September 23rd 2023.
Tom recently wrote in to the Inbox expressing his frustration with the difficulty of Armored Core 6. I can relate to that feeling, as the first mini-boss, the helicopter, had me scratching my head for a while before I eventually figured it out. It was a massive culture shock for me as well, as I had to forget about i-frames and get used to the weight and movement limitations of the mech.
I was experiencing a similar problem with Dark Souls 3. Though I'm not new to the Souls series, I was getting one-shot by enemies well past the early game. It took a lot of trial and error to make it to the shortcut near the twins boss room, and even then I had to do it without co-op. The difficulty was all over the place; the twins took three deaths to beat, while Soul of Cinder took two. It felt like the developers were trolling me with late game common enemies killing me over and over.
Aldrich and Dancer were two bosses in particular that I couldn't seem to beat. I had to re-spec from my usual and fun melee/pyromancer build to an optimised strength build to beat Dancer. After the re-spec I was able to beat her on the second attempt. Aldrich was even worse, and I eventually had to resort to the cracked tile back-step glitch to beat him.
It made me think about FromSoftware games in general – I think President Hidetaka Miyazaki must have toned down the difficulty when Elden Ring was being developed, as the difference between Dark Souls 3 and Elden Ring in terms of difficulty is stark.
FromSoftware equate difficulty with success, and you can't really blame them for it. But if they keep ramping up the difficulty, it could eventually lead to diminishing returns, where only the most skilled players will want to buy their games. Difficulty needs to be balanced with accessibility – not an easy mode, but not a game where players keep banging their head against a wall and getting nowhere.
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