A different approach to playing hard games

Games that do not offer difficulty options can often feel very hard, especially for casual players or players like me who prefer to play games in normal mode. Most people determined to play will generally think about not giving up and keep retrying till they can finish the game. A friend recently advised me not to think of the game in terms of its difficulty and to play it normally. Her approach made me realize that it is all about your approach to any given game, your mentality.

So I started playing the game, Demon’s Souls remake, which I find to be very hard, even though I have soloed the original version of that game back in the PS3. Although on the PS3, I had no option but to solo it as the game’s multiplayer was region-locked, and when I was playing the game, at that time, here in India, no one seemed to play that game, so I never found any co-op help online. On a side note, my favorite game in the Souls series is Dark Souls 2. The combat is not too fast, animations are nice, and while it did feel a little less weight compared to Dark Souls 1, I found it reasonably easier due to the easy availability of healing items called life gems.

Anyways, as I approached the game with a different mindset, I finally started getting used to the difficulty, I started getting used to dying over and over, falling off due to some platforms over and over and while I have yet to go through the poison swamp level, which I found unplayable during the last 2 times I had the game, I am sure that I will adapt to that level and any other annoying areas as well as other difficult aspects of the game now. That is right, I had bought Demon’s Souls remake twice and sold it twice due to various difficulty-related frustrations, which also includes the platforming in some of the levels, which I found to be very harsh, though I did enjoy the combat due to its weighty feel and methodical, slower pace. So basically, I am going to get through the game but with far less frustrations, because I am approaching the game differently this time. And yes, I am getting co-op help this time, without which I would not be able to go through the game at the pace I am going through at the moment. This help is also a vital part of it, but I have also been motivated by the above-mentioned friend with her words of wisdom.

Personally, I have found these games interesting enough to try them, but they are just not approachable enough for some casual players. Yes, the more you play the game, the better you get, but if you do not like the game, then you cannot put sufficient effort to begin with, but if you try the game with this different approach and ignore the difficulty aspect of these games, you can certainly progress further and overall do better in not just this but any hard game. Do not think about the difficulty, just try to play the game as it is. That being said, though, I thoroughly believe that every game needs difficulty options, and the game developers can always give their preferred difficulty option too, and this option does not affect the game’s balance at all. Just that they will not get to force players to experience the game their intended way, which they still can with various difficulty options, including their default/preferred one. It will be optional for the players as then they get to select if they want to go through the game as the developers intended them to go through.