I think one big one that wasn't touched on was the rental market. If a game was too easy, it could be breezed through in a weekend and returned to the store. And there'd be little incentive to buy the game unless you really liked it. It's why Castlevania 3 is harder in the US version than compared to the JP version where rentals were more stamped out.
I'm glad someone mentioned this as it is probably the most important reason why the older games were harder. Nintendo hated video game rentals and even tried filing lawsuits to stop video game rentals in the US.
I think it is a little inaccurate to claim a source of the difficulty of some old games is due to bad design. Actually, a lot of the hardest games of that era were pretty masterfully designed in more ways than one, since a lot of them had to be immediately appealing, easy to understand yet with great depth and find a balance where the game is hard enough to apply said depth but not so hard it's blatantly unfair. Nobody was putting money into machines of games that were gratuitously hard with nothing good to offer in return. Final Fight is a very good example: an extremely hard and very chaotic game, but overall a very fair and deep one, that is fun regardless if you're playing for a One Credit Clear or Creditfeeding. With appropriate balance, it means that the best players get to show off the game to onlookers while barely spending any money to play the game for upwards of an hour, said onlookers would find the game cool and creditfeed through it, and some of them might be interested enough in the nuances of the game to come back and try to set better runs. Lifetime, you would spend less money on this ordeal than you would buying a home game, console notwithstanding too. It's not that this design is "bad", rather it's just not understood and appreciated anymore.
I think the video creator just doesn't understand arcade design or that he has to memorize the games to beat them, idk why they are making a video on things they don't understand learning and practicing the game is the actual gameplay, it's not like modern design where your first playthru is your only playthru and then you quit...
@@samhein321 there's space in the market for a little bit of everything. As games became more home-focused instead of being derived from arcades, they adapted, not being limited by experiences that wouldn't make sense while in a public setting or that couldn't be finished in one go. And that's okay. It's just a shame that as arcade-styled games fell out of favour and became increasingly distant from the mainstream that their design philosophies are kind of taken as being inherently of less merit.
Lol, we absolutely talked about games' visuals, stories, and music in the late '80s and early '90s. Things like the DuckTales Moon Theme, Wily 1 and various other Mega Man tunes, Vampire Killer, and the Zelda theme are popular now because they were popular then. Stories like Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest/Warrior, and even Ninja Gaiden inspired a lot of imaginations. And while there are plenty of cheap, unfair games out there, the ones that are hailed as classics are quite fair and thoughtfully designed. A lot of people will just notice an absence of certain features that are standard/expected in modern game, or they'll get killed by a legitimately tough obstacle and cry "BAD DESIGN!" because they're not used to games offering that kind of resistance. And yeah, manuals provided a ton of context, flavor, and story for early games. Before a video game aftermarket was really an established thing, and when you're working with about 300 kB of cartridge space, I think games can be allowed a couple dozen pages of supplementary materials.
Is it also possible that most of these old games were made by smaller teams and in shorter times than nowadays? So they made very hard small games so people would get their money's worth
Most retro games were designed with no frame of reference in mind when it came to designing how responsive it would feel compared to other games, so whatever the developers made, they themselves had to play test it and it would be a gamble whether or not it would sell if you also consider how niche gaming used too be. All that is to say that, yes, retro games were hard not only because they were designed to be artificially challenging in order to play over-and-over again in order to memorize the game in order to beat it due to it being short, but also because those games were limited in terms of scope and the limitations of the hardware they were built on.
devs wouldn't make the games unfair or jank on purpose, whole point is to keep you playing their game over and over and not hate their game and move to another cabinet next to it...
My first console was an SNES but I still think a lot of old games are bullshit. Running around in many of them just feels awful, along with combat. There are very few standouts from the NES that I think are hard, but fair, like Mario, Kirby, and Mega Man. Maybe Zelda.
What’s also unbelievable is how James Rolf/AVGN’s parents purchased the game Ghosts N Goblins with an NES for him in 1988 for his eighth birthday gift and it was the first game he played out of the two his parents first purchased him! The second one was the Super Mario Brothers and Duck Hunt combo cartridge! :)
I don't really remember thinking about games being hard back then. It's just the way they were. There were lots of games we had that I never got all the way through as a kid but it didn't stop me from playing them and enjoying them and it was always exciting when you finally got further in a game than you'd been able to before that.
They were hard, but somehow they had a nice learning curve? Otherwise we wouldn't even learn to play, we would try a few times and then drop the game because it was hard. But instead we kinda insisted and learned how to play in order to play through the rest of the game. I think games back then had really good first stages, that were really fun and could show you what the game was all about. Now we have 20 minute long tutorials.
Is not that they are unfairly hard (beyond stuff like saving) the real issue is, we are so used to sanitized, handholding and yes, easy modern gaming practices (as you said, to be accessible for everyone) the moment you go back to an old game that demands you to be get better, people yells "ITS BAD GAME DESIGN!"
I think that's the appeal of something like the Souls games. Nothing is told to you, most living things are trying to kill you and the ones that aren't trying to kill you are either merchants or NPC's that have cryptic side quest that are kinda hard to understand. it feels like NES hard, with a world that feels like a modern 3D Castlevania.
@@TrevorJacobs-vr8ug The big issue with that logic is that it really just ignores what you got back then and how they are experienced now. Because "NES hard" is really just "playing the game without a big chunk of the content" in most instances, as the way modern people play these games is with loose carts or emulation while the manual had loads of information that was required to play it's a manual after all, not a sales pitch. For example it's pretty common to see people complain about the first zelda being incredibly cryptic and just dumps you in the game with the idea of "figure it out" (or go on a tangent on how it's some incredible design because of that), but if you'd read the manual it gives you a guide to the first 2 or 3 dungeons (depending on region), teaching you the game rules and logic in the process and giving you enough information to go on your own.
@@KidPrarchord95 Yes, Metroid 1 truly conveyed the feeling of "getting lost in an unwelcome place", with no map at all. Compared to it's remake, that is the total opposite
I agree mostly with the gameplay part. Gameplay should ALWAYS be the primary focus of a video game in my opinion. (That's not to say that other factors like story and art aren't important too, though.)
Because retro games were designed to keep you glued to your couch and compensate for their short lifespan. The first Mario game literally had a lifespan of less than 2 hours if you were good at it, less than 30 min if you used the right Warp Zones.
I didn't know that you could save whenever you chose in the first legend of zelda game! I always let all of my hearts become depleted by monsters and their attacks in order to save.
It was definitely mainly the hardware and the size of the design teams. That being said, some of it was that it was less likely for a game to contain a portion that was significantly harder than other parts of the game like you have today. So, most of the time, you wouldn't be going along and be just splatted by something coming up unexpectedly. It would happen the first few times but you'd eventually figure out that it was coming. Modern games are built in such a way that that's harder to manage.
Hardware limitations was one of the big things on PC adventure games. While the PC gave users some advantage over consoles at the time with storage, RAM and input methods. Still a game like Kings Quest might have 40 different screens to explore. The game needed moon logic, and random problems to make the game unwinnable, so people would keep on playing a $60 game back in the 1980s. It was common to play the game for a while only to get stuck and start the game over, taking months to play and win the game only to find out you are still missing a few points. Where today with internet hints and walkthrough, the game could be played in under an hour, without speed running it.
I grew up in the 80s and 90s and most of what you say about video game culture is more or less true. There was a more competitive spirit, and people bragged about beating games all the time. Although, I don't remember anyone actually caring about high scores, at least on the NES, for the most part. That was more of a golden-era arcade thing from the 70s and early 80s, which predates my experience. Also, even back then, people complained about certain games just being way too hard. Battletoads was notorious for being unreasonably difficult, and most people never made it past the 3rd stage. Games like Super Mario Bros 1 thru 3 were never considered particularly hard though.
The problem with Battletoads is really that it changes genre throughout, so the motorbike level is not only really hard but hard in a way the player is unprepared for. Otherwise hard games of the era typically escalated gradually so the player had an opportunity to get better.
I gotta like how the Japanese version of Super Mario Bros 2 managed to even be harder beyond the other games standard, that releasing it for western gamers was turned down, and instead the US got the well known version of Super Mario Bros 2 with the vegetable throwing and enemies that would be a staple of the Mario series.
There were other factors involved than just the difficulty---primarily timing. The NES came out much later in the west, with a gradual release, so by the time the west was "ready" for SMB2 it was already kind of old and dated.
The phenomenon of a game being kinda unfair to squeeze out more playtime has a name: Nintendo Hard(Even tho the feeling of "nondesign" is not exclusive to the NES.) Luckily, it faded sorta quickly. Games meant to troll you still exist and probably will never entirely vanish(especially when many people still can't destinguish challenge from tedium), but the size of games that are actually attempting to be fair in their difficulty, low or high, essencially ballooned just a console generation later and still continues. Now there are a few hard games that are actually harder than the average NES game, but have 90+% of the deaths you face actually be your fault.
I can beat Zelda I both Quests back to back w.o dying and Zelda II in one continue. While that's not world record stuff I consider myself an Elite gamer. Back in the days video games were still in Wild West so to speak, but games in the mainstream were well designed, compared to a lot of the garbage anyone put out (ask AVGN). Problem is, what is difficulty because of "challenge" and what is just "bullshit". "Challenge" makes someone come back to the game, time and time again, because the game is fun. "Bullshit" makes someone not want to play.
I really appreciate how information dense this video was! You just got straight to the point instead of wasting our time with jokes that drag out for too long like most other youtubers with content like this do. And I really appreciate the topic and how you handled it straightforward instead of having any sort of "git gud" or "games are just dumbed down for babies these days" attitudes like is really common when talking about this. Keep doing what you're doing!
I can think of a few retro games from that era that are too difficult such as the original Mario Bros. game (not Super Mario Bros.) but Mario Bros. and DK3 isn’t all that difficult it gets harder as the levels go on as do most video games but in the long run I wouldn’t call it difficult same with Popeye and Duck Hunt isn’t all that difficult and neither is Hogan’s Ally or Wild Gunman or Pinball there’s a few retro video games that aren’t too difficult
I feel this is the kind of video that could only exist when a person is trying to push themselves to make content weekly instead of taking the time to form an argument, explore the history, let those thoughts marinate and then write. Incredibly interesting concept, very boring execution D:
ANSWER - you need to squeeze two weeks worth of playtime into something that should realistically take ten minutes, to justify a forty dollar price tag
A lot of NES games are honestly just bullshit. They're janky and clunky and aged very terribly. They're great for their time, but wow, they are _not good_ today. Some games aged well though, like Kirby's Adventure and SMB3.
My favorite quality of life addition: menus or quest logs or something that tells you what you're doing and at least hints as to what to do next. 90s gamers all know that utter confusion that comes from booting up something like Final Fantasy 3 after a long break, loading up your save, and then realizing you have absolutely no idea where the hell you were going or what you were doing. And in the proto-internet days you couldn't easily look anything up either. Time to aimlessly wander all over the huge map and pray we randomly bump into the place we needed to go next or randomly talk to theone random NPC in the one random cave we need to talk to. Sometimes it was just easier to start the whole game over than to keep wandering
Yes! I've been slowly making my way through the Mass Effect trilogy and there are times when I can't play for weeks and when I do get a chance to get back into it, I'll stare at the screen for a moment and think, "What planet is this? Why am I here?" then look at the journal and sort of remember what I was doing.
@@Dargonhuman Yeah it's easy to make fun of Navi the fairy constantly yelling at you about where to go next in Ocarina of Time but in the context of the time this was a positive step, just implemented badly. The RPGs of the time generally didn't do this at all and you'd often get just completely lost
I think one big one that wasn't touched on was the rental market. If a game was too easy, it could be breezed through in a weekend and returned to the store. And there'd be little incentive to buy the game unless you really liked it. It's why Castlevania 3 is harder in the US version than compared to the JP version where rentals were more stamped out.
I'm glad someone mentioned this as it is probably the most important reason why the older games were harder. Nintendo hated video game rentals and even tried filing lawsuits to stop video game rentals in the US.
@@mattb6522 They didn't change their games for it though, as in Japan it was (maybe still is IDK) to rent movies, games, etc.
@@relo999video game rental was banned in Japan in 1984 due to rampant piracy
Bayou Billy (Mad City in Japan) is another example.
@mattb6522 Bro, why is Nintendo always so consistently scummy?
I think it is a little inaccurate to claim a source of the difficulty of some old games is due to bad design. Actually, a lot of the hardest games of that era were pretty masterfully designed in more ways than one, since a lot of them had to be immediately appealing, easy to understand yet with great depth and find a balance where the game is hard enough to apply said depth but not so hard it's blatantly unfair. Nobody was putting money into machines of games that were gratuitously hard with nothing good to offer in return. Final Fight is a very good example: an extremely hard and very chaotic game, but overall a very fair and deep one, that is fun regardless if you're playing for a One Credit Clear or Creditfeeding.
With appropriate balance, it means that the best players get to show off the game to onlookers while barely spending any money to play the game for upwards of an hour, said onlookers would find the game cool and creditfeed through it, and some of them might be interested enough in the nuances of the game to come back and try to set better runs.
Lifetime, you would spend less money on this ordeal than you would buying a home game, console notwithstanding too. It's not that this design is "bad", rather it's just not understood and appreciated anymore.
I think the video creator just doesn't understand arcade design or that he has to memorize the games to beat them, idk why they are making a video on things they don't understand
learning and practicing the game is the actual gameplay, it's not like modern design where your first playthru is your only playthru and then you quit...
@@samhein321 there's space in the market for a little bit of everything. As games became more home-focused instead of being derived from arcades, they adapted, not being limited by experiences that wouldn't make sense while in a public setting or that couldn't be finished in one go. And that's okay.
It's just a shame that as arcade-styled games fell out of favour and became increasingly distant from the mainstream that their design philosophies are kind of taken as being inherently of less merit.
Lol, we absolutely talked about games' visuals, stories, and music in the late '80s and early '90s. Things like the DuckTales Moon Theme, Wily 1 and various other Mega Man tunes, Vampire Killer, and the Zelda theme are popular now because they were popular then. Stories like Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest/Warrior, and even Ninja Gaiden inspired a lot of imaginations. And while there are plenty of cheap, unfair games out there, the ones that are hailed as classics are quite fair and thoughtfully designed. A lot of people will just notice an absence of certain features that are standard/expected in modern game, or they'll get killed by a legitimately tough obstacle and cry "BAD DESIGN!" because they're not used to games offering that kind of resistance.
And yeah, manuals provided a ton of context, flavor, and story for early games. Before a video game aftermarket was really an established thing, and when you're working with about 300 kB of cartridge space, I think games can be allowed a couple dozen pages of supplementary materials.
Is it also possible that most of these old games were made by smaller teams and in shorter times than nowadays? So they made very hard small games so people would get their money's worth
Yeah that's definitely a part of it. Those old games had very few people working on them.
retro games weren't hard, games just became comfort food later on
also calling retro games "unfair" is pretty lol
Some were unfair, but I mostly agree with you
Most retro games were designed with no frame of reference in mind when it came to designing how responsive it would feel compared to other games, so whatever the developers made, they themselves had to play test it and it would be a gamble whether or not it would sell if you also consider how niche gaming used too be.
All that is to say that, yes, retro games were hard not only because they were designed to be artificially challenging in order to play over-and-over again in order to memorize the game in order to beat it due to it being short, but also because those games were limited in terms of scope and the limitations of the hardware they were built on.
true games suck nowadays my touhou friend
devs wouldn't make the games unfair or jank on purpose, whole point is to keep you playing their game over and over and not hate their game and move to another cabinet next to it...
My first console was an SNES but I still think a lot of old games are bullshit. Running around in many of them just feels awful, along with combat. There are very few standouts from the NES that I think are hard, but fair, like Mario, Kirby, and Mega Man. Maybe Zelda.
What’s also unbelievable is how James Rolf/AVGN’s parents purchased the game Ghosts N Goblins with an NES for him in 1988 for his eighth birthday gift and it was the first game he played out of the two his parents first purchased him! The second one was the Super Mario Brothers and Duck Hunt combo cartridge! :)
I don't really remember thinking about games being hard back then. It's just the way they were. There were lots of games we had that I never got all the way through as a kid but it didn't stop me from playing them and enjoying them and it was always exciting when you finally got further in a game than you'd been able to before that.
They were hard, but somehow they had a nice learning curve? Otherwise we wouldn't even learn to play, we would try a few times and then drop the game because it was hard. But instead we kinda insisted and learned how to play in order to play through the rest of the game. I think games back then had really good first stages, that were really fun and could show you what the game was all about. Now we have 20 minute long tutorials.
Is not that they are unfairly hard (beyond stuff like saving) the real issue is, we are so used to sanitized, handholding and yes, easy modern gaming practices (as you said, to be accessible for everyone) the moment you go back to an old game that demands you to be get better, people yells "ITS BAD GAME DESIGN!"
I think that's the appeal of something like the Souls games. Nothing is told to you, most living things are trying to kill you and the ones that aren't trying to kill you are either merchants or NPC's that have cryptic side quest that are kinda hard to understand. it feels like NES hard, with a world that feels like a modern 3D Castlevania.
"You didn't know this thing you couldn't possibly know about and that is why you died? Git gud. Gud at what? Future sight, n00b!"
I agree for sure. The original Metroid gets way too much flack from people who just refuse to play it on its own terms
@@TrevorJacobs-vr8ug The big issue with that logic is that it really just ignores what you got back then and how they are experienced now. Because "NES hard" is really just "playing the game without a big chunk of the content" in most instances, as the way modern people play these games is with loose carts or emulation while the manual had loads of information that was required to play it's a manual after all, not a sales pitch. For example it's pretty common to see people complain about the first zelda being incredibly cryptic and just dumps you in the game with the idea of "figure it out" (or go on a tangent on how it's some incredible design because of that), but if you'd read the manual it gives you a guide to the first 2 or 3 dungeons (depending on region), teaching you the game rules and logic in the process and giving you enough information to go on your own.
@@KidPrarchord95 Yes, Metroid 1 truly conveyed the feeling of "getting lost in an unwelcome place", with no map at all. Compared to it's remake, that is the total opposite
Like if you think games should be gameplay & difficulty focused again
I agree mostly with the gameplay part. Gameplay should ALWAYS be the primary focus of a video game in my opinion. (That's not to say that other factors like story and art aren't important too, though.)
Because retro games were designed to keep you glued to your couch and compensate for their short lifespan.
The first Mario game literally had a lifespan of less than 2 hours if you were good at it, less than 30 min if you used the right Warp Zones.
Hell, the current speedrun record is less than five minutes.
I didn't know that you could save whenever you chose in the first legend of zelda game! I always let all of my hearts become depleted by monsters and their attacks in order to save.
It was definitely mainly the hardware and the size of the design teams. That being said, some of it was that it was less likely for a game to contain a portion that was significantly harder than other parts of the game like you have today. So, most of the time, you wouldn't be going along and be just splatted by something coming up unexpectedly. It would happen the first few times but you'd eventually figure out that it was coming. Modern games are built in such a way that that's harder to manage.
They carryed over the arcade difficulty
My Brother is Christ, if you feel the need to comment in English; learn English.
Hardware limitations was one of the big things on PC adventure games. While the PC gave users some advantage over consoles at the time with storage, RAM and input methods. Still a game like Kings Quest might have 40 different screens to explore. The game needed moon logic, and random problems to make the game unwinnable, so people would keep on playing a $60 game back in the 1980s. It was common to play the game for a while only to get stuck and start the game over, taking months to play and win the game only to find out you are still missing a few points. Where today with internet hints and walkthrough, the game could be played in under an hour, without speed running it.
But you didn't need maximum points to beat King's Quest. The most "moon logic" solutions were an optional challenge for repeat playthroughs.
I grew up in the 80s and 90s and most of what you say about video game culture is more or less true. There was a more competitive spirit, and people bragged about beating games all the time. Although, I don't remember anyone actually caring about high scores, at least on the NES, for the most part. That was more of a golden-era arcade thing from the 70s and early 80s, which predates my experience. Also, even back then, people complained about certain games just being way too hard. Battletoads was notorious for being unreasonably difficult, and most people never made it past the 3rd stage. Games like Super Mario Bros 1 thru 3 were never considered particularly hard though.
The problem with Battletoads is really that it changes genre throughout, so the motorbike level is not only really hard but hard in a way the player is unprepared for. Otherwise hard games of the era typically escalated gradually so the player had an opportunity to get better.
The games were easier in Japan, it had a lot to do with blockbusters and the rental market in the US than anything.
I gotta like how the Japanese version of Super Mario Bros 2 managed to even be harder beyond the other games standard, that releasing it for western gamers was turned down, and instead the US got the well known version of Super Mario Bros 2 with the vegetable throwing and enemies that would be a staple of the Mario series.
There were other factors involved than just the difficulty---primarily timing. The NES came out much later in the west, with a gradual release, so by the time the west was "ready" for SMB2 it was already kind of old and dated.
The phenomenon of a game being kinda unfair to squeeze out more playtime has a name: Nintendo Hard(Even tho the feeling of "nondesign" is not exclusive to the NES.)
Luckily, it faded sorta quickly. Games meant to troll you still exist and probably will never entirely vanish(especially when many people still can't destinguish challenge from tedium), but the size of games that are actually attempting to be fair in their difficulty, low or high, essencially ballooned just a console generation later and still continues. Now there are a few hard games that are actually harder than the average NES game, but have 90+% of the deaths you face actually be your fault.
I can beat Zelda I both Quests back to back w.o dying and Zelda II in one continue. While that's not world record stuff I consider myself an Elite gamer. Back in the days video games were still in Wild West so to speak, but games in the mainstream were well designed, compared to a lot of the garbage anyone put out (ask AVGN). Problem is, what is difficulty because of "challenge" and what is just "bullshit". "Challenge" makes someone come back to the game, time and time again, because the game is fun. "Bullshit" makes someone not want to play.
One game with an exception could be dungeon master as it has save features, good controls and was played on pc. It was just made hard
I really appreciate how information dense this video was! You just got straight to the point instead of wasting our time with jokes that drag out for too long like most other youtubers with content like this do. And I really appreciate the topic and how you handled it straightforward instead of having any sort of "git gud" or "games are just dumbed down for babies these days" attitudes like is really common when talking about this. Keep doing what you're doing!
Thanks for the support!
Heck, there are even some "games are dumbed down for babies" folks in this very comments section! Lmao
I can think of a few retro games from that era that are too difficult such as the original Mario Bros. game (not Super Mario Bros.) but Mario Bros. and DK3 isn’t all that difficult it gets harder as the levels go on as do most video games but in the long run I wouldn’t call it difficult same with Popeye and Duck Hunt isn’t all that difficult and neither is Hogan’s Ally or Wild Gunman or Pinball there’s a few retro video games that aren’t too difficult
Great video, very interesting
Glad you think so!
guys named retro video games
I feel this is the kind of video that could only exist when a person is trying to push themselves to make content weekly instead of taking the time to form an argument, explore the history, let those thoughts marinate and then write.
Incredibly interesting concept, very boring execution D:
Amazing video!
ANSWER - you need to squeeze two weeks worth of playtime into something that should realistically take ten minutes, to justify a forty dollar price tag
A lot of NES games are honestly just bullshit. They're janky and clunky and aged very terribly. They're great for their time, but wow, they are _not good_ today. Some games aged well though, like Kirby's Adventure and SMB3.
Games weren't THAT hard back then. It's just the new gen kids SUCK at gaming ... and life ... that's it.
💀
I'm sure your grandparents said the exact same thing about your generation too. And lo and behold, you've become exactly like them.
Hey, just found your channel, great video! (Also I love Jesus too ❤️✝️)
whats the game at 4:22
Drakkhen.
@@RealHud Ah, you beat me to it!
You're Awesome @Hud!!! Thanks Again For Your Wonderful Videos!!! I Definitely Remember A Lot Of These Hard Games!!! 😁
My favorite quality of life addition: menus or quest logs or something that tells you what you're doing and at least hints as to what to do next. 90s gamers all know that utter confusion that comes from booting up something like Final Fantasy 3 after a long break, loading up your save, and then realizing you have absolutely no idea where the hell you were going or what you were doing. And in the proto-internet days you couldn't easily look anything up either. Time to aimlessly wander all over the huge map and pray we randomly bump into the place we needed to go next or randomly talk to theone random NPC in the one random cave we need to talk to. Sometimes it was just easier to start the whole game over than to keep wandering
True
Yes! I've been slowly making my way through the Mass Effect trilogy and there are times when I can't play for weeks and when I do get a chance to get back into it, I'll stare at the screen for a moment and think, "What planet is this? Why am I here?" then look at the journal and sort of remember what I was doing.
@@Dargonhuman Yeah it's easy to make fun of Navi the fairy constantly yelling at you about where to go next in Ocarina of Time but in the context of the time this was a positive step, just implemented badly. The RPGs of the time generally didn't do this at all and you'd often get just completely lost
SMB The lost levels is the definition of this.
Skill issue
This is what the Souls series is, a deliberate old gameplay style.
True. They're still pretty fun tho