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The games you almost beat on normal difficulty

mrmustard

Banned
Are there final bosses or final stages you couldn't beat and gave up or had to switch to easy?

You can also list games where you gave up, because it was too much work and you didn't want to do it. For example that huge temple in Powerwash Simulator that took hours.

Had to switch to easy for the endboss:
Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order

Coudn't beat the boss:
Gumshoe (NES)
Ninja Gaiden II (Xbox 360)
The Amazing Spider-Man (Game Boy)
 
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Beer Baelly

Al Pachinko, Konami President
Tobey Maguire Lol GIF


Normal is easy
 

Kacho

Member
Wiegraf in Final Fantasy Tactics is an infamous save slot killer. Keep in mind, this game came out a few years before internet usage was common for kids and teens. Had to restart the game when I got stuck on him during my first playthrough. Super frustrating at the time, but the game was so good it didn't turn me off.

 

Aenima

Member
Modern Normal difficulty is the Easy Difficulty.

Only have switched from Normal to easy in a couple of games, but not because i found the game hard, it was because i was not enjoying the combat system, and just wanted to spend less time on that as possible to move on with the story that i was enjoying.
 

CatLady

Selfishly plays on Xbox Purr-ies X
Are there final bosses or final stages you couldn't beat and gave up or had to switch to easy?

You can also list games where you gave up, because it was too much work and you didn't want to do it. For example that huge temple in Powerwash Simulator that took hours.

Had to switch to easy:
Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order

Coudn't beat the boss:
Gumshoe (NES)
Ninja Gaiden II (Xbox 360)
The Amazing Spider-Man (Game Boy)

I had to switch to easy on Jedi too because I suck at platforming and kept falling and dying. You didn't lose health if you fell on easy.

In Halo 2 I often switch to normal at the end as I hate dealing with Tartarus. I've solved that problem now, I just don't play Halo2 anymore when I do a run of all the Halo campaigns. Halo 2 is my least favorite Halo.

Quantum Break is one of my favorite games from last gen but I gave up at the end because you can't change the difficulty and I couldn't get past that last boss fight.
 
I would have on Sekiro, of I had been given the option.

I'm glad I wasn't given the option.
That final boss in Sekiro is a bitch. I love how the game doesn't give you the option of dumbing it down and you gotta either quit or "git gud". I tried and tried so many times that I had run out of prosthetic attacks due to no spirit emblems (?) so I had to beat his ass with just my sword and dodging which made it even more difficult. I could've quit but I wasn't going to let the bastard win.
 

rofif

Can’t Git Gud
Horizon Forbidden West... I had enough of the grind and vision of grinding 3 more levels was exhausting. I just wanted to finish the story.
Gow2018 first time around. switched to easy half way through. Got back to it last year and had no issues on normal. Different midset!
Dark Souls3. Prince and forward was crap so I used a trainer. Got back to it many times after no issues at all. got gud
 
Guacamelee I bailed on the final boss.

Fortunately the sequel starts with you fighting that same boss but made super easy (since it's the very start of the game lol)
 

The Stig

Member
Dont know if this counts as it is an optional boss after the story is complete.

God of War Ragnarok - The valkyrie queen. I remembered how much of a pain in the arse she was in GoW 2018 and just decided to save myself the aggravation.
 

cireza

Member
If I make it to the final boss you can be sure that I am going to complete the game. And this isn't even related to difficulty.

I even managed to beat PSO v2 on Dreamcast 100% offline in ULTIMATE. I can tell you this was really tough and required a lot of time to even be able to survive the Grants spell.
 
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Danjin44

The nicest person on this forum
For me most games on normal are pretty easy so I usually start with hard and my answer is no because I'm too stubborn.
 
The last time I had to turn down the difficulty was Metro 2033 on the Xbox 360. Normal difficulty was too hard, but Easy was a cakewalk.

I gave up on Alone In The Dark, also on the Xbox 360. The game was hard, but mostly because the controls were ass, and made the game horribly frustrating.
 

saintjules

Member
Wiegraf in Final Fantasy Tactics is an infamous save slot killer. Keep in mind, this game came out a few years before internet usage was common for kids and teens. Had to restart the game when I got stuck on him during my first playthrough. Super frustrating at the time, but the game was so good it didn't turn me off.



That one was really tough when I first played it. Took a series of tries, but eventually got past it..
 

Danknugz

Member
it always strikes me as weird that so many people had trouble with njnja gaiden on xbox and 360 because i'm not good at games at all, barely try always playing casual/easy etc and all the ninja gaidens on xbox/360 were a breeze to me and I think i even played on normal
 

Danknugz

Member
what about cheating? i do it all the time and wouldn't really be interested otherwise. maybe video gaming just isn't for me. i find more amusement in playing them the wrong way and in ways people look down on. for example some games i won't even touch unless there's a trainer on PC i can cheat with. no time in my life to be challenged on some video game. i guess i'm just too old for this shit


another example is back with GTA5 and when it first launched. i spent all this time amassing like 150 million doing all kinds of money glitches before they cracked down and took all my
money. i literally never played the game again, it was only fun stealing the in game cash than actually playing the damn game.
 
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Knightime_X

Member
Super Meat Boy
Was on the second to last level of the game and simply could not finish it.
I gave the game a break which should have been a day or 2 but turned out to be over a decade.
Tried to return to finish the game and said fuck it. And that was that.
 

rodrigolfp

Haptic Gamepads 4 Life
Never on easy. Only dropped some games from the hardest because too much BS difficulties.
 
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Fbh

Member
Triangle Strategy:
Wasn't even the final boss but I just found hard mode too punishing and not fun. Hard mode makes every enemy deal a lot o damage while simultaneously turning them into bullet sponges.
Changed it to normal and had way more fun that way, the game really felt designed for that difficulty IMO. It also still offered a decent challenge towards the end.

Persona 5:
Wasn't a hard boss or anything, I was defeated by the awful pace and never ending bloat. The sunk cost fallacy made me want to see it through but like 80 hours in I just went from hard to easy to rush through it .
 
Blood & Wine. Didn't realize that the armor you pickup during the final level was intended to make the final boss easier. Albeit heavy, but that's fixable.
 

Kataploom

Gold Member
Are there final bosses or final stages you couldn't beat and gave up or had to switch to easy?

You can also list games where you gave up, because it was too much work and you didn't want to do it. For example that huge temple in Powerwash Simulator that took hours.

Had to switch to easy:
Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order

Coudn't beat the boss:
Gumshoe (NES)
Ninja Gaiden II (Xbox 360)
The Amazing Spider-Man (Game Boy)
Jedi: Fallen Order last boss is pretty dope, I played it on hard ("Grand master" I think it's called?) and I swore at the time she would show a new pattern/attack every now and then without stopping, but the scene after worth it!
 

fart town usa

Gold Member
Last boss in R&C Size Matters (PSP). Just a complete mess from what I remember.

That game in itself is kind of a mess overall so I wasn't too upset when I decided to let it go.

Countless other games too but that one came to mind.
 

BlackTron

Member
Original playthrough of Castlevania CotM on GBA...yeah from launch on the dark screen. In hindsight I should have just power leveled up and came back, but I just kept trying to beat Dracula over and over again until I gave up.
 

AV

We ain't outta here in ten minutes, we won't need no rocket to fly through space
I've technically never beaten Metroid Prime I guess, since I got to the final boss at like 3am, died just as it was about to, called it a night, and completely forgot I hadn't actually done it.
 

Dr_Ifto

Member
Wiegraf in Final Fantasy Tactics is an infamous save slot killer. Keep in mind, this game came out a few years before internet usage was common for kids and teens. Had to restart the game when I got stuck on him during my first playthrough. Super frustrating at the time, but the game was so good it didn't turn me off.


Man this fight can totally fuck your save. Plus it being 8-10 hours into the game, can totally make you put the game down for a few months with how frustrating it is if you are not ready for it and need to restart. I luckily had an older save that was only 4 or so fights backtracked, so I wasnt totally screwed. But I over leveled the fight and was able to get past it easily by second time around.
 
When I first played Dead Space in 2008, I got to the second meteor shooting section and it gave me a lot of trouble for some reason. It annoyed me that what was basically a tower defense section was ruining my otherwise great enjoyment of an action/horror game, so I changed it to easy and beat the game, but then immediately replayed it on Normal and Hard because it made all the other encounters less tense because it was too easy.
 

Zannegan

Member
Fracture, that Lucasarts terrain deformation game on the 360. Just could not figure out what to do with the final boss.
Sky Crawlers: Innocent Aces on Wii. The final boss is on a timer and will just wait out of bounds in a cloud until you do... something to trigger her to attack again. It seemed totally random. And I kept dying due to timeouts.

In both cases, the rest of the game hadn't been that difficult, but I just could not figure out what I had to do to progress. In the end, I dropped both. They had stopped being fun by that point, and neither felt worth the time investment to figure out. I guess I could have looked up the solution, but if I'm not invesyed enough to figure out a solution on my own, I'll usually drop a game before looking up a guide. No idea why.
 

RPS37

Member
I actually came in here to say Fallen Order too!
However, I didn’t switch the difficulty to easy, I just stopped playing.

Same with Rage 2.
 

Faust

Perpetually Tired
Staff Member
I did this with Pathfinder Kingmaker, but not because I was struggling. The combat felt great! The issue was I was 227 hours into the game and I just wanted to have it *end*.
 

Pelao

Member
PC versions of both Ghost Recon Advance Warfighter games, 4 player coop with friends.
The PC versions made by GRIN simply don't hold back their punches and feel much more punishing in coop if one of your teammates gets killed.
We had to lower the difficulty and, even then, each stage was an ordeal to complete, but those were some extremely fun LAN parties.
 

westman

Member
Had to switch to easy:
  • Ni No Kuni. Failed repeatedly at the last stage of the final boss, and didn't feel like spending more time improving my party/gear/monsters etc.
  • Batman: Arkham Knight (to get past the excavator chase sequence, switched back to normal after it).
  • Ratchet & Clank (2016). Switched to easy for the final boss, maybe prematurely since there were things I didn't quite understand about the stage/setup until after I'd switched.
Couldn't beat the final boss:
  • Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, best ending (just couldn't do enough damage on the last stage of the final boss, and slowly succumbed to attrition).
  • Arc the Lad: Twilight of the Spirits. Went into the final dungeon underleveled, couldn't beat the final boss, realized there was no way to leave the final dungeon without restoring an old save (which would have undone quite a bit of progress/leveling), gave up and applied a cheat code so that I could at least see the ending (this was before YouTube).
 
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01011001

Banned
not in any game that came out in the last 20 years no.

I don't even bother playing any game on normal if there's a difficulty selector.

DMC3 made me switch tho, I wqs really bad at that kind of game when I was younger
 

TheUsual

Gold Member
Red Faction Guerilla wasn't fun on normal. Dropped it down to easy and had the time of my life!
Just running around and destroying stuff while in mission and not having to worry about dying just took the game to another level.
 

mopspear

Member
last boss of Metroid Dread. I struggled through most of the game in the first place but couldn't even get to the final form of the last boss.
 
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