Someone Asked Reddit Which Sequels Are Harder Than The Original Games, But Nobody Can Seem To Agree
Quinton is a Staff Writer from the United States. In his youth, Quinton was ridiculed for making video game ranking lists instead of paying attention in math class. In adulthood, people sometimes pay him for it. Life’s a trip.
Taking his first steps into the industry in 2020, Quinton has written for several digital publications, but his permanent literary home is right here at TheGamer.
Before striking up a conversation with Quinton, consider the risks: he’ll find a way to transform almost any topic into an analysis of either world history, Star Trek, or – at least this one’s relevant to his career – all his favorite role-playing games.
Which video game sequels were harder than their predecessors? It’s an easy question to ask, but it turns out, a harder one to find unity on when answering. Difficulty is subjective, after all, and there are only certain examples of something that’s just categorically, nigh-unequivocally, more challenging.
Even then, there’s a measure of subjectivity involved, isn’t there? Someone out there found Zelda II: Adventure of Link easier than The Legend of Zelda. I don’t know who they are. I don’t know where they are. I’m in awe of their hypothetical mastery of the side-scrolling genre’s tough-as-nails NES era. But they exist.
A recent Reddit thread exemplifies the “what’s hard for you, is bizarre to me” philosophy. The user poubelle2table – “poubelle” means “garbage can” in French, by the way, so good on them for converting something into something else? – pondered whether they were simply unfamiliar with a wider variety of examples. “The original XCOM: UFO Defense,” they recall, “released in 1994 [and] had a sequel the next year, XCOM: Terror from the Deep.” It’s the only example that they could think of – surely, there are more, they ask?
“Advance Wars 2, they specifically said, ‘this title is for those who beat the first,'” neo_sporin recalls. Delliot90 took umbrage: “Hang on, what? The first stages are HARD for the first game?” neo_sporin was bewildered in turn: “I’m confused by your confusion. [Advance Wars] is generally considered pretty easy for most, if not all of it. [Advance Wars 2] starts hard and gets harder.”
“The Witcher 2 completely changed up the formula to fit the ARPG expectations of modern games,” said masterbeatty35 of CD Projekt’s 2011 sequel. “The original was a rhythm-based clicking combat.” Djebeo had an interesting counterpoint. “I would argue that combat in Witcher 1 was way more difficult, in the way that you had to stomach constantly subjecting yourself to this monstrosity of ‘gameplay’ just so you can enjoy the amazing writing and atmosphere of the game.”
The Witcher 2, though, is something of a difficulty-curve oddball, as other Redditors mentioned. “I remember struggling in the beginning on Normal, but then, after a couple of hours in Flotsam, it got super easy,” MarcheM explained. This tracks with my own experience, albeit only to a point – I’m not a pro Witcher 2 gamer, evidently, because for me it went from tough to… average?
Not so much for the sequel angle – although, that has some back-and-forths as well – but the original Halo received unequal recollections, too. “Legendary [difficulty mode] was challenging, but fair,” said izagger, whilst khinzaw completely disagreed: “Personally, I think CE kind of falls apart on Legendary. There are too many things in CE Legendary that feel either unfair or at least unfun. It’s just a massive slog.”
“I think Hades 2 is definitely harder than Hades 1,” Lazy-Owl-5148 established, before going on to say that “there are more bosses, more enemy types, and you need to be absolutely focused in most fights.” nyether had a separate story to tell. “Maybe it’s just me, but I found Hades 2 to be much easier than the first.” ScottyBoy314 “can’t give a fair assessment, since I retained a lot of muscle memory from Hades 1 to 2, but I can tell that you definitely have less i-frames in your dashes, the omega charging can really screw you over, and for sure, Olympus runs were harder than almost anything Hades 1 could throw at you, even before turning up the hate/fear.”
“DKC1 vs. DKC2” didn’t get any umbrage when MoldyPond cited it, but “also, Tropical Freeze vs. Returns” did. “Huh,” herman666 expressed. “I thought the exact opposite. I was disappointed by Tropical Freeze after how hard Returns was.” Moldy asked for clarification on whether it was the original versions of each, as Tropical Freeze was ported from Wii U to Switch, and Returns, from Wii/3DS to Switch. “I guess I just found the levels to be harder,” herman went further; “maybe that’s jsut because I beat Returns first.” Personally, I think Tropical Freeze is both harder… and far superior.
The top comment has brought major unison, at least. “Devil May Cry 3 is an infamous one, especially the US edition,” rugmunchkin replied, to very little pushback. DMC3 is a hard game by most definitions of the word, if ya ask me, but the North American version was infamous for being even tougher. As a 2018 WordPress article by PlatinumParagon explains, is that the PAL and Japanese versions’ difficulty settings of Easy, Normal, and Hard were essentially Normal, Hard, and downright ridiculous in NA, respectively.
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