Back in February 2023, I finished my first playthrough ofHi-Fi RUSH. That littleGOTYcontender started to roll up its end credits, and I kept waiting for a certain achievement to pop. I’d earned the achievement for beating the game on Normal difficulty, and I expected the achievement for beating the game on Easy to pop as well, a term we Achievement Hunters call “difficulty stacking” (where a higher difficulty will still trigger the achievement for the difficulties below it).
Hi-Fi RUSH had something different in mind though. There was no difficulty stacking. Instead, the game holds a record screen for every level that records your best overall scores at every difficulty. This means that you have to beat every level at the specific difficulty to earn the related achievement.
An interesting ask, one that I haven’t seen in a while. Achievements for difficulty levels aren’t rare, but they often bundle in the Achievement for the lower difficulty if you complete it on the higher one. Which is fair enough, because I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve replayed games on difficulty settings that barely change barely anything at all,justto get the Achievement.
I Really Miss Printed Strategy Guides
The nostalgia of holding them in my hands makes me wish they still existed.
The Three Same Faces Of Difficulty
Back in 2010,Mafia IIwas one of those story-rich games that was able to stand out in the sea of open-world gangster games. That said, I can’t recommend the game on Hard or Easy. Mafia II had the philosophy that Easy means you take less damage and Hard means you take more damage. The difficulties aretechnicallydifferent from Normal, but not enough to make either stand out. Normal feels like the refined way to play, while Easy and Hard feel like the game forgot you didn’t select Normal.
This was par for the course in many PS3/Xbox 360-era games. Take both the Deadpool game from 2013 and the InFamous series, for example. On Normal difficulty I had to play the game by upgrading my powers and making sure to heal whenever I had the chance. But on Hard, I played the game by upgrading my powers and healing whenever I had the chance. Both Deadpool and Cole McGrath saw the end of their adventures the exact same way on Normal and Hard, I didn’t have to change my playstyle, as Hard may as well have been called “5% harder”.
When selecting a difficulty setting, you sometimes see the phrase ‘the way the game was intended to be played.’ Many times this is an earnest promise from the developers, a heads-up that out of every difficulty, this one feels the best. In my experience, this can be a clue that only one difficulty setting got love and care, and that the others aren’t worth touching.
Sometimes the game will simple offer an achievement for beating it at any difficulty, but also save a special one for beating it on the hardest setting, such asBaldur’s Gate 3. “All’s Well That Ends Well” unlocks not matter what, but “Critical hit” will require you start and end on Tactician difficulty (“Honour” was added later for Honour difficulty, to clarify). Tactician basically just tweaks the numbers to increase the challenge, but this is Baldur’s Gate 3 we’re talking about, a game that can offer such vastly different experiences on each playthrough that it doesn’t really need difficulty to define that.
Nevertheless, the game introduced a ‘Custom’ difficulty in December, which really spices things up. Say you like enemies being as aggressive as they are in Tactician, but also want your characters to be as powerful as they are in Explorer mode, with Custom mode you can choose exactly that. You can turn off saving throws, decide whether a short rest fully heals, there’s even a slider for the prices offered by traders! It’s in your hands to make the game brutal or forgiving or somewhere in the middle, ensuring it will be fully unique to your desires.Dishonored 2 offered similar flexibility, as did one ofour top indie games of 2023, El Paso, Elsewhere.
Going Critical As A Legend(ary)
Another example of ‘difficulties done good’ isHalo, which has four settings: Easy, Normal, Heroic, and Legendary. Heroic would translate to Hard, with Legendary being extra/very Hard, and yet Heroic is the one Bungie described as “the way the game was meant to be played”.
And you know what? I agree with them. Stats are tweaked in the ‘your health worse, enemy health stronger’ tradition, but the difficulty also affects how smart the enemies are in combat, and changes the number of enemies in each level. Some Elites only spawn in Heroic and Legendary, and Grunts are more likely to run away on Easy or Normal but will stand their ground with better weapons more often on Heroic, and especially Legendary.
With or without the extra modifiers (favorites of mine beingAcrophobia to fly aroundand Fog to remove my radar), each difficulty feels like a different iteration of the game, requiring different strategies and plans of attack to see the fight to the end.
Kingdom Hearts 2is another case in point. In Kingdom Hearts II Final Mix, there’s a difficulty called Critical, which is a mix of several elements from the difficulties below it. To start, enemies will hit even harder than they did in Proud (the second hardest), and your health is even weaker than in Proud. So far so normal, but the twist is that you yourself hit even harder than on Beginner difficulty, and are given tons of free abilities to test out combos from the start, before you even need to level grind.
Critical is a stern test. KH2 has incredible combat you will need to learn the ins and outs of, because whether you win or lose, most battles are going to end in seconds, making everything feel more intense, and with higher stakes.I am not always a “play on Hard” person, but I only play KH2 on Critical. The first time I did it was for a trophy, all the following times were because I loved it.
If Halo and Kingdom Hearts 2 can do it, then any game sticking an achievement to Hard mode can do it too. If that’s just not the way that game is played, far enough, just don’t bother with Hard or Easy modes at all. If you want gamers to play on Hard, you need to make it worth their time. Especially when achievements are on the line.
I Replayed Saints Row IV With Cheat Codes Turned On
Why be a superhero if you’re able to’t be invincible?
