Will the PC version have difficulty settings?

[Camm]

I notice on the console versions there are no difficulty settings, ie. no hard or easy modes. In fact it seems there is a forced automatic easy mode once you die a few times in boss battles, a character drops hearts and even a potion during a boss battle if you have failed a few times.

It would seem to make sense to at least have a hard mode with this easy boss mode turned off and some tweaks to the combat formula to make it harder. Hard modes in this genre are common and my children would definitely appreciate an easy mode.

Any thoughts?

[Terrence M. Delawgan]

It would be great. But it's unlikely. Nowadays, developers tend to favour casual players (and mainly incompetent ones) to cast a wide net. They remove Game Over screens, they give infinite Lives and/or Continues, ... But with this new approch for duffers the price to pay is that more experienced players are totally left behind. Sadly, cursed Kingdom is a perfect example of this tendency.

[Jinx]

I'm actually glad to hear this. I grew up in the 80s, beat all sorts of difficult games (see: Ghouls 'n Ghosts), but I don't enjoy replaying the same crap over and over to get it perfect and I don't have unlimited patience or time any more. Wish the last two Shantae games had better balancing, they are too easy 90% of the way then you hit a freaking wall at the end with spikes and bottomless pits.

[Cheese]

Originally posted by Jinx:

I'm actually glad to hear this.

I don't follow. Why are you glad to hear the game doesn't offer options and forces people into an easy mode whether they want it or not?

[Jinx]

I'd rather have this than the game be locked to a higher difficulty. And it's only going to apply if you're actually having issues. But yes it would be nice if there was an option to simply disable it for your whole playthrough if you didn't want it.

[strata_ranger]

Originally posted by Terrence M. Delawgan:

They remove Game Over screens, they give infinite Lives and/or Continues....

For a game that is purchased once then enjoyed forever, the player always has "infinite lives/continues"; "Game Over" is little more than an official message acknowledging that they have to restart from the last checkpoint (or save file).

[Jinx]

Originally posted by strata_ranger:

Originally posted by Terrence M. Delawgan:

They remove Game Over screens, they give infinite Lives and/or Continues....

For a game that is purchased once then enjoyed forever, the player always has "infinite lives/continues"; "Game Over" is little more than an official message acknowledging that they have to restart from the last checkpoint (or save file).

It's funny that people try to use old arcade games as the gold standard for what difficulty should be like. Arcade games were intentionally unfair and overly difficult to force you to spend more money on them. As the focus of development changed to home consoles and PC things changed because home games didn't to be frustratingly hard to make money.

[strata_ranger]

Originally posted by Jinx:

It's funny that people try to use old arcade games as the gold standard for what difficulty should be like. Arcade games were intentionally unfair and overly difficult to force you to spend more money on them. As the focus of development changed to home consoles and PC things changed because home games didn't to be frustratingly hard to make money.

Indeed, arcade games were the ORIGINAL microtransaction, and got away with it because they were (in some cases literally) the only game in town. Granted, to actually finish an arcade game in one credit (or at all) took some serious game knowledge and/or skill, and they nickel-and-dimed (quartered?) you for it every step of the way.

From a design perspective, there's nothing necessarily wrong with giving the player a limited number of attempts before they are reset to their last checkpoint. It's really all about the specific details and implementation.

For Monster Boy specifically, it would not be wrong to call its difficulty level the "Dark Souls of" Wonder Boy games. Late game enemies inflict a lot of damage (even with upgraded armor and HP) but their movements are simple and you are expected to learn how to take advantage of this to avoid taking damage in the first place -- almost every death is ultimately your fault, either because you missed something the game was trying to teach you, or made an error while executing a particular segment. When you die, you respawn at your last checkpoint in short order with whatever HP (Potion included) you had when tagging the checkpoint the first time, but many other things persist: you keep whatever money you died with, solved puzles remain solved, collectibles are still collected (vital collectibles trigger a new checkpoint), and so on.

[Professor Q]

Originally posted by strata_ranger:

For Monster Boy specifically, it would not be wrong to call its difficulty level the "Dark Souls of" Wonder Boy games.

Having just finished Wonder Boy in Monster World, I sure hope they don't surpass the Wonder Boy standard of difficulty in Monster Boy...

[strata_ranger]

Originally posted by Professor Q:

Originally posted by strata_ranger:

For Monster Boy specifically, it would not be wrong to call its difficulty level the "Dark Souls of" Wonder Boy games.

Having just finished Wonder Boy in Monster World, I sure hope they don't surpass the Wonder Boy standard of difficulty in Monster Boy...

Wait, is that Wonder Boy 2 or 4? Very very important not to get those two mixed up, given how the first two games were designed with quarter-munching arcades in mind.

[Jinx]

Description
Wonder Boy in Monster World, known in Japan as Wonder Boy V: Monster World III, is a side-scrolling action role-playing game originally developed by Westone and published by Sega for the Mega Drive/Genesis in 1991. Wikipedia