FTL. At least until you've beaten the game several times
this post was submitted on 12 Sep 2024
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That's a good example. You simply can't grasp optimal choices or know possible events and outcomes before going through it a great deal of times, and it's likely that you'll get killed too fast to experience much if you start on normal. You definitely end up switching to normal as you improve, learn, and unlock, but it really benefits and smoothens the learning curve to start easier.
This is such a good answer. I remember playing it on easy back in the day and the final boss still kicked my ass.
I remember having some really solid runs, easily beating every enemy I encountered... and then not even being able to make a dent on the final boss
I spend the entire game prepping for the boss. Just because I can ohko every other ship the moment I land doesn't mean I can touch the beast. I've done the last sector without taking a hit just to never even get past the shields in phase 1
I think that's my main complaint with the game. Once you find a way to beat the boss, you just go for that build every time. It's so punishing and the path to get there is so long, that it's a massive disincentive to try new things.
Yep, that's what everyone realises after getting stomped a few times!
Into the Breach too, it's just a less brutal way to learn how to play
And once the game has become a breeze, with 100% of your runs being a success, install the Captain's Edition mod and suddenly, it's a pleasantly challenging title again. The add-on that turns it into an endless game in particular is so good, I spent dozens of hours playing it.
Shoutout to Twinge’s Balance Mod. It’s actively maintained, and it makes the game more interesting by encouraging use of unpopular weapons and systems
Captain’s is great too, but it can be overwhelming.
Thanks for the recommendation!
The difficult steps in FTL are no joke. I was having no difficulty clearing on easy and was just trying to unlock all the ships. Once I did I switched to normal and had to restart 3 times before getting out of the first sector.
Anything where you're more interested in the story than the challenge.
So... story-driven games.
I wonder what game stories benefit from a bit of challenge.
Like, I feel like The Last of Us benefits from a little bit of challenge to drive home the anxiety and cleverness of the characters.
Dwarf Fortress! Turn off attacks and sieges and just let your dwarves die by your own incompetence instead
Usually the issue isn't my incompetence, people just get too drunk in the tavern and decide to kill each other. FUN.
I just wall myself up inside with a gate and wait out the sieges. I also place two dogs outside the main entrance to catch kidnappers. Has the same effect without needing to mod the game or alter the settings.
Of course once I can build ballastas or make use of water/lava, I can set up winding paths with Dwarven Shotguns (basically using water pressure and garbage I can fire minecarts full of crap at high speeds) to obliterate trespassers.
I'm taking this as an opportunity to illuminate issues with particular games, since... well, play on easy if you wanna, naturally. So, for my recommendation: If you don't use the mod that makes all weapons very dangerous, Mass Effect Andromeda. Without a mod to speed it up a lot, every fight becomes ages of tedium. There's one weapon that can be made any good and even that doesn't make fights bearable. You're basically sitting for like ten minutes at a time hosing down foes with off-brand Super Soakers until they get frustrated and leave. It's quite bad. Just play it on easy. Not just easy, the easiest easy. Whatever the lowest difficulty is, pick that one. There's just no point in anything higher unless you've got infinite patience. And ammo. Bleeegh.
So, generally I play things on easier difficulties when I feel like anything higher will get tedious rather than interesting. The Mass Effect trilogy, I play on the maximum difficulty because that adds a bunch of mechanics that give me more to work around. Fighting armoured enemies should be done differently from fights against shielded enemies, that sort of thing. Enemies become more dangerous when they're not shut down so there's that encouragement to get them figured out before they bring out the scary attacks. Some games just increase health amounts, which... okay, just shoot them more? 😴 Boring.
tl;dr: Games like Mass Effect Andromeda where difficulty settings only increase tedium. Am never gonna want to crank up the tedium setting.
off-brand Super Soakers until they get frustrated
I'm now imagining the leaders of the Andromeda Initiative shopping for guns at the Citadel branch of Temu, which is Commander Shepherd's least favorite store.
Personally, I am playing Dragon Age: Origins and Dragon Age 2 on easy. They come from an era where if you aren't suffering through it then you must really suck. Personally, I don't have time to fight the same boss for an hour only to die when he gets down to the last 5% and start over again, I only get a few hours after work to game. However, the story is honestly pretty good, and I recommend them - if you play on easy.
Uncharted on console/with a controller. Unless you really love sitting behind knee-high-cover™ I highly recommend playing them on easy and like an older Tomb Raider game. Much more fun that way.
Let's be real: I doubt many people are playing the Uncharted games for the gameplay. These titles are doing the bare minimum to meet AAA action-adventure standards with some technical flourishes here and there, but that's about it. You get by the numbers cover shooting, by the numbers occasional easy stealth, by the numbers climbing, by the numbers (and by that I mean really small numbers) puzzle solving, etc. The appeal lies in the spectacle, the artistry, the technical excellence by the standards of the platforms they are on, experiencing what are essentially slightly interactive Hollywood adventure movies that manage to keep the player hooked with expert pacing and characters that are straddling the line between psychopathy and charm just right.
One might also argue that it's more fun watching footage of these games than actually playing them. The best example of this is the car chase sequence in Uncharted 4, which looked amazing when I first watched it years before being able to play it, but once I got to actually experience it first hand, this was the moment when I dropped the difficulty down, because it was remarkably (and surprisingly) frustrating and irritating to play. Don't get me wrong, it's an astonishing technical achievement, but not one second of playing it was fun, at least in my opinion.
Three games came to mind just now, for slightly different reasons.
Similarly to others, just for feeling good: Earth Defense Force (whichever release, really). While it's great to have a challenge in the missions, getting through the game, finding a good mission to farm weapons on, then using those fun weapons to destroy horses of insects and aliens is just so fun. And some missions can feel a bit BS with the weapons you might have available normally.
I would also actually say Baldur's Gate 3. I know a lot of people enjoy the tactical side of things, but my opinion is that the DnD 5e ruleset kinda just sucks for a video game. I play it as a TTRPG, it's fine. But I found rolling badly in something my character's meant to be good at just so frustrating. This let me actually explore the story and world my own way, which was way more fun to me than restarting combat because I got unlucky.
That one might be controversial, but I was also speed running completion because I wanted to know conclude the story and see the world, but something about the game just didn't click for me.
And finally, because I think it's a fantastic game that deserves attention (with the best soundtrack I've heard in a while): Rabbit and Steel. It's a brutally hard roguelike bullet hell that's based on dungeon raid boss mechanics from FFXIV (which I haven't played, but that's what everyone says). The difficulty will make you want to not play it, and for me stuff only really clicked once I unlocked my penultimate class. I can now heat Hard fairly consistently, but it has taken a lot of runs to get there. No shame in admitting that those started from Cute and Normal and involved me grinding out all the unlocks by charging through Cute difficulty.
So really, the summary of this far too long reply is: just lower the difficulty when it's frustrating or keeping you too much from getting to the fun stuff. You can always try again on a higher difficulty later.
I played Bg3 on easy, no shame, but I think I missed out on secondary class. I think that’s not available on easy.
BG3 had too much truly random BS I couldn't account for to justify anything other than easy or normal. Stuff like companions switching to real time from turn based and walking into fights from a stealthy position or not avoiding traps that have been spotted. It's a fun game but it's seriously to janky for me to avoid on difficult challenges. If I fuck up, that's on me, but when my planning is right and the game fucks me over by randomly making a companion walk towards me and lose stealth then why would I want to try to experience a good challenge? It's just not worth it.
NieR Automata, for basically the same reasons. Hard mode is filled with instakills everywhere and is really just a damage multiplier, so you have to be the right kind of person for that. If you're not, Normal is probably already fairly easy because of all the auto-heals, but the pacing can be a bit slow for something where most enemies aren't dangerous. Might as well play Easy and play for the story.
I love the combat in the game. I think I played it on normal. I wouldn't recommend anything easier. I feel like everything would die too easily.
Project Zomboid. That’s the most recent game I can think of where I reduced the difficulty (and that’s coming from someone that has nearly 400 hours into Elden Ring). It’s not that the game is tougher than ER or anything like that. It has a ton of cool mechanics and detail that are really enjoyable if you’re into zombie survival games, but the zombies can really swarm you in that game and you won’t live long.
It also has sandbox mode where there’s no zombies and you can focus on farming, building, etc.
I think easy game modes take away what a great game makes a great game. I'm not sure if I can explain this with words, but if you are going to play on easy, then it means you don't want to play. At that point, its probably not a game for you. I'm talking across all kind of genres and type of games. However, if a game is unfair or badly designed, that is the moment when I would recommend using easy mode. And it depends on how the difficulty scaling is implemented. Some easy modes are really dumb and take away the core principles of the game, while others are very intelligently realized.
Your example is a great example of what I meant by that. You are not interested into the combat, therefore made it easy so it does not get in your way. You didn't turn it down because its unfair. What happens is, you are actively playing a game, which you don't want to. I don't know what exactly scales in that game, so maybe its not a bad easy mode at all, but can't judge the game.
I'm currently playing Metal Gear Solid 5 for the first time (just played a few hours on launch and now I'm back to it) on normal difficulty. The game can be brutal at times and there were multiple moments when I almost quit the game. Yet I did not turn easy mode, and now I'm happy that I overcome the challenge naturally. And that's what I mean. I you turn the game to easy mode, then you get into these habits of not solving the challenges.
I think easy game modes take away what a great game makes a great game.
But a lot of people are coming to gaming from traditional media where there is no interaction. A lot of those people like the narratives in games, but don't love beating a challenge. A lot of those people are tired from long days at work and do not get joy from eking out a win. To them, it feels like a chore, and they didn't get into this to do chores. They got into it to get away from the stress of the world.
(EDIT: Forgot to mention, this is also why Let's Play youtubes are popular. I know a guy who doesn't game at all but has watched full playthroughs of things like Firewatch.)
If you get enjoyment from great game mechanics, more power to you. However, that doesn't mean those game mechanics are less impactful in story driven games where the gaming is "easier."
My partner didn't play games at all until those old Walking Dead games by Telltale came out. They were like a TV show, and she started playing them... because it was like "playing" one of her favorite shows at the time. I literally chose them to introduce her to gaming because it was more like a TV show than a game.
She recently finished Baldur's Gate 3 on normal and its her favorite game now. So games with easy difficulty levels can also help people who have never gamed before be able to get into it and eventually love the more difficult challenge.
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Playing on easy doesn't mean you don't want to play. Or at least, that's not my personal experience when I put games on easy, which is not always.
I'll throw out two examples. Age of Empires 2. I suck ass at real time strategy, so I put the bots on easiest. What this gives me is the experience and feeling of building up my faction, gathering resources, making upgrades, feeling later like those upgrades were smart (which I wouldn't get on harder difficulties as my actual poor choices would backfire and punish me), and then I get to conquer my enemies with my large army.
I still got to build something up from nothing, create a satisfying army, utilize what I made to conquer. I got something out of it that I wouldn't have if I played on normal. I would've struggled and likely lost. I might've just as likely actually risen above the challenge and came away with a more satisfying, but hard fought win, but I have challenging and hard fought wins at work every day. I don't need that in a genre I'm only a tourist in at home. I have Monster Hunter for that.
I put Gundam Breaker 4 on easy, the combat is satisfying on a surface level, but too precise and finicky as the challenge rises. I enjoy the combat still, on a smaller scale, but I moreso enjoy acquiring gear and making a Gundam that looks a certain way. The things I enjoy more about the game are facilitated by easier combat, I can get to those parts more easily, but still enjoy the combat.
This might be a weird one as the game is often blamed for not having difficulty settings, but Elden Ring. While it doesn't have a straight up setting that says easy, there's a lot of ways to make the game easier.
I really hate how Fromsoft put the "Prepare to Die" tagline onto Dark Souls when it came to PC and seems to develop into more bullshitty scenarios that kill you in unpredictable ways. Elden Ring has for example a lot of enemies that hold their attack for unintuitively long just to catch you off guard and punish you when you roll on the intuitive timing.
The community is to blame as well for the bad reputation of the games with people making fun of others using big shields and summons to beat the game. And herein lie the difficulty options of Elden Ring:
- Using greatshields makes a lot of the game a lot easier
- Using spirit ashes makes places that allow them a lot easier (as opposed to player and npc summons they don't affect the enemies health pool)
- Using magic allows you to attack with little risk to yourself
You can also summon other players but i don't know if that makes the game easier: As noted above it raised the enemies HP so everyone has to do their part to succeed but if you are a caster you can mostly sit back and blast enemies from afar while your summons tank. Using player summons also opens your world up for invasions and while the invader usually is in a 1v3 situation they also usually know what they are doing and how to deal with such situations.
If you're still stuck at a boss, just go somewhere else and explore. The game is designed to teach you that lesson with the first actual boss but a lot of people take it as the game just being hard.
All of this is to say: it is okay to use the games integrated mechanics that make it easy. It doesn't make you less of a gamer. Elden Ring has such a beautifully crafted world and if you're looking very interesting lore and it's a shame that seemingly all people talk about is the difficulty. It is actually the easiest Fromsoft title if you want it to be as it gives you a lot more and more powerful tools than the other games.
(Also if you see a chonky looking gal in black full body armour called Sieglinde, summon me. I have great heals, a big chonky sword and love helping people 😘)
The Ascent.
Bit of diablo, bit of Borderlands; good game but lacks variety and also has some insane jumps in the difficulty. Playing on Normal is hard enough with no extra payout. Hard is impossible unless you are absolutely perfect in execution. Might as well put it on Easy and just have fun endlessly blasting punks, mutants and machines because when you start dying in the first 2 seconds of every boss fight, it stops being fun.
There are a lot of indie games that suffer from this imo. Might be because they don’t have enough testers.
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Literally any fire emblem game, I might just have dum tho
I think there's something to be said about completing some games on yard difficulties, and Fire Emblem falls in that category. The category is puzzle games that require insane tactical strategy.
A lot of unit based RPG's function this way, and they do a really good job a lot of the time. But that is just one way to play the game, and quite frankly grinding through levels to "properly" beat a certain difficulty is certainly a better option for the majority of players.
There is something unique about finally completing a damning level, but it's only something that is there if the player has the drive to get that fulfillment.
I wouldn't say you have big dum, more likely you just value your time and the engagement of the game is more rewarding on lower difficulty, due to the element that is driving you to play the game. That is to say, it's aspects of the gameplay and the story that keeps you coming back, not necessarily the insane strategic plays needed to beat a hard level.
Both are completely valid forms of gameplay, the hardest difficulty is often min-maxxed and tends to account for a small section of players, and is probably included partly for replayability.
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XCom
Maybe it’s a skill issue, but this game was Star Wars Jedi Knight 2 for me. I think I played it on the second easiest difficulty. On higher difficulties, the enemies move much faster and do more damage, and you start to realize how inaccurate the guns are. On top of that, the weapons are projectile weapons, so you’re aiming inaccurate and slow projectiles at stormtroopers shuffling left and right rapidly. I think it’s much more fun to just play on the first or second difficulty.
Uncharted, especially the final installment. On normal and higher difficulty dealing with the enemies becomes a bit of a chore: they force you to hide a lot, as well as waste entire clips of ammo on a single guy. On easy the game becomes forgiving enough food you too start pulling off cool stunts: swinging on ropes, shooting during a climb/jump, etc.
It's just more fun on easy.
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