Granular and detailed please. Give me icons, highlight what changes, explain it carefully.

I'm reminded of Might and Magic 2, where undead are immune to fire. In fact, in that game, way too many enemies are immune to fire and cold, making spells of those elements significantly less useful than their electric and acid counterparts. (There's also the fact that, unlike Lightning Bolt, Fireball can't be cast on enemies engaged in melee combat, making it less useful in battles where more enemies are considered to be in melee.)

(This is without considering the difficulty setting, whose only function is to determine how many enemies appear per battle.)

Scarcity of weapons and good armour is one of the best ways to do it. Risen and ELEX are good examples for it done right. You have to invest XP into stats and weapon/armor/magic, money for the items and trainers to improve your skills. The weapons, armor and magic spells becoming available to you are also always much weaker than your enemies', making the process of beating enemies much more difficult than they actually are.

Risen can be very easy to beat even on the highest difficulty level. The trick is to fight without weapons and specialising in one or two weapon types or magic. You will save tons of money for good armor and shields, rings and trainers as well as scrolls and potions. You will also have lots more XP and skill points left to spend on only a select few important stats.

Fights are also more dynamic in melee combat. The only time you need a weapon is for the end-boss so can beat it 99.5% without weapon and for the three or four hits to bring down the BBE. There are still particularly nasty creatures and there is a possibility to die in an encounter. One reason is they deal more damage of a certain type, the other is lack of skill to evade an attack, so is mostly down to the player.

The only other way coming to mind has been used in a very old Famicom game. Can't remember the name of it, but there was no magic to heal or potions to swallow to heal wounds. Instead you had to visit hospitals, you couldn't sleep yourself back to full-health and there were other measures to always make you look over your shoulder and don't jump into a fight.

Overall the best system I have found is changing up attack patterns and intelligence of enemies. With this there will always be an element of surprise, even though you have encountered the same enemy hundreds of times, which can make it difficult to overcome at any level. The only game that does it is God of War.

I've seen this be the strategy in a few other games as well, either because there's weapon durability that does not apply to spells or unarmed combat, or weapons are too expensive, or unarmed combat is just better, or the game balance favors magic over physical attacks.

Some examples:
* In Final Fantasy 2, particularly remake versions, your unarmed attacks become pretty good for the early part of the game if you level up the skill. The drawback is that it doesn't work as well with a shield, which means it's not that great in the long run (given that shields are hugely important in this game).
* In Arc the Lad 2, later on enemies are significantly higher in level than you are, and that means your attacks will no longer hit. As a result, you need to use skills to attack, and this means that characters with strong normal attacks but poor skills (looking at you, Tosh) are not that good later on. (You also need to be concerned about MP, but there are items to regenerate MP, and one special item to negate MP costs entirely.)
* In Saviors of Sapphire Wings, magic, particularly light-elemental magic, is significantly stronger than physical attacks. Once you have a good magic setup going, and have the MP needed to sustain it, magic is going to be your primary means of winning battles. (Note that this is not the case in Stranger of Sword City.)

In Elder Scrolls game specifically:
* In Arena, unarmed combat with a spell to max out strength lets you fight well without any weapons, avoiding weapon durability (and the spell can last a really long time). Also, unless you can wear plate mail, you don't really need armor. (The big exception here is the Knight class, who has the ability to passively repair weapons and armor.)
* In Battlespire, and perhaps also Daggerfall, unarmed combat works really well.
* In Morrowind, magic items regain their charge over time, so fighting using magic items is the most sustainable strategy.
* In Oblivion, your magic regenerates (assuming you weren't born under the Atronach sign), and custom damage + weakness spells can do enough damage on repeated castings to kill even high HP enemies, yet weapons still have limited durability.

I do think the best is having no difficulty level. What you see is what you get, everyone gets the same game experience, and although there are options to make the game harder for yourself (i.e. self-imposed challenges), you get to experience the game "as developers intended."

This has always been a struggle personally since I dont know what the intended experience is meant to be which can have an impact on the story. Am I meant to be a badass that mows down enemies and rarely dies? Or am I supposed to die frequently and struggle past every boss? The former is the intended experience for Dynasty Warriors (where you are a legendary hero who leads their country to victory) while the later is Dark Souls.

There is the case that the "intended difficulty" is the one above normal as seems to be the case for Halo where Heroic difficulty is considered the "true Halo Universe" by most employees and creators but this might not necessary hold for all games. There are also cases where devs dont test their game difficulty, making a newly patched in difficulty too difficult early game (KH3 critical mode seems to be a response to criticism that the game was too easy and nerfed magic while not really balancing the issue for a better experience. Shadow of War's gravewalker sucks especially early game and brutal is more fun and balanced despite being easier).

Difficulty levels also forces players to make a choice of how they will experience a game when the player themselves has no idea of what the experience will be like. Its like asking what sort of pie you want (apple, cream, blueberry) despite having never tasted pie before. Its nice to have options but I do prefer no choice although that seems to no longer be an option.

I disagree. Difficulty options allow more players to experience the game, and allow for more varied experiences.

The game can signal "intended difficulty" while still having a choice; just have the cursor initially point to the game's intended difficulty, and anything above or below is harder or easier than intended. A new player can just choose the intended difficulty, while a veteran can choose a harder (or, if desired, easier) difficulty for a different experience.

This is basing on the assumption that not allowing difficulty selection automatically makes a game too hard that it cant be completed or that it would dissuade players which is not true.

RDR2 has no difficulty selection and is a widely beloved game. Its also a game that isnt really able to adjust difficulty but the small spikes it has (its not really a "hard" game) help enforce the story narrative.

Older games like Chrono Trigger, Megaman, every Zelda except for a rare few, also dont have difficulty levels but have wide appeal among gamers.

I am all for choice but find many instances but find in most cases, difficulty levels are poorly implemented. One example is Kingdom Hearts 2. The game itself has a pretty in-depth combat system and a variety of options available to the player at any given time but many players never bother to experience them because they dont need to on normal. You can "mash attack to win," apart from a few difficulty spikes. On the contrary, playing the Last of Us on easy is honestly not that different from playing it on hard in the early game where you dont have access to alot of equipment. Enemies still hit the same and clickers are one hit kills so new players will still struggle and get fed up. I think there was also a case where you can beat one of the CoD or Battlefield levels without touching the controller on easy but the game becomes insanely difficult with grenade spam on its hardest difficulty (both scenarios being kind of unrealistic for its setting).

This is probably more an issue of developers poorly balancing difficulty levels as opposed to difficulty levels themselves being the problem but I do find this to be a, issue that comes up frequently (necessitating articles on what difficulty should be selected). Maybe its because, as TC says, the default approach to difficulty is ramp up enemy damage output and decrease player damage output to just prolong fights and force the player to fight more defensively but if that is the case, is having different difficulty levels that much of a benefit versus having the developers focus on making a more wholesome experience at one difficulty setting without making easy too easy and difficult just frustrating?

Except that not allowing difficulty selection could result in a game that is too easy, with no way (other than using self-imposed restrictions that often involve ignoring interesting mechanics) to make the game hard enough to be fun to play.
RDR2? (Could you please spell out a game's name rather than using an acronym the first time you mention the game?)

Chrono Trigger can be too easy for experienced RPG players (though I note that Final Fantasy 7 is worse in that regard, not counting two optional isolated bosses that aren't even in the original Japanese release).

Early Mega Man games have some difficulty issues. In MM1, Guts Man's stage isn't well designed, as it throws you off the deep end, introducing a mechanic in a context where, if the player doesn't succeed multiple times in a row, the player falls and loses a life. Fortunately, the developers learned, and a comparable case, Ring Man's stage in MM4, is handled much better; the mechanic is introduced where you only have to pass it once and failure isn't a death, and then it builds from there.

In MM2, which (in its English NES release) actually *does* have a difficulty selection, there's another issue, and that's that you can run out of weapon energy. At this point, if weapon energy is a death, it can be painful to farm new energy to try again, particularly since, unlike in MM1, placed energy pick-ups don't respawn until game over. The final stage has a particularly bad example of this issue: If you don't have enough energy to defeat the boss (which is immune to the Arm Cannon, your only free weapon), you have no choice but to intentionally get a game over, which takes too long. (Basically, it's a softlock if you don't have enough energy to kill the boss).

Mega Man 4-6 require playing too many levels from the last save point (that is, the last point a password can take you) to the end of the game, making them pretty much not feasibly winnable unless you have a huge block of time to play, are willing to leave the NES on, or are using an emulator with save states.

Incidentally, the original Zelda *does* have a difficulty selection. If you name your file ZELDA, or if you continue after beating the game, you will be essentially playing the game's hard mode, where things are re-arranged, the dungeons have been re-done, and some new (and rather evil) mechanics are added. (I remember one of the dungeon items being in what is probably the *last* place a player will look, to the point where a player will likely think they've completed the dungeon before finding it.

Final Fantasy 9's optional superboss can be beaten without touching the controller during the fight, provided that you have a good setup for that and are lucky, yet nobody (to my knowledge) considers that boss to be easy. (With noting that luck is needed, as this is basically an RNG boss, who randomly uses attacks like Meteor which does something like 110-9999 damage to the party, possibly killing everyone except the character who was almost dead (I saw that happen in a youtube video).

The difference between them and Risen and Gothic is that there aren't any skills or specific character class/design to support this fighting style. I also never figured out why this was an option in Risen in the first place. Maybe they had a quest in mind involving a fist-fight like the ones in The Witcher. Or maybe it was planned as an alternative to render someone unconscious instead of killing them. Robbing and stealing are both options and to get away this would have made sense. In reality you can only kill opponents, even unarmed, if you aren't careful and fail to withdraw. Which is again easier fighting unarmed than is the case swinging some melee weapon.

While there are two small arenas where it would make sense, the opponents you have to face are well armed with an axe, short and long sword + shield or staff and the toughest is also wearing a very good armor. The only real difference is that your opponent will be knocked unconscious with and without use of a weapon, while at the same time if you decide you can kill them which isn't a good idea.

That's why this is very different to any of the games you've listed and described. I played almost all of them with the exception of Savior so can say that in one way or other there isn't just the option to play a martial arts class - or unarmed because weapons will become weaker or even break; That's also common in other RP where you'd have to waste money or SP to learn a repair skill or money to have a blacksmith or weapon/armorsmith do the job. Kingdom Come is one such game and also one you can fight unarmed. It's a choice and depending on whatever character class plus skills and perks you go with, it can also influence the difficulty. I think that Wizardry VIII is a good example for this. Fairy Ninja, incredibly powerful, solo'd once. Whereas with a full party and diverse set of characters complementing each other, even on the lowest difficulty level setting it can become impossible to make any progress. Level the characters to quick and you it doesn't take long before not a band of 10 hiway robbers but several different large groups of enemies will spawn. Before long this will kill the party or will have you spend hours and days to bridge the relatively short distance between Arnika and Trynton.

ラストレムナント - (Last Remnant) is one additional example which in my opinion at least handles difficulty in an intelligent and encouraging way with its battle rank system. While it seems to discourage power leveling/grinding, because if your rank increases the enemies' stats and rank does also, which can increase the difficulty to a degree where no more progress can be made and you have to start over. Without proper understanding how this system works and what all influences the increase or how to keep it at a low level even after 70 fights in quick succession, one is bound to fail miserably or getting penalized for high BR's. So here eventually besides the difficulty setting itself after beating it and starting game-plus, it depends on the right choice of places and enemies to fight, to make slow progress in BR while still increasing the character level, which will involve grinding and doing lots of side-quests, is what ultimately determines how easy or challenging it gets. It's ultimately on the player to develop an understanding for this system and its intricacies, on their ability to develop strategies and which battles to fight and how many to establish and maintain a challenge without every getting in trouble. Or, if the system is well understood, to even outsmart and make it very easy to play and finish the game.

TES: Arena doesn't have any skills or classes to support unarmed fighting; it just happens that the damage bonus from high Strength is enough to make it viable, provided you're not wearing gloves or gauntlets. (If you are, the game will crash if you try.)

In Saviors of Sapphire Wings, unarmed combat is ineffective (though at least *possible*); it's just that spells are really powerful as an alternative to using weapons, to the point where you need spells to win normal battles in a reasonable amount of turns. (With that said, i note that late game boss fights end up being really short when you take full advantage of spells.)

(In Stranger of Sword City Revisited, unarmed combat is outright impossible; you can't even attack without a weapon equipped. On the other hand, the Puppeteer class gets a zero-cost skill that allows you to use enemies as weapons, and that actually works really well, to the point where it makes it much easier to kill higher level enemies.)

SaGa games, incidentally, are a bit different when it comes to unarmed combat, *especially* SaGa 1/2.

SaGa 1: Unarmed combat requires a martial arts item (like Punch), so it has the same durability constraint that weapons have. The damage dealt by martial arts increases as the durability of the first instance of that martial art in the character's inventory decreases (note that used-up items count even though they're not visible). Final use is 3x as powerful.

SaGa 2: As SaGa 1, except that the durability count used for damage is that of the actual item being used. If a martial arts item somehow has -1 uses remaining, the attack hits for over 65k damage. (While this can only happen due to a glitch, there is one particular fight that is set up in such a way that this glitch is likely to be triggered by a confused enemy's attack.)

SaGa 3: No durability here. You don't need a martial arts item to make unarmed attacks, but it does help.

SaGa Frontier: Humans can learn martial arts attacks by using Punch. No weapon durability here, but learned techniques require WP to use.

SaGa Frontier 2: Like SF1, except that weapons have durability (so martial arts have that advantage), and martial arts do more damage as current WP decreases.

Romancing SaGa: Minstrel Song: As SF1, except that stringer attacks cost Life Points (whereas for weapons they use DP), so you don't actually escape weapon durability (especially since DP for weapons typically recovers at the inn).

SaGa 3 remake: You need martial arts items to make unarmed attacks, and they work just like other weapon types (but are quite good despite having no multi-target attacks).

Agreed. I quit Diablo 2 thanks to the immunities.

It was a blind playthrough so I went with sorceress and put all my stats in ice magic. Yes, it was a “poor” decision to not diversify but no one told me about it and it never hurt me in the past. Remember getting to the stages before Diablo or Ball himself and basically running into enemies that were completely immune to my attacks so had no chance of getting to the boss. Hell, the bosses were easier than the mooks because the bosses themselves had no immunity.

I think I also played an earlier version so no respec, just out of luck.

Wow, I didn't expect this thread to last this long.

What do y'all guys think of invincibility and infinite resources (ammo, pickups, potions, spells, whathaveyou) as an official form of easy difficulty as opposed to just using cheats to do the same thing?