I just started Stellar Blade and I’m a bit unsure about the difficulty. I’ve played a lot of Soulslike games and usually enjoy tough challenges (the last one I finished on hard was Khazan). For a first playthrough, would you recommend Medium or Hard? I want a real challenge, but I don’t want to constantly get one- or two-shot by enemies. I’ve heard Hard is more balanced for NG+. What do you think?
Posted by Available_Hour_6116
9 Comments
Hard is for NG+
Medium is already challenging 🙂
Don’t mess with the hard difficulty. It’s not simply difficult, it feels completely unfair without NG+
Hard mode was not balanced around NG. You will realize real quick how unbalanced it is on a new game run unless you’re really good at dodging and parrying.
I play a lot of souls like as well. I even have the platinum trophies for almost all from software souls like games. But don’t let this experience fools you. I started Stellar Blade on hard because i thought my souls like experience would make the game a breeze. It didn’t! The game is very, very unfair with the hard mode on ng. The enemies are very tough. It takes forever to kill them and they can kill you in seconds. After i wasted like 5h trying to kill the first boss i gave up hard mode and swaped to normal. I wasn’t having any fun.
After i finished the first time i changed the difficult. Then i finished ng+ and ng++ on hard and had a blast. I earned the platinum trophy last week after playing for like 120h and collecting more than 100 nano suits. Play on normal the first time and have fun exploring, completing side quests and collecting the suits and equipments. Leave hard for the next runs. It’s not worth it. Trust me. Or you can try it by yourself. You can chance the difficulty any time.
Play on medium. Hard is balanced for NG+. While enemies do more damage, if you’re good, you can still survive. The real difficulty is how much extra health enemies have on hard. Without the unlocked skills of NG+, every fight, especially boss fights, become grindy.
Hardmode is designed and meant for ng+ when you have most of your skills. They gave in added it to the start quite a bit later
DO NOT PLAY HARD UNTIL NEW GAME PLUS!!!
It is meant to be a challenge for players in NG+, where you not only known the mechanics but start the game leveled up and kitted out with endgame gear.
Play normal for the first playthrough, while technically you could play hard mode if you felt masochistic for your first time through it wouldn’t be very fun cause the mode is 100% aimed for new game +
Here’s my take. The games base difficulty on NG is quite easy but very fun, especially if you’re good at action combat. If you can land parries, dodges, and make full use of your abilities, you’ll destroy most bosses. But the games Hard difficulty is quite challenging, probably more so than the average SoulsLike, or maybe equivalent to game like Khazan on Expert. So make of that what you will.