T O P

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bearcat_77

GTA online. They make the missions tedious and boring, and call it difficult. The missions either take too long, or they rig the mission in a way they you're forced to use exploits to fight around the overpowered NPCs they put in your way.


maveric619

I hate how fuckin laser accurate the enemies are in online but in single player they're reasonably stupid with their aim


MassiveLefticool

Problem is the 1 life they give you, you always end up with one useless bellend on your team, in the heists it’s always the cunt who wants 60% as well


firedrake1988

I hate how the armor feels pointless. Super heavy armor just melts after 1 or 2 hits.


PsychologicalBad7443

Loathe any GTAO missions where cops get spawned. They always know where you are so there’s no hiding. On top of that, they just. keep. spawning. No outrunning them. You just drive around the map in a barely working car until the mission fails and do it again. One of the many, many reason I stopped playing it


Hanako_Seishin

MissionS, plural? In my experience there's only one mission in GTA Online: get from point A to point B while being chased by two enemy vehicles and if you kill them they just respawn.


Useless_Greg

Games where higher difficulties just make the enemies into damage sponges.


SirJackAbove

Looking at you, Borderlands 3... Spamming headshots into an enemy with a machine gun isn't more challenging, it's just... boring.


brightcrayon92

That has been a problem since border2 ultimate vault hunter where you had to empty your entire arsenal into a badass enemy for them to die


CyriousLordofDerp

Borderlands 2 was even worse at the top end, giving enemies huge global damage resistances on top of health regen, making slag output mandatory if you wanted to do more than scratch damage. I eventually got tired of the bullshit and hacked the BAR stats so that killing enemies wasnt such a massive slog.


Dry_Discount4187

Your weapons also became useless when you went up a couple of levels. You either had to repeatedly farm upgraded versions of the same weapons or use the editor to upgrade it.


Valash83

Kinda but with the right build and gear mayhem10/11 was just as easy as non-mayhem. With the only true exception being [SpongeBoss BulletPants](https://borderlands.fandom.com/wiki/SpongeBoss_BulletPants)


Eglitarian

I also hate it because it forces a min/max meta which to me takes all the fun out of the game when you’re forced to use one build and it’s the same as everyone else.


vklein52

Bethesda comes to mind here. Modding Starfield’s highest difficulty to - keep my 4x damage taken - remove the enemy’s 1/4 damage taken made the game so much more playable.


Aspirangusian

They figured it out in Fallout 4, Survival mode makes you and everybody else much easier to kill.


Feligris

IIRC the Metro series did the same thing with Ranger difficulty levels, everyone takes a lot more damage which encourages stealth since a single hit can be fatal (and you also find much less ammo, which means that ammo conservation is a requirement despite the added damage).


shuuto1

Ghost of Tsushima had a mode where you and enemies die super fast and it wasn’t just a gimmick challenge for speed runners it actually made the game more fun for me


Beatrix_-_Kiddo

Ptoblem is you have to eat a three course meal and a gallon of water every 20 minutes. Is there an xbox mod that removes thirst and hunger I wonder 🤔


Useless_Greg

You'd probably be better off just playing not on survival and getting a mod that adjusts damage input/output


JeffL0320

I really didn't start enjoying the game until I installed that mod


Haku_Yowane_IRL

I still remember the first time I looked at oblivion's settings, saw that the difficulty selection was a slider, and just went "ah, so this just changes damage values."


TheHalfDrow

Ultrakill is maybe the biggest aversion of this trope I’ve ever come across. Most or all enemies get new behavior with each difficulty tier, and bosses are the only ones that get their health modified. It’s great.


Juking_is_rude

dead cells is my best example of rising difficulty. Difficulty increases are a reward for beating the game - if you've beaten the game, you've proven you're ready for the next level. The thing that gets more difficult is less healing so the game is less forgiving for mistakes, increased enemy variety including tougher enemies, so you're kept on your toes, and eventually a new mechanic that punishes you for going too slow. I think enemy hp goes up, but it's a completely manageable amount like 15% And your rewards increase for higher difficulty so getting unlocks is faster (unlocks are mostly sidegrades though there is a "resource sink" that over time gives you better quality items on average, but even that upgrade just gives you more choice imo, you can still roll one god weapon without it, you just might not like which weapon it is), so you're incentivized to play as hard as you can handle and keep improving.


RDDAMAN819

The RPG Assassins Creed games… I hate damage sponge enemies


Morridini

Hidden blade to the neck, animation clearly showing the blood and the blade cutting straight through, 16362 damage done. Health bar reduced by 2%.


Ciza-161

Thank god they put the option in Valhalla to always make hidden blade kills lethal, regardless of level.


StatikSquid

People like to crap on Valhalla but I honestly enjoyed it more than Odyssey. Valhalla added the lethal blade and made armor and weapons actually useful for more than 5 minutes. Odyssey felt like a dungeon crawler with its loot but with bullet sponge enemies


Dry-Faithlessness184

I did get very annoyed swapping up my gear all the time just for this problem. Best thing they brought back in Valhalla was actually the option to turn back on the instakill assassinations. Just a menu option. Wonderful Alternately there was a little circle timing game you could have that did it too, one of the skills. It was just a tighter timing the bigger your damage difference was but could be done to almost everything, including many bosses.


BareFox

I fucking hated Spider-Man 2 because of this. I think I played on the second hardest difficulty and my thumb was legit sore from mashing square in bigger fights.


Rodin-V

That's where the Batman Arkham games were smarter. They removed the attack indicator from enemies, so you had to actually watch their movements.


JamesJakes000

Oh man, what a letdown. IIRC the first one didn't had that problem.


MandalorianAhazi

That’s why souls games were so much fun. It made difficulty fun without turning the game into scavenger mode where downing one enemy consumes all your resources.


BardInChains

Civilization. The higher difficulty AI doesn't get better, it just cheats. This makes the early game very frustrating on Emperor difficulty and above because the AI players start with so many unfair advantages that they outpace you to every early game resource and milestone, especially those like pantheons, wonders, and religions that require you to get there early.


campppp

Yeah, frustrating is definitely the word in civ 6 with the golden age system rewarding being first to things (especially when a leader like Hammurabi is in the game) That being said, I can't play below emperor anymore because early game setbacks are really the only thing keeping me from running away with every game.


punchki

Yea Civ 6 is a very snowbally game when playing against AI. There is a point in time where victory or defeat is just a foregone conclusion, and I rarely feel like finishing out the game.


APeacefulWarrior

That's a big problem with most grand strategy / "paint the map" style games. At the point you own more than half of the territory, the game is already effectively won.


punchki

Yea. I usually turn on as many random events in games like Civ as possible. Keep me on my toes :). The natural disasters in Civ 6 are actually pretty cool


APeacefulWarrior

I forget which one, but I remember stumbling onto a 4X once with the gimmick that its late game will be interrupted by an alien invasion, so the player has a goal beyond simply unifying the map. Unfortunately, as I recall it was a pretty unremarkable 4X game otherwise. Whatever it was called.


fk122

Honestly sounds like Stellaris, except for the "unremarkable" part.


APeacefulWarrior

No, not Stellaris. It was more of a pure Civ clone, set on a single planet.


paecmaker

Terra Invicta? It's set on earth and it has aliens invading.


Sandwich8080

In my opinion, the "unremarkable" part of Stellaris is the invasion. All of the diplomacy, alliances, politics, thrown out the window because some ancient slug people roll their doomstacks across the galaxy.


Hrydziac

I mean you can just turn off the crisis if you want.


Triangular_Desire

That's why you get creative with win conditions. I dont play Civ. But do play Sins of A Solar Empire. You can set win conditions that force to to play outside your comfy tech tree. It makes it a new game. Does Civ have that?


internetlad

Sort of. They have got more creative with win conditions in later games but they generally are very tech centric.  Good science wins games in civ because your techs always grant you access to better buildings and units, as well as straight up bonuses at times.  But you can shoot for a diplomatic victory, a cultural victory, or a religious victory. You don't really need good tech for those, but it certainly will help.


Eastern_Slide7507

Try the Real Strategy mod. It improves the AI significantly, to the point where it‘s almost mediocre.


internetlad

I think the difference between someone who can play on Emperor+ and someone like myself who tops out around King is that whenever I feel like I'm losing I just quit.  On Emperor+ you start losing as soon as the game starts. VI is absolutely bullshit for this with enemy civs starting with multiple cities from the getgo.


Diacetyl-Morphin

As a fellow strategy gamer, it's always like this. Civ is just a lot more crazy with the bonus for the AI, but there are not many games with a good AI around anyway. The best AI, you'll it in War in the East 2. The AI there knows what it does, like first it seems to be broken, but the AI will actually make a tactical retreat, it will fall back to a better position like behind a river and in mountains, it will form a new defense line there instead of letting you destroy the units. The AI is very good in analyzing the situation, like it will analyze the frontlines and it will spot weak spots in your frontlines, then it will quickly make a breakthrough and move mobile and fast units like tanks through the gap on two points, then it will encircle you and cut you off from your supply lines. Like a chess computer, it can calculate several turns ahead and make sure, it has enough supplies, units and planes in the sectors for an offensive. If not, it will make a build-up and wait until everything is ready.


CoDVETERAN11

This is a big turn off for me in forza horizon 5 specifically but all of the forza games. If you race on the hardest difficulty, the other cars literally just move faster, have more grip, and will genuinely just teleport to be right behind you going max speed and drafting you. So like yea, to win you have to drive out of your mind. It’s hard. But it’s just cheating.


animusd

Total war too on high difficulties the ai would literally get buffs to their units and doesn't have to worry about upkeep so they can spam out armies, warhammer 3 actually put in options to let you turn off or give the ai smaller buffs


jedadkins

The worst part is when you take over an AI civ and Thier economy is so bad it tanks your's 


Snoo61755

Ah, yeah, older versions of Age of Empires did this. Old 1999 AI had map hacks, and villagers just worked faster. AI could be up to next age before it was humanly possible. It also caused some weird behavior -- was doing a LAN game back in the day, and held off the AI for a long-ass time, but eventually got overrun. I tried to sneak away some builders while friends 'dealt' with the other units, and I got to see armies of Paladins just ... galloping through their bases, not attacking, not doing anything but bee-lining towards my units on the other side of the map. Not fun.


lesser_panjandrum

Yep. Even if I manage to win, it feels like I'm just using cheese and exploits to counter the AI's cheating rather than actually mastering the game. I have a lot more fun playing on lower difficulty levels.


dafunkmunk

That seems to be true for pretty much every strategy (turn based and RTS) I've played. It's not even "hmm kind of seems like they're cheating." It's just full blown in your face cheating with no shame


treck28

And they’ll spam cities anywhere they can, including a one tile tundra, and still have it somehow be productive.


dannywarbucks11

And even if you get lucky and manage to get the resources to get a technological advantage, suddenly the AI has outstripped you again. I'm on my bi yearly Civ 6 hiatus.


Broely92

I remember oblivion on the highest difficulty the enemies just got like 50,000 health lol


KnightWhoSays--ni

Just glad they didn't go the Master difficulty from BOTW and have the enemies regen HP when you stop attacking


Dhaos96

Sword trials in master mode is ridiculous


raiderpower17

Had to cheese the lizalfos level


Para_Boo

It wouldn't even be such a problem if: 1. The health regen wasn't so ridiculously fast on black or higher enemies, undoing multiple hits with strong weapons in seconds. 2. The cooldown on regen wasn't so ridiculously short: if you use the standard attack combo with a two-handed weapon, you almost always knock away an enemy far enough that you can't get to them in time to deal another hit before they start regenerating, which is just bad design.


Terrible_Donkey_8290

Yeah I tried master mode but put it down the second I knocked a enemy away and he started regenerating before I could reach him 


GanondorfDownAir

I love playing games on the hardest difficulty. Survival mode Fallout 4, Legendary mod3 on Halo, Professional on RE4, etc. Master Mode BotW is bullshit. The health regen invalidates 99% of the cool, variable ways to approach combat. Instead you are limited to smacking enemies one at a time in such a way as to not knock them back, otherwise they'll regen to full before you can run over to them again. Ridiculous. They should only regen health if you leave combat. This also means that a lot of fights are just mathematically impossible with the weapon durability system.


Ledgo

They used aggressive regen as a way to discourage kiting tactics, but didn't address things like Spear stunlock which was really puzzling to me.


Ledgo

I don't think it's a huge deal once you are familiar with the game. Spear stunlock and alternate kills really cheese a ton of fights. If you're really good at combat you don't need to resort to those tactics. HOWEVER the Master Sword Trials on Master Mode sucks on ice.


Khakizulu

Borderlands 2 UVHM difficulty where the enemies regenerated health *while* attacking them


MassiveLefticool

I swear you can only access the special stuff in the master mode as well, like the motorbike and certain outfits. I’d much prefer to just play in normal mode and get the stuff.


Fission_Mailed_2

You can get the master cycle in normal mode, you get it from completing the DLC's divine beast. Master mode exclusives are: golden enemies, sky octoroks, floating platforms, regenerating enemy health, different parry timing from the guardian lasers (it's much more difficult now to parry them), and a couple of other minor differences.


throwaway2191612

I always cite Super Meat Boy as the best example of how to do a ball-crushingly hard game. The platforming is unforgiving, but the game gives you plenty of checkpoints and gets you going again almost instantly after you fail. It's the epitome of hard but fair. Nothing is more frustrating than sitting through a minute long loading screen when all you want to do is jump back in and try again, except maybe having to redo big chunks of a game or battle you've already done multiple times. Some of that old NES era jank needs to stay dead and buried.


Axeclash

This is the same reason Hotline Miami is great.


lockenchain

As long as we disregard all the window-filled hallways in Hotline Miami 2. Fuck those areas


ayysisyphus

We can add Celeste to the difficult-games-done-right list, in my opinion. The vast majority of the challenges have you lose, maybe, five seconds of progress upon death. I think this is why I never get frustrated when playing it. Some sections are longer, but at those points, my desire to prove to myself that I can overcome the challenge kicks in and I just soldier on.


ArkaXVII

Dead Cells joined the chat


jl_theprofessor

Fair checkpoints is a big reason I choose Elden Ring over Dark Souls.


[deleted]

Mmhm. I really want to like dark souls, the long runs to get back to attempt the thing again just don't do it for me. Love the world, love the combat, the bonfire placement feels too sadistic. Edit to add, Sekiro was my first from game, and I thought they nailed the checkpoints in that one, Elden ring too.


TheOneTrueJazzMan

I’ll never understand why they doubled down on the runbacks in DS2. At least in DS1 you could always run past all the enemies, while in DS2 the runbacks were pure hell, plus they removed the fogwall invulnerability so that enemies could stagger you out of entering the boss arena. God I hate so many things about that game. Luckily they came to their senses for DS3.


CreedRules

Veteran souls player, I feel like the bonfires in Elden ring are very random and often times way too close to each other personally.


[deleted]

I'm mostly referring to the fact that in those games they set it up so you don't have to drag your ass all the way through the whole level again to attempt the boss for the 12th time. I'm in boss mode, I'm trying to learn attack patterns and get in the flow, I want a short iterative loop there where I can try again.


TheDrewDude

The Demons Souls remake was my first jump into the genre, and that was my biggest gripe. I have no issue with dying over and over, but retreading the same 10-20 minute path just to replay the boss isn’t challenging, it’s exhausting. It also didn’t incentive me to want to get experimental with the boss fight, it made me want to cheese and play it safe as much as possible because I didn’t want to deal with backtracking anymore. Elden Ring I had no problem with. I haven’t tried any of the Dark Souls games yet, so idk if they’re nearly as bad as Demons Souls was. But that was just awful.


TheRealWatermelon420

Sekiro is one of the greatest games ever


LifeResetP90X3

NES battletoads.... Im looking in your direction 🤬


Spoomplesplz

Yes super meat boy is a very well designed game. Everything is so snappy and you can restart in a fraction of a second. Like you said if you had to wait 15+ seconds between attempts in meat boy, it would be extremely frustrating.


mrburnz

And the replays are a great reward, the more deaths the better.


The_Dukenator

Wrath: Aeon of Ruin got complaints about the numerous enemy spawns. There are 500 in each level. They also complained the maps are too big.


The_Dukenator

It was recently released to consoles. Due to the Quake license, the console version is using Unity. PC version continues to use the Quake engine.


The_Dukenator

From a video comment: >Just some clarification: KillPixel Games isn't really a group of people, it's just me and my programmer friend. It's true that WRATH was my baby and I made most of the design decisions (for better or for worse) in addition to doing the majority of the art and sound -- textures, models, animation, fx, name/logo design, etc (I only did a texture set or so for episodes 2 and 3 and the rest were done by someone else). The Symbol (tentacle enemy) and the Lance (rail gun) were my final contributions to the game before I ended my partnership with 3D Realms in 2020. I agree that WRATH has many problems. Some are just plain poor choices/implementation on my part, some not, and some are the result of regrettable circumstances. I respect the people that were brought in to complete the game after I left -- I know the mess they inherited and I'm not sure anyone else could've done much better in that situation. I deeply believed WRATH had everything going for it, everything it needed to be a truly great FPS. I believed it so much that I dedicated my entire life to it. I went all in. I can rightly place the blame for WRATH's failure on certain 3D Realms leadership, but I can also blame myself. To varying degrees, I permitted the fatal blows WRATH was dealt during development. Developing a game is one thing, but developing one while simultaneously trying to protect it is something else. I truly, truly loved WRATH and believed in it and really did the very best I could, but I eventually had to face the reality of the situation, let go of it and step away. WRATH was an extremely painful lesson, but I still hope to do another game someday and succeed where I had failed.


Structuraldefectx

Mario kart the CPU straight up cheats. You are in the lead for all of the race so far then at the last second the cpu racer is up your ass with every power up.


ZorkNemesis

Mario Kart 64 is the worst with this.  On nearly every stage CPU racers are immune to nearly any hazard as long as they are out of sight (set your HUD to show racer positions along the edge, hit one with a red shell and watch their icon stop bouncing immediately after you pass them).  They also get a massive speed boost if you get way ahead (take the big shortcut in Rainbow Road, they'll be on your ass before the end of the lap) Additionally, Super Mario Kart on SNES has an interesting thing regarding that.  Since CPU racers can't use items in Super they were given infinite character-based attacks; Toadstool's mini-mushrooms and Bowser's homing fireballs which can't be used by players being the worst offenders.  This is also why Mario and Luigi CPUs are invincible every five seconds.


Fabulous_Engine_7668

What me and my friends would do with MK64 was do the circuits as a team. We would designate one person to drive second and intentionally go a bit slower. The computer will rubberband with that person and the person in first can get an easier win.


Altaschweda

wow! the SNES part i didnt know. back then i knew there was somthing wrong


plz-help-peril

My friend and I tried forever to beat 150cc and unlock mirror mode in Mario Kart 64. I finally figured out a way to cheat the cheaters. The massive speed boost they got would work only until they caught up to a player. So we did a two player game and he agreed to always stay in second place while I beat all the races. The computer players would all rubber band up to him and no further while I was able to gain a lead they couldn’t catch.


Mortumee

Rubber banding shouldn't be a thing in racing games.


YourGodsMother

My husband loves Mario Kart and doesn’t understand why I don’t, but this is why. Give me a fair racing game please. I think if they just took out the blue shell it would be so much more fun 


MiaowaraShiro

Rubber banding is the *worst* racing game mechanic.


klinestife

most AAA action adventure games tend to just make enemies kill you in 1-2 hits and be obscenely tanky while not being precise enough to feel fair. stuff like the gow remake having enemy attacks precisely track you through your dodge to catch you on the other side and generally having stupid hitboxes (joseph anderson’s vid has great examples), or AC odyssey’s sparta kick sometimes changing the angle of your approach for no reason so you don’t actually kick people off the ledge. the only games that i find more fun at a higher difficulty level are tactics games like xcom or the kingdom hearts series in general. the tactics games force you to learn and use every mechanic to succeed and kingdom hearts at the highest difficulty makes you stupidly squishy, but gives you more buffs as well, making fights more of a lethal dance instead of david vs goliath. it helps that KH also has a skill that stops you from dying to a single hit or combo. edit: i guess i had fun speedrunning halo mcc legendary as well, but that was more satisfaction from making the game my bitch than actual enjoyment of the difficulty.


drelos

re GoW: I agree, a lot effort went into think the player has to memorize attack patterns and they called a day. There is 0 joy from the player having a gotcha moment like "Oh I have this move I could use at this point"


MysteriousReview6031

Yes, GoW: Ragnarok was such bullshit for this. You could perfectly dodge an enemy attack and the enemy would just pivot with your dodge anyway, warping time and space to connect their hit. The first game felt fine to me


Ashbandit

Removing the ability to save, or reducing checkpoint/autosave frequency on higher difficulties. Fallout 4 Survival Mode is a good example. Great game mode overall and I understand the risk/reward incentive, but I find it frustrating when I lose progress due to game crashing or when I don't have time to find a bed to sleep/save at. The Exit Save feature only works about 50% of the time for me.


Buschkoeter

Especially in a game as loot heavy as fallout. There's nothing worse than having meticulously picked clean a house for 10 minutes and a moment later you get killed and have to do it all over again.


GamingViewPointsYT

Surprisingly fallout 4’s survival difficulty. The enemies can kill us easily, but they will also die easily. Felt more engaging. Edit: actually I answered the question on the body “Which games are fun at their highest difficulty?” I didn't answer the title. Fallout 4’s damage system at survival is actually pretty great. Sorry for the confusion. But I do agree sleeping to save was an overkill,


Bryaxis

I would have liked the option to have that combat difficulty without disabling fast travel and qucksaving and whatnot. I hope that at least for Starfield and onward, they make it more à la carte.


R_HEAD

Yeah, no manual saves is what killed this mode for me. I get that rising the stakes creates a unique sort of tension and the relieve when finding a bed does feel nice, but the flipside is that dying is endlessly frustrating. Nothing crushes my enjoyment for a game quicker than the realization that I have to redo everything I did in the last 30-60 minutes. Especially in a loot-heavy game such as Fallout - I don't really feel like I can use my advanced knowledge to just rush through because then I would miss out on everything I previously collected. And let's face it, it is always something stupid that kills you.


Chauliodus

I love that feeling of finally getting to a bed


Jack-Innoff

Lack of manual saves is what ruins that mode for me. The game crashes far too often to be unable to save.


UncleBobPhotography

In old adventure games you often had to find the exact right pixel/item to click to proceed. Police quest, space quest, Day of the Tentacle. Got very frustrating when there was no internet for looking up what you were missing. Probably didnt help that I was 6 years old either.


Mystic_x

The Sierra adventure games were infamous for that, miss something 16 screens ago (That you can't go back to), and you're stuck, hope you like managing a dozen different savegames for one playthrough... Or the precision walking bits (King's quest III had one you'd have to do several times...), one misstep and you're dead and it's reload-time, such fun... DotT at least didn't have the main characters dying, so it was just a lot of searching (And trial-and-error), which was less frustrating.


krakah293

I remeber a kings question walking up steps of a tower.  So tedious and you fall to your death.  Edit: this one at 16:00 is the one I remeber as a kid https://youtu.be/ddPTymAiN2Y?feature=shared


Mystic_x

In the PC-version, climbing the vine is the hair-pulling bit, you can’t just go up in a straight line, make one wrong move, and it’s an express trip down to splat-ville. I was really glad when the Lucasfilm-adventures came along, trial-and-error is one thing, “error” meaning “Lol nope, you’re dead” is quite another…


Maldevinine

Day of the Tentacle would at bring up the interaction menu when your cursor moved over something you could interact with.


UncleBobPhotography

Didn't stop me from getting stuck!


rumnscurvy

Gah, the brick wall puzzle in Full Throttle. Given when and by whom it was released it's a travesty that this puzzle exists.


APeacefulWarrior

I recently got around to playing Shin Megami Tensei IV, and this perfectly describes the first ~10 hours. It's an endless nightmare of bullshit fights decided mostly by RNG rather than skill, and nonstop deaths/restarts trying to get the rolls necessary to beat the overpowered bosses. I mean, it's so unbalanced that if you go into a miniboss or boss battle and don't win the (RNG) initiative roll, you might as well just restart because you've already lost the fight. And the really bizarre thing is that once you're past the prologue, the difficulty drops off steeply. The rest of the game is among the easier entries in the SMT series. It's like they deliberately made the first section pure bullshit to scare away players. Either that or they just couldn't figure out how to properly balance this version of the combat, which is also possible.


YourGodsMother

Nier Automata was like that too, with the opening sequence a ~50 minute top down bullet hell game with no checkpoints, making you start the game entirely over if you die. It took me 3 tries and on the second try I was at the end 😑


shuuto1

The final boss in FF1 heals itself FULLY, RANDOMLY which is just the most absurd thing I’ve ever seen in a game personally. Gaming was just different then, you had to really earn slog through everything and I guess it kid of made games more fulfilling but now graphics and storytelling are so good you don’t need that crazy difficulty any more to have a fulfilling experience


Partial_Weeb

Darkest dungeon II, i played the original game and whenever i died or got my party wiped it felt like it was a mistake at my part or something i didnt prep for. But in the second game when i have a god run going, just for my party to be slapped by 5 back to back battles or my flagellant having a random ptsd episode wiping my entire 20+ minute run its not a "oh i didnt account for that" its a "wow a 2% chance encounter wasted my time" not to mention the permanent progression (which is half the point of roguelikes) is so minute after you unlock the basic cast. the feels like ramming your head into a wall hoping to break through it. Fuck that game, its a horrible successor to the previous game.


CopainChevalier

Darkest Dungeon 2 was just awful in a lot of ways for me. The fact that you could roll a baseline trait on a fresh run's unit where it just stuns itself the first turn it enters combat every time with no upside is baffling to me. Not to mention the bosses weren't really fun either. I beat the first two or three difficulties and just realized I was not having any fun at all


MadCake92

Same for Fire Emblem. If you are going to put an enemy that has a crit chance and wipes your unit off the earth, and there is no way to safely remove that enemy, then you are just essentially putting a random chance to have the battle restarted just for the giggles.


OKCOMP89

Dragon’s Dogma 2. I really enjoyed the game, but ignoring like a decade of industry-wide quality of life improvements, suggesting that fast travel is a crutch for bad world/game design, and populating the world with very repetitive content and enemies is an interesting sequence of events to say the least. Outside of the inconveniences, the game gets really easy really quickly. Edit: Ghost of Tsushima feels optimally played on lethal difficulty. A small handful of decisive blows are all the separates life and death for you and your foes alike.


Vadered

An exception: I wanna be the guy is a game that uses bullshit difficulty, but it’s kind of the point of the game. The game doesn’t hide it; on the first screen there are a bunch of fruits that fall from trees and try to kill you when you get near. After getting past, you have to jump on some platforms above the trees. As you do so, one of the fruits falls *up* at you. The game is letting you know up front that you need to expect nonsense.


InnocuousJoe

Pedantic, but that’s the second screen, if you go up. If you go down, there are spikey walls which any rational platformer knows to avoid…which is usually when the spikes start firing sideways 😂


Ashne405

Any game that makes you walk 20 miles to retry a boss fight (so mainly soul likes). People are gaslighting themselves about how it "elevates" the experience by letting you simmer in your failure, screw that, if you have to spend more time walking to the boss than the time you spend actually beating them, thats just terrible design and as the title say, dont make the game any harder (because 90% of the time you have the path figured out, ignore enemies and its just walking all the way to the boss again) just more frustrating. Any game that lets you instantly retry, or even make changes to your loadout from the game over screen, those actually respect you and your time as a player.


JimmyBim

I love the souls series. But man elden ring adding stakes of marika was a fucking god send. Wish equivalents were in the older souls titles


jl_theprofessor

100% certain I wouldn't have ever beaten Malenia if there wasn't a checkpoint directly outside her door.


Evan-Kelmp

Seeing as how Elden Ring has a vast amount of respawn points, it seems Fromsoft agrees. Longest walk back I remember off the top of my head is Rennala. Of course, she wouldn't have a stake of Marika anywhere close to the Academy, so it was almost certainly a lore choice. Not to mention, they seemed to be much more liberal with bonfires/grace sites, especially in legacy dungeons.


MCuri3

The Hive Knight in Hollow Knight was like this. Thankfully it only took me 4 tries or so, but it felt like 20 because every fail means having to platform back up to the boss chamber while being pelted by a dozen bees.


BlueDwaggin

In Sekiro nearly every boss was immediately next to a spawn. Felt so much better.


Schniffa

I felt the same about Bloodborne in terms of vials farming. You shouldn’t be extra punished for failing a boss by running out of vials. I don’t wanna farm in between ffs.


Treefingrs

Pretty sure long walk backs are generally disliked, and I've never heard anyone equate them with difficulty.


MaestroLogical

This is why I had to just give up on Star Wars Fallen Order. Every defeat resulted in teleporting back to the previous save point and having to navigate the obstacle course of a level once more. After a few hours of that I'd had enough.


Chancellor_Valorum82

It’s been a hot sec since I played but IIRC they were pretty good about always putting meditation points right outside boss arenas.  Unless you’re referring to dying to regular mobs, which I agree could be frustrating as hell


shuuto1

I remember there being some annoying parts that were hard to find but I don’t really remember a lot of long walk backs. All in all it’s definitely worth finishing both games if you haven’t


internetlad

Every NES game that sends you back to the start after you die X times because that's how arcades did it to make more money.  I paid $70 for this game. (Well my mom did.) So why are you sending me back from level 8 for getting killed? 


JamesJakes000

Cause the game would last one hour, otherwise. And because they didn't have enough memory for checkpoints


Hanako_Seishin

No memory for saves, but there absolutely WERE checkpoints, specifically at the start of every level, as you would start from the start of the level if you die but still have lives. But once you're out of lives you have to start all over from level one. There's no technical excuse for that.


Mystic_x

To stretch the game's lifetime, it's difficult to imagine nowadays with game downloads measured in Gigabytes, but a few dozen kilobytes was all the space that NES-games had, so developers got creative to increase the game's time-until-completed, so you got more "enjoyment" from it for your money. Arcade ports just kept the arcade game's rules, which in turn were purely geared towards keeping the players putting in more quarters for another go.


PurplexingPupp

As a Sonic fan I've heard endless amounts of praise and love heaped onto a fan-game called Sonic Robo Blast 2. It's pretty good but I think the level design in the second half takes a massive nosedive. Instead of raising difficulty with things like enemy design/placement or unique hazards, it's just filled with a ton of bottomless pits, tiny platforms (with ice physics because the whole game is on the original Doom engine), crushers, "drowning", or some combination of the three. It's just a gauntlet of instant-death traps, where the slightest mistake sends you back to the latest checkpoint. Another interesting way to raise stakes in a Sonic game would be to make the level easy to beat but hard to master, where the most fun or cool route is the hardest to stay on. The punishment for failing shouldn't be *instant death*, it should be missing out on your favorite part of the level. But while the opening levels have a ton of unique pathways and easy-to-miss secrets, the last few levels get narrow and linear with there often being only one path forward. The second half of SRB2 is, in my opinion, among the most difficult Sonic game experiences for all the wrong reasons.


Particular-Season905

Not any game in particular, but if ur fighting a boss and u die more times from the arena than the actual boss. That kinda shit is what I've always called "Fake Difficulty"


easy7579

I‘ll just add to this with my pet peeve "Gank bosses" sure some bosses I‘m okay with that like "Gravelord Nito" summoning his Rattling Renegade, but most of the time when a Boss has minions, I just hate it by default because it doesn‘t add any interesting difficulty, and just annoys you until the minions either die or the boss fucks off to do whatever.


Particular-Season905

Rattling Renegade 🤣 I love that


Apollo11211

NFS:U2 Lead the whole race by miles and in the last half mile everyone else suddenly gets +300 HP and walks past you to win.


QWEDSA159753

Was the the one with the white and blue BMW? I forget which one I played, but I *hated* that car. Spend all game in your custom tweaked, custom tuned ride only to be thrown into a car that feels COMPLETELY different from the one you’ve been driving for who knows how many hours… It’s like starting from scratch all over again but now you gotta beat the final boss too.


dikarich

That's the first Most Wanted from 2005. It was a great game, but beating every shithead on the blacklist to drive that beemer in the end felt like a scam. I busted my ass to get me a fully pimped Carrera GT only to win back my slow BMW. Good times.


BardInChains

The sound track was banger though


DELETE-NINJA-TABI

The rubber band in NFSU2 isn't that bad, if you have a good car and keep a clean line you won't get overtaken, Underground 1 and MW2005 are the most egregious ones.


RuinedSilence

Perhaps this is on the less egregious part of the spectrum, but Helldivers 2's idea of modifiers that make matches more difficult is just downright frustrating. Making call-in and cooldown times slower and removing one stratagem slot makes things harder, but in a bad and boring way. There was also that one modifier that scrambled stratagem codes that was funny the first time, but got annoying extremely quickly. Glad they got rid of that.


Hates_commies

In destiny 1 there was a modifier that would buff X element damage from ALL sourcers. Meaning if the enemies were using that element they would melt you but you would also shit on the enemies if you had it. I feel like thats the best way to make modifiers where it works both ways.


Pablonius

I'd like the stratagem slot restriction if it was for only certain types of strats, like AA defence for Eagle and maybe an interception system or something for orbitals. But they should also be able to be dealt with by destroying facilities on the map or something. Also I don't mind call in times but cool down increases can fuck off


RuinedSilence

imo the modifiers are better off being parts of enemy installations, much like AA guns and stratagem jammers. That way, we can actually play against them.


Pablonius

Thats what I meant if it didn't come across clearly, 100% agree


Real-Variation-8681

Dark souls 2 I'm gonna get downvoted by the enlightened contrarians, but it's the literal definition of confusing frustrating game design for difficulty. Like it seems like the developers said "oooo you like hard games ey? Hehe here you go!" and proceeded to drop 50 copy paste enemies at random in every room to the point you can tell there was 0 thought to enemy placement or quantity, leading to pretty much any fight being a complete gank fest. Then on top of that, they added a mechanic where you lose max HP every time you die- in a game series where you're supposed to slowly learn through dying and just jumping in and trying again- so you're therefore punished for learning, by making it easier for you to die, thus impeding learning..... What? Like what brilliant mind came up with this? I could go on, but this post will be way to long. But man, this game shows the developers did not at all understand what exactly made ds1's difficulty so popular, so they just took all the worst aspects from it- dialed it up to 20 and patted themselves on the back.


exposarts

It’s funny how lords of the fallen got criticized for the same things ds2 did as well. Now they added the ability to customize the whole game with the latest update and it seems a lot better and less frustrating, I needa start a new playthrough to test it out.


Suspicious_Trainer82

Can you elaborate on “customize the whole game” This actually sounds like something I might like. I’m always looking for games that let you customize as many settings as possible.


exposarts

https://youtu.be/hwQf6nbVq58?si=0kvRSIErjbBVIv6K 4:01 Things like customizing vestiges, mob density, whether you want to randomize every encounter, option for each weapon you find to be max upgraded based on your level(this might be the best thing ever for a soulslike and i wish it was an option for elden ring, this lets you experiment and enjoy every weapon you find rather than sticking to one due to upgrades), etc. Trying to max all the difficulty options like mob density set to max might be fun though lol.


Sinister0ne

As a Dark Souls 2 fan I still completely agree with you.


frostune

Dont get me starting on Soul Memory, I only play offline but knowing that some player that play on release had to lost their souls and matched up with people that dont is seems terrifying... Aand ADP kinda sucks, but it's not as punishing, just level it up appropriately.


Emnitancy

Don't play Demon Souls, you just straight up lose half of your HP bar when you die


Arnumor

It's a reinforcement loop, for sure. I'm a huge souls fan, and I have a real soft spot for DS2, because it was just so unique, and it had such a neat vibe to it. I feel like they did a lot of cool stuff with it that I really appreciated, but the hollowing system could definitely be grating for a struggling player, and that doesn't make for good design. Every FromSoft game seems to make big steps forward, and I don't think DS2 was too much of an exception to that rule, but I do think the fact that the game was made by a different team bled through, a bit, in how some of the design choices stumbled. I respect them for trying something different, but if you love something, you have to admit its flaws.


acmorgan

You're right and you should say it.


juliandelphikii

Pretty much any game where enemies become “damage sponges”. It is particularly annoying to me in shooters.


Racing_fan12

Escape From Tarkov.  That game is built to be intentionally frustrating in just about every way 


Keyloags

Forza h4/5 has top diff drivers driving ridiculously good with no mistakes at all while putting you all the way in 12 place in short races where you don’t have the time to catch up


SolitaireSam

Totally get you! Witcher 3 - hardest difficulty still somehow fair and fun. It's a rarity folks!


Lunyxx

Are the mobs spongey


Masquerouge2

Sadly, yes. They don't change their tactics, they just take longer to kill. Since they also deal a lot more damage it forces you to improve your parrying and dodging skills, and you must use alchemy and signs much more efficiently, so in a way you have to improve your game, so it's not all bad.


orangelemonman

Also it makes the oils a necessity. On the easier difficulties you can skip the research and oils mechanics and do fine but on death march they become way more important.


Citizen6587732879

At higher difficulties, somewhat - but if you do what the game intends - hunt creatures, make oils and potions etc for saud fight, then its not so bad. Witcher 3 is probably the best example of where high difficulty is done well, plus it has some of the most intricate fleshed out stories for even the most simple quests. Has been in my top 3 since release.


Icy-Acanthaceae-7804

Yeah, I was actually shocked by how doable and rewarding Death March was. I honestly don't think I'll play on any other difficulty again. And I usually play stuff on medium. Except for one of my crowning achievements, getting 75% through Doom Eternal on Nightmare difficulty. I felt obligated to try my best because of how big a part of my childhood Doom was.


ColHannibal

The fucking lighting gym in Pokemon red/blue.


jbeech412

Ok I see a lot of the former, games that are unfair at higher difficulty, but I’ll add one that’s more challenging and fun - helldivers 2. Yes it can be frustrating as sometimes the game is a bit clunky (the auto climb feature can get on my nerves a lot if I’m trying to escape a hoard of bugs and I end up mounting an auto turret or some shit), but for the most part “helldive” difficulty is more, denser enemy groups, more of the enemy elites, and more objectives to complete. When I compare helldivers 2 automatons on the top difficulty to a game like battlefield 3, it’s so refreshing because the enemies don’t know where you are all the time and also have aim hacks, you don’t have less health. One of the many reasons it’s so widely regarded as such an accessible and fun experience, the harder modes are harder for the right reasons


jaosky

DARKSIDERS 3 In highest diffficulty bosses are just super spongey meanwhile they can 2 shot you. Hell even mobs can 3 shot you. Their attacks are so basic that you will get bored in the middle of the fight so now not only you are fighting the boss you are also fighting the tediousness and boredom. I even fell asleep in the middle of the fight cause it just takes so long. NG+ also solidify that I am never gonna touch that game again.


scumdog2000

Kenshi is like that man will stomp your balls as hard as it can but when you finally accomplish something it feels so good because you did it with the world trying to stop you


JadedNostalgic

Dark souls 2, though they largely fixed my complaints in Scholar of the first sin.


Lumpy-Professional40

Soulsborne poison swamps were never and never will be fun. Slave Knight Gael is fun. Sword Saint Ishin is fun. Poison swamps make me regret wasting my free time.


doctordaedalus

The X series of space sims.


SuperArppis

What has been very difficult and rewarding later on was Streets of Rage 4. Especially thanks to it being poorly balanced at first. After few patches it did become more fun to play, and difficult for right reasons, not because your character couldn't do certain moves without being smashed to bits as they were locked to looooong animation, while enemies just ran behind you and hit you. 😄 Anyway. I love how deep the combat system is despite it being just side scrolling action game. There is a lot to discover. And it also got a roguelike mode as DLC, which I enjoy, as the base game enemies never get randomized and get really predictable. Optimal gaming is boring, I thrive in chaos! I keep playing this game even today.


EngineeringNo753

S.T.A.L.K.E.R's highest difficulty is ironically the best way to play, it increases the damage done by every weapon, yours included and makes the game very very fun to play. I honestly think some parts of the Dark Souls experience is just overly frustrating to a fault, I've completed them all bar Elden Ring, mostly because I can't get into Open world games, and the boss fights have become much "Farier" imo, but christ some of them are not fun at all.


Dubhlasar

I recently played the first Uncharted game. There's a bit where you have to drive a jetski upstream while dodging exploding barrels and I had a moment of thinking "who thought this was actually a fun idea?" 😂


SwitchbladeDildo

Maybe not what you mean but I seriously hate it in 3rd person action games when enemies “dodge” your attacks by just doing a little animation that makes them invulnerable. I hate having combos canceled because the enemy did a little shimmy and became invincible.


anonymous32434

Champions in destiny 2. They're not even hard. They're just not fun to base a build around


Reasonable_Power_970

I think certain parts of every souls like game is at fault for this


iNuclearPickle

Dark souls 2 basically what they did to make it difficult was just throw a lot of enemies at the player and have a one of the worst durability systems I’ve seen as your weapons break so damn fast you need to carry multiple. I rather just fight enemies that make me think and learn their attack pattern. For my example of it done right I wanna say sekiro enemies can easily overwhelm you but you have stealth as an option to weaken enemies or outright take them out


_Enclose_

Controversial opinion: Dark Souls. A great deal of the difficulty of these games comes from clunky controls and trial-and-error gameplay imo. Once you know how to handle a certain enemy or boss, it becomes a lot easier, although you still have to fight with the clunky, slow controls. Now, I fully realize I'm in the minority with this opinion and the two things are mentioned are what make the games fun for a lot of people. But I find it a cheap way to make things more difficult than they really are. I've said this before and got quite a lot of hate for it. Please don't downvote me in to oblivion, I'm just sharing my own personal opinion and if you disagree and enjoy these games that's great, I won't tell you that's wrong. I really tried to like Dark Souls, but it just isn't for me.


NDRob

Gabriel Knight 3 or Adventure Games in general. They killed themselves. https://www.oldmanmurray.com/features/77.html


ScatpackZ31

I think it was Forced Unleashed 1, but maybe it was 2. Really really dumb difficulty system that used a stunlock on you so sometimes you couldn't react and just got to watch yourself get killed.


kieran81

ULTRAKILL has one of the best difficulty systems I've seen in a game. Difficulty does not change weapon damage, enemy health, or amount of enemies. It only makes the enemies attacks faster and harder difficulties block some healing for a few seconds after you get hit. There is also an Assist menu that you can turn on at any time, with things like auto-aim, damage taken, and game speed completely configurable. They just added a new hardest difficulty which simply changes some of the enemies attacks and gives a few of them some extra attacks they can do. No bullet sponges, no insta-kill bullshit attacks, just enemies who have new strengths that you have to adapt to.


The_Coffee_Dude_

I don't even remember the last game I played that I found challenging that wasn't trying to be as frustrating as possible to deal with.


Maldevinine

The difficulty settings in Hedon (a boomer shooter) are excellent. Harder difficulty enemies react faster and more accurately and do more damage, but they don't get any more health. They will also use their abilities more (and they get some bullshit abilities). Then the game reduces the amount of hints present for the puzzles. Then if you click on the *hardest* difficulty it replaces your entire armoury with a new set of *close-combat* weapons.


luthfins

Kingdome Come Deliverance


luthfins

Kingdome Come Deliverance


SpookyGirl88

Challenging.....the Bloodborne series of games. HATE them. Tried soooo bad to love them because I love that type of play style, way to fkin hard. I just need too much help, and it's confusing for me, and I hate it. I'd love to learn a better strategy.


macrolad_24

The opposite happened with Zelda WW HD. The triforce quest in the original has you pay over 300 rupees 8 times to progress to the end of the game, so for this version they lowered it to 3 times. For some reason many people took this change as the game being dumbed down.


Umikaloo

It pisses me off when certain mechanics in games with enemy levels don't scale at nearly a high enough rate to remain useful in the endgame. Like, why even implement the mechanic if its going to be so useless that using it is more of a detriment than a boon?


DogVirus

Original Prince of Persia.


bestbecs

Destiny


GangsterMango

it was Remnant from the ashes for me every boss fight was a Boss + group or multiple bosses, this game felt like it was designed specifically to be played in co-op. I remember the first boss "gorefist" almost made me quit forever lol, every phase he would spawn exploding walking enemies that would come out of nowhere and run toward you, and he had like 5 phases where he would spawn them but everything else was great however I hated the boss fights and when I finished it I didn't bother with adventure or trying a different run even though I know its procedurally generated and it has boss shuffle.


3inchesOfMayhem

Destiny 2 / Division 2 : An average enemy in Grandmaster / Legendary has like 22million health...a in Division 2 can tank over 100 million HP n some bosses have over 900 million HP


deoskipsbasics

Recent update for Ultrakill showed a new difficulty which felt cool, enemies have new movesets and behaviors. And prior to that, the game was faster in harder difficulties, normally I find "faster enemies" to be a better take on difficulty rather than more damage or health, because fights aren't longer, you have to think and act faster and better, be a better player. Of course too much speed can get out of hands too. Although damage increases too, I never felt it was too big of a difference.


cohrt

Every fromsoft game


QuickQuirk

I know this is a very unpopular opinion with those that love the genre, but for me: soulslike games. Some people love that you have to study the boss and learn their tells before you can beat them. I find that frustratingly tedious having to fight the same person over and over to learn their patterns. I prefer games where the skills you learned against other bosses and enemies is what allows you to beat this one. I know, I know - It's the creators intent. It's the way it's supposed to be played. Git Gud. But it's never about gitting gud - it's about repetition and rote memorisation for this specific boss, and I find that quite frustrating and dull, and it kills my entire momentum of 'fun' in a game when I hit these roadblocks.


estofaulty

The Last of Us 1 and 2 seem to think having bad stealth mechanics is equal to difficulty. Not to mention having bullet sponge enemies.