I completely understand about Resonance of fate. I was cursing the game for so long. Then one day it just clicked. And when it did, dear god was it fun. I couldn't stop playing. I felt like a gun wielding martial arts god. So glad I stuck with it. Also love the world, the feel, and the music. Which is what made me stick with it as long as I did. Story became a wonky mess tho. But for once I didn't care lol Also great video as always.
Vagrant story holds very near and dear to me I used to rent it at Blockbuster when I was little and die a lot until I got older, more wiser, and really got my timing down. Beating that game was a very satisfying feeling
The disgea series was this for us man did it take awhile for it to "click " for us. Agree 100% the Dark Cloud series needs both a re release for now console's and a Dark Cloud 3 would be the gold standard.
I quit DS1 3 times over several years before I finally took a $20 gamble and bought BloodBorne. The faster movement was exactly what I needed to break through the hardship and start loving the games. I wasn't even halfway through before I bought the DLC and once I finished I went back to DS1-3 and they've had their claws in me ever since.
I can never understand STING games. (ie Yggdra Union, Knights in the Nightmare) Feels like the most convoluted way to make a combat system. I appreciate that it's unique but I just can't get into it.
Really solid list, though there is one thing want to comment on and maybe give my thoughts on it. Apologies in advance if this next part seems long. I just don't get to talk about it much so this might come off as long winded or maybe I could have shortened some stuff idk. For me, Resonance of Fate is one of those games that I didn't really enjoy playing until I figured out the battle system. Now, it did wind up becoming one of my all time favorite RPGs, but going back to that enjoyment thing I mentioned, once I figured out how to play the game I took it upon myself to find ways to use the game's mechanics to my advantage whether it be finding ways to level up fast (more or less swapping out weapons between the party occasionally and building up as much scratch damage as possible so I could get lots of exp for whoever wasn't using a machine gun weapon type), or just figuring out different ways to deal with enemies more efficiently (not sure what examples I could go with for this one so not gonna really say much about it). Anyways, setting aside the battle stuff, the more I played through the game and the further I got, the more it grew on me. There's some stuff I think could have been better, the stuff the party says when they do attacks or take damage and so on in battles can come off as repetitive for some people, the tutorial stuff is located in the arena and for a first time player they might not know what to do to find it since it's a side area and from what I remember you can potentially play through the entire game without going to it once, and I'm not sure if it's an actual issue but there's a definite difficulty curve in chapter 1 for the place you go to for the story mission. For anyone that isn't familiar with the way battles work up to that point, especially with the boss of chapter 1, if you can't figure out tri attacks or running and so on, then good luck trying to get past that part. But once you get past that point, I personally think that as long as you get around to leveling up every weapon type for every party member often then it shouldn't be too hard outside of a few moments later in the game. Not sure what else I could say. I could gush about different stuff I love from the game, even discuss more stuff I dislike since I don't think it's perfect even though I've always praised various things in the game for one reason or another, but with all of that said I don't want to make this any longer without going into more detail so I'll stop here.
Also curious to know if you would consider what you said at the end, about persevering until you break through the door of understanding applies to grand strategy and similar games? Large scale tactics games and the like. I've tried to learn a lot of these, Total War, Crusader Kings, Hearts of Iron and other Paradox games, even Civilization is far too deep for me to get a grasp on. I guess you take what you give and it takes hours upon hours of learning before it becomes enjoyable but damn I don't think I have what it takes to take a full 3 credit hour course on a game before I play it.
Vagrant Story was especially difficult to learn for me. I bought it used from blockbuster way back when I was 10 and it didn't come with an instruction manual so I had to learn the game as best as I could with a lot of experimentation through trial and error.
Tark, are you going to do a review of The House in Fata Morgana? It just released a while ago on the Vita digital store, and I think it may be releasing on PS4 at some point. I'm reading through it now and it's not only the best visual novel I've ever read, or quite possibly the best thing I've ever read period, but the CRUELEST. I've read a lot of visual novels and seen some truly horrible shit happen to characters, and none if it compared to what these characters go through. I highly recommend it to you, whether you review it or not. I almost always agree with your reviews and I think you'd fucking love it. The story, writing, music, characters, it's all goddamn perfect.
Coming up on that 10k!!! Fantastic video as always, Tarks. Really appreciate your thoughts on Dark Souls. I gave up after a few hours because it was so confusing and poorly explained. Hearing your perspective makes me rethink how I went about it. Maybe I’ll revisit it in the near future.... Monster Hunter series is a good pick. Definitely agree with that one. Need to give Dark Cloud a chance. And the sequel. Love videos like this, dude.
Resonance of Fate took me about 7-8 hours to understand, then I absolutely loved it- just make the biggest triangles you can and the most badass weapons you can. Until you get to the final boss, when it doesn't work :-(. It took a while for my risk-averse play style to understand that gung-ho attacking was always the best option (until the final boss). My bete noires are: 1. Final Fantasy VII- in the days before internet or playthrough books, I didn't understand levelling. I've read reviewers claiming the game is too easy, but I finally beat this after 20 years (after about 15-20 hours of farming "Slash Cut") on the PS3 emulation. I still think the game is unfair. 2. God Eater- I had to read up on building better bullets to kill the bouncy lions, then waltzed to the final boss (not final mission as there are apparently character based missions after the final boss) where I just got creamed- 30 or 40 times. 3. Drakengard 3- I needed a TH-cam walkthrough to try to synch with the PS3 to beat the last 3rd of the final boss rhythm game.
I got Dark Souls Remastered on Switch . I played for about 15 mins and was just pissed after a while . I really need to read more up on it more . I haven’t played any of the Dark Cloud games. Resonance of Fate is one of those games I’ve seen on the store shelves but never knew I should get it .Monster Hunter sounds like a real trip , the item management trial and error aspect sounds frustrating. Ugh Seikiro hurt so many friendships on twitter, who knew this would such a divisive topic . Awesome video Tarks ! In really gotta give Dark Souls a chance again .
My friends and I started Monster Hunter on day 1 of the original and we were so confused. Now we G rank everyone that comes out. Amazing game with a very steep learning curve.
Here you are complaining about not being able to find the "Praise the Sun" button. Meanwhile I'm still stuck at the title screen of several games because I can't find the "Any Button", to start it.
Dark Souls: "It doesn't even feel that hard anymore" yup, my experience exactly. And you know what? I blame the hype. If you don't go into it expecting an impossible game and try not to approach it like you would any other hack & slash game...it's actually not even half as bad as people make it out to be. I'd say its hardest aspects are understanding its complex statistical groundwork. Where strength doesn't necessarily means hitting harder, where dexterity isn't "hitting bettrer" etc. Once you understand how to allocate stat points according to your preferred playstyle rather than what would be logical in other RPG's, the rest becomes more akin to Castlevania / Mega Man of old: Go in, die, learn, trey again and get further. Resonance of Fate: For me, RoF was the Ninja Gaiden (Black) of JRPG's. Let me explain: You cleared Devil May Cry on several difficulties without much issues, and you're generally pretty good at the genre in general. So why should NG be any diff....and you're dead... You learn all the combos and enemy patterns and...you're dead... And sometime later you realize...the game doesn't care about flashy combos, even though it has pages upon pages of them...heck, it's score system doesn't even award significant points for them...so what does the game want from me? Efficiency...and nothing else. Don't play around, just kill your enemies. Kill one mook as effectively as possible, use his essence drop to then start chaining your charge attacks. RoF felt very similar to me. If you don't use its systems as intended and to its fullest, the game will kick your butt. It distracts with its incredibly flashy visuals but beneath that, it's just what you said yourself: A very specific and precise math equation. Get that, and you're in for a treat. Don't and it turns into a mess. Labyrinth of Refrain: Huh...i got the game based on your review and didn't have any issues since you pretty much covered all the bases :D Vagrant Story: Wholeheartedly agreed. It comes from a time where Square had a lot of games with mechanics that required several years of university courses to fully grasp. Legend of Mana's crafting system comes into mind. And frankly...i like it specifically because of that. It doesn't play it safe, instead, it goes for something insanely complex without compromise. And i actually miss those approaches these days.
Nice video man, I actually didn't find MH that hard to learn, yeah it took me some hours to know the stuff you mention like the cooking and dodging mechanics but after beating barroth (the first hard monster) on the 4th try, I solo the entire game Before going into online mode. I also don't know if im just a special case but i used all weapons xd. Oh and i was planning to buy Labyrinth of Refrain but now i have no doubts i need to get it!
I feel if you're just learning than playing with friends is totally the way to go, but at some point you should take it unto yourself to do it all solo. I didn't start soloing until mhw, but that game was way easier than the rest. I feel mostly the same about dark souls. Use the things the game gives you until you think you can do without. Hence why I play ds with no armor or shield now.
For me there has always been two types of difficulty in games, fun hard and stupid hard. Stupid hard games punish you every chance they get and usually have needlessly complex systems that involve immense amounts of grinding. Examples I would put games like the Disgaea series, the Agarest Wars series, Monster Hunter type games, and pretty much all dungeon crawler games in this category. I am not saying they can't be fun but finishing them feels like a waste of time, they all get to a point where you have seen everything and all that's left is just a ton of grinding. Fun hard games are challenging but if you learn from your mistakes you are constantly rewarded with positive feelings or actual rewards. Examples are Dark Souls, Ys's games , Tales of, and kind of even the Legend of Heroes games. Its not that most of those give you the choice to play on hard or easy I don't care about that. But that putting them on hard just makes every battle feel extremely satisfying especially boss fights. The Legend of Heroes games have the brilliant mechanic of not letting you over level its such an easy thing to keep a game fun but like no one does it. Epic battles feel epic in all of these games on the hard difficulties and if you fail yeah you lose some time but it doesn't crush your soul. You just load up from the nearby save point and learn from your mistakes to me that's how difficulty should be at least in my opinion.
@@caseycoker1051 Nah. Playing on PS2 lol. Dug mine out of the storage container. I always liked DC2 more than 1 but am very surprised to find the game is still as enjoyable as it is.
Most of these I haven't played through besides Dark Souls. I gave up on Sekiro for the time being, it just might not be for me and I love a challenging game. I have Divinity, Labyrinth of Refrain, and Vagrant Story, but haven't gotten to them still. Shout-out for the Tool shirt and animated Nier background.
Ninja Gaiden (the remake on 360) definitely took some adjusting to for me but once I got it down I loved it. Demons, Dark Souls and Bloodbourne while difficult in places were not really ones I personally had trouble adapting to but RTS games (pretty much any of them) just throw me for a loop I think my cat could beat me at those games much more a fighting game and TBS player. I think my biggest problem with RTS games however is that I am not willing to put in the time to learn them because none have hooked me enough like say SF2 did for fighters. Always interesting how people struggle with different things and excel at others.
I beat Ninja Gaiden razors edge on Wii-u and the game literally froze in the final cut scene. Game was hard as nails until I figured out 1 move that... Kind of felt like a cheese. Rts games I grew up on so they aren't too hard for me to get, but such is the nature of learning and subjectivity.
Usually CRPGs have much higher learning curves than JRPGs and console western RPGs. I honestly feel overwhelmed by the few I've tried, but have adapted over time. Edit: I see you have the most popular recent game on your list already. Edit: Roguelikes are worse.
Awesome video! I never really found Dark Cloud too difficult. A lot of the mechanics were new to me as well, but I found it easy to adapt to. I completely agree with Dark Souls though. Still haven't got the hang of it.
Its not that the game itself is hard, just keeping track of it's weapon system and survival mechanics can be a bit to take in. Weapons upgrade by killing enemies, but if durability drains then it's gone for good. If you upgrade past +5 the weapon becomes a gem used to upgrade other weapons etc etc. If you happen to lose the weapon you've been working to build you're pretty screwed for a bit. That aside, it's about learning curves more than difficulty curves. There's a lot to learn in dark cloud because of it's various genres.
@@ChrisGildart I am legit playing it at this very minute. This brief talk about it had me wanting to go back and see how it feels today. Still a super addictive game, but man are the controls (Primarily the camera) pretty dated.
Yeah, that's my one pet peeve with fifth and sixth gen games. Especially if the camera is inverted and there's no option to change it *cough*MarioSunshine*cough*
@@ChrisGildart With dark cloud the issue is that making your character turn left or right rotates the camera with them, so if you just hold right you run in a semi-wide circle. Works better to play with tank-like controls. Only ever push forward on the left analog stick, and use the L1 and R1 camera rotation buttons for turning.
Hard Games and Steep learning curves are not the same: Wizardy 8, X3 Series, X4 Foundation, Mortal Online, Wurm Unlimited, Arma 3, Eve Online, Planet Calypso, Dwarf Fortress, X 11, Life is Feudal, Kerbal Space, ...
01:28 .. Dark Souls.. The world first difficult videogame. Ah yes.. Megaman is the Dark Souls of platform games, Contra is the Dark Souls of 2d action games and Castlevania Nes is the Dark Souls of 2d adventure games😜
I feel like that joke went over so many peoples heads cause I played it so straight lol. Mega man 1 is just plain brutal lol. Mega man 2 though. My all time favorite game.
Battletoads (nes) and athena (arcade) are the darksouls of platform games. The first athena game will kill you 100s of times and that won't even let you cross the first world. @Tarks Gauntlet It went over my head as well, I think I made a post but it is missing.
I love and hate Dark Cloud. It was fun but a super struggle especially when my best daggar broke. Got stuck on the 2nd dungeon and never came back. I still don't understand how to play Record of Agarest War. Maybe I just suck at tactic games. All I wanted to justify my purchase of buying a LE with Anime tiddy mouse pad. Rebuying it on steam with DLC an playing on auto mode also doesn't help my lack of understanding of the games mechanics.
I tried Agarest war starting at 0. Gave up after 5 hours. Something was not clicking for me. I feel like I was understanding it just fine, but something about it just felt like I needed to be TOO particular. Difficulty curve was strong.
Resonance of fate is a good game if you just don't go all gun blazing and use your head for a change. What's so hard to understand? Scratch damage first with machine guns and finish your opponents with direct damage of Handguns and throwable weapons (grenades, knives, molotov cocktails). Only an idiot would consider this a mathematic equation when in reality, it's just the basics of the system. Just make sure to do both of these things during your turn because enemies recover from scratch damage over time. Then there's also elemental properties and special ammo than can help defeat armored enemies. It is satisfying once you understand it all and take advantage of breaking body parts for almost infinite combos. My technique early in the game is to target different enemies in a single turn with the machine gun and turn their health bar completely blue and then finish them all off with allies using hanguns in a single bullet. Customizing your weapons very early with materials you get from enemies is vital to be always on top. A game you should have mentioned instead for its what the fuck battle system is the Last Remnant, now this is a messy one with no tutorial whatsoever and no way to fully grasp anything if you don't own the manual of the 360 version or the ps3 game.
Better go through the comment section and start calling people idiots then. Besides, the sheer length of this comment designed to explain how "Easy" it all is should probably make you realize something about how convoluted it actually is, especially considering how much you left out (Proximity based charge times, movement patterns/shapes, action points.) Add on top of this how poorly the mechanics are really taught to the player (They describe action points as "Bezels" for christ sake. Most people don't even know what that word means,) and you got yourself a pretty terrible learning curve. And I never said it was like a math equation, I said my understanding of the rules was more like I had memorized an equation rather than understood one. I know that the rules work, but the logic seems poor so I could never believe that the rules SHOULD work.
@@TarksGauntlet One of the main reasons I don't pay attention to game awards. They never take the full games into account, to include stuff like optimization.
Dark Souls, the first ever difficult game? You must have never played: Battletoads Literally any Ninja Gaiden game The original DMC3 TMNT on NES Chakan the Forever Man Drakkhen The Lion King Like, bruh... seriously lol
@Vincent Cavanagh Just how I roll lol. I think it's funny to play absurd things straight. Can't be straight and use sarcasm, undermines the joke. That said, it should have been obvious to an extent, considering many of the games later I consider harder, and predate dark souls by a significant margin.
@@pite9 Nah, it's the same either way. You either believe somebody could mean something so absurd legitimately or you don't. Considering the meme status of "X is the dark souls of Y" I'm really surprised anybody could fall into the former category.
This made me want to return to Kingdom Hearts Re:Chain of Memories. I'm stuck at double boss fight on easy difficulty. But when I think about that game I can't help myself thinking it's just a pointless filler with very little story to add to the main plot and I hate grinding when combat is this bad.
I completely understand about Resonance of fate. I was cursing the game for so long. Then one day it just clicked. And when it did, dear god was it fun. I couldn't stop playing. I felt like a gun wielding martial arts god. So glad I stuck with it. Also love the world, the feel, and the music. Which is what made me stick with it as long as I did. Story became a wonky mess tho. But for once I didn't care lol Also great video as always.
Vagrant story holds very near and dear to me I used to rent it at Blockbuster when I was little and die a lot until I got older, more wiser, and really got my timing down. Beating that game was a very satisfying feeling
Congratulations on reaching 10k subs, buddy. Keep it up!
Thanks Erick! I didn't mention it before, but I'm glad to see your monetization issue was resolved!
I LOVED Resonance of Fate. I would kill for a sequel.
The re-release may hnt that direction. We can only hope.
I've been around for a while, and let me just say your editing is getting really good.
The disgea series was this for us man did it take awhile for it to "click " for us. Agree 100% the Dark Cloud series needs both a re release for now console's and a Dark Cloud 3 would be the gold standard.
I quit DS1 3 times over several years before I finally took a $20 gamble and bought BloodBorne. The faster movement was exactly what I needed to break through the hardship and start loving the games. I wasn't even halfway through before I bought the DLC and once I finished I went back to DS1-3 and they've had their claws in me ever since.
I can never understand STING games. (ie Yggdra Union, Knights in the Nightmare) Feels like the most convoluted way to make a combat system. I appreciate that it's unique but I just can't get into it.
Lol I love Resonance of Fate xD anyway, great video as always! And MH3 was also my first MH game!
I agree resonance of fate is a great game with one of the coolest battle systems. Really wish we would get another one.
The battle system is amazing!
Really solid list, though there is one thing want to comment on and maybe give my thoughts on it.
Apologies in advance if this next part seems long.
I just don't get to talk about it much so this might come off as long winded or maybe I could have shortened some stuff idk.
For me, Resonance of Fate is one of those games that I didn't really enjoy playing until I figured out the battle system.
Now, it did wind up becoming one of my all time favorite RPGs, but going back to that enjoyment thing I mentioned, once I figured out how to play the game I took it upon myself to find ways to use the game's mechanics to my advantage whether it be finding ways to level up fast (more or less swapping out weapons between the party occasionally and building up as much scratch damage as possible so I could get lots of exp for whoever wasn't using a machine gun weapon type), or just figuring out different ways to deal with enemies more efficiently (not sure what examples I could go with for this one so not gonna really say much about it).
Anyways, setting aside the battle stuff, the more I played through the game and the further I got, the more it grew on me.
There's some stuff I think could have been better, the stuff the party says when they do attacks or take damage and so on in battles can come off as repetitive for some people, the tutorial stuff is located in the arena and for a first time player they might not know what to do to find it since it's a side area and from what I remember you can potentially play through the entire game without going to it once, and I'm not sure if it's an actual issue but there's a definite difficulty curve in chapter 1 for the place you go to for the story mission.
For anyone that isn't familiar with the way battles work up to that point, especially with the boss of chapter 1, if you can't figure out tri attacks or running and so on, then good luck trying to get past that part.
But once you get past that point, I personally think that as long as you get around to leveling up every weapon type for every party member often then it shouldn't be too hard outside of a few moments later in the game.
Not sure what else I could say. I could gush about different stuff I love from the game, even discuss more stuff I dislike since I don't think it's perfect even though I've always praised various things in the game for one reason or another, but with all of that said I don't want to make this any longer without going into more detail so I'll stop here.
Also curious to know if you would consider what you said at the end, about persevering until you break through the door of understanding applies to grand strategy and similar games? Large scale tactics games and the like. I've tried to learn a lot of these, Total War, Crusader Kings, Hearts of Iron and other Paradox games, even Civilization is far too deep for me to get a grasp on. I guess you take what you give and it takes hours upon hours of learning before it becomes enjoyable but damn I don't think I have what it takes to take a full 3 credit hour course on a game before I play it.
God bless this man for repping Phantom Brave.
Vagrant Story was especially difficult to learn for me. I bought it used from blockbuster way back when I was 10 and it didn't come with an instruction manual so I had to learn the game as best as I could with a lot of experimentation through trial and error.
Ah dark cloud, I still find myself still playing that game every once in awhile
I'm playing it again right now. Game is still super fun and addictive, but oh boy is the camera tough to get used to.
Tark, are you going to do a review of The House in Fata Morgana? It just released a while ago on the Vita digital store, and I think it may be releasing on PS4 at some point. I'm reading through it now and it's not only the best visual novel I've ever read, or quite possibly the best thing I've ever read period, but the CRUELEST. I've read a lot of visual novels and seen some truly horrible shit happen to characters, and none if it compared to what these characters go through. I highly recommend it to you, whether you review it or not. I almost always agree with your reviews and I think you'd fucking love it. The story, writing, music, characters, it's all goddamn perfect.
Coming up on that 10k!!! Fantastic video as always, Tarks.
Really appreciate your thoughts on Dark Souls. I gave up after a few hours because it was so confusing and poorly explained. Hearing your perspective makes me rethink how I went about it. Maybe I’ll revisit it in the near future....
Monster Hunter series is a good pick. Definitely agree with that one.
Need to give Dark Cloud a chance. And the sequel.
Love videos like this, dude.
Resonance of Fate took me about 7-8 hours to understand, then I absolutely loved it- just make the biggest triangles you can and the most badass weapons you can. Until you get to the final boss, when it doesn't work :-(. It took a while for my risk-averse play style to understand that gung-ho attacking was always the best option (until the final boss).
My bete noires are:
1. Final Fantasy VII- in the days before internet or playthrough books, I didn't understand levelling. I've read reviewers claiming the game is too easy, but I finally beat this after 20 years (after about 15-20 hours of farming "Slash Cut") on the PS3 emulation. I still think the game is unfair.
2. God Eater- I had to read up on building better bullets to kill the bouncy lions, then waltzed to the final boss (not final mission as there are apparently character based missions after the final boss) where I just got creamed- 30 or 40 times.
3. Drakengard 3- I needed a TH-cam walkthrough to try to synch with the PS3 to beat the last 3rd of the final boss rhythm game.
I got Dark Souls Remastered on Switch . I played for about 15 mins and was just pissed after a while . I really need to read more up on it more . I haven’t played any of the Dark Cloud games. Resonance of Fate is one of those games I’ve seen on the store shelves but never knew I should get it .Monster Hunter sounds like a real trip , the item management trial and error aspect sounds frustrating. Ugh Seikiro hurt so many friendships on twitter, who knew this would such a divisive topic . Awesome video Tarks ! In really gotta give Dark Souls a chance again .
My friends and I started Monster Hunter on day 1 of the original and we were so confused. Now we G rank everyone that comes out. Amazing game with a very steep learning curve.
I could not get into Dark Cloud 2 for the life of me... frustrated me so much having my weapons break once overused.
Here you are complaining about not being able to find the "Praise the Sun" button. Meanwhile I'm still stuck at the title screen of several games because I can't find the "Any Button", to start it.
Ahh Resonance of Fate, where it took minimum of 3 hours to finish all the games tutorials.
Dark Souls:
"It doesn't even feel that hard anymore" yup, my experience exactly. And you know what? I blame the hype. If you don't go into it expecting an impossible game and try not to approach it like you would any other hack & slash game...it's actually not even half as bad as people make it out to be.
I'd say its hardest aspects are understanding its complex statistical groundwork. Where strength doesn't necessarily means hitting harder, where dexterity isn't "hitting bettrer" etc.
Once you understand how to allocate stat points according to your preferred playstyle rather than what would be logical in other RPG's, the rest becomes more akin to Castlevania / Mega Man of old:
Go in, die, learn, trey again and get further.
Resonance of Fate:
For me, RoF was the Ninja Gaiden (Black) of JRPG's.
Let me explain: You cleared Devil May Cry on several difficulties without much issues, and you're generally pretty good at the genre in general. So why should NG be any diff....and you're dead...
You learn all the combos and enemy patterns and...you're dead...
And sometime later you realize...the game doesn't care about flashy combos, even though it has pages upon pages of them...heck, it's score system doesn't even award significant points for them...so what does the game want from me?
Efficiency...and nothing else. Don't play around, just kill your enemies. Kill one mook as effectively as possible, use his essence drop to then start chaining your charge attacks.
RoF felt very similar to me. If you don't use its systems as intended and to its fullest, the game will kick your butt. It distracts with its incredibly flashy visuals but beneath that, it's just what you said yourself: A very specific and precise math equation. Get that, and you're in for a treat. Don't and it turns into a mess.
Labyrinth of Refrain:
Huh...i got the game based on your review and didn't have any issues since you pretty much covered all the bases :D
Vagrant Story:
Wholeheartedly agreed. It comes from a time where Square had a lot of games with mechanics that required several years of university courses to fully grasp. Legend of Mana's crafting system comes into mind. And frankly...i like it specifically because of that. It doesn't play it safe, instead, it goes for something insanely complex without compromise. And i actually miss those approaches these days.
Nice video man, I actually didn't find MH that hard to learn, yeah it took me some hours to know the stuff you mention like the cooking and dodging mechanics but after beating barroth (the first hard monster) on the 4th try, I solo the entire game Before going into online mode. I also don't know if im just a special case but i used all weapons xd.
Oh and i was planning to buy Labyrinth of Refrain but now i have no doubts i need to get it!
No, any MH is meant to be solo just like any DS.. in my opinion.. XD
I feel if you're just learning than playing with friends is totally the way to go, but at some point you should take it unto yourself to do it all solo. I didn't start soloing until mhw, but that game was way easier than the rest. I feel mostly the same about dark souls. Use the things the game gives you until you think you can do without. Hence why I play ds with no armor or shield now.
Another entertaining video as usual
Great video mate!
I gave up on Vagrant Story back in the day I thought it would be like a Final Fantasy game
For me there has always been two types of difficulty in games, fun hard and stupid hard. Stupid hard games punish you every chance they get and usually have needlessly complex systems that involve immense amounts of grinding. Examples I would put games like the Disgaea series, the Agarest Wars series, Monster Hunter type games, and pretty much all dungeon crawler games in this category. I am not saying they can't be fun but finishing them feels like a waste of time, they all get to a point where you have seen everything and all that's left is just a ton of grinding.
Fun hard games are challenging but if you learn from your mistakes you are constantly rewarded with positive feelings or actual rewards. Examples are Dark Souls, Ys's games , Tales of, and kind of even the Legend of Heroes games. Its not that most of those give you the choice to play on hard or easy I don't care about that. But that putting them on hard just makes every battle feel extremely satisfying especially boss fights. The Legend of Heroes games have the brilliant mechanic of not letting you over level its such an easy thing to keep a game fun but like no one does it. Epic battles feel epic in all of these games on the hard difficulties and if you fail yeah you lose some time but it doesn't crush your soul. You just load up from the nearby save point and learn from your mistakes to me that's how difficulty should be at least in my opinion.
I really liked dark cloud back in the day. I've been tempted to play it again at some point.
Dark cloud was so much fun. I did find it a pretty easy overall.
I'm literally replaying it now. 7 hours in. Talking about it here got me in the mood to see how I would handle it now.
Are you playing it on ps4? I've been tempted to get it on ps4 just to avoid the hang ups of hooking my ps2 to a modern television.
@@caseycoker1051 Nah. Playing on PS2 lol. Dug mine out of the storage container. I always liked DC2 more than 1 but am very surprised to find the game is still as enjoyable as it is.
Nice Video!
Maybe it's me but I feel like you had a different kind of humor in this video, it was almost stealthy, and it was good
Really love this video, agreed with alot of these points.
Most of these I haven't played through besides Dark Souls. I gave up on Sekiro for the time being, it just might not be for me and I love a challenging game. I have Divinity, Labyrinth of Refrain, and Vagrant Story, but haven't gotten to them still. Shout-out for the Tool shirt and animated Nier background.
Ninja Gaiden (the remake on 360) definitely took some adjusting to for me but once I got it down I loved it. Demons, Dark Souls and Bloodbourne while difficult in places were not really ones I personally had trouble adapting to but RTS games (pretty much any of them) just throw me for a loop I think my cat could beat me at those games much more a fighting game and TBS player. I think my biggest problem with RTS games however is that I am not willing to put in the time to learn them because none have hooked me enough like say SF2 did for fighters.
Always interesting how people struggle with different things and excel at others.
I beat Ninja Gaiden razors edge on Wii-u and the game literally froze in the final cut scene. Game was hard as nails until I figured out 1 move that... Kind of felt like a cheese.
Rts games I grew up on so they aren't too hard for me to get, but such is the nature of learning and subjectivity.
Great Video really enjoy your vids keep it up! :D
Usually CRPGs have much higher learning curves than JRPGs and console western RPGs. I honestly feel overwhelmed by the few I've tried, but have adapted over time.
Edit: I see you have the most popular recent game on your list already.
Edit: Roguelikes are worse.
Awesome video! I never really found Dark Cloud too difficult. A lot of the mechanics were new to me as well, but I found it easy to adapt to. I completely agree with Dark Souls though. Still haven't got the hang of it.
Its not that the game itself is hard, just keeping track of it's weapon system and survival mechanics can be a bit to take in.
Weapons upgrade by killing enemies, but if durability drains then it's gone for good. If you upgrade past +5 the weapon becomes a gem used to upgrade other weapons etc etc. If you happen to lose the weapon you've been working to build you're pretty screwed for a bit. That aside, it's about learning curves more than difficulty curves. There's a lot to learn in dark cloud because of it's various genres.
Man, I should go back to that game. I was very happy to see it get released for PS4 along with 2. Just wish it came with a widescreen patch.
@@ChrisGildart I am legit playing it at this very minute. This brief talk about it had me wanting to go back and see how it feels today.
Still a super addictive game, but man are the controls (Primarily the camera) pretty dated.
Yeah, that's my one pet peeve with fifth and sixth gen games. Especially if the camera is inverted and there's no option to change it *cough*MarioSunshine*cough*
@@ChrisGildart With dark cloud the issue is that making your character turn left or right rotates the camera with them, so if you just hold right you run in a semi-wide circle.
Works better to play with tank-like controls. Only ever push forward on the left analog stick, and use the L1 and R1 camera rotation buttons for turning.
I wish resonance has a ps4 or xbox 360 release. I loved vagrant story.it was hard at first but once you learn the mechanics of the game it is fun.
Resonance of Fate is available on PS4.
Hard Games and Steep learning curves are not the same: Wizardy 8, X3 Series, X4 Foundation, Mortal Online, Wurm Unlimited, Arma 3, Eve Online, Planet Calypso, Dwarf Fortress, X 11, Life is Feudal, Kerbal Space, ...
I mean, that's what I tried to say In the beginning. Ikaruga is a hard game, but dead simple to learn.
I still don't understand Vagrant Story, even after walking through it with an in-depth guide. Still gorgeous, though.
Don't blame yourself. It's really fucked
Ayy my man getting decent views, keep going
Steep learning curves are my kryptonite lol. I suck at games.
01:28 .. Dark Souls.. The world first difficult videogame.
Ah yes.. Megaman is the Dark Souls of platform games, Contra is the Dark Souls of 2d action games and Castlevania Nes is the Dark Souls of 2d adventure games😜
I feel like that joke went over so many peoples heads cause I played it so straight lol.
Mega man 1 is just plain brutal lol. Mega man 2 though. My all time favorite game.
@@TarksGauntlet I know its a joke m8.. I just expanded on it by using the "Dark Souls of" meme 😉
Battletoads (nes) and athena (arcade) are the darksouls of platform games. The first athena game will kill you 100s of times and that won't even let you cross the first world.
@Tarks Gauntlet
It went over my head as well, I think I made a post but it is missing.
Resoance of Fate big learning curve indeed
Good idea for a video.
I love and hate Dark Cloud. It was fun but a super struggle especially when my best daggar broke. Got stuck on the 2nd dungeon and never came back.
I still don't understand how to play Record of Agarest War. Maybe I just suck at tactic games. All I wanted to justify my purchase of buying a LE with Anime tiddy mouse pad. Rebuying it on steam with DLC an playing on auto mode also doesn't help my lack of understanding of the games mechanics.
I tried Agarest war starting at 0. Gave up after 5 hours. Something was not clicking for me. I feel like I was understanding it just fine, but something about it just felt like I needed to be TOO particular. Difficulty curve was strong.
Resonance of fate is a good game if you just don't go all gun blazing and use your head for a change. What's so hard to understand? Scratch damage first with machine guns and finish your opponents with direct damage of Handguns and throwable weapons (grenades, knives, molotov cocktails). Only an idiot would consider this a mathematic equation when in reality, it's just the basics of the system. Just make sure to do both of these things during your turn because enemies recover from scratch damage over time. Then there's also elemental properties and special ammo than can help defeat armored enemies. It is satisfying once you understand it all and take advantage of breaking body parts for almost infinite combos. My technique early in the game is to target different enemies in a single turn with the machine gun and turn their health bar completely blue and then finish them all off with allies using hanguns in a single bullet. Customizing your weapons very early with materials you get from enemies is vital to be always on top. A game you should have mentioned instead for its what the fuck battle system is the Last Remnant, now this is a messy one with no tutorial whatsoever and no way to fully grasp anything if you don't own the manual of the 360 version or the ps3 game.
Better go through the comment section and start calling people idiots then. Besides, the sheer length of this comment designed to explain how "Easy" it all is should probably make you realize something about how convoluted it actually is, especially considering how much you left out (Proximity based charge times, movement patterns/shapes, action points.) Add on top of this how poorly the mechanics are really taught to the player (They describe action points as "Bezels" for christ sake. Most people don't even know what that word means,) and you got yourself a pretty terrible learning curve.
And I never said it was like a math equation, I said my understanding of the rules was more like I had memorized an equation rather than understood one. I know that the rules work, but the logic seems poor so I could never believe that the rules SHOULD work.
I'd like to see you try a fighting game then tell us that story.
Ultimate mortal Kombat 3. They have tough difficulty curves though, not really learning curves.
I'm one of those who can't get on with Sekiro, lol.
I beated sekiro....I wont play it again. In ps4 is broken (27fps+ screentearing)
Yup. Performance is awful. Frame pacing is one thing, but at times it literally feels like it drops or delays controls.
@@TarksGauntlet One of the main reasons I don't pay attention to game awards. They never take the full games into account, to include stuff like optimization.
Dwarf Fortress
First difficult video game he says (Dark Souls), lol. Never played original NES games I'm guessing.
PS I know it's a joke.
Look, this is a hard hitting fact as sourced from game journalists around the world. Dark Souls is the first hard game ever made.
@@TarksGauntlet damn, you got me there. Can't argue with game journalist logic, lol.
Dark Souls, the first ever difficult game?
You must have never played:
Battletoads
Literally any Ninja Gaiden game
The original DMC3
TMNT on NES
Chakan the Forever Man
Drakkhen
The Lion King
Like, bruh... seriously lol
Bruh, it was a joke about how society treats the game.
*zero sarcasm detected, joke null*
@Vincent Cavanagh Just how I roll lol. I think it's funny to play absurd things straight. Can't be straight and use sarcasm, undermines the joke. That said, it should have been obvious to an extent, considering many of the games later I consider harder, and predate dark souls by a significant margin.
@@TarksGauntlet I think that joke is calibrated for the offline world.
@@pite9 Nah, it's the same either way. You either believe somebody could mean something so absurd legitimately or you don't. Considering the meme status of "X is the dark souls of Y" I'm really surprised anybody could fall into the former category.
This made me want to return to Kingdom Hearts Re:Chain of Memories. I'm stuck at double boss fight on easy difficulty.
But when I think about that game I can't help myself thinking it's just a pointless filler with very little story to add to the main plot and I hate grinding when combat is this bad.
Disliked because you attacked Solaire. How dare you.