Take it easy, a few games I wish were easier.

Let me be frank. I dislike difficult games. Call me a baby, or a casual, or whatever other derogatory term you have to sling at me over my lack of geeky manliness, but I just don't like hard games. I played my fair share of them growing up, and I generally avoid them nowadays because I know that it's just a frustration I'd rather avoid. However, sometimes there are difficult games that I pursue, because I do want to like them, but ultimately get slammed in the teeth by the barrier to entry that is it's punishing difficulty. So I decided to make a list of a few games that I wish weren't so brutal. Why? I dunno, I just felt like doing it.

Meanwhile, there are some games that do include some pretty easy difficulty settings in them. And I appreciate that, but, then they become too easy. I'd perfer too easy to too hard in most cases, but it still shows that there's another end of the spectrum. That's just a random aside though. We're not here to talk about those games. Ahem.

List items

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  1. Demon's Souls

  I can see why people love Demon's Souls. It has some really cool ideas implemented in it. There's something charming about it to be sure. However I still can't get over the punishing difficulty. I think this is a case where the difficulty helps make the game what it is, but there's some bullshit in here that I think most players could do without. The stakes are too high for dying. I'm not just talking about losing your souls, but having to make your way all the way back to your soul, with half the health you had before dying. It would be fine if it took you hours to make a little bit of progress into a dungeon. But then it becomes horseshit when you have to do it all over again if you die. I think I could really love Demon's Souls if it wasn't for shit like that.

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  2. Arc Rise Fantasia

  ARF seems like a pretty cool game, aside from some horrendous localization work. Unfortunately the developers of the game had no idea what balance was though, and thus every random encounter in the game is cake walk, and the bosses are lifted straight out of some JRPG torture hell. I don't know why the bosses are so god damn hard, but they really ruin the game.

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  3. Eternal Sonata

  Let's be clear here, I'm talking about the "enhanced" PS3 version of the game. The 360 version is fine. But for whatever reason they decided to make the PS3 version of the game brutally hard. This would be fine, I guess (except for PS3-only owners who got fucked over) but there's new content in this version, including two new playable characters. It's bullshit that I'm required to play the game on some higher difficult level in order to experience that content. Way to ruin the game.