i think the hard part about old rpgs (e.g. wizardry 1-7, istar, realm of arkania etc.) was not a combat, but the fact, that there was no hand holding. You had to find on your own what to do, how to progress, which item use at which place etc. You had to actively look for things, they were not served to you on silver platter.
edit: as for combat - old rpgs were maybe slightly harder, but i dont think that much. main difference there imho is that what in old days passed as normal difficuly, without way to chooses any other, is now just one of the options called hard or even impossible. there were maybe more often some fights that were really hard, but that happens even now, e.g. heroic mode in WoW, some fights in the witcher etc.
I hate to be an old schooler but I am going to anyway.
Although I like a good combat engine and for me no combat engine is good unless its first person with that all said, RPG's were orginally turn based stradegy games. Having twitch skills is not really a core base of RPG and really never has been even in recient history. I am not saying it should be there, I personally think it should but what I AM saying is to suggest that its a requirement is being way off base.
In fact, one of the wonders of RPG was orginally the study of doing certian things in combat from a numbers standpoint. Instead of flexing one action or another you would study you options (aka if I cast this spell I will not be able to do X, do I want to save that for later etc etc) anyone who has played table top games knows what I am trying to say here
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
theres a ton of jrpgs that are hard also (nearly all of them tbh lol)
My jrpg experience is limited to the entire Final Fantasy series, Chrono Trigger/Cross, a couple of the Dragon Warrior games and Suikoden 1-4, but of all of those, each seems absolutely impossible to fail. The games are designed to have you succeed. As the OP said, most of the stragetic gameplay takes place in the menus outside of combat where you progress and customize your party.
That said, I've actually heard a few different people claim they got stuck at certain points of a FF game and gave up, frustrated, though I can't fathom how that is possible.
I remember playing some RPGs that were pretty tough....You ahve to realize that a high percentage of players play these games on their easiest difficulties......Most of the hardest games are probably 20 years old or so....THe games over the last few years have definitely been easier.
You need to define hard. If hard means you need a group of xx players for killing some mob then all mmo's are hard.If you ment you need a large group of players to kill every mob in the game then all games are very hard.Many people say that soloing in games is easy but grouping hard,they are wrong,if there are mobs in the game you cant kill without a group then grouping is easyer than soloing.
Star Ocean 2 the main quest is linear but if you want the really cool stuff you gotta work for it
I remember there was some social event in that game, where if you accepted it, the final boss became damn near impossible to beat.
Took me half an hour using Action Replay cheat codes to actually beat him like that. There had to have been some trick to beating him after that event that I never discovered. Otherwise I don't think it would be possible to win.
theres a ton of jrpgs that are hard also (nearly all of them tbh lol)
My jrpg experience is limited to the entire Final Fantasy series, Chrono Trigger/Cross, a couple of the Dragon Warrior games and Suikoden 1-4, but of all of those, each seems absolutely impossible to fail. The games are designed to have you succeed. As the OP said, most of the stragetic gameplay takes place in the menus outside of combat where you progress and customize your party.
That said, I've actually heard a few different people claim they got stuck at certain points of a FF game and gave up, frustrated, though I can't fathom how that is possible.
Depending on how you choose to grind, most things becomes easy. Try going to Garland at level 1 in Final Fantasy I. As a player, you are choosing the difficulty and that's a part of the charm.
Other aspects of your playstyle affects the difficulty as well. If you are like me that once you get a class with a "steal" ability, you will try to use it on every enemy you encounter and search for those enemies as well, just to see what you get, then it is likely that you will get it easier compared to someone who doesn't really care about the "steal" mechanic at all, due to the numerous more fights you will engage in.
On the other hand, I would need to design my team in such way that my thief can do multiple steal attempts during a fight, without risking to lose.
I hate to be an old schooler but I am going to anyway.
Although I like a good combat engine and for me no combat engine is good unless its first person with that all said, RPG's were orginally turn based stradegy games. Having twitch skills is not really a core base of RPG and really never has been even in recient history. I am not saying it should be there, I personally think it should but what I AM saying is to suggest that its a requirement is being way off base.
In fact, one of the wonders of RPG was orginally the study of doing certian things in combat from a numbers standpoint. Instead of flexing one action or another you would study you options (aka if I cast this spell I will not be able to do X, do I want to save that for later etc etc) anyone who has played table top games knows what I am trying to say here
Dont hate, Im an old schooler too ;-)
And its one of the reasons why I found MMOs. It brought me back to my early NES days where you had to plan your attacks, just with MMOs instead of turn based it was "real time" (who remembers the 'action bar' in Final Fantasy IV :-)
RPGs are only as challenging as you make them, since you can always grind and outlevel content. For me, I always tried to be 2-5 levels under the enemy I was fighting, trying to play through the story without grinding (which was brutal in series like Dragon Quest, but HELLA fun!)
I think they have made RPGs too easy today, starting with Final Fantasy VII. By this time, RPGs became more about story (and easy progression) as opposed to understanding your character build to progress. To the point that todays current RPGs like Skyrim has become exploratory action titles with RPG elements (managing attributes to build your character). But there really is no challenge.
At least in MMOs you have to play your role to do some of the dungeons which brings me back to my early RPG days. Now even MMOs are going the easy route with titles like SWTOR. Currently playing korean MMOs (like Eden Eternal) which while they give the cutesy anime look of the RPGs I grew up with, give a nice healthy dose of challenge that puts the fun back in gaming. At least for me.
As someone already stated the only game I think that would come close to fitting what you are asking is Demon Soul. This is probably the most unforgiving RPG game I have ever played.
But isn't the difficulty of demon soul and witcher 2 mostly all in the action style gameplay?
I mean I think Witcher 2 is a great RPG but none of the RPG aspects really relate to the difficulty of the game just in how you chose to play the game.
Obviously this is a prett ygray area we are skirting here and it is somewhat confusing. But I would certainly venture to say with good deal of certainty that the RPG parts of Witcher 2 (I haven't played demon soul only heard of it and read reviews) do not really contribute to the overall difficulty.
In in Witcher 2 the RPG aspects do not really unlock much the way of overall extra stuff and merely let you specializ certain key things. All alchemy potions and bombs can be used with no skills. All signs. All swords moves are there right from the beginning. Only a few additional feature on signs and some enhancers are gotten through the RPGs stuff.
Now I know demon souls you start to unlock very important moves through RPG mechanics so in yes the RPG mechancis are essential and not there from the beginning. But these are moves like blocks and such. Which really are basic action style tropes that require you to actively use them at the correct times.
I dunno Witcher 2 and demon soul almost seem more like they belong in the deus Ex style category. Its true to some extent that a real time action RPG like Diablo could also fit into this to some degree (and therefore basically most MMORPG) as you do need to do the right things at the right time.
I guess the main reason I differentiate a game like Diablo 2 from the Witcher 2 or Demon Souls is that timing is everything in the latter two miss the wrong things at the wrong time and you go down and out or close to it. But in Diablo 2 gear and skills you take dominate the gameplay. Not only that but there is alot more true action-style gameplay that goes on in witcher/demon soul.
Perhaps the true distinction is more about how much gear/skills/stats dominate the gameplay versus actual gameplay stuff. I am unsure.
i heard Dark SOuls is hard, i havent played it tho. I found combat hard in most RPGs i played since the snes Japanese rpgs were the best thing (still are the best for me). That was only because i never focused on combat and was always lower level than everything else so got killed very easy. I learned not to avoid combat, ever again... and now everything is easy fight.
Grandia 2 and Valkyrie Profile had some really tough boss fights that involved good hand eye coordination, timing , and strategy.
I sit on a man's back, choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by all possible means - except by getting off his back.
I just started playing Skyrim again on the hardest difficulty. In this difficulty setting pretty much everything two-shots you. Pretty hard.
But yeah RPGs are usually pretty weak on the difficulty. The hardest RPGs are usually the ones with really complicated stats that just take so long to understand.
Like honestly, why is charisma ever useful? Anyone?
All of the old school wizardry games were hard as hell. You had to map out the entire game and characters died permanently. Puzzles and clues were Kings Quest level of obscure. For modern RPG's they tend to play out like movies rather than having much challenge. Dark Souls and Demon Souls are challenging in the extreme. You feel like the developers tried to make a game where their success is measured in player deaths.
Are you a Pavlovian Fish Biscuit Addict? Get Help Now! I will play no more MMORPGs until somethign good comes out!
Xenosaga series. Tons of fights where if you didn't use strategy you would fail. Even the easier fights were important to play smart, since they (sadly) would wear you down with attrition.
The game had its problems (some of the strategic optimization required some tedious research into mobs' various weakpoints, and the attrition fights were a lot less interesting than the genuinely challenging ones) but was very rewarding overall.
(This is without getting into all the challenging Tactics games over the years.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own. -- Herman Melville
That game you never finished and therefore marked "crap" or "stupid".. that one was hard for you.
I guess it would be easy to find a game that is hard, but not fun (for your taste). A game should be rewarding in some way or you wont play it. I played many games that were hard because it required a ridicolous amount of hours or so high maintenace that it killed the fun. Games that were hard because they were too fast paced for me to keep up, or hard because I wanted to micromanage (perfectionist) but the pace or complexity didnt allow it (certain rts games comes to mind).
Anyway, when people say hard about a mmorpg I think they mean challenging. Opposite of challenging is railroaded, handholding, story based etc. Challenge in a mmorpg is throwing the ball to the player in a way that encourages the player to find his way through a problem, to give the player enough rules to make it controllable, but enough freedom to encourage the players curiousity to take up the challange.
At the moment every game company think that making their games easier will get most players, to have story based games and extremely controlled gameplay makes costs more predictable - They are probably right, it just doesnt create challenging games.
Comments
i think the hard part about old rpgs (e.g. wizardry 1-7, istar, realm of arkania etc.) was not a combat, but the fact, that there was no hand holding. You had to find on your own what to do, how to progress, which item use at which place etc. You had to actively look for things, they were not served to you on silver platter.
edit: as for combat - old rpgs were maybe slightly harder, but i dont think that much. main difference there imho is that what in old days passed as normal difficuly, without way to chooses any other, is now just one of the options called hard or even impossible. there were maybe more often some fights that were really hard, but that happens even now, e.g. heroic mode in WoW, some fights in the witcher etc.
sweet!
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Please do not respond to me
I hate to be an old schooler but I am going to anyway.
Although I like a good combat engine and for me no combat engine is good unless its first person with that all said, RPG's were orginally turn based stradegy games. Having twitch skills is not really a core base of RPG and really never has been even in recient history. I am not saying it should be there, I personally think it should but what I AM saying is to suggest that its a requirement is being way off base.
In fact, one of the wonders of RPG was orginally the study of doing certian things in combat from a numbers standpoint. Instead of flexing one action or another you would study you options (aka if I cast this spell I will not be able to do X, do I want to save that for later etc etc) anyone who has played table top games knows what I am trying to say here
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Please do not respond to me
My jrpg experience is limited to the entire Final Fantasy series, Chrono Trigger/Cross, a couple of the Dragon Warrior games and Suikoden 1-4, but of all of those, each seems absolutely impossible to fail. The games are designed to have you succeed. As the OP said, most of the stragetic gameplay takes place in the menus outside of combat where you progress and customize your party.
That said, I've actually heard a few different people claim they got stuck at certain points of a FF game and gave up, frustrated, though I can't fathom how that is possible.
I remember playing some RPGs that were pretty tough....You ahve to realize that a high percentage of players play these games on their easiest difficulties......Most of the hardest games are probably 20 years old or so....THe games over the last few years have definitely been easier.
Realms of arkania and to some degree thunderscape.
Zork I and Zork II
You need to define hard. If hard means you need a group of xx players for killing some mob then all mmo's are hard.If you ment you need a large group of players to kill every mob in the game then all games are very hard.Many people say that soloing in games is easy but grouping hard,they are wrong,if there are mobs in the game you cant kill without a group then grouping is easyer than soloing.
I remember there was some social event in that game, where if you accepted it, the final boss became damn near impossible to beat.
Took me half an hour using Action Replay cheat codes to actually beat him like that. There had to have been some trick to beating him after that event that I never discovered. Otherwise I don't think it would be possible to win.
Depending on how you choose to grind, most things becomes easy. Try going to Garland at level 1 in Final Fantasy I. As a player, you are choosing the difficulty and that's a part of the charm.
Other aspects of your playstyle affects the difficulty as well. If you are like me that once you get a class with a "steal" ability, you will try to use it on every enemy you encounter and search for those enemies as well, just to see what you get, then it is likely that you will get it easier compared to someone who doesn't really care about the "steal" mechanic at all, due to the numerous more fights you will engage in.
On the other hand, I would need to design my team in such way that my thief can do multiple steal attempts during a fight, without risking to lose.
Persona 1 on the American Playstation
Xenogears
Planescape:Torrment
Final Fantasy 2/4
Diablo 2
Final Fantasy 1 Good lord this game was hard, I never beat it
Any mmo worth its salt should be like a good prostitute when it comes to its game world- One hell of a faker, and a damn good shaker!
Dont hate, Im an old schooler too ;-)
And its one of the reasons why I found MMOs. It brought me back to my early NES days where you had to plan your attacks, just with MMOs instead of turn based it was "real time" (who remembers the 'action bar' in Final Fantasy IV :-)
RPGs are only as challenging as you make them, since you can always grind and outlevel content. For me, I always tried to be 2-5 levels under the enemy I was fighting, trying to play through the story without grinding (which was brutal in series like Dragon Quest, but HELLA fun!)
I think they have made RPGs too easy today, starting with Final Fantasy VII. By this time, RPGs became more about story (and easy progression) as opposed to understanding your character build to progress. To the point that todays current RPGs like Skyrim has become exploratory action titles with RPG elements (managing attributes to build your character). But there really is no challenge.
At least in MMOs you have to play your role to do some of the dungeons which brings me back to my early RPG days. Now even MMOs are going the easy route with titles like SWTOR. Currently playing korean MMOs (like Eden Eternal) which while they give the cutesy anime look of the RPGs I grew up with, give a nice healthy dose of challenge that puts the fun back in gaming. At least for me.
NetHack.
Alternate Reality - The City
Let's internet
But isn't the difficulty of demon soul and witcher 2 mostly all in the action style gameplay?
I mean I think Witcher 2 is a great RPG but none of the RPG aspects really relate to the difficulty of the game just in how you chose to play the game.
Obviously this is a prett ygray area we are skirting here and it is somewhat confusing. But I would certainly venture to say with good deal of certainty that the RPG parts of Witcher 2 (I haven't played demon soul only heard of it and read reviews) do not really contribute to the overall difficulty.
In in Witcher 2 the RPG aspects do not really unlock much the way of overall extra stuff and merely let you specializ certain key things. All alchemy potions and bombs can be used with no skills. All signs. All swords moves are there right from the beginning. Only a few additional feature on signs and some enhancers are gotten through the RPGs stuff.
Now I know demon souls you start to unlock very important moves through RPG mechanics so in yes the RPG mechancis are essential and not there from the beginning. But these are moves like blocks and such. Which really are basic action style tropes that require you to actively use them at the correct times.
I dunno Witcher 2 and demon soul almost seem more like they belong in the deus Ex style category. Its true to some extent that a real time action RPG like Diablo could also fit into this to some degree (and therefore basically most MMORPG) as you do need to do the right things at the right time.
I guess the main reason I differentiate a game like Diablo 2 from the Witcher 2 or Demon Souls is that timing is everything in the latter two miss the wrong things at the wrong time and you go down and out or close to it. But in Diablo 2 gear and skills you take dominate the gameplay. Not only that but there is alot more true action-style gameplay that goes on in witcher/demon soul.
Perhaps the true distinction is more about how much gear/skills/stats dominate the gameplay versus actual gameplay stuff. I am unsure.
CHEERS! I wouldn't call them "hard", but I LOVED their challenges.
Kudos to the OP for mentioning Bard's Tale. I thought people had forgotten about that game.
I think both UO and Asheron's Call were challenging.
i heard Dark SOuls is hard, i havent played it tho. I found combat hard in most RPGs i played since the snes Japanese rpgs were the best thing (still are the best for me). That was only because i never focused on combat and was always lower level than everything else so got killed very easy. I learned not to avoid combat, ever again... and now everything is easy fight.
Grandia 2 and Valkyrie Profile had some really tough boss fights that involved good hand eye coordination, timing , and strategy.
I sit on a man's back, choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by all possible means - except by getting off his back.
I just started playing Skyrim again on the hardest difficulty. In this difficulty setting pretty much everything two-shots you. Pretty hard.
But yeah RPGs are usually pretty weak on the difficulty. The hardest RPGs are usually the ones with really complicated stats that just take so long to understand.
Like honestly, why is charisma ever useful? Anyone?
Website: http://www.thegameguru.me / YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/users/thetroublmaker
All of the old school wizardry games were hard as hell. You had to map out the entire game and characters died permanently. Puzzles and clues were Kings Quest level of obscure. For modern RPG's they tend to play out like movies rather than having much challenge. Dark Souls and Demon Souls are challenging in the extreme. You feel like the developers tried to make a game where their success is measured in player deaths.
Are you a Pavlovian Fish Biscuit Addict? Get Help Now!
I will play no more MMORPGs until somethign good comes out!
Xenosaga series. Tons of fights where if you didn't use strategy you would fail. Even the easier fights were important to play smart, since they (sadly) would wear you down with attrition.
The game had its problems (some of the strategic optimization required some tedious research into mobs' various weakpoints, and the attrition fights were a lot less interesting than the genuinely challenging ones) but was very rewarding overall.
(This is without getting into all the challenging Tactics games over the years.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
This is a very difficult old title with lots of traps, false walls, pitch black areas, etc. Mapping is almost a necessity. http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?desktop_uri=/watch?v=CDnj3KDiIqE&v=CDnj3KDiIqE&gl=US
Death is nothing to us, since when we are, Death has not come, and when death has come, we are not.
Nethack.
There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own.
-- Herman Melville
That game you never finished and therefore marked "crap" or "stupid".. that one was hard for you.
I guess it would be easy to find a game that is hard, but not fun (for your taste). A game should be rewarding in some way or you wont play it. I played many games that were hard because it required a ridicolous amount of hours or so high maintenace that it killed the fun. Games that were hard because they were too fast paced for me to keep up, or hard because I wanted to micromanage (perfectionist) but the pace or complexity didnt allow it (certain rts games comes to mind).
Anyway, when people say hard about a mmorpg I think they mean challenging. Opposite of challenging is railroaded, handholding, story based etc. Challenge in a mmorpg is throwing the ball to the player in a way that encourages the player to find his way through a problem, to give the player enough rules to make it controllable, but enough freedom to encourage the players curiousity to take up the challange.
At the moment every game company think that making their games easier will get most players, to have story based games and extremely controlled gameplay makes costs more predictable - They are probably right, it just doesnt create challenging games.
"I am my connectome" https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HA7GwKXfJB0
Battle of Olympus. An old RPG action adventure for the NES.
the poster formerly known as melangel :P