Dynamic difficulty in Year of the Dragon

[NBOX21]

As someone that knows this game so well (Year of the Dragon on PS1 is one of my favourite games ever) and played through it tons of times, I know that the original PS1 version had a dynamic difficulty feature.

As far as I'm aware, there are 3 difficulty levels - easy, normal and hard. You can't actually pick your difficulty when you start a new game, rather the game determines the difficulty based on your skill level. If you're doing really well at the minigames, levels and bosses, the game gets harder for an extra challenge. If you're having a hard time, usually failing three times in a row, the difficulty goes down to make it a little bit easier for you, which is especially noticeable in the Harbour Speedway race.

Nowhere in the game or instruction manual does it tell you about this feature, but I thought it was a cool thought on the developers nonetheless. Some of the effects include shorter time limits, faster AI opponents, tougher boss attack patterns, more enemies (which explains why some of them don't drop gems), as well as more butterflies required to earn an extra life. There were also cheat codes that let you play on the easy or hard difficulties at will.

For some reason, the Reignited Trilogy doesn't have this feature in place whatsoever. The game's difficulty is the same no matter how well or poorly you are doing. I especially noticed this in the whack a mole minigame where nothing seemed to change during repeated failures. The time limit was the same and the moles didn't move any slower or show up more frequently. The skateboard race in the final level was stupid easy - despite multiple mistakes and wonky physics, I still beat it first try, where in the original it still takes me multiple attempts, even on the easy difficulty.

It's kind of weird they didn't include it in the Reignited Trilogy or even for all three games considering the Crash Bandicoot N Sane Trilogy did something similar with its dynamic difficulty - despite not being in Crash 1, they decided to put it in Crash 1 for the N Sane Trilogy anyway.

[Moogal™]

I played Year of the Dragon a lot a long time ago. Still have my copy for the PS1. I never knew or remembered there was any difficulty settings anyway. Not that the game is difficult anyway.

[NBOX21]

Originally posted by Moogal™:

I played Year of the Dragon a lot a long time ago. Still have my copy for the PS1. I never knew or remembered there was any difficulty settings anyway. Not that the game is difficult anyway.

That's because there's no difficulty selection - the game automatically adjusts difficulty as you play according to your skill level, and the game does a surprisingly good job of hiding it.

And yeah, it's not even that hard of a game, but there are cheat codes to set the game to the highest difficulty if you want an extra challenge or the easiest difficulty if you're having a hard time.

[JaredX7]

So, kind of like what Unreal Tournament did?

Never knew or noticed the original Spyro 3 did it, and I 100% completed it many times back then.

[NBOX21]

Originally posted by Lumehr:

That's a really interesting feature, and I only knew about this just now. I assume that this feature was simply forgotten, as it seems rather subtle. Even if it's not a bad deal, it sucks when something you admire about a classic game is gone from a remake.

Crash 2 and 3 on PS1 had a similar feature where losing 5 lives in the same stage grants you a free aku aku mask to make your life a bit easier whereas losing even more lives at the same section turns a regular crate into a checkpoint, and that feature got brought back in the N Sane Trilogy even including it for Crash 1.

Even though it does kinda suck that they did not bring this back for the Reignited Trilogy version of Year of the Dragon, I won't let that take away from what is otherwise a mostly good and faithful recreation of the original game.

[Moogal™]

Originally posted by NBOX21:

Originally posted by Lumehr:

That's a really interesting feature, and I only knew about this just now. I assume that this feature was simply forgotten, as it seems rather subtle. Even if it's not a bad deal, it sucks when something you admire about a classic game is gone from a remake.

Crash 2 and 3 on PS1 had a similar feature where losing 5 lives in the same stage grants you a free aku aku mask to make your life a bit easier whereas losing even more lives at the same section turns a regular crate into a checkpoint, and that feature got brought back in the N Sane Trilogy even including it for Crash 1.

Even though it does kinda suck that they did not bring this back for the Reignited Trilogy version of Year of the Dragon, I won't let that take away from what is otherwise a mostly good and faithful recreation of the original game.

In crash, it is at least needed as the games are more difficult than spyro. Much more actually.

[Tomiply]

That can't be true. I just did the race against the butterflies now. Could not get to first place, even though I hit every single boost and made no mistakes. I then lost once on purpose in my second try, raced again exactly the same way, hitting all the same boosts, making exactly the same turns and I caught up to the 1st AI in the second round, even though I couldn't do it in three rounds the first time I tried. Seems like the difficulty was lowered, because I did nothing different.