Is the game harder solo?

[7empest]

I want to get this game but it looks like it is mainly coop focused. Does the game scale in difficulty depending on how many people you are playing with?

[Nei]

I've been playing this game solo without any issues
there is a difficulty spike at one point but you overcome with better equipment but you can also be stealthy until you do get the equipment

[CombatWombat]

It does, but not in the best way. It reduces the number of enemies making the place a bit empty.

That said, I still recommend you play it Solo. It is very doable and enjoyable and you can soak up the atmosphere better when playing solo.

[mr steal ur spell]

You might find yourself juggling food and water less, and relying more on turrets and crafting in solo play. Certain aspects of the late game (ammo for non-craftable weapons, more streamlined ways of handling hunger, thirst and transport) make it easier with a solo player because you don't need to grind materials as often as you would in a group.

[MechWarden]

It was fairly playable solo when it released, but to help out the devs added in a Dynamic Difficulty feature that removes non-key enemies from the map if you are playing solo or exploring solo. That feature is still pretty basic, but it is a start in the right direction.

It did kill some of the challenge for experienced solo players, but odds are that will be addressed at some point.

To answer your question, it likely still is technically harder in some ways than in co-op, but likely not by that much. Having a second or third person to help out can be quite the power multiplier, as you are able to loot stuff faster and focus attack on enemies better.

[Countersync]

From a first time solo player that hasn't played multiplayer (and I've cleared Rise).

There are a couple spots with lots of enemies (an intersection in Manufacturing, Adjustments, mostly) which I probably should have tackled in a better, not FPS way. I didn't even think of trying to deploy traps in the field. I'd recommend the blade weapons over the Teslas though since you don't unlock respawning fire extinguishers until you reach the Train; actually you can skip those grunts and push around TO the train, so Teslas are an option if you aren't death rushing into the wrong spot by mistake.

[MechWarden]

Yeah, untraining players to not treat this game like an FPS will likely do them a lot of favors. Framing the game a bit like 'Half-Life 1, but as a survival game' brings along the baggage of looting weapons and gunning down anything you see as the expected mode of operations, despite what the trailers try to showcase.

[Monokuma]

It's sort of a balanced difficulty choice, you can either handle encounters alone with tweaked ai and spawns in a solo playthrough, or have a bunch of people going through a zone at once with the default spawns and ai, but suffer the fact that you are now having to distribute the loot across all the players involved. And loot does not increase with playercount, there's definitely a fixed amount of loot within the facility itself, and portal dimensions don't spawn extra loot in multiplayer either. So you're picking the difficulty between somewhat harder combat encounters and harder resource management.