how hard is this game

[Maine]

im thinking of buying it but i'd like to know a little more about its difficulty without spoiling too much of the game

[Edgard 142nd of Welshdale]

To be honest, the difficulty is overhyped. On normal you can die infinitely, you just lose half of your inventory(none of your hotbar) each time you die - you can reclaim it by going to the spot you died at, and by then whatever killed you likely is nowhere near anymore.

In normal mode, dying isn't very punishing. The very worst thing i can imagine happening is if you get to very low reputation(this game's currency) AND you lost your most important gear in a very dangerous area, far from the hideout, without a watch. Then, it would just be very tedious - but not necessarily hard - to recover yourself.

[Ivy]

It's not really hard if you beaten it. But on first playthrough you'll probably die a lot.

[ScumWatcher]

I'd play it on the hardest difficulty for your first time, you have limited lives as for how hard it is well....if you panic you will die, if you don't have proper supplies you are more likely to die, if you are not patience you will die, if you don't manage your stamina you will die, if you are use to taking lots of hits don't practice that in this game you will die. Play unfair as F to win. Morality.....good and bad have repercussions both........

[ScumWatcher]

It is a rush to beat this game on hard and is the best feeling you can get in this game, if you want a.......story driven narrative with no consequence then do it but sooo many other game do that do not robe yourself of the hard mode experiance. Now only do this if you are a vet of gaming and have a few titles under you belt. Played dark souls or darkest dungeon then you are sorta ready.

Do not play this game on normal the first time throu then expect to play this game on hard later it just will not be the same. I beat the game on hard for my first time throu and it was like a trail of life and I had the biggest erection/orgasm of my life.

[II Wingless II]

Normal mode is stupidly easy, should be renamed casual
Hard mode is somewhat hard
Nightmare is quite difficult

[Perfice]

I think an issue in the discussions for this game is that almost all of the responses come from what many people would consider "Hardcore Gamers". As you can see, a lot of the discussion boards are filled with people that think the only real way to play is if you play on hard. They make it seem like the difficulty is really the only redeemable/important aspect of the game, and that's not true. I am 19 hours into the game, and I can tell you the game is very worthwhile even on Normal difficulty.

As far as I know, there is no difference between the difficulty levels other than how punishing the deaths are. On Normal the deaths are not very punishing, especially when you die during the night right next to or inside your hideout. On Hard mode you have only four lives, and Nightmare you have only one life. When you die, you drop half your gear and spawn inside of your hideout the next morning. You can return to where you died and pick up the gear you dropped, and you get no reputation (the game's currency) for surviving the night. There are a few items which will increase the number of lives you have available to you on the harder difficulties. When you get to Chapter 2, you will start over from the beginning of the Chapter rather than the very beginning of the game.

I would not count myself as one of these Hardcore Gamers, that think you might as well uninstall if you don't play on the hardest difficulty all the time. I also would not place myself as a Casual Gamer, I would say I am somewhere in between. If a game is too punishing, I feel like I just don't hate myself enough to keep torturing myself to beat it. However, I do seek out games which are a bit more challenging than the average gamer does. (I enjoyed games like Dark Souls and Cloudbuilt, but I didn't like Don't Starve because I felt like it was too punishing when you die or just get unlucky.)

As far as Darkwood's difficulty, I would say it's fair. Even on Normal I would say the average gamer will consider this to be a challenging game. The enemies are decently difficult to dispatch (many of them you will avoid until you get proper gear), and the game does not hold your hand. There are many secrets to find, and the game rewards your curiosity while at the same time rewarding cautiousness (if that makes sense). If you willy-nilly walking around the woods without constantly checking your surroundings and watching your step, you will be punished very hard for it. However, you also need to check your surrounding area for supplies if you hope to survive.

What the other people here mean when they say Normal is "too easy" is that it doesn't have a perma-death aspect to it, like the other difficulties do. In essence, they think it is too easy to allow death to be just as punishing as other games deaths are. (Even Dark Souls gave you infinite lives.) However, the average player is not willing to play a game for 20 hours and then have to restart from the very beginning after they died. You can debate that all you want, but it is just reality that most gamers would just abandon the game if that happened.

As I said, the difficulty is fair, especially the more you learn about the game as you go on. It gives you just enough hints to insinuate what you should do without holding your hand. The game is going to be challenging, but not so much that it becomes frustrating. Just watch your step, check your surroundings, and learn from your mistakes and you should be fine. So far I am 19 hours in, still on the first Chapter, and I have probably died around 7-8 times. It's not too bad, but I definitely would have had to motivate myself heavily to pick the game up again if I had played for 19 hours and had to restart from square one.