That was not my experience. I LOVED this game when it came out. It was so different from everything else and the smooth motion was just something I hadn't seen before.
You have much better patience than me, or maybe this just isn't my sort of game. I felt like it was just an exercise in memorizing the right sequence of steps, and found the controls to be a bit fiddly and unforgiving. It's undeniably gorgeous and I wanted to like it because I'd read the various Fabien Sanglard articles, I just couldn't :(
It was a lot like practicing on a piano, just with less keys. Learn the correct sequence, play it back keeping the correct timing, voila. I agree it's a specific mindset, yes.