History Main / NumericalHard

* In ''VideoGame/ShinMegamiTenseiIV'' and ''VideoGame/ShinMegamiTenseiIVApocalypse'', you do less damage and have less accuracy as the difficulty increases, while the opposite applies to the enemies. Additionally, the members-only shop in Ginza will charge you more the higher your difficulty level is. Averted in ''Apocalypse''[='=]s eponymous HarderThanHard difficulty, which also forces on the WeCannotGoOnWithoutYou mechanic (which is optional in lower difficulties, where the default defeat condition is "all party members perish, not just the protagonist") and disables changing the difficulty in the middle of the current playthrough.

* In ''VideoGame/ShinMegamiTenseiIV'' and ''VideoGame/ShinMegamiTenseiIVApocalypse'', you do less damage and have less accuracy as the difficulty increases, while the opposite applies to the enemies. Additionally, the members-only shop in Ginza will charge you more the higher your difficulty level is. Averted in ''Apocalypse''[='=]s eponymous HarderThanHard difficulty, which also forces on the WeCannotGoOnWithoutYou mechanic (which is optional in lower difficulties, where the defeat condition is "all party members perish, not just the protagonist") and disables changing the difficulty in the middle of the current playthrough.

* In ''VideoGame/ShinMegamiTenseiIV'' and ''VideoGame/ShinMegamiTenseiIVApocalypse'', you do less damage and have less accuracy as the difficulty increases, while the opposite applies to the enemies. Additionally, the members-only shop in Ginza will charge you more the higher your difficulty level is. Averted in ''Apocalypse''[='=]s eponymous HarderThanHard difficulty, which also forces on the WeCannotGoOnWithoutYou mechanic (which is optional in lower difficulties, where the defeat condition is "all party members perish, not just the protagonist") and disables changing the difficulty in the middle of the current playthrough.

[[folderDriving Game]]

* In ''VideoGame/{{beatmania}} IIDX'', the Easy LifeMeter is this to the standard meter, decreasing the penalty for missed notes. The EX Hard LifeMeter is this to the Hard meter (gauge starts at 100%, you don't need 80% or more to clear the song, but falling to 0% at any point is an instant failure) but with more damage for missing notes.

* The Reaper of Souls expansion to ''VideoGame/DiabloIII'' takes this and runs with it. Each difficulty level exponentially increases the health and damage of enemies, leading to some [[https://us.battle.net/d3/en/game/guide/gameplay/game-difficulty large numbers]]. Additionally, more monsters are spawned per difficulty level.

* Hero Mode in the ''Franchise/TheLegendOfZelda'' is this. In its introduction in ''[[VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaSkywardSword Skyward Sword]]'', all enemies do double damage, stamina-using actions consume a bit more stamina, and heart drops are eliminated. This is carried over into the UpdatedRereleases of ''[[VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaTheWindWaker Wind Waker]]'' and ''[[VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaTwilightPrincess Twilight Princess]]'', though the latter mirrors the entire world much like its Wii version. ''Twilight Princess HD'' also adds an bonus setting with the Ganondorf Toys/{{amiibo}}, which also doubles damage; this can stack with Hero Mode for quadruple damage. Hero Mode makes its 2D debut in ''[[VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaALinkBetweenWorlds A Link Between Worlds]]'', where it quadruples enemy damage, though heart drops are still present to compensate.

* Things that are examples: On hard, enemies do more 50% more damage and take 50% less and drop less ammo, but fight you the same way as they did before.
* Things that are NOT examples: On hard, new types of enemies appear, you have longer levels, and bosses have a new attack or two.

* In ''VideoGame/SystemShock2'''s higher difficulties, your stats and skills cost more cyber modules to upgrade, but the placement and number of modules remain the same. The HP and MP bonuses you receive from upgrading also dive sharply with increasing difficulty, making a particular special upgrade that gives you a mere 5 HP much more important at higher difficulties. Enemy drop percentages also fall, so on the highest difficulty, fighting is usually a frightful waste of resources. And yes, buying ammo costs more too.

* ''Franchise/{{Tales|Series}}'' games will usually multiply enemy health and stats by 1.5 and 2.0 on Hard and Mania difficulties.

* ''VideoGame/TheElderScrollsIVOblivion'' has a difficulty slider. Set at easiest, all your attacks do 6 times their normal damage and enemies do 1/6th their normal amount. Set at its hardest, those numbers are reversed. Nothing else is changed.
** ''[[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsIIIMorrowind Morrowind]]'' has the same slider with the same effects.

*** ''Legendary'' has you deal 1/3 damage and take 3x damage. This setting is only available in certain versions.

* Happens in Challenge mode of every ''Franchise/RatchetAndClank'' game after the first one. Enemies take more hits to kill, and can damage you much quicker. But conversely, challenges pay out more money, and there's a bolt multiplier to make getting money off dead enemies easier to amass. However, you'll need the money to buy new versions of your old weapons that can be upgraded with more damage and bigger ammo capacity, not to mention some BFG's and better armours (unless you really grinded for money in the first playthrough and brought them then). It generally means the game is harder in the opening stages when you need even your most powerful rockets to take out the opening enemies, even though there attacks are rubbish enough to not hit you, but gets easier as you get more and more of the big weapons.

* ''VideoGame/XCom'' enemies get higher stats on higher difficulty levels. Higher firing accuracy, time units, and Reaction add up to more ambushes. The lowest difficulty also halves armour, but all other difficulties use the same armour stat.
** ...At least in theory. ''UFO Defense'' has a bug where even if you pick Superhuman (the highest difficulty level), as soon as you save your game or load a save, you're suddenly playing on Beginner (the lowest). Both devs and fans went completely unaware of the bug for a long time, so when the devs received complaints that Superhuman difficulty was too easy, they essentially reversed the issue by scaling ''Terror From The Deep''[='=]s Beginning difficulty to the original's Superhuman. Incidentally, this allows one who is aware of the difficulty-reset bug to essentially play a [[HarderThanHard double-Superhuman]] mode in ''TFTD'', which is exactly as terrifying as it sounds. They finally got it right in ''Apocalypse'' and ''Interceptor'', but ''Interceptor'''s difficulty only affects three things: how long it takes to kill the alien craft (their armor and shields are boosted, essentially), how susceptible your pilots are to mind-control (they get penalized at higher difficulty levels), and how quickly the aliens expand (at higher difficulty levels, you'll encounter alien bases all over the place, whereas at lower levels, you'll be able to keep the map clean of bases with little difficulty).

* ''DarkSun'' video games had a difficulty slider, which only affected enemies' HP, about 10% per step. The sound effects that accompanied moving the slider deserve mentioning: "Make way for the queen's garbage!" for "easy", a human shriek for "balanced", "Die!" for "hard" and a rampager's roar for "hideous".

* Easy Mode and Challenge Mode in ''VideoGame/PokemonBlack2AndWhite2'' merely change the opposing Pokemon's levels in most cases. There are a few isolated instances of non-numerical changes (usually Gym Leaders) but they're notoriously rare.

* ''[[VideoGame/{{Boktai}} Lunar Knights]]'' has this as well with its difficulty settings. Enemy levels (which determine stats and damage tolerances) will increase on higher difficulty levels (Normal < Hard < [[HarderThanHard Nightmare]]) by a percentage rather than a number. It doesn't seem like much at first, but everything inside the gates of New Culiacan onward is ''[[{{Cap}} level 99]]''! Beforehand, [[MagikarpPower Aaron]] states that he's going to protect Lucian during your trip through the city streets. If you chose to neglect the gunslinger and don't have anything resembling guarding skill, grinding is your only solution, as the damage from a Lv99 Hot Dog in EF weather is murder (And that's as weak as Flame attacks get, and you run into one in the first block to boot!).