10 Games Best Played On The Easiest Difficulty

Look, I get it. No one wants to admit that they may occasionally prefer to have a breezier experience with a video game. With the rise of the Soulslike and the “git gud” community, many gamers wear their most difficult gaming achievements as badges of honor.

I personally love plenty of difficult games, but I’m also not too proud to admit that sometimes, I kind of just want to kick back and unplug. Not every gaming experience needs to pulverize you into a death loop and one-shot you if you haven’t min-maxed every single stat properly.

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As such, there are plenty of games that I simply prefer to scale back the difficult settings of. Yeah, I could grind out every title I ever play to prove that I’m a good gamer, but sometimes, it’s just not worth it.

Video games are supposed to be fun, and these are 10 great examples of experiences that are either simply more enjoyable on Easy, make more sense canonically, or fix some unfortunate balancing issues compared to the more challenging settings.

10 The First Berserker: Khazan

Take The Edge Off

As much as I’ve already tried to keep my gamer street cred by telling you I’m into Soulslikes, that doesn’t always mean that I want them all to be brutally punishing. To me, The First Berserker: Khazan is a genre entry that just went a little overboard with the difficulty scaling.

Granted, the actual level traversal in Khazan isn’t bad, and the grunt/regular enemies are easy enough to deal with. But man, some of the bosses are just tuned up a little too far, turning them into glorified, frustrating damage sponges instead of opponents that feel rewarding to learn and eventually pick apart.

Thankfully, this is the rare Soulslike that also isn’t too proud to gatekeep some of us weenies from dialing things back a bit. Khazan has an Easy and a Normal mode, and I personally think things are simply better balanced on Easy. The devs seem to agree, as rumor has it, an even easier option is coming soon in the future, too.

9 Another Crab’s Treasure

Soft-Shell

Before you really start to wonder about my gaming skills, I already know that Another Crab’s Treasure is considered one of the easiest Soulslikes out there. But if I’m being even more honest, I just… didn’t really want this game to be a challenging experience at all.

For me, Another Crab’s Treasure worked better as a sort of PS2-era mascot action-adventure game with goofy characters that is simply fun to play. I didn’t really want to die multiple times to bosses in this one, I just wanted to have a good time in a Spongebob-y world.

I’ve played it both ways though, which still qualified me to have a pulse on the hardest bosses in the game. Still, I did prefer my second playthrough when I reduced the challenge and just blasted through the game. This is a game that also has a lot of very tunable settings, so you can get the exact experience you’re after.

8 Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune

Say, Drake

I stand by the sentiment that the Uncharted series is surely not only one of Sony’s best franchises, but also one of the best video game series of all-time. I still even really dig the original title in the quadrilogy, as dated as Drake’s Fortune has now become.

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Even so, it’s pretty unanimous that the latter games in the series are the true masterpieces, so no one would fault you for dropping this one down to Easy to get through the intro a little bit quicker. Length of the series aside, I’d recommend Easy mode for Drake’s Fortune regardless.

For me, this is because I simply think the enemies in Uncharted 1 specifically are way too spongy. I’m totally fine suspending my disbelief for a series that can get pretty out there at times, but I still have a hard time accepting a regular, human pirate taking eight bullets to bring down. Dropping the difficulty here just makes the game feel more practical.

7 Forza Horizon 5

Cut Some Corners

Not to toot my own horn, but I’m a guy that absolutely loves playing a racing sim like Gran Turismo 7 in full VR with every possible driving assist and HUD option disabled. For a game like that, the more realistic, the better.

Forza Horizon 5, on the other hand, is a game best played as an arcade racer. I mean, this is a series that has us racing against trains and helicopters in a sandbox-style setting. I don’t really need this to be a realistic experience.

Turn up the assists, keep this one on Automatic shifting, crank the tunes, and enjoy the most electric arcade racer since Burnout 3: Takedown. The skill of the AI racers is up to you, but extra assists and increased chaos is the move for Forza Horizon 5 either way.

6 Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order

Force Push It Real Good

I’m really not doing myself any gamer credit favors by including another Soulslike here, am I? Oh, well. Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order isn’t really designed to completely kick your butt anyway, so it’s not really a case of missing out on some finely-tuned, Soulsy masterpiece if you follow my lead and make this game easier too.

My reasoning for Easy mode here is that it’s just a little weird to levy your lightsaber against hordes of enemies as Cal Kestis and be met with as much resistance as Fallen Order throws in your way. I mean, this is a lightsaber. I’ve seen it melt through multi-layered blast doors and slice anything in half that it touches during the movies.

For me, I enjoyed the crazy Jedi power fantasy of Fallen Order that came along with dropping this game down to Easy mode (or Jedi Knight, as it’s called in the game). Just let me carve through waves of stormtroopers and keep feeding me that sweet, sci-fi narrative.

5 Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus

We Ain’t In The Prisoner Takin’ Business

The recent Wolfenstein games are some of my favorite first-person shooter campaigns in gaming history. Still, I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that The New Colossus‘ difficulty isn’t at least a little bit inconsistent.

I don’t necessarily think this is a game where you need to keep it set to Easy the entire time, but I would recommend flipping it back and forth from Easy to Normal throughout most of the game. Still, I know this is a potentially annoying ask, so just setting it and forgetting it on a lower difficulty is the move.

This will make sure you don’t hit some of the random difficulty spikes that mar some of the campaign. Given the subject matter of Wolfenstein as well, I don’t really enjoy dying in this game. Let me and BJ be the powerhouses and inflict nothing but pain upon our adversaries.

4 The Last Of Us Part 2

Bleak Enough As It Is

Another Naughty Dog game joins the fray, but this time for some slightly different reasons. The Last of Us Part 2 is a masterpiece. It’s also… not necessarily fun to play—even though that’s kind of the point.

The second entry into this zombie saga is one of the bleakest, most violent, excessively angry video games ever. This is important thematically, but can also cause the game to be genuinely oppressive for a huge chunk of its runtime. You can spare yourself some of this pain by running through the story on a lower difficulty setting.

Really, you’re going to end up playing this one for the cutscenes and story drops, so I don’t think there’s anything wrong with getting through the so-so actual gameplay and combat to keep experiencing the high points of this journey.

3 NieR: Automata

Oh, The Humanity

I’m going to tread very lightly here, because NieR: Automata is one of the coolest games of all time, and the less you know about it going in, the better. Let’s just say that the first two-thirds of the game can be a little repetitive at times, but that’s also very much by design.

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Still, the action on Easy is super stylish and fun, especially thanks to several genre switch-ups along the way. You’re still going to have a blast with Automata on a lower difficulty, and it’ll help you get to the last third of the title more quickly, which is where the game really starts to go completely crazy.

Act 3 also has a pretty steep difficulty spike on Normal, so you can just get in front of that by starting on Easy from the get-go.

2 God Of War (2018)

Too Much To Ax

Look, clearly God of War 2018 is pretty amazing. It was a refresh that the series desperately needed, and it excels in pretty much every imaginable metric. Still, I’m not sold on the idea that the game’s combat is really something that you need to grind through at all.

With plenty of cutscenes featuring an amazing story, puzzles to solve, lore to uncover, and areas to explore, getting too bogged down in the combat can work to GOW’s detriment. This is another one too, where the sheer power fantasy of absolutely crushing anything that stands in your way as Kratos just feels objectively awesome.

Don’t think that lowering the difficulty on God Of War will make it a cakewalk, either. The Valkyrie boss fights can still give you that nice, occasional challenge along the way despite the moment-to-moment gameplay being a bit more streamlined on Easy.

1 Persona 5 Royal

Phantom Breeze

Persona 5 Royal is probably my favorite JRPG of all time. I love the gameplay, the story, the characters, the style, the music—I genuinely love it all. What I’m not a huge fan of, however, is the need to grind for levels in a game that’s already well over 100 hours long.

The combat itself is still plenty rewarding on Easy, and you’re going to have a great time learning every in and out of the battles, just without the stress and pressure of losing progress or simply wasting time in a game that’s already such a beast to complete.

Is P5R particularly difficult on Normal? Nah, not really. Still, I prefer lighter battles to have more time for everything else in the game.

Especially if you’ve already played base Persona 5, there’s no shame at all in dropping the difficulty down in Royal simply to get to the new content a bit sooner. You’ve already spent a lot of your life on this game. No one is going to judge you for not necessarily wanting to grind just as hard in Royal.

Like some others on the list, there’s also a Story mode (called ‘Safety’ here) that makes it so you literally cannot lose battles. This wouldn’t be my first choice over Easy, but the option is there if you simply want to go along for the wonderful, dramatic ride that is Persona 5 Royal.

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