I finished the game a week ago, i didnt find it difficult... i think the gameplay is well balanced, not difficult, not easy...

In my opinion is very important to make money and buy the weapons that better fit your play style, for me was mostly the first weapon but improved, yes, the normal lasers that you start with... and later change to "lasers", keep on lasers... i used this green stuff that shoot to the sides and rear, sonic blast or something, nearly for all the game...

For secondary weapon, i started with missiles, move to miniguns, big missiles, then atomics... and for the last part this "big beam" with very few ammon but its totally devastating for bossess.

I enjoyed very much the 3 first chapters, and some in the addons, but some of the levels in the addons are really crappy. But mostly the game is really GREAT, even if i played it for first time now.

Oh God, that's not even fair

That's what I thought too. Sometimes you die, which is to be expected, sometimes twice. By than you should have picked up on what went wrong and react accordingly. The game has a very gentle learning curve IMO and I allways considered this to be one of the easier games in the genre. I still played it a lot though, the atmosphere was great. Who wouldn't want to fly around in a carrotship and shoot bananas in all directions :D

The mouse makes things easier, you can move fastest with it. Maybe it's because I know what to buy in the shops, but I find the game way easy on the first three difficulties. "Impossible" difficulty is about right, challenging at times, and difficult during the final chapter.

ENGAGE mode is cool; your main weapon is weak, but you can perform a variety of "Street Fighter"-style combos and moves on enemies. I suck at it, though.

you have to suck to not be able to play at Lord of the Game, which applies equally to All players. If you can't beat Lord of the Game, just uninstall. to the poster, the game is dependent on your CPU and memory speed. you must have a very fast computer, that is why the game seems difficult.

Also, make sure to edit your dosboxT2K.conf and set the parameter "fullresolution" to your screen resolution, and "memsize=32", so that you can run at 60 frames per second. this improves general gameplay.

I find Tyrian really difficult in arcade mode. I managed to finish first episode though on easy.
I cannot pass second level of the 2nd episode, and even first level of the 3rd episode on easy. It's just too many enemies and too much chaos going on.
Again, this is arcade mode. And I have Tyrian v1.1 , not Tyrian2000.

This reminds me of Tubular Worlds, notorious for being hard. I remember I've never gone further than 2nd level.

I find the game extremely difficult at the Asteroids 1 and 2 levels on easy. I play story mode and spent all my money. Billions of things coming from everywhere - I don't see anything, I don't see what's from enemy and what's me and I die without seeing what hits me.

Tyrian's difficulty is actually below mediocre for an old school SHUMP. I wonder, why people have troubles beating it nowadays?

There's no shame in adjusting the game speed. That's the big thing.