This is one of the best posts I’ve read from you so far. Truly outstanding work!
What really stood out to me was how clearly you categorized each type of difficulty, and how you connected that with how a player’s background and preferred genre can shape their perception of challenge.
In the end, you made me see some of my favorite games that could be considered hard-as-nails from a whole new angle.
Glad you enjoyed it! It's something I don't think gets picked up on enough. To me this teaching issue really is the core of high difficulty, the fact that most video games still insist on telling you that you use the left stick to move and not how to approach situations.
You made the right choice! As Maria, I think it's obviously still a hard game but most experienced players could finish it. As Richter? That game was my personal hell during lockdown, I wish they'd re-release it and Symphony of the Night outside of PlayStation so I can replay them as those games are super expensive on original hardware.
Glad you enjoyed it! I'm in a bit of a pondering mood at the moment so my next post will be in the same vein as this.
I often choose the easiest named difficulty in a game because I want to enjoy the game with the limited time I have, not because I want to be challenged. I recently did it with Jedi Fallen Order, I wanted to enjoy the story. Same with Metroid Dread, I was perfectly happy playing at "rookie" level, yet still died so many times!
I liked how you tried to categorise difficulty beyond easy/medium/hard, though I think there could be a few more. One that comes to mind - though I don't know what to call it - is when the player can choose their own difficulty layers. Examples are the Sonic games (Mega Drive), you could just run through the levels, or you could complete the special stages to get Chaos Emeralds and become Super Sonic. That is not essential, it is a choice. Same with Zelda: Breath of the Wild, after leaving the plateau nothing is stopping you heading straight to the castle and attacking Ganon with a wooden stick and 3 hearts, but it would be a massive challenge. Or you could take the slow way, build up your strength, gain good equipment and complete the quest to have a much better chance at success.
I tend to choose something above average but most video game hard difficulties just make the player do barely any damage but receive extra, so I stay away from the very top; if there are 5 options, I'm usually picking #4.
There definitely is potential for many others and also subcategories if we really got into it; I bundled strategic difficulty together into 1 when, for example, something like Civilization 7 is not a challenge in the same way that Hearts of Iron 4 is a challenge. I wish more games would do what Halo has always done and very clearly mark the intended difficulty. In that series, Heroic: the difficulty between Normal and Legendary (Hard) has always had a little note in the description that reads something like 'the way Halo is meant to be played.'
It’s interesting you mentioned Metroid Dread. Like you, any new action/adventure game I play, I always turn the difficulty down to easy so I can enjoy a little challenge, but mostly experience the story and see where things go.
But for Metroid Dread, I left it on the it on default difficulty setting. It’s because I go way back to with the Metroid series (since Metroid II on the Game Boy), and feel super comfortable playing each new game because I already know what it wants from me. I feel safe playing a Metroid game on default difficulty.
Ever since Super Metroid, I see the series as deceptively difficult, especially with the boss battles. It’s all about figuring out the patterns and finding the path forward. Seems intimidating at times, until the solutions begin to click (as was mentioned in this article).
Of course, I’ll never turn the difficulty above normal on Metroid Dread because…well…I’d like to actually finish the game on my next playthrough 😅
To be fair, other than enemies taking off more health per hit, it was usually the boss battles in Metroid Dread that I think the difficulty made a difference in. Especially the final boss - even at rookie level, I had to die many times to understand the patterns.
What really made it challenging were the EMMI robots, they genuinely made me anxious! They were so unpredictable, and I never felt safe around them, so their design worked well 😀
Really enjoyed reading your thoughts, thank you! An excellent attempt at categorizing, too,—makes a lot of sense to me personally and highlights that I struggle with Mechanically difficult games.
Also the word of encouragement at the end is *chef's kiss*
I am at least glad that the precision platforming genre [which momentarily embraced the name 'maso-core'] has mostly evaporated. Nothing drove home to me the perils of difficulty for difficulty's sake more than spending 30-300 attempts developing the muscle memory to clear a stage in Super Meat Boy and then immediately shrugging and moving on to the next. I still think it's a bit silly that Celeste got SO much praise for just giving people cheat codes [a little bit of praise would be fine], but God knows I'd never play it without them.
Also I just wanted to add that, as a 40 year old and [sometimes] beared gamer, I love save states and rewind features. Why? Because there’s plenty of NES and other console games from back in the day I never played. Trying to play them to completion now with the limited time I have would be impossible if I had to start over or abide by the game’s original rules of saving.
Not to mention, my skills in certain games aren’t what they used to be due to not having played them in some many years, and I lost that specific muscle memory to make room for something else.
So I absolutely need some way to pickup immediately where I left off, or get a mulligan after crashing my ship in a Gradius game for the umpteenth time.
And one more thing. That soup with a fork analogy? Perfect 🤌🏾
Well done, good sir! Really enjoyed reading this. What especially resonated with me was the part where you mentioned when, after failing multiple times, things start clicking and you learn the solution, or button combinations, etc. to overcome the challenge.
Reading that reminded me of my experience with playing Out of This World (aka “Another World”) on the Super NES and Genesis (Mega Drive). Literally from the beginning, the game expects you to fail the first time until you realize what to do (hint: don’t just sit there).
The game was interesting enough to where I kept coming back to it despite repeated failures because I’d keep trying different things until “ah-ha!…I still died, but that enemy reacted differently this time. Very interesting.”
Yeah, I like games that seem impossible until you learn how to overcome the obstacle piece by piece.
This is one of the best posts I’ve read from you so far. Truly outstanding work!
What really stood out to me was how clearly you categorized each type of difficulty, and how you connected that with how a player’s background and preferred genre can shape their perception of challenge.
In the end, you made me see some of my favorite games that could be considered hard-as-nails from a whole new angle.
Keep up the great work!
Glad you enjoyed it! It's something I don't think gets picked up on enough. To me this teaching issue really is the core of high difficulty, the fact that most video games still insist on telling you that you use the left stick to move and not how to approach situations.
What an wonderfully presented and balanced take on video game difficulty. Awesome work!
Also, I've only ever completed Rondo of Blood while playing as Maria - which is significantly easier than Richter hahaha
You made the right choice! As Maria, I think it's obviously still a hard game but most experienced players could finish it. As Richter? That game was my personal hell during lockdown, I wish they'd re-release it and Symphony of the Night outside of PlayStation so I can replay them as those games are super expensive on original hardware.
Glad you enjoyed it! I'm in a bit of a pondering mood at the moment so my next post will be in the same vein as this.
I often choose the easiest named difficulty in a game because I want to enjoy the game with the limited time I have, not because I want to be challenged. I recently did it with Jedi Fallen Order, I wanted to enjoy the story. Same with Metroid Dread, I was perfectly happy playing at "rookie" level, yet still died so many times!
I liked how you tried to categorise difficulty beyond easy/medium/hard, though I think there could be a few more. One that comes to mind - though I don't know what to call it - is when the player can choose their own difficulty layers. Examples are the Sonic games (Mega Drive), you could just run through the levels, or you could complete the special stages to get Chaos Emeralds and become Super Sonic. That is not essential, it is a choice. Same with Zelda: Breath of the Wild, after leaving the plateau nothing is stopping you heading straight to the castle and attacking Ganon with a wooden stick and 3 hearts, but it would be a massive challenge. Or you could take the slow way, build up your strength, gain good equipment and complete the quest to have a much better chance at success.
I tend to choose something above average but most video game hard difficulties just make the player do barely any damage but receive extra, so I stay away from the very top; if there are 5 options, I'm usually picking #4.
There definitely is potential for many others and also subcategories if we really got into it; I bundled strategic difficulty together into 1 when, for example, something like Civilization 7 is not a challenge in the same way that Hearts of Iron 4 is a challenge. I wish more games would do what Halo has always done and very clearly mark the intended difficulty. In that series, Heroic: the difficulty between Normal and Legendary (Hard) has always had a little note in the description that reads something like 'the way Halo is meant to be played.'
It’s interesting you mentioned Metroid Dread. Like you, any new action/adventure game I play, I always turn the difficulty down to easy so I can enjoy a little challenge, but mostly experience the story and see where things go.
But for Metroid Dread, I left it on the it on default difficulty setting. It’s because I go way back to with the Metroid series (since Metroid II on the Game Boy), and feel super comfortable playing each new game because I already know what it wants from me. I feel safe playing a Metroid game on default difficulty.
Ever since Super Metroid, I see the series as deceptively difficult, especially with the boss battles. It’s all about figuring out the patterns and finding the path forward. Seems intimidating at times, until the solutions begin to click (as was mentioned in this article).
Of course, I’ll never turn the difficulty above normal on Metroid Dread because…well…I’d like to actually finish the game on my next playthrough 😅
To be fair, other than enemies taking off more health per hit, it was usually the boss battles in Metroid Dread that I think the difficulty made a difference in. Especially the final boss - even at rookie level, I had to die many times to understand the patterns.
What really made it challenging were the EMMI robots, they genuinely made me anxious! They were so unpredictable, and I never felt safe around them, so their design worked well 😀
Really enjoyed reading your thoughts, thank you! An excellent attempt at categorizing, too,—makes a lot of sense to me personally and highlights that I struggle with Mechanically difficult games.
Also the word of encouragement at the end is *chef's kiss*
Glad you enjoyed it! Ut was a bit unstructured so I think I'll likely tackle the topic again later but I'm glad my points hit
I am at least glad that the precision platforming genre [which momentarily embraced the name 'maso-core'] has mostly evaporated. Nothing drove home to me the perils of difficulty for difficulty's sake more than spending 30-300 attempts developing the muscle memory to clear a stage in Super Meat Boy and then immediately shrugging and moving on to the next. I still think it's a bit silly that Celeste got SO much praise for just giving people cheat codes [a little bit of praise would be fine], but God knows I'd never play it without them.
Also I just wanted to add that, as a 40 year old and [sometimes] beared gamer, I love save states and rewind features. Why? Because there’s plenty of NES and other console games from back in the day I never played. Trying to play them to completion now with the limited time I have would be impossible if I had to start over or abide by the game’s original rules of saving.
Not to mention, my skills in certain games aren’t what they used to be due to not having played them in some many years, and I lost that specific muscle memory to make room for something else.
So I absolutely need some way to pickup immediately where I left off, or get a mulligan after crashing my ship in a Gradius game for the umpteenth time.
And one more thing. That soup with a fork analogy? Perfect 🤌🏾
Well done, good sir! Really enjoyed reading this. What especially resonated with me was the part where you mentioned when, after failing multiple times, things start clicking and you learn the solution, or button combinations, etc. to overcome the challenge.
Reading that reminded me of my experience with playing Out of This World (aka “Another World”) on the Super NES and Genesis (Mega Drive). Literally from the beginning, the game expects you to fail the first time until you realize what to do (hint: don’t just sit there).
The game was interesting enough to where I kept coming back to it despite repeated failures because I’d keep trying different things until “ah-ha!…I still died, but that enemy reacted differently this time. Very interesting.”
Yeah, I like games that seem impossible until you learn how to overcome the obstacle piece by piece.