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Cyber ShadowWay too friggin' hard. Come on guys. Needs difficulty settings.(15 posts)(15 posts)
(15 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted January 27, 2021
I bought this game as a fan of Ninja Gaiden and to support Linux.
What's with the recent trend of making retro games stupid hard to the point where they aren't even any fun?
They did the same thing with CATHEDRAL, it was a game that could have been awesome but it got so stupid
hard that it just wasn't fun. I really love games that look and play like these but are more balanced or at least give
options for an EASY mode so those of us who want a more enjoyable experience can breathe.
I'm 47 and I grew up on C=64 & NES playing my fair share of difficult games but this is just ridiculous,
I'm barely on the 3rd section and it's already tedious and no fun at all.

Suggestion to DEVS: Could you consider putting a difficulty select in the options? (EASY/MEDIUM/HARD)

It's just too difficult and I'm not even that far into it yet. It would make the game more accessible.
I can't see myself playing this much further in it's current form and that's a shame, I paid the full price and
I love the control, I just don't enjoy being pummeled before I've even reached the second boss.
I bought the game because I saw YACHT CLUB was involved and I love Shovel Knight.
Shovel Knight is a perfect example of correctly balanced difficulty, I've won all of it's incarnations.
I realize YACHT CLUB did not code the game but they put their name on it.
People expect something similar in playability and difficulty balance.

Thanks for listening.
Post edited January 27, 2021 by nuacct
Posted January 28, 2021
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nuacct: I bought this game as a fan of Ninja Gaiden and to support Linux.
...
Suggestion to DEVS: Could you consider putting a difficulty select in the options? (EASY/MEDIUM/HARD)
...
I back this. I have seen that programs being easily switched to baby mode (that's what I call it - and I use it ;)
are just fun even at the beginning when you are not accustomed to controls, battle mechanics and surroundings.
One game which does this perfectly is "Fury Unleashed" {which also gives full access to change the controls
to your liking including double controls for any action} - and here when playing Easy mode, you can adjust the difficulty
parameters to your liking. And that's great.
I really would ask all developer to do exactly that so you can play the way you like it - and have fun right from the start
instead of unnecessary frustration.
One may have different scores in different modes to compensate and show what is worthy, of cause.

Another point is local Co-op ... as it was introduced later for "Shovel Knight: Shovel of Hope", I asked
if one may get this mode late here, too. Would be great.

Would be interesting to see if some of the gamers' wishes will be supported later on ...
Post edited January 28, 2021 by JMB9
Posted January 29, 2021
I think what happens is devs are obviously playing the game constantly during development and after
going through the levels countless times, tweaking every little thing, they end up knowing it like the back
of their hand and thereby making it more difficult to not to burn out during development.

However, this is not the perspective first time players are at.

It takes most players going through the game several times to get to this level of familiarity with the game,
that's why it's so important to have difficulty settings so you can "work up" to the harder mode.
You have to be able to play through it in order to get familiar with it and if it's too hard, many players
will just opt out and give up. Or worse yet, cheat. And that can ruin it if you get too carried away.

When I run into a game that I like but is too difficult, I end up trying to find a compromise in hacking it to
make it still fun without ruining it. For this particular game, I find no reason why the SP should be limited.
I've been playing with unlimited SP and it is still hard as Hell but at least not impossible now.
In fact, I think simply toggling SP unlimited on/off would be enough to change from EASY/HARD for this
particular game, they don't have to redesign the levels or anything, just give us unlimited shurikens and
the fireball thing that shoots up and to me, this alone has made the game fun.

I'm currently stuck on the serpent boss and with unlimited SP it's still insane, I can't imagine what it would
be like without it. I hope the DEVS take note and try to remember that first time players are simply not going
to be as familiar with the game as they are. When beta testing, throw in a larger variety of players as well.

The game rocks now for me with unlimited SP.
Post edited January 29, 2021 by nuacct
Posted January 29, 2021
avatar
nuacct: I think what happens is devs are obviously playing the game constantly during development and after
going through the levels countless times, tweaking every little thing, they end up knowing it like the back
of their hand and thereby making it more difficult to not to burn out during development.

However, this is not the perspective first time players are at.
That's not the case. The game is a homage to the old 8 and 16 bit era. A very common thing at the time was games being insanely hard. In fact, there's a trope named after this very concept:

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NintendoHard
Posted January 29, 2021
I'm aware of this. That is why I qualified it in my first post stating:
"I'm 47 and I grew up on C=64 & NES playing my fair share of difficult games but this is just ridiculous,
I'm barely on the 3rd section and it's already tedious and no fun at all."

There was a period where games took a trend towards being more story orientated and less skill orientated,
where anyone who spent enough time on the game would win it and there was no evolution in skill required.
I didn't like that period either and it was disenchantment with this period which is the reason there has been
a call back to the days of "Nintendo Hard" games.

However, there's a difference between being difficult and being no fun. I feel this crosses that line.
There's more to retro style than simply being difficult, one of those things is that with the classic games, even
though they were hard, they made you keep coming back for "one more try" because you always felt it
was your fault when you died and knew what you had to do. This is different.

I don't feel that way with many of these new "retro" games, I feel like it's just a tedious chore.
It is a very fine line between feeling like you can beat something and just need one more try vs. feeling
pummeled and just giving up in frustration. Developers shouldn't want to cross that line.

Again, I must praise Shovel Knight for achieving this balance. Even though there were joystick smashing
frustrating parts of Shovel Knight, I always fought on and kept trying, eventually succeeding.
Another game I can't give enough praise to is the original Gonner. They screwed the sequel up totally by
changing the entire control mechanism but the original was difficult, yet had a learning curve that by the time
I mastered it and learned all the tricks, I could easily win it.

It's a difficult thing to define exactly what the line between "difficult, but you want to keep trying" and
"this is impossible and it's still early in the game, I can only imagine how stupid it's going to get. I give up."
is but that line does exist. I don't feel like Cyber Shadow would ever be something I could rock through
without taking hits after increasing in skill like I can on Shovel Knight or Gonner.

At least, not in it's current incarnation. Maybe that will change. 8)
Post edited January 29, 2021 by nuacct
Posted January 29, 2021
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nuacct: ...
There are some runs you can look up online. If you are having trouble you can look those up and try to emulate what they do. My reaction time isn't what it used to be (I'll be 35 in March), but I'm still not having too much difficulty with the game itself. I think you have a good point with adding difficulty options. I understand if the game is too frustrating right now. If you decide to keep trying I'm rooting for you.
Posted January 30, 2021
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nuacct: I'm aware of this. That is why I qualified it in my first post stating:
"I'm 47 and I grew up on C=64 & NES playing my fair share of difficult games but this is just ridiculous,
I'm barely on the 3rd section and it's already tedious and no fun at all."

There was a period where games took a trend towards being more story orientated and less skill orientated,
where anyone who spent enough time on the game would win it and there was no evolution in skill required.
I didn't like that period either and it was disenchantment with this period which is the reason there has been
a call back to the days of "Nintendo Hard" games.

However, there's a difference between being difficult and being no fun. I feel this crosses that line.
There's more to retro style than simply being difficult, one of those things is that with the classic games, even
though they were hard, they made you keep coming back for "one more try" because you always felt it
was your fault when you died and knew what you had to do. This is different.

I don't feel that way with many of these new "retro" games, I feel like it's just a tedious chore.
It is a very fine line between feeling like you can beat something and just need one more try vs. feeling
pummeled and just giving up in frustration. Developers shouldn't want to cross that line.

Again, I must praise Shovel Knight for achieving this balance. Even though there were joystick smashing
frustrating parts of Shovel Knight, I always fought on and kept trying, eventually succeeding.
Another game I can't give enough praise to is the original Gonner. They screwed the sequel up totally by
changing the entire control mechanism but the original was difficult, yet had a learning curve that by the time
I mastered it and learned all the tricks, I could easily win it.

It's a difficult thing to define exactly what the line between "difficult, but you want to keep trying" and
"this is impossible and it's still early in the game, I can only imagine how stupid it's going to get. I give up."
is but that line does exist. I don't feel like Cyber Shadow would ever be something I could rock through
without taking hits after increasing in skill like I can on Shovel Knight or Gonner.

At least, not in it's current incarnation. Maybe that will change. 8)
You probably sucked at games when young and I bet you owned a game genie or purchased magazines to get infinite lives codes..

Listen pal, If you can't handle hard games... I dunno.. play Fall guys? is that casual enough? what about a visual novel or something that doesn't require skill to play?

Have you tried Dangerous Dave? what about Super Meat Boy, Spelunky, Maldita Castilla or Ghould and Ghost? guess what those are great games and they are all hard. The difficulty settings are NONE.

You and all the casuals who want easy modes, please stay safe on your sandbox games, Cinematic platformers or World of Warcraft.
Posted January 31, 2021
Honestly I consider this one of the more well developed games. One of the few where you doesn't have to memorize every little thing to actually stand a chance, be it enemy placement on stages or pattern of bosses. It is extremely forgiving to a point you can play it without any skills relying merely on pure reflex. Most of its difficulty comes from the never stopping enemies but you can avoid that by killing everything and progressing slower. That is how I beat it on my first time and I'm so satisfied that I consider buying it for PC as well at this point.

Minoria is very similar in this regard. Even without knowing what's going on you can progress perfectly just by watching the enemy and counter-acting by reflex.

I really prefer this over the more complex games where enemy placement and their behavior makes it play more like a puzzle game.
Posted February 02, 2021
The game is not that hard. Even i, the worst player in the multiverse, got through 5 stages.
Then i threw the keyboard against the floor and cursed like no tomorrow.
Posted February 13, 2021
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nuacct: I think what happens is devs are obviously playing the game constantly during development and after
going through the levels countless times, tweaking every little thing, they end up knowing it like the back
of their hand and thereby making it more difficult to not to burn out during development.

However, this is not the perspective first time players are at.
Huh ? Please, do not say that for everyone. Original Ninja Gaiden and Castlevania 1 & 3 & Rondo of Blood / Chronicles X kicked my ass even on emulators. BUT I'm sooo tired of no-effort game balancing these days that gameplay consist of linear annotated button press strings where I don't need to be fully awake for them to finish. If anything, this game is too lenient.

Weak balancing have trained too many people to expect zero challenge with no gameplay involvement. So much so, that so called "Dark Souls difficulty" meme was born which is a joke of itself as game is massively skewed in favour of a player.

What's game could benefit from is option to replace combo moves with dedicated buttons.
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nuacct: I'm currently stuck on the serpent boss and with unlimited SP it's still insane, I can't imagine what it would
be like without it. I hope the DEVS take note and try to remember that first time players are simply not going
to be as familiar with the game as they are. When beta testing, throw in a larger variety of players as well.
Or maybe you could benefit from playing by the rules of the game instead of cheating at every struggle and robbing yourself from experience to improve ?

I failed on that boss tens of times, probably, in a very short time. However, it was all my lack of attention. There is plenty of SP gathered from environment as long as you don't stop breaking things and boss absolutely melts when you get close to him or throw stuff at every opportunity.

I'm pretty sure that everything in the game designed to have patterns for zero damage.
Posted February 13, 2021
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X0F: I'm pretty sure that everything in the game designed to have patterns for zero damage.
Actually the Meka Dragon is the only boss to have no patter, well more like having minimal pattern. It is more than possible to kill it without damage if the player going slow because the dragon itself also kind of slow as long as you're not in water. Honestly I struggled more on the stages than on the fixed pattern bosses. Playing the game is still fun but refighting the bosses are really boring due to this. For me this is the only downside of this game.
Posted February 15, 2021
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X0F: I'm pretty sure that everything in the game designed to have patterns for zero damage.
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Pityesz: Actually the Meka Dragon is the only boss to have no patter, well more like having minimal pattern. It is more than possible to kill it without damage if the player going slow because the dragon itself also kind of slow as long as you're not in water. Honestly I struggled more on the stages than on the fixed pattern bosses. Playing the game is still fun but refighting the bosses are really boring due to this. For me this is the only downside of this game.
Yep. Although, I've found the dragon quite predictable because his positioning seems to be strictly following position of your screen-view, so you can kite him to move in accordance with platforms you drop and choose to stand on. And it has only few attacks. With electricity attack it just takes your attacks while being completely harmless, his jumping around is also has almost no chance of hurting if you constantly move, even without much thought where. The fire is the only problematic part but not if you kite him so you could stand under his mouth and jump out the moment he stops.
Posted February 15, 2021
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X0F: Yep. Although, I've found the dragon quite predictable because his positioning seems to be strictly following position of your screen-view, so you can kite him to move in accordance with platforms you drop and choose to stand on. And it has only few attacks. With electricity attack it just takes your attacks while being completely harmless, his jumping around is also has almost no chance of hurting if you constantly move, even without much thought where. The fire is the only problematic part but not if you kite him so you could stand under his mouth and jump out the moment he stops.
Exactly. The way the boss behave is very logical and easily abusable. Compared to Gremory from Curse of the Moon 1 but more exactly from 2 the dragon isn't random.
Posted March 23, 2021
This is sad to read. The difficulty is fine. I would hope they spend their valuable time adding new modes or content.
Posted July 14, 2022
Yes, game is very hard, rushing on enemies without knowledge of their attacks pattern will kill You in seconds. Even with all hp upgrades if You are not careful You will die fast. I am not good at games that require lot of skill to play, but for a most parts I enjoyed playing Cyber Shadow. Game is fair for a most parts.I like checkpoint system and unlimited lives/tries. For me most difficult section was parts after drone factory, You have long segments with spare checkpoints and no teleport for too long time. I understood that it was done for plot reasons, You can drive exo bike just once, but I would like to revisit those chapter after collecting 100% on later ones. Make breaks, practice, observe and You will make a progress. It took me about 400 and bit more deaths to finish that game.
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Cyber ShadowWay too friggin' hard. Come on guys. Needs difficulty settings.(15 posts)(15 posts)
(15 posts)