Are RPG's too easy?

[Scarim Coral]

Depend if it's a rpg that let you choose the easy route or rather taking up the challange.

Example- I'm playing Final Fantasy Record Keeper on my tablet and while I'm powling the core route at the moment HOWEVER I had steer clear on some of the elite dungeon since I know I will get my ass kicked.

Also I do know two game with a odd diffculty cruve as in hard at the start of the game but become easier later on. Infinite Space and Little Battlers Experience are evident of this.

 

[Bad Jim]

I was under the impression that Dark Souls didn't give a fuck about you or your new player bullshit. This is the game, get gud or get out?

It's harder than most, but it's well within what a regular gamer can consider fun. Some like to pretend that until you've practiced for years you won't even be able to get out of the starting area, but that's really not true.

And on that note? What makes people enjoy the hardest challenge possible. Other people have pointed out that difficulty in gaming is usually artificial and really only is hard because of the math.

I think some people just like to play a particular game for years and get so good that normal difficulty settings don't challenge them at all. The details of what makes the hardest difficulty hard aren't important. What matters is that it is challenging when you've already spent more time learning to beat the game than a doctor spends learning medicine.

RPGs are less affected by this because the people replaying them are usually interested in the story not the challenge, and use their knowledge of game mechanics to get through combat quickly.

 

[CaitSeith]

Let's see:
FF IV, FF VI, Chrono Trigger, Sword of Mana, Secret of Mana, Lagoon, Illusion of Gaia, Receteer, Skyrim, FF XIII (in Gran Pulse only, some of the enemies there are sick!). As with many games, they have several peaks in difficulty that become less and less evident the more experienced one gets by playing videogames in general.

 

[Foolery]

RPG's and JRPG's in particular always lend themselves to grinding and with patience you can literally make the game trivial. It's a feature that I love about them and readily take advantage of. Outside of super bosses designed to be hard for ultimate players, though even these often have exploits, has there really ever been a challenging RPG?

For the sake of argument, let's keep the Dark Souls series out of the discussion and focus on more traditional RPG's. Can any of you think of a single RPG that actually presented a challenging threat?

Shin Megami Tensei. The mainline series that is, including IV, if you didn't put it on easy mode. Grinding won't help you much, you have to learn how to break enemy attack chains and exploit weaknesses to get through boss battles. Magic stat players might have a slight advantage providing they know how to kit out their main character well. The Apocalypse sequel is coming with even higher difficulties.

Edit: ScrabbitRabbit beat me to the punch on this one. Oh well, the more people talking about SMT, the better.

 

[Neurotic Void Melody]

Not sure what counts as hard with some of the more in depth RPGs, but the Banner Saga series and Wasteland 2 have a habit of making you feel like you're losing even if you win. Even on easy. Everything comes at a cost. I gave up on both due to some bullshit areas. You can only quickload and attempt each strategy so many times before the craving to do something more productive occurs.

 

[MeatMachine]

I'm far more concerned with WHY each RPG is difficult or not.

-Is the game draconian about mistakes or failures, and undermine your ability to make a comeback?
-Does the game force you to make decisions you don't like, such as necessitating certain builds?
-Does the game offer very limited, one-time-use items that you never feel isn't a huge waste to use even in dire circumstances because you might need them even more later?
-Does RNG dictate a substantial amount of combat, making even reliable strategies corruptible through sheer unluckiness?
-Does the game market itself as free-to-play, but basically becomes unbeatable without pouring in microtransactions or 500 hours of grinding through constant failure to procure in-game resources?

I don't mind a tough-as-nails RPG, so long as all of the systems are fair to the player, and fair to the psychology of the player. In fact, the only thing I love more than the casual stroll of Pokemon games is an intense, strategy-oriented RPG that tests my mettle.

 

[Smithnikov_v1legacy]

Yet I can't think of a single player RPG to ever have those elements to them. You overlevel and the boss is no problem. Simple. Easy. Right?

Again, try that in AD&D Pools of Darkness. The universe will remind you just how small you are despite your levels and magic items.

Jagged Alliance 2? You can have a full roster of the most powerful mercs in the game complete with anti-tank weapons, spectra armor, and ammo for everything, but if you try to go in gung ho against the really heavily fortified areas, you'll either get worn down or someone will luck out eventually and drop a mortar or LAW on your head. Also, the longer you take, the longer some places take to fortify their position with tougher soldiers and better gear for them.

SMT was also mentioned. If you use the wrong demons/personas, it won't mean dick how good your levels and gear is, your enemies will turn you into hamburger in short order.

 

[JohnnyDelRay]

Wow, like this is a totally ambiguous statement that is really hard to answer. There are so many things that could affect the difficulty of an "RPG", but to even consider all the different types of RPGs, it's nearly impossible. What are you talking about when you consider "traditional" RPGs.

Arena type RPGs can be insanely ruthless to beginners, but MMORPGs are almost a cakewalk by comparison (to a certain point).

Hack 'n slash action RPGs (Grim Dawn / Diablo / Titan Quest) tend to be pretty easy unless you really lose focus of your character and somehow totally bork your build.

Do you want to consider Borderlands an RPG? Well that's also piss easy unless you include some secret bosses.

Like you say, some difficulty you can grind away at, some you can get yourself into a real jam if you're not careful with item preservation, with checkpoint systems this can make a game nightmarishly difficult. Some games offer tailoring to the really masochistic, Iron Man mode and the like. So the real answer here is, no, because you can make any RPG as hard or easy as you want usually.

Let's not forget the varying types of players. Myself, I found Jagged Alliance 2 and even the old X-COM series not too bad, and those are considered pretty damn tough (I even played the Urban Chaos add-on which is even worse). However, I find games like Dragon Age to really give me a hard time, and that's supposedly one of the easiest *shrugs*

 

[Satinavian]

Don't really know.

I have never played an RPG i found too "hard". Except maybe some roguelikes that had "keep dying until you figure out how to solve the riddle" or "You need luck to survive" as design principle. I find those terrible.

But i usually enjoy RPGs, even though i am not a fan of grinding. And while i can't say i remember one that was too hard, i also don't remember too many that were so easy that it became boring. I had fun with (trying for not ancient games) Blackguards, ME, Dragon Age Origins, Pillars of Eternity, Witcher, NWN2 (well, that one is basically build-your-own-challange due to customization), Drakensang : River of time (ok, there is only one optional challanging fight in there, if you don't use any runes on the Zant, so maybe it is to easy), even less serious stuff like sunrider.

I alwas tried to get into JRPGs, but i hate grinding.

Is it a genre thing ? Well, probably partly. RPGs are about the journey, not about repeating the same stuff 100 times until you get it right. I mean, i have won the original Prince of Persia without cheats and it felt like an acomplishment , but such a complete playthrough takes less then 1 hour and the other time is spent on failed attempts. RPGs are different. Death (or any other permanent failure) is not meant to happen that often.

The other reason is that RPGs often have lots of character and group customization options. And that developers try to make most of them somehow valid choices. No one wants to start all over after 40 hours gameplay because he can't progress because of wrong skill choices. But if you can win with suboptimal skills, it becomes easy when you build a character/group with some understanding of the rules and an eye for possible synergies. That makes the whole game seem easy.


And really ? Jagged Alliance 2 is connsidered hard somehow ? I found it pretty average as tactical games go. Near the end and during expansion even too easy as several strategies proved to be to good for the AI. You weren't even pidgeoholed to one, there were at least half a dozen viable ways to build your force to something completely unstoppable for the AI. It was fun though.

But if tactics game with roleplaying elements count, i would suggest to look to XCOM:EW (long war mod, basegame is too easy) and Mortheim (choose the harder missions). Both are challenging but still rewarding. You will win most of the time, usually even without casualties, but it takes effort and you will get wounded (and even crippled in the first one).

 

[CritialGaming]

So from what I've been reading the keys to RPG difficulty revolve around two things.

1. Strategy RPG's. Things like Disgaea, FF Tactics, XCom, etc. Games that really require planning and positioning in addition to raw character power. Which makes a lot of sense because if you are stupid, like me, you have a hard time planing battle strats and thus the game becomes very hard. Other games like Fire Emblem throw additional, cheap, things at you like spawning extra unpredictable (on first attempt) enemies at you after barely scraping through the initial rush.

2. Dungeons and Dragon system based RPGS. Things like Divinity: Original Sin. This is because the rule set for D&D especially 3.5 can be incredibly punishing for players looking to fight too eagerly. The difficulty also stems from the luck of the dice, which basically means the combat is almost entirely RNG-based which really doesn't seem like a good way to design combat in a video game. It works for tabletop because there is a human element that may allow for bad roll forgiveness. However the game will only do what is programmed and if your rolls suck, you will be punished to the fullest extent of the law.

I am not familiar with the Shin Megami Tensi series much. So I can't comment on the difficulty there, or even the type of game.

But it doesn't seem like many turn-based battle RPG's come up. Even some of the "hard" First person Dungeon RPG's I've played on the Vita are only hard for an hour or two until you grind away your problems. And I didn't see much else in terms of turn-based combat RPG's. I suppose it is silly to call a game hard that really only wants you to grind it out for a bit.

 

[CaitSeith]

Oops, wrong thread. Sorry.

 

[Tassit]

The toughest I've played have been the Disgaea games. The easiest, by comparison, would be Ni no Kuni. Or the Pokemon games.

Aw.. I had such a hard time with Ni no Kuni's optional ultimate bosses. >.>

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

The toughest I've played have been the Disgaea games. The easiest, by comparison, would be Ni no Kuni. Or the Pokemon games.

Aw.. I had such a hard time with Ni no Kuni's optional ultimate bosses. >.>

Maybe I was overleveled but I didn't lose once to a boss.

 

[CritialGaming]

Hell even Dark Souls players have to artificially limit themselves in soul level 1 runs to keep the challenge up.

This is because there are no difficulty settings, and if you only have one difficulty you have to make it reasonable for a new player. Even when a game offers super-high difficulty settings, some players will feel the need to artificially limit themselves to make it even harder. Nethack is by no means easy to beat, but there are various 'conducts', optional challenges to make it even harder.

Actually, yes, Nethack and other Rogulikes. They are hard. Try them, you might like them. Nethack is free, so you've got no excuse. ARPGs like Diablo 2 (not 3) also offer some semblance of challenge, and have mods that make them harder.

I was under the impression that Dark Souls didn't give a fuck about you or your new player bullshit. This is the game, get gud or get out? Though I suppose if you get too good, you gotta make it harder or something like that. I wonder though....Are people looking to actually have more of a challenge in DS because they want it? Or because they love the game so much that they simply want a fresh way of playing the game to get more life out of something they really like? \

DS is pretty accessible as long as the player isn't careless, utterly impatient or otherwise playing stupidly. I was surprised to beat the first boss on the first try. It took a few to get to it, but by that time the game had taught me its basic design principles.


There are far more difficult games, even within the genre, but most of it is due to design deficiencies.

 

[Danbo Jambo]

Bit of a sweeping generlization isn't it?

Some RPGs are easy, some OK, some solid. Does it really matter so long as they're good?

I'm quite a seasoned RPG player who enjoys a bit of a challenge, yet Shadow Hearts: Covenant is one of my fave RPGs ever and it's fairly easy throughout, especially later in the game.

 

[MerlinCross]

"Are RPGs too easy?"

Someone doesn't know about F.O.E.

Etrian Oddessy is one of those old school dungeon crawler games where you make a party and explore the dungeon. It's in the same vein as Wizardry. And these kinds of games will out right crush you if you don't sit down and learn. Mind you, the later ones have allowed for differculty options but said options feel over tuned across the board.

Still good game series I find and a testament that YES, RPGs can still be hard.

 

[Schadrach]

I just read an article about the recent remake of Dragon Quest 7 on the 3DS, in which the author was annoyed at how long it takes to save the game. Apparently you must deal with eight dialog boxes to complete your saving, which may only take 30 seconds, but adds up when you consider how many times you would save in a 40+ hours RPG. That number is probably higher on a mobile RPG due to the excessive start and stop players experience on the go.

I did not know this existed. Also, DQ7 is huge. Like "we decided to make an SNES-like game on the PSX and span it across multiple discs" huge. Because that's what they did. Literally 100+ hour playthroughs are not unexpected. Technically there's more content in DQIX, but only if you're an absolute completionist.

Those 30s blobs of talking to a priest add up. Especially when you first get access to class changes and everything is drastically more dangerous until you unlock some, you know, class features.

 

[aegix drakan_v1legacy]

It depends on the game. Some are just too easy because of shoddy mechanics, or because gaining a single level has such a huge impact that it trivializes things.

Other are actually hard and either require proper strategies or grinding.

Like, Golden Sun and Etrian Odyssey are two COMPLETELY different beasts. Golden Sun is a nice easy ride where you follow the story and get a power fantasy. EO has you slowly grind your way through a mysterious labyrinth, unlocking shortcuts and finding the right time to flee back to town, happy with the progress you've managed to make.

In my case, I make my RPGs on the hard side (with easier modes), where while grinding remains a solution you can survive at lower levels by learning how to abuse your skills to cope with various threats with maximum effectiveness (Hell, one guy beat one of my games without doing a SINGLE standard encounter. I didn't think that was possible, and it probably only IS possible because of how Level Ups in that game mostly boost survivability rather than damage)

It really depends on the RPG and how the creator chose to balance it.

Either way though, no WAY saving should need 8 dialog boxes and 30 seconds! Saving should be swift and painless. If I want to save, I want to save and be done with it so I can get back to the story or whatever Real Life thing I need to deal with ASAP. The less clunky your UI is, the better. I don't need more barriers between me and my immersion, thanks!

I mean, seriously, "quicksave" was a GODSEND when they introduced it to Etrian Odyssey. I don't want to risk losing 3 hours of dungeon time because I had to snap my DS shut and then the game card got dislodged when I put it in the case!