What are your thoughts on hard videogames?

[KaiserMk7]

So, the concept of "progression" probably invented in NES-era but I honestly still had arcade mentality.

I mean Adventure? for Atari 2600 had lock and key type items to pick up and use to advance toward an end goal, even if encountering a dragon without the sword meant death and I think it spat you right back into another run with different randomized item placement when you won.

 

[Deleted member 660650]

I mean Adventure? for Atari 2600 had lock and key type items to pick up and use to advance toward an end goal, even if encountering a dragon without the sword meant death and I think it spat you right back into another run with different randomized item placement when you won.

Hmm. It kinda felt like games are endless in Atari 2600-era but it's my child memories. You survived, there was goals, and then the game never ended until you die or turn off the console so this is the way I mean there was no sense of "progression". When there was a sense of "level change" it was like same level but something else happens but to me it was like game is endless, just levels changing just like how arcade games were.

So, I learned games can "end" in Sega Genesis-era because I was so stuck with arcade mentality. I thought all the next levels are same shit and it would go on and on endlessly as how arcade games are. So when I played Streets of Rage and finished it I was like "WTF happened" because there was an end lol, however not many games were fun to play enough to bother ending it for me. I usually played first levels of games and after first level I swapped games until I get bored for the day.

It was only during Playstation 1-era with Metal Gear Solid 1 that I cared about games can have a story and it can be worthwhile to end them, but then I only cared about stealth gameplay so it was fun. It made your brain get familiar with the idea of "progression".

If I had played SNES RPG at the time my gamer brain stucked in arcade mentality would be improved way before than PlayStation 1-era. I had no idea SNES existed until I was enjoying the technology of internet and PS2 lol.

 

[dropsmegamega]

I like chilling with a game after a day of work with a cup of coffee and don't enjoy souls-like

 

[Need4Power]

I think the difficulty of a game can be part of its identity and artistic direction. I believe it's often better to make a game for a specific target audience rather than spread yourself too thin trying to please everyone. It's not a bad thing to have difficult, uncompromising games or easy, relaxing games.

That said, I usually love challenge! If there's something difficult I really dislike in games is to go pixel hunting after some hidden interactable object

 

[parmee]

sometimes i want to play with one hand and fall asleep gaming and other times i want to play flicky and get really really angry

 

[Varyag]

Is the difficulty a well considered part of the experience?

Some SNES games are difficult just in a you need to memorize it and good luck beating it in the rental period lol

Some games are designed with difficulty in the mind in order to craft a better overall impression and to inflect different levels of progression, IE, a Dark Souls or something like that.

Grinding the same shit for hours just to make numbers go up in an FF game is boring and I want to an hero.
Grinding Malenia for 5 hours just so I can beat her ass with my fists is a good grind that actually helps me train pattern recognition and keeps my reaction time sharp. As well as helps me practice to stay calm under pressure.

It depends on the game.

Absolutely this. Depends on how the difficulty was implemented in the design of the game, and more importantly, how the difficulty relates to you as a player. There are many different ways of making a difficult game. Some of them were meant to make you spend more money feeding quarters to arcade machines. Some of them were to prevent you from running out of SNES game in a couple of hours. Some of them were the Working Designs localized games and everybody hates them. And some games, being hard is part of the intended experience.

Giving some personal examples here: I cannot into difficult platformers, and NES Castlevania style games. I HATE Ghouls and Goblins series. Honestly for most of my life I thought I didn't even like platformer games at all, but I found some I enjoy, like Rayman. Meanwhile, I really like arcade shmups, for the most part. A lot of them are insanely difficult to clear even when spamming credits. I love the CAVE bullet hell games, but don't like R-Type and Gradius for the most part.

 

[Lena CE]

The one thing I'm not really fond when it comes to retro games (despite loving them to death) is having to restart an entire game because you lost all your lives. I'm otherwise perfectly fine with a game being a challenge. Though these days, I tend to play some games on an easier setting if I can help it as I need to just relax and unwind.

Definitely! The allure of a "1cc" clear in arcade games is still appealing and its nice that thanks to emulators and modern arcades setting their cabs to free play you rarely have to shove quarters into a machine upon losing lives. For the most part having to restart a game upon losing lives is a punishment for retro console games only outside of save states for emulators or rom hacks that add checkpoint/save functions naturally.

As much fun as it is to master a game to the point that you can 1cc or even no death it, learning to do that on original hardware where any major mistake means you have to restart from the beginning rly makes it such a taxing process.

 

[KaiserMk7]

Some of them were the Working Designs localized games and everybody hates them.

I don't think I understand this statement and I'm not presently equipped to google it.

 

[Varyag]

I don't think I understand this statement and I'm not presently equipped to google it.

Working Designs worked back in the 16 and 32 bit era localizing Japan exclusive JRPGs and similar games. However, for some absurd unknown reason, they almost always took the games and not just translated them, but also made them worse on purpose, usually bloating enemy numbers, reducing player values or removing mechanics like saving mid dungeon, that were in the Japanese originals. There's a TON of ROMhacks in the Repo, with the specific goal of undoing those boneheaded changes that broke many games. Just search for "Un-Working Designs"

 

[KaiserMk7]

Working Designs worked back in the 16 and 32 bit era localizing Japan exclusive JRPGs and similar games. However, for some absurd unknown reason, they almost always took the games and not just translated them, but also made them worse on purpose, usually bloating enemy numbers, reducing player values or removing mechanics like saving mid dungeon, that were in the Japanese originals. There's a TON of ROMhacks in the Repo, with the specific goal of undoing those boneheaded changes that broke many games. Just search for "Un-Working Designs"

I'm surprised 7th Saga isn't one of them. I suppose they're not the only localizers who did these sorts of things.

 

[Vardalis]

Definitely case by case.

I'm generally fine with difficulty deriving from picking the hardest mode. I will caveat this however in the next point. I'm also fine with games that are intended to just be difficult, even if I don't tend to seek them out. In these scenarios I play the games as intended.

My main issue, when it comes to difficulty, is "artificial difficulty" stemming from outdated or poor design choices. One example I'd use for this is a game called Maken X; levels can take upward of an hour with zero checkpoints, which when paired with levels containing very difficult sections creates a more difficult experience if playing as intended without savestates. That's the sort of difficulty I take issue with and look to mitigate with modern features, like savestates or fast forwarding.

 

[Deleted member 58254]

dark souls is badly designed because i should just be able to win tbh

 

[Mopeybloke]

Turning in my gamer card here:

I only enjoy difficulty if I'm being tested on a game I care to become good at, and that doesn't include the vast majority of games. Usually if I'm just tolerating a game and I come to a difficulty barrier, I'm very likely to quit.

dark souls is badly designed because i should just be able to win tbh

Mmm... based.

 

[Xdqwerty Xdqwerty]

The only good kind of hard games are the ones that don't make the player feel like they lost due to the game's fault

 

[Waffles's iconWaffles]

My stance is quite simple: I don't stick with anything that demands mastery of whatever is asking me to do in order to enjoy it.

Oh, sure, I'll grind for levels or use my head on puzzles, but the fun threshold is left behind the second I'm punished for not being an absolute God at what I'm playing, triggering a game over because I failed to better at the game than those who made it... Which is, sadly, the case with many older titles I have played.

 

[secreto7]

My stance is quite simple: I don't stick with anything that demands mastery of whatever is asking me to do in order to enjoy it.

Oh, sure, I'll grind for levels or use my head on puzzles, but the fun threshold is left behind the second I'm punished for not being an absolute God at what I'm playing, triggering a game over because I failed to better at the game than those who made it... Which is, sadly, the case with many older titles I have played.

Did you do the Death Wish part of A Hat in Time?
It's epic but I don't want to do it again, at half the contracts I had to use Peace and Tranquility and even then... but I completed it haha.

 

[Deleted member 2077]

Hard mode in everything, I like to scream blasphemies at the screen.
In truth hard mode and beyond makes you use the entire gameplay designed system.

 

[raiden_dj]

The thing that makes me play videogames is the challenge, if there's no challenge there's no game. I'm no expert or compete in any game, or anything like that, but I know the high I get from overcoming a good challenge, either alone like beating a highscore or best time, or when playing against a very good player and winning, there's nothing like it.

 

[At_Least_20_Dogs]

Depends. Difficulty should not usually be the main thing in mind. Games should have things the player finds engaging, if adding things to the experience that makes the game more difficult also makes it fun thats great. It's no fun to gain skills and abilities and never meet a challenge difficult enough for you to use them in interesting ways. On the other hand if ramping up the difficulty takes away from what makes the game fun that just sucks. for example a game where it is fun to experiment with combat but the consequences for dying are so severe you would rather stick to surefire strategies.

 

[Cardboardtubeknight Cardboardtubeknight]

I like it hard

 

[KaiserMk7]

Hard mode in everything, I like to scream blasphemies at the screen.
In truth hard mode and beyond makes you use the entire gameplay designed system.

Well it depends on how the hard mode is designed and how necessary the systems make themselves to the experience. Boss gets so aggressive you can't not dabble in the timed block system? AOE nuke around the boss actually hits hard enough that you need to raise your shield or get tf away instead of face tanking? Sure. Buffs that are a little tedious to farm and apply? Someone's going to ram their head into that wall until it breaks.

 

[Deleted member 132407]

Sometimes, when a game is extremely brutally difficult, I’m convinced that the developers hate the player.

 

[Isegrim]

An amazing OST that gets stuck in my head usually is the thing that gets me to have the persistence to plow through a really difficult game. Or something else that personally appeals to me...the art style or the story...

 

[Deleted member 132407]

I feel the same way regarding game difficulty for example fighting games such as Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, Primal Rage, Killer Instinct, etc. I even had strategy guides.

Post automatically merged: Jul 15, 2025

An amazing OST that gets stuck in my head usually is the thing that gets me to have the persistence to plow through a really difficult game. Or something else that personally appeals to me...the art style or the story...

Killer Cuts OST that was bundled with Killer Instinct black cartridge for SNES

Post automatically merged: Jul 15, 2025

I like it hard

 

[Netra]

don't want to spend their time playing challenging games

Challenging games
"Challenging games"
Most of those grinding games of the 80-2000 were "challenging" and grinding because the game need to played for at least a couple of hours, if those games get a patch making them a little less grinding or fair to the player in one or two hours you can end them (not the rpg ones).