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Previously hardcore game series that turned casual

You could argue Mass Effect 1 to 2, but you could equally argue that the game just simply changed genres.
I remember using a sniper rifle for the first time in Mass Effect and wondering how much leveling would be needed to get Shepherd to hold the damn thing steady.
 
Final Fantasy Tactics.

From hardcore Tactics Ogre predecessor and original FFT installment to FFTA subseries and shitty mobile phone entries. The latest entry is Final Fantasy Tactics S, a mobile social game.
 
You get shiny stars on your save file if you never hit the Block of Shame. It's a crutch for kids, and if it shows up for you at all you're not good enough at Mario to complain about it being dumbed down.

I, uh, had to use this a few times in 3D World already, and I only just hit world 6... ^_^; I've been playing games for more than 20 years and I'm still crap at them.
 
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Dead Rising 3 is one of the worst offenders. Everything remotely difficult or unique about it has been ripped out from the core only to be replaced by superficial whackiness or 'action' that falls in the instant gratification category. The Tomb Raider reboot also comes to mind: it became a generic shooter with no sense of exploration, coupled with inane "fill up those bars" gameplay.
 
3D Mario games have been getting more and more casual with every entree. 3D World is a joke compared to Mario 64.
 
Fire Emblem already has 1 foot in there; lets see if they can take it out.

I adored Awakening, and some of its streamlining was necessary given just how many assorted mechanics it was already compiling from earlier entries in the series, but I definitely share the concern that it sets a bad precedent for where Fire Emblem will go from here. Offering a casual mode without permadeath is a one-way decision that the designers will never, ever be able to take back now that they've dramatically expanded their audience, and while one would hope it doesn't affect the standard mode, the problem is when the maps and difficulty levels start to be balanced around the expectation that a casual mode is available, and there are already signs of this in how Awakening is tuned.

3D Mario games have been getting more and more casual with every entree. 3D World is a joke compared to Mario 64.

You do realize that the early interface limitations of Mario 64 like the Wing Cap controls don't actually make anything in its design more intrinsically challenging than, oh, Broken Blue Bully Belt or Piranha Creeper Creek After Dark (never mind Champion's Road).

3D World is a lot gentler than Galaxy 2, I'll give you that. Other than Champion's Road it doesn't have anything nearly as demanding as Cosmic Clones in the Chompworks, Stone Cyclone, or The Perfect Run. But the idea that these are all a lot softer on the player than Mario 64 is risible.

Both 2D and 3D Mario have done a better job of maintaining a complete difficulty spread from novice to expert play than any other long-running series I can name. More responsive controls necessarily make games easier (compare Sunshine's terrible underwater controls to how Galaxy solved swimming by letting you coast behind a shell) but the recent Mario games have ably compensated for this through level design.
 
This shit right here:

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People hated the Javelin in the previous game? Add more of that stuff, but this time for all the classes!

Lock on shit everywhere. Even lock on shit that you don't need to aim. Just put it on the ground and see the points roll in.
Then you have auto-aim up the ass. Because it's too hard for someone to actually having to learn how to play a game and get hits on a target, right?

For all the crap that's wrong with the game on a technical level, it's the design decisions that have really put me off of this franchise.

EA/DICE wants those CoD numbers and were talking trash up till BF4 got released, so what do they do?
Create a game where even the biggest noob can feel like he's a battlefield veteran from day 1. Well played DICE, well played!
Hope BF5 is the biggest flop in company history.
 
The Elder Scrolls.

And it's only going to continue after Skyrim's sales.
I'd like the next ES game to, at the very least, have a hardcore mode like the one in Fallout: New Vegas. I usually don't roleplay games too seriously but I gave it a shot in NV and was surprised at how great it was.
 
Zelda might be the most watered down. From "here is a sword, good luck", to hours of tutorials and hand holding in a linear world with no real threats in it. Praises to ALBW for trying to go back a bit, though.

The same could be said for Mega Man, Castlevania and mostly any other series that started way back in the NES days. In overall terms, and in particular in the case of Zelda, I guess these games did not have any tutorial or help system (or even lore or exposition) because they couldn't. Developers were severely limited by the hardware they had to work with, and if these games were hard it was probably because the way they had to be designed, and not hard by choice. I'm sure that Miyamoto would have loved to incorporate all the lore, sidequests, puzzle design, etc. into Zelda 1 if he had had the chance.

Fire Emblem already has 1 foot in there; lets see if they can take it out.

Giving options is not "going casual". You can play the game with the same (or even greater) difficulty settings as you could before. They are all still there. That doesn't mean that making it less unforgiving for new players is "casualizing" the game. You have to realize that the concept of unit permadeath may make the game completely unattractive for some people who are new to the series and otherwise would like to try it out.

Having options is never bad, if you are not taking from one crowd to give to another, which is definitely not the case here.

Super Mario Bros. Most recent game has a "fuck you, INVINCIBLE!" box if you die a handful of times in a row on a level.

Same here. That power-up is completely optional. You can choose not to use it if you don't want to. It's there for people who are stuck in a level, and if you use it, you don't get credit for any Coin or secret you find while it's active.
 
You get shiny stars on your save file if you never hit the Block of Shame. It's a crutch for kids, and if it shows up for you at all you're not good enough at Mario to complain about it being dumbed down.
Not true. When you're going for green stars in 3D World there's a good chance it will come up for a number of reasons. Some stars are much harder to get than anything in the main part of the level. And sometimes when exploring you take some risks and die attempting to find things or test if something will lead to a secret.

Regardless, modern Mario games are a hell of a lot easier than old ones with or without the super guide.
 
I recently played through DMC4. I've beaten it before, but I've never felt like I was very good at the game. Here are my rankings:
(Mission 18-20)



Out of curiosity, I loaded up DmC to compare. That game hands out style points for free.


None of the chapters were played more than once. DmC removes a lot of the combat depth and allows you to easily infinite guys, even in the air which is particularly difficult in earlier DMC games. What are some other series that removed difficulty/depth to appeal to a more mainstream audience?

As soon as I read the title, I thought about DmC.

give NG3 and RE all the shit you want, they are still bitch hard.
 
I'd like the next ES game to, at the very least, have a hardcore mode like the one in Fallout: New Vegas. I usually don't roleplay games too seriously but I gave it a shot in NV and was surprised at how great it was.

What would an Elder Scrolls hardcore mode do? I guess it could remove map markers and such, but I don't remember Elder Scrolls ever having a focus on survival as in having to drink water and eat food.
 
Metroid.
From Metroid "Good luck finding your way and even surviving"
to Super Metroid "You can save your progress and find health without any problem oh and here's a map, it's free".

Even if you don't like this, just check the latest installment Metroid Other M "you get told what to do every step of the way with a guide"
 
Resident Evil

Not really. RE1 was trying for mainstream appeal from the start. All the games were going for a casual audience. If anything, RE6 is too hardcore for the mainstream audience, since it has a crazy depth of systems that most people didn't grasp.

Giving options is not "going casual". You can play the game with the same (or even greater) difficulty settings as you could before. They are all still there. That doesn't mean that making it less unforgiving for new players is "casualizing" the game. You have to realize that the concept of unit permadeath may make the game completely unattractive for some people who are new to the series and otherwise would like to try it out.

Awakening was one of, if not the easiest FE. Even the harder options were easier than they were in older games.
 
Age of Empires.

Going from a full-fledged RTS title managing resources, economy and complex armies made up of many individual units during a lengthy and varied campaign to a touch-based Clash of Clans mobile F2P clone.
 
I don't know about "hardcore", however I will never forget how much of a struggle I found it to get *one* character to 60 on vanilla WoW. Then in and around when the first expansion hit how I was levelling multiple characters without it feeling like I was forever going to be stuck on a particular (character) level.
 
Your rankings in DmC are about the same as DMC4.

DmC's scale is actually SSS, SS, S, A where the comparative DMC4's scale is S, A, B, C.

So on your DmC ranking you basically have the equivalent of a bunch of C ranks on there (those As in DmC are equivalent to C and your B is equivalent to D).


The DmC rankings are purposely made that way to encourage casuals to try to perform well because it always shows them as around at least A or B (which is perceived as "good" for most other games but in DmC that's like average to below average play).

SSS ranks are still pretty easy to get in DmC and the game is more casual than DMC4 but I just wanted to make that correction on the ranking system letter grading.
 
Final Fantasy Tactics.

From hardcore Tactics Ogre predecessor and original FFT installment to FFTA subseries and shitty mobile phone entries. The latest entry is Final Fantasy Tactics S, a mobile social game.

Tactic Ogre has nothing to do with FF tactic serie.
 
Probably would be easier to make a thread about games that were casual but were turned hardcore instead. For a majority of franchises, they have been turned more casual.
 

But, it's not! The series has bean generally casual with occasional forays into crazy difficulty or complexity. RE1/2, simple mainstream action horror games. 3 was pretty nuts with ammo creation. CV was hard and long. REmake was hard as shit. RE4 was back to mainstream casual, same with 5. But 6 is like if they made Devil May Cry a shooter.
 
Ill echo Dead Rising.

DR1 was hardcore, you didnt make it to a story case on time? Tough shit, storys over, you missed it. It was tough but the time limits and expiring missions kept it tense and you always had to be on your toes, and it was a better game because of it.

DR3 is like, hey heres some missions, take your time, youll be fine. No rush, complete them as you want, youve all the time in the world. did we mention you can save your game anywhere? No? Well you can!

Its super casualized and watered down
 
Virtua Fighter series. Prior to VF4 (and to some extent VF3), button mashers will get massacred and not win a single round against a veteran. I remember playing VF2 with my friends all night without them winning a SINGLE round against me. Today's VF has changed a lot. I need to be more careful in disposing button mashers.
 
Virtua Fighter series. Prior to VF4 (and to some extent VF3), button mashers will get massacred and not win a single round against a veteran. I remember playing VF2 with my friends all night without them winning a SINGLE round against me. Today's VF has changed a lot. I need to be more careful in disposing button mashers.

Well, a veteran shouldn't ever lose to a button masher, no matter how casual the game. Even in SF4 I've never lost to a masher with my main. Not even close to a round.
 
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