He doesn't handicapp himself

Should I use the mechanics the game presents to me?

>being a casual
can't you beat the game without upgrades, armor, spell and weapons?

lmao kid.
get gud

>Wearing armor and weapons
>Using spells
>Not just punching and kicking your way to Dracula
There are people right now in this thread that didn't kill Galamont with nothing but punches to the face.

depends, handicaping yourself is a legit tactic if the games becoming harder is more fun to you.

>not using the mechanics the game presents to you

Handicapping yourself to make the game better is just silly. Not long ago I was reading about deus ex runs with no skills, augs, kills, takedowns (in latest 2 games), even going as far as not doing stealth.
I dunno, in the end it's your game, play however you want but imo it's retarded to not use basic game mechanics

get gud idiot.

I've already beaten the game a dozen times.

>I am mad at some people who play a
>solitary form of entertainment differently

The thread

Castlevania SOTN without overpowered BS comes as really fucking hard bro.

It makes the game from a baby first metroidvania into a fucking legit roguelike where you need to take care of not making mistakes.

Is one of the cases where the games improves like 10x

Its like you dont even enjoyed platina the game

If i wanted to play a game that literally wants me to handicap myself, i'd play Metroid or Megaman or Contra (without picking weapons) and i'd have more fun than the shitty game that is SOTN, even without upgrades is still a really easy game. about as easy as super metroid because the entire challenge is in the exploration.

Besides
>trying to tell others that harder games are more fun
Try to beat Megaman 4 minus infinity with the BUSTER ONLY, ONLY THE FUCKING BUSTER, NO WEAPONS and come back if you want some fun by playing a hard game.

The game has only one bad thing and you are defending it. Fuck.

I once did a SOTN run in which i could only use equipment that was dropped by enemies. I was stuck with a shotel for most of the game.

It was fun.

go and play SOTN without any weapons, armors, spells or upgrades fuckboi, and tell me how much your ass burns afterwards.

Balancing the game is the devs' job. If you can easily break the difficulty of the game on your first playthrough without even looking up guides or rigorous planning ahead it means they did a shit job at it.

The user spamming about not using the mechanics of the game is also correct in that if you have to consciously handicap yourself, not only does it feel cheap, you also stand the chance of not getting the full experience and are geared towards repeating one and one thing only. For example SoTN has tons of unique fun gear, spells, weapons etc. so one has to wonder why you would choose to make the game more monotone on purpose, even going as far as defending the fact instead of rightfully lambasting the game for its balance issues.

Terminus est from nova skeletons, that shit was just right.

of all the games to pick, sotn is easy even if you go around punching everything

If I use an invincibility cheat to beat a game, then complain it was too easy, the majority of people in this thread would agree with me. The devs put it in the game. Clearly I'm supposed to use it. Not my fault they didn't properly balance the invincibility cheat.

Played Luck Mode without getting the health boosts or heart boosts, pretty fun tbqh

Sure, but playing that way isn't fun, it's just a trial-and-error exercise in frustration.

Nice passive aggressive false equivalence.

There's a clear difference between extra invincibility cheat that very likely requires looking up guides for a code or other non-apparent ways of unlocking it first compared to just playing the game blind and finding it too easy. Often if the devs do include invincibility cheats and other handicaps they even go to the length of making it clear it isn't the intended way of playing, by making your score not count or miss out on unlockables and such.

>Using only one of your arms is a valid and good way of playing the game, entitled players shouldn't expect developers to balance or do any kind of playtesting before releasing their games. Players themselves can do the balancing instead.

No, fuck off you stupid piece of shit, I should'nt have to balance the game, that's the devs job.

Almost all games put you in life or death situations, so I'm gonna fucking give it my all. I won't go out of my way to break the game, but this "Oh but that thing is OP don't use it" is a load of fucking crap and you should not excuse poor balance.

DARK METAMORPHOSIS!

Truth be told my first experience with SotN was a weird one. Had no internet back then and had no fucking idea what to expect, so naturally i was blown away with rpg elements and shit. Anyway, the game proceeded to utterly humiliate me and kick my ass all over the castle up until the finale. I was dying so fucking much, especially in the inverted castle. And that was me that was completing Contra Hard Corps from start to one of the endings with maybe losing two lives at most. So i donno, i feel like the game has more or less optimal difficulty for the first walkthrough
Of course subsequent walkthroughs ended up being so easy it was painful. My third playthrough i was going for perfect file so i used the name that gives you a boost to luck and reduces all stats to 1 iirc, and was trying to play with red rust sword and it was still painfully easy.

All of the really busted shit in SotN besides Soul Steal and Alucard Shield + Shield Rod is a rare drop though

If I want to play a challenging game I'm not going to take Symphony and wring all the life from it.

So it'd be ok if when Alucard gets the shield rod, Maria showed up and said hey alucard don't use that it makes your adventure too easy?

A game that has a very easy mode but still gives you the full end cutscene is unbalanced?

If you have the option of using the invincibility cheat, it's an intended part of the game. Choosing not to do so heightens your personal experience. You play games for fun, and if it isn't fun to you when you use the OP items, you blame the game? AND YOU CRITICISE PEOPLE WHO ENJOY THE GAME WHEN THEY HANDICAP THEMSELVES?

i usually do a no equip run
the clock tower is a nightmare

>the game is hard when you go out of your way to make it hard.
By design the game is not that hard. Stop trying to pretend that it is.

Usually its a shitty game that requires you to shut off basic features to feel any semblance of challenge.

See: MGSV

>Needing to handicap yourself to make the game pose any semblance of a challenge

>HURR GAME IS BAD BCUZ YOU CAN DO THESE TRIKS AND THAT BUILD AND EASILY BEAT IT
Why won't you play some MMO or multiplayer games to get the suprassimg feel?

If you are at any time not playing the game to its fullest potential, you're internally telling yourself how stupid you are for not playing the game as well as you could be.

there's nothing wrong with creating additional challenges for yourself after mastering a game

There isnt, but when some fool tells that X game isnt shit if you play without a controller then you know its probably a shit game

Fuck
I was going to post that
SOUL STEAL

Is this a SOTN thread of CV general?

>he doesn't play with the hard mod

No, he has to artificially gimp himself instead. What a complete pleb.

Without the mechanics the game presents to you?

How much harder does the hard mod make the game?

This, desu.

I say it's pretty challenging. It also either removes or changes the values of some of the god-tier items so they're not game breaking anymore as far as I remember.

>So it'd be ok if when Alucard gets the shield rod, Maria showed up and said hey alucard don't use that it makes your adventure too easy?
No, I'd very much prefer the developers to balance the game so that I can use the said easily and early accessible item without destroying any remaining semblance of difficulty the game might have had in the process.

>AND YOU CRITICISE PEOPLE WHO ENJOY THE GAME WHEN THEY HANDICAP THEMSELVES?
No, I'm criticizing bad developers who can't be arsed to develop a good game that takes both the main gameplay mechanics and player skill properly into account, and people like OP defending such games on the retarded basis that the players should do the balancing themselves. If I want to play a challenging game, I play a challenging game where I can attempt to do my best with the provided gameplay mechanics and still feel challenged in doing so. I do not play pretend in Laa-Laa Land imagining the game in question has good balancing or gameplay by starting to purposefully handicap myself by removing core game mechanics that the devs very likely created with the intention of bringing more variety, instead of them being the equivalent of hidden cheat codes.

Go staple your tiny dick on the chair you're sitting on right now since that should make SotN more challenging, I don't know why I'm even bothering to argue with you.

So you want the devs to balance the game based on a player who has the best equipment? Why even have the option of having other equipment, then? How is choosing to use thr op item and complaining it's unbalanced different from beating it on easy and then complaining it was too easy? New Super Mario Bros has a Luigi block that beats the level for you. You can choose to use it or not. It's there for people who can't beat it normally. It's there for people who don't want a challenge. If you want a challenge why are you using the OP equipment? If you don't want a challenge why are you complaining the game is too easy? Why do you blame the devs for giving you the option to choose how you play the game?

I was only using in game arguments but you've resorted to using elements outside the game to argue, like playing blindfolded (which people do, and it's very impressive) as if that makes the game worse somehow. Ok, then what if I was eating a burger, and I hated ketchup, but there was some ketchup on the table. Shit, guess I have to use it. I'm gonna smear this ketchup on my burger now. Oh god it's awful. If the restaurant gave the option of using ketchup, they should have made it taste good with ketchup for people who hate ketchup. What a horrible restaurant.

>So you want the devs to balance the game based on a player who has the best equipment? Why even have the option of having other equipment, then? How is choosing to use thr op item and complaining it's unbalanced different from beating it on easy and then complaining it was too easy?
No, what I'm saying is that you don't suddenly throw gamebreakingly overpowered easily acquirable equipment and abilities at the start of the game. A well balanced RPG for example would provide many different items and abilities that have different effects that change your playstyle / how you interact with the game world, with more powerful items being unlocked later on to fill the need for better gear and abilities created by tougher enemies or other difficult gameplay portions. Do you understand how a game can have both gameplay and character build variety without completely breaking game balance, and that they're not mutually exclusive things? I don't see why it's that hard to grasp. Do you exclusively play easy, poorly balanced games that can be made difficult only by consciously gimping yourself?

>you've resorted to using elements outside the game to argue
You and OP implicitly did it too, as you assume it's the player's job to research the game beforehand and completely ignore certain game mechanics / items altogether whereas if the game balance was actually good from the start, there was no need for such things and you could play the game blind and have a challenging time in doing so.

Look up the SoTN hard mode hack. It's pretty awesome. It's on extreme gaming .net or whatever

It's called knowing how to have fun you fucking retard. Holy shit. I'll bet you spam the "hint" button in puzzle/adventure games don't you faggot? THen I'll bet you complain after about how it was boring and 2Ez4U didn't engage you mentally. PSSHHHH

>fucking legit roguelike
Learn what a roguelike is

>No, what I'm saying is that you don't suddenly throw gamebreakingly overpowered easily acquirable equipment and abilities at the start of the game

Have you ever played SotN, the game we're discussing? It doesn't do that. Knowing how to go get the shield rod from the beginning would require using guides or having played through the game before, which negates your argument about the game being balanced on a first playthrough.

> you assume it's the player's job to research the game beforehand and completely ignore certain game mechanics

No we didn't. It's obvious that we're talking about playing through games multiple times with certain restrictions in place on subsequent playthroughs in order to challenge yourself. If you're arguing about a game's first time through being perfectly balanced and not having OP items then we're arguing two different things. If you get mad about playing through a game one time and finding it too easy then you probably just didn't like the game in a general sense. Also SotN is clearly designed to be played through multiple times as it has several different endings and unlockable game modes, like Richter mode.

I don't think you understand what made SoTN still super-enjoyable despite lack of retarded "le dark soul" artificial difficulty

youtu.be/UwTMpiXcbVo
Post some challenges then

>Have you ever played SotN, the game we're discussing?
Have you? Even disregarding the most broken items like the Shield Rod the game is still too easy, hence the reason you started gimping yourself in all sorts of different ways (apart from just not using Shield Rod) in the first place. Shield Rod was just one example. See mention "all upgrades"? Tell me how that is good balance in any way or form, instead of an actual big flaw with the game that the developers should have taken into account and worked around before releasing SotN. You're actively castrating the game of its main gameplay mechanics and variety in an attempt to make it more challenging, which in itself isn't a bad thing to do as a player if that makes the game more enjoyable for you. However, I have no fucking idea why feel the need to defend the game instead of admitting that it is a flaw.

>If you get mad about playing through a game one time and finding it too easy then you probably just didn't like the game in a general sense.
I don't know what you're even trying to convey with this. I mostly liked the game in general, but I'm not a deluded fanboy who defends the game's glaring balance issues and calls them intended features, especially when there exists other games that manage to have both challenging and varied gameplay out of the box without the need for the player to actively gimp themselves.
>Also SotN is clearly designed to be played through multiple times as it has several different endings and unlockable game modes, like Richter mode.
Again, how is the game being designed for multiple playthroughs in any shape or form mutually exclusive with good gameplay balance?

/thread