People like to say it’s hard because they don’t approach the game on it’s own terms. I agree Miyazaki games are not “hard” where “hard” means difficult to even figure out how to win. The answer is clear for the vast majority of his games, as long as you play the games on their terms.
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If you were a kid when Metroid came out, then you are a Millennial.
Nah… Gen X or Y or some such.
I am actually closer to Chad’s age.
I just do not LOOK it.
…still a lot younger than Starhammer, doe. 
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Y is Millennials.
Then I’ll take X.
On principle, and No Homo.
Gen X goes all the way deep into the 80s, so yeah.
Totes.
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A lot of games these days like Souls, Bloodbourne, Sekiro etc have all adopted the game design style and philosophy a lot of people have referred to as “Castlevania hard”. Also know as “Ninja Gaiden Difficulty” or “The Mega Man Learning Curve” Wherein there is obvious and clear path for you set in front of you. However, the way to get through is not straight forward. There may be platforms, enemies showing you how they behave and react to you and hazards in your way where you will have to find alternate “routes” as it were and options to navigate the path in front of you.
All of these games teach you the rules of the games as you play by slowly introducing things to you in a semi-controlled environment but once you’ve been exposed to it they put it in front of you in more elaborate and challenging ways which makes you pay more attention to what’s going on and to have patience. Hack n Slash games do this a lot too. As did early beat em ups through enemy variety.
People that refuse to take it all in, learn, pay attention and be patient are the ones who say those games are “hard”.
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YES.
Gods forbid they ever have to deal with random algorithms on top of that.
Cheers, mate. I guess that means I’m rebuying Soulcalibur.
That’s a Day Juan buy for me. I don’t know why I’m not already a huge fan of this franchise.
Ninja Gaiden master ninja mode is hard, Bayonetta non-stop climax is hard. Nothing else has come close to that type of difficulty.
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God forbid a person from just wanting to enjoy the story/lore in a game and not wanting to deal with having to learn the intricacies of the battle system or whatevers. I gives no fucks if people like to play on easy mode. Let’em. Shit, some games I play on easy mode. Why, you may ask? Because I just wanna rock shit and get the story and see cool shit.
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Thank you for adding English voiceover…
Born in the 80s is Y. So unless you’re in your 40s, you can’t be X.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with that but some games simply aren’t designed to be that way. That’s the dev’s choice.
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Xennial I I think is the term for those of us born on the cusp between X and Millennial. I don’t quite identify with Millennials, as I didn’t grow up with internet until late in high school, and that’s a significant part of our cultural identity as a whole now. On the other hand we are too young to identify as Gen X.
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Im considered Gen-X and I’m not 40. I was also a kid when Super Metroid came out.
I don’t measure the quality of a game based on its difficulty. There are plenty of games I love that would be considered easy, and I enjoy them because they are fun to play and entertaining. Super Mario World is fantastic, and I think it’s a much better game than say, SMB Lost Levels, which has some of the most difficult platforming in any Mario game.
My point earlier is that I don’t agree with people getting so frustrated with a game they feel entitled to an easy mode, when the game doesn’t come with one. And that’s because the developer didn’t intend for that game to be a cake walk. They wanted you to learn the mechanics and overcome challenges by developing specific skills within that game. And if the game can pull that off and still be fun because the controls feel good and the graphics and tone resonate with you, I think that’s a quality fucking game and the complainers be damned.
I think a part of that for me is because I grew up in an era of gaming where many games were very unforgiving, and the sense of accomplishment after beating a game you’ve invested the time to get good at is a very real thing for me. And in the modern era of gaming, most of the games just don’t present as much of a challenge anymore. So when a game comes along that doesn’t hold your hand, or give you the option of setting the difficulty lower, I feel like that harkens back to the times when that was the norm.
But I also love to just relax and play a game for the sake of escaping into that world. Sometimes I’m not looking for a challenge. I think there’s certainly room for both to exist, and I’m glad they do.
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Dying a lot is a part of the story, it’s part of the entire experience Miyazaki builds into his games. To not struggle against death is to miss a lot of the point.
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I mean let’s be real. Sometimes RNG is a definite problem. It’s held a lot of games back from being good or kept them from the cusp of greatness.
I’ll give you an example: Despite the infamous underwater level the TMNT game for NES it’s considered a classic. What people fail to mention or even realize (because they likely never got pass the underwater level or beat the game. I know because I’m one of those people) is that finding the last area/level of the game, the technodrome is entirely based on RNG. They don’t tell you this at all. It’s in one of four locations based on where the intro music is at when you press start to begin the game. It took speed runners years to figure that fact out.
That can absolute and deservedly ruin the gameplay experience. You could literally wander around the world map for hours, days, months and NEVER find the technodrome. That’s bad RNG.
I’ve not played his games so I’m not sure how to interpret that but trial and error is basically the definition of learning curve. It’s essential to becoming better at a game. Or anything really.
More games need Godhand’s way of adjusting difficulty: calling you a pussy in real time.
Would solve a lot of things.
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