Games that were easier or harder than you expected

OR

"Games that you expected to totally kick your ass, but didn't!"

and

"Games that you did not expect to kick your ass, but did!"

EASIER THAN I THOUGHT: Meteos. Possibly the most complicated puzzle game ever, with extensive, variable rules between every planet, tons of planets, several crazy modes, and a screen with so much happening on it at once it seems impossible to keep track of it all. But, maybe it's the music or something, but that's the sort of game that just sends you into that zone. The Don't Think, Feel zone. And it all internalizes to make perfect sense and you shoot the entire screen off at once and you feel like a total badass.

HARDER THAN I THOUGHT: Tigger's Honey Hunt on the N64. No, really. Long ago, my little sister rented this game from a Blockbuster because she was small and liked Winnie-the-Pooh, as small children tend to. I played it myself out of curiosity. Although it is a small child's game in many ways, it is surprisingly devious about hiding secrets, and you have to be pretty clever to find everything. I didn't expect a Winnie-the-Pooh game to challenge me, but there you go.

"Proto-Indo-European makes the damnedest words related. It's great. It's the Kevin Bacon of etymology." ~Madrugada

EASIER THAN I THOUGHT: A Reckless Disregard For Gravity. It looked hard at first, but it is simple enough to digest while still being challenging enough.

HARDER THAN I THOUGHT: Test Drive Unlimited Friggin' 2. I got stuck and gave up on it for a good reason.

"Hipsters: the most dangerous gang in the US." - Pacific Mackerel

The Complete Collection of FFIV is easier than expected. As in, it's easier than the original.

Apparently the GBA version was already easier, but the difficulty was restored in the European version.

People aren't as awful as the internet makes them out to be.

Harder than I though: Dragon Age

I played on Normal. And the fights in the origin were relatively easy, no one fell once. But once I got to Ostagar it was reload upon reload...

"It's so hard to be humble, knowing how great I am."

Easier than I thought: Demon's Souls. Sure, it's still tough, but it's not Ninja Gaiden hard.

Harder than I thought: Gradius III. Is it just me, or is this one disproportionately hard by comparison to the rest of the series?

Easier than I thought: Kingdom Hearts 2. Oh it's challenging, but I had a way easier time against the Orginization members than my brother.

Harder than I thought: Arc Rise Fantasia. OH. MY. GOD. ALL of the bosses that I've fought have kicked my ass. It also doesn't help that the current mooks I can fight are very strong.

Don't make me fire Pinky's party cannon.

Easier than I thought: Portal. After I played the Flash Version, I thought the game would be a bit tricky. I guess not. I could actually figure out the puzzles and dying was minimal

Harder than I thought: Epic Battle Fantasy 3. The game's normal mode is harder than the previous two...guess that's what happens when you don't start forging your equipment and get reluctant with your items. Still on the hard side though...

edited 6th Jul '11 7:48:45 AM by JustaUsername

Some people say I'm lazy. It's hard to disagree.

Easier :

Talesof Rebirth - aside from tedious encounter rate and puzzles that requires you to type in Japanese, I found it pretty easy. I expected it to be harder, but then again I went through my first playthrough with seldomly Enhance my weapons. Oh and probably I'm the only person here who uses Annie as my main and knows how to play her effectively (in my taste, however).

Harder :

Ragnarok Online - 6 years playing, yet I'm still not transcending. I blame people who put Bloody Branches at every single field that connects directly to the towns. I found it easier just because my sister (who was a nearly-aura Priestess) showed me it as she and her friends hunting at Glast Heim (it was pre-Transcendent era at that time).

More later~.

Easier: Most every game that my friends tout as hard. Specifically, though, I thought Dead Space would have me sliced up more frequently than it managed.

Harder: Err. Mortal Kombat Trilogy was way harder than I remember it being. Also Street Fighter II Turbo at the mall. Friggen T Hawk.

edited 6th Jul '11 9:27:44 AM by Zeromaeus

Okami was so easy that it actually angered me severely. I mean, I wasn't expecting something as hard as a good old-fashioned Western CRPG, but nor was I expecting something as easy as... 3D Mario/Zelda. I felt insulted by how difficult it was to die in that game, to the point where it almost overwhelmed the (many) positives for me.

Titan Quest was BOTH. The original Titan Quest, sans end game boss, was mostly easier than expected, even for a Diablo clone. The end boss and expansion, though, were like going into Diablo Hell on /players 8 again. Good times, good times.

Furthermore, I think Guantanamo must be destroyed.

Order of Ecclessia being easier than I had expected. I had heard about its difficult and it was indeed hard.

...because I had a broken shoulder button and didn't realize it for a while during some of the boss fights since it would work on occasion.

Once I had me a DS with all its buttons working properly and at all times I was able to finally truly experience this thing and discover that it was actually rather easy and that the bosses had but two things going for them difficulty wise. One, the bosses are mostly all completely new to the series so one can't rely on the tried and methods to killing that same fucking thing you've run across in like four of the other games. Two, the bosses have rather large health capacities and those can be annoying to whittle down until you discover what glyph or glyph combo takes decent to amazing sized chunks from their health pool.

The patterns are terribly difficult to learn or dodge and finding out what glyph or glyph combo kicks a particular boss's ass is just a matter of going through a preliminary test run of the dude using everything you have while making certain to watch what it is he does.

Also...Shanoa can do various things like backdashing and sliding. Use this. If ever there were a game in the series where this is helpful this is the one.

Harder than I thought: Lufia 1 and 2 for the SNES. Lufia 1 and 2 would prefer that you grind. Like really prefer. They almost demand it at times. I went back to playing these games from my youth recently and was surprised at just how mercilessly hard everything was hitting me. This is apparently, at least in part, because I was vastly underleveled and underequipped according to every guide I came across (I began looking at them so that I wouldn't miss any free shit I could gain by looking around).

I loved this and desired to keep it this way for as long as I could. Much fun was had as even the "easy bosses" were capable of raping me into oblivion and every battle became a game of careful buff, debuff, attack, and heal timing.

edited 6th Jul '11 9:33:44 AM by Aondeug

If someone wants to accuse us of eating coconut shells, then that's their business. We know what we're doing. - Achaan Chah

Valkyria Chronicles was quite a bit tougher than I expected.

Seeing all these piss ant tropers trying to talk tough makes me laugh. If Matrix were here, he'd laugh too.

I've beaten Vagrant Story in my first full playthrough with only one death.

Balance of all elements flows in the masters' bodies. To be a master, find the elements and fight the subconscious.

Easier: any game where character upgrades appear too fast for the difficulty curve to keep up, resulting in a difficult beginning but an easy endgame. This includes, but is not limited to, Mass Effect 2, Far Cry 2, and Batman Arkham Asylum.

Harder: Advance Wars Days of Ruin. AAAGH!(It doesn't help that you can't bring units from one map to another—in most turn-based strategy games, I'm conservative in early levels so I can bring overwhelming force down on later foes.)

edited 6th Jul '11 3:16:52 PM by feotakahari

That's Feo . . . He's a disgusting, mysoginistic, paedophilic asshat who moonlights as a shitty writer—Something Awful

Easier: Dawn Of War II. I've always sucked terribly at strategy games, but Dawn made micromanagement... Manageable. Mostly by not forcing you to send 150 soldiers at the enemy individually. This let me actually focus on the strategy aspect and it turns out i'm pretty good at that.

Harder: Hello Kitty Roller Rescue. An incredibly easy game, but i actually had to put effort into beating it. And you know what? I liked it.

Harder: Bayonetta, Easier: Final Fantasy Tactics A2.

Likes many underrated webcomics

Easier: Shin Megami Tensei II wasn't to bad, even the bosses. Then again, I stepped in ready to overlevel and get magnetite like 'F, so I had it a bit easier than most. Running out sucked, but then I just went to a few of the lower level areas. Never finished it, but I felt good throughout most of it.

Harder: Man, Mortal Kombat 9 was going so well until Shao Kahn. I spent hours trying land cheap combos, avoid getting hit and search for every strategy online, but nothing worked. To this day I haven't beaten him and that fight ultimately embittered me against the game.

Harder: A few years ago, for reasons I won't go into, I was forced to play a licensed Spongebob video game for the PS 2, based on the movie. It wasn't impossible, but as far as games that can only realistically appeal to children go it's probably the hardest one ever, except the one game I'm forgetting (not counting NES platformers because they had an all ages appeal. This game is simply too generic to appeal to someone who is old enough to remember Super Mario 64 and Banjo-Kazooie. [also please don't take offense in the unlikely case that you, person reading this, liked the game])

Easier: God Hand. It's not THAT hard. Its much acclaimed 'fairness' makes it pretty easy once you learn to dodge and get your reaction time honed. When you take out all the cheap deaths, you give the player a chance to learn, rather than forcing them to try over and over again and win by a fluke. Also, it's very easy to break with chain yanker, drunken twist, etc. Except for Evil Gene's fight, that is extremely cheap and broken fuck you clover.

Spongebob Squarepants: the movie game?

I remember that one.

Agreeded with you. Except I liked the game and is on my list of licenced games than are decent (I may go as far as calling it good, even... maybe. Not sure...)

BUT Battle For Bikini Buttom was WAY better than the game based in the movie, IMO. And I am calling it good directly, lol, with no doubt.

But hey, then again, I am apparently one of the few people in Earth who didnt find Super Mario 64 to be that good of a game (Of course, the fact than I played it for the first time about 1 year ago probably dosnt helps... LOL). But ya the Spongebob games were a copy of it. Good ones IMO.

edited 6th Jul '11 7:03:08 PM by NONAMEGIVEN

"That is not dead which can eternal lie, And with strange aeons even death itself may die."

Easier: Brawl. Specifically, Tabuu on Intense. It's hard, but not as hard as everyone says it is.

Harder: Pikmin 2. I expected it to be easy like the first one, And it was at first. But those endgame caves are just unfairly difficult.

"Hell hath no fury like a flaming skeleton on a motorcycle"- Ghost Rider

Yeah it's not a stretch to call it decent (I'd go for 'mediocre', but not bad by any means), but Spongebob the cartoon the movie the game is based on the movie which is why I say it has no all-ages appeal. The environment/game world is very very important in a cartoony platformer, which is why I prefer Banjo-Kazooie to any Mario game even though they play much better.

PS I don't hate Spongebob, I actually really liked the show, but anything past the early seasons including the movie I found lame and childish

Yeah, my favorite was the underwater one, which had electricity despite only allowing you to take blues, and a giant steamroller blob who came around to slaughter you if you took more than three seconds to pick up that cookie. I also like how worthless monetarily the items in the dungeon were.

Personally I'd like to see more dungeons that hard in Pikmin 3, or at least some more curveballs. Overall the game was still too easy and monotonous once you've seen every different type of dungeon (snow, water, rusty blue metal, toy box, cave, bathtub) for the 10th time. Or better yet, no dungeons at all and bring back the time limit, but make it have several different endings based on how long it took rather than a binary pass/fail. The only parts I found too hard were some of the boss battles (that lobster freak thing at the end of the boss rush dungeon comes to mind).

Easier : Touhou shooting games (Normal difficulty)

Harder : Blazing Souls Accelate, because I can't find any help for it (like walkthroughs and stuff.)

If people learned from their mistakes, there wouldn't be this thing called bad habits.

Easier: Ocarina of Time: Master Quest. All it takes is a little observation, a little patience, and a good wariness of possible cheap shots.

Harder: My trigger finger was not ready for Demons Souls.

ALL CREATURE WILL DIE AND ALL THE THINGS WILL BE BROKEN. THAT'S THE LAW OF SAMURAI.

Harder that I expected: The Smurfs on the SNES, easy mode. especially the Difficulty Spike of the last levels which have One-Hit Kill hazards.

Easier than I expected: The Smurfs on the SNES, hard mode. Don't get me wrong, it was harder than easy mode, just... not by much. Beat it just after an easy playthrough with a "let's see how far I can survive" mindset.

"And as long as a sack of shit is not a good thing to be, chivalry will never die."

The first few Resident Evil games took me surprise with how stingy they are with ammo and how hard it is to kill some enemies, but that was because I played RE 4 first before playing any of the original games. And then I had the great misfortune of finding out what happens when you leave a ton of zombie corpses behind without burning their bodies...