Quote Originally Posted by Goldenboko View Post
Depends on the game, I could understand on Ninja Gaiden II because the game wasn't actually that long (minus the 5 billion death times), and to be fair to that game, you couldn't beat it on Mentor or Master Ninja without first playing the easier modes.
Sure you could. It's more fair for the option to be there at the start. I felt the same way about Ninja Gaiden Black for the Xbox. I was highly irritated that I'd have to play the game on Normal mode, Hard mode, then Very Hard mode, just to unlock Master Ninja mode. It took forever to unlock! Especially considering that I didn't get to play it that often. I really would have appreciated it if I could have started Master Ninja mode from the start. When Halo 2 first came out, I was thrilled to play it on Legendary mode from the start [and I concluded that the first mission in Halo 2 is actually the hardest on that difficulty setting].

And if you're someone that's having way too much difficulty on the highest difficulty setting during your first time playing the game - the chances are, you probably haven't progressed very far into the game, and will not have to go that far back by starting over on a lower difficulty setting, so you aren't losing much time really. And if you are someone that's struggling with that difficulty setting, yet you've progressed pretty far, that may show that while you may be ripping your hair out, you're showing that you can adapt and press onward through that difficulty, and have the ability to make it through.

I will admit though, once I finally unlocked Master Ninja mode, it felt pretty damn sweet, since very few players actually get that far. And it was also quite a nice feeling to finally complete that and actually end up on the top 100 Karma score list. And don't knock me down for making a boast like that, because most of my friends haven't played Ninja Gaiden Black, and this is probably one of the few times that I can actually announce something like that and it'll actually mean something to someone.

I won't even go into how annoying it was to get to 4D difficulty in Star Ocean 3, though it's slightly different for that game since you have to play the other modes as well to get more trophies, and I was dead set on getting 95% [285/300] of the trophies to unlock Full Active Mode.