Game balancing and relative difficulty

this is exactly the issue the player should be rewarded by exploration via survival, rather than making the game easier. you shouldn't need to self regulate.

I want CotM difficulty. I want the bosses to leave me crying, huddled in the corner.

You are doing the work of the gods if you mod it that way  . Unfortunately I ordered on PS4 so I won't be able to play it like that but it's good to know someone is gonna do that.

"Why can't X be more like Dark Souls" is a bit of a played out narrative in the video game community (to the point that its basically a meme) but I will agree with the overall point that SOTN was "roll your face on the controller" easy and didn't really challenge you at all to use the various systems at your disposal. Regardless of whatever hard/extra mode a Bloodstained may have, I do hope at least at its base, the game is balanced well enough to require actual effort

Circle of the Moon and Order of Ecclesia I think are good games to take after in this regard - they weren't obnoxious or super off-putting to newer players but you had to pay attention and think on your feet to succeed.

As someone who has enjoyed the difficulty of every souls style game and the 3D Ninja Gaiden games I wouldn't mind hard mode being dark souls hard and this difficult being accessible from the first time through the game. I also think there should be a normal mode that is slightly easier than Order of Ecclesia or just as moderately challenging as Lament of Innocence. A lot of us here and who backed the game are likely long time fans of igavanias but an outright difficult game can discourage new fans from getting into the game

I also don't like this notion of "Why X game can't be dificult like Dark Souls" mantra everyone is talking about these days.

Even so, IGA said many times in the past that the main reason most of his games weren't dificult, is because he wanted people to be able to pick-and-play easily. But he agreed on fans demands and made Order of Ecclesia harder.


By the way, want a hard Igavania game? Play Order of Ecclesia on clean Hard mode (with no New game+). Hard as hell!

Pure Miriam Well, you're adding the word "difficult" in there. There's more good about those games than just them being "hard"/more behind them than the perception that everyone that likes them are just masochists or "git gud" elitists. They have great design ideas and an old school design philosophy that reminds people of things like the original Legend of Zelda and IGAvania games.

Just so happens too, IGA has stated that Zelda was his main inspiration more than Metroid for SotN haha. That kind of non-linaer and open-ended, secrets everywhere gameplay...mixed with a mysterious fantasy setting, it's really something special.

It has nothing to do with "hard" aghhh

And there is some truth to that, but just making things more difficult won't really help, there has to be a smart balance of reward and the palpable feeling that you're bit by bit making progress/improving. I'm trying to dispel some of that stigma behind it all if I can. The community for those games does have a reputation of a bunch of "tryhard", bragging "hardcore gamers" lol. I think it's a good call to separate the idea of a game from the ideas of the community of the game, but that is indeed placing a burden on the observer. Perceptions and stereotypes often exist for reasons.

Even with how most fans "seem" to be though, it's only that vocal portion of them...and a good bit of the fanbase actually parodies it with memes. Hard to tell which of those things are sarcasm and which are serious sometimes, which probably adds to the issue, but hey that's the internet.

I guess I just focus more on the rewarding aspects of it, and how by being so non-linear and abstruse in design they actually counter the trend of all information otherwise being so readily available for everything else. The thing is, someone could look at this statement and indeed read it as "harder and no hand-holding" lol, but that's a quick simplification I don't like.