Difficulty is a real snag for you, isn't it? It's too bad you didn't play this when you were, say, three to six years old, when your skills were still developing. Its difficulty would've been just right for you and its story and atmosphere (and by god, its music) would have left the imprint it did on me.
But no, I cannot argue that Rayman 2 is indeed difficult and you are some master gamer that just complains about not having a Brutal setting. I often find myself, when replaying, to be playing around with the Pirates to make the fights more interesting. For example, I'll have to kill the Pirate in the Fairy Glade using the Powder Kegs provided and this usually leads me to getting hit a couple of times. Similarly, I've once juggled around throwing a Powder Keg up into the air, being hit and quickly running back to the Keg in the Sancturary of Water and Ice just so I could open the door with the Magic Sphere in it without killing the Pirate first. Similarly, in the Grolgoth fight, I've applied several constraints such as only walking (Shift) to avoid the Grolgoth's shots in the first phase, having a Golden Fist and not losing even one charge (aka not getting hit at all ever, else, restart), riding the walls inside the lava pillars on purpose to make it more difficult to steer, shoot only once when collecting the fireball at the ends of the tunnels and then throwing the rest of the charge away, etc..
Now I don't do this because I have to, to make the game more interesting for myself or what not, but its difficulty does allow you to play around with it more in this sense. It's a lot less constrained in the manner that other, more 'defined' games are, simply because of the obstacles they present you that R2 does not.
See it like this: Rayman 2 is more of a playground. You can choose to follow the logical things you do in a playground, or you can explore it and get creative with its assets.
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But yes - at face value - Rayman 2 is pretty much an easy to play game.