Hardest game you've ever played?

Started by acatfrommars December 13th, 2015 2:11 PM
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acatfrommars

Male
Seen February 5th, 2023
Posted January 9th, 2023
3,870 posts
9.6 Years
Ever played a game that was so tough that you just wanted to rip your hair out? Well spot about it here, and share some stories!

Super Meat Boy is extremely hard imo! I beat the game but it took much, much, much trial and error. The hardest game that I've probably played is Wings of V on the PC, that game is just too hard; props to anyone who has beaten that. Also, playing as The Lost in Binding of Isaac Rebirth and getting to the standard end is an accomplishment as well.

天 (Caine)

Flower Child

Age 31
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Vice City
Seen December 25th, 2016
Posted October 17th, 2016
452 posts
7.7 Years
Childhood memories of Mega Man X really comes to mind. The last game I had trouble with was "Uncharted 2: Honor Among Thieves". That final boss fight took me a little over an hour and a half and a great deal of luck to finally put him down.

Shhwonk

always with the games, etc.

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i can't remember
Seen November 28th, 2016
Posted April 20th, 2016
102 posts
9.5 Years
Dark Souls... so many memorable moments of being trapped in hellish pits of despair and just managing to squeeze myself out. The most significant one was trying so hard to get through the Depths, which is like the most depressing place to get through. Then I got cursed halfway through it, which killed me automatically and respawned me with half health. I didn't have anything to heal it, so I had to backtrack to near the beginning of the game to get a cure. I still have bouts of PTSD because of it.

Other than that, I have very cautiously avoided games that are known for their harsh difficulty because I don't like being stressed out. I have little patience with games. The Souls series is a strange exception for me.
Probably the hardest video game I've ever played is Super Mario Bros 3. I can't go through A SINGLE LEVEL without getting hurt or dying (either by bumping into an enemy or falling into a hole). Many of the levels, especially in later worlds, look like they were designed by someone high. I have to load the last restore point on my 3DS Virtual Console (since the NES version of SMB3 doesn't have a save feature) over and over, and I mess up at the exact same point in the level many many times over. I don't remember EVER beating this game.
Super Mario Bros. - The Lost Levels (the real Super Mario Bros. 2 in Japan) is also near the top of the extremely hard list, although, with this game, there are a few levels that I can get through fairly well. Then again, that's just my opinion that SMB3 is harder than this one, perhaps because SMB2J is built upon the first Super Mario Bros., but with some "enhancements" such as wind. Unlike SMB3, I have beaten World 8-4 (the last level of the main game) multiple times, and I remember beating World D-4 (the final post-game level) on the SNES remake at least once or twice.

mew_nani

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Far Lands
Seen May 28th, 2019
Posted August 25th, 2018
1,839 posts
13.4 Years
Freaking Touhou 15: Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom. I've played Touhou games before. They're hard. But this is the hardest Touhou game - or really any game, which is a big statement - that I've ever played. Without Pointdevice mode it would be impossible - on normal difficulty. Even getting past stage 1 is a challenge, and from there it just escalates until you run into the 3rd stage boss, Doremy Sweet. I still have PTSD over that first spellcard of hers - it's freaking ludicrous. There's formations of stars and needles that you have to dance around for almost a minute and it took me over 200 tries to get through. Not 30, not 50, 200. It's just that hard. And then there's Clownpiece which... I haven't got to yet as I'm still trying to get past stage 4. I shudder. Clownpiece is legendary for being absurdly hard.

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Sydian

fake your death.

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Seen May 22nd, 2022
Posted November 29th, 2021
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15.2 Years
Just going off of what I have played personally: Zelda II, SMB The Lost Levels, Jak II, and Jet Force Gemini. Compared to some **** like...Dark Souls or something, they're probably nothing, but again, it's just out of what I've played. That's what I think of, anyway haha. I'm probably forgetting something.
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Megan

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10.3 Years
Naming a couple of my hardest games and how far I've gotten:

- Super Meat Boy: got to The Rapture
- Dark Souls: funny thing about it is that I stopped before I even got to the first challenging point of the game...
- Wings of Vi: didn't get too far into the game
- Shovel Knight Plague of Shadows: already the first stage felt like it took longer than it should have been
- They Bleed Pixels: think I got stuck somewhere in world 2, actually
- I Wanna Be The Guy: beat at least one of the bosses and got stuck on a screen where I didn't manage to progress despite spending litteral hours dying on the same spot over and over again

And a ton of other hard games...
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Mawa

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Age 30
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Seen August 13th, 2020
Posted March 1st, 2020
Donkey Kong Country Returns? I feel like I might be overlooking some harder games that I've played but I'll go with that for now. Almost every level provided me with some degree of difficulty but the minecart sections and the final boss had me ready to throw my 3DS at the wall.
I want to say all the Donkey Kong Country :3

I suck at video games. I am always the one who lose. I did beat some games but I can never, ever, beat a Donkey Kong Country game. Shame on me.
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Satoshi Ookami

Memento Mori

Age 30
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Abyss of Time, Great Seal
Seen August 5th, 2018
Posted July 3rd, 2018
14,253 posts
14.8 Years
Definitely Catherine.
Babel especially. The game is tough in itself and then they added randomized levels, damn you, Atlus :P
Since I'm not Atlus, I don't even want to start on Persona 4 Arena, Challenge and Score Modes can go screw themselves.

From recent games, Sayonara Umihara Kawase is definitely something I would not categorize as a doable game =D


Also, the f-cking Driveclub DLCs get a special mention.
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Xherdan

Bad at Good Games

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Seen July 22nd, 2021
Posted July 16th, 2019
363 posts
7.5 Years
Crimson Echoes. In my opinion it's not really a very valuable entry, since it's fanmade, but hey, it is extremely difficult. The first maze and boss aren't that hellish, in fact it is pretty easy. But when you get to some bosses like the first fight with Kasmir, you get kind of annoyed. And then there are these bosses that... just can't be dealt with. Lebniz, per example, one of the most annoying bosses in the game, lives on the MOST ANNOYING GOD DAMN CHUNK OF EARTH IN THE GAME. If the Singing Mountain was actually PRESENT on every version of Chrono Trigger, i'd just flip off and never play the game again. Yes it's just that annoying.

Now for some games that have valuable entries. inFamous 2's Hard Mode is.. what the name says. Hard. The groups of enemies on top of buildings can kill you really really fast, the re-energization missions are frustratingly hard with 70+ enemies coming from ALL SIDES, and the ambushes are very frustrating.

For a different entry, i say Mardek 3. Of course, it's an online game, but has the length of a normal console game. Or not, i don't know. Anyways Mardek 3 begins with the very boring Sun Temple - Sandflow Caves(RRRRRGH) - Dark Palace level chain. Sun Temple is plain boring, Sandflow Caves is very long, and Dark Palace is just hard. Then there are the bosses of the game. None of the 3 in the levels i listed earlier are particularly hard, in fact, the other ones that come after them are. The booby trap bosses - the Bone Demon and the Security Demon are ridiculously hard, but they yield some good treasure. The Guardians are honestly easy - Water Guardian is a push-over, Fire Guardian is... complicated, and the Earth Guardian is just a plain lazy-ass thing. Save your rage for bosses like Qualna and the Annihilators. Save your laughs for the King of Goznor: God i love that bossfight.

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Dark Souls is challenging, not hard. The game is actually exceedingly fair and most of the time you die, it's your fault, not the game's. I liked that. It was something out of the ordinary for a game of the time....it was a game that didn't hold your hand and I often feel like the people who beat it are the TRUE gamers. The kind that didn't give up on Zelda II. The kind that spent hours and hundreds of quarters playing Pac-Man.

Beating the first level of Ikaruga on hard-mode/default settings I always felt was more challenging than ringing the first two Bells of Awakening in Dark Souls.
Childhood memories of Mega Man X really comes to mind. The last game I had trouble with was "Uncharted 2: Honor Among Thieves". That final boss fight took me a little over an hour and a half and a great deal of luck to finally put him down.
Huh, I actually found it rather easy in comparison to other games back when I played it at... 6 I think. Mega Man 2 in particular I found a lot harder.
Seen September 18th, 2020
Posted February 18th, 2018
7,741 posts
16.6 Years
Kerbal Space Program is surprisingly hard to be actually competent at.

The only thing that gets me about Dark Souls (as said above, it's really a very fair game*) is Gwyn's sheer aggressiveness versus my finite health and fire resistance. Flash Sweat is actually quite a powerful and underrated spell but it doesn't help enough (the effect is sufficiently strong, but it doesn't last the whole fight and there's no respite for a recast owing to the aforementioned aggressiveness). I feel like I need either a summon or a Black Knight Shield to beat him, and I know that's a crutch.

*That said, The Urban Orb's level 1 playthrough (which is excellent btw; would recommend) shows how broken it can be in certain ways.


this is the hardest Touhou game - or really any game, which is a big statement - that I've ever played.
Play Lotus Land Story's extra stage. Hell awaits.

Speaking of 2hu, and to answer the OP, the hardest game I've played is the first one of this series. It might not actually be very difficult for the type of game it is (hint: it's not a shmup) but... it's rather mystifying for someone of my generation to behold.

mew_nani

Pokécommunity's Licensed Tree Exorcist

Female
Far Lands
Seen May 28th, 2019
Posted August 25th, 2018
1,839 posts
13.4 Years
Play Lotus Land Story's extra stage. Hell awaits.

Speaking of 2hu, and to answer the OP, the hardest game I've played is the first one of this series. It might not actually be very difficult for the type of game it is (hint: it's not a shmup) but... it's rather mystifying for someone of my generation to behold.
I'd do that but I can't even get past stage 5. I keep getting master sparked to death. And murdered by that party fairy. :/

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JJ Styles

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Seen November 10th, 2019
Posted November 10th, 2019
3,924 posts
8.4 Years
Certain Contra games would probably make it here but these two stand out:

Contra 3: The Alien Wars - ON HARD Difficulty. As if the base difficulty of the game was enough to question any person's masculinity, Contra 3 took it to the next level in Hard mode by making the game as obnoxiously unfair as possible in every turn. Combine a multiplied number of enemies on screen + Projectiles that are 3 times faster than usual, Contra 3's levels on Hard mode were some of the most frustrating moments i have had in playing any Side scrolling action game.

Contra: Shattered Soldier for the PS2 - Oh man, as if Contra 3 on Hard mode was enough, Shattered Soldier was one of those games where much of the focus is on epic boss fights but what really gives this game a capital H on the "HARD" word is that in order to get to the real ending of the game, one must make through the game on "S" rank, and nothing less, meaning that in all of the levels the player must destroy every unique destructable, from enemies, to destructable doodads, EVERY component of the boss, and of course the bosses themselves. And that's easier said than done considering that the levels are designed to be as challenging as possible, where one wrong jump can pretty much lead to death. One thing I'll say though is that I like Shattered Soldier's challenge factor more than what Contra 3 on Hard mode did since SS relied more on its intense level design and enemy boss patterns than just the cheap padding that was on Contra 3.
Shattered Soldier was one of those games that were not just hard, but was satisfying to play. I definitely enjoyed it a lot more than Contra 3's cheesy hard more difficulty.