Some games use difficulty in ways that are simple and completely uninteresting. For example, some just create damage sponge enemies the higher up you go. That’s not very fun, it never has been, and it makes the games that do only this not all that great to play past the first playthrough.
However, there are games that use harder difficulty modes to present an experience that feels beyond the original game, almost like how the developer intended it to be. These are the hard modes worth playing.
They can be in any genre, but they often present a unique tweak to the proceedings that makes things far more interesting on a subsequent playthrough.
We’re going to check out games that do just that and give you whole new experiences when playing on their hardest difficulty.
10 Valkyrie Profile
The Best Content Is Reserved For Hard Mode
Valkyrie Profile is absolutely no cakewalk on the normal or even the easy difficulty, but the hard mode is where the best pure version of the game lies. The reason is that entire new characters, dungeons, weapons, and even story moments are exclusive to hard mode alone. There are caveats for sure, like every recruited character starting at level one, but it’s a small price to pay to get to experience the actual game in full.
It’s rare that a game would lock out content, and the normal and easy modes get certain dungeons exclusive to them as well, but it’s only on hard mode that you get to recruit every character in the game, and that alone makes it worth the price of a tougher experience. If you’ve played through the game once, do it again on hard mode, and you’ll be blown away with what’s changed. You may even get a completely different ending.
9 Final Fantasy 16
Taking The Kid Gloves Off
Final Fantasy 16, outside of a few of the optional hunt battles, is one of the easiest games I’ve ever played. It’s so forgiving that there are checkpoints during boss battles that magically refill all your potions as well, and it just felt like the game didn’t remotely believe in my ability to handle anything resembling a challenge.
The Final Fantasy mode, unlocked once you beat the game, is the remedy to this. Finally, these over-the-top, jaw-dropping, and cinematic boss fights have a challenge to them. This mode removes the quicktime events that keep popping up and instead requires you to memorize enemy moves to succeed in these sequences. It also adds more dangerous enemies, shifts the placement of enemy mobs, and ups the aggression of the enemies a ton.
My biggest complaint with the base game is how everything was so easy. That’s not the case with Final Fantasy mode, and it genuinely feels like the way the game was supposed to be played. The developers have said as much, too.
8 Cuphead
The New Boss, Different From The Old Boss
Cuphead is one of the toughest games ever made, and for the true masochists among you, you can select hard mode and experience a very different feeling game. For example, enemies are now just more plentiful in the run-and-gun sections than before, which is a serious issue due to how hard the base game is.
But the real fun of hard mode here is with the bosses. Just when you think you’ve figured out all the evil tricks Cuphead wants to play on you, hard mode causes bosses to use different attacks that you’ve not yet seen on previous difficulties. These aren’t just one-off attacks either, as they’re fully ingrained in the bosses’ repertoire, and it becomes an even bigger challenge than the already difficult base game was.
It’s a unique use of a hard mode and one that other games should employ as it makes the experience feel much different a second time through.
7 The Last Of Us
Grounded, Beaten, And Bloody
The Last of Us is a dark and gritty game, but the gameplay isn’t all that tough. That is, until you play Grounded mode. Grounded mode turns the game from a relatively easy but scary romp in the apocalypse into an absolute pulse-pounding, all-or-nothing struggle for survival at every turn.
And that’s exactly how this game should feel. It makes items and ammo more scarce, the infected do way more damage, and suddenly, you’re no longer a bullet sponge, but a realistic human who only takes a couple of shots to take down. The same goes for your enemies too, so you’re not going to be underpowered here, but rather, finally on an even playing field. That playing field is one that will see you to your death countless times.
It changes the game, because it suddenly goes from an action-horror game to a survival-horror. You’re no longer the hammer here, you’re the nail. Both Joel and Ellie need to be played far more carefully, and you go from being rather haphazard with your bullets and equipment to making sure you can afford to risk missing a shot or a molotov cocktail throw. It changes everything and makes the game all the more engaging because of it.
6 Armored Core: For Answer
Unveiling The Story
Armored Core: For Answer is a game that I think would’ve been more highly regarded had the name of it not been so terrible. Not only is it fantastic as an Armored Core game, but there are also some truly unique elements to its hard mode that make it the best way to play the game.
The differences to the hard mode here are staggering, with everything from bosses having an additional phase, to characters dying who survived previously, to encounters playing out much more lopsided than you originally experienced as well.
It’s an awesome thing to witness, and much of the time, there are story elements added to the game in these hard mode varieties of the missions that you would not get to experience otherwise. You’re essentially getting two different stories playing out here, but the one in hard mode is easily the more compelling one and feels far more desperate, which is pretty appropriate for the dark subject matter of the game.
5 Fallout 4
Surviving The Wasteland
Fallout 4 may not seem like the type of game ripe for a hard mode to change all that much, but here, the Survival mode literally changes the entire experience to feel like a new game. The reason is that everything now becomes important, from the food you pick up to how you’re even able to save. Your wounded limbs now require either a doctor or a Stimpack, and you have to stay hydrated and fed, or you’ll suffer terrible stat penalties.
If that’s not enough, you aren’t even able to manually save in Survival mode, and instead need to sleep in a bed or stay at an inn to save your progress. It makes the settlement system far less of an afterthought and actually something of a necessity now, and it forces you to interact with systems you might’ve ignored prior. Companions are also more fragile now and will not automatically revive after falling in combat. Instead, they will require Stimpacks. If you don’t have Stimpacks to spare, you’ll have to go find your companions again at their respective settlements.
You’ll also have to consider things like ammo now having weight, getting sick, and how fatigue can affect you too. What was accused of being a poor RPG immediately becomes a survival RPG to the fullest, with every stat mattering, every decision carrying more weight, and every shot you take meaning that much more.
It makes the game feel so much more dire, like you’re actually traversing a hazardous wasteland, which is both terrifying and perfect for a game that puts you in that exact predicament.
4 Alien: Isolation
The Alien Is Real
Alien Isolation is one of the scariest games ever made. That’s impressive, because there is largely just one enemy to worry about the entire game, and that’s the Xenomorph. While the normal mode is tough, it’s still not impossible, because you can learn to find the signs that the Xenomorph is near and figure it out from there.
The hard mode gives you pretty much a completely different experience, and that’s because the Xenomorph is way faster and more aggressive. You go from playing what feels like a pretty tough but fair horror game to an absolute crapshoot against one of the scariest video game creatures ever programmed.
Trying to figure out the Xenomorph’s movements in hard mode is like trying to drink water with chopsticks. It’s an absolute hell that is reserved only for those who want to feel like Amanda Ripley. Whether you’re on a flatscreen, or god forbid, playing this nightmare in VR, the hard mode unleashes the true Alien experience in a way that no game really has before it.
3 Thief: The Dark Project
How Good Of A Thief Are You?
Thief: The Dark Project is an awesome stealth game from the late ’90s that has you going on various missions with objectives generally in the realm of “Steal X, Y, and Z without getting caught,” but the atmosphere, the plot, and the overall feel of the game is something that few games nail in the cohesive manner it managed to do.
The best way to play the game, though, is on hard mode. There is so much more to do here that it easily expands the already decent playtime by making missions far more complex than they were previously. The game does this in some seriously clever ways, too.
Instead of just giving enemies more health or something boring along those lines, enemies are now placed in far more difficult to handle locations, and more powerful enemies will appear where they weren’t before. You’ll also find more intricate objectives, have to contend with things like the loot you’re looking for being placed in different locations than easier modes, and generally, become the perfect thief. It’s the truest realization of the game and the best way to play by far.
2 Mass Effect 2
Insanity Is The Only Way
Mass Effect 2 has one of my favorite hard modes ever, and that is the Insanity mode. The big draw here is that instead of giving you bullet-spongy enemies with arbitrary health boosts, now, each enemy now has a specific shield type. Each shield requires a different set of skills to debuff, so whether it’s via you or your teammates, you have to fully utilize all those likely forgotten powers you’ve had throughout the game.
This mode feels like a new game, because finally, the class you chose matters. If you’re a Soldier, you’d better hope to bring some Biotics with you when facing off against Biotic enemies, or else you’re going to have a really bad day. The same goes for enemies with tech shields, as you’ll need someone like Tali or Mordin to come along and disable those as well.
It makes the game so much more tactical, with each encounter far less of just another shooting gallery and far more of a puzzle that you need to figure out how to solve in different ways.
1 Perfect Dark
Rewriting The Game
Perfect Dark has some of the most interesting implementations of its difficulty modes in any game out there. On the hardest difficulty, not only are the enemies tougher and you take more damage, but entire missions are designed differently.
For example, there is one relatively easy mission that involves you taking out a few soldiers before they kill a hostage with your sniper rifle. Simple enough, right? Well, hard mode changes things up and puts you right next to those soldiers as an undercover agent, and you have to take them both out using nothing but your fists.
This is far from the only time the game pulls a move like this either, and suddenly, mundane missions can get way more complex and creative. The result is a game that is far more fun to play and really makes hard mode the only way to play Perfect Dark, period.
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Author: 360 Technology Group
