Simple tweaks to a game like increasing hit point pools can make the game difficult in meaningful ways if there is additional depth available in the game. If an enemy has 100 hitpoints instead of 10 hitpoints, you may have to learn to anticipate and successfully dodge attacks instead of just ignoring them. Perhaps, God of War developers could have increased the damage output of the enemies or increased the frequency of their attacks instead of increasing their resilience.<p>However, I agree that I prefer when they add smarter AI rather than just increasing the enemies damage output or increasing the amount of damage they can sustain. In a game like God of War, the depth of the AI in general may be small to begin with, and there may not be much they can do to improve it. I imagine with God of War, the enemies have attack patterns, hit points and damage values for attacks with a very basic AI that begins attacking the player's character once they are within range or sight.<p>Upping the challenge in a game may actually make the game less fun, in that in order to overcome the added challenge, you have to take the game at a slower pace or resort to exploiting deficiencies in game mechanics that diminish the immersion in the game.