TL;DR in bold.

I absolutely hate difficulty options in set tiers. I am vonstantly changing between them and I tend to find normal too easy, hard to hard and then I'm left questioning am I winning cause I'm on normal or by being on hard am I wrecking the experience, it's the most unsatisfying feeling. I tend to choose normal and raise or lower the difficulty of the game but this is such an annoyance when balance goes out of whack and the question lingers, is it the games intention, is it me or is it the difficulty option causing ease or harshness. 

That said, set difficulties tend to implement the idea that you can reduce difficulty to your liking by grinding but this can get tedious and another problem arises, you could be on a boss that you may feel the need to grind and then trivialise the next handful of boss cause it was that one boss that the mechanics were difficult for you, It's why I stopped doing it in Souls games and if there isn't a recommended level, you can unintentionally make the game too easy also by doing all side stuff, many a boss in Elden Ring was trivialised cause I got to meticulous with exploring an area. Difficulty sliders and modifiers are much the same with the issue being the uncertainty of tuning, the difficulty balancing should not be for the player to QA. 

Now, Khazan comes out and while this game is infuriatingly difficult in your first run and you really, really need to learn the game, you'd think you would grind some levels or gear if you are stuck on a boss, nope. The genius here is the difficulty is really high but you get rewarded EXP for just attempting bosses and skill points for fighting any enemy whether you succeed or not so just the act of playing the game you, yourself get better and also the games difficulty reduces all the while and you don't need to grind anything, it feels as if balance comes about in an organic way, the difficulty hits just right, the only problem is it's a little stingy with EXP. Just attempting a boss, you will gain more EXP the further you get. Difficulty has always been an issue in gaming up until now, this is the first time I've seen it addressed to almost fixing the issue completely. Khazan still isn't perfect in this regard, you still need to return to the hub and upgrade your gear to make proper use of the levels gained but it's the blue print for how games should progress going forward, no nonsense like Skadu Tree fragments to tune the difficulty and being stuck six hours on a boss feels less wasteful. It really is as simple as asking the player to get better themelselves and then rewarding the player with EXP and more skill potential in that process of simply attempting to get better so they can naturally meet the demands of the game without going out of their way or unintentionally ruining the balance of the game.

I believe AI will come into play here in the future and do much the same thing but tailor it all better to the players needs but this is the first step to that and it is such genius, if a little stingy in Khazan. 

I don't see here anything new about difficulty. This is just a new way to cut down grinding.
Some tactical JRPGs like old Shining Force games were kind of similar. You did have to back out of battle with the main character alive, but you got to keep XP gained.

Anyway, I do support the design philosophy that you gain something fro everything you do in a game, whether it's money or equivalent, XP for levels or skill tree advancement. It should be slow enough that you can't really replace actually playing well by too easy grinding. But still getting something when you have to try a thing again and again makes it less infuriating.


As for difficulty, I think I play 90% of games either on easiest or hardest (much more often the first). Though that's ignoring all my retro gaming without choice.
Almost only exceptions are strategy games, but then those might have up to 9 difficulties, plus various other elements to set.

When I played the demo I thought it was neat that you netted exp for a failed boss attempt, and that item drops (which all have set bonuses - another nice tweak on the FromSoft formula) seemed more frequent when replaying an area, so you could mix it up and do either - attempt the same boss multiple times or grind already explored areas.

I agree with your Elden Ring critique: open world + repeat bosses eventually makes the difficulty trivial if you like to explore and 'finish' an area before moving on to the next. It's one of the main reasons I prefer the Souls series.

The main downside to the Khazan demo I felt was that the areas were all quite small, so you were never really that far away from your corpse, and it felt too easy to reclaim your dropped exp. But I only played the demo so maybe things improve in the main game. Part of the appeal of a Soulslike for me is your universal exp being at threat, and I never really felt that in Khazan, which is why it's on my wishlist waiting for a discount rather than being an instant purchase.

I didn't once loose my EXP, they have a consumable to regain your EXP if you're unsure of being able to get to it so I think they wanted that design. A lot of the game is a facade to get it in as a soulsborne title, it's really Nioh but they can't market that as well. 

You don't have to grind areas for gear at all, you get enough weapons during a level that you can TP but to home base and augment your current weapon to bring it up to speed and if you didn't happen to get one with your current level you can buy one at home base and use that. Another QoL thing that goes against Souls philosophy but like I said, this is what the title menu says "A hard-core action RPG", not a soulslike in the general sense, much is added in as a facade to gain that marketing but this is an action game that looks like Souls with the ability to play it which ever way you choose, Sekiro, Nioh, Souls, Bloodborne, it's all there for you to choose. It even has many bosses that force you to change your style, like only dodge bosses, only parry bosses, bosses where it makes no other sense than to hold guard. In doing this it becomes it's own thing and it is pretty special for it.

I'm doing another run for the bighest difficulty trophy and Platinum and I've listened to the story this time, it's actually pretty good and really interesting. The game lacks atmosphere cause of its artstyle but I now realise the story makes up for that. The levels are great in places but some missions are designed really well too, they ate perfect for what they are though, a setting to place the amazing enemies in. 

Damn... well, that's kinda put me off it.

I'm not sure I would enjoy an important fight becoming easier just by trying it again and again. I think it would take away from the feeling of accomplishment once I do win the fight. I imagine this does work fairly well in practice, but it has this downside as well. I guess it could work better for games that aren't so much about accomplishing anything, but I have my worries about this in games that are supposed to be hard. That said, I don't have experience with this described mechanic, so I could be wrong, or maybe it's just me.

black myth wukong did it best

There shouldn't be any random elements in it either then :/

The boss fights in PoE2 are pretty amazing, very hard first time, but it wasn't rewarding to beat them. We tried (co-op) many times and then eventually the RNG serves up a survive-able sequence and it feels like, why didn't it work before...

But it would have been better if we still got XP from trying as instead we went back to grinding a couple times getting bored of the boss fight. Which made replaying the game far less fun as we already repeated the levels before the main bosses many times.

Anyway I seldom get any accomplishment from beating a difficult boss, just feels like I'm wasting my time (while wasting my time lol). So I rather avoid these kind of games and stick with easy mode. Experiencing the world is a much bigger draw for me in video games than beating arbitrary obstacles. When given the choice I'll skip boss fights or lower the difficulty temporarily not to have to repeat it.

What you say about PoE2 sounds more like poor design to me. I don't doubt that the game is fun, and maybe even the boss fights are great, but I'm not at all a fan of challenges that you end up beating due to random factors. I don't mind some randomness for sure, but when it feels like all you did differently to pass was... nothing, besides get slightly different random factors, I don't personally enjoy that, and at that point I consider it poor design. It could be alleviated by giving XP simply for trying, but I think the core issue is still poor design.

What I meant by accomplishment is, well, I've only played Sekiro, but I imagine it's the same for soulslike games and probably some other kinds of hard games too. I think those are the kind of games where succeeding can feel rewarding (at least to many). I haven't played PoE, but I have played Grim Dawn, which to my understanding is at least in the same genre. In Grim Dawn, I've had some difficult fights, and while randomness wasn't a huge factor in them, I didn't feel like accomplishing much after beating them. In that sense, I think I understand what you mean, but you're talking about a different kind of difficult than I was.

I loved the difficulty in Dark Souls keeping you on your toes. But not the boss fights however, hated those.

The best times were sparring with a Tower Knight for 20-30 minutes and finally defeating him with a sliver of health left. And falling down a path in the Depths, getting stuck at a midway checkpoint and slowly had to map the area and dangers in many attempts. The XP gain is learning the environment and the enemies in it. That felt immensely rewarding. The boss fights just felt scripted and annoying obstacles :/

The last games I played on the hardest difficulty were RE7 and RE8 in VR. Although I didn't finish RE8 on its hardest difficulty. One boss fight is too random while you're stuck in a turret gun thing, not fun.

Anyway out leveling enemies has always been bad design, a crutch. It's meant to keep you from wandering into places you're not meant to access yet, but it also trivializes any fights. It also leads to some odd gameplay. I played TW3 on easy, then sought out the hardest targets far above my level for rewarding battles while being able to explore the world at my leisure.

Nowadays I skip games without difficulty options.