Saturday, August 2, 2008

Hard Mode, hard to pass up?

I must be some kind of masochist. I'm about to start playing Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne, having recently finished Odin Sphere, and I am already stuck. At the start of a new game the game asks you if you want to play with normal difficulty or on hard difficulty. I can't decide which I want.

Now I like a challenge, but I don't like being stymied or having to grind for levels. Now you may say, "But dude, that is what 'hard' means in RPGs!". This is not always true. In the original Valkyrie Profile, the hard mode allowed access to events and optional dungeons that the regular mode did not. Also the increase monster strength allowed for the tactical nature of the combat system to be expressed, making every action in combat more important. The thing I really can't stand in games is mindless combat. My tastes run toward the tactical anyway, so having myriad skills and spells that never see the light of day because your regular attacks can take care of all the challenges for you is unforgivable. In a game with all the layered systems and optional dongles of SMT Nocture, my fear of having this happen was even more acute.

I am about an hour into the main game now and the weakness of the enemies is giving me the heebie-jeebies, so I need to learn what the hard mode actually adds to the game. Now I read everywhere on the interwubs that this game is very hard at certain points, but I see no mention of the hard mode. So I dig deeper, one player says that there is no extra content in hard mode. No extra events, characters or dungeons. Not what I wanted to hear. Next tidbit I get is that in hard mode there are basic mathematical increases to monster strength, and probability based attacks like insta-kills and status effects are far more common. Insta-kills are insta-annoying, and yet...

To actually beat the game on hard mode, wouldn't that be even more awesome? Wouldn't I have to pimp the systems to their utmost to prevail? Wouldn't I get the greatest appreciation for the game design and textures in the game rules by challenging myself? Wouldn't the spectre of death make every random encounter all the more interesting?? The spectre of DEAAAAATHHHHHHH! (He's right over there... don't look!!)

Ya anyway, I can already see myself restarting on hard mode. This is happening tonight. *sigh* Am I nuts? The only guarantee is that I will spend more time playing this game one way or another, and I have a huge pile of games to play after this one. Is beating SMT: Nocturne on hard mode even all that important? Nothing but the math is changing here apparently, but the very fact that few if any of the goobs on gamefaqs, UGO or IGN have claimed this feat for themselves makes me want to try it all the more. There is one other thing I get out of this, however. And that is that no matter how I grind, min/max, combo or match traits to situations, I will not feel as though I am cheating myself out of any of the challenge. Is this the puritan work-ethic at work in my demon summoning/training/breeding/eating video game? Yeah probably.

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