Legend of Kay (Anniversary)

I played this on the PS2 years ago and stopped at the swamp level with the frog village because it became too frustrating for some reason. Now I thought I'd try again with the PC version and Xbox360 controller, and it went well enough. Wild boar races were still a bit annoying and too many, and the camera was not always ideal, but manageable. At some point, I also decided to use a cheat for unlimited lives because I thought the checkpoint system was challenge enough - having to replay a whole level in case you waste all your lives on a tricky spot didn't sound like a fun prospective, so I took this precaution.

And yet, once again, my enjoyment of the game stopped at the swamp and the frog village. It's not just that the area is drab and the level design a bit confusing, or that falling into the swamp is like instant death in most cases but drawn out, giving you two useless little jumps before you go under anyway, or that in this game you can actually run out of air and drown while swimming with your head over water (not diving), but that the fight with the camera was harder and more frustrating inside the frog huts than any of the enemies in the game.

In these sections you're playing a platformer that requires some precision jumps while you are threatened by moving obstacles on top of it, and it won't even let you look up, down or more than a few steps to your left or right. Instead it zooms in very closely, so that all you see is your character and not where he is supposed to jump and not what obstacles are coming in from the side to knock you down. Plus, the jumps are rather unpredictable - sometimes it looks like there's no way you can reach the platform above even with a double jump, sometimes it works regardless, but you can never rely on it. I think I will give up on this game for good and I'll never learn what comes after the swamp. I read that this might be the worst part of the game, but I don't see myself bringing up the patience to try and try again, not when I need to do several precision jumps in a row without actually seeing anything. Even unlimited lives can't remedy this situation.

What is the use of a zoomed-in and severely locked camera in a 3D platformer anyway? It's a real pity how such (very obviously) bad design can ruin a whole game.

EDIT: Never mind, I gave it another try and eventually (almost) beat the game, so it's moved to the Finished thread.