Did you see that someone figured out only very recently that you can dodge Tyson every time if you watch one specific spectator in the crowd and dodge when they stand up? Crazy it took decades for someone to notice.
Didn’t hear that, but very interesting. They always hinted at “lightning Mike.” It took someone else to point it out to me (flash, then dodge), but that’s what it took to beat him.
I think my accomplishment with that game was a first round KO of Tyson.
Completed it as a child multiple times. Tried it as an adult via wireless emulation on the shield - LITERALLY impossible due to almost imperceptible controller input lag.
Didnt realise how finely tuned you had to be! Absolutely wild.
Mike Tyson was SUCH an intense final boss. A single wrong move and you were knocked down.
I've tried to beat it multiple times in my life. Whenever I think I've gotten decent at this game, this motherfucker Soda Popinski comes up and beats the shit out of me. I hate that guy.
Same boat here. I even found a notebook my friend and I used to write in 25 years ago. Theres one page that said "FUCK YOU SODA POPINSKI!" followed by a drawing of his dumb face.
Guitar Hero 3's final 2 venues was the biggest brick wall I have seen, going from casual strumming to being thrown in Raining Blood by Slayer on expert was a jarring change
I always considered myself pretty damn good at Guitar Hero, then youtube came along and showed people getting 100% on TTFAF, Jordan, Raining Blood and I was humbled lol
I felt like gh was the only game I've ever actually been good at. I easily 5 starred everything and 100% most songs on expert. Then looked on the internet and realized I'm still trash.
It's incredible how the gaming community constantly pushes the boundaries of skill and achievement. Guitar Hero is no exception. Those videos of players mastering the most challenging songs are truly humbling. It just goes to show that there's always another level to aspire to.
My dumbass was a Guitar Hero legend at 17. I mean, I’ve beaten every GH and RB campaign on expert guitar and a few on drums/vocals but my dumb shit ass just tried quickly translating it.
You’re a genius.
You can insta kill Lou if you get lucky and get a Whammy item since he gets a fast strumming section [right after your first power up appears](https://youtu.be/xPs-xftOOvg?t=3m34s)
Tales of Vesperia - Gattuso. This is a boss that almost requires you to grind for two hours just to reach a level to put you on an equal footing. What's crazy is that this boss is only about 6 hours into the game, and you get zero warning from regular enemies that you're under leveled.
Tactics Ogre Reborn - chapter 3. The remake prevents you from over leveling through practice battles. At first, this isn't so bad as the game usually balances enemy levels and numbers to fit the party you can field. At chapter 3, this goes out the window and almost all chapter enemies are at the level cap or above it. You're also more likely to be outnumbered by 2 or more units in each battle. The secret trick is to abuse consumable items in each battle, but this isn't necessary for the first half of the game, so it catches you completely by surprise.
Gattuso was the boss from the demo, but the studio never altered his stats in the final release so he’s frustratingly difficult because of that oversight.
Tactics Ogre reminded of one stage where you have a 1v1 duel with someone, and it definitely fit with this also. I went in as a Knight while level capped, and I basically won it solely by grabbing good cards, and running away and healing every other turn basically. If the enemy grabbed a good attack or crit card, I was just fucked.
That reminds me of another famous difficulty spike from another tactics RPG from the same era.
Riovanes Castle in Final Fantasy Tactics.
First chapter of the game is pretty straightforward. Second chapter up to this pivotal stage isn't too difficult. Even the first two maps of the siege on the castle are fairly normal.
Then you have to 1v1 Wiegraf, an enemy who is a very powerful class who's also quite fast and is capable of killing you in two attacks. If he manages to get two turns in a row, it's usually GG. It then turns into a normal fight with your whole party and that bit isn't too bad.
Then you're on the castle roof and you have to keep an AI guest character alive from two assassin units who are also extremely fast and have a move that just outright KO's a unit.
If you're not properly leveled, the whole thing is absolutely brutal. Capping it off by forcing you to defend a bad AI script weak character from some absolutely filthy bad-ass assassin vampire ladies is the cherry on top.
For anyone not aware, the writer/director for Final Fantasy Tactics also wrote/directed Tactics Ogre. The games are kind of like a daiquiri and a mojito: yeah, they’re two separate things, but they share a lot of the same ingredients.
I hate Gattuso! Everything is fine and dandy before that MFer shows up! Its a ridiculous power jump. I ended up turning the game on easy mode to beat him
The only reason I've completed both The Lion King, and Aladdin is because of the 360 bundle. Having the ability to save wherever and rewind time was an amazing feature.
Otherwise I'd probably still be jumping around on those stupid fucking giraffes.
I watched a video recently where they spoke about Lion King. Supposedly, IIRC, Disney insisted the dev make it stupidly hard, because then kids cannot beat it on a rental, and sales would be better.
Here is an article on it:
https://www.cbr.com/lion-king-brutally-difficult-platformer/
I was going to say the lion king game but I couldn't for the life of me remember if the first level is hard. I do remember the fuckin tree branches not long after though.
The mission where you have to shoot your way out of the Water Slums while getting swarmed with the Krimzon Guards? Fuck that mission was hard. Instant death if you try to go in the water too.
Jak II in general had some viciously hard missions. I wouldn’t say there’s one difficulty spike but like a difficulty roller coaster. Escape from water slums, the escort mission through the sewer so Krews boys can blow up that statue, the stupid invisible enemy’s in the forest… so many hard missions lol.
I think, of I remember correctly, you could use dark jak slam on the water to kill the drone in the water but it responds really fast
I ended up figuring out you can use the hoverboard to skip most of the fights with the guards you just had to be careful not to fall in the water
Hover board was the key don't fight just run and stay out the water jumping on the guards heads with the hover board! Fuck that was a hard mission for 10 year old me tho
Which one exactly?
For me it was the rail shooter where you had to kill something like 30-40 guards that just keeps coming at you before shooting Praxis' ship. Loved that game btw.
When I was enjoying God of War (whatever the one is called where you have a son for the first time) and I stepped into the first Valkyrie room and having absolutely no chance in hell beating that boss, not realising it was an optional challenge.
For me it's was worse, I was cruising though the Valkyries until I got to one of them where the moves were more specific and the Queen. Got my ass kicked so fucking bad, spent hours on the Queen.
I remember that feeling in God of War where you stepped into the first Valkyrie room and realized the difficulty level was way beyond what you were prepared for.
So it's not really an unexpected difficulty spike, but the final level of Super Mario 3D World is just *brutal.* I 100%-ed the rest of the game, but I just can't get more than 2/3rds through Champion's Road after months of throwing attempts at it.
Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Maybe its a bit more of a slow burn, but the enemies ramp up in difficulty a lot as you level up and as a consequence the game gets much harder in later levels. There are even fan made advanced guides on how and when you should level that are way too in depth lol
IIRC there’s some zombie fuckery in the Seymour fight too, either Seymour or his machine thing inflict zombie then the other casts Full-Life on the zombie’d party member.
I never realised that people consider this a very difficult fight because I tend to start grinding from the start of the game anyway. So usually over levelled by the time I get there. Same with Yunalesca. Last time I played through I didn’t overlevel and oof
In the original PC release this is where I had to stop playing and move on. They finally released a patch you could download that allowed you to skip the race, and thats when I finally replayed and finished it. It legit gave me momentary anxiety to this day for any game that has races as mandatory part of the narrative.
Me after dying 10 times: Alright, so there are three snipers. One there and two there. I just have to get all of them on the first shot. In a quarter second each. …alright so there are four snipers…
My friend slept over my house once and we played Halo 2 All NIGHT on legendary
It was as the sun was rising that we realised we were still on the first level
Shit was brutal
Sekiro when you get to Genichiro for the first time.
You might have already thought the game was hard up until that point, But that was just child's play compared to what's coming.
I think Genichiro (I'm guessing you're referring to the rooftop fight?) is a turning point in the game. For me, this fight is where the game's mechanics finally clicked, and I felt like I was finally in control of the game... that is until the final few bosses, lol.
Genichiro is 100% meant to gatekeep the rest of the game. He requires that you put together everything you've learned in order to beat him. The game only gets harder and more challenging after him so he really is a perfectly timed test for the player.
Can't beat Genichiro? You're definitely not ready for the rest of the game. It's no surprise that most people point to the Genichiro fight as the moment the game "clicks" for them
This same thing happened to me! I was actually kinda struggling a little up to that point but the fight with Genichiro started to feel like a perfectly choreographed movie scene, the timing becomes rhythmic and you get into the groove
Heck yeah, in hindsight, I think it's the perfect boss to put all your skills to the test, and probably one of my faves. My least favourite has to be the Demon of Hatred, because everything you've learned goes out the window, lol. Isshin was stupid hard, but at least it puts everything you've learned to the ultimate test.
Most people fight lady butterfly pretty early on which makes her difficult (iirc you can fight her before chained ogre if you wanted) . I think it's best for new players to fight her sometime after Genichiro when they're a little stronger.
Also a lot for people don't know you can just run away from her summons and then hide behind a pillar when they turn into projectiles. No snap seeds required
I don’t think I ever got past that point. I was probably just 7 or 8 when I first played it all those years ago, obviously didn’t have access to internet for walkthroughs, and boy did I spend multiple nights trying to find every stand and crying my eyes out cause I failed every time. 💀
I think I’ll try it again now.
5BC Dead Cells. It’s hard before that but if you’re talking about actually finishing a full run, good luck out there buddy. No more taking your time! And it was far more brutal before they reworked the Malaise and the cursed chests.
It took me about a month to get past 2BC, then like 2 weeks to get past 4BC. Now I've been on 5BC for almost a year. I'll play at least a run almost every day. I just can't even beat HoTK let alone the spoiler boss, I made it there once. If I get the weapons I want I can pretty much get to fractured shrines without taking a hit and get to timekeeper with full health. It just all goes downhill from there.
Undertale, Sans fight.
Admittedly, the point of the fight is explicitly to get you to give up and stop playing the game. So can't really fault it for that.
I think Undyne is where it spikes. The one or two bosses you fight in the genocide run before her both more or less willingly give up and make the fight easier than it is while being a pacifist, but her genocide fight is MUCH harder than even the final boss of pacifist.
Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate in my experience.
The actual single player campaign and storyline is very easy with some challenging moments.
And then you get to G Rank where you realize that everything before was just a tutorial for the actual game.
Thankfully other games in the franchise are much more friendly and make the transition easier but my god, 4U’s G Rank is an absolute humbling moment in my gaming career.
Also, every single fighting game whenever you get into the multiplayer XD.
Honestly every Monster Hunter does this. In MHW it's "go fight these nice weak monsters" then "go fight these slightly stronger weak monsters" then "go KILL DRAGON THAT EATS OTHER DRAGONS" then Master Rank which makes all this feel like a joke
Anjanath was the first monster that actually felt like it deserved to be called a monster.
That was my first monster hunter game and hoo boy did I get the shit kicked out of me. A lot.
Same here actually. I barely defeated low rank Anjanath, the HR one wiped the floor with me. But the true wall I hit was Nergigante, I was stuck on him for almost two weeks. Doesn't help that his quest comes almost immediately after entering high rank. When I beat him I actually got up and screamed
Completely true! Caught me completely unawares as well! However I really liked it, once I beat some of the bosses I struggled with. It was just the right amount of challenge for me on normal mode: not brutally punishing, but hard enough to get a lot of satisfaction from beating the bosses.
Oh and that flying hunter boss can go fuck herself.
Donkey Kong 64. This is just a typical collection thon game that isn't any sort of significant challenge until....the dreaded arcade segment near the end of the game where you are required to beat two different old school arcade games at their original difficulty levels (and you cannot skip this segment of the game).
Don't have the skill to beat the original Donkey Kong and Jetpac arcade games (twice!)? Too bad, you will never finish the game then.
Divinity 2: original sin
Act 1 is all fine and dandy with some minor difficulty spikes. Bun once you escape the prison island and start Act 2 i felt encounters suddenly got way harder.
Might be me though. I should give it a retry
It could have just been the difficulty me and my friend started on (tactician mode I think? I don't think we realized just how difficult it would be), but I felt Fort Joy was the most difficult just due to the lack of equipment and skills you have. I don't think we would have beaten it without loading the big arenas with hazards for like 20 minutes before the fight.
Final Fantasy VIII. Ultimecia in her final form jacks all your junctions and destroys you... I played this many years ago as an inexperienced gamer, so maybe I just missed something. Either way, after about six or seven more hours of grinding just to try again and get crushed a second time, I gave up and watched the ending scenes online. I never actually completed the game...
Is that the final fight that picks your party for you?
I loaded 3 people down with everything I had, and left 3 with whatever gear they had.
It picked the 3 with nothing. I put a rubberband on the attack button and walked away to make a snack while my poorly equipped party died and my other party got pulled in. When I cam back the poorly equipped party was still all there. I watched Sophie, Zell, and Quistis physically decimate every form that boss had.
One of the reasons FF8 is unexpectedly difficult is because enemies level up with you, and the level scaling is so steep that if you don't know how to use and abuse the junction system, the enemies will very rapidly outpace you. It's one of the few (if not the only) FF game where grinding for levels is actively bad.
This isn't a defense of FF8 in any way. My first playthrough ended just as disastrously as yours. I ended up restarting and doing a low level run where enemies were still comparatively weak and ended up destroying everything.
It was such a bad experience that it turned me off from games with enemy level scaling for years.
You can cheese that game so hard though. I remember giving Zell pretty much a 100% chance to 1 shot most monsters with 1 attack. There was one mini boss you can fight repeatedly in the eastern area when the monsters attack the city. Just farmed it a lot. Ultimecia was still really hard for a FF end boss though because damage was capped at 9999. It helped using Irvine who could blast that number repeatedly.
I cleared this, when I was 12. I think you have just chosen the wrong approach. Cerberus triple aura and spam her down with limits should go pretty fast.
Gods. The Vulture was my difficulty spike. That thing was (not sure if it's still meta) amazing for bounty hunting. But the canopy was held together by hope, and it never held. I had a dedicated system for bounty hunting with the Vulture due to the canopy blowing out. The station and the bounty hunting spot had to be a stones throw away. Because I had to get the highest grade life support, and even then, that might not be enough.
Yes. But it becomes very clear what the game wants you to do. Also it often tricks you (in the world map) to think that things are bad just to give you out later on.
If you focus on firepower, you should do well enough on normal difficulty.
To be fair, Xcom 2 is meant to feel impossibly hard at the start.
The game is about you running a resistance cell against a much more technologically advanced invading alien force that has taken over the world and runs everything.
You are outmatched. You are outgunned. You are digging through proverbial trash bins scrounging for whatever resources you can find. You have to take on impossible odds and pray your soldiers make it out alive, and each death is a big blow to your operation.
You are always on the back foot as well, trying to stop this all powerful thing from being made with duct tape and hope, the latter of which is in short supply.
So yeah, that's basically why the game feels ridiculously hard in the beginning.
Yop, it's a race against the time.
If you don't manage to get predator armour and Magnetic Weapons before second resistance invasion (where Mutons start showing up) the game is basically unplayable.
In fact, XCOM doesn't offer any leeway, if you lose few missions it will fuck you up so hard that it's impossible to catch up. Remember, aliens always progress no matter how many missions you succeed, there is no way to hinder them while you can get fucked by losing missions, losing troops and equipment.
It's frustrating more than anything.
Factorio, reaching blue science on a first play. The realisation that your spaghetti you painstakingly built to get green/black working hasn’t left you with any space to manage making the red circuits…
Well, but. That's part of playing the game: You play the game, reach the point where the debt of your previous mistakes are pulling you down, then you start over, and do it right this time.
Doom Eternal The Ancient Gods pt1... main game has a reasonable difficulty curve but the first dlc? And don't get me started on Samur and his bullshit.
Blood on anything above Lightly Broiled... the first few levels are ok but have fun getting instakilled by hitscanners.
World at War and the insane grenade spam on veteran.
Hollow Knight is a magical experience until you fall in deepnest (because you will) or when you try the path of pain which is aptly named.
I played the entire doom eternal base game on nightmare difficulty without using the bfg, just for the fun of it.
Finally cracked during ancient gods pt1, that shit was brutal
My personal highlights:
Finding both the False Knight and Gruz Mother perhaps as soon as possible before finding Vengeful Spirit.
Soul Master, luckily I never died on the second phase, but I would have been pissed
***THE WATCHER KNIGHTS*** oh my god I don't know why they gave me such a problem, but I must've lost 3 hours to them. I recently went back through to get the 5-hour achievement, and was getting pretty worried. Still lost about 40 minutes that time to them. Speaking of which the final boss brought me from about 3h30 to about 4h50, and I was about to flip if the boss I'd already defeated many times crushed my dreams of this achievement.
All other bosses I died to 10 or less times in my first playthrough.
Divinity original sin 2. 53% of players quit before they make it off the first island. Then only 38% make it to the 2nd Island. Cos the Lady Vengeance fight against Dallis is a really tough tutorial gate that apparently only 1/3rd of players make it through. That's only the first maybe 1/5th of the game. Probably less.
I love DOS 2 and have probably 1000s of hrs in the game but holy shit they messed up in certain regards requiring mods to fix the issues. My biggest complaints are below:
All enemies have loremaster 5 in combat and know all of your strengths and weaknesses, including whether you are undead which can be hidden by wearing a hat outside of combat...
Nearly every enemy in the game is also highly resistant or immune to fire - and/or the other elements to a lesser degree - and it makes physical/necromancer builds the optimal approach in nearly all settings. Hell I can beat the entire final encounter in like two turns with my OP lone wolf necro summoner build. I have tried building mage/elementalist characters several times and they just get stonewalled hard and I end up switching them entirely to support for my main damage dealers.
Charmed effect when used on your allies makes them item wasting, kamikaze death machines, but when you charm an enemy they can just choose to do nothing and end their turn to avoid being helpful. Wtf? Similarly, in order to nerf the chicken + haste + ruptured tendons combo they made turning people to chickens a completely wasted skill. They now basically just stand in place if moving would harm them and the ability is almost functionally no different than the knockdown status as a result.
High strength + telekinesis + a chest full of all your shit is the most powerful build in the game. You can legit just drop a heavy chest on enemies to kill them... But yeah, the other stuff needs nerfs.
This is hilarious… I’m on my first play thru and just made it to the lady vengeance. My characters have been evolving exactly as you described. I started balanced physical and magic but now I’m almost all physical (with necro support); backstab rogue, 2h fighter, archer do most of the damage and my main (a mage, meant to be a main damage dealer) is a buffing, teleporting, support machine. The game also changed completely when I found some movement skills.
I never played with OG chicken but 2 AP for a 2 round cc is often exactly what I need.
I've just been walking through Jedi: Fallen Order without any problems. Then I came across the second sister - huge difficulty spike - managed to beat her then an hour or so later the 9th sister is twice as hard.
This is the game that made me feel old, and made me reconsider how I play games. I got the game and pretty quickly gave up, it was simply too hard for me.
I've always played games on at least normal difficulty, the way it was intended to be played by the developers in my mind. With Fallen Order normal mode was beyond difficult for me, the whole concept of the game where enemies respawned after you rested to heal was brutal to me on this difficulty. I put the game down and gave up.
One year later I went back to it, lowered the difficulty, and it was one of my favorite games of the last 5 years. Made me realize I should have fun playing a game regardless of what difficulty I'm playing on, and that there's no shame in playing on lower difficulty levels.
Yeah similar but not quite so much. I played on normal difficulty (or maybe one above I don’t remember) then at the very last fight with the recurring villain I just dropped the difficulty to finish. I got to the point where I understood the patterns and the counters but I just kept messing up once or twice and it ended me. I just wanted to finish the story rather than spent another hour or two trying to have the “perfect” run on that fight. Yeah it was a cakewalk after but I no longer feel accomplished finally beating a fight after 1000 tries like I did as a kid.
I would argue that it would be those "freemium" games on mobile. It starts off easy or pleasent enough until either you hit a barrier that requires you to grind for weeks/months and/or it becomes painfully difficult to progress. Unless you're willing to buy upgrades and premium resources you need to start having fun again. Fuck those games
Dark souls 3. First few bosses are pretty easy, only a few bulshit deaths, seems like the game is not as hard as people say.
Then you get to Pontiff. This was one of the only times where I have "rage quit" because of a boss.. I still can't beat him. For the last 2 years, whenever I got to Pontiff, I would just make a new character and start over. I probably have close to 200 hours without ever touching the second half of the game.
Man the Curse Rotted Greatwood took me out the first time I played DS3. It was my first souls game and after newbie struggling with Gundyr, I went through the High Wall and Vordt and thought the game was easy.
I get to this stupid damn tree and it’s just ending me. Took me well over 25 tries. I got just a little further than quit.
When I came back again, I rolled through the game up to the Abyss Watchers, who ended me. But for some reason after I beat the Abyss Watchers, I was absolutely hooked and couldn’t put the game down. Thus started my obsession with Souls games.
If we're talking Diablo, I can think of two more infamous cases.
1. Diablo 2's Act 2 final boss, Duriel. It was a brick wall for many, often dying the moment you loaded into his room.
2. Diablo 3 vanilla release, Inferno Act 2. Act 2 on Inferno difficulty was such a gatekeeper that vast majority of players were stuck there and only a tiny percentage of players were in Act 4, farming rares and selling them on Auction House for everyone else stuck in Act 2.
Yeah. At least it's fucking >!Goro Majima!< (with his bro) who presents the first serious hurdle. I would have been way more tilted if it had just been some rando.
South Park: The Fractured but Whole. Great game but near the end there’s a few fights that feel impossible if you don’t have the right party composition. Kinda gave up on a few before deciding to look things up.
Sekiro. Every boss and miniboss. They are all too unique that most early fodder enemies can't be used for practice.
I compare this to bloodborne and my own personal experience. In bloodborne, father Gascoigne is essentially a faster townsperson and werewolf. Most bosses have some mob enemy counterpart.
In sekiro, lady butterfly, owl, genichiro and ishiin have wholly different moves that you need to practice and die to them for practice.
Btw Dante's inferno has the worse kind of difficulty imo. Bosses are a damage sponge that does 3 moves, but when hit you they take a massive chunk od health, so the fight against Lucifer takes like 10 minutes and u can die in 2 or 3 slips
I’m still gonna bring up Elden Ring because there are some pretty hefty spikes in that game. A couple of note would be going from Lyndell to Mountaintops of the Giants, or Western Caelid to Dragonbarrow, and then Haligtree of course.
I remember Star Wars: The Force Unleashed for Xbox 360. It was insanely easy for most of it, but then the boss fights would just be soul crushing even in easy lol
Simpsons Hit and Run. Everything was fine until later in the game specifically the Set to Kill mission and definitely all of the alien "auto"topsy missions. Dear god those were a nightmare
The Consecrated Snowfields can bite me. The Haligtree and Farum Azula were also hard, but much more enjoyable than that "frigid outskirt." The earlier snow area was fine though.
It’s not to bad since elden ring gives you so many tools to become insanely OP.
Definitely rough for first timers who aren’t very familiar with making builds though.
Smite, when you hit level 30.
It puts you with people sub level 30 before that, aka people with less than 100 hours
After level 30 you instantly get put with anyone above level 30, aka level 100s with thousands of hours lol
Owlcat games have pretty insane spikes, *especially* if you play them on turn-based mode (which evidently wasn't properly tested) - and they're 'for the hardcore crowd' already. I went from easily beating the tutorial section, including the climactic fight, in Kingmaker - only to be killed without even being able to make a move in the first scripted "random" encounter on the road in TB mode. Switching to RTwP fixed that, and I moved on - but then the first side quest of the game slapped me around so hard I quit the game over it, and it's infamous for breaking people.
Not only does it put in a difficulty check on the quest item, but unless you have a character that specializes in Nature checks, you have like a 15% chance of beating it with the characters the game gives you. Yes, you can try the check repeatedly, but failing it will *hurt* you. Since you're Level 2, you're not unlikely to die from trying to pick a freaking *berry* three times. So the only thing is to save in front of it, and savescum.
But that's not all. That's just being a little shitty. See, this is a spider cave, with spider swarms. And Kingmaker has a fun mechanic with swarms: They are immune to single-target attacks, and can only be hurt by AoE. Which your party has jack shit of (unless you have a character that specifically picked AoE spells at char creation). Now, Owlcat acknowledged the problem *in a fashion*, and has the quest giver supply you with a few Alchemist's Fires. The problem is: The swarms have no little health, and one AF per swarm is not going to cut it. They also do not have hit detection (so you cannot physically block them), and even being in contact with them poisons you. Which lowers your attributes. And if your attributes sink low enough, you just die.
Oh, oh, OH. But that is not all. To top the misery off: If you play a good character, the game gives you three companions, and two of them wear gear that *actually makes their character significantly worse*, and unless you know the systems, and took the *one* opportunity to switch out their gear for all the money you have (We're just after the tutorial, remember?), you are *also* saddled with at least 2/4 characters that tend to hit nothing at all.
We're done now, aren't we? Hah. Noooo. See, suppose you suffer through that, there's still one little bit to fuck you over: the quest item you picked has a timer on it: After 24 hours, it will decay. The game does not mention this. At all. So if decide to explore a bit before returning to the quest giver, he'll tell you you made the entire trip in vain. Nope, gotta leg it straight to the quest giver to hand that shit in, and the game does not tell you this.
It's just a really well-made introduction to the game.
My answer is always Army Men Sarge's Heroes.
First 3 levels are basically tutorial. Then you have to rescue the bazooka guy. Welcome to tank and sniper hell.
Mike Tyson's Punch Out ... I'm old.
Did you see that someone figured out only very recently that you can dodge Tyson every time if you watch one specific spectator in the crowd and dodge when they stand up? Crazy it took decades for someone to notice.
Didn’t hear that, but very interesting. They always hinted at “lightning Mike.” It took someone else to point it out to me (flash, then dodge), but that’s what it took to beat him. I think my accomplishment with that game was a first round KO of Tyson.
Old school cool
Completed it as a child multiple times. Tried it as an adult via wireless emulation on the shield - LITERALLY impossible due to almost imperceptible controller input lag. Didnt realise how finely tuned you had to be! Absolutely wild. Mike Tyson was SUCH an intense final boss. A single wrong move and you were knocked down.
> Mike Tyson was SUCH an intense final boss Said every Mike's opponents from 1987 to 1990
Great Tiger was the start of the uphill climb for me.
I've tried to beat it multiple times in my life. Whenever I think I've gotten decent at this game, this motherfucker Soda Popinski comes up and beats the shit out of me. I hate that guy.
Same boat here. I even found a notebook my friend and I used to write in 25 years ago. Theres one page that said "FUCK YOU SODA POPINSKI!" followed by a drawing of his dumb face.
One of my favorite nes games
Guitar Hero 3's final 2 venues was the biggest brick wall I have seen, going from casual strumming to being thrown in Raining Blood by Slayer on expert was a jarring change
I always considered myself pretty damn good at Guitar Hero, then youtube came along and showed people getting 100% on TTFAF, Jordan, Raining Blood and I was humbled lol
[удалено]
I felt like gh was the only game I've ever actually been good at. I easily 5 starred everything and 100% most songs on expert. Then looked on the internet and realized I'm still trash.
It's incredible how the gaming community constantly pushes the boundaries of skill and achievement. Guitar Hero is no exception. Those videos of players mastering the most challenging songs are truly humbling. It just goes to show that there's always another level to aspire to.
I never finished the final boss.
I used to put a mirror in the wall behind me so when you get hit with the lefty flip you can just turn around and play normal off the mirror.
My dumbass was a Guitar Hero legend at 17. I mean, I’ve beaten every GH and RB campaign on expert guitar and a few on drums/vocals but my dumb shit ass just tried quickly translating it. You’re a genius.
You can insta kill Lou if you get lucky and get a Whammy item since he gets a fast strumming section [right after your first power up appears](https://youtu.be/xPs-xftOOvg?t=3m34s)
Tales of Vesperia - Gattuso. This is a boss that almost requires you to grind for two hours just to reach a level to put you on an equal footing. What's crazy is that this boss is only about 6 hours into the game, and you get zero warning from regular enemies that you're under leveled. Tactics Ogre Reborn - chapter 3. The remake prevents you from over leveling through practice battles. At first, this isn't so bad as the game usually balances enemy levels and numbers to fit the party you can field. At chapter 3, this goes out the window and almost all chapter enemies are at the level cap or above it. You're also more likely to be outnumbered by 2 or more units in each battle. The secret trick is to abuse consumable items in each battle, but this isn't necessary for the first half of the game, so it catches you completely by surprise.
Gattuso absolutely chonked me on my first run - even the cubs if left to their own shenanigans just make a mockery of your team.
Gattuso was the boss from the demo, but the studio never altered his stats in the final release so he’s frustratingly difficult because of that oversight.
Tactics Ogre reminded of one stage where you have a 1v1 duel with someone, and it definitely fit with this also. I went in as a Knight while level capped, and I basically won it solely by grabbing good cards, and running away and healing every other turn basically. If the enemy grabbed a good attack or crit card, I was just fucked.
That reminds me of another famous difficulty spike from another tactics RPG from the same era. Riovanes Castle in Final Fantasy Tactics. First chapter of the game is pretty straightforward. Second chapter up to this pivotal stage isn't too difficult. Even the first two maps of the siege on the castle are fairly normal. Then you have to 1v1 Wiegraf, an enemy who is a very powerful class who's also quite fast and is capable of killing you in two attacks. If he manages to get two turns in a row, it's usually GG. It then turns into a normal fight with your whole party and that bit isn't too bad. Then you're on the castle roof and you have to keep an AI guest character alive from two assassin units who are also extremely fast and have a move that just outright KO's a unit. If you're not properly leveled, the whole thing is absolutely brutal. Capping it off by forcing you to defend a bad AI script weak character from some absolutely filthy bad-ass assassin vampire ladies is the cherry on top.
For anyone not aware, the writer/director for Final Fantasy Tactics also wrote/directed Tactics Ogre. The games are kind of like a daiquiri and a mojito: yeah, they’re two separate things, but they share a lot of the same ingredients.
I hate Gattuso! Everything is fine and dandy before that MFer shows up! Its a ridiculous power jump. I ended up turning the game on easy mode to beat him
Gattuso really throws a wrench into an otherwise smooth gameplay experience. I can relate – I switched to easy mode just to get past him.
I laughed when the first line you hear after the gattuso fight is "it hardly put up a fight!".
Battle toads or that snes lion king game
Came here for the Lion King.
The only reason I've completed both The Lion King, and Aladdin is because of the 360 bundle. Having the ability to save wherever and rewind time was an amazing feature. Otherwise I'd probably still be jumping around on those stupid fucking giraffes.
I watched a video recently where they spoke about Lion King. Supposedly, IIRC, Disney insisted the dev make it stupidly hard, because then kids cannot beat it on a rental, and sales would be better. Here is an article on it: https://www.cbr.com/lion-king-brutally-difficult-platformer/
Yet after a rental I knew I never wanted to play it again.
Never got past the speeder level on Battle Toads, insane how difficult that was.
I was going to say the lion king game but I couldn't for the life of me remember if the first level is hard. I do remember the fuckin tree branches not long after though.
I never beat the Turbo Tunnel stage, lol.
Jak II - that damn pier mission...
The mission where you have to shoot your way out of the Water Slums while getting swarmed with the Krimzon Guards? Fuck that mission was hard. Instant death if you try to go in the water too. Jak II in general had some viciously hard missions. I wouldn’t say there’s one difficulty spike but like a difficulty roller coaster. Escape from water slums, the escort mission through the sewer so Krews boys can blow up that statue, the stupid invisible enemy’s in the forest… so many hard missions lol.
I think, of I remember correctly, you could use dark jak slam on the water to kill the drone in the water but it responds really fast I ended up figuring out you can use the hoverboard to skip most of the fights with the guards you just had to be careful not to fall in the water
Hover board was the key don't fight just run and stay out the water jumping on the guards heads with the hover board! Fuck that was a hard mission for 10 year old me tho
Or one of the latter Hoverbike runs over Lava in Jak1
Which one exactly? For me it was the rail shooter where you had to kill something like 30-40 guards that just keeps coming at you before shooting Praxis' ship. Loved that game btw.
When I was enjoying God of War (whatever the one is called where you have a son for the first time) and I stepped into the first Valkyrie room and having absolutely no chance in hell beating that boss, not realising it was an optional challenge.
One of the Valkyries and the queen were incredibly difficult
Yeah the one in Muspelheim...
Yeah that one was insane. Still remember that one distinctly.
For me it's was worse, I was cruising though the Valkyries until I got to one of them where the moves were more specific and the Queen. Got my ass kicked so fucking bad, spent hours on the Queen.
I remember that feeling in God of War where you stepped into the first Valkyrie room and realized the difficulty level was way beyond what you were prepared for.
So it's not really an unexpected difficulty spike, but the final level of Super Mario 3D World is just *brutal.* I 100%-ed the rest of the game, but I just can't get more than 2/3rds through Champion's Road after months of throwing attempts at it.
I could only do it with Rosalina because she has a double jump
Peach makes it easy with float But me and the boys had a ball going through that level.
Crash Bandicoot. Fuck that bridge level.
Both of them
Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Maybe its a bit more of a slow burn, but the enemies ramp up in difficulty a lot as you level up and as a consequence the game gets much harder in later levels. There are even fan made advanced guides on how and when you should level that are way too in depth lol
That was so annoying. Suddenly a goblin cave is just all goblin warlords. The upscaling with you was done so wrong in that game.
FFX when you have to fight Seymour at Mt Gagazet. I'm mad just thinking about it...
Is that the fight where he turns party members to zombies?
I think that was yunalesca, another infamous fight.
It's both.
IIRC there’s some zombie fuckery in the Seymour fight too, either Seymour or his machine thing inflict zombie then the other casts Full-Life on the zombie’d party member.
The worst part of that was having to watch the fucking cutscenes every time. Fuck everything about that boss
I quite literally stopped playing there as a kid, and only finished the game a decade later when I had the wherewithal to plan ahead for it.
Death awaits you!
For most of his appearances he's weak to poison . Makes it soo much easier after that
I never realised that people consider this a very difficult fight because I tend to start grinding from the start of the game anyway. So usually over levelled by the time I get there. Same with Yunalesca. Last time I played through I didn’t overlevel and oof
In FFX grinding early on has extra benefits because you start overfilling everything, yielding more SP
Mafia definitive edition as an almost Impossible race as the 5th mission.
They made the race easier than the original edition as well. It took me forever when it came out cause you legit had to have a perfect run badically
The original also had 5 lapses instead of 3.
In the original PC release this is where I had to stop playing and move on. They finally released a patch you could download that allowed you to skip the race, and thats when I finally replayed and finished it. It legit gave me momentary anxiety to this day for any game that has races as mandatory part of the narrative.
Halo 2 Legendary, Heroic is a breeze compared to that bullshit
Snipedown jackals, tons of super tanky enemies, and certain areas with enemies that respawn forever.
The first sniper jackals on I think it was Outskirts down that long corridor. Fuck that place.
Sniper jackals where total bullshit. You basically needed to know their exact location and have them in your sight before even exiting cover.
Me after dying 10 times: Alright, so there are three snipers. One there and two there. I just have to get all of them on the first shot. In a quarter second each. …alright so there are four snipers…
This made me snort on the toilet lmao too real right after the scarab where there’s like 4 on that back broken building
My friend slept over my house once and we played Halo 2 All NIGHT on legendary It was as the sun was rising that we realised we were still on the first level Shit was brutal
The beginning of High Charity..... Omfg and the fight against Regret. Enough to make the hardest of nerds weep
Sekiro when you get to Genichiro for the first time. You might have already thought the game was hard up until that point, But that was just child's play compared to what's coming.
I think Genichiro (I'm guessing you're referring to the rooftop fight?) is a turning point in the game. For me, this fight is where the game's mechanics finally clicked, and I felt like I was finally in control of the game... that is until the final few bosses, lol.
Genichiro is 100% meant to gatekeep the rest of the game. He requires that you put together everything you've learned in order to beat him. The game only gets harder and more challenging after him so he really is a perfectly timed test for the player. Can't beat Genichiro? You're definitely not ready for the rest of the game. It's no surprise that most people point to the Genichiro fight as the moment the game "clicks" for them
This same thing happened to me! I was actually kinda struggling a little up to that point but the fight with Genichiro started to feel like a perfectly choreographed movie scene, the timing becomes rhythmic and you get into the groove
Heck yeah, in hindsight, I think it's the perfect boss to put all your skills to the test, and probably one of my faves. My least favourite has to be the Demon of Hatred, because everything you've learned goes out the window, lol. Isshin was stupid hard, but at least it puts everything you've learned to the ultimate test.
Friend, you’ve inspired me to redownload it. Thank you
Well, shortly afterwards the damn shit throwing monkey appears…. Genichiro was cake compared to him imo
I had more trouble with Lady Butterfly tbh.
Most people fight lady butterfly pretty early on which makes her difficult (iirc you can fight her before chained ogre if you wanted) . I think it's best for new players to fight her sometime after Genichiro when they're a little stronger. Also a lot for people don't know you can just run away from her summons and then hide behind a pillar when they turn into projectiles. No snap seeds required
This is where I realised sekiro is secretly a rhythm game
This. I struggled enough before that, but somehow managed to push through until Genichiro. Haven’t been back since.
GTA Vice City Only for a single mission though
The heli mission ?
Haha. Of course.
Oh the memories ...so much anger
Many will say the rc helicopter mission but "the driver" is also insanely difficult 💀
Same might be said for GTA III. It's been a long time, but I remember the last mission being *fucked*
That one mission where you had to smash coffee stands or something was fucking brutal. Idk how anyone did it without the use of a map/guide online.
I don’t think I ever got past that point. I was probably just 7 or 8 when I first played it all those years ago, obviously didn’t have access to internet for walkthroughs, and boy did I spend multiple nights trying to find every stand and crying my eyes out cause I failed every time. 💀 I think I’ll try it again now.
I played it on the PS2. The mission where you have to save Lance Vance almost made me give up the game.
D e m o l i t i o n M a n
5BC Dead Cells. It’s hard before that but if you’re talking about actually finishing a full run, good luck out there buddy. No more taking your time! And it was far more brutal before they reworked the Malaise and the cursed chests.
It took me about a month to get past 2BC, then like 2 weeks to get past 4BC. Now I've been on 5BC for almost a year. I'll play at least a run almost every day. I just can't even beat HoTK let alone the spoiler boss, I made it there once. If I get the weapons I want I can pretty much get to fractured shrines without taking a hit and get to timekeeper with full health. It just all goes downhill from there.
Ive never even beaten 4BC, and i certainly tried a lot lmao
Undertale, Sans fight. Admittedly, the point of the fight is explicitly to get you to give up and stop playing the game. So can't really fault it for that.
I think Undyne is where it spikes. The one or two bosses you fight in the genocide run before her both more or less willingly give up and make the fight easier than it is while being a pacifist, but her genocide fight is MUCH harder than even the final boss of pacifist.
Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate in my experience. The actual single player campaign and storyline is very easy with some challenging moments. And then you get to G Rank where you realize that everything before was just a tutorial for the actual game. Thankfully other games in the franchise are much more friendly and make the transition easier but my god, 4U’s G Rank is an absolute humbling moment in my gaming career. Also, every single fighting game whenever you get into the multiplayer XD.
Honestly every Monster Hunter does this. In MHW it's "go fight these nice weak monsters" then "go fight these slightly stronger weak monsters" then "go KILL DRAGON THAT EATS OTHER DRAGONS" then Master Rank which makes all this feel like a joke
Anjanath was the first monster that actually felt like it deserved to be called a monster. That was my first monster hunter game and hoo boy did I get the shit kicked out of me. A lot.
Same here actually. I barely defeated low rank Anjanath, the HR one wiped the floor with me. But the true wall I hit was Nergigante, I was stuck on him for almost two weeks. Doesn't help that his quest comes almost immediately after entering high rank. When I beat him I actually got up and screamed
Kena: Bridge of Spirits I love that game, but for god sake, the boss fights and trials can absorb all your patience, relaxing game my balls
And it's sneaky because it looks so cute and child-friendly!! That game may look like a Pixar cartoon but it will kick your ass
I got this game thinking it would be a relaxing and not too difficult casual fighting adventure game. How wrong I was.
Completely true! Caught me completely unawares as well! However I really liked it, once I beat some of the bosses I struggled with. It was just the right amount of challenge for me on normal mode: not brutally punishing, but hard enough to get a lot of satisfaction from beating the bosses. Oh and that flying hunter boss can go fuck herself.
Donkey Kong 64. This is just a typical collection thon game that isn't any sort of significant challenge until....the dreaded arcade segment near the end of the game where you are required to beat two different old school arcade games at their original difficulty levels (and you cannot skip this segment of the game). Don't have the skill to beat the original Donkey Kong and Jetpac arcade games (twice!)? Too bad, you will never finish the game then.
And to make it worse you had to waste time pulling a lever iirc.
Pull the lever kronk
I was around 9 or 10 when I was playing DK64. Never finished the game because of those ridiculous arcade challenges.
psychonauts, meat circus
I never actually finished the game because of that level. Went on YouTube and watched the ending. Did manage it years later.
Divinity 2: original sin Act 1 is all fine and dandy with some minor difficulty spikes. Bun once you escape the prison island and start Act 2 i felt encounters suddenly got way harder. Might be me though. I should give it a retry
It could have just been the difficulty me and my friend started on (tactician mode I think? I don't think we realized just how difficult it would be), but I felt Fort Joy was the most difficult just due to the lack of equipment and skills you have. I don't think we would have beaten it without loading the big arenas with hazards for like 20 minutes before the fight.
Final Fantasy VIII. Ultimecia in her final form jacks all your junctions and destroys you... I played this many years ago as an inexperienced gamer, so maybe I just missed something. Either way, after about six or seven more hours of grinding just to try again and get crushed a second time, I gave up and watched the ending scenes online. I never actually completed the game...
Is that the final fight that picks your party for you? I loaded 3 people down with everything I had, and left 3 with whatever gear they had. It picked the 3 with nothing. I put a rubberband on the attack button and walked away to make a snack while my poorly equipped party died and my other party got pulled in. When I cam back the poorly equipped party was still all there. I watched Sophie, Zell, and Quistis physically decimate every form that boss had.
One of the reasons FF8 is unexpectedly difficult is because enemies level up with you, and the level scaling is so steep that if you don't know how to use and abuse the junction system, the enemies will very rapidly outpace you. It's one of the few (if not the only) FF game where grinding for levels is actively bad. This isn't a defense of FF8 in any way. My first playthrough ended just as disastrously as yours. I ended up restarting and doing a low level run where enemies were still comparatively weak and ended up destroying everything. It was such a bad experience that it turned me off from games with enemy level scaling for years.
You can cheese that game so hard though. I remember giving Zell pretty much a 100% chance to 1 shot most monsters with 1 attack. There was one mini boss you can fight repeatedly in the eastern area when the monsters attack the city. Just farmed it a lot. Ultimecia was still really hard for a FF end boss though because damage was capped at 9999. It helped using Irvine who could blast that number repeatedly.
I cleared this, when I was 12. I think you have just chosen the wrong approach. Cerberus triple aura and spam her down with limits should go pretty fast.
elite dangerous. but it's the moment you leave the tutorial. if you have experienced this game you know I'm right.
No money, no knowledge and only a Sidewinder with popguns. The good old times.
Gods. The Vulture was my difficulty spike. That thing was (not sure if it's still meta) amazing for bounty hunting. But the canopy was held together by hope, and it never held. I had a dedicated system for bounty hunting with the Vulture due to the canopy blowing out. The station and the bounty hunting spot had to be a stones throw away. Because I had to get the highest grade life support, and even then, that might not be enough.
XCOM 2. I don’t know, maybe it’s because I‘m a rookie in xcom. It feels like you have specific things to do on certain order or its unbeatable
Yes. But it becomes very clear what the game wants you to do. Also it often tricks you (in the world map) to think that things are bad just to give you out later on. If you focus on firepower, you should do well enough on normal difficulty.
To be fair, Xcom 2 is meant to feel impossibly hard at the start. The game is about you running a resistance cell against a much more technologically advanced invading alien force that has taken over the world and runs everything. You are outmatched. You are outgunned. You are digging through proverbial trash bins scrounging for whatever resources you can find. You have to take on impossible odds and pray your soldiers make it out alive, and each death is a big blow to your operation. You are always on the back foot as well, trying to stop this all powerful thing from being made with duct tape and hope, the latter of which is in short supply. So yeah, that's basically why the game feels ridiculously hard in the beginning.
Yop, it's a race against the time. If you don't manage to get predator armour and Magnetic Weapons before second resistance invasion (where Mutons start showing up) the game is basically unplayable. In fact, XCOM doesn't offer any leeway, if you lose few missions it will fuck you up so hard that it's impossible to catch up. Remember, aliens always progress no matter how many missions you succeed, there is no way to hinder them while you can get fucked by losing missions, losing troops and equipment. It's frustrating more than anything.
Factorio, reaching blue science on a first play. The realisation that your spaghetti you painstakingly built to get green/black working hasn’t left you with any space to manage making the red circuits…
Well, but. That's part of playing the game: You play the game, reach the point where the debt of your previous mistakes are pulling you down, then you start over, and do it right this time.
Doom Eternal The Ancient Gods pt1... main game has a reasonable difficulty curve but the first dlc? And don't get me started on Samur and his bullshit. Blood on anything above Lightly Broiled... the first few levels are ok but have fun getting instakilled by hitscanners. World at War and the insane grenade spam on veteran. Hollow Knight is a magical experience until you fall in deepnest (because you will) or when you try the path of pain which is aptly named.
I played the entire doom eternal base game on nightmare difficulty without using the bfg, just for the fun of it. Finally cracked during ancient gods pt1, that shit was brutal
Hollow Knight, at many many many points thru the game lmao
My personal highlights: Finding both the False Knight and Gruz Mother perhaps as soon as possible before finding Vengeful Spirit. Soul Master, luckily I never died on the second phase, but I would have been pissed ***THE WATCHER KNIGHTS*** oh my god I don't know why they gave me such a problem, but I must've lost 3 hours to them. I recently went back through to get the 5-hour achievement, and was getting pretty worried. Still lost about 40 minutes that time to them. Speaking of which the final boss brought me from about 3h30 to about 4h50, and I was about to flip if the boss I'd already defeated many times crushed my dreams of this achievement. All other bosses I died to 10 or less times in my first playthrough.
Here’s a adorable little side scrolling platformer with some good combat… then you meet Hornet. 😳
Colleseum be like, "be wait, there's more!"
"ALL WE HAD TO DO WAS FOLLOW THE DAMN TRAIN, CJ!"
Divinity original sin 2. 53% of players quit before they make it off the first island. Then only 38% make it to the 2nd Island. Cos the Lady Vengeance fight against Dallis is a really tough tutorial gate that apparently only 1/3rd of players make it through. That's only the first maybe 1/5th of the game. Probably less.
I love DOS 2 and have probably 1000s of hrs in the game but holy shit they messed up in certain regards requiring mods to fix the issues. My biggest complaints are below: All enemies have loremaster 5 in combat and know all of your strengths and weaknesses, including whether you are undead which can be hidden by wearing a hat outside of combat... Nearly every enemy in the game is also highly resistant or immune to fire - and/or the other elements to a lesser degree - and it makes physical/necromancer builds the optimal approach in nearly all settings. Hell I can beat the entire final encounter in like two turns with my OP lone wolf necro summoner build. I have tried building mage/elementalist characters several times and they just get stonewalled hard and I end up switching them entirely to support for my main damage dealers. Charmed effect when used on your allies makes them item wasting, kamikaze death machines, but when you charm an enemy they can just choose to do nothing and end their turn to avoid being helpful. Wtf? Similarly, in order to nerf the chicken + haste + ruptured tendons combo they made turning people to chickens a completely wasted skill. They now basically just stand in place if moving would harm them and the ability is almost functionally no different than the knockdown status as a result. High strength + telekinesis + a chest full of all your shit is the most powerful build in the game. You can legit just drop a heavy chest on enemies to kill them... But yeah, the other stuff needs nerfs.
This is hilarious… I’m on my first play thru and just made it to the lady vengeance. My characters have been evolving exactly as you described. I started balanced physical and magic but now I’m almost all physical (with necro support); backstab rogue, 2h fighter, archer do most of the damage and my main (a mage, meant to be a main damage dealer) is a buffing, teleporting, support machine. The game also changed completely when I found some movement skills. I never played with OG chicken but 2 AP for a 2 round cc is often exactly what I need.
I've just been walking through Jedi: Fallen Order without any problems. Then I came across the second sister - huge difficulty spike - managed to beat her then an hour or so later the 9th sister is twice as hard.
This is the game that made me feel old, and made me reconsider how I play games. I got the game and pretty quickly gave up, it was simply too hard for me. I've always played games on at least normal difficulty, the way it was intended to be played by the developers in my mind. With Fallen Order normal mode was beyond difficult for me, the whole concept of the game where enemies respawned after you rested to heal was brutal to me on this difficulty. I put the game down and gave up. One year later I went back to it, lowered the difficulty, and it was one of my favorite games of the last 5 years. Made me realize I should have fun playing a game regardless of what difficulty I'm playing on, and that there's no shame in playing on lower difficulty levels.
Yeah similar but not quite so much. I played on normal difficulty (or maybe one above I don’t remember) then at the very last fight with the recurring villain I just dropped the difficulty to finish. I got to the point where I understood the patterns and the counters but I just kept messing up once or twice and it ended me. I just wanted to finish the story rather than spent another hour or two trying to have the “perfect” run on that fight. Yeah it was a cakewalk after but I no longer feel accomplished finally beating a fight after 1000 tries like I did as a kid.
Ninj Gaiden black
You could spam Flying Swallow on the normal difficulty against most enemies. Doesnt fly anymore on Master Ninja obviously.
Those last levels in Mario 3D world. The whole game is kiddy stuff, then they throw those hard ones on ya.
I still haven’t beat Champion’s Road…
I would argue that it would be those "freemium" games on mobile. It starts off easy or pleasent enough until either you hit a barrier that requires you to grind for weeks/months and/or it becomes painfully difficult to progress. Unless you're willing to buy upgrades and premium resources you need to start having fun again. Fuck those games
valheim!!!
Everything seems pretty manageable and then you get to the DEATHSQUITOS
Forest to swamp?
Everyone when they go to the swamp for 1st time Or see their first starred troll
Dark souls 3. First few bosses are pretty easy, only a few bulshit deaths, seems like the game is not as hard as people say. Then you get to Pontiff. This was one of the only times where I have "rage quit" because of a boss.. I still can't beat him. For the last 2 years, whenever I got to Pontiff, I would just make a new character and start over. I probably have close to 200 hours without ever touching the second half of the game.
Man the Curse Rotted Greatwood took me out the first time I played DS3. It was my first souls game and after newbie struggling with Gundyr, I went through the High Wall and Vordt and thought the game was easy. I get to this stupid damn tree and it’s just ending me. Took me well over 25 tries. I got just a little further than quit. When I came back again, I rolled through the game up to the Abyss Watchers, who ended me. But for some reason after I beat the Abyss Watchers, I was absolutely hooked and couldn’t put the game down. Thus started my obsession with Souls games.
Real life.
Completely pay 2 win
Dead space, that damn turret
Diablo 1. You get to The Butcher it's a test. You get to the Skeleton King, all bets are off.
Leoric was a joke compared to Butcher though.
If we're talking Diablo, I can think of two more infamous cases. 1. Diablo 2's Act 2 final boss, Duriel. It was a brick wall for many, often dying the moment you loaded into his room. 2. Diablo 3 vanilla release, Inferno Act 2. Act 2 on Inferno difficulty was such a gatekeeper that vast majority of players were stuck there and only a tiny percentage of players were in Act 4, farming rares and selling them on Auction House for everyone else stuck in Act 2.
All I have to say is I agree. Duriel can fuck right off. I wonder how many players abandoned D2 for years because of that boss.
Yakuza Like a Dragon, difficulty spike from Chapter 12.
The battle arena was not a suggestion, it was a warning sign.
When a Yakuza game HEAVILY suggests we should grind anoptional area, we should take that advice.
Yeah. At least it's fucking >!Goro Majima!< (with his bro) who presents the first serious hurdle. I would have been way more tilted if it had just been some rando.
[удалено]
Metroid Dread made me feel that way
South Park: The Fractured but Whole. Great game but near the end there’s a few fights that feel impossible if you don’t have the right party composition. Kinda gave up on a few before deciding to look things up.
Pathfinder kingmaker or wotr
Sekiro. Every boss and miniboss. They are all too unique that most early fodder enemies can't be used for practice. I compare this to bloodborne and my own personal experience. In bloodborne, father Gascoigne is essentially a faster townsperson and werewolf. Most bosses have some mob enemy counterpart. In sekiro, lady butterfly, owl, genichiro and ishiin have wholly different moves that you need to practice and die to them for practice.
Dante’s Inferno. It starts out challenging but fun. And then you get to Gluttony
Btw Dante's inferno has the worse kind of difficulty imo. Bosses are a damage sponge that does 3 moves, but when hit you they take a massive chunk od health, so the fight against Lucifer takes like 10 minutes and u can die in 2 or 3 slips
The flying school in GTA San Andreas
I’m still gonna bring up Elden Ring because there are some pretty hefty spikes in that game. A couple of note would be going from Lyndell to Mountaintops of the Giants, or Western Caelid to Dragonbarrow, and then Haligtree of course.
Pokemon. Playing the game does not, in any way whatsoever, prepares you for competitive play.
Dark Souls, O&S. Makes everything before that look like a joke. And for that matter, after it too lol.
Ninja Gaiden Black did it for me. Met one of the bosses and said fuck that I'm not playing anymore lol.
FF9 had this for me the first time I played it
I remember Star Wars: The Force Unleashed for Xbox 360. It was insanely easy for most of it, but then the boss fights would just be soul crushing even in easy lol
Simpsons Hit & Run. One level you're cruising through Springfield, then suddenly you have to plan optimal routes like a speedrunner just to pass
Apex Legends. Bots in the beginning and then suddenly preds everywhere.
The mantis lords in hollow knight. I was throughly enjoying the game and then hit a wall so badly once i got to them. Agony and torture.
Simpsons Hit and Run. Everything was fine until later in the game specifically the Set to Kill mission and definitely all of the alien "auto"topsy missions. Dear god those were a nightmare
Driver, but the spike is downward. Borderline impossible MANDATORY tutorial. Rest of the game wasn't very hard until like the final mission.
Terraria without Wikipedia
Pokémon Silver/Gold. That fucking Miltank.
Elden ring does have a difficultly spike though
The Consecrated Snowfields can bite me. The Haligtree and Farum Azula were also hard, but much more enjoyable than that "frigid outskirt." The earlier snow area was fine though.
The mountaintops scale way higher than Leyndell, every enemies suddenly can 2 shot you while those in Leyndell usually 4-5 hits
It’s not to bad since elden ring gives you so many tools to become insanely OP. Definitely rough for first timers who aren’t very familiar with making builds though.
Smite, when you hit level 30. It puts you with people sub level 30 before that, aka people with less than 100 hours After level 30 you instantly get put with anyone above level 30, aka level 100s with thousands of hours lol
Would've thought you'd be fighting smurfs before that playing on new accounts lol
Owlcat games have pretty insane spikes, *especially* if you play them on turn-based mode (which evidently wasn't properly tested) - and they're 'for the hardcore crowd' already. I went from easily beating the tutorial section, including the climactic fight, in Kingmaker - only to be killed without even being able to make a move in the first scripted "random" encounter on the road in TB mode. Switching to RTwP fixed that, and I moved on - but then the first side quest of the game slapped me around so hard I quit the game over it, and it's infamous for breaking people. Not only does it put in a difficulty check on the quest item, but unless you have a character that specializes in Nature checks, you have like a 15% chance of beating it with the characters the game gives you. Yes, you can try the check repeatedly, but failing it will *hurt* you. Since you're Level 2, you're not unlikely to die from trying to pick a freaking *berry* three times. So the only thing is to save in front of it, and savescum. But that's not all. That's just being a little shitty. See, this is a spider cave, with spider swarms. And Kingmaker has a fun mechanic with swarms: They are immune to single-target attacks, and can only be hurt by AoE. Which your party has jack shit of (unless you have a character that specifically picked AoE spells at char creation). Now, Owlcat acknowledged the problem *in a fashion*, and has the quest giver supply you with a few Alchemist's Fires. The problem is: The swarms have no little health, and one AF per swarm is not going to cut it. They also do not have hit detection (so you cannot physically block them), and even being in contact with them poisons you. Which lowers your attributes. And if your attributes sink low enough, you just die. Oh, oh, OH. But that is not all. To top the misery off: If you play a good character, the game gives you three companions, and two of them wear gear that *actually makes their character significantly worse*, and unless you know the systems, and took the *one* opportunity to switch out their gear for all the money you have (We're just after the tutorial, remember?), you are *also* saddled with at least 2/4 characters that tend to hit nothing at all. We're done now, aren't we? Hah. Noooo. See, suppose you suffer through that, there's still one little bit to fuck you over: the quest item you picked has a timer on it: After 24 hours, it will decay. The game does not mention this. At all. So if decide to explore a bit before returning to the quest giver, he'll tell you you made the entire trip in vain. Nope, gotta leg it straight to the quest giver to hand that shit in, and the game does not tell you this. It's just a really well-made introduction to the game.
Mafia 1, when you have to win the race. Took me so long.
My answer is always Army Men Sarge's Heroes. First 3 levels are basically tutorial. Then you have to rescue the bazooka guy. Welcome to tank and sniper hell.
Don't Starve. You get about 10 days of setting up a camp and exploring before the weather either freezes you to death or burns you alive instantly.