I'm a little baffled by the difficulty once again. I played the SoR1 Route and a regular Nora can knock off like a third of your health with a single whip combo and Antonio hits like a truck (and can spam-kick you to death...) I lost 2 lives on Stage 1 which should NOT be happening. Something feels off about it. I spent the whole time thinking "if this is what Stage 1 is like I don't even want to see the rest." I play to relieve stress, not cause it, haha.
EDIT: Played further and yeah, way too hard. The enemies are vastly overpowered it feels. I just had Bongo do half a bar of damage with his fire breath too. Like, that's insane. Also there's times it feels like there's way more enemies on screen than there was in the original game (the SoR1 Boat was the first time to make me go "what the hell?" with this). All this stuff is great for hardcore players but not for aging casuals like myself.
Also 2 Noras can stunlock you with their multi-hitting whips... The more I see, the less I like :/
Other than that, the presentation is amazing and this will absolutely beat SoRR as the best SoR fangame someday

In many ways, it has already.
I agree that Noras can be annoying with their range and stunlock-ish behavior, especially when there's more than 1.
I also noticed that sometimes the player gets swarmed with enemies like in Mania mode, even though I'm playing normal. That's why I don't recommend the SOR3 route in this version or you'll toss the controller out the window during the tunnel stage lol. The SOR2 elevator (the Stage 7 industrial one, not the one in the office) is also quite notorious, but not as bad - it's mostly due to one very annoying enemy type, not the numbers themselves.
Also, you should definitely check out game's settings - some of them make the whole experience easier or at least more manageable.
Don't forget the "Extra menu" in main menu, it has lot of stuff.
For instance, turning off the rage attacks turns them off for both the player AND bosses. Counter, block, run and dodge don't seem to affect bosses so feel free to enable em and make use of these.
That said, you might want to set lives to 9 and continues to at least 3-5, because the current version is still a beta and needs some balancing (especially some untouchable bosses)
I'm not a pro SOR player either, the only route I was able to beat without continues was SOR1 and just because I played as Zan - give him a try, his range is very helpful.
I feel that Mr Kratus here is either going to nerf him or buff the other characters
Edit: Also, when you beat the game 1, 2, 3 and 4 times you unlock new stuff which can further improve your experience, such as AI partner, infinite juggle (if that's your thing) etc.
Edit2: In case you missed it (like i have), check out "command list" in Extra Menu -> Controls - it tells you how to perform all the new tricks available in this project, such as air recovery (up + jump after enemy sends you flying)