but to me it's really situational, i think it can positively affect the design too depending on your goals, and the common convention of "default settings is the intended experience" can go a long way

if something you can ignore is hurting your experience and emotional fulfillment, one solution is to get better at ignoring it, and i think that's a good solution in particular when the option helps other people enjoy the game more. i do agree it can negatively affect the overall design sometimes

i think it's ultimately good for video games to *end up that way* but things wouldn't be as interesting if they all started like that

if you release an uncompromising modern game, the people will complain, and if you anticipate the complaints by adding in-game options, they will descend into chaos.... hm i think i wouldn't argue "games are better if they let people skip and change stuff freely", more like it's a desirable endpoint

something nice about older console & arcade games is even if the game on original hardware is really uncompromising, you can emulate it and pretty much have free reign in a way that's clearly delineated from "in-game options". with pc games that only happens if like, the game gets a modding scene?

players WILL ruin their experience if you give 'em an inch but i think detailed granular options have a lot of benefits, not just for accessibility but for expert-level play and study. it's probably good that some games are locked down though because that's how people learn "wow dark souls rules"

i guess some of them are like blueish purple and some are more reddish purple. "meh" i say

😏 i'm not sure why you'd mention that game, unless you still believe the widespread myth that link's awakening shares code with it, despite a romhacker reporting that the games work "very differently" internally in 2021. might as well bring up mario or kirby since they also get character cameos

I think you can have a lot of fun making progress in these games even if you don't "1CC" them. When I first got into them, it was really hard to 1CC anything, but getting farther in Dodonpachi was satisfying, because Stages 3 and 4 increase the difficulty and force you to learn new skills.

Go play Dodonpachi on MAME. Its not my favourite one but I like it

sylvie? the woman who can't even clear ketsui?

why is ketsui so hard for me? it's a mere 21 on that cursed wiki