You’ve said in the past that souls games aren’t that hard, they’re just hard in contrast to current standards. So what games would you consider to be really hard? God Hand in hard maybe? DMC at a high level?
God Hand on Normal is harder than Dark Souls. Maybe even on easy.
DMC3 on normal I found harder than dark souls, though I replayed on hard with vergil and breezed through, so maybe it was just unfamiliarity with the game. DMC4 is definitely easier until the higher difficulties though (though it’s also weird because you get enemy handicap when you die which makes it easier if you continue).
Vanquish is harder, Bayonetta too (played both on hard on my first go).
Quake is harder (assuming you don’t use savestates and always restart the level when you die, also I played on nightmare only).
Doom is harder (on ultraviolence).
Half Life 1 on hard is harder. HL2 as well.
I’d say Super Mario Bros 1 is about the same difficulty because of world 8.
Ninja Gaiden gets harder around world 5 or 6. Modern Ninja Gaiden is definitely harder.
Metal Slug (any) is harder.
Contra is harder.
Shatterhand is harder.
Nioh is harder.
The original Legend of Zelda is harder.
Castlevania 1, 3, Harmony of Dissonance, and Order of Ecclesia are harder. (Not sure about the latter two, haven’t played them in a while)
Any megaman game is harder.
I mean, Dark Souls is probably harder than any other game on normal difficulty last gen, but there’s a lot harder than it in the past and on higher difficulty modes. I don’t like people going, “pssh, dark souls is easy,” because it’s clearly hard, but it’s also not the pinnacle of difficulty in games, even in 7th gen. A TON of NES games will give it a run for its money or easily outclass it.
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Very true. Ecclesia sure ain’t hard past the first few hours. The RPG elements stomp on the action very quickly, and the final boss is a joke.
Also, I guess you don’t have a lot of experience, but most shmups are harder.
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Shrug, hard to remember. Also I beat Order of Ecclesia on hard mode locked to level 1.
I’ve played some ketsui and touhou, as well as mars matrix. You’re right, shmups are generally harder.
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I consider the weapon variety to be part of the “RPG elements” like Souls. You very quickly get gigantic weapons that cover like a fourth of the screen both vertically and horizontally, and eventually you get screen-fillers. Even without leveling up, these (admittedly bitchin’) weapons reduce the game to safely and artlessly annihilating enemies from a safe distance.
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I highly disagree about Vanquish and Bayonetta, as well as some of the other games. If you play Vanquish on Godhard, then yeah. But anything under that, and the game is much easier for me. Bayonetta would need to be played on a difficulty above hard, for it to be as hard too. I agree about Quake, if you don’t use quick saves. But I’m certainly not going to play the game like that. I also found Blood and Shadow Warrior to be harder than Quake. Half Life and Half Life 2 aren’t that hard for me either. Even in hard, I found HL2 to be mostly a breeze. I’m very surprised by the list tbh. Although it’s definitely true that most NES games are harder.
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I found vanquish and bayonetta harder than dark souls on their hard difficulty.
I played Quake without quicksaves. It’s very conducive to not using quicksaves actually. When you die, you restart the level you were on with a shotgun, and every level is designed to allow you to beat it without any weapon but a shotgun.
I think using quicksaves is not a very good idea for experiencing quake and doom. Even a game like half life has fairly generous auto-saves that prevent you from having to manually decide points to restart from. The only game(s) I’d say make quicksaves mandatory are those like Thief where you need to collect a ton of small items and the levels are fairly long, and by default you need to restart the mission if you die. It would be a tedious mess to repeat all that.
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Do you consider Dark Souls to be the hardest ‘Soulsborne’ game?
I just doubt I’d be able to discipline myself to do that. Some of the later levels had some extremely frustrating stuff. Like those blob enemies. I’d be restarting the levels too many times, if I didn’t quicksave. But with Half Life, I might try it sometime. The older Tomb Raider games work very well with how they handle the save game beacons. You’re definitely right about Thief. It would be awful having to repeat whole levels.
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