Difficulty Chart?

[twiztor | 855]

is there a site that categorizes video games by their difficulties? i'm thinking something along the lines of HowLongToBeat but with toughness.

looking specifically for PS1 rankings, but does something like this even exist?

[Reed Rothchild | 9,566]

Gamefaqs does it.  It's kinda reliable.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/games/rankings?platform=78&genre=0&list_type=diff&view_type=0&dlc=0&min_votes=0

[fox | 1,669]

ymmv on that gamefaqs list

Castlevania Chronicles being that high up their when you can tweak the difficulty and lives can make it not so tough. 

On average I feel any ps1 that I am not already familiar with to be kinda hard tho.  Not because they were designed that way, they just lack a lot of quality of life features we take for granted

Edited January 31, 2023 by fox

[DoctorEncore | 3,691]

1 hour ago, twiztor said:

is there a site that categorizes video games by their difficulties? i'm thinking something along the lines of HowLongToBeat but with toughness.

looking specifically for PS1 rankings, but does something like this even exist?

The members of this site could probably put together decent lists for the older consoles. Just poll the participants in the "VGS Beats..." threads. Do we have one of those for PS1?

[twiztor | 855]

2 hours ago, Reed Rothchild said:

Gamefaqs does it.  It's kinda reliable.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/games/rankings?platform=78&genre=0&list_type=diff&view_type=0&dlc=0&min_votes=0

thanks Reed! i did a quick Google search, but i didn't even think of GameFAQs. show how much times have changed, that used to be my go-to site!

1 hour ago, fox said:

ymmv on that gamefaqs list

On average I feel any ps1 that I am not already familiar with to be kinda hard tho.  Not because they were designed that way, they just lack a lot of quality of life features we take for granted

yeah, i figured this would be tough because it's so subjective. i wasn't necessarily looking for the top 25 hardest games or whatever, just a site that gave each game a ranking. user submitted tends to work fairly well but obviously isn't perfect. 

i feel you on that last point. i didn't grow up playing the PS1 library, so a lot of these games take a reverse learning curve where you have to put yourself back in a late 90s mindset.

25 minutes ago, DoctorEncore said:

The members of this site could probably put together decent lists for the older consoles. Just poll the participants in the "VGS Beats..." threads. Do we have one of those for PS1?

we do! 

 

[Jeevan | 8,921]

1 minute ago, twiztor said:

thanks Reed! i did a quick Google search, but i didn't even think of GameFAQs. show how much times have changed, that used to be my go-to site!

yeah, i figured this would be tough because it's so subjective. i wasn't necessarily looking for the top 25 hardest games or whatever, just a site that gave each game a ranking. user submitted tends to work fairly well but obviously isn't perfect. 

i feel you on that last point. i didn't grow up playing the PS1 library, so a lot of these games take a reverse learning curve where you have to put yourself back in a late 90s mindset.

we do! 

 

ya, i need to go through there and tally up again at some point, just been playing games .  N64 beat them all!  Doing well this year!

[Sumez | 2,985]

Every time I've seen a list trying to rank games by difficulty it's always been wrong to the point where it is almost laughable. There are very good reasons for this, though:

1. There is no universal metric for "difficulty". How long it takes to beat? How long you need to practice to beat one bit? How many bits are difficult? How many times you die playing it the first time? How many times you die playing it the 10th time? It's an incredibly subjective impression.

2. There is also no common universal definition for what "difficulty" covers. Is a game as tough as the hardest part, or do the hard parts add up? Ie. a super easy game with a very tough final boss vs. a game with many difficult stages. Does leeway such as bigger health par or more 1ups factor in?

3. Even though you can still apply some basic logic to compare two games, due to the above points, those two games would still have to be played by the same person to realistically rate them, so to build a reliable list, all the games must be ranked by the same person, and therefore it could never be a universal list of "every game".

4. The popularity factor will always end up playing a bigger role. Remember all those articles that rank Contra as the hardest game ever made, or even just the hardest game on the NES? I think most people here who have beaten Contra would agree that there are probably hell a lot of games on the NES that are much harder. But Contra is a game many people have played, and it's also a game where you'll die several time on the first stage if you haven't played it before.
Way too many difficulty reputations come from people's first attempt at beating a game, which never paints a very realistic picture. If you try to build a list based on popular opinion, those are the kinds of takes that would make up the majority of the list.

 

As a case in point, I like to bring up the "Japanese STG difficulty guide", a community compiled list of every reasonably known arcade shoot'em up ranked by difficulty. A list that should ideally be a lot easier to compile because it is comparing only games of the same very specific genre with the same common metric of how difficult beating the game on a single credit supposedly is (some games are even listed twice based on them having different goals such as one loop, two loops, or with/without autofire). An English translation was posted here in 2016: https://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=56114

Yet this list is generally referred to in the shmup community as "the meme list" because of how outrageous some of the claims are. If you have beaten some of the games on the list you can probably pick them out and immediately find something you disagree with in regards to how they are placed in relation to eachother. I definitely have a few games on there that I cleared in a couple of days placing higher than games I haven't even been able to clear.

Compare this to forum poster Perikles' list made in response to it. He has played and cleared quite an impressive number of shooters (though some people claim he's a cheater, he still clearly knows his stuff), and ranked them all in a list that I'd say is generally super reliable simply because it's compiled by one person alone: https://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=59651
This one combines both arcade and console games, and is probably the best realistic attempt I've seen at comparing diffiulty across a large array of games, even if it's still limited to a single genre.

[MagusSmurf | 577]

Rayman 1 being the hardest PS1 game (assuming you don't cheat. I don't think the game works especially well without cheating due to some poor developer decisions but hey) that people actually care about sounds about right, at least.

[DoctorEncore | 3,691]

14 minutes ago, MagusSmurf said:

Rayman 1 being the hardest PS1 game (assuming you don't cheat. I don't think the game works especially well without cheating due to some poor developer decisions but hey) that people actually care about sounds about right, at least.

I had no clue this was seen as one of the hardest games. I figured it would be some jank shovelware that literally just doesn't work.