Many gamers, particularly old-school ones, might find that video games have become much easier to play. The main and likeliest reason behind that change is that gaming as a hobby has become far more widespread and popular. Moreover, for studios to reach high sales numbers, ensuring that games are accessible to a larger audience is key. Many titles still come with additional rewards for players who do like a challenge, such as trophies or achievements.

Related

How Dark Souls 4 Could Be an Exciting Return to Form

FromSoftware has branched off from Dark Souls with a number of great games, but a new Dark Souls game could serve as a welcome throwback.

Naturally, some long-running game franchises have gotten easier over the years. When these franchises first started, their initial games were limited by the tech of the time or a narrow market. However, all that has changed in recent years, with some big gaming franchises becoming noticeably less difficult over the years.

6 Crash Bandicoot

No Save State

When the remake of the original Crash Bandicoot trilogy was released in 2017 in the form of the N. Sane trilogy, most players were taken aback by how difficult some of these levels could be. However, this release was far more in line with how the series started.

Related

8 Games With The Best Bonus Stages

Bonus stages are a staple of linear video games. The following games have fantastic bonus stages that are well worth seeking out.

The first was a tight platformer that required incredible reflexes from players to complete. Moreover, the thing that truly made this first game so challenging was the lack of save states. Instead of being able to save the game at the end of a level, players could only save their progress after obtaining a gem or completing a bonus level. Thankfully, the developer gave players the chance to save the game in a hub world in subsequent games, making the Crash Bandicoot series much easier.

5 Fallout

Puzzle-Focused Gameplay

The original two Fallout games were still set in a post-apocalyptic USA. However, players could only experience this war-torn reality in an isometric view, rather than the 3D free-roaming perspective that Bethesda perfected in Fallout 3.

This means that there is a steep learning curve when fans of the series go back to play these earlier installments of the franchise. What's more, the early Fallout games were much more puzzle-focused than the combat-heavy games that came later.

4 The Sims

Managing Moods Was Hard

The first Sims game was unlike anything players had seen before. The idea of creating a virtual family and living out their life was great, but it wasn't always as easy as it should have been. The mood meters belonging to each Sim have become a core staple of the series. However, this mood meter was far more important in the first game. Keeping these mood meters filled is essential to motivating a Sim enough to do all the other fun things in the game or having them progress at work. Sadly, these mood meters were so sensitive that many players struggled more with this aspect of the game, so it was nearly impossible to accomplish anything else.

Related

18 Cozy Organization Games, Ranked

While some video games opt for a more stressful approach, some games are cozier and give players a way to peacefully organize their space.

The developers did recognize this issue, and Sims now have the autonomy to care for their own mood during a playthrough. As such, players can now focus on the many other features these games offer.

3 RollerCoaster Tycoon

Too Much Terrain To Manage

The first game in the RollerCoaster Tycoon series has a simple premise. Players were given control of a theme park and had to add rides or attractions to encourage enough customers to visit the park before a specific deadline. Sadly, some of the designs of these maps made placing rides far more difficult than it needed to be.

Certain maps like Leafy Lake and Evergreen Gardens were too full of trees or water features for players to place or finish building custom rides how they wanted. Removing these objects or navigating them took far too much time, and players often fail scenarios when doing this. Fortunately, a switch to 3D and more open maps in later games made playing the scenarios in RollerCoaster Tycoon much more manageable.

2 Grand Theft Auto

Controlling A Protagonist From Above Is Difficult

When talking about some of the biggest video game franchises in history, it is impossible not to bring up Grand Theft Auto in that discussion. However, the series wasn't always the varied 3D open-world sandbox it is today.

The first GTA game in the series was released in 1998, so they had to contend with the tech available to create a game on the PS1 or Game Boy. This means that the car chase game was controlled from a top-down perspective. While this art style worked for the console limitations at the time, GTA was hard to control. Enemies would pop up off-screen, and aiming a gun was almost impossible. Thankfully, the PS2 era brought the series into a 3D world that players are more familiar with.

1 Dark Souls

Was The Hardest Game When Released

The original Dark Souls was considered to be one of the hardest video games to ever exist at the time of its release. The dark fantasy RPG required untold patience and reflexes from players to even get close to finishing the main story. Bosses were huge, and generic enemies respawned after players rested at a bonfire to save the game. This led many gamers to assume that the next game in the series would be a lot more difficult. That was not the case.

This happened for two reasons. One reason the subsequent Dark Souls became easier is because players got used to the play style. As such, it became easier to anticipate future bosses' attack patterns and enemy placement. Another reason is that the first Dark Souls game was a big success. This meant that the studio wanted more people to play the next game, so they made things slightly easier for them.

MORE: Best Games With Ambiguous Endings