RPGs with meaningful difficulty setting

[Vic]

What RPGs have a meaningful difficulty setting that requires you to change up your playstyle on higher difficulty and doesn't simply bloat stats. Unless the gameplay allows it, and stat bloat forces you to switch up your playstyle, like in Grim Dawn, higher difficulty means you have to absolutely dodge everything or you die, where on lower difficulty you can still take hits from area of effect and such while only avoiding the heavy hitters.

[wndrbr]

Pretty much every rpg that features different difficulty settings has one that forces you to change your playstyle. The more important question is whether the hardcore setting is fun or tedious, and whether it still gives you enough leeway for roleplaying or pigeonholes you into specific powergamer builds.

Personally I liked Tactician mode in D:OS. On top of higher enemy stats it also has rearranged encounters, different trap placement, and better AI (aka bots use more abilities).

[Roguey]

The Pillars of Eternity duo changes encounter composition on the different difficult levels, but the best players need the stat-increases of Path of the Damned to get a suitable challenge for their level of skill.

[somerandomdude]

What RPGs have a meaningful difficulty setting that requires you to change up your playstyle on higher difficulty and doesn't simply bloat stats. Unless the gameplay allows it, and stat bloat forces you to switch up your playstyle, like in Grim Dawn, higher difficulty means you have to absolutely dodge everything or you die, where on lower difficulty you can still take hits from area of effect and such while only avoiding the heavy hitters.

The difficulty in Grim Dawn isn't from basic Ultimate difficulty, but from doing the crucible, super bosses, and shattered realms. You might not be able to face tank and spank the super bosses or some of the nemesis mobs on ultimate difficulty, and at some point you're going to hit a wall in shattered realms even if you can face tank and spank every super boss and crush the crucible. Shattered realms gets pretty nutty once you get deep enough, you'll end up running into Iron Maiden + Zantarin + Moose + Fabius + mad queen and a huge pack of champs for your "boss room", and at some point you just bend over and take it in the ass regardless of your build. With that being said, I still think it's a viable way of scaling up difficulty and pushing a player regardless of whether they power game or not. I thought I hit a hard wall in shattered realms, and ended up pushing 8 more floors after some adjustments.

Pretty much any class paired with soldier can be both tanky and do very good DPS. Last time I played Grim Dawn, I ran a double blitz commando (demolitionist + soldier), and it was very tanky, yet also had great mobility with 2 blitz/rush skills. Krieg's set aether melee Death Knight was also pretty solid.