Has anyone unintentionally handicapped themselves while playing a game and liked a game more for it?

I'd you're interested in this there is an entire genre of let's plays of Soulsborne games where people put arbitrary limits on their runs like not levelling up, only using consumables etc. Don't think I'd ever do this myself, but I enjoy watching them!

I used to work at place that had a TV with an NES in the break room, with a cartridge of Megaman 2. I was usually the only one who played it, so it would just be paused at wherever I left off. When I was a little kid, it was my favorite game, so I had long since beaten it and understood all of the robots' weaknesses and so forth. So, after easily beating it many times just for grins during breaks from work, I decided to try playing a 1CC run with only the Buster (except where required, like the Crash doors in Wily's castle)
It took me tons of repeated attempts. With each one I would get further, and optimize my path through the game more. Sometimes someone would turn off the console or reset the game inbetween my breaks, forcing me to start over, which was a little frustrating but reasonable to expect in a shared work environment. But eventually, I finally cleared it and felt so dang accomplished! It was a little sad though when it was over, like I had nothing to do on break anymore.
Edit: Whoops I just realized it says "unintentionally" while my handicap was very much an intentional choice

I don’t remember if I did this myself, but I’ve definitely read posts by other doing it: playing FTL and not realizing that you can pause. Makes and hard game even more so!

First time I play an rpg I like to do "no grinding". That's not to say I won't get exp, I will just not go out of my way to take extra battles or whatever.

Forces me to use the options the game is giving me to solve the problems rather than just getting too OP for the enemies.

Dishonored 1, there's an achievement for not killing anyone, not being seen, and not using supernatural powers. I thought they were all one achievement, and did all 3 and it's one of my greatest personal gaming achievements. You have to be very sneaky and very quick, moving carefully along ledges and under tables to weave your way between patrols, it was extremely rewarding. The game is cool enough to provide secret passages and hiding places all over so it never felt like I was cheesing the game or waiting around for a lucky break. Knowing that I overcame the immense undertaking that the story provides with nothing more than my own cleverness and light feet felt amazing.

I did this on my first playthrough of Elden Ring. The first really interesting weapon I found was Reduvia, and I leaned into it hard. Now after hundreds of hours in the game with multiple characters I understand choosing a dagger for my main weapon as a newbie was WAY harder than almost anything else I might have picked. No regrets though, I sliced Elden Beast up with that dagger (well mostly the mimic, but I helped).

Not quite on the handicap end but not using fast travel in Bethesda games (and some other games that have it) is a big 'mix up' for me that ends up showing you a lot more of the world.

That said, some games have fast travel included and basically require it and make it painful to play without but I think Bethesda did a good job with adding random events, even if they can repeat sometimes regularly.

some of the most fun ive had in a game was doing ironman accounts on oldschool runescape. it works a little differently to the ironman you described. if you're an ironman account you cannot trade with other players, you cannot use the auctionhouse (grand exchange), you cant pick up loot from monsters other people have damaged, you have to do everything from scratch.

it was mostly a gimmick for me at first but i quickly realised that it was forcing me to actively learn about the game. instead of just doing the most optimal/prifitable things - i was actually reading the wiki and venturing into "dead content" because it had some convenient things in the middle of nowhere and miles away from a bank. so regular players would basically have no incentive to earnestly use that area because there's a bajillion more efficient or time saving spots.

but just having the restriction of not being able to trade changes the economics of things since now you cant collect things to sell, you have to collect them to use them. and you also have to make all of the items required for quests instead of just buying them from other players. which again forces you to experience more "dead content" areas of the game

and on top of that, there's other ironman types with one kind of like the ironman you described. hardcore ironmen have 1 life and if they die outside of a safe minigame or quest that forces you to die - they get turned into a regular ironman and their highscore ranking gets frozen. this can sometimes make otherwise mundane things absolutely frightening (lapse in concentration during easy bosses or even just getting poisoned unexpectedly)

my personal favourite one is the version where you dont even get to have a bank. the only thing you've got is your iventory. imagine playing minecraft without the use of chests. it forces you to think about the game in a vastly different way and suddenly even more obscure bits of content become life saving.

that said, because of the added complexity, every time i stop playing for a few months and then come back - i wind up being utterly clueless as to what state my account was in, or what i was in the middle of. or having decision paralysis bc im between two equally far off milestones which require vastly different paths and have different opportunities along the way. it is a lot of fun to figure out a path through and insanely satisfying once you reach a milestone because of ur perseverence

There's only been one time (that I know of) where I unintentionally handicapped myself, and that was in the original Dead Space.

For some inexplicable reason, I didn't realize that there were breakable crates scattered throughout the levels that had extra ammo in them. It's been a while, but I seen to recall that they just sort of blended into the environment, so it didn't register to me that they were breakable. The consequence of that oversight meant that, by and large, the only ammo I could get for my weapons was the ammo dropped by slain enemies.

Each necromorph dropped something like 3 or 4 bullets as loot, but it took 3 or 4 bullets to kill them. I was constantly on the verge of running out of ammo. The tension of every gunfight was cranked up to 11 as I had to make sure each and every shot was used as efficiently as possible. I remember you could dismember the necromorphs, so I'd try and dismember them just enough so that I could rush in and finish them with a melee. If I missed a shot, I might as well reload a checkpoint.

The game already had an effective horror atmosphere, but the stress of managing my cripplingly low inventory made it actually terrifying. I had to be hyper alert for any jump scare, lest an enemy get the drop on me and I miss a shot. Every multi-enemy firefight was basically running around these tiny hallways trying to give myself enough time to line up a shot.

It was probably the most anxiety inducing game I've ever played, and it made the experience 100% more enjoyable for it. Once I discovered the crates were breakable with ammo in them, nearly all of the worry dissipated (and all of the fear by extension). After that it just melted back into a regular shooting-monsters game.

10/10, would recommend.

A little different from the rest of the examples in here, but I played Assassin's Creed 3 with the entire HUD turned off, including the minimap. The game is not quite designed to be played without a minimap — the streets in the cities are a little too samey — but it's surprisingly doable as I memorized some of the routes and relatively frequent checking of the full map. It was really enjoyable, especially the parts in the wilderness (which were much more easily differentiable) as I had to pay attention to my surroundings at all times.

I've tried this with some subsequent games and it doesn't work out nearly as well. Spaces that are 100% busy urban without street names make it very difficult to get around.

All the time. Games these days have so many interesting mechanics, and it's sad to me to watch people just smash one button because they found out that would work well enough.

I started doing it as a kid. One summer I decided to beat Megaman X over and over, but it got to the point where I was getting bored with it because it was too easy, so i made things harder. No using weakness, less armor, no armor, no heart tanks, no subtanks, etc.

It's a great way to up difficulty in interesting ways for games that either don't have difficulty options, or have boring ones (oh yay it takes 10x as long to kill everything).

I went for the "one gun" achievement in dead space back in the day. You have to beat the game using only the initial plasma cutter. It was actually a lot of fun as it made you far less capable and upped the fear factor even more.

I sorta did this with Prey. Prey has a psychic power level up system where you get to pick between aggressive "alien" powers or more "human" powers. It's been a while so I can't remember specifics about it. If you lean more into alien powers then the security system for the space station you're on will start thinking you're an alien and eventually start attacking you. I didn't pick any alien powers during my playthrough because I assumed the powers wouldn't be worth dealing with the security system. Well after finishing the game I found out that that is very much not the case and the game is actually balanced around using a combination of the powers. There's even a special ending you get when you don't take any alien powers.

Not sure if this counts as unintentional, but when I was a kid, I owned mortal kombat for nintendo ds and my shoulder buttons were broken.

So I had to beat the whole game without being able to block.

I only do stamina ups in BotW and TotK.

Paper Mario and TTYD are more fun when you do BP only. Shame they cap it to 30 in the first one.

Draft runs are fun in Fire Emblem games - draft the whole cast out with a group of people and then only use those characters. Means you can't cheese it with just that game's flavor of OP units.

I've done the old 3-heart zelda playthroughs for wind waker and twilight princess, and started majora's mask after that but didn't finish. It's honestly not too bad with that era of 3D zelda. In particular I think TP was rather easier than WW, but it might've been because of doing WW first. It's the kind of thing I always imagined would be tremendously difficult, but it's not actually all that bad.

Not me, but the story of this fellow who didn’t realise that Tears of the Kingdom would give you a paraglider and beat the temples without one comes to mind.

I always RP in (real) RPGs. Would my character exploit this loophole I, the player, know about and don't suffer through? (E.g. I perceive crafting a thing as instant, the character—as maybe 15 minutes of boring and maybe painful work.) No, they would certainly not. So it ain't happening.

Yeah I used to play most WW2 shooters with nothing but a pistol. It was great.

I don't really handicap myself but in RPGs I often only spend my level up skill points/perks etc when I really need them. So if I for instance encounter a locked door and need to level up picklock or if I have failed a boss fight then I have a pool of skill point to use for my second attempt.

I once played through the original Halo using only melee attacks except on the flood.

It was pretty much the only game I had at the time, so I played it a lot and ended up trying a lot of different things to change up the game.

For some reason I assumed that you couldn't run in Donkey Kong Country Returns. I didn't realize that you could until I think the 4th world. I don't know if it made me enjoy the game more as it made an already difficult game even harder. However, walking through the first part of the game caused me to develop some skills that made the rest of it much easier. Or at least it made the remaining challenges feel more doable.

Edit: just noticed the title said "unintentionally made a game harder", my mistake. Though I did end up making Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire harder on myself: I only trained my starters back then, which ALWAYS makes rival battles hellish. And then I chose Torchic for Sapphire, where the villain is a water-specialist team. And in Ruby with the fire-specialist team? I figured "Hey, I haven't seen how Treecko evolves yet so let's go with that!" Looking back, I am amazed I beat Sapphire. Don't think I ever beat Ruby.

A famous one in Pokémon is Nuzlocke, which I've never tried with the full ruleset. But it did inspire a challenge of my own: only use Pokémon that feature the color of the version. It can be as small as a single pixel, and you can use any Pokémon in that line if the color isn't part of it from the start. So for example, Sableye is valid for Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald because it has all three gems on its back sprite, and you can use Psyduck in Blue because its evolution Golduck is blue.

I tried it with Emerald with the fainting rule from Nuzlocke challenges, and failed when I reached Flannery. There just aren't many Pokémon available in Emerald that use green and aren't grass-type, especially by then. Just did a quick count, looks like there's only 4 by that point that aren't grass or bug type (Sableye, Ralts, Electrike and Numel). Before then I'd altered the rules for myself to also allow Pokémon with primarily yellow coloring, because that was Rayquaza's accent color and I was just running out of Pokémon dangit. My friend tried the challenge with Sapphire or Ruby and had a way easier time, and I plan to do it again eventually when I get around to playing Alpha Sapphire.

If anyone wants to try it, here are some color breakdowns I came up with for the other versions:

• All shades of Yellow for Gold/HeartGold, and Gray/White for Silver/SoulSilver (tip: Meganium counts since the petals are trimmed in white)
• White/Pink/Purple for Pearl, Blue/White for Diamond, Gray/White/Yellow for Platinum
• With Black/White: eyes, teeth and claws don't count. Shadows also don't count, so no Cryogonal or Klink line for Black. White-adjacent and black-adjacent colors DO count when it's basically "stylistic coloring". E.g. Vullaby's egg shell and Throh's gi are basically white, Rufflet's dark feathers and Herdier are black.
• X/Y are just blue and red. Same with Sword/Shield
• Orange/Yellow for Sun, Blue/Purple for Moon. Same for the ultra versions

As some other general rules: You can't count white or black if it's in eyes, claws or teeth, though spikes are fine (so Lucario and Riolu for all Sinnoh games!). You CAN count other colors for those parts though, so Umbreon counts for red and Jigglypuff counts for blue. The "stylistic navy representing black" such as Stoutland, Sneasel and Snorlax doesn't count as blue. The insides of mouths also typically don't count for red and pink, though the inside of ears are okay like Marill.

I wouldn't say I liked it more but I'm def more proud of myself. When I first played Cuphead I thought the items were one time use and thought, "Eh, why bother I'm going to lose it anyway." Made it to the dragon before realizing. It was kinda a rage game already so I wouldn't say my experience was really any different but I do get a little bit giddy when I tell people I beat the dragon without the lobber.

I don’t know why if this had qualified since I don’t know if it made me enjoy the game more but I accidentally finished an entirety of a CRPG game, called Encased, without any party members. A lone wolf.

It was my first time playing the game, knew nothing about it before hand and had played other CRPG games like Tyranny and Pillars of Eternity. I made my character to be socially inept that I genuinely thought that this game had a unique twist of the usual CRPG that you have to rely on your own character skills only to get through the game. I was over halfway through the game, effectively making use of stealth and traps or avoiding fights all together to go through the games. Solo. No companions. Only then I realise that the game expected me to have at least one other person. But by then I have zero in charisma and cannot get anyone else to join me.

At least I gotten the lone wolf achievement that (afaik) had less then 1% of people got. Again I don’t know if I had enjoyed the game more, but I certainly finished it.

In Ghost of Tsushima, I played through the whole game in the first set of armor. (Except for maybe the final boss battle which was a little BS in terms of difficulty). It felt way more fun to play as Ghost, a glass cannon who will rip up your 100th camp without a single scratch on him rather than a tank who weathers a zillion arrows, and still keeps going.

For "unintentionally" handicapping myself, I think the only one I've got is my first play through of Skyrim, where I finished both the main questline and the civil war quest ("Skyrim for the Nords!") without ever once using the fast travel mechanism.

I didn't even know it was possible until I went into the world map and accidentally clicked on Winterhold, only to find myself there sans interminable walk.

When I was young and played New Super Mario Bros multiplayer with my brother, I intentionally let him get the big stars so I’d get Mega Mushrooms and then stomp him with that.

(For anyone not aware, the multiplayer has the same platforming as the single-player game, but the maps wrap around and coins/enemies respawn. There are also big stars, not the power-up stars, and you win after collecting a certain number but you lose one when damaged or the other player attacks you. Every 8 coins you collect you a power-up spawns above your head, and the power-ups are better the less stars you have and the more stars the other player has. So, instead of playing to win, I played to get power-ups and attack the opponent)

Later in super smash bros, I handicapped myself to give my brothers a better chance of winning. So it evens out, sort of…

I've played Tony Hawk 3 so many times that I would put arbitrary limits on myself. The one that I remember most is in the Airport stage. I would start a combo at the beginning of the stage and end it by getting all ten flags, thus meeting that achievement as well as all of the high scores. If I failed the combo at any point, I would restart the level. I always felt very satisfied when I could hit it completely!

I played through all of Shadows of Mordor with the UI completely off.

Not seeing the big "PARRY NOW" "YOU HAVE TO DODGE" glowing indicators made combat feel so much more fun. Rather then basically mashing attack and then reacting to big icons, you really have to watch the orcs around you and learn their attacks.

I'd highly recommend it. I tried to do the same with God of War but it didn't really work as well for whatever reason.

Pokemon Moon- but not a Nuzlocke, I played with only a Rowlet (no evolution.)

Every battle had to be planned carefully. What items to use, what moveset to use, etc. For the champion fight I had to teach Rowlet Steel Wing, for example, and pray for a defense rise after KOing the first Pokemon so when the Fire-type comes out, I can barely survive the fire Z-move (with appropriate leveling and an Eviolite).

It was fun, and because I could just retry at will unlike a Nuzlocke, it wasn't an immense time dedication as you'd think.

I do nuzlocke challenges with the recent pokemon games since they're easy, often with monotype themes. Of course there are exceptions- Legends Arceus had a banger boss fight with Volo, and the "unusual" method for battling made it stressful.

Anyway, with a nuzlocke, you need to plan your strategies and money. It's fun once you get attached to your team. Grinding in the newer games thankfully doesn't take as much time anymore.

I used to play Counter strike and I never bothered to abuse mechanics like shooting pixel gaps, pre-firing corners, etc. I feel these strategies were cheesy and dishonorable. I loved the game and in public servers I was still good enough to regularly be accused of cheating. I got destroyed competitively though.

In BF2 and 2042 there were private hardcore servers that removed your HUD so the only way to get crosshairs was to ADS, I had friends that would play with me that used a piece of tape and sharpie to add a crosshair but I enjoyed the challenge. One particular set of servers also required mic and enforced chain of command it was the most fun I had in a Arcade Military Shooter. I really miss the commander position in BF (not the shit tablet version either)

A lot of games recent have had a mechanic like this built in. Just....games that make the game harder. Gunfire reborn and crab champions both come to mind. I'm not really a fan personally. I play so many games, I tend to not attach to one for long enough to want to challenge myself with it before finding a new game.

Baldur's gate seems like it's gonna be a really good game to have challenging runs.

When I first played elden ring I chose the wretch as my start, meaning I started with no weapons or armor.
I didn't really pick it to make the gamer harder, I just thought it would be funny, and it honestly did not make the game much harder (which is kinda funny considering that it was my first souls game)

I'm playing Flight Simulator 2020 and doing a grand tour of Europe in a Cessna 152 without GPS.

So Its all maps/airspace pdf's and triangulation of my position based on radio signals.
And thus far it has been a blast!

But I never expected it to be so much of a hassle flying around without GPS ... in a really slow airplane

I played both BoTW and ToTK naked from the start - this started in BoTW when I opened the first couple chests, put the clothes on, went "nah these suck", took them off - then missed the first tree branch and kited a stalkoblin into the mud and grabbed its arm to clown on the rest of them. This kinda set the tone for my game and I didn't wear any clothes for the rest of it. I carried that joke on into ToTK and played naked there as well (though slightly less so as there's a more significant number of NPCs that just won't talk to you if you won't put clothes on).

Not exactly the same as it's not 'accidental', but playing the bethesda games on hard-core really gives a very different (and imo better) experience.