Man… We are certainly off to a start this year! While I’m sure plenty of people had a good January, lots of other people have already had a rough 2025. Plenty of people getting sick, struggling with price hikes, and some people are currently dealing with a new President making some terrible choices! So I don’t think it’s much of a stretch to say lots of people are having a difficult time. And during difficult times, people often turn to video games to lighten their moods or just get their minds off things! A very healthy response honestly. And to cheer people up during these troubling times, I’d highly recommend picking up a difficult game!

Okay so hear me out. On paper I understand how playing a hard, punishing game while real life is also being hard and punishing doesn’t make much sense but I honestly think it can really help!

If you’ve been playing attention to the blog recently then you know I have been playing Darkest Dungeon II! I did a review for it before I finished the game actually. And as a side note, I did finish the game and I really enjoyed it so my opinion from the review has not changed! Anyways, while playing that it got me realizing just how much good playing a difficult game in times like these can be. So let me explain and see if I can convince some people to pick up a hard game or two to help them through these times.

First and foremost, I think the best part about playing any game while you are worried or upset is the fact that they can help take your mind off things. Especially if you’re worrying about things you can’t really change, like having a crazy President running your country for instance. Just having some kind of outlet in order to distract you can be an amazing help and video games are arguably one of the best things for that. Losing yourself in a game I feel is much easier than doing so with a book or movie, mainly because of how much focus most games require. And you know what tends to require the most focus? Difficult games!

Any game will have a learning curve where you need to learn the controls, rules, and objective of the game but not many will force you to really learn these things in order to succeed. For a hard game, you are always going to be pushed to learn the ins and outs of everything! Take a game like Animal Crossing for instance. That is a game where you do need to learn a lot but you don’t need to really hammer home the details or controls in order to make friends with all your neighbors and help grow your town. It is still an immersive game that is easy to get lost in, just look at how many people did just that at the start of the pandemic, but it’s not a game you really need to focus on. Now take a game like Dark Souls! That is a game that requires your focus. A game you need to pay attention to not just to learn the ins and outs but at every moment. You never know if an enemy will literally be hiding behind that corner waiting to jump out at you when you go to grab that conveniently placed item, you need to be ready to dodge at a moments notice! That’s not even mentioning how much focus is required when it comes to a boss you get stuck on. Learning attack patterns, when you have openings to hit back or heal, what’s the proper dodge or parry timing… All that is really mentally consuming if you want to succeed! It’s stressful sure, but it’s also distracting. And not only that, having to learn and figure out all these things plays into another reason why difficult games can be good for difficult times. And that’s because it’s time consuming!

Getting lost and immersed in a world is one thing, but it’s hard to really get invested when that thing ends so quickly. Having a game be really time consuming, something you can always come back to for more is really important for remaining distracted! Once again, a game like Animal Crossing that never really ends could work, but I also feel like having an end goal can mean a lot, but we’ll get more into that aspect later! Games being difficult in order to extend the play time is something video games have been doing since the NES era! How do you make a short game take longer to beat? Just make it super hard so it takes forever to get through! Granted, this can be hard to pull off most of the time. Some games that do this accomplish it by making the game needlessly difficult instead of actually challenging. Like putting a random pit somewhere you’d never guess unless you’ve already died to it before. That sort of difficulty is more frustrating than motivating. However, when a game does do difficulty right and manages to motivate the player to finish the game rather than beat the player down so hard it feels unfair, you have a perfect hard game to sink so much time into!

Souls-like games are often really good at striking this balance between annoying and challenging. Well, good Souls-like games are good at finding that balance at least. That being said, when you do find a difficult game that finds that balance, it is so much fun actually learning and getting better at it! And it’s also very time consuming and distracting to do so.

Like I was saying before though, I feel like it’s good to have a game with an end when it comes to distracting yourself. This is mostly because it’ll help motivate you to overcome things in order to reach that goal. Whether that goal is to kindle the flame, banish the darkness, or bust out of Hades! Having a goal and something to strive for is important in these difficult games. Because it shows you that you can overcome these challenges.

A long time ago I wrote a post talking about why I think everyone should try a Souls game at least once despite their reputation of being brutally hard and generally grueling experiences. And one of the big points I talked about is the feeling of accomplishment you get when you do succeed in these games. It’s rough struggling for hours on just one boss. Throwing yourself against it like it’s a brick wall trying to figure out what breaks it. It can seem down right masochistic to some! And while I do admit I am someone who enjoys that struggle, that learning phase of figuring out everything a boss can do, I would still say the best part of it all is when you finally do win! That feeling when you finally defeat this seemingly unbeatable force, when you take it down after all your struggling. It feels amazing! It’s a feeling that sits with you, stays with you, so that when you come to the next brick wall you know that no matter how hard that wall is, you can break it down! That feeling right there isn’t just important to the game, or any future games either. It’s most important to you the player, and your life.

While you can’t tackle your real life problems like you can with your in game problems, I’d like to think that difficult games can show you that every problem can be overcome! No matter how hard things get, how impossible they seem, you can make it through! It might be a matter of simply enduring, or changing your strategy, or even asking for a friend to help. Regardless of how, you can overcome it. And that’s what difficult games can teach you!

Now before I end this short discussion post, I wanted to give a couple of recommendations for some difficult games to try out!

First, just about any Souls game is worth checking out! Besides maybe Dark Souls 2… But Dark Souls 1 and 3, Bloodborne, Demon’s Souls, Sekiro, and Elden Ring are all good picks! Dark Souls 1 hasn’t aged the best but it’s still pretty fun honestly. Regardless, it’s hard to go wrong with any of the FromSoft made Souls games. They are difficult but very rarely unfair or feel unbeatable. Plus most of the games still have active communities so if you ever get stuck in one you can be sure that there are people you can summon for help or look to online to ask for help! You can also try other Souls-like games such as Nioh or Lies of P, but if you want to be sure to have a good time with this style of game, it’s hard to go wrong with the series and developer that started it all.

Next I’d recommend trying out a more difficult strategy game! Something like XCOM, Darkest Dungeon, or even some of the Fire Emblem games set to the highest difficulty. These games can be very distracting and require a ton of focus when it comes to learning the mechanics and the best way to tackle each situation while also being very different from a Souls game. Souls games are about reflexes and learning enemy attack patterns and all that, while a game like XCOM is much more about strategy and taking things slow so you can properly learn. The one thing that can be really frustrating about these games though is the randomness element. There will be plenty of times where things will go wrong and it won’t be your fault. Like missing an attack on an enemy despite having a 87% chance to hit. Stuff like this is why I’ve never really gotten super invested in something like XCOM personally, however I totally see the appeal and it for sure has that feeling of satisfaction when you do overcome the crazy odds of those games!

Lastly, I’d recommend trying out a rogue lite game! Rogue lites are all about improvement and learning from your mistakes. You’re never expected to win a rogue lite on your very first run! The games are all about starting almost from nothing each and every attempt. And while that may sound particularly brutal do keep in mind that a run, or attempt, usually aren’t that long depending on the game. Losing and starting over very rarely feels all that soul crushing when you know that it won’t take that long to get back to where you were. In fact, you’ll probably get there even faster than before! This is the big reason why I’d recommend rogue lites. Very rarely do you get to see yourself improving like this in any other game. For a game like Dark Souls, that’s more about progressing until you hit a wall and then breaking down that wall and moving on to the next one. For a rogue lite, you’ll get to see yourself progressing and getting better each and every run! Sure you might hit a wall too, but you’ll get to see how quickly you are improving when it comes to getting back to that wall, or by how quickly you are breaking down walls you’ve already been through! And of course you’ll get that amazing feeling when you do finally finish a run! What makes rogue lites even better though, is that you’ll probably want to keep playing even after you technically beat the game. Like I said before, improvement is a major part of rogue lites, and it’ll probably lead to you putting in way more hours into the game than you would with something like Dark Souls or XCOM. When it comes to which rogue lites to recommend I’m of course going to recommend Hades! I’m almost certain everyone reading this post has already heard of the game and that’s for good reason. It’s easily the best rogue lite I’ve ever played! If you want something else though, there’s also games like Enter the Gungeon and Darkest Dungeon II. There are quite a few rogue lites out there though, and that’s not even including games that have rogue lite modes as a bonus like God of War: Ragnarok and PREY, so be sure to look around and you’ll find something you like eventually.

I totally understand how this kind of approach won’t be what some people need. Sometimes adding more difficulty on to already difficult situations doesn’t help! Go figure. But at the same time, I hope I’ve explained well enough how difficulty can help. How it can help show you that things aren’t always so bleak or impossible. Real life problems are never as simple as problems in video games but both can be overcome! So hopefully someone who reads this gives a hard game a try and realizes that they can make it through these troubling times. And that they certainly aren’t alone!

But those are just my thoughts! What are some of yours? How has your year started? Thinking of picking up a difficult game after this? I’d love to hear your thoughts so don’t be shy!

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