Was Cuphead as hard as a FromSoftware game for those of you who played it?

[ScOULaris]

On the eve of the long-awaited release of The Delicious Last Course, I've been reading through some threads here and elsewhere about the base game. Cuphead is no doubt one of the biggest indie-game success stories ever, and IMO its success has been wholly deserved. The two things that seem to always come up when pretty much anyone discusses Cuphead are its gorgeous art/animation and its challenge level.



Even the opening tutorial can trip up some players, as hard as that is to believe. ;)

What has surprised me to see in more recent discussions about the game on game enthusiast forums like ERA is how many people claim that they never finished it due to its difficulty. Now I know that forums like these also house plenty of diehard FromSoft fans, and we all know what their games are like in terms of brutal challenge. So I'm curious: do those of you who've played Cuphead find it to be on par with a FromSoft game in terms of difficulty?

I personally don't think it's even close, but I notoriously struggle a bit more with the Dark Souls games than most hardcore fans do. In fact, Sekiro is the only FromSoft game that I've ever completed, and I personally think that it's the most manageable game they've ever made in terms of challenge due to its more streamlined design.

So I'm curious to hear both perspective here to try and figure out what makes Cuphead, specifically, so difficult for some people while not all that bad for others. I want to actually get down to the nitty gritty of the the game's design to try and isolate what certain types of players really struggle with despite excelling in other challenge-driven games.

 

[JoJo'sDentCo]

Isn't Cuphead harder?

 

[Morrigan]

Cuphead is wayyyyyyyy harder than From games. I could barely beat the first few levels and didn't get very far.

Cuphead requires action skills and reflexes that I simply don't have. From games don't do that, they just mostly require patience.

 

[vixolus]

imo the run n gun levels were the most frustrating/difficult. The bosses weren't terribly hard, but definitely took numerous tries.

rn I'm fucking fighting for my life in lower undead burg in Dark Souls 1 😭

 

[Ravelle]

From Software games aren't hard.

You can level up and destroy bosses, pick your own playstyle - take a different route - come back later etc.
Cuphead is basically hitting your head against a wall until you can dream the boss battle and beat it, also woudn't call it "hard" per se. It just takes a lot of time and practicice. It does require endurance, patience, precision and skill.

 

[nsilvias]

its harder because you cant grind your way out of it. also the easy mode is useless troll shit

 

[Imur]

Can't answer, since "way harder" isn't an option.

 

[sandman42]

Harder for me. Both games are about pattern recognition, but FromSoft games are more about patience while Cuphead is more reliant on twitch reflexes and timing.

 

[Rhaknar]

it's pretty hard yeah.

 

[Caiusto]

Nah, I don't think so. Cuphead is very challenging, but you never loses anything when you dies, you just need to go there and try again, learning a bit more about the bosses each time. With FromSoftware's games you not only loses your progress (which depending on when you last went to a bonfire it can be a lot) but your souls too, not to mention that every corner of the game is dangerous lol

 

[Pancho]

Cuphead is way harder. From's games difficulty has always been blown way out of proportion.

 

[fracas]

It's harder because there's no way to grind around it - you simply have to learn the bosses and outplay them mechanically. No way to boost your stats or find higher-level gear.

Cuphead is also in a different league design-wise compared to anything FROM has done but that's another topic 👀

 

[The Albatross]

Yes, IMO, it was harder. I'm bad at pretty much all games these days. FROMSoftware games don't require the precise maneuvers, but I'm able to eventually get through areas and defeat baddies. With Cuphead, I had to give it up, I just don't think I'd ever have that ability and the time/effort it took me to get that ability wasn't fun for me. With a typical FROM Software game, it's really not about dexterity for me, and I can eventually get gear or experience that can even out a big battle for me.

In a different age I'd probably have the patience, pattern matching, and execution to get through a Cuphead boss battle, but not at this stage of my life.

 

[Novocaine]

I found Cuphead to be harder.

 

[entremet]

I found Cuphead easier than DSIII myself. I had way more of a hard time with Midir, that damn nun with the Scythe, etc.

Remember, the hardest bosses in FROM games is the camera at times lol.

 

[Faceless_Caesar]

It's a game that is incredibly difficult but like any other really hard game like those from FromSoft or Konami's works from the '90s that inspired Cuphead's gameplay, it can be learned. You just have to commit and really learn the game by playing it over and over again. If you don't have the dexterity or patience you can buy it on PC and use a tool like Cheat Engine to tilt the scales in your favor.

 

[RadzPrower]

It ultimately depends on what you're personally good at. I haven't played a single FromSoft game, so I'm sure they'd be much harder for me than Cuphead which is a platformer...a genre I have extensive experience in and would probably be my primary genre.

 

[BassForever]

I think it depends upon your skill set, my 14 year old sister beat Cuphead by herself on the normal difficulty but really struggled to beat the first boss on Dark Souls and gave up on the game.

 

[Grisby]

King Dice can burn in a fire. The devil was a pushover compared to him.

 

[Necromanti]

No, I'd say Cuphead is a bit harder. It forces you to "git gud" with no way to modulate the difficulty. You can lower the difficulty, but at the expense of making progress.

 

[Crossing Eden]

What do you mean? That game was harder than Souls games. 😅

 

[El Crono]

There's a similarity in the way death equals knowledge, but nowhere near as challenging as any Souls game.

 

[Calamari41]

I'd say its on the same level in different ways, sure. Fromsoft games require a lot more reflexes and bosses are reliant on momentum, whereas Cuphead is more about precision and pattern recognition.

Both games obviously require all four of the things I mentioned, but they're weighted differently.

 

[dedge]

It's closest to Sekiro where you meet the skill check or you don't. Other From souls games you can always just grind.

 

[Saladin]

Very VERY challenging, yes. But to me its nowhere the struggle I struggled with FS games

This is an interesting thread and the answers will be interesting too

 

[Pancracio17]

Cuphead is harder, but also shorter and some people struggle way less with 2D games than 3D ones.

 

[hydruxo]

Harder. Cuphead requires a lot more precise timing and skill IMO. Souls games have a lot more ways to overcome difficulty.

 

[Tsumami]

Cuphead is harder because it requires more mechanical skill and dexterity. From games more require patience and pattern recognition. You can also level grind, but in Cuphead you can't do anything other than get better.

 

[digitalrelic]

From Software games aren't hard.

You can level up and destroy bosses, pick your own playstyle - take a different route - come back later etc.
Cuphead is basically hitting your head against a wall until you can dream the boss battle and beat it, also woudn't call it "hard" per se. It just takes a lot of time and practicice. It does require endurance, patience, precision and skill.

Click to shrink...

If something that requires "a lot of time, practice, endurance, patience, precision, and skill" to play through isn't "hard" according to you, how the hell do you define "hard" lol

 

[Shopolic]

Cuphead was so hard, but compared to FromSoftware games... It was much easier than those games for me, not even comparable.

 

[Revolver_Ocelot]

Cuphead you literally have to "get gud". From games can often be cheesed along the way, or you can grind along to get more powerful.

 

[entremet]

FROM games are hard. Come on, folks. Are we still being blinded by our years of playing them. Go to the Steam forums on Elden Ring, which attracted many new gamers to FROM's formula. People were having a hard time.

Tired of these FS games are not hard takes lol.

 

[Mad Gamer 64]

No. I find From games more difficult by a mile. But I also don't really play them much and I've never found a post-Demon's Souls one that I actually liked enough to get better at.

Cuphead really wasn't that hard to me. I kinda breezed through it and then unlocked all the extra stuff like the color filters without much issue. The S-Ranks were really rewarding to go for too.

 

[Lumination]

Cuphead is harder because it is faster and there's way more going on on the screen at one time. And you get 3 hits, mostly no healing.

 

[YozoraNoctis]

Cuphead you literally have to "get gud". From games can often be cheesed along the way, or you can grind along to get more powerful.

Click to shrink...

Pretty much this, you have no choice but to "get gud" in Cuphead. All From Soft games besides Sekiro can be trivialized through grinding.

 

[Arithmetician]

It was definitely harder than any From game for me. But I'm just not very good at 2d side scrollers, whereas I'm ok with third person games.

 

[Dyle]

They're predominantly different kinds of challenges and will be different for different people. Cuphead's are very mechanically demanding, but are mostly short and limited in terms of pure depth by the relatively narrow field of potential patterns to dodge and the narrow field of strategies to use to counter them, while the challenges in Fromsoft games are longer, less mechanical, and more knowledge-based with a far wider variety of things to counter and things to counter them with.

 

[entremet]

No. I find From games more difficult by a mile. But I also don't really play them much and I've never found a post-Demon's Souls one that I actually liked enough to get better at.

Cuphead really wasn't that hard to me. I kinda breezed through it and then unlocked all the extra stuff like the color filters without much issue. The S-Ranks were really rewarding to go for too.

Click to shrink...

Same, it was challenging, but i found FS games harder. I guess my NES instincts helped lol.

Also FS games have crazy loading times, which makes boss retries very annoying. Cuphead retries are instanteous. That makes a huge difference. And forget about the annoying boss runs in the older FS games.

 

[Raigor]

FS games are not hard

Cuphead is much harder.

 

[NeverWas]

Cuphead was way harder than any From Software game for me.

 

[CerealKi11a]

Poll results surprise me honestly. Cuphead was tough but when you lost, you could just restart the boss. I've always found From's games more punishing which always pushed me away.

 

[Ravelle]

If something that requires "a lot of time, practice, endurance, patience, precision, and skill" to play through isn't "hard" according to you, how the hell do you define "hard" lol

Click to shrink...

Challenging or something haha, I was trying to think of a good way to word it but had a rough time trying to compare the two different ways of hard, I wasn't thinking "man, this game is hard" when playing Cuphead. I usually give that to games are are unforgiving in a way.

 

[Ocean Bones]

It's much more difficult than souls games.

 

[solidr]

From software invented videogames 🤯🤯🤯

 

[ScOULaris]

Poll results surprise me honestly. Cuphead was tough but when you lost, you could just restart the boss. I've always found From's games more punishing which always pushed me away.

Click to shrink...

Same here. I have a really hard time empathizing with the results so far. To me Cuphead is just so, so much more accessible than the average FromSoft game. But maybe it's because I just outright refuse to grind in games, and everyone keeps saying that the ability to do so is what makes Dark Souls games "easier" by comparison.

That's why I could beat Sekiro but not any of the Souls games. Grinding and accidentally disadvantageous builds were removed from the equation, so I could finally just tackle the game's many boss fights within the balanced parameters that the game designers set. It also helps that I just flat-out liked Sekiro more than their other games thanks to its snappier combat and Shinobi trappings.

But for my particular gaming skillset it's just the opposite, I guess. Pretty interesting how that works.

 

[digitalrelic]

Challenging or something haha, I was trying to think of a good way to word it but had a rough time trying to compare the two different ways of hard, I wasn't thinking "man, this game is hard" when playing Cuphead. I usually give that to games are are unforgiving in a way.

Click to shrink...

It's alright, we can call games hard lol.

Cuphead is fucking hard. If Cuphead isn't hard, then no game is hard.

 

[Nola]

Harder

People complain about Fromsoft too much imo.

Their Souls/Borne games(minus Sekiro to some extent) are able to have the difficulty adjusted in-game through: Builds, grinding, Co-op, Summons. And Elden Ring now even has ways to let you basically just reload at the boss indefinitely. So the punishing aspect of losing and having to trek all the way back to a boss is largely eradicated.

Games like Cuphead, you truly do just have "git gud"

 

[zero_fm]

Difficulty is not something comparable in absolute terms. Cuphead and From games are certainly hard af, but in a different way

 

[digitalrelic]

Same here. I have a really hard time empathizing with the results so far. To me Cuphead is just so, so much more accessible than the average FromSoft game. But maybe it's because I just outright refuse to grind in games, and everyone keeps saying that the ability to do so is what makes Dark Souls games "easier" by comparison.

But for my particular gaming skillset it's just the opposite, I guess. Pretty interesting how that works.

Click to shrink...

I mean, yeah, this.

Any game is going to be hard (if not outright impossible) if you have a severely underleveled character going against enemies that you're not supposed to be facing yet.

 

[J_ToSaveTheDay]

No, it was harder.

FromSoft is definitely more challenging than the average game but it's got nothing on 80's and 90's inspired arcade game design IMO.