Topic: How much, if at all, does game difficulty affect your Wii U game purchases?

I specify Wii U because I consider home console games to be a large, complete experience whereas to me portable games are more acceptable as fun little throwaway titles sometimes.

I have always preferred a solid difficulty in my games. Nothing insane, but say a game that starts in the 5-6 range and ends in the 7-9 range (on a scale of 1-10).
I'm not an expert gamer but I am definitely good.

I feel like difficulty is underrated in how much it makes the game a complete, fulfilling experience. The reason for this being that without a challenge, there is not much to separate our favorite past time from books and film. I love a great story, it's essential to me as an RPG lover, but if I'm easily breezing through it, I'm basically reading a book or watching a movie, imho. It's the struggle, replaying sections to the point you know them like the back of your hand until you FINALLY figure out all the nuances required to complete it that gives you that absolute satisfaction that comes with playing video games.

As I get older, this is becoming more and more the case, ESPECIALLY with 2d platformers. Breezing through the levels in all of the recent "New" Mario titles really convinced me to never buy another one again. THAT, much more than art style, graphics, and design decisions, is what makes games feel "kiddie" to me. And when it feels kiddie, I feel like I'm just mentally past the point in life where I can derive satisfaction from the experience.

Rayman Legends had pretty good difficulty and I did NOT regret buying it at all because of it. I had no plans on buying DKC: Tropical Freeze until I recently just heard it's extremely difficult.

So, do games affect your purchasing decisions? If so, on which genres? All, or RPG's? 2d Platformers? And what "kind" of difficulty do you prefer? Trial and Error.. Non Linear games that are difficult to find a path and force you to figure it out yourself? Tough enemies, bosses? LASTLY (lots of questions, I know, just answer which you feel like) What is your age? I'm curious if there's any correlation...

I don't buy games for difficulty, I buy them for the experience.

I prefer games to have a medium level difficulty the vast majority of the time. Difficult enough to have to try my best but not difficult to the point where I'm frustrated.

Much of the DKC games (outside of the toughest parts of the sequels), Chrono Trigger, Megaman replays (first time is tough, especially Wily castles), Metroid Prime (though at this point anything less than Hard Mode is probably a joke for me) and post-NES Zeldas (outside of Wind Waker and Twilight Princess, which are fine but sometimes too easy) come to mind as games that are pretty perfect at that level of challenge. But it depends from game to game. I don't want to play a Kirby game (or at least an initial playthrough) having it be that challenging and I don't want Dark Souls to not be brutal.

Wait, You breezed through NSMBU, but you experienced difficulty in Rayman Legends? I find that hard to believe. Rayman is an awesome game for many different reasons but the last thing that stands out is the difficulty I think.

Yes and no. The main game is pretty easy for the most part but some of the bonus levels you unlock are actually really difficult, especially when trying to get everything. Especially some of the ones that are basically the Cosmic Clone comets from Galaxy, which are unquestionably tougher than the ones in Galaxy.

I guess I wouldn't like a game that was pathetically easy, but otherwise game difficulty doesn't factor into my purchases at all. And even that's not always a deal breaker. I'm thoroughly enjoying Kirby's Epic Yarn, for instance.

Fair enough, though that's the case with a lot of platformers. I "breezed" through both the 2 new DKC games. Trying to 100% everything is another thing entirely. I would like to see the OP try and complete challenge mode in NSMBU and see if he still thinks the same way. But even ignoring that mode, I don't think NSMBU Is a breeze compared to Legends. Or maybe I just suck at 2d mario games, which is definitely a possibility

Totally agree! Epic Yarn is awesome!
No seriously, I love it too. ^^

All a game has to do for me is, that I enjoy it. Difficulty is secondarily.

I need to beat your predecessor, in order to play your sequel. Even Mega Man. I'm currently on MM1 and I refuse to play MM2 until I beat 1. It's just a stupid rule I follow.

Sometimes I like a game that challenges me, particularly if the game can draw me through it. The problem is that unless it's really good I'll often just not finish it if I get stuck on a bit for a while. There are just so many other games I could be playing that I'm not going to repeat the same section over and over again unless I'm really enjoying the game. It's pretty shameful really, I stopped playing Luigi's Mansion 2 for a bit after I had to repeat a boss-rush a couple of times. I would have finished it but Animal Crossing came out and by the time I went back to it and beat that boss rush I wasn't really into it anymore. A difficulty spike can really ruin a game in that way sometimes.

At the other end of the spectrum I can enjoy a game that is easy going. Animal Crossing I always seem to pour ridiculous amounts of time into. Kirby's Epic Yarn as others have said is really easy but it has so much charm that it doesn't matter at all. Even something like Pokemon where the main game is pretty damn easy especially if you know what you're doing, the fun of it is mostly in the story and post-game. Challenge is nice but I think good design matters a lot more.

Zelda for example, it's not particularly hard or easy. The challenge of it is mostly in the puzzles but they are very clever in the way they do it. You'll unlock an item and instantly want to play around with it. At which point you'll often accidentally teach yourself how to use it and you'll feel like you're a baddass genius. The classic is the map puzzle in Phantom Hourglass. I think it's more jarring when a game doesn't quite nail that aspect more than when there's a high difficulty. A game needs to make you want to keep going but also make you feel like it's not the game's fault you're stuck on a bit.

Don't care if it's easy as long as I like the mechanics and graphics of the game I'm happy to give it attention.

Well if a game provides no challenge whatsoever and holds my hand throughout the whole thing, yeah, I'll get bored super fast, but other than that, game difficulty doesn't affect my purchases at all. Sometimes I welcome a relaxing breeze where I can just sit back and enjoy the experience with some light puzzle-solving. Other times I want to put up with some soul-crushingly difficult challenge. Which, you know, usually just results in me losing like 30 minutes of progress and then shutting the game off for a month, but I still want that once in a while.

Most of the time though, I want something in the middle. Something that will engage me and ask for my full attention, but isn't going to take me 20 tries and 80 cuss words to get through a 5-minute section of game.

I play for the experience and gaming fun, particularly when the controller matches the gameplay really well to enhance the experience (Wiimotes for racket games, Gamepad for Lego City:Undercover, traditional controller for Tropical Freeze, etc).

I really enjoyed Tengami, although that's a really short and easy game (but the experience on a big screen with good sound was really something else). And I enjoyed Kirby's Epic Yarn for its creative approach to gameplay.

But I also enjoyed getting killed lots and lots of times in Tropical Freeze, Stealth Inc. 2, Scram Kitty, Shovel Knight etc. because I have a great time nevertheless. Personally, I wouldn't say the difficulty level is a deciding factor for me buying a game.

I've never been a patient person so I've never been a fan of difficult games. Now that I'm in college I barely get to play games and am stressed out 90 percent of the time so I'm even more aversive to difficult games. Even though I don't want to see another "New" Super Mario Bros game for a long time, I enjoyed the easier difficulty in those games.

I like games that are fun, challenging, entertaining, have lots of control options, lots of features, and for as cheap as possible. So yes, if a game is too easy, then I might not buy it. To me something can be really entertaining for a while, but if there's not enough depth and/or difficulty in the gameplay, it won't be entertaining for very long.

It's a toss-up between entertainment and experience that affects my purchasing choices, but difficulty does play a major part in the overall enjoyment of the game. Take TW101 for instance, I doubt I would have enjoyed it as much if I hadn't switched to easy a couple hours in.-cue boo's-
But yet when a game has a reputation for difficulty (I'm looking at you Dark Souls 2) it does spike my interest, but it's not on Wii U so it doesn't count.

I would say that difficulty does play some role in the games I buy. On a scale of 1-10 with 1 being press start and A to win and 10 being even the creators have a hard time beating it, I fall between 3-8. I don't mind an easy game as long as it's fun and full of contents like some of the Kirby games but I do mind an game that advertise itself as being super hard, unforgiving and/or old-school difficulty like a good amount of indie games like 1001 Spikes. I'm a gamer not a masochist

In my case it wouldn't matter at all, I buy the games that interest me. Could be anything.Any Difficulty.

My experience is that there's difficulty in the Nintendo platformers , like Super Mario Galaxy, NSMB, Donkey Kong etc, and there is little or no difficulty in the generic adventure shooting games (TLOU, Tomb Raider etc). And I do prefer the Nintendo platformers so there might be something to that.

Difficulty isn't really one of the aspects that tend to influence my purchasing decisions in a big way, but I gotta say that I've been let down in the past by games that were too easy.

In my opinion, it's not a matter of how hard the game is, but how well the difficulty is implemented into what the game is trying to do. I got 200% on Tropical Freeze and it was a freaking awesome experience, hard as it was; at the same time, there's a game like Scram Kitty, which I felt was hard not by design, but because of poor controls and unfair / unfun objectives.

TL;DR: It varies. If the game is well-made enough, I'll enjoy it regardless of difficulty level.