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[Chief Icaroc]

This fight is the one that made me stop feeling guilty about save-whoring, to be honest.

Oh I was over that early on in that game. Screw those new recruits.. But I was decent at keeping everyone alive in that game. Still am not finished with it yet, but I am past the tank. Very much XCOM UFO Defense style of quit and restart....

 

[Irminsul]

Mafia 1 race

Destroyed the game for me and many of my friends. When I beat it, I almost cried.

Oh god, I remember that one. It's been a while since I played Mafia 1, so it's more like a barely remembered nightmare where I now that it was horrible, just not why exactly...

 

[galvatron]

There is an important amount of people who never got past the Turbo Tunnel on Battletoads

Everytime someone makes a thread I think they're specifically talking about this level.
I get past it just fine, but I don't personally know anyone else who did.

I'd also add the sliding block puzzle in Genma Onimusha as I'm sure asking someone who signed up for an action game to solve a tricky, timed puzzle which requires a completely unrelated skill set probably stumped quite a few people.

 

[polyh3dron]

Super Macho Man is the hardest fight in Punch Out. Even harder than Tyson.

I always hit the wall with Mr. Sandman. Funny because I could actually beat him on a real NES back in the day. I chalk it up to emulation and input lag, both on the VC and with PC emulation.

One of my personal difficulty spikes is early in Final Fantasy VI when you go to the mountain to find Duncan's son who killed him.

 

[SatoAilDarko]

Baten Kaitos Origins. FUCKING HOLOHOLO BIRD ARGH.

I love that and the fight on the airship in the first game. They both took a lot of tries but I was able to eke out victories without going back to a prior save. Since I had past saves and did eventually beat it I could enjoy the challenge it presented unlike others who might have been screwed by it.

 

[Zelias]

Act 2 Inferno in Diablo III, at least at launch. Spiked from Act 1 being totally reasonable, if not a little easy, to the basic enemies you encounter first in Act 2 destroying you over and over and over. Ridiculous.

I gather they nerfed it a ton since then, but that was one of the reasons I quit that mess and never looked back.

 

[mrmickfran]

Fuck you.
Fuck you.
FUCK YOU!

 

[QuiteUndead]

I was breezing through Dark Souls until I ran into these two.

 

[Tacitus_]

Fuck this

That was kinda easy... I remember a lot of people being surprised that you could use both barrels to shoot.

 

[SolVanderlyn]

Ratchet and Clank, at least the original trilogy, seems to be notorious for this. You can rainbow happy time your way through the first 1/3 of each game, but God forbid you slack off on the final stretch. Grind for bolts, buy awesome armor/weapons, OR ELSE.

 

[Mockingbird]

Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles

 

[Manu]

I did beat this level, but lost most of my lives there which left me hopeless for the rest of the game.

 

[Deified Data]

My Dark Souls brick wall is always 4 Kings.

 

[J-Roderton]

Worst thing ever.

 

[Astarte]

I was breezing through Dark Souls until I ran into these two.

The only thing I remember about these is my friend absolutely raging about 'Biggie Smalls'. Now I have to look forward to fighting Oompa Loompa

 

[HORRORSHØW]

Tomb Raider's parachute section. Man, I'm a branch-spear magnet.

 

[Paskil]

I got lucky with Wiegraf in FFT because Ramza had dual wield geomancer with auto-xpots. Smoked some W that day.

For me, Super Meat Boy. Specifically Cotton Alley.

 

[Duxxy3]

Fuck that part. Harder than any boss in the game.

 

[Parallacs]

Mass Effect. I remember this fight when you are riding a large circle elevator up and you encounter a Krogan and three others. The krogan has some sort of protection and you have to learn to pause and actually issue commands to debuff it, Baldur's Gate style.

Up until that point I just played it like an FPS. I wiped like 10 times on it. The funny thing is that for the rest of the game and the entirety of Mass Effect 2, I never encountered anything difficult.

Vanquish has some of the most poorly balanced sections in the game, most notably the boss fights. Also, the tentacle creature in Rage just throws off the entire game's sense of balance whenever those things make an appearance. Absolutely loathed those things.

Also, System Shock 2 and sections of the game in general. Don't get me started on that damn Cargo Bay section.

Cargo Bay feels like a trap of sorts. You don't have enough ammo or health to take on all of those bots and there isn't much reward for venturing in there. Maybe it is the game's way of telling you to stay on track.

 

[Daniel Jackson]

A lot of levels in the Donkey Kong Country Trilogy have a sudden spike at the very end.
A series of difficult jumps or barrel blasts. Or some very fast enemies, especially in the mine cart levels.

 

[Chitown B]

Mass Effect. I remember this fight when you are riding a large circle elevator up and you encounter a Krogan and three others. The krogan has some sort of protection and you have to learn to pause and actually issue commands to debuff it, Baldur's Gate style.

Up until that point I just played it like an FPS. I wiped like 10 times on it. The funny thing is that for the rest of the game and the entirety of Mass Effect 2, I never encountered anything difficult.

Ha, you didn't command your guys in ME1? That was a lot of the strategy.

 

[Owl]

Is it just me or do Patapon and Patapon 2 have difficulty spikes? I love those games, but I've gotten stuck in both of them and I've given up after an incredible amount of grinding with still no success of progressing.

 

[Wasp]

Ratchet and Clank, at least the original trilogy, seems to be notorious for this. You can rainbow happy time your way through the first 1/3 of each game, but God forbid you slack off on the final stretch. Grind for bolts, buy awesome armor/weapons, OR ELSE.

Yeah I never did beat the final boss in R&C1 or R&C3. The final boss in R&C2 was easy however.

What's annoying is if you die and fail at a boss fight you have to start again obviously but the ammo you used in your previous attempt is still gone on your next attempt, so you have to spend a load of bolts refilling your ammo again. That's fucking unfair. If my ammo doesn't return neither should the enemy's health.

 

[stonedwal]

Yoshi's Island DS. Fairly straightforward up until world 4, then it gets stupid hard. The final castle has some real bullshit in it. Fucking Artoon.

 

[Evilisk]

Valkyria Chronicles Chapter 7 rockets to mind.

This monstrosity turns up leading to a mission where you must slowly take it down while also avoiding its firepower and ability to flat out crush you, how well you succeed partly depends on if your Lancer units are feeling accurate or not and at this early point in the game expect a lot of buggering up from their inaccurate abilities.

I swear, if I didn't have GameFAQS for this level, I would have ragequit on this game. This battle is pure trial and error otherwise, you'd never know playing the level for the first time about grenades one shotting radiators, or how you really shouldn't put lancers on the top of the level or they're dead meat, or how you have to let Batomys go past a certain point in the level to have a chance of beating it, or how to do deal with Selvaria etc.

 

[Psycho_Mantis]

I remember this part being particularly hard:

Also RC1 the toxic green planet caused me a lot of troubles and then the final level. God damn had to grind for ryno to do that.

 

[Septimus Prime]

Shinobi:

Guy is harder than the whole rest of the game, which is already pretty hard.

Paladin's Quest:

Again, guy is way the hell harder than anything else in the game, which is already very hard.

Wrath of the Black Manta:

This is the first boss of the game. I've never beaten him.

 

[deli2000]

Zero's RC Missions in San Andreas.

Also

Spoiler

"All You Had To Do Was Follow The Damn Train CJ!" Ad Infinitum

 

[DrAg0nBoY]

Mafia 1 race

Destroyed the game for me and many of my friends. When I beat it, I almost cried.

It's funny because I heard of that level when I was younger. When I got to it, I beat it in like my 4th or 5th try I think.

Still never beat the whole game, lol.

 

[NewGame]

He was a nasty, nasty surprise.

 

[JimmyRustler]

Mafia 1 race

Destroyed the game for me and many of my friends. When I beat it, I almost cried.

Oh... remember that one. Broke the game for me. I beat it eventually and continued a little bit afterwards but I never recovered from and and stopped playing soon after.

 

[velociraptor]

Haha, I am playing through it right now and I agree. The one thing I HATE about Uncharted 2 and 3 is the extreme amount of enemies they throw at you from every single direction. It's stupid and not fun at all.

God Of War Ascension throws a shit ton of enemies at you at times.

I think the difficulty in that game spikes unfairly in certain sections e.g. Trials Of The Archimedes.

 

[Sword Familiar]

Back when I was playing portable 2nd, this mofo gave me the most trouble:

After finally beating him though, I never lost again, but man did it take many tries for me to beat him. To top it off, most enemies post-Tigrex felt like a cakewalk.

 

[matrix-cat]

The final boss of Revengeance was astonishingly hard for me. I started the game on Hard, and I hadn't exactly been breezing through it, but the final boss took me a solid hour and a half to beat. And I loved every second of it. By the time I beat him I felt like I could dodge or block every single one of his attacks, including exploiting my dodge moves i-frames to dodge through that area of effect explosion thing he does that doesn't give you enough lead-up time to run away from if you happen to be attacking when he starts it. That's what a final boss should be.

 

[Labadal]

Fractal: Make Bloom Not War

Made it through story mode all the way to level 23. Level 24 feels impossible to beat.

 

[nOoblet16]

this was quite annoying, fighting like 12 of them in hard mode and 25 in European Extreme

 

[truestatic]

Played Torchlight on Very Hard Hardcore. The jump in difficulty as you reach the lower floors before the final boss are overwhelmingly brutal. Playing carefully and being generous with potions will get you down most of the way. Eventually though, you get far enough down and you find yourself finding friendly little succubus lookalikes called dark zealots. They hit with a monstrous, fast moving ranged attack that takes away half your health in a shot. The first time you die to them you probably won't even see it coming. They are brutal kill joys, and they put the end boss to shame in terms of difficulty,

 

[PK Gaming]

Yusuckalesca

3 phases.

Zombie spell (in which you can't heal unless cured)

Instant death spell (against non-zombies.)

Welp.

 

[Barry Burton]

Final boss of Condemned. Fuck that shit.

 

[Sickbean]

Havel the Rock would like a word.


I know he's optional at that point and you can't even get to him from the Burg without the Master Key, but he's probably the biggest jump in difficulty in the whole game for a new player.
I remember reading all the warning messages down the stairs and thinking 'can't be any worse than the black knight', then slam. Instadeath.

 

[RangerX]

I swear, if I didn't have GameFAQS for this level, I would have ragequit on this game. This battle is pure trial and error otherwise, you'd never know playing the level for the first time about grenades one shotting radiators, or how you really shouldn't put lancers on the top of the level or they're dead meat, or how you have to let Batomys go past a certain point in the level to have a chance of beating it, or how to do deal with Selvaria etc.

Yep I must have tried this battle dozens of times. I never knew about the grenades and I eventually traded the game in. Its a pity too as I loved the game up until that mission. I never see it in shops now either.

 

[Doomshroom]

Super Macho Man is the hardest fight in Punch Out. Even harder than Tyson.

Thats not super macho man its Soda popinski and he was just a drunk, pretty easy to beat.

 

[Fargh]

I know he's an optional boss but you completely own dark magus sisters and everything and then this thing shows up and sends you back to kinder garden.

 

[Jawmuncher]

Uncharted 3 had some stupid difficulty spikes. At least compared to the 2nd game. It never felt like a smooth expierences on most of the gunplay. Especially the first desert part in a sandstorm.

 

[LakeEarth]

I haven't played this game, but your description reminds me of Turokinosaur Hunter. You know, the pillars at the end of the third level? Platforming hell.

I understand most people's frustrations with that part but if you turn on the map, and only pay attention to the map, it isn't so hard. It's like you're playing an Atari game.


My contribution: Trials HD, that level where there's a box on the up ramp and you have to wiggle yourself just right to get around it. I just couldn't do it.

 

[Tokubetsu]

Shinobi:

Guy is harder than the whole rest of the game, which is already pretty hard.

Paladin's Quest:

Again, guy is way the hell harder than anything else in the game, which is already very hard.

Wrath of the Black Manta:

This is the first boss of the game. I've never beaten him.

UGh Shinobi PS2. Love the game to death but the whole thing is some kinda test of virtues. Willpower, patience, mental health etc. Then you hit this fucking asshole and it's like staring into an abyss. Pure evil and it's come to crush you into nothingness. I bruised my right knee beating my PS2 controller on it because of Shinobi. I respect any gamer than can make it to 6b.

 

[ElectricBlue187]

Final Fantasy 12 is the poster child of this for me. You just cruise along on auto pilot and then suddenly HOLY FUCK and then it's easy for awhile and then JESUS CHRIST and then it's easy for a really long time and then FUCK ME

I think it's because the strategy and tactics needed for the bosses is sort of esoteric and random and unnessesary for the rest of the game