I don't consider to turn off either Trial of Iron neither Expert Mode on any of my playthrough...

Path of the Damned won't be for my first playthrough, but I could try it on the next ones.

Trial of Iron on the first playthrough? Are you kidding? I have a hard enough time surviving my umpteenth playthrough of BG2 on core rules. I always forget what I have to do to win certain battles until I go trial and error again. So Trial of Iron? No. Trial and Error? YES!

yeah, my main issue in BG was randomly being gimped on hp, especially at early levels where it's so damn crucial.

 

True, each time I got "Hit points gained: 1" (and I got it a lot) it felt really dissatisfying...

 

Another thing I don't like about PE's announced high-difficulty modes, is that apparently they'll hide numerical info of what is going on (dice rolls, ...) which would otherwise be available. I want challenging tactical combat, and at the same time enough fine-grained information to be able to really effectively optimize my party and tactics. This will be especially bad for the first playthrough, when you're not familiar with the combat system yet.

 

If it will be possible to specifically exclude those two aspects, I'll probably activate all difficulty modes except for permadeath on the first playthrough, and see how far I get. (Hm, actually, permadeath on the first playthrough could be pretty fun... we'll see.)

Definitely not. Probably normal mode for me as I learn the gameplay mechanics, then progressively harder on repeat playthroughs. I don't know if I'll ever try iron man mode. I'd probably find it too frustrating.

Not sure honestly. Permadeath is a great feature in games that have randomly generated content (i.e. roguelikes) because you're not really "repeating" anything, but I could see it getting frustrating in a game that's much more linear.

 

On the other hand, it makes gameplay about 10x more intense, which is a massive advantage.

 

We'll see I guess, not sure now. Got 2 years to decide though

I'll be using Man of Straw difficulty first time around and will probably never get to Man of Iron. In my entire life as a gamer, there have been very few times that I've done anything at Hard/Hardest difficulty.

I'll never use Trial of Iron.

 

First playthrough: Hard + Expert

Second: Hard + Expert + Path of the Damned

Yup, I know I'll die often and gruesome... no way I want to replay again and again already my first game.

 

Just... well... want to finish it. If that makes sense

I've been playing Xcom on ironman and having a lot of fun doing that, but in that instance, it's typically only a 5 hours or so that I lose when things go bad compared to a game like PE which I expect will be considerably longer. I'll play ironman at some point, but I'll likely stick with the Normal/Hard and Expert/PathoftheDamned to start with.

I wore out the novelty of no second chances mode back when Diablo 2 came out. I played hardcore mode for a couple years until I got tired of doing everything again because of a server hiccup killing my characters.

Heh. Oh heck no. I will probably have a hard enough time on 'normal' during my first play through.