Difficulty.

[Shadow Kraken]

The difficulty curve is just absent. It spikes randomly. With platformers, there should definitely be a learning curve. I for one, am not an avid platformer person, i will admit that.

But when i think of platformers, i do expect a difficulty curve. Nope. Not in this game. This game punishes me so much, the frustration is literally blatant.

This reminds me of the Ginso tree, i raged HARD at that. I do not have the reactions of a housefly. The Forlorn Ruins are another peeve. Where even the slightest mistake can cost you everything..

I am sorry, but i am considering giving up. This really is not worth tearing my hair out over.

[Groen90]

Originally posted by JR Cyborg:

I am sorry

lol... ok? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Originally posted by JR Cyborg:

I do not have the reactions of a housefly.

In games, where reflexes fail, memorization prevails. Most of the harder sections (I want to say all but could be wrong) can be done the same way every time; learn from your mistakes and... don't repeat them?

... or just give up, that works too I guess

[Shadow Kraken]

Originally posted by Groen90:

Originally posted by JR Cyborg:

I am sorry

lol... ok? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Originally posted by JR Cyborg:

I do not have the reactions of a housefly.

In games, where reflexes fail, memorization prevails. Most of the harder sections (I want to say all but could be wrong) can be done the same way every time; learn from your mistakes and... don't repeat them?

... or just give up, that works too I guess :lunar2019deadpanpig:

i just thought i'd come back to the game after 2 months. I didn't know why i left it, but now i do.

My reactions are not that quick. i wasn't expecting a sudden difficulty spike.

I've tried to memorise what i need to do. This just isnt working for me

[Kelrycor]

Ori is not an easy game indeed, but it is also not very difficult if you get the hang of it. Some parts with instant death mechanics may cost you some repetitions, but they never felt unfair for me, only challenging. And like Groen90 is saying, memorization should help you master every part in this game. So don't give up beating the game, the final reward will become sweeter with every bitter step you take

But if your willpower is not making up your reflexes, when this game might just not be for you. I suggest you stick to games like Abzu or Aer instead, where failing is not a big issue.

[Shadow Kraken]

Originally posted by Kelrycor:

Ori is not an easy game indeed, but it is also not very difficult if you get the hang of it. Some parts with instant death mechanics may cost you some repetitions, but they never felt unfair for me, only challenging. And like Groen90 is saying, memorization should help you master every part in this game. So don't give up beating the game, the final reward will become sweeter with every bitter step you take :kuro:

But if your willpower is not making up your reflexes, when this game might just not be for you. I suggest you stick to games like Abzu or Aer instead, where failing is not a big issue.

Is the final reward even worth all the blood, sweat and tears?

[Kelrycor]

Originally posted by JR Cyborg:

Is the final reward even worth all the blood, sweat and tears?

If you ask me, yes. Ori is one of the best games in my Steam library. You will probably also love it when you completed the game by yourself rather than just watching a Let's Play.

[Stretchyf]

A kind of slow-learner myself. Ori died 600+ times on Normal under my supervision on the first run, but I never felt that difficulty is unfair and plainly loved playing when game was about to end (sadly). After that immediately made a run on Hard.

And now I can say that even after I finished the game twice I hadn't really learned how to play. Only after 30-40 hours of playing (DE and original) my gameplay is something not painful to watch :D

[Nexus]

I have realised what is so crap about the tree section already, the enemies shoot inconsistently and the water rubberbands worse than an arcade era racing game, combining these 2 means that if reactions fail you, memorisation will too

Get a little ahead and the pattern is different and you cant wait for it to line up again because of the uneven water flow

[LinkSamus3]

Originally posted by Nexus:

I have realised what is so crap about the tree section already, the enemies shoot inconsistently and the water rubberbands worse than an arcade era racing game, combining these 2 means that if reactions fail you, memorisation will too

You have to control the enemies' shooting with your positioning.

[Shard of Manus]

I'll preface by saying that I'm playing on Normal, not Hard... but this game comes across as really, really forgiving. Both in platforming and combat.

As for the water section in the tree, treat each part individually, because the water keeps up with you no matter what; it only drowns Ori if you aren't fast enough on one particular section. Just bait the direction of enemy attacks with your positioning, make good use of double jump and air dash (makes this section much easier).

[Stormspark]

There are MUCH harder platformers than this out there. This game lets you save almost anywhere you want, almost anytime you want, and there are NO penalties for dying whatsoever. You should see Guacamelee. It makes the hardest platforming in this game look simple, PLUS it only has checkpoints (no saving anywhere), PLUS a light world/dark world mechanic that you have to use while platforming. You could say it's like Ori hard mode. Check this out and then say Ori is hard. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8jyomgJMUU

[Waggy]

I found both Guacamelee's much easier than this game personally.

[FrostPaw]

For some people, frustration is fun, for those people repetition is how they define skill. As a disabled gamer who is playing the definitive edition, having gave up playing the standard edition at release. I find the range of leniency between "easy" and normal rather pointless.

The difficulty of enemies never seemed to stop me, the tedium of repeating perfect sequential jumps, flips, dashes etc was the problem. This is possible with reaction speed, dexterity and repetition until either you can always do it, or more often, by a micro second mistimed something the other way, which turns out good enough to get by.

Since I lack the literal ability to combine all of the above due to my crippled hands, getting worse the more I repeat an action, it is disappointing to me the designer thinks the term "easy" represents the easiest they could make that difficulty. Only those of us that don't care about chest beating would choose anyway.

Since the creators clearly have talent for making the game, I can only imagine they are young and thus without any life experiences they can base such difficulties on. There are many gamers who would buy their games, they aren't all young and flawless, I think it's a silly mistake to only cater to the smallest percentage exclusively.

It feels like they designed normal for the top 5%, then designed easy for the extra 6th% . Think about that, all the people below that percentage want to enjoy the game still. Why even have difficulty options if you choose to exclude so many anyway. Isn't that the point of difficulty options.... to choose what you are comfortable with.

[Stretchyf]

But how you expect to lower the difficulty below easy without redrawing the map? Do you aware that environment is pretty much hand-drawn and can't be changed with ease? But while typing this I found some way to do this: having more modular environment and removing some obstacles on easy could ease the platforming part.

Disabilities are nothing to laugh about, but I think developers weren't thinking about people with disabilities much. And average person without serious physical constraints can finish the game IMHO. I consider myself such an average person.

For me game was very challenging at first run and I felt frustration time after time, especially while climbing the Ginso Tree for the first time. But most deaths were not results of micro-second timings - I consider tolerances on platforming rather good and fair - but because I was clueless and lazy to learn. You need to be careful with double jump cause performing it erases your velocity vector. Learning that can take some time and effort cause you need to force yourself to not press jump-key excessively. Bash even have different levels of comprehension and it is good in my book. Also it required some power of will to not be just jumping around but consider a plan and be following that plan. Considering all that I never felt that game was unfair to me.