The director should have reasons for the difficulty of the game. Celeste is a Perfect example. It’s hard but it lets you learn and allows you to try again easily even if what you are doing is hard. Hard games that punish you and make you walk for 20-30 mins just so you can learn a few new moves the boss does can be incredibly frustrating. Many people who play these games eventually look at videos online to help after multiple tries because just “getting there” is extremely time consuming. A lot of games have normalized looking things up and that is disappointing as someone who would rather figure it out on my own. But wasting 30 mins to be killed in 2-3 hits from multiple stage bosses is not enjoyable IMHO.
One can think of it just like about a fastfood joint. Two lines of coordinates: food and service, or user experience and mechanics. We do play clunky old games for their plot or shallow timekillers for their gameplay. Striking the right balance that is fitting your core audience is the goal. There, Kodjima thinks about better service, toning down mechanics so that everyone can eat their burger, while Miyadzaki serves artisan sets knowing their inaccessibility is a part of the deal for their niche audience.
I love ULTRAKILL for many reasons, but this is one of them. I would never have completed the Prime Sanctums if I had to wait longer than 1 frame to reset to the checkpoint.
This is the entire problem with modern gaming meta though. There basically is an assumption that people will look up the walkthrough, so you need to scale difficulty with that in mind.
I am like you, and this is a big part of why I’ve almost entirely stopped gaming. Either the game is too hard, or it has like 20 minutes of cir scenes per hour, or it requires an hour of supply grinding any time you pick it back up.
Like cyberpunk? The borderland series? Elder scrolls series? Expedition 33? Assassin’s Creed series? Tons more hyper popular games I’m not aware of because I play mostly arpgs too.
There’s plenty games that try to offer easier playthroughs, unless you wish for a game without easy mode but an easier baseline experience, in which case… Pokémon? The TLoZ games from Wii onwards? Idk, there’s plenty and plenty more I don’t know of.
I found expedition 33 to be difficult even in the story telling mode. It suggests a focus on the story, but you absolutely have to scale your characters correctly, learn boss fights patterns etc. I don’t like the fight gameplay (not my cup of tea), so I tried to avoid them, but I couldn’t progress past a certain point. Love the story and universe, but wish they’d made an even easier mode because I don’t want to spend time learning all the mechanics and combos etc.
Weird, I beat everything but the last optional superboss (Simon) in hard (the difficulty before max) and it’s not like I learnt character combos much. Yeah I did learn enemy movesets, sorta, but I always dodged, fuck the parry. Enemies did hit my characters a lot and almost half the turns were spent reviving them, but the revives recover post fight so it’s whatever.
I did reach a point where Maelle and Verso were so strong that enemies hardly got a turn though.
I put exactly 0 thought to the characters builds, so I know it’s my fault and I suspect it’s not that hard. But I literally have no interest in the combat system, so of course the game is not entirely made for me. However, this story mode shows that some devs don’t consider difficulty as a pre-requisite to enjoy their art.
Maybe there’s a mod that autowins the battles for you if that’s something you would enjoy? If all you want from the game is the story and the art but go along at your own pace, so not game play videos, god mode cheats might give you what you want. I’m being 100% serious.
Don’t let the word cheat be a distraction, games are for enjoyment and if the default experience is not enjoyable for you tweaking is 100% fair in offline games tbh. My point was that I like there to be an actual default unified experience, but everyone is free to enjoy how they like. I’m one of the cheesiest players of offline games of all time lol.
Yeah no worries I dont have any issue with cheating in single player games.
I used loads of trainers in the past to expend the fun in a game after beating it. It’s just rarer the times I need to pull out one to finish it
Because the game is prettier/smoother running on my computer native res at 100fps, than watching compressed videos on YouTube.
Otherwise yeah I would have watched a play through instead.
Also going at your own pace and being free to explore the environment is more pleasant than watching someone do it for you
Something a lot of people forget is that looking stuff up is not something normalised recently, older games tended to have a freaking manual that explained most bosses and areas, it even gave hints!
I get that you would prefer that, lucky there’s plenty games for both of us.
Fair point. I always associated those with the fact video games were relatively newer media at the time but you are correct. Some times they would give you maps and instructions.
Respectfully disagree with your stance (which is fine, as fushuan said, there’s games enough for all of us.) When I was younger and played more games, I would frequently look up how to get through them on GameFAQ. The joy wasn’t in figuring out puzzles, it was in getting to see the story unfolding.
If you’ve never gotten it yet, get “Shattered Pixel Dungeon” on your phone. Completely free game. Most of what you speak of, and you’ll feel like you’ve really pulled some shit off after you beat it the first time.
SPD is proof that I’m just bad at vidya. I’ve gotten to floor 10 once. There’s clearly come meta I am missing, but I’ve read strategy guides so I’m just kind of lost at this point.
It’s just fucking hard. All the random builds and bad guys. The best hint is to use small walls to your advantage and to sometimes run away and avoid creatures. After you die and die and die you start to learn how all the baddies move around. You can eventually get good. It took me 45 attempts to get my first win, but I had 10 more wins by attempt 70. I was hooked on that game hard for a while.
It’s just about 5 new monsters I think and a few levels got some new designs. So nothing Crazy. They do mix things up a bit though. I’d say it’s worth it if you have the time
Return of the Obra Dinn and the golden idol games would probably work. I think you could do everything with mouse clicks or hitting a few keys with your good hand, nothing is time based. Other puzzle based games might work too (lorelai and the laser eye, Blue Prince?)
Mostly 2D factory games, like Factorio could also be doable. Would be a little annoying, but it would work.
Is this a cold take? I think its not hot nor cold. Its a medium take.
I think it depends what someone wants out of a game, and I think most people would agree that classes having just brick wall hard counters can be annoying in games where you play as a single character, like everything should have some chance of fighting everything else, even if disadvantaged by class type etc.
Like imagine a game like marvel rivals, but where you just straight up couldn’t hit ironman as wolverine or similar. I think people would dislike that.
In like a real time strategy game though, thats different.
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