What is the easiest AAA game you've played since 2005?

[laggyteabag]

For a game where its most advertised mechanic requires the player to die, the game sure is easy.

That was pretty much my issue with Shadow of Mordor/Shadow of War. If the game's whole gimmick is for the player to have these cool interactions/rivalries with orcs, but the game is so easy that you beat every encounter the first time around and never die, you just end up with a shallow Arkham clone.

At least the Batman games had cool characters and fun locations to explore.

 

[wings012]

Why 2005? Though like hell I can remember every game I played within a 13 year period. That's close to half my life.

The first Prey or the Bioshock series comes to mind at any rate. Since in those games, you literally cannot die. So you can pretty much just be lazy and brute force your way through every challenge ever. Granted you can turn off the Vita chambers, though I don't remember if you could turn off the spirit world for the first Prey. I get the feeling though that without the respawns, the games would feel badly balanced and maybe even harsh in terms of health pickups and what have you.

Any JRPG I played within that period I would probably find easy. Honestly, JRPGS tend to be a battle of stats rather than strategy. can't beat something? Get more levels. Though I haven't touched a Final Fantasy since X, so I wonder if anything I played could be considered AAA. Xenoblade perhaps? Which I didn't find too difficult, though I don't think I considered it a massive walk in the park either.

Bethesda games tend not to be too challenging once you figure out the workings of the game and proceed to break the absolute hell out of it. But there was a time where I actually found Skyrim difficult. Giants were one thing, but the Falmer were some absolute brutal shit before I was completely decked out in Daedric/Dragonbone. They tore through my Ebony like genestealers through terminators. But well, once all is said and done you become a literal unkillable god. You can turn up the difficulty but it just turns everything into absolute damage sponges which is just no fun.

But I think it just tends to be that way for RPGs. They are difficult until you figure out how to abuse the shit out of the game. Wasteland 2 was whipping me, but then I figured out ARs were absolutely OP and I just wrecked everything. Pillars of Eternity was kicking the shit out of me, then I figured out knocking everything on their arse with Ciphers got you through most fights unscathed. Also lol paralysis scrolls. Though those aren't exactly AAA games.

 

[DrownedAmmet]

Sleeping Dogs melee combat is really easy, but it is also super fun! Just counter everything and you'll be fine. The funnest part is when you grapple people and bring them to a piece of the environment for an environmental takedown and those just never get old. I can watch people get clobbered over the head with a payphone all goddamn day

 

[Xprimentyl]

Spoiler: Here's one of my favourite Morrowind exploits that I figured out on my own

Get a skill drain spell to unlock this effect in spellcraft (spellcraft is cheesy AF in general). Make a spell with only this effect, as strong as possible, lasting for 2, maybe 3s targeting yourself, affecting a skill you want to train. Cast this on yourself and immediately talk to a trainer for this skill (conversation pauses game time, so 2s duration should be plenty) - trainers will only train you up to a certain level, but the game checks against your current skill level, not base, meaning you can abuse this to train all skills to 100 without bothering with master trainers. Better yet, it even lets you "train" capped skills - they will of course reset to 100 the moment they exceed this value, but it's a quick and convenient way of leveling up a maxed out character without using jail time to randomly deteriorate your skills across the board.

Spoiler: My favourite tip

Pay attention to item quality in shops. There are a number of shops in Morrowind (such as the pawnbrokers in Suran and the Telvanni District in Vivec) that sell heavily damaged Glass daggers. Their condition is so poor (2/100) that they can be bought for as little as 15 Drakes, but if you then join the Fighters Guild you can access their equipment chests for free and repair the daggers back up to their full retail value of 4,000 Drakes each. And then of course there's someone in Caldera who will happily pay full price for anything you bring him...

Spoiler: ?My favorite Morrowind exploit?

Not really an exploit so much as it is the game working as intended, but breaking itself in the process: enchanting each piece of a full set of Daedric armor with a Grand Soul Gem (and Grand Soul) with the Chameleon spell grants you 101% invisibility. Basically turns on God/Debug mode; even when you attack enemies, they can?t see you, so don?t they don?t aggro; the world becomes your passive playground!