not as hard as people are saying...

[Icedfate]

I'm not being elitist, I'm not being a "git gud"

I'm not saying this game is "Easy", it's not.

I'm just saying

this game is nowhere as hard as Isaac, meat boy, enter the gungeon, contra, metal slug, etc...


admittetly, I've only played a couple of hours , I'm halfway through chapter 2


most of my deaths were from trying to be fancy and get in all my "parries" on the bosses to get a better score on my first go through.

I do see the game getting a little harder. the bird boss in chapter 2 actually had some "baby's first bullet hellI" elements.

I would rate this game "medium".

it's not an "opinion".
the enemy layouts are not as dense as other "hard" games,
the speeds of the bullets are not that fast
, the bullet patterns are less complex
, the enemy movement speed is slower,

sure, the later stages are getting harder but

the thing that gets me isn't that people are struggling, it's that people are struggling on the first freaking levels!

I watch a video and I see

they're on the first run and gun stage saying "omfg, there's ♥♥♥♥ everywhere!" and it's just a couple of guys dropping from the sky a every few seconds in a predictable pattern,

then later, you see an acorn fly above and drop down on people and i'm like "omfg , just shoot up at it..."

and then I see people dying at the first long pit, like they never even looked at the tutorial and saw the mid-air dash?!

I see threads on here, people saying the first run and gun stage is "the most insane difficult stupid thing n existence with zillions of respawning enemies" and that's just ultimate exaggeration, or that person is just really bad a platformers,

again, not saying "git gud", but the first level is just basic skills. its not elite trick shots, or long jumps from edges of platforms where you just barely make it. the enemies are not that spongy, they only take a couple of hits. and they don't respawn "that" fast. like on NES games, some games that enemies will respawn literally the instant you kill it, another one spawns in it's place. this game at least gives a few seconds in between.

okay
I did get hit by the first tulip flower because I thought the seed was gonna fall through the floor, not explode in a pillar of flame, but yeah, that only got me once.
the first mushroom also got me, because I dunno, I was shooting at it as it popped up and it still managed to shoot it's shot bfore I could kill it and on every run after , that mever happened again, they always die when they pop up and I'm shooting at them.



the Hilda Berg? a plane comes out, and shoots 1 shot at you then goes away.
sometimes a green plane shoots a 3-way spread and goes away.
they go down in like, 2-3 shots. the main reason I got hit is because I was intentionally not shooting the planes down so they would shoot the pink shots so I could parry them and that's what caused me to die the first few times.
if I had just focused on shoot her, I would have been done with it.
of course the final form kind of caught me off guard. I knew the UFOs would shoot at me, but I thought they would give more time to move out of the way, but then I learned where the safe spots were.

maybe it's because I grew up with Contra and Megaman X and Ninja Gaiden and Gradius


Contra is way harder than this. I just got my hands on the Contra game for nintendo DS and I'm struggling on the first level

I've actually never gotten more than halfway through Contra Alien Wars (SNES)

you want "hard", try those games.

the flying stages aren't any tougher than any other shootemup.

Gradius and R-Type are way harder. (in my mind, I think R-Type is fricking impossible, but I guess I just suck at video games)


the mausoleums? I did the first 2 on my first try, it's just jumping at ghosts, it's not rocket science. one did almost get through in the second one, I'm assuming there wil be a third one in chapter 3.


yes, I did die a bunch of times, several of the deaths were when I saw the final form of a boss the first time and got killed.

the flower boss killed my twice in his final form because I didn't notice the "tell" for where the roots would appear. I also dies on him because I intentonally did not kill that floating flower that shoots pink shots at me, because I was trying to get my parries in.

I died a few times on baroness bon bon, because I was trying to "parry" the little pink guys to get a better score instead of just shooting them.
and the gumball machine got me because i saw it charging and thought it was gonna go all the wat to the edge of the screen and so I tred to jump over it and got hit.
the gobstopper got me, because I was focused on parrying the litttle pink guys instead of shooting it.

I also died a few times on the frogs, because , again, I was trying to get my "parries" in and you have to be careful, because the bounce from parrying the pink shot, can carry you right into one of the blue shots.


but I mean, it's not like you have to play through an entire stage all over again just to get back where you just were.
there's a retry button right there, you just hit it and try again. you have "infinite lives".


the face in the pool of water says I died 22 times so far. I dunno, maybe that's bad for being near the end of chapter 2. most of those deaths were me trying to get a better ranking on the stages, as opposed to just getting through the stages.

I suspect, the main thing that will make this game "hard" and cause me to rage is trying to get A+ rank on every stage.
that's what is gonna be "Hard"

but just getting through the game, to the end?

it's not as hard as people are saying.







go ahead.

loose your venom on me

I'm immune.

[Hooligan Spooks]

I agree with you actually. I thought the game was along the lines of normal. I did all the bosses in simple mode, went back and did regular mode and the pacifist runs. Now I have a few S ranks and im starting to get bored. Not frustrating at all trough.

Its got a somewhat steep but short learning curve. After that its just a fun challenge, but nothing rage inducing like when there is cheap catch up AI in racing games (Personal rant)

Although I did grow up in the days of no saves, limited lives and trial and error pattern fighting with plently of dieing and repeating. So I am a bit nastalgic about the dificulty.

[꧁ঔৣSergioTucuঔৣ꧂]

There is an Expert mode too

[Multihog]

Originally posted by Femaiden:

the flying stages aren't any tougher than any other shootemup.

Gradius and R-Type are way harder. (in my mind, I think R-Type is fricking impossible, but I guess I just suck at video games)

Yeah, R-Type Delta owned me so hard I still haven't fully recovered from it. These flying stages are actually quite easy.

[Xande]

I agree, it's hard, but not as hard as people are describing it. The only fight that gave me trouble was the dragon, because the "terrain" is randomly generated
other than that, no it's not very hard, just "hard" xD

[Pom Pom 🍕]

If you're experienced in the 2D run n gun genre it's really not a hard game, but for newcomers of the genre it's tough.

I think you'll enjoy expert mode more though, it feels much more challenging.

[Fiend]

Originally posted by Pomikuza!:

I think you'll enjoy expert mode more though, it feels much more challenging.

Yeah OP should of waited till they got 200% before posting this, Expert is a lot harder than Normal. I agree its not the hardest game ever like some people are making out though

[Trixter]

I racked up a lot of deaths and retries just trying to get As in all the bosses. So many thirsty parries squandered but I did it lol

[Icedfate]

Originally posted by M☢rtalTucu ♿ PUBG / CSGO ♿:

There is an Expert mode too

I don't doubt that the expert mode is gonna be difficult.
my point was that most of the people complaining about the difficulty, are struggling on just the introductory stages.

I'm watching youtubers getting their butts kicked by the garden vegetables and the slime on simple mode.

I mean, yeah, the majority of Let's Player's seem to suck at video games anyway,unless I'm watching the wrong people.

I know that like, binding of isaac and enter the gungeon have several live streamers that are super experts, but then I see guys like the game grumps or something and they suck at just about every game they play, unless maybe the game grumps are playing bad on purpose for the lolz? I dunno.

the game grumps especially...OMG, I can't watch them. Every time, they make me want to reach through my screen and yank the controller away and show them how it's done.

like WTF, they are playing Hello Kitty Island Adventure and they're like "I don't know what to do! where am I supposed to go?! I hate this game, this is not fun!" while there's a GIGANTIC arrow on the screen pointing to the right saying "GO THIS WAY!!!!!"

I don't argue with that hello kitty game being bad, I'm a girl and I wouldn't touch that piece of crap, but these people can't even master the most basic functions of a video game.

why do we need a tutorial to tell us "press A to jump"? especially when there's an options screen that lets you map the buttons to anything you want. and then despite there being a tutorial telling people what buttons to press, they still die trying to jump across a pit because they don't know to use the air dash even though the game explicitly told them to use it.

[Mango]

I'm no youtuber so I can't say this is a good reason, but talking and trying to focus on this game is difficult from what I can tell. Providing decent commentary while trying to focus on this game can prove difficult. I unno, I just wouldn't get so upset over it, yea sometimes It's cringy to watch but I see where you're coming from.

Ding Dong from Oney Plays is pretty good at the game, beating the first run and gun, and 3 bosses in about 15 minutes w/o taking damage. I'm assuming that he's played through the game before, but there are some people out there that aren't garbage at the game and perform on the let's play scene. Sadly they've only done one episode and I doubt they'll be doing more but who knows. Anyways, that's my two cents.

[DJDiceZ]

I think that this game caught the eye of a bigger audience, with more casual players, which is why the difficulty is exaggerated, likely. But yeah. This game is challenging, yet nowhere near impossible, it's not ridiculously unfair either. I've had a much harder time in Hollow Knight, so i agree. (And i have like 3/4 of expert cleared so far). It's sad that there's so much whining over a game that's bested by many others in the difficulty department. This game was made to be a metoid vania/bullet hell type of game. I don't know what people were expecting. It's a bullet hell being a bullet hell. Easier than most of them actually.

People complaining about the "die and retry" mechanic clearly have never played any game like that. This is a basic component of the genre, and in no way bad design.

[Icedfate]

I don't have a problem with people not being good at a game.

it's when someone tries a game and fails and concludes that it's the game's fault for being "bad".
and they come to a conclusion that "this game sucks".

I don't expect people to be experts, or get through it on their first try.

but I would expect people to be able to perform basic functions like moving left and right and jumping, and it seems that a lot of people can't even do that.

it's like watching Conan O'Brien trying to play a video game, but at least he has an excuse, because he's an older guy and he's a talk show host, not a gamer.

I saw an episode where he had Mike Tyson as a guest and he had Mike Tyson try to beat Mike Tyson in Mike Tyson's Punch Out on the NES and ofcourse, he lost, but again, Mike Tyson is not a "gamer"

I admit, it's hilarious to watch someone rage at a game they are failing at, especially when it's a bonafide "hard" game.
but watching self proclaimed "gamers" try and fail at the most basic things that are in every game in the same genra is not entertaining at all.
I expect a "gamer" to at least know their way around a video game controller (or a keyboard). A gamer should intrinsically know how to jump and shoot in a game...as long as the controls conform to an industry standard.

I would also expect developers to know how to play a game too, because how can you make a good game if you don't know how to play games?

so if the dev mapped the jump button to, like , click the left thumbstick to jump or some other awkward position and they didn't offer the option to remap the controls, then people would be justified in complaining. (there are developers that do ♥♥♥♥ like this, with wierd controller layouts with no option to change them)


I know I'm ranting, when I should be playing the game. I'm actually playing 2 other games at once right now so, yeah

[pook99]

I agree that with most of what your saying, I just bought the game today and I am a few bosses into world 3. It is a tough game, but the difficulty is fair in the sense that you have infinite lives and never have to replay long sections of anything due to the 2-3 minute nature of the level design.

I am also mystified by youtubers dying multiple times on the first level, but as was stated before, the aesthetic is luring people in and many of these people were not weened on the classics so their perception of difficulty will vary from seasoned gamers.

As for the difficulty compared to contra, I personally cannot say. Contra, Super C, and Contra 3 are all very easy for me, not because I am some gaming god, but because I played them so much in my life that the entire series is burned into my muscle memory.

I did recently play through contra 4 on ds, I would say cuphead is considerably harder than that game, that game was tough, but generally easier to memorize and learn the patterns for than this game is.

[Rainy days.]

I found it odd how you compared this to games like Megaman X, Gradius, etc, when those games are more about sheer memorization, bar, boss battles.

[Fall]

Same. Gets a lot harder though.

[Hooligan Spooks]

I dont want to sound like an elitest jerk or old man, but honestly and truly games of the most recent generations are alot easier. And there is also now a casual/mainstream croud that wasnt around before. But games have progressed to the point that they are like hand holding, over protective parents when compaired to older games that are like alcaholic abusesive parents that beat you like a red headed step child.

Just look at all the modern game features: Regenerating health, healing at save points, being able to save or save anywhere, unlimited lives or continues/restarts, random over powered items reward at random to make even the worse players feel good, freaking auto aim and target tracking, glowing guide arrows and fast travel, Restricted and hallway style level design, daily rewards/items just for logging in, ect. The list goes on.

Now I am not saying ALL those things are bad changes, but what I am saying is that if you always had those things and got used to them, it would be harder when they were taken away. So when you have a generation brought up on that stuff, going back to the days when games were harder and less accommodating they see it as a problem with the game. I doubt there will be any R-Type, Contra, Ikaruga or Gradius 2 players that are gonna say Cup Head is too hard. But I would bet that the people who think of Dark Souls when asked about a hard game are more likely to say Cup Head is also hard.