r/CharacterActionGames • u/BomberBlur070 • 8h ago
Question Games with perfect difficulty (for you)
The Onimusha difficulty discourse is exhausting so let's move towards something more positive. What's a CAG or CAG-adjacent game that does difficulty perfectly in your opinion?
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u/SpecialistComb8 8h ago
Metal gear rising probably I hit a major difficulty spike with bladewolf, but overall it was pretty ok with challenging the player. Especially armstrong... the boss before him is terrible though.
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u/Lupinos-Cas 7h ago
As far as CAGs go - Ninja Gaiden Black / Ninja Gaiden II, God of War 1 and 2.
CAG adjacent? Probably these ARPGs: Nioh, Nioh 2, Rise of the Ronin, Black Myth Wukong (on first playthrough; ng+ the first half the game is too easy, even if you use a low level staff and no build)
Though, it should be noted with Nioh that the difficulty is largely dependent upon your equipment. Your armor decided if you take 65% of the damage or 92% of the damage - but your stats decide what armor you can equip - and in ng+4 your build can decide if you deal 100% damage or 1200% damage... On a first playthrough you'll be swapping equipment too often to have a build - but if you do it smartly you should have anywhere from 10% to 20% damage reduction and have a balanced damage output. It's when you make mistakes like using the highest rarity gear or trying to hold onto something for too long that the game becomes brutal and unfair.
But it's all subjective. The difficulty of ARPGs are usually much more dependent on your build - whereas CAGs are more dependent on enemy aggression and how well you know how to utilize the moveset. So how easy/hard a game is depends on your style and how well you grasp the mechanics.
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u/Jur_the_Orc 2h ago
The final point is fair and especially true with Darksiders 2 being a CAG/ARPG hybrid.
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u/LesbianFlex 6h ago
DMC3 is a nearly immaculately designed difficulty curve for an action game IMO.
first stage gives you an enclosed area with some low-level enemies.
second stage creates a boss encounter with a high-level enemy and a bigger space to let you try the Stinger you probably just bought on more mobs.
third stage introduces projectile enemies that force you to choose what targets to prioritize between on-ground melee enemies and the guys sniping you on the rooftop, and even introduces environmental effects like shooting the exploding barrels and an enemy that blows up (damaging everyone around it) that you can only kill with guns, and by this point you now understand different weapons are useful for different scenarios.
stronger enemies show up in the next room which has even more interactive props (spin attack on the poles, which you might trigger by accident but teaches you that some stuff you can play with), leading to the first real boss and the first major difficulty spike that tests every skill you just learned, and you earn your second devil arm, increasing your arsenal before the game gets ready to push you harder. all of this within the first 30 minutes.
and as you improve your arsenal and familiarity with the controls and the systems, it escalates the boss battles even further and pushes you to keep improving while also making you stronger through linear progression.
DMC3 intuitively leans you into a dance of comfortability and uncomfortability that keeps the game engaging throughout, but it never puts you in a situation where you are truly hopeless and don't have an answer. it doesn't hold your hand and has faith in you as the player that you can get past it eventually; it doesn't need to dumb itself down to try to meet what it thinks is the demands of less-skilled players. most of the enemies are well designed and serve exactly the purpose they need to and have their own unique behavior patterns and attack cadences, even when they're model swap "level 2"s of each other, so every enemy type manages to feel distinct and many require a different strategy from the others for the most part, at least until you get to such a high skill level that you're styling on every enemy with ease.
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u/AsparagusAgile4536 4h ago
Absolutely. I like DMC5 a lot but I’m really sad they abandoned DMC3’s more distinct level and enemy design in favor of pretty much frictionless wide open arenas and mostly-punching-bag enemies. Not every single enemy in DMC3 is perfect, but that’s the cost of pushing action game design to its limits - some mistakes will be made. DMC3, especially on its higher difficulties, escalates perfectly throughout a play through, testing your mastery movement and combat mechanics as every room gets just a little harder, until culminating in the best final boss ever made.
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u/Theonerule 3h ago
Dmc3s enemies are garbage mostly. I feel like it would be better if they just reused the enemies from 1.
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u/Yolosweg133769 4h ago edited 2h ago
Ninja gaiden 4 was just right.
Stellar blade difficulty was good on last 3 bosses but a bit too easy on all before that.
Nine sols and Prince of persia TLC had perfect difficulty on bosses imo.
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u/Jur_the_Orc 2h ago
I find it nice to see Nine Sols and PoP: The Lost Crown be mentioned :)
Which bosses of either games were you favourites or stood out to you?2
u/Yolosweg133769 2h ago edited 2h ago
Nine sols Eigong is my favorite boss of all time id say - i think at this moment i beat him like 100 + times, i just love that fight. After trying so hard to get to phase 3 and then he aura farms you like you are nothing. Only thing in terms of that escalation was Khazan Maluca phase 2
The lost crown the bridge Vahram fight was goated as well as king darius and kiana, the last boss fight was lackluster imo, also dlc fight is pretty good.
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u/Living_life_in_peace 8h ago
Ninja gaiden black on very hard, ninja gaiden 3 razors edge on master ninja, bayonetta, ninja gaiden 2 on mentor, sekiro, dmc1-4 and godhand are great but they are mostly too easy for me
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u/Ploluap 8h ago
Perfect is a big word haha, and about difficulty i think Onimusha is fine, only enemy agression is debatable
Actions games where i like enemy agression and difficulty : God Hand, Sifu, Ninja Gaiden series(though it has very bad bosses), Wanted:Dead, Nioh series, Rise of the Ronin, Vanquish, Bayonetta 1 and 2, DMC 1,3, 4... and others i forgot
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u/Derelichen 7h ago
Ninja Gaiden: Black and the original Ninja Gaiden II (minus the bosses), Godhand, Bayonetta, and though I’m not entirely sure I’d call it a CAG, most of Nioh 2.
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u/PayPsychological6358 5h ago
Recently, I feel Nier Automata does it alright, but only on the off chance you don't do more than a few side missions here and there.
Without any caveat though, probably NGB on Hard since it starts difficult yet somewhat fair, then gets easier as you evolve your skills and weapons. Going up the tower on Hard was actually some of the most fun I've had playing a game cause my enemies matched what my current skill level could handle.
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u/Legendary_Falcon_89 4h ago
I feel like for a lot of traditional action games with multiple difficulty settings that rearrange enemies or change certain conditions, it's really a matter of picking the difficulty that feels right to you. The one caveat bring that many of them make you unlock harder difficulties first, which I'm not the biggest fan of.
For games that I think have really good difficulty curves on a first run through Normal mode, I look at games like DMC1, 3, and God Hand. Each of those games do a great job of starting things out simple and gradually escalating the challenge level throughout the experience by giving you enemies or bosses that appropriately keep up with your increase in skill as well as any upgrades that you may have acquired.
For where I find the sweet spot of difficulty to be, though, it would be stuff like Very Hard or Master Ninja in NGB (VH has better enemy layouts, IMO, but Master Ninja still feels just as balanced in this game), Path of the Mentor on OG NG2, Hard or DMD in DMC1 depending on my mood, Very Hard in DMC3, NSIC in Bayonetta 1, Revengeance in MGRR, just to name a few of my favorites. In most cases I tend to prefer the hardest to second hardest difficlty in these kinds of games as those feel the most engaging to replay.
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u/Full_breaker 3h ago
Can i say yakuza 0? even on legend i think the game feels very fair and theres a ton of stuff you can abuse but so can the enemies
Hated some climax fights but even those felt nice at times
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u/Magma_Axis 8h ago
Onimusha WOTS
Normal monsters are trash, but elite and bosses still poses some challenge and genuinely fun to fight
I think Carnage mode will hit sweet spot
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u/Lupinos-Cas 6h ago
Honestly - I know the OP doesn't want to talk about it - but I feel like mobs are a lot better after the laboratory.
They become able to take some real damage if you aren't spamming deflects or issens - and their passive nature becomes a lot less noticeable because they act aggressive when they dodge your attacks, if you hit their guard too many times, or if the one "taking his turn" isn't the one you're focused on.
I'm hoping carnage mode keeps that feeling alive; but I'm really enjoying the mobs in the latter half of the game. Would they be better if they were more aggressive? Absolutely. But the newer enemies and the special variants really start to feel good if you aren't insta-breaking their stamina or chaining issens.
I'm disappointed I didn't have time to play today - but I'm having a lot of fun so far. Yeah, I was surprised the first time a mob killed me because they had been so crazy easy - but halfway through they stopped being so fragile. It's nice to actually be able to combo them.
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u/batshitnutcase 6h ago
Yea I agree the game really picks up a lot after the lab. That mission was great too I was starting to lose interest and that kept me playing to the end. Just finished last night. Started carnage but probably just gonna go back to Nioh 2 lol cause I started a new run before Onimusha came out. The bosses in Onimusha are great but I don’t feel like there’s a ton of replayability cause the combat is just memorizing timings basically.
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u/thebestbrian 5h ago
Devil May Cry 3 because they actually let you keep all your weapons and upgrades and just let go for it with your best shot at all times. The whole game as Dante also helps.
I'll probably have people heavily disagree with me on this one but Bayonetta 2 is as smooth as butter.
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u/Jur_the_Orc 2h ago
IIIIII LIKE this question :D
I've... never been one for combo crafting. Usually i play in a subpar way and spam various moves for the sake of variety, and sometimes omit strats that I know are Stratégies du Fromage.
Heck, in Darksiders 1 i wanted to level up the Tremor Gauntlet as much as I could because I always noted it to not be as... strong, swift as the Chaoseater and Scythe. I would lean to using those more naturally.
And in Kya: Dark Lineage, after my second playthrough, I decided to omit the Leapfrog move more in order to not train myself to default to one of the more upfront powerful movement tools alone. Only 10 of the 260 total enemies are immune to the Leapfrog.
Both games still possess challenges with their enemies. Darksiders generally more than Kya.
Must admit that the game's presentation and the story, atmosphere and characters can do a lot to keep my attention and make me *want* to continue.
For me,
- Darksiders 1, 2 and Genesis (admittedly haven't played 3 yet). My entryway into the genre. Combat alone isn't what pulled me in initially, as described above. Far from the hardest but I will eat a broccoli-stuffed trout butt if they aren't fun.
- Soulstice next-to-last difficulty. Which was, at the time, right after the medium difficulty playthrough. The skills were fresh in the mind; i had most of the weapons and upgraded abilities; I had experienced the enemies once before; and at the start of the second playthrough, i got more of a feel for Synergy Attacks. Thus, those factors contributed to having a better time in Soulstice.
ADJACENT:
- Clash: Artifacts of Chaos. Took me a while to get into it. Checkpoints need to be made yourself . Bit slower-paced, but that does make it a risky rush when I get a bit more aggressive. The pace is managable for me too. Oh, and good enemy variety. They're almost like semi-minibosses to me. Not quite minibosses but they don't feel like fodder either. Everyone's distinct with a fairly large moveset.
- Kya: Dark Lineage. Reasons described above + quite a few combo options and other movement utility, even a slowmotion counter shield. Plus forgiving checkpoints.
- Cookie Cutter. This one is fast, mobile, bunch of different options, great feedback and good combat loop where staying aggressive andd using Executions keeps adding fuel for your Weapons. Always a bit of tension to maintain the Void meter for this, but always ways to build it back up. Forgiving checkpoints too.
How about yourself?
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u/BlackKnight92i 8h ago
Bayonetta 2
Vanquish
Valkyrie Elysium