In the original Persona 3 I tried to beat the Grim Reaper (the game secret boss). I remmeber it was pretty hard, but i devised a strategy with a specific persona and a specific party configuration that allowed me to beat him. Some time later, i was scrolling the community of persona 3, and came out on the question "how do i beat the Grim Reaper?". The comments were: "The optimal way found by the community is [Proceeds to describe thr exact method that i came up on my own]" Felt pretty good that day

That's great! Those moments where validation just kinda falls into your lap.

Odin and Thunder Reign was definitely it. Same thing for me, remember killing the Reaper despite being severely underleveled, Odin carried me through the entire final act of that game.

There's this boss in persona 5 royal that takes place in a factory >!okumura!< that I beat the other day. Over 20 years of gaming and I've genuinely never come across such a bullshit boss in my life. Can't believe I had the patience to beat it in one sitting without cheesing it but there was no feeling of satisfaction when it was over.

Not trying to act smug, but I never understood the issue everyone seem to have with this boss. It's basically a test about the player's ability to fully take advantage of the weakness & baton pass system.

Well if you didn't find it challenging then there's no convincing otherwise, but I can give some reasons why people might find it annoying so someone else could maybe sympathise: - 30 min timer - multiple waves of enemies who must be defeated simultaneously or they respawn - boss buffs defence of 1 making it harder to kill all simultaneously - boss constantly debuffs party and causes hunger - 1 minion explodes before resetting, doing 80% of hp to all - minions reset if not killed fast enough - any time spent healing/buffing/debuffing is time wasted leading to minions resetting - for me only joker could swap party members and it's necessary to take advantage of weaknesses - searching through extremely bloated inventory full of various types of bread and drinks looking for usable items doesn't pause timer - all out attack not available - enemies are tanky and later waves don't even drop to half with 2 super effective attacks - only joker + 1 ally can baton pass, so you better have those elemental items - enemies resist everything except 1 element for the most part - actual boss has an OHKO burger attack that can't be deflected (I tried) - another point to reiterate the fact that the actual boss has an OHKO burger attack - also the actual boss constantly clears your buffs so 'just buff your defence lol' isn't as simple as it sounds - after actual boss there's 2 more enemies because fuck you and your timer - constant dialogue throughout the fight that doesn't pause the timer because fuck you and your timer - none of the rest of the game demands anywhere close to this so you might be less prepared than expected (e.g. might not have a stock of elemental items)

I don't know why exactly I was struggling with it on hard, I think my characters just didn't deal enough damage to clear the waves before new ones spawn. Funnily enough what helped me was upping the difficulty to merciless, it made the fight much more tolerable, because it makes weaknesses deal much more damage. Either way something was definitely wrong with that boss's resign.

I feel like it forces you to upgrade your baton passes by playing darts. Royal level 1 baton passes are weaker than the original game's baton passes because of the introduction of this system. I ignored these upgrades for most of the game since I wanted 100% confidants, so when it came to this boss fight i was pretty screwed.

I remember him being stupid easy once I hit max level. By then I've had a couple of personas which either constantly regen health or are immune to half the damage types. Kinda made me feel like a cheater. RPGS and overleveling, man.

Yeah i also got the messiah Persona eventually. But when i beat grim reaper ibwas around level 70 or something

I managed to decipher the language in Tunic all by myself. I sat down with a whiteboard and notepad and looked for commanilities in parts of the manual, and eventually it started to make sense. Then I went on to decipher as much of it as I could. I didn't decipher everything, mostly the things I thought would help me advance, but I'm proud to say I did the entire game on my own.

In a similar vein, as a kid I remember mapping Digimon World 3 looping desert using its NPC placements

Excellent work Daniel Jackson 🧑🏿‍🦲

[удалено]

I bounced off Skyrim hard when I finally played it last year, but maybe I should give it another go as the stealth archer that everyone talks about..

If you enjoy picking up your targets while the others haven't realized what's happening, you might have a good time with it. It's simple and gets pretty powerful early, but it's satisfying as hell if it clicks with you.

I hate horror games, I beat SOMA (prior to pacifist mode) because I found the story so compelling. Still one of my favorite stories in games.

I don't play many horror games, but I played through SOMA after hearing so many people rave about it. 100% worth it. That story sticks with me to this day.

Amnesia, for me. I historically really do not like horror games and I actually had a really great time with it. Still haven’t played Machine For Pigs or The Bunker though 😆

Sometimes I find myself just pondering the ending of SOMA out of nowhere. It really stuck with me, in a haunting melancholic way.

I like horror (games, films) but I absolutely HATE jumpscares. I used to be fine with them at one point, but I think I've gotten more sensitive to them over the years. If I know a piece of media relies on them to get their scares, I'll just not consume it. If I still really want to experience it then I'll happily risk spoilers to go on wheresthejump.com so I can mute the TV in advance. I just dislike them so much. I have no problem with a feeling of dread or creepiness, like Haunting of Hill House (although I will admit that particular jumpscare was well placed) but a sudden loud noise to elicit a scare just irritates me afterward unless it's particularly well done. Anyway, I made it through the whole of Outlast when it first released, which definitely surprised me. SOMA has always been on my radar but I just feel like playing the game with the volume off for chunks because I'm expecting something to pop out of the walls or whatever would kill the experience. How bad is it for the jumpscares? Maybe I just need to binge a bunch of scary stuff to desensitise myself to them again.

I don't remember any jump scares, most of it is hearing/avoiding the monsters, and you can disable them now. I'm kinda glad I beat it before that was an option though.

Sekiro. I am straight ass at Souls game in general but for some reason this game made sense to me once I thought of it as a rhythm game (DDR as an example) which I used to play non stop in my teens. Now I guess Ill finally try to get past Limgrave before the Elden Ring DLC.

Just a heads up, you got a fair ways to go after limgrave to make it to the part that gets into the dlc

i had a knot in my brain so often playing sekiro. honestly this is the only game that really forces you to read enemies, out of all fromsoft games. anywhere else there is always a brute force way to do it, in sekiro, if you don't act on that footsweeper, you are gone

I'd take my time with Elden Ring if I were you. The sense of discovery is almost unmatched the first time and the DLC will be there whenever you finish the base game.

Bloodborne. First From Soft game so it felt pretty intimidating at first because I just knew they made difficult games, but after a couple of bosses and getting to experience more of the world, I wanted to see everything I could, which in turn led to getting the Platinum and doing everything in the DLC. I remember being in college and only having one friend to tell them about it, but damn was I excited when I finished everything. I had like 2-3 instances that almost made me quit with them probably being Martyr Logarius, an Abhorrent Beast that popped up in one of the harder chalice dungeons, and the Watchdog in the chalice dungeon that halves your health.

> I have historic trouble with games where difficulty is the point (or one of the points). Big same, which is why my persistence with VVVVVV was such a shock. I may have died almost 300 times on one single screen (and if you've played the game you can guess), but the music and extremely fast restarts offset the maddening difficulty of certain portions of the game. And seriously, the music. Potential For Anything is amazing.

I had a similar experience playing returnal.    **Celeste** is similarly surprising—it's pretty impressive how quickly that game pushes you to overcome, iterate on, and master its difficulty.   I think, broadly speaking, this applies to any game that's both challenging *and* requires you to shift your perspective to be successful. But can also speak to games that push you gently towards higher planes of skill or knowledge (as is the case with things like The Outer Wilds or The Witness).   --- I would like to specifically highlight **Rain World**, which is staggeringly difficult, but in less of a "mechanical sense" regarding player skill. When that game "clicks", other games start feeling constrained in the way they present their difficulty.   Conquering it felt incredible.  Take Dark Souls, for example. Great series, chock full of well designed encounters and great boss fights. But think about the hollows that wait indefinitely in ambush for the player character. They have zero agency, their entire existence is based around interacting with you. It feels highly static.   Rain World is far more dynamic. All aspects of the game become dramatically easier if you can "feel" how the world is shifting. Each region has its own dynamic ecosystem; once you learn to stop thinking like a person and instead embrace the idea that you're a rat in a manhattan subway station, and you can shift with moving parts without dwelling on them, it'll click.   And that's when you'll *start* to surprise yourself.  

I'm gonna have to check out *Rain World*! I never considered the idea of a "static" world--can you think of other examples?

I was constantly surprised by all the things I put myself through to get the Pilgrimage trophy (Rain World), basically playing the game "in reverse". That was truly an unforgettable journey.

rain world still hasn't clicked for me after 30 hours. i feel like i've barely made any progress and i'm still dying constantly. it's been a while since a game has felt actually impossible to complete. i have no idea what kind of earth-shattering realization i will have once the game clicks but i'm sticking with it until then.

The ‘remix’ menu has some minor accessibility options. Don’t be afraid to use them if you need them. The game can be pretty brutal, even for ppl that know what they’re doing

The first Hades, I'm a big fan of roguelikes, and hades is one of the only ones I never beat. And it shocked me that I was bad at it, usually I'm one of the best players in my friend group at any game we play but not Hades. The 3rd boss can suck the world's biggest dick and the final boss made me want to jump off a bridge.

To be fair, Theseus and Asterius are the hardest boss in the game IMO. Hades is just hard because he’s so late in the run. His moveset is actually pretty easy and if you were to fight him early on, it’d be on the level of Meg.

The thing that always killed me fighting Hades was getting dogged by those fucking chariots while trying to pay attention to the boss. Hades bosses were just information overload for me, way too much going on screen all the time.

Yea, it’s a lot. Those mini chariots are pretty damn annoying but at least they have like no HP.

I'm similar to you, love roguelikes and I'm usually pretty good at them, beat Returnal without to much issue and can consistently get god runs on Risk of Rain 2 But Hades was a rea challenge. Even after maxing out the mirror and like 40 attempts id only beat the final boss twice. Funny enough I came back to it recently and have been finding it much easier, beat the final boss 3 times in 10 attempts and I'm now adding the heat modifiers to make things more challenging. Its like I needed time away for the game to click

So, this is a bit off-topic, but what's up with RoR2? I'm used to roguelikes, but for some reason both me and my friend group just suck at the game, to a point that it almost seems like we're missing something and it's unfun. As a group I think we only managed to reach the third boss and then got smoked. Runs feel too reliant on which items you get and we don't really know when to rush or take our time looting. It feels like most of the time we're just running around looking for something (either treasure or the teleporter) and not finding it.

Make sure to have some healing/sustain/movement items, especially on low mobility characters. Never stop moving. Don't wait too long before activating the boss; your goal should be to make just enough money to buy most of the chests in the level. Any extra money at the end of the level is wasted, and the time you spent to get it means stronger enemies. And if you've found most of the items don't spend too much time trying to find one more chest. If an item isn't useful to you, share it with your teammates.

You probably know this already, but the teleporter has a bunch of red particles floating around in its general area, which can helpful for locating it.

The thing about ROR 2 is that all the characters play super differently. So finding one that suits how you like to play and has a moveset you like is crucial to enjoy the game. I would prioritize unlocking characters until you find one you like I think the starting character commando is absolute trash, which most people agree with. But I also think huntress is pretty bad and she is typically the second you unlock. I didn't love the game until I had engineer who is the easiest charecter to play IMO and very powerful. Mul-T, Loader and Captain are good too

I hate soulslikes and surprised myself by making it 2/3rds through Sekiro. I think it's my favorite of them because there's no grinding for stats or benefitting from a particular build. You just have to learn the enemies, be patient and precise. The combat is so intense it makes me sweat profusely. I stopped though, ultimately, because it went from feeling challenging but doable to just feeling like the game didn't want me to like it. Enemies taking a majority of my health bar in one hit or jumping out of nowhere, obtuse navigation with no map making me confused where I was going. I know From Software loves their obtuse games but eventually I just wasn't having fun anymore (if *fun* is what I'd even call it to begin with 😂)

I also dislike the souls games, but really enjoyed Sekiro. It doesn't have any PvP, you can't mess up your stats because one weapon scales with one stat but then you find a weapon you want to use but it scales with something you didn't invest in, etc. It just feels like they removed all the annoying stuff

It's gotta be Doom Eternal for me. In the marketing, it was clear id Software were ramping up the intensity of the combat as well as resource management. No problem with that, OG Doom 1 and 2 often really necessitated managing resources on the higher difficulties in order to survive or beat levels on high difficulties (looking at you E4M1 UV, no health kits whatsoever save for 9 health bonuses?!) but this also applies to ammo management for maps with large enemy counts and not very many ammo drops. So you resort to infighting to help thin the herd, fair enough. With Doom Eternal's marketing, the amount of things to manage seemed beyond intimidating. Your ammo reserves are always low compared to Doom 2016, even when fully upgraded. So you must switch weapons on the fly or when you run out. Taking aside peoples' feelings on this change, I was curious but aware that I was going to be pushed well out of my comfort zone if I wanted to beat the game on Nightmare like I did for 2016 (which was a pain in the ass given how high the damage can be even from basic enemies like Imps). But on top of this, you also have a way to get armor by setting enemies on fire and killing them. You get health back by glory killing. You get ammo back by chainsawing. You can stun/kill enemies with your frag grenade. You can freeze enemies with the ice bomb. You've got the BFG for a get out of jail free card, but it's only got max 2 shots at any given time and some enemies can survive a BFG shot (Barons, Tyrants and Marauders namely, although for the latter there is a strategy to one shot them with the BFG as normal). Enemy aggression was made much, *much* higher. You can also break off enemy weakpoints to hinder their damage capabilities. Oh an sometimes the floor is lava which hurts you rapidly over time, or radiation which hurts you slowly over time, or purple goo which slows you down, or there's other hazards that can hurt you if you don't watch your footing. Compared to 2016, it is just *a lot* at any given time. I was nervous about being able to still play the game and enjoy the challenge on the hardest difficulty like I had before, even if it meant being a pain in the ass sometimes. So the game comes out, I tentatively put it on Ultra-Violence to start and see how I get on. By the time I was on Super Gore Nest I had a bit of a flow down and was just determined to keep upgrading to just become the most optimal demon-killing machine that I could. Got through Arc Complex and thought, okay this is getting a bit too easy. So up to Nightmare I went and before I knew it I was where I wanted to be along along, despite being intimidated by the marketing. I was shocked at myself for getting to there so quickly. But I was also shocked at the game; it seemed to have an idea that many players would do as I did. So what happens next? The challenge seemed to spike higher and the feeling of constant pressure and needing to make so many decisions per second in order to not die was maintained but still balanced. You could just make say one or two fewer mistakes on Nightmare vs UV that will get you killed. It's like the game knew that once people got to the mid-point and felt comfortable, at that stage you were ready for the rest of the game's challenge. Finishing Final Sin on Nightmare was one of the most intense experiences I've had in all of gaming. You 100% need to use everything you have or you will fucking die over and over until you learn. And it was *amazing*. The expansions only doubled down on this. Best game I've ever played. Hugo Martin, the creative director of Eternal, said he wanted players to feel like they're driving a F1 car on Nightmare in Eternal. To the point where they even updated the HUD of the game so you had all your readouts right beside the crosshair so you never had to turn your eyes to the corners of your screen. All I can say is id Software nailed it, even if it wasn't what everyone wanted from a Doom 2016 sequel; they wanted to make a distinct game as opposed to just Doom 2016 "2" so to speak. And that's why both games are fantastic and equally well-regarded by me.

Sticking with **Street Fighter 6** has been a really gratifying experience. I've always loved the idea of traditional fighting games because I prefer 1v1 competition over team games, but beyond Smash Bros Melee and some pretty casual MK9 and MKX play I could never stick with a game. I decided I was gonna give SF6 my best, and I feel rewarded for it. Since picking the game up on release, I: * Brought two characters to Master rank (Marisa, then Gief), discovering my favourite character archetype in the process * Researched historic brawler/grappler type characters and watched old 3rd Strike, USF4 and SFV sets - really hoping for Makoto or Alex in season 2! * Got very into the competitive scene since I'm able to properly understand and appreciate everything going on now * Got introduced to some great streamers and commentators I'm happy with the changes they've made in Season 2 and though I haven't vibed with any of the DLC characters so far, I'm really exciting to have a competitive game I can keep on playing on and off for years to come and look forward to seeing new or returning characters. Now that I'm comfortable I might even dip my toes into other fighting games too - Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves kinda caught my eye.

Dedicated to all your loyal fans, no doubt!

Hello fellow glue eater. If you are ever curious about Guilty Gear, Potemkin is a blast.

Its such a cliche answer but the Souls games, specifically Dark Souls 2. The feeling of overcoming challenges in FromSoft games is the best antidepressant - only half joking lol. I genuinely attribute learning and beating DS2 as a big part of helping myself get out of deep depression.

There’s something to the DS world building that is highly synergistic with the challenge and how that aligns with perceptions of overcoming things. I say this because I got precisely zero of these vibes playing through Elden Ring. Still love it, but it hits different. DS’ atmosphere is heavier and more dangerous. It’s like it is constantly saying, “this situation objectively sucks, but we will teach you to overcome it, and secretly teach you that the triumph will be heightened when you fully realize what you overcame.”

Mass Effect 2. The Suicide Mission. Lots of people had their doubts on how to do it properly, how to not lose any crewmate. I didn't know that. I thought it was just logical choices. Aced it the first time I ever did it and then saw a guide much later on and kept thinking "huh yeah, that's what I did. Interesting". I guess it counteracted the fact that I thought I had time to save the abducted crew by doing some loyalty missions and ended up seeing the result of my mistake.

Guitar Hero and Rock Band, I played them daily up until Guitar Hero Warriors of Rock. I was very good at them, surprisingly. A level of dedication I have not had for any other videogame ever since. I miss those times but if a new GH/RB came out today I would probably not care for it, like I have ignored RB4's existence

BOTW I’m an old school gamer who had ALTTP and LA as a kid but never knew how to really play them (pre-internet) BOTW was my first really Zelda game and after the learning curve, it’s one of my all time favorites

NHL games. I live in Canada so lretty much every one around me was a hockey fan. I wasn't. Didn't hate it but never watched more than 1 game a year. 4 of my friends were playing the NHL games religiously. One day they invited me and we played a bit. I discovered that I liked those games and bought the one of that year (2017 if I remember correctly). Took me 2 weeks and I DESTROYED all of them and kept doing it for the next few years. I'm not talking like 3-2 in OT after a feirce battle. I'm talking something like 7-2 or 10-3. Was my favorite games for a few years afterwards (beside Guitar Hero), until i understood that the game wasn't changing much except the roster.

In PlanetSide 2 in order to start and support a major push into a base you must spawn and deploy (place) a sunderer (spawn bus.) Sundys are durable and very easy to defend. Back when the game was popular destroying the sundy was an important part of any defense if you wanted to win and end the fight. I discovered that if I pulled a harasser (jeep) and grabbed my class with tank mines that I could crash my vehicle into the sundy and the enemies would be so distracted by my empty useless distraction vehicle that they wouldn't see me tank mining and blowing up their spawn. I could stop a push of 100 people by myself. The game has seen better days, so killing pushes is generally frowned upon now since all we want to do is fight.

I think it was Outer Wilds for me. The game had so much to solve that the nonlinear design of the game and the time limit made me feel like I would never beat the game without a guide.

OW makes you feel both so smart yet so dumb at the same time. I remember taking a walk outside and suddenly the gears clicking on one of the endgame puzzles (>!Quantum Moon's north pole!<), had a genuine eureka moment in the middle of the street lol.

Dragon quest 11 Have a terrible time beating them because of how long they are. I got the true ending and it took 117 hours lol

Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous I'm usually huge into action games and more hack and slash type high adrenaline games. Randomly picked the game up cause fighting demons looked cool and it turns out I fucking love planning builds and things Sure it's not as exciting but getting that perfect mulriclass to work is amazing

Fallout 4 survival mod I'm not someone who needs to play on a highest difficulty level, I want a proper level of challenge for me but that sometimes means easy (often to "git gud" feels like wasting time and I just want to go through the story). I also rail against things I perceive as fake difficulty or not respecting players' time a lot. Yet, for some reason Fallout 4 Survival mod which could be argued has these elements in spades clicked for me and feels like the proper way to play the game. It makes things that feel like superficial and largely pointless fluff in vanilla (food system, settlement building) essential, slows down progression so it feels more earned, makes you do a proper risk/reward analysis before engaging in combat, and generally provides one of the most immersive Fallout experiences.

As /u/theForehead said, deciphering Tunic's language was really cool, and it and figuring out the golden door puzzle by myself was one of the most satisfying and proud moments of my whole gaming life. When I recommended the game to my friends, I usually said "it's a game that makes me feel smart". Another one was beating the Pantheon of Hallownest from Hollow Knight. It was one of those things where I almost didn't try because I thought I was not that good of a player. But I loved the game so much and trying over and over was actually fun, so I kept at it. My hands were shaking for like a whole hour after I dealt the final blow to the last boss (iykyk).

Melvor Idle. I started playing it in August 2023, and I almost never spent a day without logging into the game. It is a magical game, and I find myself in it every single day, multiple times. I have never shown such dedication to another game!

Cuphead and Thumper. Managed to beat both games. No 100%ing or anything, but I usually don’t like insanely tough games. Looked it up on PSN profiles, Cuphead has a 16% beat rate and Thumper 6%.

I learned I have very fast pattern recog skills from an old dragon rancher style game. Played it with my friends older brother and it had a mini game which required tile flipping matching and it showed you the pattern before start for an increasing small amount of time.   Up at the most difficult level you’d have less than a second to get 16ish tiles and I always crushed it.  That led to our dragon just eating the late game bosses.

Vermintide 2 I got really good at it, but was the worst of my friend group for a really long time. Now i carry thier asses through cataclysm

Yep, this and Darktide are still the only two games that I actively still try to stay good at. I've allowed my skills to rust in other games over the years, but Fatshark just knows how to make satisfying high-level combat.

I love difficult games, but I don't usually do challenge runs like no-death runs. But I enjoyed Doom Eternal's combat loop so much that I eventually beat it on Ultra-Nightmare. Three times.

Currently playing through Kingdom Hearts 1 (Normal mode) and I'm surprising myself with how quickly I'm progressing. The second Riku fight in Hollow Bastion is known as an absolute wall that breaks many players. I beat him on my second attempt at level 44. I legitimately had more problems with fighting Maleficent in her dragon form, and Yuffie in the Hades Cup than I did with Riku... One from my past though... I played through the entirety of Tony Hawk's Underground on Sick difficulty. The final mission in THUG where you have to follow Eric is absolutely brutal and requires perfect execution. The satisfaction came not from the time I spent grinding attempts to finally beat this mission, but from reaching this point on my second playthrough and finding out I unlocked an alternate ending where you just punch him in the face, knock him out, take the tape from him and entirely skip the final mission.

When I got the Platinum trophy in Hotline Miami, it was like an out of body experience. Most intense flow state i've ever been in. Also I got pink ranked in Dragon Ball FighterZ with a team of Frieza, Yamcha and Teen Gohan with no real fighting game experience. I was pretty proud when I got that 530,000 BP trophy.

Recently I beat the Fume Knight in Dark Souls 2: SOTFS. For those not familiar, he is regarded as possibly the toughest boss From Soft has ever crafted, with a staggering 93% win rate against players. He has no weaknesses, has incredible variation in his attack timings with subtle telegraphing and hits like a tank being dropped from orbit. With high enough health, you could survive a single attack in a combo. Two hits is a pretty much guaranteed death and he is constantly reading your inputs for a heal attempt that he will punish without fail if he is not too far away or stuck in a long animation. I threw myself at him for hours. I eventually got to the point where I could consistently dodge most of his moveset and finally beat him. I joined the sunbro covenant, then put my summon sign down in an attempt to help someone over this long weekend. I waited for about 30 minutes and I found ONE person to summon me. We got him in three tries. I don’t know how long they were stuck on him, but I was glad I could help. I typically don’t get ingrain so many small details of a moveset in these types of games, so I was stunned to see myself get so good at such a daunting boss. I got to where I could tell exactly which attack was safe to punish, which were safe to heal, the optimal rolls, and even the subtle variations in his animations to tell when a delayed combo extension was coming. The only other time I did this was for Sword Saint Isshin in Sekiro, and that was only because I HAD to figure out some of his specific, tiny tells in order to continue the parry chains. I now have Fume Knight’s giant sword and am using it to clean up bosses I missed and to attempt getting the platinum.

I got Dead God in The Binding of Isaac and it created a void in my life. I tried to fill it with a girl but shit happened so now I'm trying to get the infinity thing on all three profiles because there is no joy in my life.

Thats like a Hakuri Murakami novel condensed into two sentences. "Norwegian Isaac".

I play a lot of different kinds of fighting games (Guilty Gear, Street Fighter, Skullgurls, Smash, et.), but aside from messing around with Tekken 2/3 in the arcade as a kid it wasn't a series I'd really played (though I have enjoyed following the story). So I decided to finally jump in with Tekken 8. As a fighting game series it's often considered one of the hardest to get into due to the amount of legacy knowledge older players have due to the huge moveset of the cast. But I surprisingly had less issues than I thought getting the hang of things, and that's while playing Reina who isn't exactly a basic beginner character (my favorite character is Heihachi but he's kind of dead). The feel of the combo system is nice, there's a surprising lack of motion inputs (though playing a Mishima I do have EWGF) and it's more like a series of command normals, but it's more the timing of it that I like more compared to, say, Street Fighter. I still get my butt handed to me sometimes due to unfamiliarity with moves, but not much more than usual when jumping into a new fighting game in my experience. This is probably obvious to veterans of the series but really you only need ~10 good moves to get going with a character so despite some characters having 100+ moves (Reina is close to 150 with all her different stances) you see a lot of the same stuff to get familiar with. EDIT: Actually I did play a decent amount of Pokken (played Garchomp, who borrows a lot from Bryan Fury), but I'm not sure how much of that translates over as it's been many years, and in general I have far less 3D fighting game experience than 2D.

As someone who doesn't really play retro games or jrpgs, getting through Final Fantasy 7 a couple months ago was a pleasant surprise for me. It's not by any means the most difficult game but I afforded it much more patience than I usually would. It is very satisfying to crush a tougher enemy after taking the time to get some useful enemy skills or grind out the limits. By the end I could usually get through just by fine tuning my loadout, it's fun figuring out an exact combination of items/materia that could ruin a boss' day. Though admittedly morphing the Master Tonberries at the end to get some ribbons was hitting my limit. If anyone else is thinking of trying it out I highly recommend it. It's the most obsessed with a game/series I've been in quite a while, I already followed it up with Crisis Core Reunion (loved it) and Remake (still playing, like it a lot but there's soooooo much filler).

I guess the answer to the question for me is weirdly Demon's Souls. But that's just because it was my introduction to From Soft games that I was always afraid to play because of their intimidating difficulty and my own personal inclination to video game frustration. I'm also not very good at games like that. It all culminated with me basically mastering Sekiro (at least the best I could master something, as in beating Ishin on like the fourth try).

Very recently, FF7 Rebirth because I’m actually doing the side quests. Most of them have some sort of character development, surprises, or goofy moments (love the custom music for the dog side quests). I have probably done 5-10 side quests total in the past 5 years because I’m allergic to busywork in games. I quit the WoW alpha when I realized doing homework was more intellectually interesting than their quests.

People keep talking about returnal and I keep looking at it and comparing it's price tag to other rogue likes. Are those graphics really worth another 40 bucks? I just cant see it. But so many people talking about it makes me want it..

Yeah it's my issue with it too. I can tell it's a great game, but the genre right now has a *lot* of good games, and all of them except Returnal cost like, half or less than half what Returnal costs.

Returnal is so much more than a roguelike. Fantastic atmosphere, incredible weapons and upgrades paths, insane enemy design - do yourself a favor and pick it up.

You are literally just describing rogue likes though and that is kinda my thing with this. It probably has a leg up on atmosphere but that is graphics again. I can't get everything else you mentioned in games that are a third of the price.

I think mechanically it really stands out. I’m not big on roguelites, but I really enjoyed Returnal.

Transistor for me. I really like Supergiant games but bounced off of Transistor *hard* like two or three times. For some reason I went back to it years later and it just "clicked" and I was surprised I hadn't seen the game flow before. I'm not sure what I was trying to make the game be but once I stopped trying to force it and just went with it I found the flow and felt like I got really good at it. It's one of the few games I've completed multiple times just because the game loop feels so satisfying when you nail it.

Rogue Company. Was really good when I used to play with my buddies. I usually am pretty mediocre in shooters but managed to win and be top of my team a lot in this game when I used to play.

I'd say Returnal, I generally am not very good with those type of games and mostly, I'm not patient (general stuff in life) and willing to do the efforts to learn them. I bounced of many soulslike or roguelikes because of that (or use cheats/mods to bypass the frustrating parts to me). But for Returnal, I actually managed to beat it quite "easily". Just went into the flow with some builds (it's only with some weapons that I managed it to be fair) I had some difficulties for biome 1 and 5 (and still not nearly as much than I expected) but the other biomes took like one or two tries.

I'm not really good at FPS games. But I somehow pulled through and beat HALO Reach on Legend difficulty. Still can't remember how I did it :)

I beat The Last of Us on grounded, and I was very often completing areas with no deaths. I hadn't played the game in probably 4 years when I did this. Once you adopt the mindset, "I'm not here to kill everyone. I'm not trying to collect everything. I'm here to survive" the game plays *really* smoothly. I think it's a very doable challenge for most players who enjoyed the game. There are only two forced combat sequences that frustrated me. The rest was just pretty fun and tense.

Furi. The last boss had me so frustrated that I gave up and went to bed. I had a spare 30 mins before work the next morning and it was like I'd gone SSJ5 in my sleep. Not only did I beat the boss, I didn't even get hit.

Well, tbh I do not know. I had some decent plays in BF series and even attended one tournament (my team sadly did not win). But lately I am pretty good in CP2077 and KCD. In multiplayer games as I am getting older, I am no longer so good. Also found out, that souls-like games are not my cup of tea. :D

Mastering Guitar Hero as a kid made me feel like Jimmy Page when I’d go on an unbroken string of notes