Unified difficulty is the best, so that people are talking about the same game instead of constantly asking "what difficulty are you playing on" type of redundant question
Ah yes that's right, because "What difficulty are you playing on?" is a question that comes up in every single video game discussion.
Oh wait. No it doesn't.
There's no actual, valid argument for not having multiple difficulty levels in these games. Their previous games, like Ninja Gaiden, had up to 5 difficulty levels. The only reason they aren't adding them is because they want it to be part of the "souls like" genre which means that the only justification for not doing it is because "Well souls game don't have them" and the only reason souls games don't have them is because, quote:"We want everyone to join the discussion at that level"
It's for PR purposes. It's always been for PR purposes. Make the game hard with no difficulty select so that the "HaRdCoRE" will sing its praises and that strategy is working out fantastic for them.
Since the time when instead of saying ‘this game is too difficult for me, no problem, I can play something else’ people post things online like ‘omg, I have a right to enjoy this game, the developer should make sure everyone can’.
How dare people criticize design decisions that fill no real purpose.
This could sound almost reasonable IF what was expected from them was to be incredibly skillful, rather than barely competent in their alleged area of expertise above a threshold of decency.
I keep hearing these tales about video game journalists being bad at video games and yet, unsurprisingly, you post the same two examples that have been posted countless times. There are hundreds, if not thousands of people working in video game journalism and yet evidence for supposedly "Terrible video game journalists" rarely exceed these two videos. Nearly every single high profile souls like game is met with glowing reception from the press. High praise for every Souls game. Elden Ring. Sekiro. Nioh. Yet somehow, this narrative that video game journalists can't handle or disapprove of hard games keeps getting brought up. Why?
As far as I'm concerned gatekeeping is fucking irrelevant.
I don't like difficulty selection in general, incidentally. And I don't like it for what it does for ME, not for what it does for others.
I'm not sure why game designers keep asking me to "pick a difficulty" upfront without any real explanation of what each difficulty level entails.
Will the increased/diminished difficulty come with different rules? Will it involve more sophisticated enemy behavior or more challenging puzzles? Or will it be a case of stat bloat where arbitrary numbers are added and subtracted with impact on the game's flow?
What if I like a decent/moderate challenge but I'm not into HP bloat as a way to achieve it? What if I pick "Hard mode" and it turns out to be over-tuned and annoying in a way that makes the game less enjoyable? What if on the other hand I pick "normal" and it turns out to be something tuned for the average mentally challenged Polygon game expert? Etc.
You make some really good points about difficulty levels and how we select them. You're right: We generally don't have a lot of information about the difficulty level that we select. Normal? What does "Normal" difficulty mean? How does that impact the game? Agree with you on that across the board. Having said that, most modern games allow you to adjust the difficulty setting mid play through so you generally get a pretty good feel what difficulty is right for you.
I'm much more comfortable with the FEW but precious games that tell me "Here's the game, it works according to these rules and it's the same for everyone, we put our effort in making the the experience as balanced as possible across the board, make the best of it".
And if turns out to be too difficult/unforgiving for me in a way I can't enjoy (an example here would be Cuphead, as far as I'm concerned) eh, I'll drop it. I don't feel entitled to the right of finishing a game just because I bought it.
But Souls Like games aren't better balanced across the board, and adding difficulty levels doesn't really take that much effort at all. That's why it's the standard in nearly every single game. Saying you can just drop a game if you don't like it is easy to say when it's a cheap indie game such as the one in your example. It's a little different when you're spending 60$ - 70$ on it.
Sure, there's all sorts of reasons as to why someone won't like a game or why it's not for them, but "difficulty" is a pretty crappy reason because it's so easy to rectify.
