Plus I never understood the limited save system shtick.
It makes saves a resource to manage and prevents comfort-saving, its a hit and miss feature but works quite well in specific titles like Lisa's pain mode, where save points are single-use.
Look at it this way, you have an hard boss in front with a single save right at the entrance of his arena, you could:
- Save immediately, so you can try the boss multiple times, but you will have to fight him again if you die before the next save.
- Or you could try to beat it, save once you win the fight BUT, in case of failure, you'll have to re-do the boss run.
- Alternatively, you could just not save, so that you keep the spare savepoint for a later section that may or may not be harder.
- And if you played well enough that you dind't needed to save one or more earlier sections, you can just save both before and after the fight.
Its not a mechanic that works well with all games, and sometimes its either too extreme or not fit of the game you are playing, but its quite good for second playtroughs, where you are accustomed to the game and know what its about to throw you. Horror games love this mechanic too because it makes the experience more stressful and while annoying, I find it a lot better than permadeath.
This is a legit complaint about modern difficulty. Incorrect labeling of a difficulty and what it means. Is Hard just the base game but bullet sponge enemies? Are there different enemy lay outs? Which is the original intended layout? How do I know if I want "Normal difficulty" or "Experienced survival horror player" difficulty? And does this mean fixed cam survival horror, RE4 survival horror or something in between? If you just cut my ammo in half and give the enemies more HP, I don't want to play a grindfest designed to restrict me for the sake of restricting me.
I'm pretty sure this whole topic of difficulty modifiers only change the amount of damage you and your enemy takes has been discussed for so long it predates every single version of skyrim.
Hell, arcade games had difficulty modifiers, and they almost always did the same things: spawning more enemies, making them faster, giving them more hp, shoot more bullets while you have a shorter timer and take more damage from them.
Its an issue so old its to be considered a standard in the game industry, and anything that differs from them, i.e.: new/alternative patterns/stages has to be considered the exception.
Naming convention too is quite an interesting topic, and I agree that more devs should point out what's the intended difficulty, either by directly pointing it out to the players or by doing what IWBTG does by mocking you for picking "normal" difficulty over "hard", but once again, its a pretty dated topic.