Games hard to beat

i've juste tried back the 7th saga, to see if the games was still very hard, and the answer is... YES !!!
Awfully hard and that's a shame because the game is excellent ! But this difficulty, likeThoul have said before, kill all the interest

I'm extremely tempted to try it again. I want to find out how I see it today now that I know how games work from the inside, I can observe its behavior and see if I can't find any exploitable holes.

I played it when I was 16, which is now 20 years ago. Playing it today would yield a completely different vision no doubt.

myau56 wrote:

i've juste tried back the 7th saga, to see if the games was still very hard, and the answer is... YES !!!
Awfully hard and that's a shame because the game is excellent ! But this difficulty, likeThoul have said before, kill all the interest

The 7th Saga had some rather well-known and mind-boggling changes made for western release. Monsters were buffed, character stat gains were reduced, but not the stat gains that rivals got, which made certain bosses unbeatable if you leveled too much.

So it was made more difficult than the Japan release? That's a strange occurrence. Almost the exact opposite of what happened with some of the other RPGs from that era. What company made 7th Saga? Must not have been Square.

R-90-2

Quote:

The 7th Saga had some rather well-known and mind-boggling changes made for western release. Monsters were buffed, character stat gains were reduced, but not the stat gains that rivals got, which made certain bosses unbeatable if you leveled too much.

I didn't know about it either ! Now I understand....
About the company, it was Enix, but many years before the fusion with Square soft !
It was called Elnard (エルナード?) in Japan !

Thoul wrote:

So it was made more difficult than the Japan release? That's a strange occurrence. Almost the exact opposite of what happened with some of the other RPGs from that era. What company made 7th Saga? Must not have been Square.

7th Saga was developed by Produce and published by Enix. In any case, I do believe that more games have been made harder for US release than the other way around. Castlevania III and Contra Hard Corps are the ones that immediately come to mind.

Wow, I had no idea! Games made harder when westernized? Common knowledge was that Japanese loved to dumb them down so they were more accessible to us "western neophytes". Very good to know!!

Well, we're no longer neophytes. Japan used to have the monopoly on video game awesomeness but that is no longer true. Some gem still comes from Japan once in a while but to me, North America is where the best games are made today.

Anyways. I beat a buffed up game when I was a kid. This makes me giggle on the inside!

Aeroprism wrote:

Wow, I had no idea! Games made harder when westernized? Common knowledge was that Japanese loved to dumb them down so they were more accessible to us "western neophytes". Very good to know!!

Well, here's the thing- in Japan, there is no video game rental market, and there hasn't been for at least 25 years. Games were partially made harder for international release to exploit the Western video game rental market. It was(is?) also the mostly overwhelming opinion in Japan that Americans preferred harder games, which is why you get things like the difficulty mode shifts in the original US release of Devil May Cry 3, the removal of the Easy setting in River City Ransom, and the doubling of enemy health and damage in Bayou Billy.

Games that were made easier, while higher-profile (Final Fantasy IV) are by far the exception.

Interesting explanation, R-90-2 !
I've never thought of the rental market ! It can explain a lot of things....
And It's why I'm not american : I really don't like hard games !