Elden Ring gets almost everything right. From top to bottom, From Software have seemingly released their magnum opus, a sprawling open-world take on their “Souls” series. This has hardly gone unnoticed by fans and critics alike, shattering From Software’s sales records, and winning the coveted “Game of the Year” at the Game Awards. However, for all it’s successes, Elden Ring has done what all From Software games does, and prompted a regular discussion about difficulty. With vitriol from both sides, the questions returns time and again; are From Software games too hard? In a modern age where difficulty options are wide-spread, FromSoft continue to stick to the same principals they established in 2009 with the release of Demon Souls on the Ps3. There is one difficulty, the question then simply becomes can you beat it, or not?
First, it’s worth noting that this is not a revolutionary take by From Software. Video Games have, traditionally, been hard. Unfairly hard even, developing from the seed of Arcade’s, where developers were charging you for each “attempt,” leading them to be needlessly difficult to draw more coins out of your pocket. Then, as this evolved into the home console, it was common for games to completely reset after a single death, even though there was no continuous draw for your money at home. In the earliest black and white Mario games, for example, no matter how far through the game you reached, to run out of lives would return you back to Level One, a level that surely became memorized by the vast majority of kids at the time. It was around this period that I have my initial memories of playing through video games.
My first ever memory of gaming was on an a Gameboy, playing through that very same black and white Mario. It was so challenging that I’m not sure I ever even finished the first World, but I do distinctly remember getting to Level 3, after having failed at the Mushroom sections prior what felt like a thousand times. This is my first thought when regarding challenge in gaming.
Difficulty creates memory.
In contrast to the other children’s games I played at the time, all of which blend into one another, those hours spent dying in Mario remain burned into my brain, namely due to having overcome such challenge at an early age. It’s created a sense of pride, and that feeling is, to this day, what drives my gaming decision making. Now, if I were to go back and play that same game, I’m sure my experience would be entirely different. It might be a lot easier than I remember, but the part that makes the difficulty feel unfair is the loss of progress. This of course is something that Elden Ring emulates, losing your “Runes” (Currency to level you up and purchase equipment) on death. These can be recovered, but in many cases that won’t happen, and so it creates a sense of falling backwards.
Let’s compare this with another recent release, Ragnarok. The first big fight is with Thor, a visually striking and epic battle, featuring a notable fake-out where you’re lead to believe that you died, only to be resuscitated by Mjölnir. It’s a great fight, and a solid introduction to Ragnarok’s combat system, but as the fight is divided into many smaller sequences, it makes the decision to checkpoint you at each of these stages. Say you miss-time a few too many dodges and are punished for it. No problem! You passed a recent cinematic barrier, and are suddenly brought back with full health and skills, with which, usually, you can overpower the boss, and move to the next checkpoint. But does it really feel like beating it? Did you learn the fight, or was it more handed to you?
Contrast that with Margit, Elden Ring’s first notable cinematic fight. It was the final boss of the network test, and the first major hurdle for Elden Ring’s player-base. In my personal opinion, Margit is the hardest of FromSoft’s entry bosses. He has a high health pool, two phases, a diverse move-set and is also quite aggressive, especially in his second phase. To me, Margit serves as the teacher of Elden Ring. Dark Souls 3 made dodge-rolling too strong, and with the high stamina pools, the most common strategy in fights was to start spam rolling at the first sign of movement. Margit seems like a statement against this kind of game play, faking you out with delayed overhead slams, and fast follow-up attacks. It’s a message to the player, saying that if you don’t adapt, you won’t be able to progress, and it’s a lesson you’ll be glad to have learned as Elden Ring ramps up the difficulty later. As Margit’s second phase is different from his first, and without any checkpoints mid-fight, to learn the second phase means mastering the first, as you’ll have to reach that second phase several times to understand it. Yes, it’s a punishing encounter, but when beaten, it’s met with a jump in the air, and a true feeling of accomplishment. You feel like you owned the fight, and often in Elden Ring, you know that victory was only possible because you understood, learnt, and mastered the encounter.
This is not meant as criticism on God of War’s difficulty, it’s optional bosses are certainly more punishing and feature no checkpoints, but my point is only to emphasize what is memorable. God of War features magnificent visual encounters, the aforementioned fight against Thor is great fun, but even as I was thinking of what to write about as a move that could kill you, none came to me. Margit, however, after hours of kicking my ass, both in my first play-through and especially my Level One run, has burrowed into my mind, but so is the absolute joy of beating him. None of God of War’s story bosses ever made me feel the same way.
Perhaps while on this streak of comparison it’s worth exploring a bit more about what makes something the right level of difficult. The old ways of resetting the entire game when you die is quite clearly unfair, and not enjoyable, as what often happens is you repeat the same hours of game-play over and over, simply to practice and die on a level you’ve never seen before. There’s also such a thing as too hard, and that’s something that a lot of games with difficulty modes fall into these days. For me, I usually choose the difficulty option one below the hardest, as often times the hardest is simply not enjoyable. Another recent release, Assassins Creed Valhalla is an example of this. Their difficulty options are based on percentage numbers, and at the highest level, this often results in bosses health being so high you barely make a dent, and then, in a single hit, you’re gone. The other issue with this sort of scaling is that often times the character out-gears it, and a lot of games suffer from a brutal early-game that gets easier with time as you unlock more skills and equipment. This then becomes another positive of a single difficulty setting, as Elden Ring is able to measure what power level you’re likely to be at each of it’s encounters, and the fights are adjusted accordingly, with the game expecting you to have fully upgraded gear for it’s final fights.
So, there is clearly a difference between “fun” challenging, and “unfair” challenging, and I suppose where that line resides is in the eye of the beholder. To me, I want to be pushed. A fatal mistake should be truly fatal, but the key is to create the sense in the player that what they’re doing is always possible, they just need more time with it. Rarely if ever do I think I can’t do something, the question just becomes when, and for me, Elden Ring hits that marker exactly. Challenge is still a question of taste, and certainly not required for a game to be “good,” but I always feel it adds that extra element, and pulls you in just that little bit more. Last of Us 2 is a story game first and foremost, but wouldn’t it’s terrifying encounter with the hulking Rat King be so much less scary if it simply fell over in a few shots? But on the difficulty I chose, with limited ammo and death assured if it reached me, each second was tense, and added layer after layer to making that fight all the more memorable.
There are of course downsides to difficulty, which is that everyone is operating at a different level. That, I believe, is the biggest argument against Elden Ring’s philosophy. They have designed a beautifully haunting game that won’t be experienced by many who are still stuck tanking slams from Margit at the gates of the castle. Games are a unique form of problem solving, and Elden Ring is a fine example of this, asking you question after question as you dodge and weave, and either you understand how to handle it, or you don’t, in which case you will fight it until you do. Some find that too frustrating, and often the pain of being beaten overwhelms the part of you that could learn to overcome it. I’m perhaps lucky in the sense that each failure only raises my desire to beat it and feel that rush of success, but of course not everyone is like that, and that means, such as in the case of Elden Ring, that a fantastic story and world is passed by.
I suppose then the conclusion is that there is no right answer to difficulty, as everyone’s sense of challenge is different from one another. We know we want our games to be fair, but what’s fair and what isn’t has already changed so much since the days of the Arcade. There will continue to be conflict between elitists who think Elden Ring is too easy, and those frustrated at missing a chance to experience it. What I do believe however, is that coming up against challenge is a life skill, and one that shouldn’t be shied away from. Maybe Elden Ring is too hard for some, in which case, seek out challenge elsewhere, put that difficulty up one higher than normal, and think about how it will feel when you finally beat it. Because that memory, standing over the bosses body, triumphant as the cinematic rolls, hands shaking with the adrenaline from knowing just how close you were, is like none other, and is sure to create a memory that will last far longer than the feelings of frustration and failure ever do.
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