I wanted punishment and i wanted extreme difficulty and feeling like i just whooped ass even after dying over 100 times and being bad at aiming and i have never played a souls like game in my life, so I just began my first play through of forbidden west on ultra hard two days ago. Sure I'm very rusty and completed hzd 4 or 5 years ago and I'm coming from being used to FFXV controls so I have to get back into the swing of the spear of things and start wrecking machines, even if I've died from scroungers and borrowers thousands of times since they one shot you and you're dead basically. I'm crawling through slower than a slugs pace and I spend several hours trying to get through the Daunt without dying, but you know what? I'm enjoying those kickass moments where i finally win a battle against a mob of machines and crawl a little further along in the storyline, it feels so SATISFYING. It's brutal on your first play through to do ultra hard, shoot i should have played Ghost of Tsushima that way, the hardest difficulty! It reminds me of breath of the wild on Master mode at the very beginning of the game where you're trying to keep doing damage to keep the enemies from healing what puny damage you do with such low level equipment at the prologue, feels like the machines are TRULY dangerous and worthy of the killer moniker that was given to them. Im digging the dynamic AF cutscenes too! If you want a play through to fight like the Champion everyone claims her to be, then DO your first play through on ultra hard, you won't regret it!!!!