The end goal is engagemet and not difficulty, the issue is that these often become the same thing with turn-based JRPGs because premeditated inputs are the only way a player can interact with the gameplay. Pokemon's developers said in Omega Alpha that they were intentionally trying to make the games easier so that they could compete with mobile apps for kids' attention, and the obvious result is less engaging. The games were always easy, but now they're just boring to play because there isn't even an illusion of struggle or progress.
If I catch a Magikarp and train it up into a Gyarados, I've engaged with the gameplay and been rewarded for it in a way that's intuitive and makes sense in the context of the game's world. If I catch a Magikarp and it immediately turns itself into Gyarados, I've been rewarded without engaging the systems at all and it doesn't feel earned. If anything, I'm mildly irritated by the slight inconvinience of the Magikarp stage existing at all - just skip the charade and save me the 45 seconds. It feels closer to bad QoL than an actual gameplay system at this point.
>>53609970Pretty much this. While DS2 is more "difficult," it accomplishes this through sheer tedium in a way that circumvents engagement. If you copypaste the same basic enemy into every room a dozen times, of course players will quantifiably die with greater frequency - it just isn't fun or engaging. An "easier" game like Elden Ring is more engaging because the player has a wider variety of challenges to face and tools to solve them with - in a way that a turn-based JRPG like Pokemon never could.
