Hello and welcome back to my blog!
I have noticed myself playing hard games lately. I was never a big fan of Souls-like games because I always thought having extra difficulty was stupid in games. After all, why would you want to get frustrated when the point of playing games is to enjoy them...right? But this year has been completely different for me.
I tried a couple of tough games this game, starting from Elden Ring, which is one of the hardest games I've played. There is no difficulty adjuster, challenging bosses right as you start the game and annoying enemies. The same goes for platformer games like Celeste, where the protagonist Madeline is literally climbing a mountain. I replayed Hollow Knight (especially late game) and completed the Path of Pain this year, and now I am playing Silksong. All of these are hard games at the core. Then why am I enjoying these games so much?
Harder games seem to have an advantage over relatively easier games. They give you a big sense of achievement. You are not just playing the game but learning the moves, perfecting your movements, utilising every window of opportunity and planning a lot. And a game with consistent and fair challenges allows you to learn all these things slowly. You feel like getting better at the game slowly. Each death teaches you something about the level, a specific move, a window to dodge, the perfect time to heal, etc. You feel like constantly improving at the game, and then that moment comes when you finally overcome that tough boss; it is the best feeling ever.
I remember when I completed the Path of Pain or killed the Pure Vessel at the end of the Pantheon. It is a whole journey, and that becomes so much more memorable. You get a big sense of achievement, and you know that it wasn't a fluke; you have learned it.
This sense of progress and getting better at things is inherently enjoyable for many of us. An easy boss will never be that memorable. An easy win will easily be forgotten. Why Nightmare King Grimm is one of my favourite fights in the game? I spend many hours trying to learn to fight him. And now I can easily kill him hitless. I enjoyed the process; it felt like a fair fight, each move telegraphed to the players, consistent patterns, and the flow makes it a great battle.
But on the other hand, there is a bad type of difficulty as well. Enemies spawn in random areas controlled by RNG and teleport all across the arena in a manner that feels hard to predict. Then it may be very frustrating for the player to proceed, and your best run will feel like they were affected by luck, which no game would want to achieve.
It is very hard to balance a hard game, so it doesn't go into the frustrating category. A good way to balance the game's difficulty is by giving players options to explore more, gain more experience or grow stronger and come back later to fight. This is what Elden Ring does very well. If the developers just gave a difficulty adjuster setting, it would ruin this game because players, upon facing a tough boss, would just lower the difficulty setting rather than explore the world, levelling up or find better armour or weapons to fight.
Team Cherry, upon hearing some criticism that Hollow Knight Silksong is hard, responded by saying, You always have options. Which means if you are stuck on some boss at the point of being frustrating, go take another path, find more mask shards to increase health or return after improving your needle or find new tools which will help in this fight. There are always options in a good game.
Talking about Celeste, that game has a lot of accessibility options, including having an extra dash for players who just want to enjoy the story and have fun without playing those hard platforming sections. But in my opinion, using those would make the journey much easier than intended. That game is one of the best games in terms of emotions. You feel like facing the challenges of Madeline, who is taking this journey and learning with you. Overcoming tough challenges, crossing both physical and mental challenges. The difficulty fits perfectly with the story of the game.
Some games are supposed to be hard. Life is hard. Achieving success after a hard-fought battle will always taste sweeter than an easy win.
I am stuck on an Act 3 boss in Silksong, and this post idea came from that... is it hard? Yes. Is it frustrating? No. So, well done Team Cherry!
Let me know what the most challenging games you have played are, or if you prefer easy games that don't challenge you much.
Thanks for reading...
Until next shot...
