The Atomic Heart difficulty settings let players choose between Peaceful Atom, Local Malfunction, and Armageddon before they jump into the game. But which of these options should you pick before you head out into its dangerous world?
Which Atomic Heart difficulty options should you pick?
Peaceful Atom is Atomic Heart’s easy difficulty setting, Local Malfunction is Normal, and Armageddon is its hard mode. As such, it is recommended that you pick Local Malfunction to begin your journey.
Local Malfunction is Atomic Heart’s default setting, meaning that this is the expected way to experience the game. However, you can change the in-game difficulty at any point in its menu, meaning that if you want a change of pace you can quickly switch between its easy, normal, and hard modes.
What are the Atomic Heart difficulty settings differences?
In truth, even Atomic Heart’s Peaceful Atom mode presents a challenge. Its enemies are still very spongy — something that is apparent across all difficulty types — but they won’t do as much damage to you as they would in Local Malfunction and Armageddon. This means that combat encounters can still last for a while.
Local Malfunction will see enemies dishing out a moderate amount of damage, while also taking some time to take down. Finally, Armageddon will really test your wits with strong enemies who can both dish out and withstand a ton of damage — this one isn’t for the faint-hearted.