Are you into difficult games?

[Sheikah_Witch]

Difficult games has seemingly been acquiring some limelight in gaming recently with lots of buzz around games being 'soulslike' and opinions like how difficult games makes you feel awesome when you've cleared a particularly difficult foe or enemy.

Do you 'get' difficult games, or are you into them?
Or does hard difficulties put you off?
What kind of difficulty is good difficulty to you? When does a game just get frustrating instead of offering a fair challenge?

 

[Spirit]

I've never been very talented as a gamer because I grew up with Nintendo and Nintendo games are generally rather easy.

I've not played a Dark Souls games because they look terribly boring to me.

But I have tried Nioh, Bloodborne and the demo for Code Vein.

I got the furthest on Nioh because I am really intrigued by the story. But I've noticed the harder a game is the less I pay attention to the lore and story because I'm struggling to stay alive and worry about stats.

I think these 'souls-likes' are difficult to a fault with having to abuse I-frames and being forced to play certain ways rather than a way you'd be more comfortable in.

I do want to be good at these kinds of games but I think they go far too far. They layer systems on top of systems and and enemies troll you with their movements to purposefully catch you off guard.

You have to try and try and try and remember the movements of enemies... That isn't fun.
A good kind of difficulty should challenge your skill with how to use the mechanics you have control over, Platinum games do this well, not with having to memorise things after constant retries, that's boring.

 

[Fraxinus]

I'm a goddamn casual. I have fully come to terms with the fact that I'm horrible at video games and don't necessarily feel too discouraged when I'm reminded that my skills are just godawful. That said, I don't really like playing on the easiest difficulty in a game (when I say this I mean like an easier difficulty than what is the default; if there's a default and a harder difficulty, I'll typically stick with the default difficulty for a first playthrough), as I'd rather work a little to overcome my own incompetence throughout my journey through the game.

I don't really seek games out based on their difficulty. A game's difficulty plays very little role in why I ultimately decide to get a game, but if it happens to be difficult, I have a lot of other reasons for why I got the game that will make the experience worthwhile even if I get my ass handed to me. I don't play games to be frustrated; I play them to enjoy them.

I've not had much exposure to most of the infamously difficult games that have achieved a meme status for their difficulty, though. A few of them seem interesting in premise outside of their difficulty, but a lot of it comes down to my own inaccessibility to the games whether it be due to the platform on which they're available, or just the price outweighing my desire to try them out. Sekiro for instance looks really immersive and incredible, but I have absolutely no means of playing that game at the moment.

 

[Dizzi]

I dont like them difficult difficult where im dying every 5 seconds or stood tryna figure out the puzzle of the key rotating...

 

[mαrkαsscoρ]

eh, not really, especially not these days where I'm conscious about how I spend my time, and retrying a level or something over and over for like an hour only to leave w/ no progress is just not something I want to do anymore

 

[Azure Sage]

I don't really seek games out based on their difficulty. A game's difficulty plays very little role in why I ultimately decide to get a game, but if it happens to be difficult, I have a lot of other reasons for why I got the game that will make the experience worthwhile even if I get my ass handed to me. I don't play games to be frustrated; I play them to enjoy them.

This sums up my feelings pretty well. I look for fun first and foremost in games. If I'm having fun, I don't care how easy it is. I generally play games on easy or normal mode as it is. I rarely ever select the hard modes. People who have the attitude that games need to be hard to be good or that easy games are automatically bad annoy me. It's a frustrating pet peeve to hear people talk like that. If you are having fun, then that's the base requirement. Like, that's it. Anything on top of that is icing on the cake.

 

[Princess Niki]

I am too casual to be any good, only game I want to try but know I probably shouldn't cuz I already suck at platformers is Cuphead.

 

[Fraxinus]

eh, not really, especially not these days where I'm conscious about how I spend my time, and retrying a level or something over and over for like an hour only to leave w/ no progress is just not something I want to do anymore

A game built on its difficulty should be well designed so you're not forced to be road blocked by one specific task. Overcoming an obstacle you were stuck on sure feels goddamn good, but I definitely agree with not wanting to be forced into nothing but failed attempts at the same thing for hours on end. Need a little more freedom in a game like that, so I have other things to do while mentally preparing for taking another stab at it.

 

[Mikey the Moblin]

Nope

PS dark souls is not hard

 

[the8thark]

PS dark souls is not hard

It is hard but in a very different way most people this. Dark Souls to me is an action puzzle game. As in the difficulty comes not from the controls or executing them. The difficulty comes from wrying to work out what do where and what is the best action to counter the enemy and boss moves. Almost all moves in the game are telegraphed. When the telegraphs happen the challenge is to work out which move to do, remember to do it and do it in a timely matter so you are not one shot killed.
It's a good game to take slow and slowly get better at working out what to do and betting your reaction times.
"You Died" is not you suck or git gud. It's "you have yet to work out what to do there".

So to your comment I agree with you 100%.

*****

Do I like to play really hard games?
Not really. I play games these days more for the fun and less for the challenge. Unless it's a thinking challenge. Forcing myself to contort my hands in all different ways really fast, like required for many games, fighting games or RTS games being an example, is something that is something left in my younger days.

Also I'm not that much a fan of rogue-like games because it's hard to git gud at them as the skill needed for each run is RNG dependant on how good the loot you get that run is. Or maybe I just don't like bullet hell rogue-like games. I really like Faster Than Light and it's a rogue-like. It's final boss is a little broken (as in it's 1000x harder than the rest of the game all combined) but past that it's really good.

If I really like a game I will replay it on a harder mode after I've beaten it on normal/easy because that makes the challenge about the same. Hard is harder (duh!) but I have more skill from beating the game on normal so most of the time that's about the same challenge to the player. But that's hard only. I won't hit up any stupidly harder than hard difficulty if they exist.

 

[Farore's Chosen]

If they're fun and at least mostly fair, then yes. If the challenge is poorly implemented and they end up being more frustrating then fun, forget it.

 

[alexx]

I play games just for fun and prefer light but entertaining games with interesting plot. Right now I play crypto online casino games to get some coins. Very cool game, I can play it even at work. So convy.

 

[toonlink]

I love a good challenge, although usually I stick to tough RPGs and roguelikes. My reflexes are decent, but I can't really get into soulsborne games, probably due to a lack of interest in the gameplay+setting. I enjoy games with very deliberate controls and bosses with patterns like Monster Hunter, and I love medieval, high fantasy settings, but something about both of them together just doesn't click with me.

As for difficult RPGs, I really enjoy facing overpowered, massively difficult bosses, since usually figuring out the strategy for the boss is really satisfying. I detest bosses that just require grinding to power through though, it's no fun just smacking an enemy over and over again without any strategy.

When it comes to difficult roguelikes, I really enjoy all the ones that infuse difficulty and loss with the mechanics of the game, like Darkest Dungeon or Dead Cells, and more arcade-like ones, that have lots of isolated runs and tons of unique stages/enemies/weapons, like Binding of Isaac or Enter the Gungeon.

 

[Jirohnagi]

I love difficult games such as the Soulsborne series, Sekiro and Nioh i enjoy schlepping my way through mostly because all of these games give you multiple ways to do something (except maybe in Sekiros case where it's a rhythm game with swords)

As @Spirit says above sometimes the games require forcing you to abuse certain mechanics such as I-frames the ability to spam the deflect button or in the case of DS using a whole lot of OP magic to murder it all, i don't enjoy being forced to use one specific method overly much.

And again as she says troll enemies really do get to me more than they should, Mimics, freaking one-eyed imps or Mujina/Nurikabe all screw with me than they should. Added onto this with having to learn rapid enemy movements and adding in multistage fights with some bosses or hell with some enemies (Freaking one eyed imps) can really break me down it can be so frustrating to down them.

But at the end of it all i enjoy the knowledge that i've just conquered a tough foe and that kinda makes me want to carry on and see how much more i can do before i hit another wall and if i can surmount it, if not then it calls for grinding til i CAN do it or sitting there learning the methods i can use to successfully do it (Such as with Nue, a ridiculously tough foe when initially encountered but has a hell of a cheese that makes it piss to kill)

 

[TheGreatCthulhu]

I do prefer difficult games. I don't like hand-holding.

Games that are tough, but fair is what I'm talking about. Bull**** difficulty or artificial difficulty does bother me though.