Honestly, the difficulty curve on HZD feels like a sine wave sometimes.

Cuz:

• You do simply get stronger over time
• You also improve your use of tactics over time
• You also gain access to new tactics
• But they introduce much stronger machines too
• But a lot of a machine’s strength can be mitigated by approaching it with the right tactics
• But they also deliberately put you in situations where you can’t use the easy tactics
• But they also put you in situations where you can use the easy tactics, against a ton of very strong machines

So depending on how quickly you hit the skill ceiling on using your available tactics, how much you like to grind, how reliable your multi-tasking is, and your basic “twitch skills”, you might get a skewed perspective at any point along the way.

I don’t think there’s any harm in changing the difficulty back and forth (not sure). So maybe just go with whatever feels comfy at the moment?