[email protected] @cereal@shitposter.club @coolboymew@shitposter.club It really depends on the game: In modern Fire Emblem games, Normal mode is generally Easy Mode, and a game like Fire Emblem Awakening is really easy even on Hard if you play it the way its meant to and just really go all in on making a handful of Units (Robin especially) super overpowered. In The Wonderful 101 meanwhile I feel that Easy mode is essentially Normal mode, it's the only game in recent memory I've played on Easy, and that was comparable to playing the Bayonetta games on Normal. Xenoblade 2 and Astral Chain are both really easy on Normal once you gain a decent understanding of their combat systems, but their highest difficulty mode is just a bit too brutal for me, you just get nerfed in so many critical ways while also dealing with stronger enemies. I really wished games like that had a mode between Normal and those highest difficulty settings. Thankfully at least Xenoblade 2 has an option to let you customize the difficulty, which is what I did on my last playthrough. I've also been playing Bravely Default 2 recently, and had to go from Normal to Hard after coming up with a super-strong build for Adelle that really abused Godspeed Strike and just Deleted bosses from existence. Even on Hard, the bosses can't really deal with that build, even without special prep and the other characters just leveling up different Jobs of their own. As a general rule of thumb, if you can only handle a game on Easy, you really lack a fundamental understanding of how the game works, unless the game itself really is that hard (which is very rare nowadays). Twitch streamers also get tons of tips from the chat and their mods as well, so their first playthrough of a game is if anything easier than the first playthrough of most people.