For real, I’ve got shit to do. Old-school boss fights requiring a ridiculous degree of flawless repetition was an expression of hardware limitations at the time, not a fun feature to get nostalgic about. People can spend their time as they wish, but for my money the artificially ramped-up difficulty for its own sake is a cancer on game design, not something to develop a sense of elitism about.
It’s not that I don’t appreciate a challenge. I used to love difficult games. I grew up in the NES era when difficulty was the only thing that kept games from being completed in 30 minutes.
But life moves on and we get busy. If I get 2-3 hours in a week to game it’s a miracle. I am not going to spend that time grinding a boss for hours.
But other difficult games may be fine. Specifically, rogelikes. Slay the Spire and Dead Cells are games that can be very difficult, but the games are designed to be taken on in short chunks with an entire run taking under an hour, whereas Souls-Like games expect a lot more time commitment.
I really enjoyed the Respawn Jedi games. They’re Souls-likes with difficulty sliders that should appease anyone.
I play both of these and loved em. I also poured 50 hours into beating cuphead. Difficulty isn’t a problem if the depth of the game is a pool instead of a sea.
I think Hades/Hades did it great. Brutally difficult at first, but with an optional mode to make it easier each time you die, and full runs taking about 30 minutes.
And making failure a part of the story that allows you to maintain progression despite dying is also neat.
The only thing I’d really like to see changed is making an optional twist on God Mode where every time you lose it gets easier, but every time you win it gets harder.
Personally, I gave up at the first fight in Bloodborne (I have 40 min of gameplay). Never touched a souls game ever again.
For real, I’ve got shit to do. Old-school boss fights requiring a ridiculous degree of flawless repetition was an expression of hardware limitations at the time, not a fun feature to get nostalgic about. People can spend their time as they wish, but for my money the artificially ramped-up difficulty for its own sake is a cancer on game design, not something to develop a sense of elitism about.
Souls have pretty hard bosses… but mostly, they are just optional content. Main story isn’t that difficult in my experience.
It’s not that I don’t appreciate a challenge. I used to love difficult games. I grew up in the NES era when difficulty was the only thing that kept games from being completed in 30 minutes.
But life moves on and we get busy. If I get 2-3 hours in a week to game it’s a miracle. I am not going to spend that time grinding a boss for hours.
But other difficult games may be fine. Specifically, rogelikes. Slay the Spire and Dead Cells are games that can be very difficult, but the games are designed to be taken on in short chunks with an entire run taking under an hour, whereas Souls-Like games expect a lot more time commitment.
I really enjoyed the Respawn Jedi games. They’re Souls-likes with difficulty sliders that should appease anyone.
I play both of these and loved em. I also poured 50 hours into beating cuphead. Difficulty isn’t a problem if the depth of the game is a pool instead of a sea.
I think Hades/Hades did it great. Brutally difficult at first, but with an optional mode to make it easier each time you die, and full runs taking about 30 minutes.
And making failure a part of the story that allows you to maintain progression despite dying is also neat.
The only thing I’d really like to see changed is making an optional twist on God Mode where every time you lose it gets easier, but every time you win it gets harder.