This is a dilemma that I encounter every time I play a game: What difficulty should I play.

So is the normal difficulty pretty easy for experienced RPG players (those who have played games like Baldur's Gate I and II)?  Is the hard difficulty mainly for people who have already played through the game once, and will rape anyone who does not have specific knowledge to the game and a plan for character/party building?

Of course, the game hasn't been out for very long.  There may not be many people qualified to answer this question.

Always play on the hardest difficulty possible.

Normal's pretty challenging even for experienced PC RPG gamers. I'd recommend it for most people though, cause no game's fun without challenge.

Normal should be sufficient. I have been playing on normal, and actually died a couple times. Mostly because I was kinda breezing through - then you encounter some genuine challenges, and need to start micromanaging your battles a lot more.

So far I think it is a good balance, between fights that come your way and you can breeze through with one or two short pauses to setup your actions and more challenging fights where you need to be more assertive and attentive and put some thought into your strategy.

So I recommend normal.

Also, IIRC you can switch difficulty during the game, so if normal doesnt work for you you can always turn it up a notch.

What mostly changes between the difficulties is the spell range damage you can do to your allies (cause yes, there's friendly fire). Also, some of the enemies have higher resistance if I recall correctly.

I'm playing on Normal right now.

Normal seems the most balanced for a first play-through. Its tricky enough that you can die pretty easily but easy enough that every fight isn't going to have you tearing your hair out.

Awesome game so far.

Play it on hard, that's what I plan to do.

I've played every single Bioware PC title through at least once and I've played heaps of other RPG's as well and normal is more than hard enough for me...

Slimebeast said: Play it on hard, that's what I plan to do.

It should be noted that the console version is signifficantly easier than the PC version to compensate for the limits of the controls and tactical views.

Thanks for the advice. I'll play it through on normal for the first time. At the very least, it gives me a reason to play it again if I haven't finished hard mode the first time.