it shouldn't surprise me, but it does, that i have friends who think the easier games are just right, and friends who think the hardest stuff isn't hard enough. i guess i had forgotten that even my people have a range of different tastes and i can't necessarily please them all at the same time.... i guess my own tastes lean on the difficult side too (for the same reason as you, i want the game to make me actually engage with its language), and in principle i believe in shooting to please yourself. but i think the flexible objectives in sketches 3 and 4 really let me have my cake and eat it too, so i'd like to aim for that sort of thing whenever time permits.
in any case i appreciate the vote of confidence. thanks a lot for sharing your thoughts.
(re: valdivia, i just think exploration is more interesting when it's weighed against your survival needs. a situation where you're committing suicide to explore because death.. feels like flouting the premise rather than engaging with it. although maybe it's just another kind of engagement....)