Depends on the game. A game like Animal Crossing is obviously going to be easy due to the fact there isn't any real "baddy". I personally would like Pokemon to be slightly more difficult. The older games by the third gym you were facing leaders with 6 Pokemon. Fast forward to today, we have Elite four members with only 4 Pokemon? Like what?! The best of the best of an entire region, yet they don't even have 6 pokemon?

When people praise Dark Souls difficulty, I think many people misunderstand what they mean. It's the fact that the game is built around dying being ok, and the lack of hand holding. They just plunge you into a universe, where you're free to explore as you see fit. It's not even that one factor that makes the game fun. It's multiple things. Lack of hand holding, fun boss fights, multiple different builds to try out, cool looking armor, the atmosphere etc. The game is more about learning the patterns of a boss, then once you understand it, you can beat it.

Looking at some other games, they'll literally PAUSE the game, with a menu popping up showing you the button configs. You're just like "YES I KNOW HOW TO MOVE THANK YOU!!!" That's absolutely unnecessary. It really takes away from the game, destroying immersion too >.

For too easy, yes. For too hard, no. There is no "too hard". There's only "not skilled enough".

But don't you think that "not skilled enough" people might want to play the game, and they're incapable of doing so because the devs only aim to the so-called hardcore gamers? And that an option to make it easy if you want it doesn't really affect anyone's enjoyment of the game? I mean, you can still play in ultra-hard mode or whatever is called in the game XD.

Yeah it's totally fine and sometimes merited.

Yeah, I think it could be considered fair for both sides. Some enjoyable can be lost if a game is just too easy to get through and vice versa. Although, in terms of a hard difficulty, it could be at times a result of poor game design that makes it not only harder, but seem unfair at times. As long as a game has different difficulties, I think that remedies the issue for the most part.

Well that's a bit strange, isn't it? Kirby games are supposed to be easy games by design since it's an entry level platformer.

Such criticism has its roots somewhere else. If a game is too hard or too easy that means it lacks options for the other. No options is always bad, so yes, it's the right thing to criticize games for a lack of options.

It's not hard to offer easy or hard modes, so devs who don't offer those options can be considered incompetent, lazy or assholes.

Might be easier to discuss if you gave some examples, and explained why those games deserve more praise/criticism for being easy/hard.

All very subjective, and the OP is too open-ended.

If there is no difficulty settings and the game is very easy to go through that could definitely be a down for the game, maybe not for all but for me having some element of challenge increases the fun..

On the other hand if there is no difficulty setting and the game seems like it's too hard and things were made difficult just for the sense of being difficult and doesn't make much sense then that also could be a down.

It matters how it's difficult. If it's mostly easy but just has no checkpoints and a really hard part at the end of a level so you keep dying and having to replay all the easy parts then that's a stupid difficulty. They should just have a checkpoint before the hard part. Lives systems are also horribly outdated especially in one shot kill games where it makes no sense to not have frequent checkpoints as there's no accumulation of damage so you being in the last part of the level means you've done it all perfect and should have to replay the whole thing again.