The first time I played the game I didn't understand and mostly ignored World Tendency and it probably made certain segments, particularly later in world 1 (which you want to play most of later or last =), much harder.
You're lucky you got to ignore it. In the original PS3 release, the servers would hold holiday events where they would switch the World Tendency of all the levels to one of the extremes for a week depending on what was being celebrated. For instance, Halloween would be pure black, while Christmas would be pure white. The first time I played through Demon's Souls fell on the week of Valentine's Day. For that, Atlus let the players vote on what tendency was more fitting for it, and when the results came up roughly even, they decided to have the first half of the week be pure white and the second half be pure black. Let me tell you: Pure Black Valley of Defilement is not fun. Not when you have to cross a vast poison marsh that takes away all your mobility and have to pass by an island that's now populated by four black phantom versions of those giant beak-masked fuckers.
If you guys have any great Metroidvanias to recommend, please do mention them.
You could check out Axiom Verge. It pretty much plays out like massive love letter to Metroid. Don't know of any other good Metroidvanias that are out right now. I do have one called Momodora in my backlog, but I haven't played it yet. There are a couple of intriguing ones on the pipeline though. There's Metroid Dread of course. Salt and Sanctuary is getting a sequel in the form of Salt and Sacrifice, which looks pretty cool. But what really has my eye is The Last Faith.
Anyway, I've been playing Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne HD Remaster on my Switch. I already gave my initial impressions of it, including my opinion on some of the updates. It's not nearly as hard as I remember it being, but I suppose that's because I'm more familiar with its mechanics. I know what skills are useful and which are not, and I make damn sure I've got a good mix of buffs and debuffs spread among my demons at all times. Though it doesn't help that I early on managed to make a healer whose mana replenishes as I walk, which means I never have to worry about dying or conserving on my magic ever! Though I have a feeling I might have unintentionally overleveled myself; I've leveled to my early 60s and fused a Beidou Xingjun, which I remember turning into my Uber Pixie in the Fifth Kalpa of the Labyrinth of Amala the first time I played this game eons ago, and I haven't even started the fourth one yet!