Unpopular(?) opinion: RetroAchievements, while fun at first, can quickly make you hate your favorite game

This has been on my mind for a while now, but I only recently managed to practically cement my opinion: RetroAchievements can (and will) make you hate your favorites. Especially hardcore mode.

Imagine, if you will, achievements for Symphony of the night. One of the most popular Castlevania games, and PS1 games in general. Tons of fans, surely lots of them must have mastered it, right? Nope. Out of the thousands of players, barely 1% did it. And just about every "hard" achievement either has sadistically cruel requirements (i.e. no death, no hit, no items etc.) or artificial difficult that requires sinking hours into grinding and hoping the RNG blesses you with every single item drop an enemy can have.

Neither of these categories are fun. They just ruin the game. And please, spare me from the "practice using save states" argument; if it requires hours of save state practice, hours of trial and error, hours of replaying to get the perfect RNG on enemy patterns or item drops - it's clearly not an enjoyable achievement anymore.

None of the difficult achievements I've suffered through were rewarding in any way, not even the one damageless achievement I managed to get. It was stressful, cortisol level raising, and it just sucked out the fun. If anything, it was just relieving to say "I'm never playing this again", which is something no one should ever have to say when talking about games they love.

All in all, genuine thank you to the developers for the work; I know it must be a difficult job. But I'm sorry, the expectations you set are just impossibly high. I just can't stand the no damage, no death, no items, no hit, no jump, no friends, no bitches, no money, no social life, no food, no goals, no future, no will to live type of achievements anymore.