I disagree.  I think a game should have a good learning curve where it starts off easy helping the player learn the basics and slowly ramps up.  This way the game doesn't remain easy throughout the entire playthrough and it teaches the player the skills she'll need to beat the game as it gets harder.

Fire Emblem 7 did this the best.  Its tutorials early on were great and later maps were challenging yet beatable with the skills the game taught you earlier.

IMO, there is a balance when it comes to difficulty.  Too easy is as bad as too hard.

Again, for what? 

What am I supposed to learn?  Is that the part where you say "Haha yeah 99% of the game is stupidly easy except this one quest which is really hard!"  Do you realize how lame that sounds?

I'm sure the game would be tougher if I played it on the 1/2 experience setting too, but increased difficulty does not equal increased fun.  There has to be a carrot at the end of the stick that I care about otherwise it's meaningless.

Hmm... I had a near equally hard time with Symphonia, Abyss, Legendia, and SkiesoA. I died many times in each the first time I played through them.

What gave you trouble in Tales of Symphonia (do you remember)?

IIRC it was usually certain bosses and enemies with radically high damage output that caught me off guard a few times, to the point that I couldn't recover the battle and lost. :(

Those was a first-time playthrough though (completed ToS 3-4 times) so I don't make those mistakes anymore. :)

Hmm maybe.  There were a couple times I used restorative items.  It was more along the lines of "How do you kill someone!?" though.

A few times? Jeez. In boss battles lloyd spends as much time healing (items) as he does attacking, simply because my healer(s) can't keep up with the hp loss. :o

Yeah, Lloyd is the worst melee character ever in terms of getting hurt a lot. The one and only big drawback of Loyd.

I seem to remember a lot of battles going along the lines of:

*hit* *hit* *hit*
*sword rain/variant*
*guard*

*hit* *hit* *hit*
*sword rain/variant*
*guard*

...etc.

Or something like that anyway.  Lloyd's sword rain moves pretty much either nailed the enemy for nasty damage or kept the enemy stuck blocking while someone else nailed it. 

Great topic. I love ToS mainly because It's a co-op multiplayer RPG. I can finally play a game with my 10-year old cousin when I visit him. w00t. And it's real time, so I don't need to force him to wait his turn. Yeah, the camera's broken but I play it by ear and listen for sound effects to tell me what's going on. Or I play a caster.

Lloyd: He's broken as long as Raine is healing him. Or, I guess the "run to enemy, headbutt controller" method works 99% of the time. But when it fails, it fails spectacularly. I had to reset a few times with the Lloyd v Kratos 1v1 battle because I had to figure out how to avoid Grave. And I needed to heal. And Lightning Stab = EVIL. Of all the characters, Lloyd requires the least amount of thought to play correctly.

Ex-spheres: Agreed. The bonuses they grant are simply too invisible until you reach level 4 Combo Skills. And by then you've learned how to fight without them, so it's now a tacked on bonus. The only time I've said "Need EX NAO" is when Genis had to fight in the arena alone. I needed the "don't get interrupted while casting" effect.

Videogame plot tends to not bother me much, mainly because plots are an excuse to go into dungeons and kill stuff. Although, Colette is dangerously stupid (and emo) unlike Lloyd who's simply stupid.