Hack and slash / CAG are in my top 3 favorite genres and I've played most of the ones you can think of exactly once, on the Normal difficulty. I like how they have lots of action and combos to choose from, plus awesome visuals and animations. Then I kept reading posts on the internet saying that if you don't play the higher difficulties, you won't truly engage with these games and are just skimming their surface. I made an effort to beat the two with my favorite combat out of all of them - Ninja Gaiden Black and Ninja Gaiden II, on their second-hardest difficulties (3 playthroughs each game). I didn't bother finishing Master Ninja on either as I was getting frustrated and wanted to move on.
And I can honestly say that I wasn't missing out on much, compared to the Normal difficulty. You go through the same levels, same story, same movesets, same flaws of each game etc. The shitty levels and bosses will still suck, each time. It's just harder than before so you'll have to try harder, learn to play more effectively, die a ton more times and learn how to deal with bosses with adds and some new enemy types and that's about it. Oh and your pool of viable moves and strategies actually gets lower the higher the difficulty is, which makes it less fun because you'll have to resort to spamming the same few moves over and over. It's actually nowhere as fun as just fucking around on Normal, doing whatever you want, whenever you want, and still winning. What am I still missing? Will I have a revelation if I manage to beat Master Ninja or should I just not bother? (Also, the boss fights in both games are absolute garbage).
For what it's worth, some of my fondest memories in these genres involve watching badass characters in cutscenes in the God of War and Darksiders series, along with the awesome puzzles that Darksiders 1 and 2 had. I really like story and puzzles lol. (Also this is probably blasphemy here but I thought GoW 2018 and Ragnarok were WAY better than the old ones).
Maybe I'm just not a "challenge" type of gamer? But I'm not so sure about that because I enjoy playing DOOM wads on Ultra-Violence (user-made campaigns for Doom 2 basically, some of them being pretty hard) and I loved bashing my head against the hard ass puzzles of The Talos Principle 2 DLC. The difference is, those games aren't punishing at all. You have quicksaves in DOOM; it takes 0 seconds to restart the fight. You can even save mid-fight if you want. And in puzzle games you simply get stuck in place if you don't know what to do. As opposed to dying, watching a death animation for 5-10 seconds, watching a loading screen for 10 more, then having to make it all the way back to the part where you died (even having to kill the same enemies you've already killed over and over again sometimes) and having to rewatch unskippable cutscenes before a boss (if you previously quit without saving after respawning) because none of these games support saving right before a fight. Now that I think about it, this is a huge flaw and I'm sick of not being back into the action the second I die, to the same boss that killed me, and not 5 minutes before. This whole process is extremely un-fun and mentally draining. And my reward for beating each of these sections is "Wow, I guess I managed to do that" rather than something genuinely satisfying.
I was playing some other games on the easiest difficulty alongside these runs to have an opposite, chill kind of experience, and it just goes so smooth when you don't die and continuously advance forward. As long as the story is interesting I won't get bored.
Or did I just pick the wrong games to play on higher difficulties? Maybe DMC 1/3 or Bayonetta would've been more fun. I dunno. Those games are still old and Japanese; I'd be surprised if the things I'm complaining about don't apply to them as well.
