And that’s what difficulty settings are for. If you just want to explore the story, puzzles, and some action, set it to easy. Or maybe they could have a “dynamic” option, which adapts to your ability if easy is too easy.

I want a consistent, challenging experience. Often “hard” is less fun than “normal” because it often pumps the HP of enemies, limits my resources, and allows the AI to cheat a little, which might be fun for a second playthrough, but not a first playthrough. I want a consistent experience as the devs designed it, and if that means I need to replay a segment a dozen times because I’m just not getting it, I’m fine with that, as long as I know it’s fair. Perhaps after a few tries it should ask me if I want to switch it to easy, but it shouldn’t automatically switch it.

I want a consistent, fair difficulty, and I’m happy to disable a difficulty scaling option in the settings to get it (ideally it would be an option at the start though).