I usually enjoy a challenge but in both Persona 4 Golden and Persona 5 I've played story mode. I just didn't enjoy the game before that accepted that I'm not much of an JRPG-guy while I still liked the rest of both games.

No, I tend to play on the hardest difficulty. I play for the gameplay. There's not many games where the story is the main focus for me.

Git gud!

If you don't want to actually play a game you will have a very cheap alternative. Watching playthroughs of games with or without commentary.

As I said before, whatever the maker of the game think is right.
Before we get the conversation in circles, I like accessibility options, I use them all the time and played games both in hardest and easiest dificulty.

That's probably where our opinions diverge, I don't think anyone is entitled to have a easy mode or accessibility options and not every game needs it. As stated above, most games just increase/descrease enemy numbers or health anyway.
Irks me more trying to "appeal to a wider audience" than the lack of a easy and hard modes or whatever.

Very true and I agree, even us as players can change our way of perceiving dificulty. As an exemple, I don't think Battle Brothers is particulary hard once played a couple of campaigns.

But on the other hand, if one don't enjoy a particular game for being hard (or easy for that matter), is not that there is a game shortage at the moment.

Edit: nevermind, it's futile anyway.

I see. It's kinda similar to the point-and-click game Strangeland where some deaths are actually mandatory to progress the story. But I won't consider it a difficult game lol. But most games really don't benefit from that, like Hotline Miami could be an easy game and be just as fun.

Oh I personally absolutely enjoy getting into some completely unknown games on easy/story modes. Being a completionist, I view the experience of those modes as more of an extended tutorial. You get the feel of the game, the pacing, and actually experience the story. Then you go through it a bunch more, retching up the difficulty each time. If a game didn't grip me in the first round, then I am glad to have at least not wasted much time on it, breezing through easier difficulty.

Another side to that, are any games that do not have fair save systems. Harder difficulties right out the gate are undermined by some atrocious checkpoints. Those games I typically never even attempt multiple times.

My personal favorites in save designs are Max Payne (PC and later console releases... NOT that awful PS2 version) and Dead Space 2. Both of these games are staples in their own right, but I love their saving mechanics. MP allows you to have a quick-save at any time; however, there are two modes which will mod the game for that extra challenge: New York minute and Dead on Arrival. Both mess with saving and you can really brick your whole run if you don't know what you're doing. Dead Space 2 had the standard gamut of difficulties, but then the last mode allowed you to only save 3 times during the whole (hardcore) run of the game. You had to visualize your whole run and where to catch a break.

My only exception is when difficulty is the whole point of the game. Probably why I don't enjoy Souls games and most Metroidvanias. Those are for a different type of gamer than I. Fully believe that those games and their high difficulty baselines should always exist though. Some of the most fun to watch.

I found the jumping passages in Psychonauts 2 so annoying that I really didn't want to deal with combat as well. I turned on all accessibility options eventually, and I'll say: then it turned out to be an incredible game.

Yes, in Two Princess Knights or other juicy anime games. Watch it as a movie/story mode with someone you trust.

I'm not sure if Outlast 2's "easiest" mode is called "story mode," but I played that game on the easiest mode of that game, a mode which was deliberately patched in after the game had first come out, supposedly in order to "fix" the problems of the game being too tedious and repetitive and aggravating.

Except, it didn't actually fix any of those problems at all.

Prior to playing Outlast 2, I had also completed the first Outlast game, which was one of the worst gaming experiences I've ever had, because it consisted of almost nothing but repetitive trial & error (non)gameplay, and what little gameplay it did have was hardly any different than a walking simulator --- except that walking simulators are actually much better and also they are infinitely less aggravating & less tedious.

I regret having played both Outlast games because they were both terrible games, and I'd also argue they are barely even "games." Those games both need a real, literal story mode wherein literally nothing happens other than the player watches as the game plays itself (with no repetitive trial & error character deaths occurring); that would be way better than is the trash that was published as the Outlast games which we actually have.

Other than that, for other games, I generally chose the hardest difficulty, not the easiest.

But now I am starting to regret that too, because I started to play Xuan-Yuan Sword VII on "Nightmare" difficulty the other night, and I keep running into problems like, I have barely any stamina, and therefore my character often dies simply because there is not enough stamina both to swing my sword at the enemies and also to dodge/roll/run away too from their attacks, and from when they mob all around me (and if you fully run out of stamina, then you can easily become paralyzed in place, which equals instant death).

This causes me to "lose" not due to any fair loss due to the game's enemies fairly overcoming my skill, but rather I lose due to the game's arbitrary, very bad design choice to leave the player character unfairly underpowered (at least on Nightmare difficulty).

And these problems are compounded by the facts that there is a massive cooldown on using healing potions (so they cannot be used consistently in a long battle), and there are hardly any places to earn money to buy new potions to replenish your stock, and the healing potions you can buy from merchants don't heal very much HP, and on top of all of that, many areas of the game leave you "stuck," with no possible way to get out of the area in order to buy more potions, or to level up more, or to hunt for supplies to craft more gear, etc., unless you first defeat that area's enemies or boss, even though your character might be too weak to defeat them.

Because of these kinds of issues, I cannot beat the first major boss, and that's still so after I've already reloaded from an earlier saved game, from a point before wherein I got "stuck" at the unbeatable (for my character) boss, in order to grind up more levels and gear...and then after returning hours later, after all of that extra grinding, the first major boss still totally wrecks me anyway.

So I probably should have chosen the easiest difficulty for that game; if I l knew the kind of crap I just described would be awaiting me after choosing "Nightmare," I wouldn't have chosen that.

I'll get right to finding the one person who has played though all the Zeek the Geek levels.

I usually pick the hardest "normal" difficulty.

Many games have a tendency to do some weird gimmick on the hardest difficulty and that's usually a no-no from me. Like not being allowed to save, or enemies respawning or completely changing the gamemplay in some way. Doom 3's hardest difficulty for example. Your HP degrades to 20 but you have the Soul Cube from the start. Never would play on something like that.

As for story difficulty, I don't think I'd ever voluntarily pick that. I need at least some level of engagement from the game to enjoy it.

I wouldn't have thought story was the main draw of System Shock, so it would be a bit odd for it to have a Story mode, but yeah, I'm not averse to it, depending on the game.

In an ideal world, where I can be certain that every difficulty level was well balanced to not give a rubbish gameplay experience, I'd choose the easiest "gameplay" difficulty, and shift upwards if I found it too easy.

No, I would be ashamed of myself if I did. People who do so just need to git gud.