miscellaneous
The hardest difficulty is essentially an entire different game
I get a bit miffed whenever I look at hard modes and see that the only differences are: enemies hit harder and have more health. That's why I find it so refreshing when a game's "hard mode" switches up how you play the game in general.
Cursed Mode [Look Outside]: The hardest difficulty of this game essentially takes everything in the base game and shuffles them around, mixing in new things throughout. A door that's usually open now requires you to beat an "optional" boss. The tutorial enemy now can kill you if you're not careful. Existing bosses have new phases. There are brand new bosses just... hanging out. I think you get it.
Lethal Mode [Ghost of Tsushima]: This difficulty setting is very simple and very fun. The enemies deal a shit-ton of damage, enough to kill you in couple swings, but you also deal absurd damage. It forces you to play carefully and near flawlessly if you want to win.
Survival [Fallout 4]: F4 is better in survival mode, full stop, and that's dimply because it adds in survival mechanics to your post-apocalyptic survival game. Hunger, thirst, fatigue. You actually have to engage with the world around you.
Nightmare Mode [Dying Light - The Beast]: At a baseline, this difficulty does some fun stuff that we've seen before; specifically, it is permadeath and adds in a hunger mechanic. What really sets this mode apart for me, however, is the fact that (unlike other difficulties) every single zombie you kill, stays dead. It's such a cool concept, and you could - theoretically - clear out the entire map given enough time.
revengeance and very hard in Metal Gear Rising Revengeance swap out almost every enemy with much later game ones and actually makes some pretty cool changes to some fights
Im not sure what difficulty im playing at i just know its atleast hard and the cut up debris for healing qte has me wanting to pull my hair out. Like idk why im struggling so much with it of all things
I've actually figured it out on my last playthrough you have to go into ripper mode right before the qte for some reason it doubles the time you have to cut
it's been years so i can't say i remember well, but IIRC essentially every basic enemy was replaced with one of the longsword dudes and a few were the hammer guys as well, keep in mind that they would 2 or 1shot you depending on the attack (And the sword dudes are annoying as shit to perfect parry because of their parrying ability)
Just bigger and more annoying enemies. It's not that the individual enemies get swapped, it's more like entire encounters get changed into something tougher.
Like, enemies you would normally fight by themselves are thrown in with squads of soldiers, or a big slow mech is switched with multiple smaller but much faster enemies, or a section that used to be safe now has an ambush. Things like that.
Yeah, this is one of my favorite way of handling it, and Platinum Games tend to have similar settings across their other games.
For the Bayonetta games, which I'm more familiar with than MGRR due to the many many replays on highest settings, they also remove enemy slotting to some degree - making it so enemies no longer come at you one at a time when you're in a group, and don't ease off when they're off-screen - on top of the reshuffled groups and enemies that are now much harder to stun, so you really need to be on point in every fight.
Pair that with switching to Jeanne, which then also tightens your dodge windows (and the resulting Witch Time slowdown, which now becomes a frame perfect requirement) in exchange for a higher damage output, or proper use the equippable Moon of Mahaa-Kalaa that gives you a Revengeance style parry, and you've now turned heightened enemy aggression into an increased opportunity for massive damage on your end instead. Total feast or famine, be perfect and dominate or get shredded instantly.
In the harder modes of Wonderful 101, you have all the weapons available from the start, so enemies that require specific ones to beat can appear way earlier, and in greater numbers and harder combinations.
Yes, parries can even skip boss phases and you should have all upgrades and Ripper Mode permanently activated. Beating Revengeance difficulty is not that difficult, doing so with only S ranks was tough.
DMC on DMD is such a huge leap from Son of Sparda it’s wild. You don’t juggle and DPS enemies fast enough to kill them? Well they’re gonna devil trigger and not be combo able and heal.
European Extreme in the MGS Franchise. Turns it from a stealth action game into almost purely a stealth game because you get a game over as soon as the enemy detects you, with the only combat being in bossfights and other mandatory combat sections.
In MGS2 yes, it actually changes some things such as there being more bombs around the Big Shell than in regular Extreme. As well as the fact that in other difficulties in MGS2 enemies have to actually call in to start the alert phase, giving you a grace period to either gtfo or knock out/kill the enemy, you can also shoot out their radio forcing them to go get a new one. With game over on detection on however that is no longer an option and it's game over as soon as they see you. MGS2 is also just in general arguably the hardest game in the series on its higher difficulties and what it asks of you for the best completion titles (e.g. the Big Boss rank.)
In MGS3 however it's back to alert as soon as an enemy sees you on all other difficulties, and there's no changes in European Extreme from regular Extreme like in MGS2 outside of the game over on detection. So if you're someone who already goes for low to no alerts anyways then you might actually find it easier than regular Extreme for the sole fact the instant game over just saves you time from having to reset the game and instead you can just hit exit and go straight to reloading your last save. I actually recommend European Extreme over regular Extreme for this exact reason if you're going for the Fox Hound rank (MGS3's equivalent of the Big Boss rank.)
Iirc it was like finish the game in less than 4 hours, limited number of saves, no detect, and also less than 3 healing item usage something like that ...
I think i lost to psycho mantis fight, took too much damages :(
It's actually fairly easy compared to the other games. You don't have a save limit so save the game every time you reach a checkpoint and one between chapters. You also should get the solar gun before attempting it but it's not a 100% necxesry as there are people who have gotten it with no unlocks. Not me, I used anything that was allowed and abused the checkpoint system to hell.
I still remember watching a youtuber play through MGS3 on European Extreme, entirely nonlethal, without the tranq pistol. The number of weird little interactions in that game is so ridiculously high, and the majority of players will never see them because they've been given a nonlethal nuclear option basically from the start.
I remember cracking up at the name "European Extreme" for MGS1 and MGS2 as a kid, we would always used to joke about another difficulty called "Russian Extreme" where you got shot IRL if you got detected in the game.
Also, all the extremely helpful recruits in Look Outside who usually just join you now have requirements, so you need to collect a bunch of stuff for them, forcing you to go solo longer.
I didn't understand that you should stay at home in look outside to recruit people so I was solo for I think 4 or 5 days until I found the janitor. It was not a great time lol
I know hindsight is 20/20 and all but it's significantly quicker to grab Joel on day 1 or Leigh (if you know about using the pool cue/use a slashing weapon) so I'm not sure why the default recommendation most players give is to wait around for party members
Joel and Leigh are also MUCH stronger than most other characters. Leigh has a worthless special ability until you unlock their personal quest item, but is just a solid tough character.
Joel is...wildly strong and has incredible growth potential, great specials, and lots of very specific story stuff.
i literally never replaced them and loved making new friends and "friends" but most were not worth actually using
I mean you should play some video games for a skill or two, and hopefully you get a nom-merchant door encounter before leaving for Joel. If you get Hellen early on she's insane.
If you want difficulty where enemies oneshot you but you dont oneshot them, then Hell and Hell, the actual hardest DMC difficulty, is waiting for you
Edit: DMD enemies devil trigger is a lesser inconvenience than literally ANYTHING oneshotting you, especially when fighting bosses. H&H is harder than DMD.
Ironically, Hell and Hell is usually not seen as the hardest mode since it locks enemies to Son of Sparda difficulty. It sounds intimidating at first but if you go into it straight from Dante Must Die mode you've already dealt with dodging way more difficult and aggressive enemies
Back in DMC4 I definitely remember Dante Must Die difficulty as being harder than Hell and Hell mode (and being surprised at it as well). Trying for the 100%, at this point in the journey never getting hit by the H&H enemies was surprisingly easy cause it's still essentially just medium difficulty mode. Dante Must Die just kind of swarms you with twice the enemies / spawns harder enemies earlier in the game / has them do new patterns / gives them more health / has them activate the devil trigger where sometimes you randomly can't stagger them and just mess up everything - and of course the damage they do is so high that while you can take a stray hit now and again, if you get hit like 3 times you die anyway. Like you kind of have to get in the habit of basically never getting hit no matter what but that is SO much harder to do in DMD
The actual hardest difficulty is still Dante Must Die (hardest). Enemies Hell and Hell are set to Son of Sparda (hard) difficulty, and don’t have access to Devil Trigger which is the actual big difference - enemies gain huge stagger resistance and take a fraction of the damage on top of their already increased health, and get more aggressive.
It's worth adding that if you're going for completion, I.E. trying to get S-ranks on every mission, you basically have to go through the entire game without getting hit anyways.
If you've S-ranked DMD already, H&H just feels like a formality.
Hell and Hell is not the hardest difficulty at all. The enemy health is significantly less. Enemies take a fraction of the time to kill even if you do get one shot.
By the time you make your way to hell & hell you've chewed through the game hard enough during Dante Must Die that you become a tornado of death, at that point you barely get touched.
Nothings stopping you. This mode is more a kind of victory lap you take after beating Dante Must Die (the highest difficulty you can play the "standard" game on). It makes for comical moments too where a boss will show the extent of his power in the cutscene leading to his fight and then he just goes down with one bullet.
Once you've had your fun with your little victory lap you can suffer in Hell or Hell mode where only you get one shot. The enemies don't
Nothing, it's actually the easiest mode by far. And yes it applies to bosses.
The actual hardest mode is arguably Hell and Hell mode seen in DMC 4 and 5 where you die in one hit but enemies are set to their Son of Sparda (Hard mode) difficulty.
I say arguably because
1) You get 3 auto revives per level, so it's more accurate to say you die in 3 hits than 1
2) if you've already beaten Dante Must Die mode (Which is required to unlock Heaven and Hell or Hell and Hell modes) then dealing with Son of Sparda level enemies isn't actually that hard, it just punishes mistakes a harder
Oh, Dante as a Guilty Gear character would be one of the best things they could do with the next crossover tbh. Devil Trigger is quite possibly the most Dragon Install-y move in anything that isn't a fighting game already.
I don't play DMC myself so I'm not sure exactly what they could do with his kit, but I'm imagining him keeping the style ranking system as a way to gain buffs for doing cool combos and stuff.
I liked I Am the Knight in origins because the game is short enough to make it only take like 6 hours. The only hard parts being in the last 2ish hours. Though I ran into the big on 360 where whenever you started the bane encounter, there was a chance to wipe your progress on all gadgets :(
As much as I love the Arkham series, I'll never try I am the Knight because that first Bane fight is so janky and it always takes me a while to work around the jank
So in Arkham Asylum I think I accidentally turned that off at the start of the game and went through the entire game without indicators. Was kind of shocked how easy it was when indicators started popping up in City
Ranger mode in the Metro games. Stealth and patience is paramount as every enemy is highly lethal and you can easily die in a few shots or hits. Hardcore Ranger kicks this up a notch by disabling the HUD and you have to use more digetic methods to figure out your status.
Ranger mode also increases player damage, so guns act like guns to both players and enemies and are hyper lethal (especially when using Military Grade Rounds)
You play as a ghost hunter and your mission is to deduce what type of ghost you are facing.
Each ghost has 3 types of evidence to find with each having a specific combination and then secondary traits associated with each.
At the beginning you can essentially just gather all 3 evidence types checking them off to confirm the ghost and levelling up unlocks more gear to make it easier and safer whivh early on you have little to stop a ghost when it hunts making it terrifying when you lack knowledge of the deeper mechanics.
The highest standard difficulty hides 2 of the 3 evidence types randomly and you have to rely on the secondary traits with your knowledge of them and more advanced gear and it turns the game from a horror where you feel powerless not knowing what you're doing, to a puzzle where you are actively trying to get hunted shouting "hey john hey john hey john".
Species: Unknown (which is like Phasmo but with aliens and robots on a spaceship) also does difficulty kinda like this
The missions start fairly simple and straightforward like extracting a black box or finding out what weapons can kill/capture the monster, but as you do higher level missions, the game adds random modifiers such as power outages or haywire sentry guns
On top of that, the monster itself will stalk you much more aggressively, even knowing when you make too much noise or get too close to the objective (which usually amplifies their various gimmicks you have to follow, like the scorpion alien that makes zombies you have to burn so they don't keep reanimating, which also hunts from the vents to try and turn YOU into a zombie)
I miss Phasmophobia - one of their big updates about 2 years ago essentially screwed over the casual players. Now it takes too damn long to get any money or items, so playing it is a slog.
Masoχ-S/M difficulty in Fear & Hunger 2: Termina. In this mode you start the game during the night of day 3 (game takes place over three days divided into three time periods, so you're stuck at the very end of the game's available time), because of this you can't save by sleeping like you can in the other modes, all other contestants (aka most of your potential party members) are either dead or have turned into monsters, and also if you stay outside for too long you'll transform into a monster too. Have fun!
Iron Man mode, Old School Runescape. You can no longer obtain items from other players, so EVERY item, whether it's combat supplies, gear, or quest-related items, needs to be obtained the intended way from the world itself. This changes the flow of gameplay completely and the mode has a huge following and community within the game.
I died in Karamja while doing the tai bwo wannai cleanup, poisoned by the tribesmen and was out of antipoison and food but couldn't get to the shop that sells antipoison in time, lol. At least you get to keep your character after death, just lose your hc status.
I was going to put all of Old School Runescape: Early level combat is essentially turn based combat: your character attacks at a certain speed (depending on your weapon) and the npc has a set attack speed, so you essentially just exchange blows as a stat check until one of you dies (hopefully the enemy). This basic combat will get you through hundreds if not thousands of hours of gameplay.
But the hardest difficulty content is an entirely different game. The game operates on 0.6 second intervals called tics, so you have 0.6 seconds to input everything you want your character to do for the next game tic. High level combat such as Theater of Blood, Inferno, and Colosseum require you to be tic perfect, clicking the right floor tile or clicking the right prayer to negate enemy damage. This 0.6 second game cycle makes high level OSRS combat feel an awful lot like a rhythm game rather than the turn based feel in the early game.
And then there's Port Khazard, who is playing an entirely different game from everyone else. 54 Awakened Leviathan in one inventory? No prayer Inferno? No prayer Colosseum??? The man is playing a much different game than me and I have 500+ Tob completions and four Inferno capes.
I'd say this is truly the hard mode that changes osrs - ironman in a lot of ways can just be a main with extra steps (i.e. you might be doing the same grind as a main, you just have to gather the resources yourself first)
Uim changes so much that you'll straight up be doing completely different methods for your grinds
Alien Isolation's "Nightmare" Difficulty, added post launch in the game, is argued by some as the definitive and maybe only way to play.
The key features being that resources are now totally scarce, you have no map, the motion tracker is constantly on the fritz and sometimes gives unreliable information, human and android enemies basically kill you immediately, your later flamethrower runs out of juice fast, and most important and horrifyingly, the Alien is at its absolute smartest and most persistently. In a game that is already incredibly immersive and like playing one of the Alien movies, it really makes you feel like you're in the Alien movies.
Hiding is useless on nightmare mode. I was in a locker and the alien must have heard me breathing. Ripped the door off its hinges, yanked me out, and ate my face. Terrifying.
Dead Cells, an intentionally difficult side-scrolling action-platforming roguelite, plays two mean tricks on you.
First, when you finally win a run for the first time and are jazzing on that "beat the game" dopamine, you're smacked in the face with the realization that you've only beaten The Tutorial™. You earn a "boss cell", which increases the difficulty of future runs significantly. Finish a run with one active boss cell and you'll earn another boss cell, which will significantly increase the difficulty again. Actually beating the game requires winning a run with five active boss cells.
And here's the second smack in the face: playing on the hardest difficulty, five boss cells, adds a new mechanic called "malaise" that forces you to both run through the levels quickly and kill as many enemies as possible along the way. Whether you were taking your time and methodically killing mobs with safe tactics, or playing fast and sneaky to bypass mobs entirely, you'll need to completely revamp your playstyle in addition to the standard significant increase in general difficulty.
As one of the ~1% who has 100% in dead cells, you’re correct in saying the mid is the most boring. 4 specifically can feel like a bit of a nothing burger, because at that point you already feel pretty experienced with the game, but you’re still just trying to beat it ‘one more time’ to get to 5.
I will say, without spoilers, 5 is absolutely the best tier, and it’s absolutely worth it no question
you'll be rewarded way more by playing methodically and avoid getting hit and instead aim for the killstreak/flawless doors. the malaise isn't all that of a big bad scary thing to worry about as well; at times it can even help you because it supplies you with more enemies to proc heals, build killstreaks, etc.
Puzzle roguelike Peglin had a similar system of 20 levels of additional difficulty (called Cruciball levels). These all have unique effects, with some removing resources and other buffing enemies. They are however cumulative, so playing at level 12 also gives you the first 11 complications. This culminates with level 20, which adds new unique mechanics to each of the game's bosses.
The final update also introduced an optional fourth act to the game, which is only accessible by taking on extra difficulty in acts two and three. This additional difficulties are in a deck from which you get to choose between three random draws for each act, so you can't specifically build for taking on the challenge, as you don't know which options you'll get.
Watch Dogs legion resistance mode makes the game a million times better. Perma death for recruits, enemies are buffed tremendously, hacks are slowed down, detection times increased. Planning and stealth becomes critical, just as it had in watch dogs 2. Not to mention it even aids to the story. Previously your operatives would just get knocked out unless they had a prefix of random death. However, with perma death it actually makes dedsec feel like an underground organisation of people risking their life
https://giphy.com/gifs/lsBtHdFFhwGTN5PD3K
In Terraria, Expert Mode and higher grants exclusive items, namely unique boss loot. Where it gets really different is when you defeat the Eye of Cthulu and gain the ability to dash.
Failed to mention that, the entire point of the post, enemy and boss ai gets drastically changed in expert mode, not just higher health and damage pools. Theres also for the worthy and zenith that also change enemy/boss ai
The enemy/boss AI changes are like, the least notable parts of the FTW or Zenith worlds. The spawn change, the insane increase in things trying to kill you, and some things being entirely changed such as the existence of Mechdusa are all far more notable and completely change what you're used to.
Baldur’s Gate 3 with Honor Mode. It still follows the same rules of dungeons and dragons, but you have permadeath, bosses have legendary actions, only one save file, and more strict resource management.
I came to add this. Surprised how much i had to scroll for it.
Also, spells will sometimes just not work, or work differently. Like charming spells (friends, etc) will straight up make npcs hostile. Spells that work great on npcs/monsters/bosses just dont work or are limited.
Bunch of interactions are different also. Like in normal mode you can knock the phase spider queen into the underdark to kill her. In honor mode she just does phase spider things and teleports back up.
I loved my honour mode run so much. My fiancée and I planned every single encounter in the game, we wrote down every strategy in an excel file for each encounter, the level we should be if for example the dialogue option goes wrong, the enemy to kill first, etc.
Either of Fire Emblem’s most extreme difficulties: FE12’s Lunatic Reverse, where all enemies attack first no matter what. Not only do the enemies have the insanely high stats and strong weapons of Lunatic mode, you also have to almost always play on Enemy Phase now, unless you’re able to attack the enemy unpunished.
FE13’s Lunatic+, where every enemy is given a random “plus” skill, including Vantage+ (the same as 12’s Lunatic Reverse), Hawkeye+ (the enemy will always hit), Luna+ (always halves your defense), etc etc. It forces the player into extra care of what skill the enemy has, on top of the again insanely bloated stats of Lunatic mode.
I was going in this comment section hoping someone would mention FE. In Awakening, Lunatic essentially turns the early game from a strategy RPG to a hard puzzle game. The hardest fights are basically in that section of the game where you really gotta figure out the exact ways to beat it. Especially if you don't wanna sacrifice anyone.
Mid to late game once you learned some skills, upgraded you characters, got better weapons, maybe some offspring character etc. it gets significantly easier.
For those who didn't play; it's a roguelite where you go through zones in the underworld, progressively making meta progress due to unlocking small permanent upgrades, but the major bosses (mainly in Hades 1) only drop their unique materials once.
If you want more of these materials, you have to engage with the Heat system, which makes it so you need to start adding modifiers of your picking to up the difficulty (the Heat level) in increments. Clear it on Heat 1 to get the drops again, then on Heat 2, then Heat 3, and you can continue to choose what detriments you want to keep mixing and matching. At first simply making enemies have a bit more health, a singular hit of armor, being slightly faster, etc. is enough. But because you need to keep building heat, you'll end up with runs where:
- Enemies are faster and more numerous, with increased damage
Environmental hazards deal more damage, enemies self-destruct on death, and other detrimental effects are more punishing, such as you no longer getting an invulnerability window after being hit.
Rewards are fewer, helpful items have increased prices, and every level requires you to part with with an ability per floor
All while bosses get extra phases, you're now on a time limit, and more and more of your meta progression upgrades are deactivated
I will say that they changed the heat system a bit in Hades II to be a bit less punishing. But I personally find the Extreme Measures bosses in Hades II to be more difficult. Maybe just because I have spent more time in Hades I.
Resident Evil 7 and 8’s hardest difficulties, Madhouse and Village of Shadows respectively, all increase the normal things like enemy count, health, and damage, but also shuffle around the locations of items and add new ones, most notably with the Antique Coins in re7
And an indie example, Going Under’s “Imposter Mode”, which combines the three main dungeons into one 10 floored dungeon, with additional difficulty levels being added with each level beat, including starting each new dungeon cursed, taking damage whenever you learn a skill, and taking double damage in the final room of each floor
Doom (the original 90's version) has Nightmare mode, originally added in response to players complaining that Ultra-Violence wasn't hard enough.
Rather than just increasing the damage dealt to you or the health of the monsters, Nightmare introduces three mechanics that fundamentally change how you play through levels:
Fast Monsters, which doubles the windup and projectile speed of all monsters, and doubles the land speed and attack animation speed of melee-only monsters. When combined with the faster reaction decisions noted below, this means that Pinkys and Spectres reach you about three times as fast as they should, and having more than a couple imps or cacodemons active at a time means near constant barrages of damaging projectiles flying through the air, destroying your ability to safely move across a room or down a corridor.
Instant Reaction: monsters will attack immediately upon seeing you and have a high chance to skip idle or motion frames in favor of launching more attacks. This translates to even low level monsters like imps being a serious problem, but more importantly it means hit scanners become living turrets, inflicting constant damage to you until temporarily dealt with (see below).
Respawn. Every monster you kill, except those which explode leaving no body, will automatically revive around 30 seconds after dying, immediately awake and hunting you.
So in short, you can no longer afford to stop even for a moment. Monsters are constantly firing on you from all sides, any backtracking means you're facing fresh monsters again because you can't clear out a room and have it stay dead for more than a few moments, and monsters who should take a while to get around obstacles are instead more or less sprinting at you to attack you and pressure you even faster.
It is such a different experience from the base game that it is widely acknowledged the only way to actually beat even the original Doom maps on nightmare is to speedrun them. Pistol starting certain levels on Nightmare is effectively impossible.
And yet, damned if it isn't incredibly fun to test your mettle with, especially if you've been blowing apart Ultra-Violence as a difficulty.
It is such a different experience from the base game that it is widely acknowledged the only way to actually beat even the original Doom maps on nightmare is to speedrun them.
Which is why I hate it. It can be great fun without the respawning enemies, though.
Terraria! Expert mode introduces new mechanics for some bosses, as well as added drops that can have a huge impact on your playthrough. It’s most popular mod, Calamity, is the same way, with its new difficulty Revengeance introducing the mechanics fear and adrenaline, which also change your playstyle a lot.
Another one I guess would fit is Dead Cells, where you have to beat one difficulty to move on to the next, and each difficulty completely changes up the enemies in each level, adds new bosses and levels you can go through, and gives you fewer opportunities to heal between levels.
I would also say Terraria, but not because of expert mode. The Zenith seed and the True Zenith seed is almost a whole different game compared to expert mode.
Spawns you in hell
Makes the surface biome inhospitable (it is half corrupted half crimson)
Rains boulders
Adds an extra boss with a unique drop
Rebalances a large number of weapons, placing early game weapons at the end of the game, giving them the appropriate stats, and vice versa
Forces you to eat to not die
Graves act like boulders and can kill other players
Crispy honey blocks (which are one of the most common blocks in this seed) kill you in seconds
Traps everywhere
Massive increase to enemy damage
Bosses often have significantly different sizes and tweaks to their attacks
Life crystals (the item you mine to increase your health) have a chance to be boulders (which activate and roll upon interaction)
Trees drop bombs
Every ore in the game spawns (usually you only get half)
Boulders break into smaller boulders
And finally, you mine blocks around twice as fast
Arguably Critical Mode in Kingdom Hearts 2 and 3. You get more abilities to start and overall, and the damage multipliers apply to you and the enemies. So you can become an unstoppable force of nature if you play well, but you're one to two hits away from death basically at all times.
KH3 Critical makes it so even regular enemies can be dangerous during the early hours of the game. Bosses actually become a challenge too. Those toy story mechs get absurd health pools though.
Also: Level 1 runs, where you can't level up or gain EXP at all. It forces you to learn and utilize every mechanic and recognize boss patterns instead of just mashing X and healing when you get hit; the fact you can't unlock Second Chance or Once More means you're always in danger of being one-shot.
One would think being at level 1 means doing chip damage, but KH has a damage floor that ensures you always do a certain minimum amount of damage to enemies and bosses, so your damage is always respectable. Win or lose most fights are over pretty quickly.
On other difficulty settings, you can get by just by buying new gear and leveling up your character like any other rpg. Death March, however (especially with enemy upscaling) forces you to actually read the Bestiary and find monster weaknesses yourself. Junk alchemy ingredients for potions become necessary items, and Witcher signs like Quen turn into a literal barrier between life and death. All in all, you actually feel like a witcher, which is awesome
I played Witcher 3 first time on Death March, I never used a single potion or oil and just Queen from the signs quite frankly nothing else was needed and the only hard fight was Detlaff because some attacks killed through Quen lol
just get perk that food last 20min and its more than enough. I would say game would be actually hard if you couldn't use Quen, it just trivialize game even on death march.
In Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Master Mode makes sweeping changes to enemy power levels, often upgrading them significantly; red bokoblins become blue and sometimes black, enemies that are black colored become their nasty silver variety, and it introduces gold colored enemies that are tougher still. Combined with a buff that causes enemies to regenerate their HP if they go more than a few seconds without taking damage and the game's inherent weapon durability and cycling system, and it changes the game's dynamics drastically, including;
-Early game enemies simply have too much health for a bag of tree limbs to take out before they break. This forces a greater reliance on bombs in order to fight early on, and since smaller enemies are sent flying by the explosion it can be obnoxious to kill them this way. Often times it is better to avoid combat and sneak around them until better equipment is more reliably available.
-Camps now demand MUCH more of a material investment to clear out, mandating that the player take extra care to scout the potential rewards and make sure they will be worth the cost.
-Hit & run tactics become much more common; silver enemies with powerful weapons don't need to be killed if you have a means of inflicting shock, as electrocuting them will make them drop the weapon for the player to grab and then flee the scene without spending more than a single bow shot and a shock arrow.
-Bows in general become the most reliable weapons simply because of efficiency; enemies can be shot repeatedly without being launched away and allowing their HP to start regenerating, headshots provide a reliable damage bonus, and against major enemies like Hinox and Lynels it's practically required to pull out a bow and shoot them every few seconds just to waylay their regeneration while waiting for a proper opening.
-Sneakstrikes skyrocket in value, as they deal 8x the weapon's printed damage when used. With a high grade weapon, these can do significant work in taking an enemy down. In particular this makes Royal Guard weapons, which in the base difficulty are rarely used because their incredible attack stats are outweighed by terrible durability, very valuable to carry one of purely for big sneakstrikes.
Overall, Master Mode forces the player to take more of a sneaky, assassin-style approach for much of the game until they can scale up their arsenal, and with the extra power of enemies everywhere it FEELS like Link has just woken up from 100 years of atrophy to a hostile world overrun with monsters he can't fight evenly and must resort to alternative tactics until he has the strength to stand up to them.
One major problem with master mode is that the dramatic power difference between enemy tiers can cause some truly bs encounters that aren't even worth engaging in. A camp of 6 black bokoblins is a very different fight from a camp of 6 silver bokoblins, even before the passive healing is factored in.
Once the difficulty reaches a certain stage, most camps are not worth the effort required to beat them. You're dealing with multiple regenerating silver enemies at once, breaking most of your weapons to get 1 sapphire and maybe a small pile of melee weapons with middling power. The gerudo desert is especially bad, having multiple encampments that will soon be filled exclusively with silver enemies, with no water sources or cliffsides to smack enemies into.
I wish master mode was more of the great plateau experience, with a greater emphasis on reworked encounter positions and weapons, and link needing to use stealth and environmental tactics, rather than the mode's focus being the sweeping "all enemies are a tier up from normal". At a certain point in the difficulty scaling, it becomes better to not engage with the combat, which is a real shame.
Also, fuck the silver lizalfos room in the trial of the sword. No way in hell was that encounter properly playtested.
Seriously, the sense of rewards for doing many things in BOTW is bad enough even on normal difficulty - Master Mode basically just encourages you to avoid combat in most instances because it's essentially never worth it.
It's just a TERRIBLY balanced difficulty mode. Which is frustrating cuz it really does need a harder difficulty option.
I did the Trial. I am prepared to say it was worth it because Trialed Master Sword is just the weapon equivalent of HIM, but it was not easy and there's one room in particular that demands a very specific prep from the very beginning.
Shocked no one has mentioned this so far, but in the Dead Money DLC for Fallout: New Vegas, you're transported from a fairly easy RPG to a survival-horror game.
All of your weapons are taken, you're equipped with a bomb collar that goes off if one of your companions die, or if you get too close to a radio, and there's poisonous gas that will kill you after a few seconds. There's also very scarce resources and ammunition, enemies that either can't be killed or are very difficult to kill, and companions that are difficult to work with. To top it off, the sneak mechanic around a lot of the enemies is broken, so you either have to have a lot of points stacked into melee, or just make a run for it. Not to mention one of the most evil villains in all of Fallout.
charmless Sekiro makes a lot of changes with a seemingly insignificant change to the base game formula. normally, if you block an attack (not perfectly parry it), it will fill up your posture meter a lot and potentially stance break you, leaving you vulnerable. it will negate any damage from the attack, though.
charmless? blocked attacks no longer prevent damage taken, only reduces damage taken from an attack. this means if you are at low hp, you have to play PERFECTLY or else you will die, removing a lot of mercy the game previously granted you as a player. tactics you could use normally ("oh, my posture meter is almost full, but i know that attack an enemy is using will leave them open for a bit, so i can block this and stance break myself without worry, which will reset my poster meter and leave me in a better spot") cannot be used anymore, and chip damage from blocking attacks imperfectly add up and could potentially kill you, even if your stance isnt broken.
Came here to say the same. Lots of bosses are meaningfully different challenges without kuros charm, especially the sword fighting bosses like Genichiro, Owl, Isshin, and oh my god Orin.
This is one of the few things I feel comfortable modding in on FO4 (same for KC:D). The game is excellent and fun, survival mode is just better and way more interesting, but I've got a wife and job and kid so no saving is just often not an option. Not to mention the quantity of random game breaking bugs you can encounter.
I'm generally a big fan of playing the game the way the devs built it and intended it to be played, but that one not so much.
It’s not even the dying part that bothers me for it, but you could be easily taken out by a random crash losing progress. It’s not like fo4 is known for being extremely stable.
The way the games are actually programmed, there's a hidden bias to throw you ammo when you're out, especially when you're using your ammo to kill the dudes to get more ammo.
It makes for less of a scarcity puzzle and more like hotswapping to whatever gun just got enough ammo for a fire fight, which I personally find super fun.
This is how most games with scarce resources work.
Because nothing is more unfun than realising you’ve bricked your save file because of inefficiency in gameplay several hours ago that is just now catching up with you.
People think old Resident Evil games were super easy to softlock yourself in by wasting ammo on non important fights. But you had to comically inefficient for that to ever happen. Original RE2 for example has enough ammo to kill the entire game twice.
RE4 onwards moved away from being overly generous to the more modern system of dynamically dropping resources as you get low on them.
which can be quite easily abused, since game only checks what’s in inventory, not what’s laying on floor yet to be picked up. So if you are low on ammo, start breaking boxes, ammo will drop, but don’t pick it up. Continue breaking boxes, more and more ammo will drop. Then pick it all up at once.
Game intended to give you 15 bullets. But just have you like 75.
Similar tricks work in TLOU, though not nearly as abusesble due to smaller ammo limits.
People think old Resident Evil games were super easy to softlock yourself in by wasting ammo on non important fights.
Code veronica says hi. If you dont play with the knowledge of just how overpowered the knife is and when to place claires weapons in the box, you will have a bad time.
Last of us 2 on harder difficuties actually made me feel like a badass by using everything in my arsenal and my wits to progress combat. I got my ass-kicked a ton, but once you start actually getting better as a player, you will notice just how differently you approach encounters as you go along.
Progenitor of this might be Thief: the Dark Project and sequels' system: at easy difficulty is go in, do the objective, get out; at max difficulty is get in, steal everthing that's not nailed to the walls, do side quest(s) along the main one, get out and make sure you don't kill anyone, not even pets.
While not a completely different game, it changed a lot the dynamics, which was a lot 30(ish) years ago.
In Kingdom Come: Deliverance, the hardcore mod disables fast travel, hides your position on the map, and even removes the compass. So if you don’t know the map well, you have to travel on the roads, orientating yourself with the sun... The NPCs also detail the way to the objective they give you, which is redundant in normal mode since you can just travel cross country with the map, but really helpful in hardcore. Every landmark is now helpful, you know you have to turn right at that cross on the side of the road, and you never stray off the path in forests or you’re doomed to get lost
Not to mention it also adds negative perks, like sleepwalker, which sometimes makes you wake up in a random location… without the map to help you find your way
Haven't played survival mode in fallout 4 but the thought of playing the game without fast travel sounds terrible. The quests aren't designed around it, especially the settlement recruitment quests. Maybe if you were playing with a vehicle mod or something.
Yeah the survival mode in Fallout 4 is a hollow shell of its last iteration in New Vegas.
Fallout: New Vegas did something really interesting with its survival hardcore mode; it allowed fast-travel, but it would cost you bottles of water an increase in thirst and hunger compared to regular travel.
You may be thinking of a mod. FNV vanilla doesn't actually have a Survival mode, only a Hardcore mode, which adds various stuff (most notably food/water/sleep needs and companion permadeath) but nothing related to fast travel.
you are indirectly right that fast travel will lead to seeing an increase in needs (you get hungrier/thirstier/sleepier when time passes due to travel) but nothing specific to bottles of water.
Counterpoint: Vertibird with rides of the valkeries blasting in the background while you are the doorgunner.
In all seriousness, taking the hikes can be a hells march when starting out and you really want to go all the way from Sanctuary to south of the map in one go.
It is why it becomes important in survival to get the settlements as soon as you have access to them, as they provide food, water and a save point, as well as to meet the BoS as soon as you can.
The vertibird was a nice gimmick for funsies in normal difficulties, but it is now the Go To fast travel option in survival when you have to go far and you have to go quick. You can`t really use it all the time thou, flares are heavy, cost money, and take a bit of time to restock in the BoS quatermaster store, so you have to use it wisely or at least always save the last flare to go back to get more.
Not exactly the same, but honour mode in baldurs gate 3 adds Legendary actions to all bosses, that are VERY OP and you basically have to play around each bosses gimmick, that can easily wipe your whole party.
Combining it with the fact that honour mode gives you 1 save, which RESAVES when any of your party members dies and which gets deleted if everyone dies, and the fight part of the game plays WAY WAY WAY different
I've been finding that Zero Company's 'Beskar' mode is similar. It doesn't seem to add extra mechanics to the bosses, but the single save file that overwrites itself any time anything significant happens means you are absolutely forced to live with your choices.
Sniper Elite Series Authentic Diffculty. Removes most of your HUD, especially the ability to mark enemys and to have yor aim assisted by a diamond in your scope when you hold your breath. Makes the whole game way more challenging, especially shooting long distances and staying undetected.
I love this, it has become the default for me since 4!
Honestly, playing even one diffuculty beneath kinda ruins the game for me, as you get an overload if help and can essentially just play the game like an ordinary 3rd person shooter.
Authentic really relies on you planning ahead and not be too careless. Even in firefights, you may have an good position, but they will swarm, flank and bomb you out, draining your frail HP.
Hitman: World of Assassination has "Master" difficulty which to me makes it a whole new experience.
-One save per mission, no savescumming to recover from blown cover or a missed shot or whatever. No autosave.
-No guides for mission stories, have to uncover and perform them all yourself
-More cameras and enforcers who see through disguises
-Killing an enemy up close will compromise a disguise (because it got blood on it, I guess)
-NPCs have super sharp hearing to catch you trying to sneak around
The "one save" thing combined with everything else forces you to really slow down, plan everything out carefully, and act nearly perfectly as you pull of kills. Literally one wrong move, just a failed attempt to sneak past a guard, can blow everything.
Bayonetta. The hardest mode "infinite climax" disables the iconic Witch Time mechanic, so time doesn't slow when you perfectly dodgr or parry an enemy. Despite eliminating a core mechanic, the game is so well made that it works, only that you have to be very good dodge-cancelling your combos.
World of Warcraft Classic: Hardcore.
WoW is a MMORPG, designed with the idea, that your character will be dying from time to time. There are even different abilities and mechanics, like graveyards, ressurection spells, etc. connected to that process. The game is also designed in such a way, that it takes a lot of time and knoweledge to level up and properly gear up your character.
Hardcore mode prohobits you from playing your character with Hardcore mode, if they die even once. It is especially hard to avoid, considering there are a lot of activities, where you are dependent on other players or server performance.
DMC has a bunch of additional difficulties, all stemming from the second to last difficulty, Son Of Sparta.
Dante Must Die: All enemies are on max agression, and enemies if left alive for too long or witness a certain other enemy/enemies die, can activate Devil Trigger, increasing attack and giving HP regen, some bosses can also use DT.
Heaven Or Hell: Everything dies in one hit. EVERYTHING. all bosses, enemies, and you, hit them first or die.
Hell Or Hell: Same gimmick, except ONLY for you, the enemies are untouched, don't get hit.
Legendary Dark Knight: no changes in HP or damage, just... MASSIVELY increases enemy spawn numbers, hope you like AOE attacks!
Must Style Mode: Only in DMC;Devil May Cry, you can only inflict damage to enemies if your style rating is S or Higher, you can still hit them, it just does 0 damage until you have good style, considering DMC is a Stylish action game, i'm surprised that this wasn't brought back, it's pretty awesome.
Kirby: Super Star Ultra, Triple Deluxe and Planet Robobot all have you replay the whole game with a different character and a wildly different ending sequence. While the world doesn't change, your ability set and overall flexibility certainly do.
A Bad Moon Run (or BM Run) is an entirely different way of ascending (essentially a New Game+ for this browser game).
The only way to unlock it is to do a Standard *Hardcore* Run previously.
For context purposes, A Hardcore run is a little bit more difficult where you dont have access to your items at all for the entire run instead of just a limited time period. On top of this run, you must not have ANY "Lucky!" adventures that involve a lucky clover item.
Once you've done those two requisites, you can do a Bad Moon run which is like a Hardcore run except there's various "Unlucky" adventures that ultimately give great buffs but can also really, really hinder you.
Or you could be a Super Masochist run and do a BLACK CAT run inside your own Bad Moon run.
The Black Cat can Reduces stat gains, takes away MP, removes buffs, forces you to attack with your weapon instead of using skills, blocks combat items, randomly destroys dropped items.
But doing that as well, PERMANENTLY unlocks Bad Moon for that character.
Halo series, one of the OG’s. Sure, you can beat the game on Legendary, the hardest difficulty where everything has tons more health. But you can also play it on LASO: Legendary, All Skulls On. The skulls each act as a modifier to the game, some having fun little effects like grunt birthday party (headshots provoke a cheer from enemies an confetti pops out) but some make make it impossible like Iron (if you die you restart the mission), Blind (no hud, which mean you can’t see your own weapons or ammo/grenade count), or Black Eye (shields recharge only on a melee an enemy, who you do not want to get close enough to strike). It’s incredibly difficult to play the game this way and requires you to really pick and chose the way you approach combat and various aspects of a game where you normally just run around and shoot people at your own discretion.
There's more objectives to complete on normal. You also get to fight against more bosses.(such as the Cropolite pictured here) On hard mode, some secondary objectives are mandatory or it's mission failure.
Undertale hard mode.\
So in Undertale it's important that the name that you give to the player character isn't actually their name. But what happens if the player knows the protagonists true name, and names themself that? Hard mode baby!\
New enemies, new dialog, new music, new battle mechanics! Too bad it's ends in the Ruins and basicly it's a joke.
This is hardly farthest from a trope we've gotten. It's an unmoderated sub at this point. Best to just enjoy the good posts until Reddit notices it's unmoderated. Maybe they'll ask for some help moderating at some point.
idk if it fits exactly - but most Monster Hunter games have a series of village quests that are basically the story line. The fights are easier, and there isn't much to it - its kinda a meme that people get to the credits in 3-5 hours and wonder if they really just beat the game.
Almost all of the content people actually play MH for is end game content where it pushes the difficult up to extreme measures often ending with what is essentially the "true form" of most fights - monsters you had fought since the beginning or middle of the game raised to be end-game threats.
There isn't really a difficulty level to MH games, but if you don't play through the hardest end-game stuff you didn't really experience all of the game.
The Resident Evil games tend to be very good at this. Like, you will get to a boss you've tackled the same way every time in every other difficulty mode, and in the hardest mode it will just... Not work that way.
You also have to have completed the game on a standard difficulty for the insanity type difficulty to unlock at all in most of not every RE game.
Undertale technically does this twice. There's "hard mode" where you play the intro as Frisk if you pick that name. It's a short part of the main game and plays a bit differently, with harder enemies and a few different drops, then the final fight of the intro portion gets interrupted. There's also the Genocide route, which isn't explicitly a difficulty choice, but it's significantly harder after the initial grinding that unlocks it, with the two actual fights at the end being the hardest in the game by a long shot.
I really like survival mode for the way damage and health scale, ammo weight, the survival elements, and I even like how it forces you to not use fast travel. The not being able to save outside of sleeping though is absolutely ridiculous, especially in a game as unstable as Fallout.
Dude i love the ammo weight, and the concept of the food and drink needs. But in practice having to down 7 ribeyes and 8 waters to not even be well fed and lose it in about 10 minutes is annoying.
Companions leaving after not being revived is also annoying.
I atill play fo4 on survival but thats just for the ammo weight feature
Should’ve just required an item to fast travel, like a camping kit or something. Maybe a packed lunch. Something that you’d have to craft or prepare ahead of time but can be used in the field as well if you’re struggling with food, water, sleep etc.
Like a grenade to call down a vertibird or something if you allied with the Brotherhood. Maybe give something similar to other factions if they steal a Vertibird. The Institute could have their teleporter
That's a great Idea, it would create a far more reason to ally with high tech factions. Perhaps the railroad could give access to some armor boost for light clothing to get around the weight restrictions. Perhaps the settlements could be used to provide resource drop off and collection points.
Honestly - anyome who doesn't like survival, fair enough. But I havent played without it in years. IMO it makes it a much better game.
That’s why New Vegas’ survival mode is better since you can still fast travel and actually makes the game more challenging in a less tedious way. Every time I do a new play through I always do survival
100% agree with this. I think the biggest QoL improvement from FO3 to FO:NV was survival mode deactivating instantaneous healing - made the game much more difficult rather than a test of how quick you could spam hotkeyed stimpaks. It's why I only use Restoration spells for healing in Skyrim rather than potions.
Carry weight and carrying around food also made a big difference for some builds as well (e.g. energy weapon ammo was heavy).
Bethesda heard too much weird noise from the Skyrim community about how eating 3 square meals and walking everywhere was a good way to play, and then paired that to a lot of the FO:NV settings for FO4 which should have been kept separate.
Personally I like survival, but I can only do it with certain quality of life mods, on console at least I stick to very hard or whatever the hardest is before survival lol
Yeah, I beat it and I eventually had fun, but imo there were a ton of issues.
1. Diseases are absolutely badly implemented. You can get a disease really quickly early game and you are then reliant on RNG to get antibiotics because doctors barely exist in the north part of the map.
2. VATS bug. If you get hungry or dehydrate during VATS, the game freezes. (I just ended up never using VATS again, but sucks for someone who wanted to build around VATS).
3. This is a game with RNG super mutant rocket launcher encounters and enemies that use the fatman launchers. I just don’t feel like you should have a “save” mechanic when you can have that level of variance.
4. Burrowing enemies, scorpions spam this shit so much and then they will absolutely destroy you with a couple attacks.
Anyone can pretty much blunder through Borderlands games, particularly Borderlands 2.
By the time you get to Ultimate Vault Hunter Mode, aka New Game Plus Plus, let alone the Overpower levels, you’re shoved down a very narrow set of builds and I hope you remembered what the game taught you about slag.
And don't forget, with every level of you now have to refarm your equipment. Because having equipment that's even 2-3 levels under level can be a death sentence.
Which, minus the broken health regan some enemies have, has got to be my last favorite part of ultimate vault hunter mode. That and bullet deflection. And dot damage doing dick all to enemies but being a death sentence to you
Enemies have more health and crit more often, multiple in town upgrades are more expensive, all difficulty options are locked to the hardest settings, your light depletes faster and the useful tent in the beginning is replaced with a stress inducing tree.
And all of that is before getting into the failure conditions. If you have 12 heroes die (at any point) or the week counter hits 86, you lose automatically and your save file is deleted. Both of these brutal requirements to work under in a game like Darkest Dungeon, where it's a good idea to take your time in the campaign and heroes die a decent amount of the time even on the easier difficulties.
I’m just gonna say it any difficulty mode that fucks with your save files is bad design and Survival is no different, HOWEVER I do wish you could take the hunger, water and fatigue mechanics and add them without adding the cancerous other mechanics that come with survival.
That said, I’m gonna go ahead and drop Silksong’s Steel soul has a boss exclusive to it. Heaven and Hell mode from DMC is also a pick.
It is a difficulty exclusive to the Arcade mode. Your goal is to get S rank at the end of a stage.
Arcade mode is very different from the main campaign. In the main campaign, you can just do whatever you want and play very passively.
In Arcade mode, almost every action gives player some points and increase or maintain the score multiplier. It is kinda like Devil May Cry, the game wants you to style on enemies instead of killing them as fast as possible by spamming powerful moves.
If you get hit, you lose some score multiplier. If you repeat the same sequence of actions or play passively for a long time, the score multiplier will slowly reduce.
FF difficulty is a difficulty available for both main campaign and Arcade mode. Playing a stage with the goal of getting a S rank already makes a stage harder than in main campaign.
Ultimaniac difficulty makes mobs even more aggressive and has higher score requirements for getting a S rank.
Resident Evil 3 remake Inferno.
Playing this without special box item is hell. Very hard, does
Not even feel fair. Re 3 standard and even hardcore are so great and fun, Inferno not so much. https://giphy.com/gifs/jtEclH8lLvthx4q6Le
Specialist unlocks when you beat the campaign mode. There is no health regen, you receive actual physical damage to limbs and body parts, so if you get shot in the arm, you lose accuracy, or if you get shot in the leg, you can't walk, as well as helmet damage, which is displayed on screen as cracks on the visor which makes you suffocate in the space combat sections.
So you have to equip nano shots to repair broken limbs and body damage, and helmets to replace damaged helmets, but they replace the lethal and non-lethal slots I.e. grenades and flash grenades.
Then there is YOLO mode, where you have only a single life and getting killed makes you start from the beginning of the campaign.
Both modes ensure you are less run and gun and more tactical, thoughtful in approaches to stealth and combat, leaning from cover, weapon selection etc
WoTR is a titanic 150rpg based on pathfinder, which is sortve like dnd, but just kinda... better. thats not important though. what IS important is the WOTR has extremely customizable difficulty, but its "Core" difficulty is noted as being pretty damn hard. Core is one step over normal, and it demands a lot from you as a player. you need a reasonably competent team with your bases covered, proper use of buffs and debuffs, consumables, etc to do well on it.
Unfair cranks every number into the stratosphere. every enemy hits like a freight train, with increased crit chance, resistances, everything you can think of. On top of that, most encounters have double the amount of enemies. Everything is blatantly unfair, so how the fuck do you beat a massive rpg when every single encounter is life threatening?
Well, the game is a puzzle now. Ignore most of actual characters and custom build a unique party, tailoring it to difficult fights and stacking a cartoonish amount of buffs. abuse the AI, multiclass into insanely broken combos, be a wiki warrior to find all the perfect items for each character. Unfair is a grueling uphill battle through a slaughterhouse, where every single fight in a puzzle to be solved, tailoring your spells and party to exactly what you're dealing with. It is a difficulty explicitly for min-maxing powergamers.
You know that guy that showed up to your dnd game with his gloomstalker-assassin-battlemaster and started telling you that you should reaallly multiclass your paladin into hexblade warlock, and hell, why not add some sorcerer levels into there too? that guy? yeah, you need an entire party of characters like that
So in addition to ramping up enemy senses and damage, you carry less ammo, resources and crafting output is reduced. Oh the HUD and button prompts are disabled too. The only way to get through it is to play like a stealth shooter, headshots are the only ones you can afford to minimize the time your shot at.
If you return Kuro’s charm at the start right after getting your sword, this places debuffs on you; you get chip damage on block and imperfect parries, enemies have more health and posture, wolf takes more vitality and posture damage, status effects buildup faster
Essentially perfect parry every single attack and get more heavily punished for anything less than perfection
another crabs treasures new game plus is lowkey insane, i was like 70 and started the game plus only to realize that their is different bigger enemies found in the late game had spawned in the beginner area plus they come very close to one shotting you its brutal
May I dare suggest Helldivers, and its sequel Helldivers 2, and its difficulty system where going up difficultys does mean more enemies but also different enemies with different ways to combat them. That and increased rewards such as more missions and super samples on higher difficulties.
(Sorry, this was the first image that I had that represented Helldivers)
Sniper Elite 5. Hardest difficulty (Authentic) just makes you use the tools the game gives you for hitting your shots, instead of having a reticle doing wind/speed and bullet drop compensation for you. The game remains fair even at that difficulty (can't say the same for Sniper Elite 4).
Perfect Dark. Hardest difficulty adds in entirely new objectives and mechanics. The best example I can think of is that on level 4, you have to snipe soldiers to save a negotiator held at gunpoint. On the hardest difficulty, however, you are the 'negotiator' and you have to fight your way out without any snipers to help you.
Id be tempted to give it a try but only being able to save at beds it make a full nonstarter.
When there are common bugs that inexplicably kill your character (like bumping against a car) I just see no value in playing it and wasting hours due to a bug.
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u/Greg-theseatreader 1d ago
revengeance and very hard in Metal Gear Rising Revengeance swap out almost every enemy with much later game ones and actually makes some pretty cool changes to some fights
Also the DMC games