Sequel Difficulty Drop: Difference between revisions

 

Contrast [[Sequel Difficulty Spike]], [[Surprise Difficulty]].

 

* The [[The Legend of Zelda (video game)|first]] [[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link|two]] ''Zelda'' games are considered the hardest of the series ([[Nintendo Hard|par course for games of that era]]), so all the games after that are this. In particular, ''[[The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker|The Legend of Zelda the Wind Waker]]'' and ''[[The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess|The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess]]'' are notably much easier than either of the two N64 games preceding them. [[Nintendo]] made a point of reversing this trend with ''[[The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks|The Legend of Zelda Spirit Tracks]]'' and ''[[The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword|The Legend of Zelda Skyward Sword]]'', with the latter's higher difficulty being largely due to a greater emphasis on combat.

* ''[[Uncharted]] 2'' not only adds the new "Very Easy" difficulty level for beginners, but all of the other difficulty levels are toned down from the previous release. Except [[Harder Than Hard|Crushing]], which is ''harder'' than Crushing on the original.

* ''[[Castlevania II: Simon's Quest]]'' is ridiculously easy once you get past the [[Guide Dang It|obtuse hint system]], owing to enemies that freeze everytime they get hit.

 

* The ''[[Devil May Cry]]'' series seems to have zig-zagged. The first was [[Nintendo Hard]], the second dialed back the difficulty to the point of many considering it [[It's Easy, So It Sucks]], the third was a bit more difficult than the first, and the fourth was much easier.

 

* ''[[Discworld]] 2'' was made much easier than the first game, although this was mostly due to the fact that the puzzles went from being totally obscure non-sequiturs to proper [[Moon Logic Puzzle]]s.

* ''[[King's Quest VII]]'' and ''[[Space Quest]] 6'' changed the engine, and had eliminated the [[Unwinnable]] scenarios that tended to really annoy beginning adventure game players. The difficulty and tone didn't change much for [[Space Quest]]. Roger was still none-too-bright "semi-hero" players knew and loved. The ''[[King's Quest]]'' entry was markedly different from previous entries, going [[Lighter and Softer]] along with the Sequel Difficulty Drop. This accounts for the mixed reception it has on the fanbase.

 

* ''[[Streets of Rage]] 2'' (except for the new [[Harder Than Hard|Mania mode]]), although the game was far from easy. Played straight in the original version of the 3rd game but [[Sequel Difficulty Spike|completely inverted]] in the Western version... unless you use the [[Game Breaker]] character, Shiva.

 

* ''[[Tokimeki Memorial|Tokimeki Memorial 2]]'' was made easier than its predecessor, most notably by dramatically lowering the bombing rate. This was done in order to focus in a character storyline-specific challenge instead of a mostly stat-based challenge.

 

* ''[[Street Fighter Alpha]]''. While far from easy, and still having very good AI, it is noticeably easier than the old [[Street Fighter]] games. Maybe because the AI cheats less.

* In the first ''[[Power Stone]]'' arcade mode was pretty difficult, especially after beating the first boss. However, in the sequel arcade mode can easily be finished in no time at all even by new players after getting to know how to play better.

 

* ''[[Far Cry]]'', ''[[Crysis (series)|Crysis]]'' and ''[[Far Cry]] 2'': Far Cry, the first game, is the FPS equivalent of [[Nintendo Hard]] on its highest difficulty and massively challenging for even experienced gamers. Both the sequel set in the African jungle, and 'spin off' ''Crysis'' are hard enough on the highest difficulties, but don't provide anywhere near the challenge that the first game did. A good part of this is due to having access to regenerating health, unlike the original ''Far Cry'' with its reliance on (somewhat rare) health kits and armor pickups.

* ''[[Descent]] II'' is a definite step down from the brutal difficulty of the first game. Even with the more advanced robot A.I. and nastier bosses, the game is noticeably easier thanks to the addition of accessories like the afterburners, energy converter and ammo rack. The difficulty went back up with the third game.

* The first three ''[[Rainbow Six]]'' games (excluding the console version of ''3'') had multiple teams of agents, complicated pre-mission planning, easy [[One-Hit Kill|one hit kills]] by enemies, and [[Final Death|perma-death]]. Starting with ''Lockdown'', the series became a more forgiving fast-paced single squad-based shooter.

 

* The original ''[[Time Crisis]]'' was by far the hardest in the series, because its timer immediately ended the game when it expired, [[Unstable Equilibrium|time extensions were dependent on the player's skill]], and [[Time Keeps on Ticking|time kept on ticking between action sequences]]. As opposed the later games where it only took off a life, and reset with every checkpoint.

 

* [[Blinx the Time Sweeper]] 2: Masters of Time and Space to the original game.

* ''[[Super Mario Bros 3]]'' was a huge drop compared to ''[[Super Mario Bros the Lost Levels|Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels]]'', although still harder than ''[[Super Mario Bros. (video game)|Super Mario Bros]].''

* ''[[Exit Path]] 2'' is a bit easier than the first due to a smoother control scheme, an ability to double jump, and bounce pads having a fixed height.

 

* ''[[Puzzle Quest]] 2'' was far easier than any of its predecessors in the series. Outside of the occasional [[Boss in Mook Clothing]] (*coughvampirescough*), enemies were rarely a challenge - especially if you're playing as a Barbarian (who has access to the strongest weapons in the game and power boosting spells).

 

* ''[[Wangan Midnight Maximum Tune]] 2'''s story mode is a bitch to complete without losing at all (an accomplishment known as "unshaded status" after the stage clear marks that are hollow if you haven't lost and filled if you have). ''[[Maximum Tune]] 3'' and ''3 DX'', on the other hand? As long as you don't crash in the last 2-3 kilometers any given stage, unshaded status is very possible.

* ''[[Super Mario Kart]]'' is probably still the hardest game in the series,even if ''[[Mario Kart 64]]'' and ''Mario Kart Wii'' give it a run for it's money. Otherwise the series has gotten easier and easier over the years in comparison.

* ''[[SSX]] Tricky'' is an example of this [[Tropes Are Not Bad|working in the game's favor]]. The controls are much tighter and smoother, you are overall faster, and the introduction of Uber tricks allowed players to easily rack up the kinds of scores that only would have been possible in the original if you were playing at maxed-out stats. This allowed you to unlock new characters faster, so if you wanted to get to a certain character you could reach that character faster.

 

* ''[[We Cheer]] 2'' has an easier difficulty for the songs, and even includes testing for the lag calibration.

* ''[[Guitar Hero]]: World Tour'' added a "Beginner" difficulty level in addition to the usual Easy, Medium, Hard and Expert levels.

** ''Rock Band 3'' automatically turns on no failure mode when playing on easy, and allows it on all difficulties without penalty; [[Scoring Points]] is still as much of a challenge as always.

 

* ''[[Kingdom Hearts II]]'' compared to the first ''[[Kingdom Hearts (video game)|Kingdom Hearts]]'' and ''[[Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories]]'', except for [[That One Boss|a couple of the bosses.]]

* The difficulty levels of ''[[Dragon Age II]]'' were adjusted so that they were equivalent to the level below the level of the same name in ''[[Dragon Age]]: Origins''

* ''[[Dark Cloud]] 2'' does away with a LOT of the aggravations from the previous game: weapons are no longer permanently lost if broken, the characters no longer have a thirst meter, enemies drop a lot more money, and the inventory window is not only much larger, but items stack—you can carry 20 of each healing item without taking up 20 individual slots in your inventory.

 

* ''[[Touhou|Double Spoiler]]'' compared to ''Shoot The Bullet''. Mainly by greatly lowering the number of scenes cleared needed to unlock a level, but most of the more bullshit pattern types (photograph ''exactly'' the right part of the pattern, survive before the boss appears, etc.) are absent as well. Unfortunately for players, the hardest spellcard in ''Shoot the Bullet'' (if not the entire series) carried over to ''Double Spoiler'' - though the bullet size DID get reduced, and it's only 3 photos needed. And fitting for the character that uses it too...

* ''[[Do Don Pachi]] Dai-Fukkatsu''. Its bullet count would [[Sequel Difficulty Spike|put it above]] ''dai ou jou'', however, if you're playing on Bomb or Strong Style, you get a very [[Game Breaker|game-breaking]] feature not found in prior games: Auto-[[Smart Bomb|bomb]]. Getting hit with a bomb remaining causes you to fire a bomb instead of dying, and with each successive life your bomb capacity (which starts at 3) increases by 1, all the way up to 6 after 3 lives lost. This essentially means you start with 15 lives, and gain 1 more when you get a bomb item (at least 1 on each stage from stage 2 to 5) 7 more with each [[1-Up]] (3 of which you can get in one loop, although 1 of which requires a very high score), for a total of at least 34 chances to get hit before seeing the Continue screen. Thus, you never have to worry about determining the right time to fire a bomb.

* ''[[Radiant Silvergun]]'' is vicious. Long stages with at least a dozen bosses throughout the game, [[Malevolent Architecture]] up the ass, and a chaining system that not only requires leaving roughly 2/3 of enemies intact, but is ''essential'' to powering up weapons and making later stages managable. ''[[Ikaruga]]'' dials down the complexity, allowing the player to absorb bullets without using a weapon, and not requiring playing for chain to have enough firepower for the later stages.

 

* ''[[Trauma Center|Trauma Team]]'' is easier compared to previous installments. However, trying to get the XS rank is a lot harder.

* Papyrus' ''NASCAR Racing 2002 Season'' was perceived as [[It's Easy, So It Sucks|Slower So It Sucks]] after cars in the predecessor, ''NASCAR Racing 4'' had noticeably higher speeds than in [[Reality Is Unrealistic|reality]].

 

* It is nigh-impossible to die in ''[[Assassin's Creed II]]'', unless you either leave the game alone in combat (good job, by the way,) or the streamlined freerunning controls cause you to accidentally jump off a building. Even then you can just drink a potion (you can carry 15). Beyond that, the guards will no longer follow you to the rooftops, which means escape is an utter cakewalk. Still a better game than the first, though.

** ''[[Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood|Assassin's Creed Brotherhood]]'' is even easier than ''[[Assassin's Creed II]]'', due to the upgrades to the fighting system, as well as Ezio's eponymous brotherhood being at your beck and call.

* The original ''[[Hitman]]: Codename 47'' had ''no save states'' OR ''checkpoints''. If you screwed up just once you were likely to end up being riddled with bullets and sent back to the beginning of the mission; some of the more elaborate missions could be 30–50 minutes or more in length. Later games let you save in the middle of a mission, and (on the regular difficulty) allowed 47 to sustain much more damage before dying.

 

* ''[[Silent Hill]]'' games have gone up and down over the years. ''[[Silent Hill 2]]'' was considerably less intense and dangerous than ''[[Silent Hill 1]]'', yet ''[[Silent Hill 3]]'' ramped up the challenge to the point where there were [[Serial Escalation|''ten'' difficulty modes above Hard]]. The next three games had a single, set difficulty which was rather high overall, and then ''[[Silent Hill: Shattered Memories]]'' came along and is without a doubt the easiest game in the series.

* ''[[House of the Dead]]: Overkill'' fits this trope, especially with unlimited continues.

* Compared to the [[Resident Evil 1|original]], ''[[Resident Evil 2]]'' swamps the player with ammunition and healing items and has much easier monsters (no "fast" zombies, overall low-damaging Lickers instead of [[Demonic Spiders|Hunters]], and so on). Furthermore, certain [[Good Bad Bugs|coding errors]] make it so that certain areas with enemies are clear after a scripted event. An average player can complete a blind run without dying once. Further games, however, [[Sequel Difficulty Spike|are another story entirely]].

** Part 2 also fixed two bugs in the original that made it harder: Pushing away one zombie will knock down the others close to it (as opposed to each one getting a turn at your neck until you either got a lucky break or got dead), and monsters making a [[Deadly Lunge]]-type attack could be shot out of it (whereas in the original, a Hunter leaping at you was garanteed to score a hit unless you dodged it).

 

* ''[[Gears of War]] 2'' adds a new difficulty, normal. It is roughly equivalent to the casual difficulty setting of the first one, which was the lowest. This makes ''Gears of War 2'''s casual difficulty equivalent to an easy mode. The developers have claimed that they hadn't intended for ''[[Gears of War]]'' to be as hard as it was on the lowest difficulty. [[The Dragon]] of ''[[Gears of War]] 2'' is also considerably easier than the [[Angrish]] inducing General RAAM from the the first. ''Gears of War 2'' is also easier due to being much more balanced / developed than the first game; friendly A.I. squadmates are ''vastly'' more intelligent and helpful, the Locust assault rifle has been changed to a semi-auto sniping weapon which gives you a viable long-range combat solution which was sorely lacking in the first game, and enemy Locust drones and Boomers take slightly less bullets to kill than in the first game in addition to hitting you less frequently.

** Gears of War 3 is much easier than the second game, to the point that many sections can be beaten by simply hanging back and letting the AI squadmates kill all of the enemies. This is on the second highest difficulty setting. Hell, on normal, you can win >80% of the fights by bayonet charging and using melee attacks. Even using the cover system becomes close to optional most of the time. Enemies are even less damaging, less accurate, and less durable.

* ''[[Max Payne 2]]'', while still a challenging game, is no longer as [[Nintendo Hard]] as the first game. Max can now survive a reasonable amount of damage (compared to the first game where a handful of 9mm bullets or a single shotgun blast would spell instant game over), bullet-time now regenerates slowly over time (so you no longer can get stuck because you ran out), shootdodges no longer cost bullet-time at all to perform, and late-game enemies are no longer inexplicably [[Made of Iron]].

 

* The 'Phoenix arc' of the ''[[Ace Attorney]]'' games got progressively harder. However, ''Ace Attorney: Apollo Justice'' and ''Ace Attorney Investigations'' were [[It's Easy, So It Sucks|criticized for being too easy]].

** In [[Ace Attorney Investigations]], unlike in the first [[Ace Attorney]], after pressing all a witness' statements and reflecting before going back to the first one, Edgeworth tends to provide players with a hint as to which part of the testimony contains the contradiction. Additionally, all penalties take off 10% of the truth bar, with the exception of one rebuttal sequence later on, in which even ''pressing the wrong testimony'' incurs a 20% penalty.

 

* ''[[Grand Theft Auto II]]'' is a minor Sequel Difficulty Drop over ''[[Grand Theft Auto Classic|Grand Theft Auto]]'' due to the advent of the save feature, and each city containing only one level as opposed to two, including [[That One Level]] ''Rasta Blasta''.

* All the main game starts in the ''[[X (video game)|X]]-Universe'' series have gotten progressively easier with every sequel - the first game starts you off in a pathetic and painfully slow ship with no shields, while the latest gives you a 16 million credit high end corvette within the first hour. However, the games all offer game starts with much more difficult starting equipment, like starting off in a tiny scout ship with a mere 1000 credits (barely enough to buy more than a few trading goods), or a start that will ''delete your save file when you die''.

* Compared to the original ''[[Prototype (video game)|Prototype]]'', the [[Prototype 2|sequel]] is almost disappointingly easy. The enemies are overall much weaker, even the bosses tend more toward [[Elite Mooks]] than true bosses. The [[Final Boss]] battle in the first game was a brutal [[Timed Mission]], the sequel instead gives you mid-battle [[Check Point]]s that fully heal you. The game rounds this up by marking all the [[Collection Sidequest|collectibles]] on the map ''and'' providing a pop-up notice when you're near one. Even the [[Nintendo Hard]] Event challenges have been moved to optional [[Downloadable Content]], and you now only need Bronze to unlock the rewards.

 

* Up through the ''Ravnica'' block, ''[[Magic: The Gathering]]'' deliberately included terrible, unplayable cards to tighten the card pool in Limited (games where a small, randomized pool of cards is used to built decks on the spot, instead of bringing pre-made decks to the event) and give good drafters a leg up. For the next block, ''Time Spiral'', they decided to include dramatically fewer universally-unplayable cards. It was decided that this worked better over all, and got a lot less complaints than when deliberately useless cards were garbaging up booster pack space.

 

* ''[[The Amazing Race]]'' American edition:

** Season 8 featured watered-down Roadblocks that could be completed by a child, and was just one big loop around North America, with a small detour in Central America, instead of a trip around the world. This was because it was the Family Edition, and they had children as young as eight, which limited the international travel.

** ''Nicaragua'' didn't feature any heavily physical challenges that often result in people getting hurt, like in previous seasons. [[Justified Trope|Justified]], in that the gimmick of the season was "Young vs. old", and dueling challenges would have been a disaster. Not to mention, the producers had offered more food reward challenges and gave them the choice to give more rice due to the shelter burning down.

 

* Cars tend to become progressively easier to drive as they go through more designs and generations, and cars have gotten progressively easier overall to drive every decade. Compare driving a Ford Model T which has a huge array of weird driving instruments, to a modern car which can park itself, changes its gears automatically, warns you when you're drifting out of your lane, et cetera. [[Cool Car|The Porsche 911]] was infamous for fishtailing when it came out, but is now far more controllable than the first generation.

 

[[Category:Video Game Difficulty Tropes]]

[[Category:Sequel]]