I beat v1.1.3 today, and could not really notice a difference in difficulty. The witch has a glowing medallion now, is all I could tell.
By “balanced leaning on the side of easy/gentle” I meant things like the safe zones are clearly noticeable and numerous, the enemy shots come at a reasonable speed (even a little on the slow side, but fitting for our own acceleration), we’re not ambushed from off-screen (we get telegraphs for anything incoming), our weapons are effective. We can win on first tries, without having to die 10 times over to learn attack patterns. That sort of balance.
A larger hp pool on bosses still maintains all of that, so it didn’t feel like it changed. This is all praise, by the way, not some complaint that it wasn’t made hard enough.
Rays still got me twice, on the windows build. (I know it wasn’t modified, and I’ve let the matter go, just reporting). I suppose I am simply old.