mhg83

Having just completed Super Ghouls And Ghosts on SNES it is by far the game with the cheapest difficulty I’ve ever played.

When you force the player to go back to the very beginning to find a bracelet that’s not good game design. That’s just cheapining the gameplay by artificially lengthening the game. You can’t even find the bracelet in your first run! It only shows up in the second run.

What are some other games with cheap difficulty?

starseed1981

Dark Souls is the obvious and easiest answer I think. The amount of times that I was randomly killed by some far off enemy throwing a projectile from off screen. Grrrrrrr....

dom56

Omega Pirate from Metroid Prime. Fuck that boss, can't tell how many times I died fighting him when I finally beat it, I gave it a middle finger and yell, "Got you, motherfucker!"

Kedrix

Yeah, the Ghouls n Ghosts, Ghosts n Goblins, etc were always champions of cheap difficulty. I always felt the Mega Man series had a lot of cheap difficulty too, so much so I really don't want to play it too much anymore.

A recent game with cheap difficulty in my opinion is the game Has-Been Heroes. If you don't have the right combination of perks and powers in a run, you will get mauled by the last boss. Not to mention if you don't have really good reflexes and can watch three lanes at the same time with laser focus, you don't have much hope either.

Rob V

The first Far Cry had some pretty cheap stuff with normal grunts spotting you from several hundred yards out and nailing you in foliage with sniper-precision accuracy.

Lastblade

I am playing Ninja Gaiden (NES) now, trying to finish this 30 years later. Talk about cheap.

Mike86

I see a lot of people say this about the Mega Man games. I guess I never really felt they were that cheap. A bit challenging and frustrating at times but not so bad that I had real problems playing them. I'm by no means a great gamer either. I played a ton of them as a kid though. I only owned Mega Man 6 but the others were regular rentals.

fujishig

No Battletoads?

Most arcade games were cheap like that which is probably where ghosts and goblins got it from. I mean the main point of the game is to separate you from your quarters.

Also the newer Ninja Gaiden's, especially II, were very challenging. And whichever Devil May Cry game where they set the default US difficulty to what was HARD mode in Japan.

mewmartigan

I wouldn't say cheap difficulty but a cheap way to extend the game....Bravely Default for the 3DS.

The bulk of the story is activating 4 crystals across the world...then you get stuck in at time loop and have to activate the 4 crystals again......and again...and again. Admittedly each one takes less time and there are some story elements reflected in the time loop but holy crap was that first "well, we'll have to do it again" annoying.

JTH182

I think the worst part of Mega Man were the blind jumps. That's kinda cheap.