Is the game supposed to be hard?

[Rick]

First of all, I'm not clown farming or flaming the game or anything like that. I've played for 90 minutes, and I've won both runs.

The first was the default character that summons stuff, and I went for the blood summoning options. I almost died a couple of times because I didn't really understand I was getting hurt with each summon. I had 7 divine interventions, so I think that's what kept me alive until I realized I was killing myself and started putting points in strength to get health and damage resistances.

My second was an assassin goblin with the god who corrupts every item you pick up. I took the Agility (31) and Technique (16) skills, and also took champion as my prestige class. The only time I was in danger was the very last level where I had to use my heal for the first time, then I stepped into the crowd of enemies and they all died.

Have I just gotten super lucky? I've already unlocked every character, class, and god, and I'm wondering if that's normal or if I've accidentally cheesed my way through the game. Am I not seeing a difficulty slider somewhere?

Another reason why I'm asking is because I got two achievements with very low percentages. The first for winning with only blood powers, and the second for winning with only martial powers. Are these just unpopular?

Anyways, thanks for any advice and replies. I think the game is fun, so I'm hoping there are more challenging ways to play.

[Ulfsire]

Originally posted by Rick:

First of all, I'm not clown farming or flaming the game or anything like that. I've played for 90 minutes, and I've won both runs.

The first was the default character that summons stuff, and I went for the blood summoning options. I almost died a couple of times because I didn't really understand I was getting hurt with each summon. I had 7 divine interventions, so I think that's what kept me alive until I realized I was killing myself and started putting points in strength to get health and damage resistances.

My second was an assassin goblin with the god who corrupts every item you pick up. I took the Agility (31) and Technique (16) skills, and also took champion as my prestige class. The only time I was in danger was the very last level where I had to use my heal for the first time, then I stepped into the crowd of enemies and they all died.

Have I just gotten super lucky? I've already unlocked every character, class, and god, and I'm wondering if that's normal or if I've accidentally cheesed my way through the game. Am I not seeing a difficulty slider somewhere?

Another reason why I'm asking is because I got two achievements with very low percentages. The first for winning with only blood powers, and the second for winning with only martial powers. Are these just unpopular?

Anyways, thanks for any advice and replies. I think the game is fun, so I'm hoping there are more challenging ways to play.

accidentally released an update with "test mode" on, which gave a ton of free glory and stuff - should be fixed now, apologies!

[Rick]

Originally posted by Ulfsire:

accidentally released an update with "test mode" on, which gave a ton of free glory and stuff - should be fixed now, apologies!

Thanks for the quick response. Have a good one!

[Arc]

Its super easy regardless to me. You can stack stats to be basically invincible, summon like 40 dudes on entering a room, etc, channel like 20 effects because you walked past and hit one guy, etc etc. You either die pretty much immediately or vastly outscale the game.

[Ulfsire]

Originally posted by Arc:

Its super easy regardless to me. You can stack stats to be basically invincible, summon like 40 dudes on entering a room, etc, channel like 20 effects because you walked past and hit one guy, etc etc. You either die pretty much immediately or vastly outscale the game.

Yeah it can be somewhat dissatisfying if you're a natural to that stuff. The cycles were an attempt to mitigate that but there are still folks who struggle on cycle 1 - it's a hard balance to strike, for sure. It's one of the things I really admire about rift wizard

[Arc]

I think its fine as is. Not every game needs to be hardcore. I had fun seeing the ways I could break the game.
Rift Wizard I didn't like at all because it wanted me to play so tediously perfect

[Gienah Corvi]

Originally posted by Arc:

I think its fine as is. Not every game needs to be hardcore. I had fun seeing the ways I could break the game.
Rift Wizard I didn't like at all because it wanted me to play so tediously perfect

Yeah, I love the fact you can do broken builds. It's really what I enjoy. Or the struggle builds and overcome.

I get extremely tired of current year games where they constantly nerf or prevent anything to have fun in the game, putting anti-fun code in their games basically. Path of Achra is definitely lots of fun. 135 hours of fun for me.

I tried Rift Wizard 2 and it really didn't jive with me. I don't hate it or anything, it just doesn't flow for me. Happy other people like it though.

[Dr. Shenanigans]

I'm currently on cycle 16. I've found that the game stops throwing punches fast once you get beyond cycle four.

last I heard, the loop cap is 30. You check at the bottom of your screen during character select to figure out your cycle and thus difficulty. More cycles = harder games

The thing about PoA, is that it probably one of the few roguelikes in existence where in the Sadomasochistic relationship between players and the game, the game plays the sub at first and then starts getting into increasing resistance as you play with it.

[katabatic]

First cycle is pretty easy. If you're looking for difficulty, start bumping that upward. Re: the low % achievements-- there's just too many prestige classes in the game. I've sunk 20 hours in so far, and I think I've beaten a cycle with 6 or 7 of them. There's dozens and dozens, so odds are whichever one you happen to pick will be uncommon.

[Nick]

yeah come back to this post when you hit cycle 15 and enemies start hitting you in the tens of thousands per hit, 50 times a game turn from range 10 because you spawned into an open field surrounded by kolecs / teleporters / other stupidity. cycle 1-5 is a joke for most people that can use a mouse, im pretty sure you can put 45 points into just stand ground and still win

[Arc]

"Just beat the game 14 times then its hard" is a really poor argument
Its like the people saying the Nioh games are hard when you're so far into newgame everything just 1 shots you

[Balm]

hit "random" and then try to win on the highest difficulty you think you can manage