Am I crazy

So I went through and beat the game including iki island but I never really went through and did any exploration things like doing shrines or hot springs

So basically I went through the game with the bare minimum Stat upgrades. The only real upgrades I did were Armour upgrades because the Armour visual upgrades. I also got sword upgrades and other upgrades when I got them naturally. So basically I never went out of my way to get upgrades.

I played the game on hard. Did I make the game way harder on myself or do the upgrades not really make to much of a difference. I will say enemies felt so insanely tanky but I thought that was from playing on hard. Guys am I crazy?