All difficult games should have an easy mode for accessibility.
Signed, a Dark Souls enjoyer.
this post was submitted on 23 Nov 2024
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For mechanically difficult games, definitely agree. Celeste is an example I usually bring up - it's a platformer that can get pretty tough at times, especially in the after-story optional levels. But it also has one of the most flexible and useful accessibility modes I've ever seen. It allows you to adjust basically every aspect of the game a player might struggle with (game speed, additional jumps, timed mechanics, you name it). And the game itself is very good as well.
Honestly... I disagree. What is accessibility? Every souls game has been beaten with dance pads, rock band drum kits and guitars. They're also frequently beaten by people with serious disabilities using specialized controllers. Input speed is not an issue here, Souls has always been about carefully choosing your moves to manage the end lag and stamina cost of your actions. It's about making the right move, not about moving quickly or pressing a lot of buttons at once.
IMHO, accessibility is frequently cited as an excuse for lower difficulties here, when in reality the difficulty isn't a serious part of the barrier for disabled players. It could use better accessibility options, like configurable colourblind modes, audio indicators, more configurable text size, some kind of clear colour indicators on attacks for low vision, but difficulty? No.
There are also lots of good reasons not to add explicit difficulty options, which is y'know, why From Soft haven't done it yet.
Accessibility isn't just a case of 'accessible to the handicapped', man.
That's a fair argument then, but... this is literally what accessibility means, whether or not you can "access" the thing.
If someone isn't willing to invest the time or frustration into Souls, then fair enough, but that's a matter of priorities/convenience, not a matter of accessibility.
Also, frankly, the difficulty of Souls for regular people is insanely overblown. Stuff like "Prepare to Die" is just a marketing gimmick, and the games have become substantially easier and more flexible over time. Like in Elden Ring, where you can leave bosses for later, and can frequently just bypass them entirely, experiment with an insane variety of builds, use effective ways to grind ridiculous amounts of souls, and just generally become ridiculously powerful. They've done essentially everything but creating an explicit "easy mode" to make the game playable for as many people as possible. If you want an easy mode, basically every souls game has builds or guides that function as that easy mode.
I wanna play a game with story interspersed with fun action combat... not keen on dying a million tonnes until I learn the timings for each enemy in order to be able to defeat them and get the next bit of story. Soulslike games aren't accessible to me.
I mean, Souls is accessible to you, it sounds like it just isn't for you. There are tons of games that I wish were made in a way that I'd enjoy more, features I've disliked, etc. But in almost all of those cases, someone loves those features the way they are, as is.
Like, for example, I don't love JRPG combat. I would love to play and enjoy Persona 5, but eh, I'm just not interested in investing in those systems to play that game. But that game is beloved, as is. I would never go petition Atlus to make Persona 6 into a Soulslike so that I "could" play it.
And that's great, there are a ridiculous amount of great games coming out every year, far more than I or basically anyone but full-time streamers have the time to play. So just... go play what you like?
Trying to make games that are "for" everyone is how we end up with soulless bland titles like Ubisoft keeps pumping out. Good games have to take risks, and make interesting decisions that alienate some and engage others.
I've never had vitriol spewed at me quite like when I argue in favor of easy mode for soulslike games. I'm at a point where I hate soulslike games, half because I don't want to spend ten hours on a boss that I can't beat, and half because I don't want to associate with soulsborne players
Easy mode ftw. I've only got so much free time. I wanna chill when I'm gaming.
Counterpoint: not every game needs to be chill
It's a choice. You don't have to take it
The choice existing would impact how players play, which may also go against the artistic vision. You don't have to play a non-chill game.
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You don't want to spend twenty hours trying to beat one boss, and being told to git gud whenever you ask for advice on the internet? But think of the sense of pride and accomplishment you'll feel when you finally beat it! The best part is you get to go through this like 10 times
/s
I am playing Sekiro with a easy mode mod.
Even with being able to kill everything with 1-4 hits, I was getting TRASHED by bosses. People play this without the mod? 😭
It's a difficult game for sure. Probably the most difficult out of the FromSoft games. Not to feed into the meme but the game does click once you get to a certain boss in the game. The combat feels natural, you know what to do and how to do it usually etc. It's a really difficult game and the final boss might just be the most difficult I've ever had the displeasure of fighting against (they get a lot easier once you know what you're doing)
Git gud casul?
Otherwise...
Finger but, whole.
I love how all the comments insist on discussing the difficulty, despite OP literally pointing it out as bait.
That's good bait.
I know it's bait. I'm just looking for an opportunity to unload.
The circle of "just want to feel something" wraps round and round.
I just started playing Stellar Blade.
It's really nice to go through the checklist of which soulslike attributes games are now inheriting, and which they decide to throw away. SB happens to have a set that I really jive with. No "lose currency on death", clean and clear tutorials, but still has lots of secrets hidden around the world. And, it has an easy mode - which I'm not using, because as much as the bosses challenge and frustrate me, they're very satisfying to learn.
I've never touched any game of this series. If I need to replay a section or fight in a game more than 3 times it annoys me so much, I need to take a break. This often led to me never playing that game again, because only thinking about being stuck at that spot again kills all the fun for me.
In Cyberpunk for example my car got stuck in the middle of nowhere by a glitch and I would have needed to walk for god knows how long to find another vehicle. Needless to say I never played that game again, even though I was not nearly even half way through and liked it up until that point.
I'm willing to replay a section as many times as it takes, as long as I consistently feel a sense of progression and improvement. The problem is that it can take dozens of attempts before I realize I'm plateauing, and I have to give up.
I cannot tell you how much I want to play Remnant: From the Ashes. In between boss fights, I'm in love with the game. The story is deeply fascinating, and I love the gameplay. There is exactly one boss in that game that I was able to beat without going online and waiting for some random to join and carry. Eventually I got to a point where in order to upgrade gear, I had to kill bosses, and in order to kill bosses, I had to upgrade gear. Uninstalled it after I made no story progress for like 10 hours.
Contrast that with Outriders. Considered by many to be an awful game, it was my favorite game that I've played this year. The story is deeply fascinating, I love the gameplay, and there is exactly one boss in that game that I couldn't beat at the highest available difficulty. So I turned the difficulty down, breezed through it, and turned it back up afterward, and there was no penalty for doing that.
Did you not just hit the "summon a vehicle" button that the game gives you to summon one of the many cars the game gives out for free? Cause it's there. I believe they tell you about it during the prologue and it's enabled before then.
Did you just skip all tutorials or something? I'm struggling to understand how on earth you got stuck so bad you ended up quitting the game. Plus, if you're half way through, you have a minimum of 2 vehicles, the starting car and Jackie's bike, if not even more. Wtf were you even doing?
Can't you just summon a new vehicle?
Lmao yeah. I'm kinda like him but even I knew you could summon your rides in Cyberpunk. I stopped playing that game because it was getting repetitive af.
I think the whole "Elden Ring is hard" is overrated.
I'm a garbage player. And I manage to cheese my way through the game. It has classic NES/SNES energy where you can absolutely leave and come back when you're way stronger. The game is so massive, you will always find something else to do.
Then again, if cyberpunk made you rage quit, maybe you won't like Elden Ring. I found that game to be really straightforward.
EZ mode in Elden Ring is to play Scadow of the Erdtree for a bit. That hands out fifty level-ups for shitting yourself hiding in the bushes, just to mock you for how you still ain't got gud. Go back and beat up Malenia and Placidusax all you want, you're still going to die to the very first expansion boss like you've never played a Souls game before.
I dislike how people use game completion as a method to gloat
Like bro, don't we all play games to have fun?
I separate people into two camps.
People who beat THE Sega Genesis classic Sonic 3 with lock-on Technology with Sonic and Knuckles and achieved all 12 Chaos Emeralds, and LOSERS.
I'm currently playing Elden Ring for the first time and I'm note sure if I'm not just doing it for self-flagellation instead of fun
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I never understood the obsession with stupid difficult games at all. It's like, let me bang my head on a coffee table for 3 hours trying to make 5 minutes of progress. No thanks
Edit: Wow, this blew up, quite a controversial take, and not a hint of irony from all the people commenting about how I don't get it.
Edit 2: For what it's worth, I have played Dark Souls 1 all the way through, some of Dark Souls 2, got to the end of Bloodborne, played about 3 hours of Elden Ring, and a bit of Lies of P. These games just aren't for me. I played them bcz my friend loves them, and I was trying to make a soulslike bcz that seems to be all the rage right now.
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