Not realizing your difficulty settings weren’t what you thought

[StaceyPowers]

Can you usually tell what your difficulty settings are without looking?

I lost patience with a fight in Dragon Age: Veilguard the other night, and checked my difficulty settings, expecting to find they were on standard/normal. I found I’d been playing on “hard” all along. That really surprised me, as I have to play most DA games on casual to get through them. I reduced to “standard” and beat the fight.

[Scorpion]

Sometimes, I can tell my difficulty settings without checking, especially if the game feels too easy or too hard based on enemy strength, resource availability, or challenge level. Other times, I need to double-check to be sure, depending on the game's design.

[killamch89]

This happens to me constantly! I'll spend hours struggling with what I think is normal difficulty, only to discover I've been playing on hard mode the entire time without realizing.