Are RPGs Hard?

[EBHughsThe1st]

Are RPGs hard? Like, are they difficult?
I remember I got into a flame war about how Final Fantasy VII's final boss was not difficult, mainly because (In Cloud's Mind) you could do nothing and kill Sepharoth. Seriously. Do nothing and Cloud will counter the attack.
But some guy misunderstood and said that it was beyond difficult. All the hours of work he put into the game to build up to level 80 or something.
Then I came to a conclusion.

Most RPGs are not hard, but rather time-consuming. And it feels like the difficulty of a Role-Playing-Game is easily diminished by hours of grinding a character. If you do, any boss or enemy is a breeze to just plow through.

Like, hard RPGs are only really RPGs with enemies that have levels close to your characters. But you can easily even the odds.

The only real hard RPGs are the ones where the battles are real-time like Kingdom Hearts or Dark Cloud. Even if you are at a high level, a fast boss or a delayed reaction could mean death.

Feh. Wat do you think?

Edit: Didn't add poll options before posting. My bad.

 

[Raistlinhawke]

The difficulty curves of any RPG will fluctuate depending on its series or developer. But largely, yes, the majority of the genre's difficulty comes from the time demanded and the effort put into the type of character specifications.

 

[BlueSinbad]

They can be....*coughs* Awkward in here...

 

[RedEyesBlackGamer]

RPGs are as hard as any other genre. Investment of time into a game is not proportional to difficulty. You want a hard one? Play Nocturne.

 

[aPod]

It all depends on the game really. Some RPG's are challenging even at high levels but I think it goes without saying that any game where your skill and reflex's are key to combat are going to have a high degree of difficulty.

 

[Continuity]

Really depends on the game, some RPGs, especially the older ones can be rock hard.

 

[ramboondiea]

go play resonance of fate...then tell me thats not hard

 

[Vern5]

Only if you don't refrigerate them.

 

[Gill Kaiser]

Western RPGs aren't meant to be hard. The crux of RPGs is the story, the progression of your character, and your immersion in the game.

On the other hand, JRPGs are frequently hard, and that's an aspect of their design.

 

[Gill Kaiser]

Are RPGs hard? Like, are they difficult?
I remember I got into a flame war about how Final Fantasy VII's final boss was not difficult, mainly because (In Cloud's Mind) you could do nothing and kill Sepharoth. Seriously. Do nothing and Cloud will counter the attack.

But some guy misunderstood and said that it was beyond difficult. All the hours of work he put into the game to build up to level 80 or something.

You were talking about the interactive cutscene AFTER the boss battle, and I'm pretty sure he was talking about the actual boss battle. Why would you base a premise on a misunderstanding?

 

[Je Suis Ubermonkey]

Try playing Mass Effect on insanity. At the start there are nameless goons as tough, if not tougher than you.
As with all game genres, there is great variety.

 

[Zaik]

If you define hard strictly by measures of manual dexterity, no, next to no RPG has ever been remotely challenging. Even throwing in games that aren't turn based snorefests, it's not incredibly difficult to shoot people in the head if you've been doing it for 50 hours already.

It's a strictly linear path through a story where suspiciously ability-appropriate enemies are always in ample supply for any would-be hero to effortlessly practice on, while foes who are more or less unchallengeable almost always remain in the shadows or otherwise uninterested or not able to reach your character until it is much too late for them to stop you.

There are other definitions of hard that many RPGs can throw at you, mostly involving complex understanding and/or manipulation of rules, or cheating hit detection, throwing inappropriately powerful optional bosses in for limited windows for mainly bragging rights, and so on.

But no, RPGs have never been an issue of manual dexterity, unless you count pausing every 3 seconds in Dragon Age games on the hardest difficulty to issue specific orders to each member of your party as requiring that, which is questionable.

 

[Legion IV]

Are RPGs hard? Like, are they difficult?
I remember I got into a flame war about how Final Fantasy VII's final boss was not difficult, mainly because (In Cloud's Mind) you could do nothing and kill Sepharoth. Seriously. Do nothing and Cloud will counter the attack.
But some guy misunderstood and said that it was beyond difficult. All the hours of work he put into the game to build up to level 80 or something.

First of am gonna say this cause i hope people finnaly get it, PLOT FIGHTS DONT COUNT, the battle in clouds mind is a plot fight its IMPOSSIBLE to lose even if somehow you beat the game and cloud was level 1 with nothing hed still win, every hit does less until it does nothing your supposto win. So they guy you were arguing with has never played Final fantasy 7 OR he was refering to Safer Sephiroth who can be extremely difficult. Any game can be extrodinarly easy, name some of your fav games am sure there very easy to.

 

[EBHughsThe1st]

Are RPGs hard? Like, are they difficult?
I remember I got into a flame war about how Final Fantasy VII's final boss was not difficult, mainly because (In Cloud's Mind) you could do nothing and kill Sepharoth. Seriously. Do nothing and Cloud will counter the attack.
But some guy misunderstood and said that it was beyond difficult. All the hours of work he put into the game to build up to level 80 or something.

First of am gonna say this cause i hope people finnaly get it, PLOT FIGHTS DONT COUNT, the battle in clouds mind is a plot fight its IMPOSSIBLE to lose even if somehow you beat the game and cloud was level 1 with nothing hed still win, every hit does less until it does nothing your supposto win. So they guy you were arguing with has never played Final fantasy 7 OR he was refering to Safer Sephiroth who can be extremely difficult. Any game can be extrodinarly easy, name some of your fav games am sure there very easy to.

I knew he was talking about the fight before. It was more a set-up for my hypothesis of RPGs not being hard. Afterwards I explained to him the whole plot-fight thing, but what he said about grinding away to win lead me to this.

 

[EBHughsThe1st]

Are RPGs hard? Like, are they difficult?
I remember I got into a flame war about how Final Fantasy VII's final boss was not difficult, mainly because (In Cloud's Mind) you could do nothing and kill Sepharoth. Seriously. Do nothing and Cloud will counter the attack.

But some guy misunderstood and said that it was beyond difficult. All the hours of work he put into the game to build up to level 80 or something.

You were talking about the interactive cutscene AFTER the boss battle, and I'm pretty sure he was talking about the actual boss battle. Why would you base a premise on a misunderstanding?

What he said regarding the grinding he did lead me to the hypothesis. It's more a story to set up this idea. I am aware that he was talking about the fight before.
But I thought that last symbolic battle that was indeed a battle was easy. It could be won by doing nothing. And then he misunderstood.
This misunderstanding has nothing to do with the argument. Other than that it gave me that idea.

 

[Legion IV]

Are RPGs hard? Like, are they difficult?
I remember I got into a flame war about how Final Fantasy VII's final boss was not difficult, mainly because (In Cloud's Mind) you could do nothing and kill Sepharoth. Seriously. Do nothing and Cloud will counter the attack.
But some guy misunderstood and said that it was beyond difficult. All the hours of work he put into the game to build up to level 80 or something.

First of am gonna say this cause i hope people finnaly get it, PLOT FIGHTS DONT COUNT, the battle in clouds mind is a plot fight its IMPOSSIBLE to lose even if somehow you beat the game and cloud was level 1 with nothing hed still win, every hit does less until it does nothing your supposto win. So they guy you were arguing with has never played Final fantasy 7 OR he was refering to Safer Sephiroth who can be extremely difficult. Any game can be extrodinarly easy, name some of your fav games am sure there very easy to.

I knew he was talking about the fight before. It was more a set-up for my hypothesis of RPGs not being hard. Afterwards I explained to him the whole plot-fight thing, but what he said about grinding away to win lead me to this.

Most RPGS dont have a difficulty setting, so lets just say using ff as an example. Easy mode would be grinding like mad to easily beat everything, Normal mode is fighting every encounter you come across and mabey do slight leveling if your stuck, Hard mode would be minimal fights with no grinding at all. Extra hard would be a no random encounter run (Very possible in FF if your truley dedicated lol).

 

[Jaranja]

Really depends on the game, some RPGs, especially the older ones can be rock hard.

Mind Flayers in the Underdark in BG2...

Just kill me.

 

[Jaranja]

That's a very sweeping statement.

RPGs can be tough, can be easy. But it's mostly fake difficulty (see the level scaling system in Oblivion, which left me getting slaughtered by tanks along the roads) and grinding (badly designed JRPGs).

But then you have Fallout 3, for example, which is always difficult because you have to conserve ammo, keep weapons in check, etc, and skill-based ones like Mass Effect where you play out the battles real-time.

So all-in-all, it varies.

Fallout 3 hard... Heh. Good one.

 

[Feralcentaur]

Try playing Mass Effect on insanity. At the start there are nameless goons as tough, if not tougher than you.
As with all game genres, there is great variety.

But Mass Effect is very... Shooterish and there's no where you can go to grind so it's not really something you can use as an example for all RPGs.

 

[ciancon]

I found FF13 to be the hardest RPG i've ever played. Dear god it was frustrating to get knocked down so many times, but i guess that was counteracted by the fact that when you restarted it you ended up just before the boss instead of and hour away like the other FF games.

I really liked FF13....so pretty. And i thought that the storyline more than made up for the linearity.