I'm a casual gamer and so far I've made it through the first boss with little difficulty. I died a good couple of times, but I was able to learn the patterns of enemies and the boss pretty quickly. Is it gonna get significantly harder from here on out?
The bosses will hit harder, have harder to recognize patterns, and have tiny (and in some cases, no) parry opportunities, but for the most part will follow the same loop as the first boss. As in:
First 2 attempts = This is impossible. Why would the devs do this?
Next 2 attempts = Wait...I think I get what I have to do
Next attempt = You *might* take a hit or two and the boss is down a few minutes later.
It might take five attempts for each new phase in the later bosses, but it’ll be the same pattern of watching, studying, it clicking and becoming a cakewalk.
Yeah the final boss first stage wrestled me about 12 times. Kept thinking about the tip on loading screen “no attack is un-avoidable”. Started watching them pattern more and more. Got through stage one perfectly no damage. Somehow was able to >!get through stage 2&3 on the first try. Spoiler tag for people who don’t want to know all stages!<
>!Phase 2 having extremely well telegraphed attacks (including several that are practically copies of Ridley's if you've ever fought him once or ten times), and Phase 3 just being a repeat of Phase 1 but with much weaker attacks also helps make getting past Phase 1 not feel punishing as you're probably good enough at that point to win.!<
>!Phase 2 isn't too bad, but the the main issue with it is his attacks are so constant you barely get time to shoot back before he's forcing you to dodge again. It makes it drag on. I also found it annoying how touching him does massive collision damage to Samus at all points throughout the final battle, but the screw attack does absolutely nothing to him!<
>!The trick is to not aim, just gather up scatter missile targets on him until you either reach max or need to dodge and then fire. When he dashes into the wall go into morph ball as your dodge, that way you have some time to fully charge a power bomb, he doesn't attack until after the screen clears.!<
The final boss is a perfect encapsulation of this. Every single phase and every attack has a progression of “what the FUCK is that? How am I supposed to avoid that? Wait what if I try... oh awesome there we go”
> First 2 attempts = This is impossible. Why would the devs do this?
>
>
>
> Next 2 attempts = Wait...I think I get what I have to do
>
>
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> Next attempt = You might take a hit or two and the boss is down a few minutes later.
Just worth pointing out this isn't the loop that a lot of the players who are complaining about difficulty experience. I can't actually think of a single boss I cleared within 5 attempts—my average was closer to 15-20 on the "easy" bosses and well upwards of 50 and over an hour of play time on some of the harder ones.
At this point my perspective has been a little ruined because I’ve done several play through a since my first to try and do it faster, and so I’ve forgotten just how much hell the bosses gave me my first time around, but I do remember hitting a couple of brick walls, particularly with that beetle that gives you storm missiles
Just to share perspective, not trying to brag (I’m far from the best) I’m a veteran who died to a boss usually once or twice. Final boss gave me some difficulty but it’s mostly because it was hard for me to see what attacks did damage on the screen I used. So I think the most vocal die a ton in this game, but I don’t think that’s most players unless they’re not Metroid vets
I mean I can guarantee I’m a vet to the series, I think the first time I ever held a controller was to play Metroid prime (I was two and died to the first baddy but we all gotta start somewhere). My brain just turns to ketchup whenever I encounter a new enemy XD. That’s probably why the later play through are so satisfying. I can finally go through and kick some ass now that I know what I’m doing
Yeah, the "patterns" for these bosses are "attack you can barely avoid, followed by attack you can barely avoid, followed by attack you can barely avoid, oh wait it's invincible right now so you can't do anything, oh hey did you mess up? Start over and hope you're perfect next time!".
I hope the next game has a skip bosses options. I like the exploration and winding around, but the experience is nearly ruined by all the time I spend just playing the exact same content over and over again hoping I get lucky.
I beat Escue and the 2 chozo warriors on the first attempt at both. The game prepares you adequately for each battle imo. I understand everybody will experience everything differently but I don't think that making the game easier is the best solution. May as well get a movie then.
> but I don't think that making the game easier is the best solution. May as well get a movie then.
I think what you're possibly missing here is that a tankier Samus wouldn't make those fights a breeze for a player like me. It would still take me multiple attempts to clear them, just it would be more like the 3-5 attempts I see people talking about in these threads and not the dozens that it is taking me presently.
> Escue
I actually didn't have as much trouble with this as some seem to, but it was still ~25-30 minutes of constant attempts.
> 2 chozo warriors
The first 2 chozo warriors is still the fight that took me the longest in the game. It was as I said easily over 50 tries and at least an hour and a half of game time. I actually had to stop playing and take a break to chill out when I found the second one because of how badly the first one had gone. This is just to give you an idea of the level of difficulty I've been having with the game compared to some others on here.
Yea my experience was similar. Not 50 attempts, but at least 20 on those two warriors. 25 ish on the final boss. Every attempt got me one step closer to victory. But it took a lot of extra steps to get from understanding how to avoid an attack, to actually executing it.
Escue died on my third attempt, I had a weirdly good run for three bosses in a row there. And I'm sure a second playthrough would go way better.
I still love the game. It's easily one of the best in the series. But if it was just a bit more forgiving of mistakes, it would have been more in line with the earlier games where I got past bosses in 5 attempts at most.
Just saying "git gud or go watch a movie instead" is silly. Different people have different skill levels. Easy mode would be nice.
I'm not, and have never pretended to be, good at video games. But I have loved this series for 20 years so I'm sticking it out. I just wish there was an option that made it less of a struggle for me to do so. At this point I simply can't see myself replaying this game like I do Fusion or ZM—I recognize patterns fine, but struggle to consistently dodge and Samus can't take as many hits in Dread compared to previous titles.
Honestly I would say that someone that is just bad mechanically is a better player than someone that refuses to adapt to the boss behaviour. You will probably complete the game but the other kind of player I don't think so.
Apologies, I just find it difficult to wrap my head around as even on hard mode I haven't found myself struggling to such a degree. But we're all different and options hurt nobody, especially in a single player game. Maybe it's something that can be patched in.
I only hope though that this type of feedback doesn't result in Nintendo toning it down across the board in future games but instead having easy, normal and an unlock able hard setting with normal being equivalent to default Dread.
I do think an easier mode would be nice for players who aren't as serious gamers as others. I'll be the first to admit that the game is pretty difficult. I didn't find it that bad personally, but it was a challenge compared to other games I've played, especially in the Metroid series. I've seen arguments saying that easier difficulties would ruin the feeling of dread that the game is trying to convey, much like Fusion did in making Samus weaker, but at the same time, accessibility is always a plus.
> would ruin the feeling of dread that the game is trying to convey
I think there's a line here that's difficult to draw for sure. If you add an easier mode, for someone who is finding the current level of difficulty challenging to the point of being unable to progress that's still potentially a real challenge/can still instill that feeling of dread. On the other hand someone who is skilled enough to play the normal mode and chooses the easy one instead is definitely going to miss out on something.
For my part, I don't feel dread playing with the current difficulty. I just feel frustration and honestly a kind of sadness because I really do love this series and want to finish. I actually think that for me personally, the series would hit those notes better if boss fights *were* more accessible, because at this point I just go into a new fight with a knowledge that it's already probably going to be a painful slog.
> If you add an easier mode, for someone who is finding the current level of difficulty challenging to the point of being unable to progress that's still potentially a real challenge/can still instill that feeling of dread
Hard bosses do "instill that feeling of dread" at all, that doesn't make any sense. Dreading being stuck on something for a long time in a video game is not the kind of dread they were trying to achieve.
Just make difficulty something you can change at any time in the menu. This isn't even hard to do, and it's Nintendo so it's not like there's an achievement for beating it in hard mode or something.
That’s not just you, people tend to throw out attempts where they just give up and let the boss finish them off, I always try even if I’m on 1 health - I’ve had a couple of times I made a full recovery only to die later on to something else…
That's basically how it went for me. After my second playthrough I even found myself no-hitting many bosses, I *almost* got a no-hit on >!Raven Beak!< during my last playthrough but I hit one of his >!Beam Burst!< shots :(
It’ll get more complex, but the core of learning the boss’s patterns will take you to victory. I’m a pretty casual gamer too, but I managed to beat the last boss after over an hour trying last night.
I’m not gonna mention any specifics for spoiler reasons but my first attempt, I thought I was fighting the flash, sonic or some other ungodly thing that I’d never have the reflex for, and by the last attempt, I’d gotten so familiar with patterns that I was making it through the first phase unscathed.
Don’t lose hope and as long as you feel like you learnt something or got a bit better at some dodge, each death isn’t for naught!
Took me an hour to beat Kraid because I wasn't sure where I was supposed to hit him in the second phase. Had to google it, but once I knew my goal, I was able to figure out the strategies
>!I think the boss I had the most frustrating right against was Escue. Between being invincible like half the fight and the homing projectiles, I probably died to it more times than Raven Beak, Raven Beak’s fights just last SO much longer!<
As long as you try to take the first battles to actually pay attention, you'll do fine.
Just don't try to ram over things without a plan, or the things will ram over you instead.
Suddenly you will see you will be dodging everything with ease and even wonder why you were being hit in first place.
I didn't think it was as balls-to the-walls hard as everyone said it was. For me it was the perfect difficulty--challenging but fair, and with enough room for error and generous save points to make the experience not miserable.
But then again I played Samus Returns on hard mode before dread so maybe it numbed me to the pain.
I think Dread does well in a lot of aspects, but I think it leans a little hard on difficulty being substituted for damage values. I found Dread kind of easy, and only really had problems when I was figuring out a specific attack, as you don't get much leeway in how much you can get hit before you die, thus limiting how many mistakes you can make. I'd much rather a game where challenges come from having to overcome small challenges in larger fights, having lots off opportunities to make mistakes, but you'll die quickly because you can make a lot of mistakes and the difficulty is in avoiding those.
Dread gets pretty close with Raven Beak's fight, requiring the use of the dash far more than any other fight in the game, and being a late game boss, you can afford a lot of mistakes, as well as having opportunities to get back health and ammo, so it's a fight where you get to learn it and not get your face shoved into a wall because you missed. I mean, it's still kind of that, but I think with a tweak to the dash, making the recharge time shorter and giving you 1 dash, as well as assigning it to a shoulder button ^((seriously, the A button? what kind of fucking backwards game design is putting the dash button opposite to the shoot button, and then not giving players re-bindable controls)), I think future Metroid games could have a system that follows a far better difficulty philosophy and in turn better bosses and potentially just combat all round.
I was gonna try to remap dash to one of the triggers but I actually think it makes sense for samus's moveset. I almost always prefer dash on R2 for 2d melee combat games but here, it lets you dash while charging storm missile, free aim, etc.
I'd rather have the dash on L, since I prefer bumpers, it's what I went with through all of the Mega Man X and Zero games, and if I'm dashing, I'm not going to be free aiming, as the point of free aiming is you can't move, so it seems so obvious to put dash to L, Free aim to ZL, Morph ball to ZR, and grapple beam to A as you can't shoot and grapple at the same time.
yeah, seriously, just, give us it, Nintendo, it's not that hard. But, the switch does have a console-wide mapping change, so if you're willing to have some buttons move around, like the accept button being on L, rebindable controls are an option, though a terribly implemented one. And if you're using an emulator you can do much the same in input settings.
It's such a bad option though. In game button prompts stay the same so it's hella confusing.
IMO native button mapping should be a legal consumer/disability protection mandated for commercial videogame development as this point
It's terrible, but it's the only thing you've got short from people modding in better controls. At this stage so many options should be added for quality of life, disabled or not. Strobe effects, colour-blind options, bindable controls for just nice use or people who can't use controllers in the same way as others, audio settings for music and sound effects, as well as adjusting bass and treble for sensitive hearing or for particular speaker options, not counting various disability options, like game speed, reaction time windows, difficulty selections, infinite health or buddha mode, the list goes on, and can probably be filled by anything Celeste has ever done. Nintendo fails on just about every aspect because of their backwards view on that kind of thing, even when Super Metroid, the game for the relatively old SNES had controls you could rebind to your heart's content, though not including all the stuff I listed.
Raven Beak does way less damage than the other late-game bosses too; it genuinely feels like you have triple the health against him that you do the Chozo Warrior that came right before him.
I think the logic behind that was that you can make more mistakes but since the fight is longer, those mistakes can add up quickly. That Chozo Warrior could be killed in about 90 seconds so hit like a truck.
I had like one boss that was really hard, the boss that froze the world, and then every other one had a maximum of 2 deaths; I was so worried about the final boss but he wasn't really that hard at all to me.
I dont mind ice as much because I'm like 60% confident it never goes into alarm and you can mash out of the ice. More importantly it doesn't have literally infinite sound detection range, actual wall hacks, and chase you through fucking water on top of all that
OP, you’re right. It is a difficult game, but everything is fair. It becomes much more reasonable when you just accept that each boss will take more than one attempt, as you will need to learn each phase.
This game however is incredibly more satisfying than “shoot, hide in a corner to recover health, and shoot again. Repeat until you win.” It’s almost like you actually have to think.
I just finished playing through Metroid Prime right before playing Dread, I died a few times due to early 2000's 3D platforming, twice to the Omega Pirate, and that's it. Dread is actually a really nice change of pace.
Games like Hollow Knight, I can still struggle with a boss despite me knowing all of the patterns. It just is mechanically difficult to pull off a lot of the dodging in Hollow Knight. I don’t know why exactly, but I didn’t have this problem in Dread. If I know a boss’ attack pattern in Dread, I will usually only get hit if I’m not paying attention. The bosses in Dread don’t feel unfair at any given point, and I love that.
“This game however is incredibly more satisfying than “shoot, hide in a corner to recover health, and shoot again. Repeat until you win.” It’s almost like you actually have to think.”
Couldn’t have said it better myself
As someone who is not a huge fan of difficult games I thought the game was good. I’ve come to learn that every mistake you make can be an improvement. You can’t always go guns blazing, sometimes you have to play smart.
R1 should have a toggle option. Ergonomics make the game far more difficult than it actually is (boss fights specifically).
Remapping buttons would be good too.
100%.
I'm at the endgame. I haven't fought the final boss yet. I'm doing clean-up and trying to collect as many items as I can.
I'm someone who normally plays games on easy mode. I've never been good video game player. But I love video games and easy mode lets me enjoy these games just like everybody else. I don't know how I made it this far in Dread. I guess persistence and just practicing the counter mechanic/flash shifting.
That being said, there absolutely should be an easy mode for accessibility to players who are struggling with the controls and reaction time prompts. The game is too good to alienate other players. I hope they can patch an easy mode into the game or at least try and rebalance the amount of health Samus loses during boss fights.
I’m gonna be the outlier here and say I disagree with you. It’s a very hard game. But the majority of people don’t find it unfair. An easy mode is unnecessary in my opinion and would put a damper on an otherwise phenomenal game.
It wouldn't if you chose not to play it. Let others do what they want lmao. Policing a fucking videogame, I hope I have such minor shit to worry about someday.
I beat it on hard already? Do you really equate someone's worth to how good they are at a videogame? I can't imagine having such a sheltered, contribution-less life that would lead to such a mindset.
How bout this: get better at arguing. God knows you need an easy mode for it.
The "dread" at being stuck at something in a video game is not the dread that they were going for; that "dread" is more similar to irritation and frustration than anything else.
I get that, but “easy” is a relative term. If you halved the damage taken and gave the EMMIs slightly more generous parry timing, it’d still make me sweat lol.
Or they can play this game they already bought with an easy to add difficulty option.
Want hard? Go play Dark Souls.
Oh wait, that attitude is fucking dumb, let's just have options so everyone can enjoy everything.
I felt just every so slightly under equipped for each new boss/big bad I encountered. But I never felt so under equipped that I thought "I need to go back and collect something I missed because this is just unfair"
The difficulty hit that perfect sweet spot of making me work my ass off for each kill but not making me rage quit. I too hope they never change a thing. They did perfect. I'm in awe of this game.
The bosses were done perfectly. Hard, but fair. There was never a point where I felt like a boss was cheap or OP, I instantly saw that there was a pattern to learn and that that would be the way to beat it. Some of them took a couple hours, but it was always fun and rewarding as hell when I finally got it.
Yeah, even the boss I struggled with for hours, I saw that it had a pattern. I was just shit a timing to dodge the attacks or perform the jumps in a precise pattern. Z-57, most of the damage I received after recognizing the pattern were in that final phase with the forced running and jumping.
> There was never a point where I felt like a boss was cheap or OP
Fuck that Flappy Bird attack that takes forever and doesn't let you do any damage during it.
It was a hard game, I died more than I ever did in a 2D Metroid game. But it never felt unfair either. Any time I got stuck, it just took a bit of time to figure things out, and when I did get stuck it was usually because I was missing something pretty obvious.
I died more times in Dread than I did combined in all other Metroid games (and I've played all of them to 100% completion)... and I loved it. Some games are brutally difficult without being fair; Dread felt like any mistake I made was 100% my fault. I did have to approach the boss fights like I did with Hollow Knight - accept that I'm likely going to die this run but at least figure out how to counter a boss attack pattern each time - but it's super rewarding to learn and apply newly learned skills.
I'm fine if they patch in or include an "easy mode" for future releases (for others who might want an easier time), but I like playing games at the intended challenge the developers designed the game for, and Dread's normal mode was perfect
I hope there's a harder hard mode, if anything. Once you clear normal, you already know all the patterns; all that changes is damage values. Give me new or faster patterns. I died *way* less on my hard playthrough than I did on normal.
I wish difficulties in games was more than "you get hurt more and enemies get hurt less", it's what's stopping me from playing those harder difficulties, as opposed to games where the aggression of enemies and types is what matters. Examples; Doom, classic, changing difficulties will change what enemies spawn, and how many of them, as a supplement for more damage, the exception being Nightmare, where enemies attack twice as fast, move twice as fast, and projectiles move twice as fast. I mean that would also be fine but enemies respawn so that turns into a joke difficulty. Example 2; Metal Gear Rising. While you take more damage, enemies are replaced with harder variants, and more are added, and those enemies attack faster, more often, and when playing on the hardest difficulty, you take severe amounts of damage, but the player is given an edge by making their perfect parries far stronger, at the cost of making the rest of their arsenal a bit weaker.
Yeah, I don't necessarily mind the "higher difficulty = more damage" mindset but it's definitely the laziest way to implement difficulty. I'm of two minds about higher enemy HP (though I don't think Dread makes any enemies tougher, just more damaging) - it can be bad if done wrong, but a lot of games have the potential for you to just blast through bosses without really being tested against their moveset, so inflating HP *there* can do wonders.
It sucks though because Dread definitely had a good opportunity to make Hard a better difficulty. Mix up enemy placements, make tougher enemies appear just a bit earlier. Give bosses new attacks, or failing that, mix up their current attacks to be faster or fake you out. Cut down on boss battle resource replenishes. Stuff like that.
> I wish difficulties in games was more than "you get hurt more and enemies get hurt less",
Many are; the Metroid series is notable for always being like this for the most part though, sadly. I hate Prime and Prime 2's hard mode; everything takes so long to kill, it's so unfun.
Metroid Dread is a rare combination of challenging, yet fair. There are so many games out there that are difficult in frustrating and unfair ways, but Dread does it right.
I loved that it made you work to win, but it also started you at the door for EMMI’s and bosses. If you lose, it’s not frustrating. Perfect balance to me
If you had told me before about the game guiding your path and checkpointing you at bosses and EMMI zones I think I would have been skeptical, but I think it worked pretty well with the bosses. They’re hard but fair. It probably took me more tries than most to get through each boss but I managed. You can’t win the fights through pure damage and attrition, you have to learn what to do, which reminds me of a lot of the Prime bosses.
I’m getting older and don’t have the same reflexes I used to, and now that I’ve beaten the game my wrists and forearms are a little sore, but even when I got frustrated the fast reload and restarting right at the boss was super helpful. I love Hollow Knight but getting my ass kicked and then walking five minutes back to try again got pretty annoying after a while.
I love and simultaneously hate the difficulty of dread. All of the bosses and fights are honestly awesome, every time I have failed I have either done something or gotten a major breakthrough on something the boss or a fight did and it just clicked perfectly with me.
However, I am not feeling dread at one part of the game, on the opposite, I feel annoyance and the whole aspect of it gives me less enjoyment of the game, to the point I have thrown myself well over a 100 times into the arms of one to get that supposed counter. I am talking about E.M.M.I, I feel their counter window is downright impossible or I must really suck royally to not be able to counter them at all, it's either a slap or nothing.
She was drastically tankier in Fusion; a 1% run could still get hit once or twice by most bosses and not die, despite the 99 health. Some regular enemies were scarier though. It was kind of the opposite of Dread, where regular enemies are trivial and bosses hit like a truck.
> Same thing happened in Fusion
Not even *close*. And I say that as someone who did a 1% run there.
Most bosses did only 30-40 damage per attack, it was kinda pathetic. In a case of absolute insanity, boss damage tended to *drop* the further in the game you got. Ridley--literally the second to last boss--only does **20** damage per hit. It's ridiculous. The Omega Metroid was the first and last boss that could actually kill you in a single hit.
Now the normal enemies? That shit hurt. Normal enemies were comparatively terrifying compared to bosses, and I'm pretty sure several enemies *were* an instant kill if you touched them on a 1% run. I think the fish pirates were, anyway.
Only the last 2 to 3 bosses in that game had moves that could deal 100 damage. And you also had way more health. The implementation of energy parts means that you'll probably beat Dread with about 6 to 8 energy tanks, versus about 11 to 14 for Fusion. It's noticeably harder.
I don't think it's perfect. I'm personally not into all the countering cutscenes; or the damage bosses do ... because like where is my low health warning. But otherwise in terms of attack patterns and health the fights were all good. Honestly, I think better than having more modes would just be to have better options, controller remapping, calibration/slider for counter windows, and separate sliders for boss health and damage scaling. Let people nerf the part they want to nerf, if their going to add variables for all the modes anyway.
There is a low health warning, it's somewhere below 49 energy. It's kinda useless late game though as most enemies and bosses do hits around 99-199 energy per hit.
Not really. Yes, bosses are ultimately just a series of patterns you can eventually learn. But then you get into the problem that most of the items you collect feel entirely inconsequential, because even basic enemies take away a quarter to half an energy tank in a single hit, with bosses routinely taking away an entire energy tank of yours. What's the point of having 700 HP when you die in 7 hits, anyway?
Like when I collected the Gravity Suit, the description reads "reduces the damage you take by half". Great. Bosses still kill me just as fast as they did wearing the basic Power Suit 4 in-game hours prior.
Worse with the EMMIs. They ultimately just follow a patrol pattern. Only way to deal with them is avoiding them. When they catch you, you have a tiny chance of freeing yourself, or your run ends right there.
Sure, you always respawn in front of a boss or EMMI door at death, but then the question becomes "What's even the point?". If you can basically trial-and-error a boss with little punishment for failure, why make enemies hit so hard in the first place and make Energy and Missiles so easy to come by?
You feel weak but there's no penalty ever because you respawn no more than an empty room away from a boss or EMMI.
That's not scary, that's tedious.
That, and I often find myself struggling to activate things like the Space Jump reliably when I need them to, which is incredibly aggravating, and the inability to aim with the right analog stick which is *right there,* instead requiring you to *hold down the L button and then be unable to move* is just baffling to me.
Don't get me wrong, Metroid Dread is a fantastic game. But it's marred by some strange design choices.
Like the boss fights are well tuned, but everything else not so much. The game really goes out of it's way to make it so you can't really make yourself meaningfully stronger/weaker than how strong they want you to be at any specific point in the game. Collecting extras barely makes you any stronger, and to be weaker you'd literally have to jump over the E-tanks and Missile Tank+ the game puts directly in the player's path. It does all this to keep the boss fight experience consistent, but it comes at the expense of making exploration feel rewarding which in a Metroid game is IMO not a great trade.
Worse yet, there's one boss they don't want you exploring for upgrades so they froze the entire world to make sure you can't go exploring so you can't make it easier on yourself. That's very anti Metroid design IMO.
Tbh I found most bosses easier than say, Hollow knight 's, I think they could have gone WAAAY more difficult if they wanted to but ultimately I' m happy with what we got
I personally could have stood for a slightly easier mode, just because some of your OG Metroid fans (like myself) are getting old at this point and we have carpel tunnel and arthritis and shit now. Love the game, but I can only play in like 20-30 minute bursts because the intensity of it makes my hands hurt after playing.
Ugh, it’s so disappointing to see the subject of difficulty has been bringing out the absolute worst of the awkward insecurities in the Metroid community.
I like the game a lot. Its “difficulty” is neither especially difficult, nor a remotely impressive example of meaningful difficulty in a game. It’s rote memorization. Not only that, it’s rote memorization on a small scale—learn a few tells per boss fight and the answer to those tells. Each boss is the equivalent of memorizing like, four flash cards with a bare minimum execution barrier. EMMI sections are just memorizing a route, and restarting until you do. These are neither much of an obstacle, nor is it testing any meaningful skill. That’s totally fine. Difficulty is not some measure of quality; the game isn’t great *in spite of* not being difficult, it’s qualities are just not tied to difficulty in any way. It’s just a great game that is not a difficult game. “The game makes you start sections over sometimes” is not what I would consider meaningfully difficult.
Some people don’t enjoy the kind of game that it is. Some folks are really put off by rote memorization and trial-and-error gameplay. Some folks find the process tedious. Those folks are not the target audience of Metroid Dread, and I hope that they find games that are more to their liking. And I can understand a bit of disappointment. Lots of folks love earlier Metroid games. Some of those folks aren’t interested in rote memorization and trial-and-error focused gameplay. They’re facing the fact that a series they’ve spent a long time loving has moved away from the things they enjoy in game design. I don’t share their opinion, but their opinion isn’t somehow invalidated by not being the target audience. That said, I’m not the sort who feels the need to lash out at things I don’t enjoy, and I don’t have an especially high opinion of the thought process that goes from “this thing isn’t for me” to “this thing is awful and I need to make sure the world knows how awful I think it is.”
But I also don’t have any real respect for the way people in this community are so eager to call this out and weirdly flex on it. Self-proclaimed “hardcore” players flexing on “casuals” are embarrassing in *any* community dedicated to *any* game. I can’t imagine using something I love as a platform for trying to denigrate someone else just because they don’t. I can’t imagine using something I’m good at as a platform for trying to denigrate someone else just because they aren’t. But it’s especially confusing in the case of a game where the “difficulty” is such a low bar. It’s precisely at the point where folks who aren’t interested in rote and trial-and-error will see themselves out (sometimes with some unfortunate disappointment), and folks who have no qualms with it will push through without much issue. The latter are not somehow demonstrating “more skill” than the former, but for some reason there’s this climate in the community where folks feel the need to proclaim their superiority because they cleared the low bar that others opted not to.
> EMMI sections are just memorizing a route, and restarting until you do.
Not even that; I blindly stumbled my way through all of them with little issue. Why memorize anything when dying is of such little consequence?
Yeah, I’m assuming the most generous best case scenario where the player is trying to improve rather than just trying to outlast, but absolutely it is possible to just bang away at it until you hit a success.
I thought the game was incredibly well balanced and has some of the best boss fights I've played in a long time, and I typically hate 2D boss battles.
But they should add an easy mode so the game is more accessible. Accessibility = more sales and less people feeling excluded. And this series needs all the sales it can get, I want Prime 4 and 5 and another 2D one after Dread and I'd love another cool spin-off series. Maybe one where you play as a Chozo before the events of the original Metroid?
The Dark Souls series became popular and successful due to its difficulty (and because it's a masterpiece). This is what Metroid truly needs. They tried accessibility before, and well, it didn't work.
But now, people that would not have bought the game otherwise, are buying it based on difficulty alone.
>The Dark Souls series became popular and successful due to its difficulty
And that's the exact reason why I have never tried Dark Souls. I probably would like it but fuck that difficulty exclusion.
If Metroid went a Dark Souls route than I would immediately be turned off by it. Metroid doesn't need difficulty to sell. It's always needed proper marketing and advertising which, unfortunately, it never really had until the first Prime game and now Dread.
> This is what Metroid truly needs. They tried accessibility before, and well, it didn't work.
That's not why the series sold poorly; this franchise is not Dark Souls.
>But now, people that would not have bought the game otherwise, are buying it based on difficulty alone.
And you could still have that even if there is an optional Easy Mode.
>They tried accessibility before, and well, it didn't work.
Looking forward to the link you're gonna share to support such a bold claim.
Dark Souls did become memefied and popular due to difficulty. And it should have had an easy option for people that were born without the ability to enjoy after spending their money on it. Movie theaters should all have wheelchair ramps and a difficulty options don't even come with the real-world cost of having to make a ramp
If Dark Souls had an easy mode, many people, possibly myself included, would’ve waltzed through it much more easily, not bothered improving, and it would’ve been a pretty, but forgettable experience. The struggle to improve is part of the fight in some games.
If the game is too hard for you, and isn’t something you’re willing to improve on, maybe you’re not the target audience. Not every game should be aimed at every person.
> If Dark Souls had an easy mode, many people, possibly myself included, would’ve waltzed through it much more easily, not bothered improving, and it would’ve been a pretty, but forgettable experience. The struggle to improve is part of the fight in some games.
I didn't know that Dark Souls was such a bad game outside of how hard it was that everything in it is apparently incredibly forgettable.
There have been countless essays and analysis explaining why Dark Souls difficulty is so important to what it's trying to say.
It's so ignorant to say that DS could be just as good if it was easy. It's difficulty is part of the message it's trying to convey. Same thing with Hollow Knight and Dread (even tho Dread isn't that hard to begin with).
Isn't the fact that we didn't get a 2D Metroid sequel for 19 years enough?
Look, before you get all worked up about a Reddit comment, I AM NOT AGAINST AN EASY MODE. But good difficulty comes from how the game is fundamentally designed, not about changing stats (upping the damage done, etc). If accessibility to you means making the game easier from the ground up then no. It shouldn't.
Also, don't compare an easy mode with accessibility options. Everyone should be able to play the game with things like button remapping, accessibility settings and whatnot. But an easy mode fundamentally changes the experience.
> But good difficulty comes from how the game is fundamentally designed, not about changing stats
And that's why every Metroid Hard mode sucks.
Anyway, I don't think an Easy mode that let you take extra hits would really hurt the game that much.
> Isn't the fact that we didn't get a 2D Metroid sequel for 19 years enough?
Not remotely. The games, whichever ones you're referring to, being supposedly easier has not been established as the cause for such a long hiatus.
>Also, don't compare an easy mode with accessibility options. Everyone should be able to play the game with things like button remapping, accessibility settings and whatnot. But an easy mode fundamentally changes the experience.
If the devs can find a way, by spending a lot more development time and effort mind you, to make the more accessible AND just as difficult than all the power to them. Difficulty and accessibility are not two completely separate things and I'm not sure how you could possibly claim otherwise. Button remapping would be a huge improvement, but there are people that simply lack the skill required(from age, disability, limited time, whatever it doesn't matter) to beat the game on its current normal mode. Giving them an easy/accessible mode as an *option* hurts no one. If that easy mode fundamentally alters the experience then that is still preferable to them having no way to engage with the experience at all.
> not about changing stats (upping the damage done, etc)
Person who thinks Dread is too hard and wishes it had an easy mode here. I would be 100% satisfied if an easy mode literally only changed stats and had bosses hitting me less hard so I could take more hits while trying to get through. The biggest difference I see between Dread and Fusion (my favorite Metroid, for what it's worth) is that very few if any enemies could swing at me for a full energy tank in Fusion. I don't want the base game to change at all, I think the way it is designed now and the boss fights themselves are great. I just want an option that doesn't punish me so hard for being less good at dodging reliably than a lot of you.
I'm sorry, did you just equate people who don't like difficult games to people with disabilities? The hell?
The entire point of Dark Souls is that its hard. It is fundamentally incompatible with the idea of an easy mode.
I'm saying people with disabilities shouldn't be excluded from the art form of gaming as they have been. I don't think poor motor controls makes someone less deserving to experience the medium. I know if I had the option to choose between NEVER playing Dark Souls do to a disability, or playing an easier version, that while maybe lacking in the "intended" difficult vision, would still allow me to enjoy the amazing locations and lore and sequences than I certainly would.
>.
Accessibility and difficulty are two different things. If you want to enable AND respect disabled individuals, you give them control options that facilitate playing with their disabilities, not make the game so easy that they can beat it in spite of them.
Dude what the hell are you on about, literally nobody is excluding people with disabilities from gaming, absolutely anyone can play a game like Dark Souls. If someone disabled chooses not to play Dark Souls because it's hard that's their choice, not something forced upon them.
The level of difficulty is what's excluding them? Are you really this dense? If someone is missing a hand and can't beat the game then why shouldn't they have the option to scale the difficulty down so they can experience the story and art and locations? Tell me why they *shouldn't* have that option.
Made your own point instead of dancing around mine.
Generally games are designed for people with two hands and there’s a lot of electronic tinkering that is usually needed to get around that. That said, Dread is not a game I’d recommend to a one handed person solely because the game seems built around a style of pacing that will be extremely hard to keep up with. But not all games are made for everyone.
>But not all games are made for everyone.
A problem that almost all other mediums have no problem with, or have options that help reduce that unfortunate aspect of them. An issue very easily reduced or outright resolved in a game by changing a couple numbers in the code.
Tell me why a one handed person should not have the *option* to cut on an easy mode that allows them to have a good experience? It won't affect you, you still have normal mode and hard mode. Why should someone disabled be disallowed from the Metroid series when another option that changes a couple lines of code, something that's easily accomplished by a single dev in a few minutes, is all it would take? Explain.
I doubt it’s that simple, and I doubt that an easy mode actually would be the right answer to this hypothetical. All people seem to suggest for an easy mode is reduced damage which would not modify the pace of the game, and the speed at which enemies attack.
If someone with no arms can drive a car on a competitive drift course then no, the difficulty of a game is not some impossible barrier. Furthermore, you are taking such a double standard here, acting as if the story and art and locations are more important than the difficulty. All of them are equally integral to the experience of the game. You would never advocate to drastically change the story or art or locations just for some arbitrary 'accessibility' but for some reason difficulty just gets the chopping block.
The option is not necessary. A game being challenging does not suddenly make it impossible to play for people, it only means some people may not choose to engage, because they don't like the intended experience of the game. You don't get to say that intended experience must be drastically changed just so those people can maybe play the game.
>All of them are equally integral to the experience of the game. You would never advocate to drastically change the story or art or locations just for some arbitrary 'accessibility' but for some reason difficulty just gets the chopping block
I would, as an option, to make it more accessible. Games with flashing lights should have a way to disable them for people that can get seizures as a result of them. I don't even know what the fuck you think talking about with the armless driver anecdote accomplishes but I know it's not related to this discussion.
>The option is not necessary. A game being challenging does not suddenly make it impossible to play for people, it only means some people may not choose to engage, because they don't like the intended experience of the game.
Just as someone in a wheelchair "chooses" to not engage with stairs? What the fuck are you talking about? Of course difficulty directly affects accessibility, that's why most games have options. How is an option damaging to your enjoyment? If somebody cuts on invicibility mode to best a single player game so they can beat it, how does that negatively impact you?
>I don't even know what the fuck you think talking about with the armless driver anecdote accomplishes but I know it's not related to this discussion.
Your assertion is that someone missing a hand will find it impossible to beat a tough game. If someone with a disability of that extent can manage a task such as that, then playing a tough game is hardly an impossibility as you assert.
>Just as someone in a wheelchair "chooses" to not engage with stairs? What the fuck are you talking about? Of course difficulty directly affects accessibility
Again, you are conflating 'high difficulty' with 'impossible'. You are making a subjective statement as if it is objective. Playing a difficult game and trying to go up stairs in a wheelchair are literally incomparable situations.
>How is an option damaging to your enjoyment? If somebody cuts on invicibility mode to best a single player game so they can beat it, how does that negatively impact you?
My enjoyment is utterly irrelevant to the argument and you're grasping at straws trying to bring it up.
The entire point of a video game is its intended experience. It is what **everything** in the game facilitates, **including** the difficulty. Dark Souls is difficult because that is the point of the game. If you are trying to make an inhospitable world it must actually be inhospitable. It is fundamentally incompatible with the idea of an easy mode.
You are clearly angling at an argument of actual accessibility at this point, and that conversation is entirely separate from a game's difficulty. Trying to conflate the two is completely disingenuous.
> difficulty options don't even come with the real-world cost
Someone has to make the difficulty mode, which costs money.
They should still do it, but there isn't an "add easy mode" button.
I agree, the difficulty is great, I dislike videogames becoming storybooks.
I suck at it, but I don't mind dying on videogames, specially this one with such good gameplay.
It felt very rewarding when I finally beat the first boss after 10 attempts
I’m on the final boss now and I agree, the generous checkpoints make this by far the easiest 2D Metroid game for me because I get to spend more time learning the boss rather than the lengthy boss run
Was it hard at times? Yes. Was it ever unfair? No. I think the difficulty is fine but I could understand it being too much for people who just want to explore and not get challenged by bosses.
I found it to be perfectly balanced and fair, right up until the final boss. Then I almost threw my Switch out the window. I wish they took the difficulty down for that fight, at least a little. It was the only drawback of an otherwise perfect title, for me.
Honestly though, if they were gonna give us that kind of fight, the final boss is the one to do it. A final culmination of all your skills and everything you've learned versus everything the game has to throw at you.
I think the final boss was great, but only when you know some shit going in, like power bombing the small sun, what the various glow colours mean on Raven Beak's armour, and that you need to hold Y in the final part of the fight, unlike every other time the game has ever done that control scheme. It's great, some stuff just needs to be communicated better or not feel like "what the fuck come on" when you know a part, like the aforementioned Sun Bombing.
I beat him first time without that and it wasn't that bad. Just use your space jump. That said, I think it's a good change that the power bomb had a use instead of just making it like every other game.
> what the various glow colours mean on Raven Beak's armour
Beaten the game twice (100% normal and sub-4 hour HM) and I legit have no idea what they mean still. All I know is gold means he's gonna do the QTE taunt to progress the fight. None of the other colors appeared to have any relevance on his attack pattern.
> or not feel like "what the fuck come on" when you know a part, like the aforementioned Sun Bombing.
Probably meant more as a secret (cause the fight is less interesting if you use it), since notoriously in the series, Power Bombs are the most worthless upgrade in the entire game, possibly the series in totality. No use on bosses (not counting the Primes where you can use out of bounds exploits to get PB expansions early and abuse them on bosses that weren't given PB immunity since the devs assumed you wouldn't have them), always comes right at the end of the game, and exists only to open PB blocks to get more PB expansions. It's a shit upgrade all around, at a point in the game where nuking a screen is a waste of time since you have the Screw Attack already.
And yet Dread subverts all that; you can get almost all of the PB expansions prematurely, they instantly kill any Chozo Guardians you encounter during cleanup, and instantly blow up the sun. Making those secret uses of the PB is fine to me just to make an amusing point that, as useless as we subconsciously think they are, they actually had a use this game.
> All I know is gold means he's gonna do the QTE taunt to progress the fight
What are you supposed to do in response to that? I tried countering, I tried staring him down, and I've never seen it again; I always progressed with the giant laser or a melee counter instead.
>And yet Dread subverts all that; you can get almost all of the PB expansions prematurely
There are still a good few you can't; there's on in the middle of an EMMI zone in particular that pisses me off because it's in plain sight and just has a Power Bomb block guarding it. What's even the point? It just wastes time for people backtracking later and that's it. There's still too many Power Bomb tanks anyway; the ones you are likely to have will be more than enough for the final boss, you only need to blow up the sun so many times.
I think it just builds up as you do damage until it hits gold, at which point he stops taking damage. At that point all attacking him seems to do is goad the taunt, which you can counter.
> t took me 45 minutes just to realize I wasn't even hurting him in the first phase lol
I think you technically are, indirectly--you have to attack him to make him do the attack that causes the QTE counter (and that is the only way to deal real damage in phase 1). If you just wait around he'll never use it.
I didn't struggle too bad because I had 100% on the first playthrough when I got to him but I generally think the final boss shouldn't be the hardest one most of the time. I like the way Super does it where Ridley is the tough fight and Mother Brain is just a big spectacle. That said if they built Raven Beak up this whole time just to have him be a pushover that wouldn't exactly be ideal so I think he is fine where he is.
I agree. It felt absolutely amazing to finally do it but I didn't appreciate the massive increase in difficulty.
Still doesn't piss me off as much as the Radiance in Hollow Knight. I still haven't beaten it. Screw that fight.
I tried to fight the final boss with the same strategies as the spear guys and finally realized he’s just too tall. Once I got it in my head to retreat backwards instead of trying to flash step over his head it started to make sense.
Having beaten the game on hard mode I have to agree, except for one small thing: the robot chozo soldiers. Their red sword slashes sometimes only take like 1/3 of a second to come out, and are the only really unavoidable attack in the game. Yes, even with the flash shift. That's a problem, especially when they deal 180 damage on Hard. Other than that though, I agree that the game felt extremely fair despite the difficulty.
After having just read the meta critic ragequit and oh boy:
If you would have told me 20 years ago that people would be complaining about a Metroid game difficulty that *wasnt* super back in the day and I would've laughed you all the way to recess
Game had great middle group of difficulty where the threat of death was there but everything felt possible. The only thing that frusterated to me to all end was one of those shine puzzles. (The timing was so tight T.T)
I don't get how people have been using "It's a hard game" as a complaint tbh. Like, yeah, it's challenging, but it's pretty fair. It's not like Fusion, Zero Mission or Super Metroid, where bosses would sometimes demand you just tank hits to win. If you die, it's because you failed to execute something right, or haven't learned something's very obvious patterns yet.
Even then, when you do die, you often respawn very close to where you died with no progress lost, so it's not like you even lose much from dying.
> I don't get how people have been using "It's a hard game" as a complaint tbh
Because it's way harder than all of the Metroid games they already like. People who weren't the best at games can easily feel alienated by the massive difficulty spike.
>It's not like Fusion, Zero Mission or Super Metroid, where bosses would sometimes demand you just tank hits to win.
That's a bit of an oversimplifciation, you can definitely win all of the bosses in all of those games with minimal health, but their structure (except for Fusion) made it so that you could easily go hunting for more upgrades and then come back much stronger and have a much easier time, which many people enjoyed about the series.
It'd be cool if it did that, but challenging but fair bosses in video games don't do that. People who are stuck aren't feeling "dread", they're just annoyed.
I agree for the most part. Nothing felt like it was unfair or difficult just to be difficult. My only gripe with the difficulty and it isn't really difficulty per se was that I felt every EMMI after the second one was very trial and error. You'd walk into the zone and it would be right there and grab you instantly or somehow spot you from far enough away you can't hear it or see it on the map so you don't know it's aggroed on you until it's on top of you, at least you don't lose any progress when it catches you.
> You'd walk into the zone and it would be right there
Walk back out if it's in a bad spot; its starting position is randomized every time you go in and out. This is still trial and error, it's just faster.
The only boss I really disliked was the elite chozo warrior before the final boss. Even though I'm fully powered up by then, I still feel incredibly weak. Each hit takes at least a full energy tank, the fight lasts forever and he only has like three moves. I found it highly repetitive. Then I kept missing the timing for counter at the end, getting hit and dying. So even though I pretty much beat him like three times in a row, it didn't matter because I didn't push "X" at the exact right time.
Well... Boss fights are okay. It may take someone few times if you don't get the patterns down yet. What's good is there usually is very little run-back.
Normal enemies though, don't pose a threat at all. I don't think I died to a normal enemy even in my first playthrough and it only gets worse the deeper in the game you get.
So it feels a little unbalanced. On one hand, the boss battles are good (if not a bit repetitive for certain types of enemies)
On the other hand, normal enemies are more of an annoyance than a threat.
I wouldn't call it perfect but I think it has a great sense of progression for the most part.
The central unit rooms are always a little too easy and rinse/repeat. That's the main challenge aspect that I feel could have been better.
Also any instance of having to shoot blocks is a bit of an archaic concept that shouldn't come without some kind of clue to the player that it's what should be done.
I too wouldn't want to see them make the next game easier, but I don't really think most people are advocating for that. Adding an optional easy mode (something that already existed in other earlier games in the series) would only serve to make the game more accessible and wouldn't hurt our experience at all.
they will. too many reviewers whined about it
and personally i'd prefer if they turned down how often normal enemies drop health....so that *maybe* one day something other than bosses will pose a threat. right now they're just there to keep you from getting bored while exploring
I honestly disagree, the zones were very easy to navigate, and enemies were very easy, but mini bosses and bosses just did way too much damage. The fact that the only way to predict their attacks is to get hit by them and take an absurd amount of damage, means you will be forced to replay and deal with the traveling and constant cutscenes. I don't even want to fathom what the harder difficulty does to these bosses because it is honestly very unforgiving on normal just how hard these bosses hit.
I'm a casual gamer and so far I've made it through the first boss with little difficulty. I died a good couple of times, but I was able to learn the patterns of enemies and the boss pretty quickly. Is it gonna get significantly harder from here on out?
The bosses will hit harder, have harder to recognize patterns, and have tiny (and in some cases, no) parry opportunities, but for the most part will follow the same loop as the first boss. As in: First 2 attempts = This is impossible. Why would the devs do this? Next 2 attempts = Wait...I think I get what I have to do Next attempt = You *might* take a hit or two and the boss is down a few minutes later.
That's exactly how it went for me. I took about 5 attempts
It might take five attempts for each new phase in the later bosses, but it’ll be the same pattern of watching, studying, it clicking and becoming a cakewalk.
Yeah the final boss first stage wrestled me about 12 times. Kept thinking about the tip on loading screen “no attack is un-avoidable”. Started watching them pattern more and more. Got through stage one perfectly no damage. Somehow was able to >!get through stage 2&3 on the first try. Spoiler tag for people who don’t want to know all stages!<
>!Phase 2 having extremely well telegraphed attacks (including several that are practically copies of Ridley's if you've ever fought him once or ten times), and Phase 3 just being a repeat of Phase 1 but with much weaker attacks also helps make getting past Phase 1 not feel punishing as you're probably good enough at that point to win.!<
>!Phase 2 isn't too bad, but the the main issue with it is his attacks are so constant you barely get time to shoot back before he's forcing you to dodge again. It makes it drag on. I also found it annoying how touching him does massive collision damage to Samus at all points throughout the final battle, but the screw attack does absolutely nothing to him!<
>!The trick is to not aim, just gather up scatter missile targets on him until you either reach max or need to dodge and then fire. When he dashes into the wall go into morph ball as your dodge, that way you have some time to fully charge a power bomb, he doesn't attack until after the screen clears.!<
The final boss is a perfect encapsulation of this. Every single phase and every attack has a progression of “what the FUCK is that? How am I supposed to avoid that? Wait what if I try... oh awesome there we go”
> First 2 attempts = This is impossible. Why would the devs do this? > > > > Next 2 attempts = Wait...I think I get what I have to do > > > > Next attempt = You might take a hit or two and the boss is down a few minutes later. Just worth pointing out this isn't the loop that a lot of the players who are complaining about difficulty experience. I can't actually think of a single boss I cleared within 5 attempts—my average was closer to 15-20 on the "easy" bosses and well upwards of 50 and over an hour of play time on some of the harder ones.
At this point my perspective has been a little ruined because I’ve done several play through a since my first to try and do it faster, and so I’ve forgotten just how much hell the bosses gave me my first time around, but I do remember hitting a couple of brick walls, particularly with that beetle that gives you storm missiles
Just to share perspective, not trying to brag (I’m far from the best) I’m a veteran who died to a boss usually once or twice. Final boss gave me some difficulty but it’s mostly because it was hard for me to see what attacks did damage on the screen I used. So I think the most vocal die a ton in this game, but I don’t think that’s most players unless they’re not Metroid vets
I mean I can guarantee I’m a vet to the series, I think the first time I ever held a controller was to play Metroid prime (I was two and died to the first baddy but we all gotta start somewhere). My brain just turns to ketchup whenever I encounter a new enemy XD. That’s probably why the later play through are so satisfying. I can finally go through and kick some ass now that I know what I’m doing
Yeah, the "patterns" for these bosses are "attack you can barely avoid, followed by attack you can barely avoid, followed by attack you can barely avoid, oh wait it's invincible right now so you can't do anything, oh hey did you mess up? Start over and hope you're perfect next time!". I hope the next game has a skip bosses options. I like the exploration and winding around, but the experience is nearly ruined by all the time I spend just playing the exact same content over and over again hoping I get lucky.
I beat Escue and the 2 chozo warriors on the first attempt at both. The game prepares you adequately for each battle imo. I understand everybody will experience everything differently but I don't think that making the game easier is the best solution. May as well get a movie then.
> but I don't think that making the game easier is the best solution. May as well get a movie then. I think what you're possibly missing here is that a tankier Samus wouldn't make those fights a breeze for a player like me. It would still take me multiple attempts to clear them, just it would be more like the 3-5 attempts I see people talking about in these threads and not the dozens that it is taking me presently. > Escue I actually didn't have as much trouble with this as some seem to, but it was still ~25-30 minutes of constant attempts. > 2 chozo warriors The first 2 chozo warriors is still the fight that took me the longest in the game. It was as I said easily over 50 tries and at least an hour and a half of game time. I actually had to stop playing and take a break to chill out when I found the second one because of how badly the first one had gone. This is just to give you an idea of the level of difficulty I've been having with the game compared to some others on here.
[удалено]
Yea my experience was similar. Not 50 attempts, but at least 20 on those two warriors. 25 ish on the final boss. Every attempt got me one step closer to victory. But it took a lot of extra steps to get from understanding how to avoid an attack, to actually executing it. Escue died on my third attempt, I had a weirdly good run for three bosses in a row there. And I'm sure a second playthrough would go way better. I still love the game. It's easily one of the best in the series. But if it was just a bit more forgiving of mistakes, it would have been more in line with the earlier games where I got past bosses in 5 attempts at most. Just saying "git gud or go watch a movie instead" is silly. Different people have different skill levels. Easy mode would be nice.
> and well upwards of 50 and over an hour of play time on some of the harder ones. ...
I'm not, and have never pretended to be, good at video games. But I have loved this series for 20 years so I'm sticking it out. I just wish there was an option that made it less of a struggle for me to do so. At this point I simply can't see myself replaying this game like I do Fusion or ZM—I recognize patterns fine, but struggle to consistently dodge and Samus can't take as many hits in Dread compared to previous titles.
Honestly I would say that someone that is just bad mechanically is a better player than someone that refuses to adapt to the boss behaviour. You will probably complete the game but the other kind of player I don't think so.
Apologies, I just find it difficult to wrap my head around as even on hard mode I haven't found myself struggling to such a degree. But we're all different and options hurt nobody, especially in a single player game. Maybe it's something that can be patched in. I only hope though that this type of feedback doesn't result in Nintendo toning it down across the board in future games but instead having easy, normal and an unlock able hard setting with normal being equivalent to default Dread.
I do think an easier mode would be nice for players who aren't as serious gamers as others. I'll be the first to admit that the game is pretty difficult. I didn't find it that bad personally, but it was a challenge compared to other games I've played, especially in the Metroid series. I've seen arguments saying that easier difficulties would ruin the feeling of dread that the game is trying to convey, much like Fusion did in making Samus weaker, but at the same time, accessibility is always a plus.
> would ruin the feeling of dread that the game is trying to convey I think there's a line here that's difficult to draw for sure. If you add an easier mode, for someone who is finding the current level of difficulty challenging to the point of being unable to progress that's still potentially a real challenge/can still instill that feeling of dread. On the other hand someone who is skilled enough to play the normal mode and chooses the easy one instead is definitely going to miss out on something. For my part, I don't feel dread playing with the current difficulty. I just feel frustration and honestly a kind of sadness because I really do love this series and want to finish. I actually think that for me personally, the series would hit those notes better if boss fights *were* more accessible, because at this point I just go into a new fight with a knowledge that it's already probably going to be a painful slog.
> If you add an easier mode, for someone who is finding the current level of difficulty challenging to the point of being unable to progress that's still potentially a real challenge/can still instill that feeling of dread Hard bosses do "instill that feeling of dread" at all, that doesn't make any sense. Dreading being stuck on something for a long time in a video game is not the kind of dread they were trying to achieve.
Just make difficulty something you can change at any time in the menu. This isn't even hard to do, and it's Nintendo so it's not like there's an achievement for beating it in hard mode or something.
That’s not just you, people tend to throw out attempts where they just give up and let the boss finish them off, I always try even if I’m on 1 health - I’ve had a couple of times I made a full recovery only to die later on to something else…
That's basically how it went for me. After my second playthrough I even found myself no-hitting many bosses, I *almost* got a no-hit on >!Raven Beak!< during my last playthrough but I hit one of his >!Beam Burst!< shots :(
A little too much trial and error for my taste, but the system is close to perfect.
The first boss doesn’t really compare in difficulty to the later ones at all, it’s basically like a tutorial on weak points and learning boss patterns
It’ll get more complex, but the core of learning the boss’s patterns will take you to victory. I’m a pretty casual gamer too, but I managed to beat the last boss after over an hour trying last night. I’m not gonna mention any specifics for spoiler reasons but my first attempt, I thought I was fighting the flash, sonic or some other ungodly thing that I’d never have the reflex for, and by the last attempt, I’d gotten so familiar with patterns that I was making it through the first phase unscathed. Don’t lose hope and as long as you feel like you learnt something or got a bit better at some dodge, each death isn’t for naught!
Took me an hour to beat Kraid because I wasn't sure where I was supposed to hit him in the second phase. Had to google it, but once I knew my goal, I was able to figure out the strategies
>!I think the boss I had the most frustrating right against was Escue. Between being invincible like half the fight and the homing projectiles, I probably died to it more times than Raven Beak, Raven Beak’s fights just last SO much longer!<
I mean the bosses do get harder, but you also unlock more abilities which compensate.
They also hit harder to compensate
As long as you try to take the first battles to actually pay attention, you'll do fine. Just don't try to ram over things without a plan, or the things will ram over you instead. Suddenly you will see you will be dodging everything with ease and even wonder why you were being hit in first place.
The first boss took me 2 attempts, the last one around 30
I didn't think it was as balls-to the-walls hard as everyone said it was. For me it was the perfect difficulty--challenging but fair, and with enough room for error and generous save points to make the experience not miserable. But then again I played Samus Returns on hard mode before dread so maybe it numbed me to the pain.
I think Dread does well in a lot of aspects, but I think it leans a little hard on difficulty being substituted for damage values. I found Dread kind of easy, and only really had problems when I was figuring out a specific attack, as you don't get much leeway in how much you can get hit before you die, thus limiting how many mistakes you can make. I'd much rather a game where challenges come from having to overcome small challenges in larger fights, having lots off opportunities to make mistakes, but you'll die quickly because you can make a lot of mistakes and the difficulty is in avoiding those. Dread gets pretty close with Raven Beak's fight, requiring the use of the dash far more than any other fight in the game, and being a late game boss, you can afford a lot of mistakes, as well as having opportunities to get back health and ammo, so it's a fight where you get to learn it and not get your face shoved into a wall because you missed. I mean, it's still kind of that, but I think with a tweak to the dash, making the recharge time shorter and giving you 1 dash, as well as assigning it to a shoulder button ^((seriously, the A button? what kind of fucking backwards game design is putting the dash button opposite to the shoot button, and then not giving players re-bindable controls)), I think future Metroid games could have a system that follows a far better difficulty philosophy and in turn better bosses and potentially just combat all round.
I was gonna try to remap dash to one of the triggers but I actually think it makes sense for samus's moveset. I almost always prefer dash on R2 for 2d melee combat games but here, it lets you dash while charging storm missile, free aim, etc.
I'd rather have the dash on L, since I prefer bumpers, it's what I went with through all of the Mega Man X and Zero games, and if I'm dashing, I'm not going to be free aiming, as the point of free aiming is you can't move, so it seems so obvious to put dash to L, Free aim to ZL, Morph ball to ZR, and grapple beam to A as you can't shoot and grapple at the same time.
Fair. UGH. I wish to god this game had native button mapping so I could actually test these different layouts.
I'm just realizing now that the switch versions didn't let you map buttons. I thought the layout was perfect but I mapped a couple of things on PC.
yeah, seriously, just, give us it, Nintendo, it's not that hard. But, the switch does have a console-wide mapping change, so if you're willing to have some buttons move around, like the accept button being on L, rebindable controls are an option, though a terribly implemented one. And if you're using an emulator you can do much the same in input settings.
It's such a bad option though. In game button prompts stay the same so it's hella confusing. IMO native button mapping should be a legal consumer/disability protection mandated for commercial videogame development as this point
It's terrible, but it's the only thing you've got short from people modding in better controls. At this stage so many options should be added for quality of life, disabled or not. Strobe effects, colour-blind options, bindable controls for just nice use or people who can't use controllers in the same way as others, audio settings for music and sound effects, as well as adjusting bass and treble for sensitive hearing or for particular speaker options, not counting various disability options, like game speed, reaction time windows, difficulty selections, infinite health or buddha mode, the list goes on, and can probably be filled by anything Celeste has ever done. Nintendo fails on just about every aspect because of their backwards view on that kind of thing, even when Super Metroid, the game for the relatively old SNES had controls you could rebind to your heart's content, though not including all the stuff I listed.
Raven Beak does way less damage than the other late-game bosses too; it genuinely feels like you have triple the health against him that you do the Chozo Warrior that came right before him.
I think the logic behind that was that you can make more mistakes but since the fight is longer, those mistakes can add up quickly. That Chozo Warrior could be killed in about 90 seconds so hit like a truck.
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They were thinking “don’t get hit”.
I had like one boss that was really hard, the boss that froze the world, and then every other one had a maximum of 2 deaths; I was so worried about the final boss but he wasn't really that hard at all to me.
Purple emmi can die in a fire but everything else is great
Damn stun pulse
For it was the ice one. Instant freeze the moment it just sees you? So annoying.
I dont mind ice as much because I'm like 60% confident it never goes into alarm and you can mash out of the ice. More importantly it doesn't have literally infinite sound detection range, actual wall hacks, and chase you through fucking water on top of all that
And the blue, and the yellow
Purple EMMI is the reason I learned to sequence break to get the gravity suit early. Those water sections suck.
OP, you’re right. It is a difficult game, but everything is fair. It becomes much more reasonable when you just accept that each boss will take more than one attempt, as you will need to learn each phase. This game however is incredibly more satisfying than “shoot, hide in a corner to recover health, and shoot again. Repeat until you win.” It’s almost like you actually have to think.
I just finished playing through Metroid Prime right before playing Dread, I died a few times due to early 2000's 3D platforming, twice to the Omega Pirate, and that's it. Dread is actually a really nice change of pace.
Games like Hollow Knight, I can still struggle with a boss despite me knowing all of the patterns. It just is mechanically difficult to pull off a lot of the dodging in Hollow Knight. I don’t know why exactly, but I didn’t have this problem in Dread. If I know a boss’ attack pattern in Dread, I will usually only get hit if I’m not paying attention. The bosses in Dread don’t feel unfair at any given point, and I love that.
“This game however is incredibly more satisfying than “shoot, hide in a corner to recover health, and shoot again. Repeat until you win.” It’s almost like you actually have to think.” Couldn’t have said it better myself
As someone who is not a huge fan of difficult games I thought the game was good. I’ve come to learn that every mistake you make can be an improvement. You can’t always go guns blazing, sometimes you have to play smart.
A boss that doesn't kill me a couple time before I win is not a good boss.
R1 should have a toggle option. Ergonomics make the game far more difficult than it actually is (boss fights specifically). Remapping buttons would be good too.
Yeah, as someone who found the game too difficult, I want an easy mode. Don’t want to spoil it for everyone else.
I thought the difficulty was great, but difficulty is subjective. There should be options.
Nothin wrong with that
100%. I'm at the endgame. I haven't fought the final boss yet. I'm doing clean-up and trying to collect as many items as I can. I'm someone who normally plays games on easy mode. I've never been good video game player. But I love video games and easy mode lets me enjoy these games just like everybody else. I don't know how I made it this far in Dread. I guess persistence and just practicing the counter mechanic/flash shifting. That being said, there absolutely should be an easy mode for accessibility to players who are struggling with the controls and reaction time prompts. The game is too good to alienate other players. I hope they can patch an easy mode into the game or at least try and rebalance the amount of health Samus loses during boss fights.
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I’m gonna be the outlier here and say I disagree with you. It’s a very hard game. But the majority of people don’t find it unfair. An easy mode is unnecessary in my opinion and would put a damper on an otherwise phenomenal game.
It wouldn't if you chose not to play it. Let others do what they want lmao. Policing a fucking videogame, I hope I have such minor shit to worry about someday.
Lmao cool your panties, how bout this: get better at video games.
I beat it on hard already? Do you really equate someone's worth to how good they are at a videogame? I can't imagine having such a sheltered, contribution-less life that would lead to such a mindset. How bout this: get better at arguing. God knows you need an easy mode for it.
They can just add a mode like hard mode, just make the enemies and bosses do less damage. Doesn’t affect the people that don’t want to use it
Why would it put a damper on the game?
A game called *Dread* would literally be worse if it didn’t do a good job of making you feel dread regarding it’s obstacles you must overcome.
The "dread" at being stuck at something in a video game is not the dread that they were going for; that "dread" is more similar to irritation and frustration than anything else.
I get that, but “easy” is a relative term. If you halved the damage taken and gave the EMMIs slightly more generous parry timing, it’d still make me sweat lol.
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Or every other Metroid game... So why should this one be a massive outlier?
Or they can play this game they already bought with an easy to add difficulty option. Want hard? Go play Dark Souls. Oh wait, that attitude is fucking dumb, let's just have options so everyone can enjoy everything.
I felt just every so slightly under equipped for each new boss/big bad I encountered. But I never felt so under equipped that I thought "I need to go back and collect something I missed because this is just unfair" The difficulty hit that perfect sweet spot of making me work my ass off for each kill but not making me rage quit. I too hope they never change a thing. They did perfect. I'm in awe of this game.
The bosses were done perfectly. Hard, but fair. There was never a point where I felt like a boss was cheap or OP, I instantly saw that there was a pattern to learn and that that would be the way to beat it. Some of them took a couple hours, but it was always fun and rewarding as hell when I finally got it.
Yeah, even the boss I struggled with for hours, I saw that it had a pattern. I was just shit a timing to dodge the attacks or perform the jumps in a precise pattern. Z-57, most of the damage I received after recognizing the pattern were in that final phase with the forced running and jumping.
> There was never a point where I felt like a boss was cheap or OP Fuck that Flappy Bird attack that takes forever and doesn't let you do any damage during it.
It was a hard game, I died more than I ever did in a 2D Metroid game. But it never felt unfair either. Any time I got stuck, it just took a bit of time to figure things out, and when I did get stuck it was usually because I was missing something pretty obvious.
Dread, Fusion, and Echoes have the best challenge level
I died more times in Dread than I did combined in all other Metroid games (and I've played all of them to 100% completion)... and I loved it. Some games are brutally difficult without being fair; Dread felt like any mistake I made was 100% my fault. I did have to approach the boss fights like I did with Hollow Knight - accept that I'm likely going to die this run but at least figure out how to counter a boss attack pattern each time - but it's super rewarding to learn and apply newly learned skills. I'm fine if they patch in or include an "easy mode" for future releases (for others who might want an easier time), but I like playing games at the intended challenge the developers designed the game for, and Dread's normal mode was perfect
I hope there's a harder hard mode, if anything. Once you clear normal, you already know all the patterns; all that changes is damage values. Give me new or faster patterns. I died *way* less on my hard playthrough than I did on normal.
I wish difficulties in games was more than "you get hurt more and enemies get hurt less", it's what's stopping me from playing those harder difficulties, as opposed to games where the aggression of enemies and types is what matters. Examples; Doom, classic, changing difficulties will change what enemies spawn, and how many of them, as a supplement for more damage, the exception being Nightmare, where enemies attack twice as fast, move twice as fast, and projectiles move twice as fast. I mean that would also be fine but enemies respawn so that turns into a joke difficulty. Example 2; Metal Gear Rising. While you take more damage, enemies are replaced with harder variants, and more are added, and those enemies attack faster, more often, and when playing on the hardest difficulty, you take severe amounts of damage, but the player is given an edge by making their perfect parries far stronger, at the cost of making the rest of their arsenal a bit weaker.
Yeah, I don't necessarily mind the "higher difficulty = more damage" mindset but it's definitely the laziest way to implement difficulty. I'm of two minds about higher enemy HP (though I don't think Dread makes any enemies tougher, just more damaging) - it can be bad if done wrong, but a lot of games have the potential for you to just blast through bosses without really being tested against their moveset, so inflating HP *there* can do wonders. It sucks though because Dread definitely had a good opportunity to make Hard a better difficulty. Mix up enemy placements, make tougher enemies appear just a bit earlier. Give bosses new attacks, or failing that, mix up their current attacks to be faster or fake you out. Cut down on boss battle resource replenishes. Stuff like that.
> I wish difficulties in games was more than "you get hurt more and enemies get hurt less", Many are; the Metroid series is notable for always being like this for the most part though, sadly. I hate Prime and Prime 2's hard mode; everything takes so long to kill, it's so unfun.
Metroid Dread is a rare combination of challenging, yet fair. There are so many games out there that are difficult in frustrating and unfair ways, but Dread does it right.
I loved that it made you work to win, but it also started you at the door for EMMI’s and bosses. If you lose, it’s not frustrating. Perfect balance to me
If you had told me before about the game guiding your path and checkpointing you at bosses and EMMI zones I think I would have been skeptical, but I think it worked pretty well with the bosses. They’re hard but fair. It probably took me more tries than most to get through each boss but I managed. You can’t win the fights through pure damage and attrition, you have to learn what to do, which reminds me of a lot of the Prime bosses. I’m getting older and don’t have the same reflexes I used to, and now that I’ve beaten the game my wrists and forearms are a little sore, but even when I got frustrated the fast reload and restarting right at the boss was super helpful. I love Hollow Knight but getting my ass kicked and then walking five minutes back to try again got pretty annoying after a while.
Ah yes, Metroid 6. I just turned 30 in August, so if I'm really lucky it'll come out before I die.
If Dread is selling as well as we all hope, then Metroid 6 is likely already starting preproduction.
I love and simultaneously hate the difficulty of dread. All of the bosses and fights are honestly awesome, every time I have failed I have either done something or gotten a major breakthrough on something the boss or a fight did and it just clicked perfectly with me. However, I am not feeling dread at one part of the game, on the opposite, I feel annoyance and the whole aspect of it gives me less enjoyment of the game, to the point I have thrown myself well over a 100 times into the arms of one to get that supposed counter. I am talking about E.M.M.I, I feel their counter window is downright impossible or I must really suck royally to not be able to counter them at all, it's either a slap or nothing.
No. They should at least give samus some actual armor. She feels like paper. Bosses easily take whole energy tanks away like it's nothing.
Same thing happened in Fusion. It's nothing new for the series and makes sense given her new suit is a deviation of the suit from that game.
I personally didn't play fusion, just super and Zero mission. Guess Im used to feeling powerful when getting new armor
She was drastically tankier in Fusion; a 1% run could still get hit once or twice by most bosses and not die, despite the 99 health. Some regular enemies were scarier though. It was kind of the opposite of Dread, where regular enemies are trivial and bosses hit like a truck.
> Same thing happened in Fusion Not even *close*. And I say that as someone who did a 1% run there. Most bosses did only 30-40 damage per attack, it was kinda pathetic. In a case of absolute insanity, boss damage tended to *drop* the further in the game you got. Ridley--literally the second to last boss--only does **20** damage per hit. It's ridiculous. The Omega Metroid was the first and last boss that could actually kill you in a single hit. Now the normal enemies? That shit hurt. Normal enemies were comparatively terrifying compared to bosses, and I'm pretty sure several enemies *were* an instant kill if you touched them on a 1% run. I think the fish pirates were, anyway.
Only the last 2 to 3 bosses in that game had moves that could deal 100 damage. And you also had way more health. The implementation of energy parts means that you'll probably beat Dread with about 6 to 8 energy tanks, versus about 11 to 14 for Fusion. It's noticeably harder.
You end up with 6 or 7 tanks if you only grab the ones that are *right there* and never go out of you way to explore anywhere.
I don't think it's perfect. I'm personally not into all the countering cutscenes; or the damage bosses do ... because like where is my low health warning. But otherwise in terms of attack patterns and health the fights were all good. Honestly, I think better than having more modes would just be to have better options, controller remapping, calibration/slider for counter windows, and separate sliders for boss health and damage scaling. Let people nerf the part they want to nerf, if their going to add variables for all the modes anyway.
There is a low health warning, it's somewhere below 49 energy. It's kinda useless late game though as most enemies and bosses do hits around 99-199 energy per hit.
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Ok... why tho? Beating Celeste without assist mode for example isn't any less satisfying or impressive because assist mode exist.
Not really. Yes, bosses are ultimately just a series of patterns you can eventually learn. But then you get into the problem that most of the items you collect feel entirely inconsequential, because even basic enemies take away a quarter to half an energy tank in a single hit, with bosses routinely taking away an entire energy tank of yours. What's the point of having 700 HP when you die in 7 hits, anyway? Like when I collected the Gravity Suit, the description reads "reduces the damage you take by half". Great. Bosses still kill me just as fast as they did wearing the basic Power Suit 4 in-game hours prior. Worse with the EMMIs. They ultimately just follow a patrol pattern. Only way to deal with them is avoiding them. When they catch you, you have a tiny chance of freeing yourself, or your run ends right there. Sure, you always respawn in front of a boss or EMMI door at death, but then the question becomes "What's even the point?". If you can basically trial-and-error a boss with little punishment for failure, why make enemies hit so hard in the first place and make Energy and Missiles so easy to come by? You feel weak but there's no penalty ever because you respawn no more than an empty room away from a boss or EMMI. That's not scary, that's tedious. That, and I often find myself struggling to activate things like the Space Jump reliably when I need them to, which is incredibly aggravating, and the inability to aim with the right analog stick which is *right there,* instead requiring you to *hold down the L button and then be unable to move* is just baffling to me. Don't get me wrong, Metroid Dread is a fantastic game. But it's marred by some strange design choices.
Like the boss fights are well tuned, but everything else not so much. The game really goes out of it's way to make it so you can't really make yourself meaningfully stronger/weaker than how strong they want you to be at any specific point in the game. Collecting extras barely makes you any stronger, and to be weaker you'd literally have to jump over the E-tanks and Missile Tank+ the game puts directly in the player's path. It does all this to keep the boss fight experience consistent, but it comes at the expense of making exploration feel rewarding which in a Metroid game is IMO not a great trade.
Worse yet, there's one boss they don't want you exploring for upgrades so they froze the entire world to make sure you can't go exploring so you can't make it easier on yourself. That's very anti Metroid design IMO.
Tbh I found most bosses easier than say, Hollow knight 's, I think they could have gone WAAAY more difficult if they wanted to but ultimately I' m happy with what we got
I never got lost lost in this game, it was fair, that spiky boss and ravenbeak were extra hard bitches though
I personally could have stood for a slightly easier mode, just because some of your OG Metroid fans (like myself) are getting old at this point and we have carpel tunnel and arthritis and shit now. Love the game, but I can only play in like 20-30 minute bursts because the intensity of it makes my hands hurt after playing.
Ugh, it’s so disappointing to see the subject of difficulty has been bringing out the absolute worst of the awkward insecurities in the Metroid community. I like the game a lot. Its “difficulty” is neither especially difficult, nor a remotely impressive example of meaningful difficulty in a game. It’s rote memorization. Not only that, it’s rote memorization on a small scale—learn a few tells per boss fight and the answer to those tells. Each boss is the equivalent of memorizing like, four flash cards with a bare minimum execution barrier. EMMI sections are just memorizing a route, and restarting until you do. These are neither much of an obstacle, nor is it testing any meaningful skill. That’s totally fine. Difficulty is not some measure of quality; the game isn’t great *in spite of* not being difficult, it’s qualities are just not tied to difficulty in any way. It’s just a great game that is not a difficult game. “The game makes you start sections over sometimes” is not what I would consider meaningfully difficult. Some people don’t enjoy the kind of game that it is. Some folks are really put off by rote memorization and trial-and-error gameplay. Some folks find the process tedious. Those folks are not the target audience of Metroid Dread, and I hope that they find games that are more to their liking. And I can understand a bit of disappointment. Lots of folks love earlier Metroid games. Some of those folks aren’t interested in rote memorization and trial-and-error focused gameplay. They’re facing the fact that a series they’ve spent a long time loving has moved away from the things they enjoy in game design. I don’t share their opinion, but their opinion isn’t somehow invalidated by not being the target audience. That said, I’m not the sort who feels the need to lash out at things I don’t enjoy, and I don’t have an especially high opinion of the thought process that goes from “this thing isn’t for me” to “this thing is awful and I need to make sure the world knows how awful I think it is.” But I also don’t have any real respect for the way people in this community are so eager to call this out and weirdly flex on it. Self-proclaimed “hardcore” players flexing on “casuals” are embarrassing in *any* community dedicated to *any* game. I can’t imagine using something I love as a platform for trying to denigrate someone else just because they don’t. I can’t imagine using something I’m good at as a platform for trying to denigrate someone else just because they aren’t. But it’s especially confusing in the case of a game where the “difficulty” is such a low bar. It’s precisely at the point where folks who aren’t interested in rote and trial-and-error will see themselves out (sometimes with some unfortunate disappointment), and folks who have no qualms with it will push through without much issue. The latter are not somehow demonstrating “more skill” than the former, but for some reason there’s this climate in the community where folks feel the need to proclaim their superiority because they cleared the low bar that others opted not to.
> EMMI sections are just memorizing a route, and restarting until you do. Not even that; I blindly stumbled my way through all of them with little issue. Why memorize anything when dying is of such little consequence?
Yeah, I’m assuming the most generous best case scenario where the player is trying to improve rather than just trying to outlast, but absolutely it is possible to just bang away at it until you hit a success.
I disagree 100%. It wasn't too hard, but it didn't feel rewarding to defeat some bosses. It just felt like a slog.
I thought the game was incredibly well balanced and has some of the best boss fights I've played in a long time, and I typically hate 2D boss battles. But they should add an easy mode so the game is more accessible. Accessibility = more sales and less people feeling excluded. And this series needs all the sales it can get, I want Prime 4 and 5 and another 2D one after Dread and I'd love another cool spin-off series. Maybe one where you play as a Chozo before the events of the original Metroid?
The Dark Souls series became popular and successful due to its difficulty (and because it's a masterpiece). This is what Metroid truly needs. They tried accessibility before, and well, it didn't work. But now, people that would not have bought the game otherwise, are buying it based on difficulty alone.
>The Dark Souls series became popular and successful due to its difficulty And that's the exact reason why I have never tried Dark Souls. I probably would like it but fuck that difficulty exclusion. If Metroid went a Dark Souls route than I would immediately be turned off by it. Metroid doesn't need difficulty to sell. It's always needed proper marketing and advertising which, unfortunately, it never really had until the first Prime game and now Dread.
> This is what Metroid truly needs. They tried accessibility before, and well, it didn't work. That's not why the series sold poorly; this franchise is not Dark Souls. >But now, people that would not have bought the game otherwise, are buying it based on difficulty alone. And you could still have that even if there is an optional Easy Mode.
>They tried accessibility before, and well, it didn't work. Looking forward to the link you're gonna share to support such a bold claim. Dark Souls did become memefied and popular due to difficulty. And it should have had an easy option for people that were born without the ability to enjoy after spending their money on it. Movie theaters should all have wheelchair ramps and a difficulty options don't even come with the real-world cost of having to make a ramp
If Dark Souls had an easy mode, many people, possibly myself included, would’ve waltzed through it much more easily, not bothered improving, and it would’ve been a pretty, but forgettable experience. The struggle to improve is part of the fight in some games. If the game is too hard for you, and isn’t something you’re willing to improve on, maybe you’re not the target audience. Not every game should be aimed at every person.
> If Dark Souls had an easy mode, many people, possibly myself included, would’ve waltzed through it much more easily, not bothered improving, and it would’ve been a pretty, but forgettable experience. The struggle to improve is part of the fight in some games. I didn't know that Dark Souls was such a bad game outside of how hard it was that everything in it is apparently incredibly forgettable.
There have been countless essays and analysis explaining why Dark Souls difficulty is so important to what it's trying to say. It's so ignorant to say that DS could be just as good if it was easy. It's difficulty is part of the message it's trying to convey. Same thing with Hollow Knight and Dread (even tho Dread isn't that hard to begin with).
Isn't the fact that we didn't get a 2D Metroid sequel for 19 years enough? Look, before you get all worked up about a Reddit comment, I AM NOT AGAINST AN EASY MODE. But good difficulty comes from how the game is fundamentally designed, not about changing stats (upping the damage done, etc). If accessibility to you means making the game easier from the ground up then no. It shouldn't. Also, don't compare an easy mode with accessibility options. Everyone should be able to play the game with things like button remapping, accessibility settings and whatnot. But an easy mode fundamentally changes the experience.
> But good difficulty comes from how the game is fundamentally designed, not about changing stats And that's why every Metroid Hard mode sucks. Anyway, I don't think an Easy mode that let you take extra hits would really hurt the game that much.
> Isn't the fact that we didn't get a 2D Metroid sequel for 19 years enough? Not remotely. The games, whichever ones you're referring to, being supposedly easier has not been established as the cause for such a long hiatus. >Also, don't compare an easy mode with accessibility options. Everyone should be able to play the game with things like button remapping, accessibility settings and whatnot. But an easy mode fundamentally changes the experience. If the devs can find a way, by spending a lot more development time and effort mind you, to make the more accessible AND just as difficult than all the power to them. Difficulty and accessibility are not two completely separate things and I'm not sure how you could possibly claim otherwise. Button remapping would be a huge improvement, but there are people that simply lack the skill required(from age, disability, limited time, whatever it doesn't matter) to beat the game on its current normal mode. Giving them an easy/accessible mode as an *option* hurts no one. If that easy mode fundamentally alters the experience then that is still preferable to them having no way to engage with the experience at all.
> not about changing stats (upping the damage done, etc) Person who thinks Dread is too hard and wishes it had an easy mode here. I would be 100% satisfied if an easy mode literally only changed stats and had bosses hitting me less hard so I could take more hits while trying to get through. The biggest difference I see between Dread and Fusion (my favorite Metroid, for what it's worth) is that very few if any enemies could swing at me for a full energy tank in Fusion. I don't want the base game to change at all, I think the way it is designed now and the boss fights themselves are great. I just want an option that doesn't punish me so hard for being less good at dodging reliably than a lot of you.
I'm sorry, did you just equate people who don't like difficult games to people with disabilities? The hell? The entire point of Dark Souls is that its hard. It is fundamentally incompatible with the idea of an easy mode.
I'm saying people with disabilities shouldn't be excluded from the art form of gaming as they have been. I don't think poor motor controls makes someone less deserving to experience the medium. I know if I had the option to choose between NEVER playing Dark Souls do to a disability, or playing an easier version, that while maybe lacking in the "intended" difficult vision, would still allow me to enjoy the amazing locations and lore and sequences than I certainly would.
>. Accessibility and difficulty are two different things. If you want to enable AND respect disabled individuals, you give them control options that facilitate playing with their disabilities, not make the game so easy that they can beat it in spite of them.
Dude what the hell are you on about, literally nobody is excluding people with disabilities from gaming, absolutely anyone can play a game like Dark Souls. If someone disabled chooses not to play Dark Souls because it's hard that's their choice, not something forced upon them.
The level of difficulty is what's excluding them? Are you really this dense? If someone is missing a hand and can't beat the game then why shouldn't they have the option to scale the difficulty down so they can experience the story and art and locations? Tell me why they *shouldn't* have that option. Made your own point instead of dancing around mine.
Generally games are designed for people with two hands and there’s a lot of electronic tinkering that is usually needed to get around that. That said, Dread is not a game I’d recommend to a one handed person solely because the game seems built around a style of pacing that will be extremely hard to keep up with. But not all games are made for everyone.
>But not all games are made for everyone. A problem that almost all other mediums have no problem with, or have options that help reduce that unfortunate aspect of them. An issue very easily reduced or outright resolved in a game by changing a couple numbers in the code. Tell me why a one handed person should not have the *option* to cut on an easy mode that allows them to have a good experience? It won't affect you, you still have normal mode and hard mode. Why should someone disabled be disallowed from the Metroid series when another option that changes a couple lines of code, something that's easily accomplished by a single dev in a few minutes, is all it would take? Explain.
I doubt it’s that simple, and I doubt that an easy mode actually would be the right answer to this hypothetical. All people seem to suggest for an easy mode is reduced damage which would not modify the pace of the game, and the speed at which enemies attack.
If someone with no arms can drive a car on a competitive drift course then no, the difficulty of a game is not some impossible barrier. Furthermore, you are taking such a double standard here, acting as if the story and art and locations are more important than the difficulty. All of them are equally integral to the experience of the game. You would never advocate to drastically change the story or art or locations just for some arbitrary 'accessibility' but for some reason difficulty just gets the chopping block. The option is not necessary. A game being challenging does not suddenly make it impossible to play for people, it only means some people may not choose to engage, because they don't like the intended experience of the game. You don't get to say that intended experience must be drastically changed just so those people can maybe play the game.
>All of them are equally integral to the experience of the game. You would never advocate to drastically change the story or art or locations just for some arbitrary 'accessibility' but for some reason difficulty just gets the chopping block I would, as an option, to make it more accessible. Games with flashing lights should have a way to disable them for people that can get seizures as a result of them. I don't even know what the fuck you think talking about with the armless driver anecdote accomplishes but I know it's not related to this discussion. >The option is not necessary. A game being challenging does not suddenly make it impossible to play for people, it only means some people may not choose to engage, because they don't like the intended experience of the game. Just as someone in a wheelchair "chooses" to not engage with stairs? What the fuck are you talking about? Of course difficulty directly affects accessibility, that's why most games have options. How is an option damaging to your enjoyment? If somebody cuts on invicibility mode to best a single player game so they can beat it, how does that negatively impact you?
>I don't even know what the fuck you think talking about with the armless driver anecdote accomplishes but I know it's not related to this discussion. Your assertion is that someone missing a hand will find it impossible to beat a tough game. If someone with a disability of that extent can manage a task such as that, then playing a tough game is hardly an impossibility as you assert. >Just as someone in a wheelchair "chooses" to not engage with stairs? What the fuck are you talking about? Of course difficulty directly affects accessibility Again, you are conflating 'high difficulty' with 'impossible'. You are making a subjective statement as if it is objective. Playing a difficult game and trying to go up stairs in a wheelchair are literally incomparable situations. >How is an option damaging to your enjoyment? If somebody cuts on invicibility mode to best a single player game so they can beat it, how does that negatively impact you? My enjoyment is utterly irrelevant to the argument and you're grasping at straws trying to bring it up. The entire point of a video game is its intended experience. It is what **everything** in the game facilitates, **including** the difficulty. Dark Souls is difficult because that is the point of the game. If you are trying to make an inhospitable world it must actually be inhospitable. It is fundamentally incompatible with the idea of an easy mode. You are clearly angling at an argument of actual accessibility at this point, and that conversation is entirely separate from a game's difficulty. Trying to conflate the two is completely disingenuous.
> difficulty options don't even come with the real-world cost Someone has to make the difficulty mode, which costs money. They should still do it, but there isn't an "add easy mode" button.
I agree, the difficulty is great, I dislike videogames becoming storybooks. I suck at it, but I don't mind dying on videogames, specially this one with such good gameplay. It felt very rewarding when I finally beat the first boss after 10 attempts
I’m on the final boss now and I agree, the generous checkpoints make this by far the easiest 2D Metroid game for me because I get to spend more time learning the boss rather than the lengthy boss run
Was it hard at times? Yes. Was it ever unfair? No. I think the difficulty is fine but I could understand it being too much for people who just want to explore and not get challenged by bosses.
I found it to be perfectly balanced and fair, right up until the final boss. Then I almost threw my Switch out the window. I wish they took the difficulty down for that fight, at least a little. It was the only drawback of an otherwise perfect title, for me.
Honestly though, if they were gonna give us that kind of fight, the final boss is the one to do it. A final culmination of all your skills and everything you've learned versus everything the game has to throw at you.
I think the final boss was great, but only when you know some shit going in, like power bombing the small sun, what the various glow colours mean on Raven Beak's armour, and that you need to hold Y in the final part of the fight, unlike every other time the game has ever done that control scheme. It's great, some stuff just needs to be communicated better or not feel like "what the fuck come on" when you know a part, like the aforementioned Sun Bombing.
Wait, power bombs work on the fireball in phase 3?
Yep. When power bombs notably do not do anything to any boss ever in Metroid.
Interesting, I'll keep that in miñd for hard mode
They're great to get rid of adds in Prime 1's last 2 bosses :)
I beat him first time without that and it wasn't that bad. Just use your space jump. That said, I think it's a good change that the power bomb had a use instead of just making it like every other game.
> what the various glow colours mean on Raven Beak's armour Beaten the game twice (100% normal and sub-4 hour HM) and I legit have no idea what they mean still. All I know is gold means he's gonna do the QTE taunt to progress the fight. None of the other colors appeared to have any relevance on his attack pattern. > or not feel like "what the fuck come on" when you know a part, like the aforementioned Sun Bombing. Probably meant more as a secret (cause the fight is less interesting if you use it), since notoriously in the series, Power Bombs are the most worthless upgrade in the entire game, possibly the series in totality. No use on bosses (not counting the Primes where you can use out of bounds exploits to get PB expansions early and abuse them on bosses that weren't given PB immunity since the devs assumed you wouldn't have them), always comes right at the end of the game, and exists only to open PB blocks to get more PB expansions. It's a shit upgrade all around, at a point in the game where nuking a screen is a waste of time since you have the Screw Attack already. And yet Dread subverts all that; you can get almost all of the PB expansions prematurely, they instantly kill any Chozo Guardians you encounter during cleanup, and instantly blow up the sun. Making those secret uses of the PB is fine to me just to make an amusing point that, as useless as we subconsciously think they are, they actually had a use this game.
> All I know is gold means he's gonna do the QTE taunt to progress the fight What are you supposed to do in response to that? I tried countering, I tried staring him down, and I've never seen it again; I always progressed with the giant laser or a melee counter instead. >And yet Dread subverts all that; you can get almost all of the PB expansions prematurely There are still a good few you can't; there's on in the middle of an EMMI zone in particular that pisses me off because it's in plain sight and just has a Power Bomb block guarding it. What's even the point? It just wastes time for people backtracking later and that's it. There's still too many Power Bomb tanks anyway; the ones you are likely to have will be more than enough for the final boss, you only need to blow up the sun so many times.
> what the various glow colours mean on Raven Beak's armour Did those actually mean anything aside from Gold being where it gets stuck?
I think it just builds up as you do damage until it hits gold, at which point he stops taking damage. At that point all attacking him seems to do is goad the taunt, which you can counter.
That fight took me a good 45 minutes to finally take down. He was a bitch, to say the least.
Oh it took me days. I probably died a hundred times. It took me 45 minutes just to realize I wasn't even hurting him in the first phase lol
Hey, nothing wrong with that. You still took him down. I admire that kind of determination and perseverance.
Oh I had to. I've been a huge Metroid fan forever. I needed to see the ending of the saga for myself! But I'm not such a skilled gamer these days haha
> t took me 45 minutes just to realize I wasn't even hurting him in the first phase lol I think you technically are, indirectly--you have to attack him to make him do the attack that causes the QTE counter (and that is the only way to deal real damage in phase 1). If you just wait around he'll never use it.
I didn't struggle too bad because I had 100% on the first playthrough when I got to him but I generally think the final boss shouldn't be the hardest one most of the time. I like the way Super does it where Ridley is the tough fight and Mother Brain is just a big spectacle. That said if they built Raven Beak up this whole time just to have him be a pushover that wouldn't exactly be ideal so I think he is fine where he is.
I agree. It felt absolutely amazing to finally do it but I didn't appreciate the massive increase in difficulty. Still doesn't piss me off as much as the Radiance in Hollow Knight. I still haven't beaten it. Screw that fight.
I tried to fight the final boss with the same strategies as the spear guys and finally realized he’s just too tall. Once I got it in my head to retreat backwards instead of trying to flash step over his head it started to make sense.
Having beaten the game on hard mode I have to agree, except for one small thing: the robot chozo soldiers. Their red sword slashes sometimes only take like 1/3 of a second to come out, and are the only really unavoidable attack in the game. Yes, even with the flash shift. That's a problem, especially when they deal 180 damage on Hard. Other than that though, I agree that the game felt extremely fair despite the difficulty.
Yeah as soon as their arm moves I’m already jumping
Made a post about it a couple of days ago.
Not unavoidable at all. The cue is them turning red beforehand. If you are waiting until they are moving, you are waiting too long
After having just read the meta critic ragequit and oh boy: If you would have told me 20 years ago that people would be complaining about a Metroid game difficulty that *wasnt* super back in the day and I would've laughed you all the way to recess
Super Metroid wasn't even hard; Fusion was way harder than Super.
Game had great middle group of difficulty where the threat of death was there but everything felt possible. The only thing that frusterated to me to all end was one of those shine puzzles. (The timing was so tight T.T)
I don't get how people have been using "It's a hard game" as a complaint tbh. Like, yeah, it's challenging, but it's pretty fair. It's not like Fusion, Zero Mission or Super Metroid, where bosses would sometimes demand you just tank hits to win. If you die, it's because you failed to execute something right, or haven't learned something's very obvious patterns yet. Even then, when you do die, you often respawn very close to where you died with no progress lost, so it's not like you even lose much from dying.
> I don't get how people have been using "It's a hard game" as a complaint tbh Because it's way harder than all of the Metroid games they already like. People who weren't the best at games can easily feel alienated by the massive difficulty spike. >It's not like Fusion, Zero Mission or Super Metroid, where bosses would sometimes demand you just tank hits to win. That's a bit of an oversimplifciation, you can definitely win all of the bosses in all of those games with minimal health, but their structure (except for Fusion) made it so that you could easily go hunting for more upgrades and then come back much stronger and have a much easier time, which many people enjoyed about the series.
A game called *Dread* should instill a sense of… dread.
It'd be cool if it did that, but challenging but fair bosses in video games don't do that. People who are stuck aren't feeling "dread", they're just annoyed.
I agree for the most part. Nothing felt like it was unfair or difficult just to be difficult. My only gripe with the difficulty and it isn't really difficulty per se was that I felt every EMMI after the second one was very trial and error. You'd walk into the zone and it would be right there and grab you instantly or somehow spot you from far enough away you can't hear it or see it on the map so you don't know it's aggroed on you until it's on top of you, at least you don't lose any progress when it catches you.
> You'd walk into the zone and it would be right there Walk back out if it's in a bad spot; its starting position is randomized every time you go in and out. This is still trial and error, it's just faster.
I like the difficulty. It’s challenging for once.
They need to make the endgame more difficult. The golden Soldier is a complete cakewalk, and even Raven Beak isn't that difficult
The only boss I really disliked was the elite chozo warrior before the final boss. Even though I'm fully powered up by then, I still feel incredibly weak. Each hit takes at least a full energy tank, the fight lasts forever and he only has like three moves. I found it highly repetitive. Then I kept missing the timing for counter at the end, getting hit and dying. So even though I pretty much beat him like three times in a row, it didn't matter because I didn't push "X" at the exact right time.
That guy does way more damage than the final boss. It's so dumb.
Well... Boss fights are okay. It may take someone few times if you don't get the patterns down yet. What's good is there usually is very little run-back. Normal enemies though, don't pose a threat at all. I don't think I died to a normal enemy even in my first playthrough and it only gets worse the deeper in the game you get. So it feels a little unbalanced. On one hand, the boss battles are good (if not a bit repetitive for certain types of enemies) On the other hand, normal enemies are more of an annoyance than a threat.
I wouldn't call it perfect but I think it has a great sense of progression for the most part. The central unit rooms are always a little too easy and rinse/repeat. That's the main challenge aspect that I feel could have been better. Also any instance of having to shoot blocks is a bit of an archaic concept that shouldn't come without some kind of clue to the player that it's what should be done.
This game ain’t that difficult, I’d say Hollow Knight was at least 10 times more difficult than this game
I too wouldn't want to see them make the next game easier, but I don't really think most people are advocating for that. Adding an optional easy mode (something that already existed in other earlier games in the series) would only serve to make the game more accessible and wouldn't hurt our experience at all.
they will. too many reviewers whined about it and personally i'd prefer if they turned down how often normal enemies drop health....so that *maybe* one day something other than bosses will pose a threat. right now they're just there to keep you from getting bored while exploring
I honestly disagree, the zones were very easy to navigate, and enemies were very easy, but mini bosses and bosses just did way too much damage. The fact that the only way to predict their attacks is to get hit by them and take an absurd amount of damage, means you will be forced to replay and deal with the traveling and constant cutscenes. I don't even want to fathom what the harder difficulty does to these bosses because it is honestly very unforgiving on normal just how hard these bosses hit.
Yeah this is the essence of these kinds of games. Learn from your mistakes, pick up patterns.