It's Easy, So It Sucks

Burn the rope? That's it? Man, this game sucks!

"People don't spend sixty bucks on a game they know they can beat."

Sometimes a gamer plays a new game only to find the level of challenge is less than what he expected - sometimes considerably so. To some gamers, this shall not stand! Video Games are about overcoming challenge! Without challenge, a game is little more than a pointless exercise.

Of course, there is nothing inherently wrong with an "easy" game. Some people prefer them that way. Further, depending on the individual, the genre and the game playing setting, the reasons for gaming vary greatly from "overcoming challenge for a sense of accomplishment" to "distracting one from the mundane minutia of life" and everything in between. This trope is the reaction fans have when a game, particularly one from a franchise known for challenging games, presents itself as less challenging than its predecessors or than what one would normally expect from games of a similar genre.

This is not a page to complain about easy games. Only add examples where the sentiment has been expressed by reviewers or a sizable number of fans when comparing a game to previous installments in a franchise or similar games of that genre.

Be aware with adding examples where people mention about how once they found a Game Breaker, learned to exploit a Good Bad Bug, caught the hang of it, learned the way the game mechanics worked, then that they found the game trivial afterwards. Many of those examples can be attributed to merely being Genre Savvy.

It's also rather weird when people complain about features in a game that make it easier and said features are actually completely optional. You'll notice several examples are about features in-game that you don't have to use.

This type of complaint can happen if the game's predecessor was more difficult.

This also becomes incredibly annoying about developers if people complained about the previous game was too hard, or if it was hard but for all the wrong reasons. It really makes for the perpetual Unpleasable Fanbase.

It's Short, So It Sucks is a Sister Trope, with several points overlapping with this. The opposite is It's Hard, So It Sucks. Also see They Changed It, Now It Sucks. When people try to force the way they play the game (which generally has to do with difficulty) onto other people, you have a Scrub or a "Stop Having Fun" Guy. When you have both It's Easy, so It Sucks and It's Hard, So It Sucks, you wind up with an Unpleasable Fanbase.

No, this has nothing to do with sexual promiscuity or oral sex.

Examples of It's Easy, So It Sucks include:

Video game examples

General

  • Many old school gamers in general generalize all modern games to be easy, with modern elements such as checkpoints, saves, (near) unlimited lives, and most importantly, a lack of Fake Difficulty. (The latter often being a result of the Nostalgia Filter and the Unpleasable Fanbase.)
  • TheGameOverthinker revealed that Nintendo patented a technology that would give hints to players who are apparently stuck in a game and allow gamers to bypass difficult sections altogether, playing them as semi-cutscenes instead. Cue the whining.
    • This ultimately came to a climax with the new "Super Guide" being added into New Super Mario Bros. Wii, which can, after you die eight times in one level, take over for you and show you how to finish a level. It is theoretically possible to beat the game simply by dying and continuing enough to activate it (although doing so is definitely more tedious than just playing the game yourself). Needless to say, there's been a lot of backlash from this one...never mind that
      • Of course, Nintendo seems to have used this feature as an excuse to make the games that include it much harder in general, so that players who don't want to use the guide will get the greater challenge in games that would otherwise be made easier so that people could finish it. Also, using the guide typically results in Easy Mode Mockery of some kind- in New Super Mario Bros. Wii, even having been offered use of the guide results in the loss of a Bragging Rights Reward of sparkles on the stars that mark your completion level. Also, using it in Super Mario Galaxy 2 will get you a Bronze Star instead of the normal gold one, which counts towards the total star count but not 100% Completion. Obviously, you don't have to use it. Also some stages don't even have the guide (such as the last one). Not that any of the whiners listened...meanwhile a lot of people were scratching their heads at people whining about it because if you didn't like it, you didn't have to use it. It was as easy as just walking past it or declining the auto mode.
  • One could argue that this is the mindset of pretty much every ROM hacker that makes a Nintendo Hard or even harder than that Super Mario World Romhack. ....Which amounts to approximately 90 percent of the romhacks available. Keep in mind that SMW, while easier than the original Super Mario Brothers, by no means held your hand throughout the game.
    • Whenever a mod doesn't ramp the difficulty up to Platform Hell levels, it doesn't matter how thorough the ROM-Hack was or how revamped it is; if it's not Platform Hell, it sucks. This is probably due to the fact ROM hacks are always played on emulators, which make the game easier ("tool-assisted").
  • During The Golden Age of Video Games, particularly 1982-1983, many Atari2600 titles had "easy" game difficulty levels (among several difficulty levels), which allowed children or others with less mental acuity to get acquainted with the game and succeed. To an experienced gamer, the "child" variation – often it was marked with a teddy bear – was absurdly easy and the more challenging variations would invariably be chosen.

Action Adventure

  • Castlevania: Symphony of the Night angered many fans of the series' incredible challenge factor. The Metroidvania installments of the series tend towards easier difficulty in general.
    • Indeed, there are so many possible Game Breakers found through normal means that by the end of the game, the only challenge most players will face is purely Self Imposed. Despite this, though, Symphony of the Night is still widely considered the best game in the entire series.
    • That was reversed in the last Metroidvania, Order of Ecclesia, where the considerably shorter dungeons are populated by very angry and powerful enemies; careless players will never be able to reach the now scarcer checkpoints. Even Igarashi's detractors agreed that the game, while not perfect, is much more challenging and closer to the older Castlevanias than any of the games since Symphony Of The Night or Circle of the Moon.
    • Playing the trope straight, Harmony of Dissonance gets flack for being the easiest game in the series, among other things.
  • Many The Legend of Zelda fans complain how the games have steadily gotten easier over the course of the series. Especially after going into 3D. The series added more and more interesting puzzles but included easier combat, fewer traps, and less dangerous Boss Battles as part of the deal.
    • The Legend of Zelda: A Link to The Past started the trend by actually showing you where the dungeons are instead of leaving you to go find them yourself, as well as making the controls more intuitive and the enemies far less numerous and powerful. Also, one of the more difficult challenges in doing a 000 game is that you cannot Save and Quit (this requirement was removed in the GBA port), but even without that requirement it takes a whole lot more skill to do that in the two NES games. Once the 3D installments rolled around it got even easier to do a 000 game. (In Zelda games, the number of restarts - usually caused by a Game Over, but some games add one if you save and come back - is counted by your name. In the NES games your number will be astronomically high. The later ones, not necessarily.)
  • La-Mulana is a Take That against newer generations of games; the manual calls anyone used to playing newer games a wuss.
  • This was a complaint leveled at Okami a lot, and it was an easy game: The items were cheap and powerful, and a plentiful Auto Revive was built into your abilities. It was still critically acclaimed and sold decently. Indeed, this wouldn't have been a big deal, but considering that it was made by Clover Studios...
    • Speaking of Clover Studios, this is what a lot of fans said about Viewtiful Joe 2. And the DS one. And the Gamecube Mascot Fighter...
    • Which is ironic considering that Clover Studios was also behind God Hand, a game criticized for being too hard.

Action Game

  • Devil May Cry 2 was criticized for a lot of design choices, the too-easy fights being just one of many. And then came the sequel.
    • Devil May Cry 4 is being criticised by long-time fans of the series due its significantly lower difficulty compared to the third game.
  • Gungrave and Nightshade got this, as their challenge was mainly based around getting a high score or equivalent, and they were fairly easy if you wanted to just charge through to the end. Oddly, the more traditionally difficult Gungrave: Overdose and Shinobi instead get complaints about being too hard.
    • In Nightshade's case, it managed to feel more like a traditional Shinobi game due to easy levels, but relatively hard bosses. Of course, ditching the health-draining sword mechanic of PlayStation 2 Shinobi made fans of that game find Nightshade to be too easy, so it's really a case of Broken Base.
  • The Freddi Fish series arcade styled spinoff Freddi Fish and Luther's Water Worries gets a lot of this. Being a children's game, you shouldn't expect much to begin with, but it's very hard to actually lose in it at all, even if you're in the game's target audience. Unless you stand perfectly still and do nothing, trying at all will grant you a win.
  • The Ninja Gaiden series prided itself on being some of the hardest games around. This changed in the reboot version of Ninja Gaiden 3. Critics and fans hated the game for taking the strategic fighting elements from the first two and toning them down to a simple one button hack & slash. One common complaint being that you can close your eyes and still kill all the enemies.


Adventure Game

  • This was a major complaint levelled at Leisure Suit Larry 5: Passionate Patti Does A Little Undercover Work: The designer's intention was to make the game play more like an interactive cartoon rather than a complicated adventure game, and make sure as many people as possible finish the game, therefore removing old Sierra adventure game standards such as death or Unwinnable situations. Despite Larry 5 being, for these reasons alone, significantly better than the games that preceded it, adventure game fans cried foul as their beloved genre was being dumbed down for the masses.
  • Hardcore Sierra Enthusiasts and LucasArts adventure gamers whined and whined about how games after Zak McKraken were programmed so that it would be impossible to lose (Unless you were absolutely trying) or make the game Unwinnable, therefore "Dumbing it down for the masses". Nevermind that people to this day whine about how Sierra Adventure games ruined them by having the realistic scenarios of characters using the wrong item and dying.
  • And even when another Sierra adventure game called Torin's Passage came around and featured an in-game hint feature at the cost of points, people whined about how that hint feature was too easy. But wait a sec...You didn't have to use the In-game hint feature, did you? Then what was the problem?!?
    • The minmaxing, powergaming types are compelled to use every tool at their disposal to their advantage for maximum gaming efficiency: Game Breaker weapons, physics glitches, you name it. Those people did have to use the in-game hint feature, simply because it was available to be used, but they don't have to like it.
  • The new Telltale game Back to The Future has been called this by many gamers. The puzzles are very simplistic and the games short, however, the dialogue and story were written by Bob Gale, the writer of the films, and the voice talent is top-notch. This results in a Broken Base between fans of the film and hardcore gamers who want a challenge.

Driving Game

  • Mario Kart Wii is also accused of being dumbed down. Not just because snaking is useless now, but the fact that in order to gain mini turbos, you have to drift on corners and maintain it, which is easier than wiggling the analog stick left to right and get many turbos in a row while drifting.
  • The Wangan Midnight Maximum Tune series had its Story Mode toned down in difficulty for its third installment. The more hardcore players complained that getting undefeated status in Story Mode is too easy now.
  • Forza Motorsport 3 gets this because of its unlimited rewind feature, which is optional, not available in multiplayer, and a detriment for your leaderboard standings.

Fighting Games

  • Many fans of Street Fighter derided Virtua Fighter, and later Tekken, as being too easy because characters had full limb movement and the game didn't require you to learn combos to win. Nevermind that 3D games have a far larger variety of moves and thus less of a need to stick to a strategy, old school players still deride it as 'button mashing'.
  • A common criticism with newer fighting games, particularly those by Capcom, is their alleged simplicity compared to older titles. Particularly, fans of Marvel vs. Capcom 2 commonly cite this trope as a reason they dislike Marvel vs. Capcom 3.

First Person Shooter

  • BioShock (series) gets criticised a lot for the Vita-Chambers. Whenever you die, you respawn nearby without penalty, so even a tough enemy like a Big Daddy can be worn down over several "lives", removing almost all challenge and a lot of scariness from the game. A patch added the option to disable the chambers, making it much harder. (Granted, you could have always chosen to simply reload the game and wipe your progress instead of letting the Vita-Chambers revive you. Same end result.)
    • While System Shock 2, which Bioshock is the Spiritual Successor of, had resurrection chambers, the difference was that there was only one on each level and you had to find and activate it first. And it costs you- no nanites; you stay dead!
  • When Halo 3 isn't being bashed for gameplay modifications or whatever, it's being bashed because it's too easy. The developers have freely admitted that Easy difficulty is purposely developed so that "my grandma can complete the game if she wants". However, try it on Legendary.
    • While still being a challenge, Legendary in Halo 3 in itself is still toned down compared to Legendary in Halo 2. There are only, at best, a handful of Sniper Jackals in the entire game of Halo 3 (likely because they were Demonic Spiders in Halo 2), and while the Brutes are significantly improved from 2 to 3, the Brutes are not even close to being a replacement for how fierce and challenging the Elites could be.
      • More importantly, the Sniper Jackals who are still in the game don't seem to be armed with "I can kill you in one shot if you are driving a vehicle" Beam Rifles anymore. Halo 3: ODST feels like the same end result at times, since you are not a SPARTAN super-soldier, and you have less overall health.
      • Of course, this could be a bit of Fridge Brilliance in the fact that Brutes are tactical idiots. The Fleet of Retribution destroyed the Covenant fleet above the ark when outnumbered three ships to one.
        • You can get by without as much tactics if you have numbers and strength, and you as the player usually face a lot more than three Brutes at once anyway.
  • Left 4 Dead 2 is usually blasted for being too easy due to the inclusion of the Magnum (one hit kill on common infected, regardless of game mode) and melee weapons (same as the Magnum in terms of killing power).
  • Regenerating Health is usually looked down upon as making modern FPSs too easy in comparison to the traditional health system in older ones. Never mind the fact that it helped to remove nigh-Unwinnable situations in which your character was dangerously low on health and there were plenty of enemies in sight, but not enough (or even any) health packs in sight.

MMORPGs

  • In the MMORPG genre, a vocal minority loathe World of Warcraft because, compared to other MMORPGs of the time, it was too easy to grind to max level, the penalties for dying were a pittance, it was too easy to gain gear (via PVP), etc. And then the Wrath of the Lich King expansion introduced entirely new levels of complaining to the existing Unpleasable Fanbase:
    • Starting raids were too easy. Epics were too easy to get. ("Purples are the new blues!") Stats were simplified too much. Never mind that Blizzard wants more players to get into raids, citing as examples the 2% or less of the player base that ever entered Naxxramas at level 60, or Sunwell Plateau at level 70. Never mind that all raids since 3.1 have featured "hard modes" that award better gear and Achievements.
    • In many cases raid bosses will be released harder than intended, either because of Game Breaking Bugs or insufficient real world testing. In these cases, the raiders who do manage to kill the boss prior to its inevitable nerf will cry foul.
      • The developers responded to complaints that raiding was "too easy" by adding Algalon "the Raid Destroyer" the Observer, who took over a month for players to first kill, and is generally considered one of the hardest bosses (for deliberate reasons, not because of a bug or because the boss was temporarily overpowered because the next one wasn't ready yet) ever introduced in the game. (It should be noted, also, that you need to beat the hard mode of the "final" boss of the dungeon Algalon appears in in order to reach Algalon - and the toggle resets weekly - and that that hard mode is also considered one of the legitimately hardest fights in the game.)
    • There have also been complaints, of all things, about Blizzard's attempts to simplify the stat system, under the premise that players shouldn't have to consult a strategy guide, develop spreadsheets, or run third-party simulation programs to figure out if a piece of gear is an upgrade for them or not. (As well as removing stats that were redundant and making Intellect work the same way as Strength and Agility did for DPS classes.)
    • Even the user interface isn't exempt from this trope, as there's a vocal minority who complain that Blizzard "hates mods" despite: directly supporting and advocating their use, deliberately keeping the core UI simple to encourage people to develop addons, and incorporating the best user-developed addon features into their own UI. Oh, and making sure that any addons that do provide an unfair or unacceptable advantage will no longer work.
      • Examples of the latter include Decursive; which made it so that you only had to press one button over and over again to remove a debuff. (It automatically targeted a raid member for you) Or some of the Rogue Mods in Classic that actually set up a combo and executed it for you, which was practically a borderline bot as it was.
    • As a rare aversion to this trope, the addition of the Dungeon Finder feature in patch 3.3 was met with near universal praise, despite a few grumbles that it made traveling to dungeons unnecessary.
      • Jossed in Cataclysm - you can't queue for a dungeon until you find the entrance.
      • That got reversed, you only need to meet the item level requirement to queue up, you have the entire listing of dungeons available immediately.
    • Ten man raids are turned for people wearing ten man gear. What happens when a group goes in wearing twenty-five man gear? Yep, it's too easy.
      • On the other hand, when a 25 man group can skip the 5-mans entirely and go straight through the raid with green quest gear, it begins to raise a few questions.
    • There does appear to be general agreement that the massive amount of area of effect damage, which often turned fights into everyone just picking a target at random and unloading, was overdone. By all accounts the Cataclysm expansion is intended to reduce the omnipresence of aoe attacks and perhaps reintroduce crowd control effects, which were incredibly prevalent up until Lich King, and were then almost completely abandoned.
  • The death penalties for City of Heroes are considered to be even easier than WoW's, except that their players liked it that way. Lately there have been complaints that the game is getting too easy as the already weak penalties have been reduced to near irrelevance; however, with the introduction of the mission editor in issue 14, players who like a challenge will be able to play (and create) missions as difficult as they like, to the point of creating new enemy groups which make Malta and Knives of Artemis look like wimps.
    • And now with issue 16 players have more options for setting the difficulty. Ranging from normal spawn number to spawns ussualy set for 8 people and same level enemies to over four levels higher.
  • There's a vocal part of the zOMG! fanbase that insists any nerfing of any quest or enemy is ruining the game by making it easy. This includes the parts of the game that were honestly too difficult for the CL it was meant for. And the game is still in beta.
    • The update in the first half of December 2009. Enemies (including bosses) were universally weakened, and many buff rings had their duration increased and/or recharge time drastically shortened as well as given an area of effect that reached all players visible on the screen without using any Rage Ranks. The tutorial has also been stripped out, which gives veteran players the impression that newcomers aren't bothering to learn basic mechanics of the game such as swapping rings or leveling up. Oh, and gold rewards have been increased, but it's still a pittance compared to what other methods on the site can earn.
  • Final Fantasy XI sometimes has its veteran players complain that new expansions have made the game too easy. Of course, they have only brought the game somewhat into line with modern MMO standards for ease of play and soloability, and the game is still an epic time sink for grinding and camping Notorious Monsters, among other things. And these kinds of things are what people consider difficulty in an MMOG....
  • This happened quite a bit with Guild Wars...Even Factions received this complaint when it was new! Nevermind the amounts of missions declared as "Newbie Traps" that happen very early in the game compared to even Prophecies's annoying levels.
    • And a lot of things in the game catch hell for precisely this reason. Heroes, PVE Skills, inscriptions for weapons (never mind that the previous system sucked ass), specific weapons becoming more common, etc etc...
  • League of Legends is often considered by Heroes of Newerth fans to be a "noob game" due to its lower skill cap and newbie-friendly features at the expense of player skill and the competitive scene. True to this trope, LoL went on to become one of the most successful online games in the West while HoN experienced very limited growth in it's playerbase after the open beta and was forced to adapt the same free-to-play model as LoL a year after it launched. The hostility of the community towards new players was likely one of the key reasons for this(though having a price tag for over a year compared to LoL being free-to-play the whole time didn't help matters).

Platform Game

  • The Mega Man franchise to an extent. Despite its still-present challenge, people don't like the new abilities that give a better chance of beating bosses. The Mega Man X series gets more flak because of the dash jump and other such abilities.
    • To this day, Mega Man 3 still takes a huge amount of flak for introducing the slide move. This is odd, since 3 is still considerably harder than the previous entry, and Mega Man 4 is downright ridiculous in places.
    • Subversively 9 is a throwback to the Nintendo Hard era. It's short, but very difficult.
      • And then along came 10, with the addition of an Easy Mode. Cue rage from the "Stop Having Fun!" Guys (Never mind the fact that Mega Man 2 also had an easy mode, even if it wasn't called that...).
    • The Zero series calls players' bluff. The stages are fairly easy, but the ranking system is aggressively demanding. You have to get at least an A rank to receive EX Techs. Zero 4 toned this down, refreshing for a lot of the Zero fanbase. (However, try the Self Imposed Challenges in the ZX subseries.)
  • Super Mario Galaxy is often bashed for being too easy, people saying how getting 60 stars to fight Bowser in the finale is cakewalk compared to how Super Mario 64 did it. They tend to ignore that the extra stars (like the green star challenges or the purple coin ones) were borderline hair pulling.
    • Super Mario Galaxy 2 seems to have taken the "easy so it sucks" complaints to heart and made the majority of the game more challenging.
    • The Mario & Luigi games compensate for this by having the attacks being considerably more damaging than most ordinary attacks in RPGs; you can't afford to get hit on a regular basis. Unfortunately, at the beginning of the second stage of the final battle in Superstar Saga, both Mario and Luigi start with one HP each, and Cackletta might do her very hard to avoid "arm swinging" attack first, then follow up with six more attacks, and near the end of Partners in Time you can only defeat the Shroob-powered Bowser by dodging his attacks so dodging is even more crucial in those instances.
    • Miyamoto himself has stated [dead link] that he regrets making New Super Mario Bros. (DS) too easy.
  • Yoshi's Story traded in large, imaginative, dangerous levels for short, boring, easy ones. The Final Boss even has invincibility powerups in the same room as him.
    • However, some bonus stages like catching melon blocks slowly can be quite difficult.
  • The Super Mario Advance series is often accused of this, what with things such as your number of lives being saved. To Super Mario Advance 4's credit, it had an e-Reader card that replaces the enemies with harder versions, but that never made it out of Japan.
  • A lot of people hated Metroid Fusion for giving you the location of your next destination and closing off alternate routes, claiming that it destroyed the series's emphasis on exploration. Gamespot famously deducted points from Metroid Prime 3 because the controls were too good and thus the game was "too easy".
    • The Fusion example is made even more ironic in that the game was anything but easy. Some Most of the bosses (such as Nightmare) were incredibly frustrating. There are some sections of the game where you have to run from the SA-X which is not a cakewalk in some cases.
    • People complained about Super Metroid back in the day, saying the inclusion of an automap feature was a travesty against everything Metroid was about.
  • Old fans in particular often blame Crystal Dynamics' Tomb Raider games of being too easy and straight-forward in comparison to the often expansive and difficult Core Design games.
    • Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation was designed to be a good jumping-on point for new players, but long-time players who had gotten used to the brutally difficult TRIII could be left wondering, "Is this game ever going to get hard?"
  • The 2008 Prince of Persia game has also been criticized for being very easy, as the companion saves you from any death while platforming or fighting, though you're brought back at the beginning of whatever platforming, or after the enemy regains a good chunk of health. For all intents and purposes, this means that the game establishes checkpoints at every safe platform, rather than forcing you to go back to some arbitrary checkpoint and waste time redoing five minutes or so of platforming just to get back to where you were before.
    • Another complaint about the 2008 Prince of Persia has to do with the changes to the series platform running, climbing, and jumping. It feels much more hand-held than before, and things like direction and distance and timing feel less important. As long as the buttons are pressed in the correct order, it is difficult to screw up a maneuver. As this review comments, it has been reduced to a quick-time-event.
  • Wario Land and Wario Ware games often fall into this gap as well as It's Short, So It Sucks, due to being generally short games that reward 100% completion more than a main mode. In the case of Wario Ware, this is likely because the gameplay is deliberately kept simple as part of the series premise, and due to the fact the first run through only requires you to play through the first micro game set difficulty level to move on to another. For Wario Land, it's probably because of the health set up being extremely generous towards the player (aka about ten heart points to complete invincibility). Which completely ignores that both series have some quite difficult bonus challenges and secrets.
  • Nintendo Power's only complaint about Klonoa was that it was a bit easier... because Klonoa had one more heart than in the original version. They gave it a 9.0 anyway.
  • In Donkey Kong Country (video game), visits to Cranky's Cabin are accompanied by Cranky ranting about how newer games have been dumbed down for new players.
    • Which is somewhat ironic because the series is Nintendo Hard. Especially the second one.
  • For some reason, this is usually averted with Kirby games, even though they're easy, and he sucks.
    • The reason for the aversion is that many Kirby games heavily apply Easy Levels, Hard Bosses. Kirby Super Star is usually considered to be harder than most other games in the series, and its expanded remake includes the maddeningly difficult True Arena. The Amazing Mirror isn't a cakewalk either, and Kirby's Pinball Land is pretty damn hard. However, Kirby's Epic Yarn actually has been suffering from this trope: mainly because, in Epic Yarn, you don't have health and lives in the usual sense, or even what is standard for Kirby games; instead, taking hits merely causes you to lose some of your in-game currency. This makes bosses almost laughably easy. 100% Completion, on the other hand...
      • This makes a lot of sense when you consider that the developer for Epic Yarn also developed Wario Land: Shake It! (see the Wario Land entry above).
  • This was the main complaint against the first Jak and Daxter game. Jak II fixed that.
  • Fans of the newer Spyro the Dragon games (especially The Legend of Spyro) are prone to saying this about the original series.
    • The second game introduced the ability to save anywhere in the level. This, coupled with the lack of dragon statues, changed the game into somewhat of a standard platformer. It's still quite hard in places but far more childish.
  • Jett Rocket received some flack for this—despite being just about the only 3D Platformer on Wii Ware, reviewers wanted something Nintendo Hard.
  • Jumper fans usually criticize lack of Difficulty Spike in Jumper Three and its lack of length.
  • Sonic Colors half-averts this. Averted in that the Unpleasable Fanbase actually generally thinks the game is a step forward, played straight in that one of the main criticisms leveled against the game IS that the game, especially bosses, are too easy.
    • Hell, Yuji Naka, creator of Sonic and lead developer up until Sonic 06 (when he quit) claims Sonic games aren't as fun any more, as the new games lack the challenge of the Classics.
  • Super Princess Peach got this criticism on feminist grounds, with some commentators arguing that its relative easiness compared to the main Mario games was an insult to women. It's possible to go either way on this—on the one hand, it could function as a gateway game for the many girls who still don't play "hardcore" platformers, but on the other hand, it's not like boys had any problem enjoying difficult Mario games.
    • Partly averted with the Extra Levels.
  • Bugs Bunny's Birthday Blowout (NES): It is too easy to collect extra lives and too hard to lose them in this game.

Puzzle Game

  • Part of the backlash for newer Tetris games comes from infinite spin, then there's the purists of older versions of Tetris that denounce the piece generator in newer versions, saying that surviving a wave of S and Z pieces and going 50 pieces without an I piece is what Tetris is all about.
    • Tetris: The Grand Master 3 implements floor kicks, which allow an I block on a flat surface to rotate upright, allowing it to more easily slip into holes one block wide. This feature was not in TGM3's predecessors, which has led some players to believe that this ruins the challenge of the TGM series.
  • There were complaints about the introduction of 'Super Hints' in Professor Layton and the Unwound Future. In the previous two games there were three hints that you could unlock via hint coins. Super Hints more or less solve the puzzle for you and cost an extra two coins.
    • The complaint is a tad silly given that, at least, it uses a game mechanic and expends a finite supply of coins—thoroughly stumped players of the previous games had no other recourse and would have inevitably referred to an online walkthrough.

Rhythm Game

  • When Guitar Hero: World Tour's track list was announced, fans complained that there was no song on par with "Through The Fire and The Flames". Fan backlash and flame wars are expected as those fans realize that "Satch Boogie" is not on that level, and that's the only really hard song in the game.
  • The Beatles: Rock Band earned its fair share of this before it was even out; players who cut their teeth on Guitar Hero III's "Through the Fire and Flames" decried TB:RB as "just a bunch of tier 1 songs." Perhaps those fans are missing the point of having a Beatles game...
  • DJMAX Portable 2 reuses a few songs from the original DJMAX Portable such as "Blythe" and "NB Ranger", and gives them new, usually-easier charts. Fans complained about the new charts.
    • Some players don't like the new Fever system in DJMAX Portable Clazziquai Edition and Black Square, because they lack the distracting tinting of the playfield when you get a x3 Fever or more going, the x5 Fever mode in both games doesn't cause your speed multiplier to increase, and the x7 Fever mode only causes it to do so when you hit x7. Some even go as far as to wish that the x7 Fever feature had two increases in speed multiplier. It Doesn't Have Fake Difficulty, So It Sucks.

Role Playing Game

  • Ar tonelico was panned by fans on both sides of the pond for being way, way too easy. It still proved popular enough to spawn a sequel, which upped the difficulty slightly, but not so much as to alienate those who liked the fact that it was easy.
  • Though the Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights series weren't ever really seen as presenting killer difficulty compared to other companies' RPGs, later Bioware franchises like Knights of the Old Republic, Jade Empire and Mass Effect have vastly "streamlined" combat and shorter, much more linear (and repetitive) campaigns that older fans complain are a cash-in on the genre and give less bang for the buck.
    • This even happened to Dragon Age...never mind that it has difficulty settings; and several bosses are still difficult on Easy Mode.
      • Then Dragon Age 2 is criticised for being easier than the first one.
  • Final Fantasy Mystic Quest was specifically designed for newcomers to the roleplaying-game genre. Cue hardcore Final Fantasy fans lynching it for being too easy and short.
    • In the same vein, Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles was bashed for, among other things, ease of play, which contrasted directly the much-hyped difficulty of use. It's not a hard game by any stretch of the imagination, but it's not supposed to be.
  • Kingdom Hearts 2 got this type of criticism because of its simple reaction commands and the addition of Drive forms, and the almost total removal of any platforming or puzzles whatsoever.
    • Which was probably why Square Enix decided to program Birth By Sleep as it was. One troper's response to the whining about the difficulty of the Mysterious Figure optional boss:

"Guys? PLEASE don't complain about how 'easy' Kingdom Hearts games are...because then we get bosses like Vanitas Sentiment and the Mysterious Figure."

  • Grandia II. Like, beating the game for the first time without losing a single winnable battle (there were some uniwnnable ones, Millenia and Melfice)?
  • Hype Backlash aside, a common complaint against Fable I was that it was extremely easy. This was largely due to you being able to carry an infinite number of health potions (which instantly restore your health to full), and health potions being really cheap to buy, resulting in it being virtually impossible for anything (even the major bosses) to kill you as long as you just kept mashing that "drink potion" key.
    • This was extended even further with Fable II. It is completely impossible to die. Losing all of your health merely results in scarring. And of course, you can carry an infinite number of health potions and resurrection phials (still very cheap).
  • The remakes of Final Fantasy I had purists complaining about hits being redirected to live enemies if they targeted enemies that had just died; in the original, they would have automatically missed, which is considered Fake Difficulty nowadays.
    • Later remakes were stuck in "easy mode" (the PSX version had to option for "old-school" difficulty or easy mode). In addition to making level ups easier to achieve (level 2 takes 12 XP instead of 40, for example), it replaced the "x spells per level" mechanic with a straight MP mechanic. This ended up seriously unbalancing the game towards the player, who could now cast NUKE (Flare) many, many times per dungeon, as opposed to two or three times. However, the developers DID realize how devastatingly powerful this is: all enemies have increased magic resistance, and bosses are almost entirely immune to attack magic (except Lich with Dia. Go. Fucking. Nuts).
  • Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories has been criticized for being somewhat easy, as on many boss fights against enemies with decks (for example, the Organization members), the player can repeatedly dodge the boss's sleights (which remove one card from the deck) to drain the boss' card reserves. Eventually, the boss will be unable to make more than a few attacks without reloading, will hardly ever use any of the sleights, and most likely will have used up its Enemy Cards, so it will be relatively easy pickings.
  • Pokémon Gold and Silver had become the target of harsh criticism from fans for being too easy. Gym Leaders (aside from Whitney) were often simple to defeat and the Elite Four provided almost no challenge compared to the other 3 regional Elite Fours in other games (although this was done was so Kanto would have reasonably leveled Pokémon).
    • The remakes HeartGold and SoulSilver copped flack for not really bumping up the initial difficulty all that much, and because Whitney's Pokémon dropped one level. Never mind that everything after the Elite Four got a boost, many of the Gym Leaders received a level boost as well, rematch battles against Gym Leaders and Elite Four reach into the 70's, Red's team almost hits 90's, Ghost Pokémon no longer work against Whitney and the AI in general has been greatly improved from the original games.
    • The main games in general get this accusation from more competitive players who have every last bit of the system memorized. Most fans seem to forget that the series tries to appeal to all ages.
  • One of several complaints against Mana-Khemia 2: Fall of Alchemy is how easy the game is compared to its predecessor, even in Hard Mode.
  • Gaiden Game Suikoden Tierkreis is often bashed by a portion of Suikoden fans for being much easier than the main games. And that's just one of the reasons why they refuse to support this game...
  • Lunar: Silver Star Harmony has gotten shit for being easy than previous versions of Lunar.
    • The limit-breaks have been criticized. Never mind that one, they're actually optional, two, unless you unleash them all at once, only trivialize trash mob fights (With the exception of Mia's Mist Barrier. A Challenge Gamer doing a low level run's wet dream), and, notably, the fact that Luna was actually useful when you had her with you. (She wasn't that useful in the Playstation&Saturn versions, and was absent in the Sega CD)
  • Chrono Trigger is frequently lauded as an excellent classic-style RPG, but old school Final Fantasy fans are sometimes dismayed by its apparently low difficulty level. This often changes once they've seen the later bosses, though, especially in the Nintendo DS remake.
    • The later bosses in Chrono Trigger are easier than most Final Fantasy games. The difference is that your level is much more controlled in Chrono Trigger, so you can't just over level to steam roll bosses as easily.
    • Also surprisingly, many people don't have an issue of the game being easy; sometimes people cite it as a good way to introduce people to the genre.
    • Chrono Cross also gets some flack for being pretty easy. Your main character, Serge, is easily the most powerful character available and can't be removed from the party until New Game+. There's a few bosses that can be tough, but for the most part you can just plow through everything with little trouble. That being said, it is harder than Trigger, especially considering you can't grind in Cross.
  • The Elder Scrolls Oblivion has players complaining about a lot of things, but one of them is that the (optional) travel system makes the game too easy, since you can evade random encounters after you first found a location.
  • Avadon is an interesting case in that it's not much easier than most other recent western RPGs, but the default difficulty is significantly easier than the game it's been repeatedly compared to. The complaint goes something like this—RPGs that are such obvious '90s throwbacks are hardly ever made nowadays, so it's disappointing to fans of the genre not to get a challenge out of this particular game. (For what it's worth, the highest difficulty level is painfully hard—it's just streamlined, lacking a lot of challenges that the creator considers Fake Difficulty.)
  • One of the main complaints usually raised against Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning is this trope. How Egregious is it? Well, when in a game, whose main appeal is the action oriented combat system, players have to actively try to gimp their characters to feel any semblance of a challenge, it's pretty Egregious. Items that can be made through the crafting system are so ridicilously overpowered that health potions become obsolete because your health will never go low enough to make them necessary, all lootable items will be inferior to the one's you can make yourself and you are also given a quite literal "I win" button in the form of "Reckoning Mode" which turns any given fight into a Curb Stomp Battle.

Shoot Em Up

  • Subverted with Gradius Gaiden; despite being one of the easiest games in the series, many Gradius fans still regard it as the best Gradius game around.
  • Averted with Mushihime-sama Futari's Xbox 360 port, which has "Novice" versions of the Original, Maniac, and Ultra difficulties. Even seasoned Bullet Hell players actually like them.
  • Gunstar Super Heroes got criticized for this by fans of the original Gunstar Heroes, since the original gun mix system was swapped for having three types of ammo from the start and the option of using a huge cannon whenever. Oh, and some bosses were seriously toned down, one barely even attacking anymore.
  • Thunderforce VI received this reaction from many fans.

Simulation Game

  • After several games which gradually raised the difficulty and complexity, culminating with the Nintendo Hard SimCity 4, SimCity Societies toned down the difficulty, removed the zoning system, and instead replaced it with a social influence system that would determine whether your city will be made of slums or crystal spires. Here's a hint: SimCity 4 was the highest ranked game of the entire series. Now figure out the rest.

Sports Game

  • The Backyard Sports series, to IGN at least. The scores just get lower and lower because the games get easier and easier (and cheesier).
  • Nicktoons MLB suffers from this, even on the hardest difficulty.
  • An interesting example is the Tony Hawk's Series. The first game's goals are much easier than later games, but it is harder to score more points due to the lack of mechanics available. In later games, it is easier to score more points but the goals are harder. Unsurprisingly, the highest rated game in the series is Tony Hawks 2, which is easily the hardest.
    • The remade classic levels in Tony Hawk's Underground 2 and American Wasteland are good examples. In the original Tony Hawks Pro Skater, it is quite hard to get up the mountain in Downhill Jam, in Underground 2, it is possible to just get off your board and climb up there. Similarly, in American Wasteland, the Downtown level is made easier with the ability to just climb the raised areas at the beginning of the level rather than having to go up the ramp to get to them. The mall level in American Wasteland features an steep ramp to the left of the fountain, that would have been almost impossible to get up to in the original game. But in this, it is possible to get up there and get off your board.

Stealth Based Game

  • One third of the complaints about Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes were that the addition of the tranquilizer gun and first-person aiming made the game too easy. The other two-thirds were about the voice acting and cutscene changes.
    • Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots similarly received flack for including a silenced pistol from the get-go. In previous games, the tranq gun was stealthy but only temporarily incapacitated the enemy, while the standard handgun was lethal but loud. Combining the two removes much of the challenge, as you can just shoot enemies with wilful abandon.
  • Many longtime fans of the Rainbow Six series complain about the series' shift from hardcore "one-shot kill" tactical shooters to standard First-Person Shooter action games, starting with Rainbow Six: Lockdown and solidified in Rainbow Six: Vegas.

Survival Horror

  • When Resident Evil 4 was ported to the Wii, aiming became much easier due to motion controls. While much of the fanbase was pleased with easier controls, purists went on ranting about how the game was ruined because it was too easy to shoot things.
  • A common complaint about Silent Hill Homecoming was that its updated controls made combat less threatening, since you could actually dodge. In an interesting twist for this trope, many also suggested that making it easier to fight things made the game less scary, since traditionally fighting enemies just led to you dying, so it was smarter to run.

Turn Based Strategy

  • A lot of people complained about Fire Emblem: Blazing Sword being easier than the previous games. The Sacred Stones was even easier than its predecessor. Then came Radiant Dawn, which brought back the difficulty in full force.
    • Ironically, Radiant Dawn caught a lot of flack from other parties for being much harder than the previous games. This attitude is explained by Blazing Sword being the first western exposure to the series.
    • Sacred Stones made up for it with its Brutal Bonus Level Lagdou Ruins though, whose last few floors were full of caster monsters who all hit obscenely hard or could twoshot someone from halfway across the map. Heaven help you if you attempted it on Hard difficulty.
  • The Advance Wars series (part of the Nintendo Wars series) has become much easier across all four games. The first game's campaign was moderate, but the hard campaign was nigh impossible. Advance Wars 2 reduced the difficulty in both game modes, and Advance Wars: Dual Strike...well, thanks to skills, the hard campaign was easier than the normal one. Even though Advance Wars: Days of Ruin increased the difficulty a bit, it is nothing compared to the first game's difficulty.
    • However, the AI has improved too. In the first game, the AI had the intellect and commanding skill of a toddler: as a result, the maps in the later games often give the player less of a handicap. This leads to the curious situation where the later games are easier to beat, but harder to write a walkthrough for due to less manipulable AI.
  • Final Fantasy Tactics Advance. A widespread criticism from fans of the Playstation FF Tactics was that the game felt so toned down by comparison. In the original Tactics, no matter what map you were on, if a unit died, there was the risk of their spirit turning into a crystal/chest and being lost forever. In Tactics Advance, that was only possible on one or two specifics areas. The Playstation Tactics had quite a share of ball-buster encounters. Tactics Advance? Not so much.

Visual Novel

  • Ace Attorney Investigations was far easier then the previous games which was one of the complaints fans had with the game. In fact the game is so easy that it's almost impossible to get a game over unless your purposely failing, mainly due to penalizes being very small (the standard is 5% while the highest in the game is only 20%).

Non-video game examples

Collectible Card Game

  • Magic: The Gathering started a practice of printing italicized rules text on cards when space permitted, making it slightly easier to actually play the game without having a rulebook handy. Of course, hardcores who already know all the rules hate it. Wizards of the Coast even poked fun at its fanbase in a joke set: Duh
    • The removal of Manaburn means that the odds of dying to one's own manaramp deck have been all but nullified. Naturally, this takes a good chunk of the fun out of playing said decks.
    • Ironically, this practice makes it amazingly easy to tell exactly how long individual players have been playing. By taking the point of what they felt was the downfall of "challenging" Magic and the going back two years to the last Standard format before that set/block's release, you usually get the entrance point. This leads to hilarious conversations between players about how the latest sets are too dumbed down and have too many cash grab rares, without either realising that the "good old days" that they both think they are discussing are actually fifteen years apart.
    • Of course, it also doesn't help opinions when a lead designer goes on record with, "The real question isn't "Are we dumbing down the game too fast?" It's "Are we dumbing down the game fast enough?" "
      • Then again, we mustn't forget that he previously established in that interview that the game was actually getting more complicated with every new release, making it not just a straight case of dumbing down, but more of a balancing act between it and overcomplicating.
    • In a metagame example, the color Green often gets this treatment. All the other colors have cool spells and flashy effects to throw at you (Kill It with Fire, Power Nullifier, Mind Rape, The Sacred Darkness, Phlebotinum Breakdown, and more), but Green just has... Mooks. The fact that it's the easiest color to start with, and the color most likely to appeal to Timmy players, doesn't help.


Computers

  • Some programmers look down on Visual Basic because it's easier for beginners to create working programs in compared to the likes of C, C++, and Java. This is sometimes extended to other languages (notably Python and Lisp) as well.[1]
    • A related complaint is that it makes it easier to make a "badly written" program that still "works". That becomes a problem when another programmer has to modify said program.
  • Ubuntu is looked down upon by most "serious" Linux users due to its design being more geared for general use.
    • Ubuntu's new Unity interface is getting this from longtime users.
  • UNIX/Linux/DOS users tend to look down on GUIs for this reason.


Game Shows

  • Some longtime fans of Jeopardy! criticized the show for seemingly getting easier over time, particularly in the early 2000s. While it's very much subjective in this case, the purported "easiness" may just be the result of learning more material by watching the show for an extended period of time.
    • Similarly, when the current version debuted in 1984, there was criticism (mostly, by fans of the NBC series) about the show's material during the first season, especially during the first few months. The producers admitted such was the case, deliberately so so as to acquaint new viewers with the show's concept and to allow time for the question writers to come up with more challenging material.
  • Similar criticism is held against sister show Wheel of Fortune, which has gradually introduced more and more specific categories over time (for instance, something that would've previously been just a Thing might now be Around the House, Living Thing, Food & Drink, etc.). What's more, the daily Prize Puzzles are often themed to vacations or beaches in some way.
  • Fans criticized the American version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? during its original ABC run when the game was easy enough that a Millionaire was crowned in a matter of months, or even weeks or days. The show upped the difficulty of questions when the show moved to syndication (although this was the result of a lower budget) yet the fans still complained about the difficulty which results in droughts of million-dollar wins that can last for years and fans are screaming that difficulty should be lowered. All we can say is Be Careful What You Wish For.


Sports

  • Often, many sports teams at the high school and college levels – most commonly, football and basketball – will schedule at least one non-conference game where there is great disparity in talent levels between the two teams. For the "superior" team, it often becomes an exercise in rote gameplay, particularly since the game is expected to be one-sided; however, the winning coach's objectives may be to allow their team to perfect certain plays and assess talent in an actual game situation, and virtually guarantee younger players (those who will likely make up the junior varsity for most of the season) playing time once the expected one-sided score is established. While sometimes players of the supposedly better team will complain about the game's easy difficulty level, the trope is more often applied by fans and the media (i.e., sportswriters and broadcasting), disparaging the winning team for their choice of (their hapless) non-conference opponent.


Tabletop Games

  • Some people have this attitude even in Table Top Roleplaying games. If a Game Master refuses to have Player Characters die, then they (and the players) are wusses.
  • This is one of the main complaints about the Space Marines and their variants in Warhammer 40,000. The 5th Edition Space Marine Codex and its variants are all full of viable units that can be easily mixed and matched to create powerful lists. Because of this, many people (especially those who play armies one or two editions behind) see people who play Space Marines as being less talented at playing the game than others.
  • Dungeons & Dragons 4th edition took many measures to make itself "newbie friendly" and in turn drew vicious ire from fans of the third edition who actually enjoyed the complexity in 3ed and find the "simplicity" in 4ed makes the game boring.


Real Life

  • Different type example: LARP (mainly, fantasy). Many old-school larpers whine a lot about modern games to be "tamed", because organizers don't take the risk to allow some props or actions. While it's not a real problem (it is easy to find a small, hardcore group that plays with hard weapons and allows full contact), the difference between old players and new players is big.

There's just no pleasing people, is there?

  1. ↑ Being easy is what programming languages were designed for, otherwise we would write in machine code.
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