I’ve been having a really hard time getting into RPGs lately, but this weekend I pulled myself together and tore myself away from the World Cup games long enough to start Kitaria Fables. No reason for this in particular, it just looked cute and easy and I heard there was a minor farming sim component like in Harvestella. I don’t need stress in my life, so I went even further and selected “Easy Mode” at the start. So why did I die to orcs in the very first quest of the game?
It seems developers and I have very different ideas of what “Easy Mode” represents. In my opinion it should mean zero challenge. Impossible to die. “My five year-old nephew can finish this” kind of easy. It should not be possible for me to die to the very first challenge barely 15 minutes into the game. In fact, as I said with Triangle Strategy earlier this year, I’d be 100% okay if every enemy died to a single hit. I’ve paid my dues. I don’t need to fight fair to prove I’m a gamer.
Unfortunately it seems that game developers don’t agree, so they keep putting out “easy modes” that are not that easy. Just easy enough to unsatisfying, but not so easy that they provide the time-savings and catharsis that an Easy Mode player would be looking for. Obviously I dropped Kitaria Fables after my ignominious defeat, but I’ll probably try again next weekend. Still, right now I’m in “Now what?” mode, because I don’t want to play with the Switch any more. I’m annoyed with it for letting such a game toy with me. I dug out my PS2 the other day, shockingly enough it still works fine. Now I just have to resist the temptation to play La Corda d’Oro for the 1000th time and actually try something new.
Anyway, that’s my situation now. Oh yeah, I’m also playing Epic Seven again because of course I’m playing Epic Seven again. They’d have to EOS to get rid of me :D. Aight, back to preparing for another week of hard work!
