What do Indiana Jones and the Great Circle difficulty options change?

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle difficulty options
(Image credit: Bethesda)

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle difficulty options gives you two areas, action and adventure, where you can tune the difficulties to suit your preferences. The Action option governs basic gameplay, mainly combat and enemy behavior, and has four options from light to very hard. While Adventure covers overall guidance and puzzle difficulties, with two options, light and moderate. It's probably the one main setting that will affect how long Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is overall so here's what that all means.

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle action difficulty

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle difficulty options

(Image credit: Bethesda)
  • Light - Enemies attack in fewer numbers and do less damage.
  • Moderate - Enemies attack in moderate numbers and do average damage.
  • Hard - Enemies deal significant damage and attack in greater numbers.
  • Very Hard - Enemies attack in overwhelming numbers and deal devastating damage.

The key thing with the Indiana Jones Action difficulty setting is that it mostly controls combat and how tough enemies are to deal with. So, as you work you way up the difficulties there will be more enemies, that do more damage and take more hits to go down. They will also spot you more easily or quickly when you're in stealth or a disguise.

From playing the entire game in Moderate I've found there's plenty of challenge at that level. A few enemies at once can give Indy a decent fight, and it feels testing, but fair and fun overall. As far as stealth goes, Moderate is still generous, with plenty of time to get out of sight if you're seen. But the two combined can basically be game over if you're caught in an area with a lot of guards.

Overall, Moderate is not that hard, but it will keep you on your toes. At no point in my 30 or so hours I've played so far have I try anything harder, as it feels like going up another notch would just make things less fun in Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. While making it easy feels like it would just utterly strip the challenge altogether.

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle adventure difficulty

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle adventure difficulty

(Image credit: Bethesda)
  • Light - Story focused, with exploration more guided and puzzles easier to solve.
  • Moderate - The default setting that focuses on a story with moderate challenge. Exploration is not guided and puzzles are more challenging but not really that hard.

The Indiana Jones Adventure difficulty governs the puzzle difficulty and how much help you get while trying to complete them. On Moderate I found most of the puzzles fairly easy, with a little challenge here and there but little to really stop you. A few needed some thought, and occasionally some note taking, but nothing that really held me up. However, if you don't want any friction at all here it's probably best to pick Light.

From playing on Moderate, the objective location markers mostly guide you well enough, although they can often take you to dead ends and locked doors with no help around them. That's in part because some areas are locked off until you complete side objectives - something the game fails to communicate at all. The Indiana Jones A Date to Remember mission, for example, can be found long before you complete the mission that accesses the areas you need to complete it.

If you don't want to occasionally have to try and work out your own routes from the not always helpful maps, maybe go with Light. You can also toggle settings like Objective Location Markers on or off to fine tune things further from your chosen options.

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle accessibility and other settings

There's a host of Indiana Jones accessibility settings in the Great Circle that let you do things like change how powerful Aim Assist is, or how much interactable items light up to help you find them, or the visibility of damage indicators.

You can also adjust font sizes, colour and high contrast modes and toggle a range of controller options to help with aiming, throwing and other core gameplay functions if need assistance.

Once you've got past this and started the game properly, working out where to put the Indiana Jones and the Great Circle museum exhibits will probably be the next thing you'll have to think about.

If you're wondering what's happened to Indiana Jones and the Great Circle on PS5, then it's out in Spring, 2025.

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Leon Hurley
Managing editor for guides

I'm GamesRadar's Managing Editor for guides, which means I run GamesRadar's guides and tips content. I also write reviews, previews and features, largely about horror, action adventure, FPS and open world games. I previously worked on Kotaku, and the Official PlayStation Magazine and website.