Difficulty Setting Preferences

[talonmalon333]

The original Resident Evil on its advanced mode is incredible and is practically a brand new experience compared to the original. It moves items around, changes certain puzzles, gives you less ammo, makes the monsters tougher, places more monsters in each location, and occasionally replaces monsters in an area with even tougher ones.

Ninja Gaiden Black does the same thing. It changes the locations of where you find weapons, health upgrades, and Ninpo (magic), changes up enemy sets so that you encounter tougher enemies earlier on (and you encounter new enemies AND boss fights on the higher difficulties as well, which I have never seen a single other game do, to this day), naturally also makes the enemies tougher and more aggressive, and it makes items and upgrades much more expensive to buy. The second game doesn't do nearly as much as that, but it does change up enemy sets for you to encounter tougher enemies earlier on, but the third game being the POS that it is just throws more enemies at you and hardly changes anything else other than the amount of damage that you take from attacks.

Bayonetta and Metal Gear Rising also throw tougher enemies at you earlier on with the harder difficulties. The DMC games also do this, but the changes aren't as vast, though DMD does give enemies the ability to Devil Trigger, which really changes the way that you fight enemies in the first game.

I like it when games do that. It's honestly my favorite method of including a higher difficulty, and I wish more games did it. Ocarina of Time kind of had it with the Master Quest storyline (but that wasn't playable until the GameCube release of the game), which entirely redid the puzzles and changed the placements of enemies. However, the enemies still do the same amount of damage as before, and those changes were made only in the dungeons, and they were a bit too weird and unnatural for my liking. Of course, Master Quest was great overall, I mean it's still Ocarina of Time. But it was a bit less awesome than the original game.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I remember enjoying Master Quest, myself. I really want to replay that version of the game at some point. But, yeah, I wish more games incorporated that style of design for higher difficulty settings.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

So, here are my preferences for the Halo games:

Halo: Combat Evolved/Anniversary- Legendary (it's the most fun way to play the game, The Library notwithstanding; the Rocket Launcher Flood are a bitch on ANY difficulty, so I don't view it as a detractor, here)

Halo 2- Heroic (This is my least favorite Halo campaign except for maybe 4, and much like Halo 4, the difficulty can be borderline cheap at times, which is why I don't like Legendary mode on this game, and  I never best that mode solo on this one, anyways)

Halo 3- Heroic (Legendary has it's moments, but like Halo 2 it can get kind of cheap, IMO, so Heroic makes for a better challenge without being too aggravating)

Halo 3: ODST- Legendary (it's the easiest Halo campaign by far, so this is a no-brainer)

Halo: Reach- Legendary (The Elites have a bit too much shield and health for my liking, and the Hunters are ridiculous, but the rest of the difficulty is just stellar, it's very challenging but also feels very balanced)

Halo 4- Heroic (To be honest, I never even beat this game on Heroic, but I got through most of it on that difficulty, and it was definitely more challenging than Normal without being too overbearing; I never actually even tried the game on Legendary, but overall I just got tired of it, mostly because the gameplay felt monotonous, and the Promethean Knights are cheap bastards)

Overall, Halo: Combat Evolved and Reach are my favorites in terms of difficulty and balance.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I've been fooling around a bit on Bayonetta on Hard mode, and yeah, this is definitely my favorite difficulty in the game. I just think that WT makes the game for me in so many ways. Taking it away doesn't really make the game harder, except for a few parts. It just makes the game less fun, IMO. Still, overall it's a much, much easier game than any of the Ninja Gaiden or DMC games (except for maybe the reboot) are on their hardest difficulties, or Revengeance for that matter.

[gunswordfist]

Gunstar Heroes - Hard mode. I believe I haven't beaten Harder mode or got to the final boss. I forget. Either way, Hard mode is here because that's one Golden Silver is incredibly fun to fight for the entire bout. Still my favorite shoot em up boss.