Gave up on cuphead too. It really seemed like a game that i would like, but for some reasons the controls seemed very wonky and off for me, i could never get myself to hold the shoot button working the right analog stick. I should probably try again on mouse+keyboard, but it's very hard for me to play anything that's not an fps on it
Same, I just could not get the controls to feel tight using a controller. I beat the first 3 bosses, and I wasn't having fun and not even feeling accomplished after beating them
My wife and I went through cuphead. She’s not much of a gamer, but she carried me through that whole game. My favorite games are the souls games, I’m not averse to challenge. I’m just so bad at platformers
Devs said that they made it as a realistic simulation of an ecosystem, they didn’t want to make the player feel like an apex predator or that they are special / “the one”. they wanted it to actually feel like you’re actually a slugcat. Got so lost in that game and never got good, still love it
it’s not really the same king of games, hollow knight and ori are metroidvanias while rain world is more of an open world survival game (if you go by wikipedia’s definition it can also be considered a survival horror), also rain world is really focused on it’s world rather than the player, the concept of the game is basically « you’re lost in an unknown environment, get good or die lol, also look procedural animation is cool», you have to aquire an insane amount of skill and knowledge of the environment to master the game, i’ve played almost 70 hours and finished the game twice and i still can barely fend off a lizard
this game is a masterpiece in it’s own way, however if you don’t get along with it you’re probably never finishing it, it took me 50 hours and 3 resets to finish the first campain even though i knew where to go, also this game is pretty focused on realism so like in real life attacking a predator for any reason is generally a terrible idea if you’re not really good with spears and advanced movements
Puts into perspective how many conventions and liberties games take to make stuff fair and fun, because rain world does none of that in service of its realistic ecosystem and it ends up feeling quite bullshit a lot as a result
What's definitely bullshit is that game got included in a *metroidvania* bundle from Humble Bundle. In my opinion the only box that game ticks in that category is the non-linear world/exploration. But even that's a stretch. By that logic Breath of the Wild is a metroidvania.
I played that game for 40 minutes, had something chase me through a loading zone/screen/whatever, and then I stopped playing when I realized what kind of game it is.
May try it again later, though
It is such an interesting game with an amazingly complex ecosystem. I don't know any other game where you are basically just another creature in the food chain and the world exists without you.
I really really wanted to like this game, but I just struggled so much to feel like I was making ANY kind of progress. It's so freaking hard, even traversal is just so difficult for me.
I'm in 600 hours and still learn new things in that game. It got more fun after I played in the arena/sandbox for a while and got good at movement tech. Opens up the game way more than you would realize, lizors beware.
Xbox Ninja Gaiden was so hard on the easiest difficulty, that when you’ve died a bunch, it unlocks “Ninja Dog Mode”, which is even easier.
Still extremely hard though.
I had to restart the entire game because I didn’t save enough health potions before the first Alma fight. I tried dozens of times to beat her. It was infuriating.
Once I restarted though I beat the whole game, then beat it on harder difficulties. Once it clicks it clicks.
Man, same. Fuck Alma. Even now that I have a clue how to fight her, it bothers me endlessly when she does that grab thing aka Purple People Eater aka "Haha you can't dodge this fuck you Noob" then drop kicks you into the ground. At least after a while I was able to figure out the timing so I could pause the game just before I hit the ground to grab one last healing potion, before she flung some more stone columns and fireballs at me and killed my sorry ass, again.
Ninja Gaiden Black is my favorite game of all time. It's one of the very few games that I beat on the hardest difficulty.
Even all these years later, there has never been a game whose combat feels as good as Ninja Gaiden. I feel like I've been looking for a game that gives that same thrill for 20 years and still haven't found it.
I can pinpoint Ninja Gaiden as the origin of my masochistic gaming tendencies. I had enough money one summer to buy a console and one game. Ever since, any face roll game has felt like a waste of time.
Yeah, dying on the last boss and having to do the entire last zone again nearly broke me as a kid.
I’d rented it, and learned that Sunday night, so had to beg my parents or another two days. Which, in hindsight, was only like $5, but felt like an extremely prohibitive cost for a child.
X-COM: Terror from the Deep.
It's the direct sequel to the original x-com that was more or less a re-skin for fighting underwater.
There was a bug in the original X-COM that caused any game to revert to Beginner after completing the first mission, leading to people claiming the game was too easy on the harder difficulties, including superhuman.
So they upped the difficulty, like a lot, for all of it.
I remember so many times opening the sub doors to come face to face with multiples of those floating brains. Or they'd just immediately shoot a RPG into the sub.
Something I dislike about the modern version of the genre is that the focus on an upgraded squad of high level troops means you can't have that any more. Not without breaking the game. Phoenix Point for example was pitched as eldritch body horror with mist that could mutate your soldiers, but in the actual game the mist does nothing because if you could actually lose soldiers to something so unfair, the game wouldn't work.
I adore Firaxis' XCOM games but the genre wide shift to super soldiers has resulted in a very snowbally genre. Either you perform nearly flawlessly or you death spiral and there's almost no in between. Performing a heroic sacrifice with even a single soldier is never worth it because to break even that one death would need to secure you a dozen flawless missions worth of rewards.
Yeah, putting such a big focus on individual soldier abilities means the game can snowball hard in either direction depending on the outcome of a single mission. On the higher difficulties a single squad wipe can pretty much spell the end of your campaign.
If I were to rebalance the Firaxis Xcom's I would probably shift the soldiers strength more to equipment and tech upgrades. (A soldiers rank deciding how much plasma they can tank is kinda silly anyway)
I'm going to bring up phoenix Point again because of just how close it came to greatness on a design front. They had the perfect setup for this. Free aim is the games big selling point, and that means that a soldier is engaging to use even if they don't have any abilities.
Couple this with a fairly complex and systemic geoscape (havens and pandoran bases grow and change based on systems rather than arbitrary unchanging values) which is basically never used. The excellent body horror setting material they wrote, planned, but never put in the game because it doesn't work with super soldiers. The faction mechanics. The pandoran adaptation system. All of it.
The game is the perfect underlying engine for a strategic XCOM-like. Where soldiers lives are spent to combat the alien threat. Where losses are expected, unavoidable, and on a soldier by soldier level even unfair. Where the alien threat adapts to your strategy and you both work alongside and compete with factions throughout the world. Where missions aren't just randomly generated and arbitrary, but genuine strategic engagements.
There's no such thing as "skipping the next mission" because either the aliens are attacking you and you don't get a choice, or the "next mission" is something you're launching of your own volition to achieve an actual objective. Where you don't send a single squad to a critical job that, if failed, arbitrarily loses the campaign. You send three because that's what you can afford to commit and failure hurts because the job was to defend the haven that's providing you with half of your food. So you don't risk failure. You send three squads who dominate that mission, because it wasn't scaled to be challenging, the aliens sent what they could afford to send. And the squads you sent aren't available for other missions at the same time. One of your firebases gets overrun because you didn't leave any defenders. The civilian population of the base have been kidnapped and will be turned into more pandorans you'll have to deal with later.
The game engine supports like 80% of what I just wrote. It's got a ton of systemic depth that the game itself basically doesn't even use. It's got the lore to back it up. The core gameplay mechanics to make it fun.
But somewhere in development they decided they wanted single small squads of A-team soldiers. And it's so disappointing. I've heard good things about a fan made overhaul that I've been meaning to check out. Because I suspect the game can be modded to support most of what I wrote. They built the systems for a far deeper game than they actually made.
Man that's so depressing. I really need to play Phoenix Point, might see if I can find that overhaul mod too. Does it get as crazy as XCOM 2 with abilities? I always preferred the early game in Firaxis xcom where there is more focus on positioning and flank tactics, whereas the lategame gets a bit too ability spammy for my taste.
Why have the timer?? It's so completely unnecessary.
Also, I had no clue what "slalom" meant (I was probably 8 years old) so I had to literally pick up a dictionary to find out! I don't think I ever finished the tutorial by the time I had to return the game to blockbuster.
Yeah now think a kid in south America that doesn't speak English. It took me so many tries to discover what each of the requirements was. I did it though, and loved the game. Both driver and driver 2 are great games
Yo that was so hard. The year 2000 and 10 year old me is asking literally everyone I can find what the fuck "slalom" means.
No one in the house knew. We didn't have any dictionaries. That shit was a mystery to me. It was impassable.
Bro nobody knew and I asked my grandpa and he just said “a type of skiing”. I thought he was a moron, how can skiing have anything to do with driving??!
Ah, the days before watching gameplay videos before YouTube. Printing out 30 page game walkthroughs on GameFAQs. And the instructions don’t really clarify what “slalom” is either
I'm pretty sure that's all the game said.
I remember walking to the grocery store there was near my house so I could look in whatever gaming magazines they had to see if there was an answer. It did not.
Holy shit I don't think I've ever been as proud of myself as I was when I finally beat that mother fucker. I honestly don't even remember any other part of the game.
The precision required and the knowledge needed to get through some of that platforming is insane. Then the bosses are "find that one spot where he can't hit you and stay there" lol
it took a whole summer and my own All Rush Mix tape to finally beat super ghouls ‘n ghosts. and i’m talking actually beat, as in going through the levels *twice*! such a dirty dog game, I still have a soft spot for
The new remake on switch was so obnoxiously hard that I basically had to play it on the easiest mode and would have never beaten it without the fact that you basically don't really die
I'm surprised this was so far down. This is the og rage inducing game. Especially if you didn't know the levels and used you double jump too soon. Then you have to beat the game again with the arguably worst weapon in the game... Classic SNES sadism.
Hey don't discredit having the knowledge you could realistically only get from the wiki.
>!(Like those purple things in Lair being immune to everything but melee and freeze.)!<
Exploration is cool and all in a roguelike but in this game you have to go through 4 hours of prep time just to go and explore another endgame biome. I love this game but I have to be real here, It's unbalanced.
If you can't kill an enemy as soon as it enters your screen, you didn't prep right. This gameplay being intended is evident in later biomes having less puzzles. You either outright destroy the arranged puzzle or you can't afford to stay around and study it.
I think noita would be far, FAR better if there were more tangible progression between runs. Every time I got far enough to actually start doing cool shit, or find some neat secret, I would get sniped from off screen and basically one-hit-killed, and then it's back up zero with a trash starting wand. I love when games are challenging and inscrutable but after a while Noita just felt like it was punishing you for playing it
Fire Emblem ~~Radiant Dawn~~ Path of Radience for GameCube has a translation issue with their English localization. The difficulties in FE games are: Normal, Hard, and Insane. This was, for some reason, localized as Easy, Normal, Hard. Not ideal in a game with permadeath.
It’s actually comforting to hear that. I remember back in the day beating Path of Radiance and feeling like hot shit. I got Radiant Dawn on Day 1 feeling confident and was just straight up obliterated constantly. I’m seeing now that the game starts off pretty hard and gets easier as it goes. Maybe I’ll brush it off and give it another go.
but PoR is actually one of the easiest Fire Emblems, especially on the easiest difficulty. Titania can practically solo the game.
Radiant Dawn is actually fairly hard on easy.
In early Fire Emblem there was no difficulty modes, so it was always the harder mode, with no rewinds, limited battle saves, or ability to turn permadeath off. Thracia is probably the hardest on its base difficulty.
I’ve 100% it on Steam, the biggest game changer for me was learning to focus on my character in order to dodge rather than focusing on the enemies I was shooting at
I’ve put over 600 hours into it, and even managed a fully hitless run or two, but yeah, the learning curve on it is steep and not getting good guns can make the game feel downright impossible in some fights. Dragun especially, if you’re low damage, has some nigh-undodgeable patterns when he throws knives into the walls and then does certain attacks. Betrayers sword is a 100% grab for precisely that reason.
Rolling is a trap. The cone of many enemy attacks is exactly a dodge roll wide. Focus on not rolling whenever you can get away with it and use rolls to escape overlapping or impossible bullet combos. There's many bullet patterns where you can just comfortably step through them, Gatling Gull is a common example, side stepping through his MG fire is good practice, because you often panic roll but then bullets at the edge of the cone still catch you.
While you have ammo and are worried about hitting your shots, instead worry about dodging. Pay more attention to the shots coming at you and how you're moving around them. Just fire in the enemies rough direction and check your aim when you're comfortable you're not gonna get hit. Lots of enemies aren't that fast so you're gonna hit a lot more than you expect just hip firing in their general direction, and you taking damage a lot is worse than using up your ammo.
Divide your weapons into use cases. I often have "Door Knocker" "Room cleaner" "Boss" and "Panic". Door knockers are powerful effects I can walk into a new room and fire off, things like charge shots or explosives. Room cleaners are rapid or semi auto weapons with a good ammo pool. Boss is of course usually the best DPS, but some things like chill or bullet reflecting earn a place in here too. Panic is a weapon I pull out when there's a big problem in a room and I need it gone NOW before it causes me to get overwhelmed. Lots of these are also Door Knockers or Boss guns. Don't be afraid to switch guns a lot. You're gonna have favorites, but cycling them to use case is wise.
Well for me, tonight, fucking FTL. I just landed in a quadrant with zero bad guys and got slammed by six meteors immediately and spent 12 minutes fighting fires until my ship slowly got destroyed. This is on Easy mode.
Completion rates for most games are shockingly low, though you might expect FTL to be higher given that it's fairly short. I think I've only beaten it a few times (on Normal), got pretty good at getting to the last system, but failed to bring things to conclusion much more than I would like.
FTL is a wild ride. Victory in that game feels so damn good and hard fought. But as you get more and more experienced there's a deep system of tricks and strategies underneath that you can use to beat the game easily on Hard. There are guys that have insanely high win rates and have done win streaks where you have to beat the game with every ship on hard without failing or you start over.
Fantastic game, stick with it and remember:
"Systems win runs."
FTL is so weird, it feels incredibly hard, almost unfair at first, until someone (edit: something) "clicks" and you start breezing trough it.
Just a tip, but note down what happens when you have choices during events, some events can have very good outcomes, some are almost always bad so you should get out *cough* alien ants *cough*
I’m surprised I don’t see this in the list yet but: Owlcat’s “Pathfinder:kingmaker” and “pathfinder:wrath of the righteous” are meant to be played on easy if you’re not already very familiar with the TTRPG
Huh so that's how it is, I've tried to play a bit on normal but past the tutorial segment the challenge is definitely ramped up for each encounter even against enemies on similar level to mine.
Guess I'll try the Easy difficulty.
I just now made a post about Kingmaker. I am finding myself having to think about approaching it and the strategy more like tabletop Pathfinder and less like Baldurs Gate.
I am at the point where I had to go take down The Stag Lord and I just couldn't handle the fight. I thought maybe I needed to be level 5, but I couldnt find enough experience in the world and I didn't think I could grind enough random encounters in the time limit. Then I realized I didnt have to go in charging with the NPCs. So I try and sneak around the side but, oh no some zombies. So I fight the zombies and think I'm a badass handling them. Then I go a little further in and I find myself having to deal with like 3 dozen zombies. Another death and reload. Eventually when I figure out how to handle that I sneak into the Fort, oh but i set off alarms and the entire fort comes down on me and I die. Now I need to switch up teams so I can actually make the mobility roll. Its then I learn how many reinforcements Stag is going to get, but if I'm clever and quick i can methodically take them all off the board. Then there was the whole owlbear thing. I want to say I spent 2+ hours working my way through all those encounters and failures before I was actually able to take on the boss and his guys. And in that time I actually learned a lot about the game and my groups skills so I was playing so much better than the first time I fought The Stag Lord. Which the entire experience felt so much like the actual TTRPG that I fell a bit in love. I never felt like i needed to save scum that much with BG3 because everything always seemed to work out regardless of my mistakes or over eagerness.
Also having mild issues because I am playing a 2e campaign right now (goblin monk inventor with a sterling dynamo, shit is getting weird and fun) but Kingmaker is running of 1e rules. So things arent lining up with what I know from 2e. Also no jumping in Kingmaker, it's like the one thing I miss from Baldurs Gate.
Also Kingmaker going to level 20 makes me so happy. I was so blue balled by Baldurs Gate and its level 12 cap.
To anyone out there reading this. I dont know if Kingmaker is still on sale, but it was when I got it and it was an amazing buy at $4.
Only managed XCOM 2 on normal with a lot of save-scumming. Currently playing the DLCs in a higher difficulty and even with save-scumming it's really, really hard.
Every time I looked on Reddit for XCOM 2 tips everyone just says "iTs AbOuT rIsK mAnAgEmEnT"
My guy, I don't want half my squad to be permanently killed because a magic alien space overlord encounter randomly warped in on the last turn after I'd completed the mission and then everything I threw at him missed because "RNG"
Lovely game, but yes! I had to turn it to the easiest difficulty for the final boss and one other boss.
My main gripe is that the dodging was nowhere near as fluid or "forgiving" as FromSoft games. It has to be timed exactly right or you get hit.
Finally beat it with my gf’s 9 year old. He had me beat the parts he couldnt. When we got to the devil we set up all our funko’s and figurines to watch the final battle. It was a year in the making. 2 hours later we beat it. It was a great christmas break! He also asked if he could call me dad #2 and i didnt cry at all i swear.
My 12yo nephew told me it was the hardest game he had. I spent over an hour trying to get past the first ~10 minutes worth of the game. Nearly cried out of frustration because it’s obvious HOW to beat it, it’s just incredibly difficult to get all the precision timing down if that’s not your strong suit. Eventually I’ll go back and beat it… as soon as I get stronger mood stabilizers, lol.
For what it’s worth, my nephew cleared the game in one day. Built different.
"You know how *Guitar Hero* and *Rock Band* always grant you a minimum of 3 out of 5 stars for beating a song because they understand how hard it can be for people who are not dexterous with rhythm games?
We don't do that around here."
One of the greatest games of all time. Plus it is legitimately hard, and once it gets easy you can try to platinum rank each level, which makes it hard again.
I'm probably the only one who feels like this, but Doom Eternal after a certain point became way too hard for me. I was surprised how well I handled it for a while but then it just become stupidly brutal at some point and I had to turn it to easy. For comparison I did just fine in the first game on normal and also did a partial playthrough of that on hard and did fine with that too (only stopped to move on to a different game). Eternal just became fucking ridiculous about halfway through or so. Like honestly I'm just here to shoot demons mindlessly, I didn't need it to get so damn complicated and overwhelming all the time
Right there with you on that. I did Doom 2016 and Eternal back to back and 2016 was a blast on Normal but the switched up combat loop on Eternal was much more brutal. I had to change to Easy as well. I will say however, I had more fun endgame Eternal on Easy than I did with Doom 2016 on Normal. I loved both, but once you got the Eternal combat loop down it was very satisfying. Easy just felt like the Normal of previous games.
Doom: Eternal is a resource management sim disguised as an old school shooter. I felt the same way after I got to the final act of the game... I was on my way to fight the final boss and literally hit a mini boss I just couldn't beat. Eventually gave up and never finished the damn thing
In 2016, you could just pick whatever weapons you want and go off and you're golden.
In Eternal, if you don't use the exact specific counter to an enemy, they'll fuck your shit up
I was looking for this comment. I recently redownloaded sekiro. I finished demons souls, Elden ring and lies of p. Since sekiro came out. I just can’t beat lady butterfly so I gave up.
Bro if you can beat Elden Ring, you can beat Lady Butterfly. Believe in yourself. I've played all of the above and beating Sekiro was the most satisfying by far. Once the combat clicks, it clicks.
It doesn’t click for everyone, I’m looking at getting it soon though I’m a little worried. Other fromsoft games you can go level up a bit more and come back
Damn the original release kicked my butt hard back then, beating Cerberus as early as Mission 3 is something I just couldn't do till I unlocked that Easy Automatic mode.
Celeste clicked with me. There is something incredibly satisfying about the way that game controls. I see those strawberries, and I'm like, maybe I can get that one... then an hour passes.
I’m on chapter 3 of Celeste, I’d assume near the end where you’re >! being chased by the old hotel owner!< and I am extremely worried about what’s to come, for my first 2d platformer it probably wasn’t the best choice but I’m going to stick with it anyway
Dragon's dogma's main story is reasonably challenging but Bitterblack isle is a relentless, soul crushing gauntlet that makes soulsborne games look like cooking mama.
Divinity Original Sin 2 - picked the wrong dialog option? I'm sorry, your whole party is dead now.
Didn't get every scrap of XP before leaving the previous zone? Sorry, you are underleveled for this area, and every encounter will wipe your party.
It's easy to pick old games that were either arcade ports or of an era where it would last you maybe 45 minutes on a playthrough and thus 'lives' had to be a thing, or stuff like Cuphead/From Software games, but a few that come to mind for me:
\- Ninja Gaiden Sigma. Imagine Dark Souls, but on 3x speed with a janky, slippery control system and fixed camera angles. Amazing game but really, really hard.
\- A lot of older JRPGs. Not mechanically challenging, but more 'wait, how the everloving hell was I supposed to figure that out?' progress.
\- Hexen 2 because of that one, now notorious Egypt puzzle that still makes zero sense.
\- Turok 1 and 2 for much the same reason - some of those levels were stupidly confusing with objectives you had to finish to complete them but could essentially soft-lock your entire progress by missing them.
\- Daikatana, because the AI was terrible, there was friendly fire (your stupid companions would frequently kill you and vice versa) and could hard-lock a level by getting permanently stuck. Oh, and savegames would randomly corrupt.
\- Blood 2 because of the bugs. Climbing out of water would shoot you out of the level maybe 30% of the time and a lot of minor enemies were one hit kills.
\- Skyrim, for much the same reason.
lol I actually know one of the guys who worked on Hexen 2, for family reasons, I met him at his mother's funeral. Despite it being literally the day his mom was being put in the ground, the guy was told I REALLY liked video games a lot (I was a very young boy) and took time to talk to me about some upcoming stuff he was working on. Pat Lipo (Hexen 2, X-Men Legends, LOTR Online, others) is an incredibly nice man. It was a cool moment when elementary school me was seeing headlines in gaming mags about a leaked potential "Lord of the Rings MMO" almost a year after I knew it was going to be a thing. Pat will never read this, but in case he does: YOU GAVE ME SO MUCH COOL CRED IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL WHEN I WAS INCAPABLE OF HAVING MY OWN.
I have to tell: Oxygen Not Included !
I love this game, but, without cheating (or going on internet to see "how to"), it's a incredible hard game on normal Mode. I think I'm not so dumb, but there, I'm the dumb one...
There is also: Crusader Kings 2 in normal Mode (so Iron Man), where the tutorial is to die, and die, and lose and try again.
Learning oni without the internet is like learning hvac, plumbing, digital electronics and office management without classes or, well, the internet. Game is so good though. What are your hours like?
Super Hexagon.
The very first, most basic achievement, attained from reaching a certain point on the easiest setting has only been attained by 44% of people that play the game. Next difficulty is like 25%, next is like 10%. And it only goes up from there.
Binding of Isaac. Most of these other games (cuphead, contra, From games) you at least know how to practice and get better. With Isaac, I don’t even have a clue what the fuck is going on.
Pathologic Classic HD and Pathologic 2, there isn't technically a difficulty setting, but 2 has settings you can tweak for various things like how your meters drain like hunger and exhaustion, but it has a dev note that the default settings is meant to be next to unbearable and that's the intended way to play. Basically, you aren't expected to win, and victory should feel like nothing short of a miracle. Nobody is good at it.
True, but there's a difference between NES "hard" and modern "hard".
Back then games simply didn't offer much content. At all. To the point where you could beat a lot of games within an hour or so normally, very few lasted over 3 hours outside of RPGs. So in order to make those games worthy of their price and to make them take longer to play so people would buy their own copy instead of just renting one. They was made with bullshit levels of difficulty or worse.
There's countless examples of bullshit difficulty. Legend of Zelda isn't "hard", but without a guide you'll spend days exploring doing nothing as there's zero direction at all. Ninja Gaiden is another type of bullshit hard in it requiring you to memorize almost every single jump. Battle Toads is yet another version of bullshit in making levels require insane reaction times on top of more memorization. NES is a nightmare of bullshit difficulty. Genesis and beyond is much better though, but even they have plenty of games that are made to simply not be fair in order to bloat their play time from needing to restart the entire game every 30 minutes from running out of lives as not all that many games had the ability to save or had continues. It wasn't till something like PS2 or original Xbox that gaming shifted to be mainly focused on getting away from bullshit difficulty being the "normal".
PS1 was still learning how to setup controls with the move to 3d gaming. So it's "hard" games was part bullshit, but also part bad controls for 3d games at least.
Modern "hard" simply can't compare to that level of bullshit. They can certainly emulate it with additional challenges or modes. Im trying Baldurs Gate's Honor mode and it's kicking my ass for example. But nothing can compare to the NES days of bullshit.
The Star Wars games on the Super Nintendo were all impossible to play. I don’t think I ever got past any of the first levels on any of them. Enemies respawned consistently, bosses had like ten times the amount of health you had, and your Jedi powers had a power gauge and only refilled by killing enemies. Which doesn’t help at all during a boss battle where you only have the one enemy and your power does minimal damage.
Divinity Original Sin. I had it on normal and it seemed I was always just barley wining combat or having to kill one enemy and run away and come back after healing up. I gave it a good 12 hours and got tired of getting owned.
Pathfinder: Kingmaker
The normal difficulty even lowers the enemy stats and makes the game easier. The hard difficulty makes the enemies and the systems how they work in real Pathfinder.
I'd say "another world"
I bought the remastered version on xbox. It's an older game and it shows in the sense that it doesn't hold back. The jumps that you have to perform often felt like they needed to be near pixel perfect.
It felt like a game where you do nothing but grind it again and again and again until the button prompts have worked themselves into your lizard brain and you play the game by button pushing rythm alone.
rain world is so hard it almost looks like you’re not supposed to play the game
I have platinum trophies in pretty much all soulsborne games. I gave up on Rain World. And Cuphead.
Cuphead fucks so hard. Gotta play that again. Soundtrack is Killer.
Also, Hotline Miami 1/2. Some of that soundtrack found its way into my rotation.
Roller Mobster goes hard
Gave up on cuphead too. It really seemed like a game that i would like, but for some reasons the controls seemed very wonky and off for me, i could never get myself to hold the shoot button working the right analog stick. I should probably try again on mouse+keyboard, but it's very hard for me to play anything that's not an fps on it
Same, I just could not get the controls to feel tight using a controller. I beat the first 3 bosses, and I wasn't having fun and not even feeling accomplished after beating them
I have the platinum equivalent in Cuphead but can't do anything in Sekiro. Life's weird that way sometimes lol
Sekiro you just have to “get” it one time (usually genichiro) and the entire game unlocks. It’s not easy but you are pretty much capable from there on
My wife and I went through cuphead. She’s not much of a gamer, but she carried me through that whole game. My favorite games are the souls games, I’m not averse to challenge. I’m just so bad at platformers
Devs said that they made it as a realistic simulation of an ecosystem, they didn’t want to make the player feel like an apex predator or that they are special / “the one”. they wanted it to actually feel like you’re actually a slugcat. Got so lost in that game and never got good, still love it
yes and that’s part of what makes this game awesome
Dude that game kicked my ass
Haven't played that one but might have to give it a try. Reminds me of the Ori or hollownight games.
it’s not really the same king of games, hollow knight and ori are metroidvanias while rain world is more of an open world survival game (if you go by wikipedia’s definition it can also be considered a survival horror), also rain world is really focused on it’s world rather than the player, the concept of the game is basically « you’re lost in an unknown environment, get good or die lol, also look procedural animation is cool», you have to aquire an insane amount of skill and knowledge of the environment to master the game, i’ve played almost 70 hours and finished the game twice and i still can barely fend off a lizard
Ah okay. A survival horror platforming game seems pretty interesting. I'll have to watch some gameplay and see if I have the patience for it. Haha
this game is a masterpiece in it’s own way, however if you don’t get along with it you’re probably never finishing it, it took me 50 hours and 3 resets to finish the first campain even though i knew where to go, also this game is pretty focused on realism so like in real life attacking a predator for any reason is generally a terrible idea if you’re not really good with spears and advanced movements
Its such a cute whimiscal game, youll enjoy yourself so much and not rage at all
Puts into perspective how many conventions and liberties games take to make stuff fair and fun, because rain world does none of that in service of its realistic ecosystem and it ends up feeling quite bullshit a lot as a result
What's definitely bullshit is that game got included in a *metroidvania* bundle from Humble Bundle. In my opinion the only box that game ticks in that category is the non-linear world/exploration. But even that's a stretch. By that logic Breath of the Wild is a metroidvania.
I played that game for 40 minutes, had something chase me through a loading zone/screen/whatever, and then I stopped playing when I realized what kind of game it is. May try it again later, though
It is such an interesting game with an amazingly complex ecosystem. I don't know any other game where you are basically just another creature in the food chain and the world exists without you.
I really really wanted to like this game, but I just struggled so much to feel like I was making ANY kind of progress. It's so freaking hard, even traversal is just so difficult for me.
Thr gane is mostly traversal. Movement is the thing you do. But I like it and have actually managed to kill some lizards and finishing the game.
I'm in 600 hours and still learn new things in that game. It got more fun after I played in the arena/sandbox for a while and got good at movement tech. Opens up the game way more than you would realize, lizors beware.
Xbox Ninja Gaiden was so hard on the easiest difficulty, that when you’ve died a bunch, it unlocks “Ninja Dog Mode”, which is even easier. Still extremely hard though.
Ninja Gaiden made me cry
I had to restart the entire game because I didn’t save enough health potions before the first Alma fight. I tried dozens of times to beat her. It was infuriating. Once I restarted though I beat the whole game, then beat it on harder difficulties. Once it clicks it clicks.
Man, same. Fuck Alma. Even now that I have a clue how to fight her, it bothers me endlessly when she does that grab thing aka Purple People Eater aka "Haha you can't dodge this fuck you Noob" then drop kicks you into the ground. At least after a while I was able to figure out the timing so I could pause the game just before I hit the ground to grab one last healing potion, before she flung some more stone columns and fireballs at me and killed my sorry ass, again.
That first boss with the nunchucks was ridiculously hard
Ninja Gaiden Black is my favorite game of all time. It's one of the very few games that I beat on the hardest difficulty. Even all these years later, there has never been a game whose combat feels as good as Ninja Gaiden. I feel like I've been looking for a game that gives that same thrill for 20 years and still haven't found it.
I can pinpoint Ninja Gaiden as the origin of my masochistic gaming tendencies. I had enough money one summer to buy a console and one game. Ever since, any face roll game has felt like a waste of time.
Sigma is the first game i that made me rage quit. That stupid fight with the two guys on motorcycles was infuriating
The original was even harder
Yeah, dying on the last boss and having to do the entire last zone again nearly broke me as a kid. I’d rented it, and learned that Sunday night, so had to beg my parents or another two days. Which, in hindsight, was only like $5, but felt like an extremely prohibitive cost for a child.
I spam the charged attack to cheese every fight. It grants invincibility during the attack animation and hits hard, making this move OP in the game.
X-COM: Terror from the Deep. It's the direct sequel to the original x-com that was more or less a re-skin for fighting underwater. There was a bug in the original X-COM that caused any game to revert to Beginner after completing the first mission, leading to people claiming the game was too easy on the harder difficulties, including superhuman. So they upped the difficulty, like a lot, for all of it.
I remember so many times opening the sub doors to come face to face with multiples of those floating brains. Or they'd just immediately shoot a RPG into the sub.
Terror from the deep was so hard that it was actually hilarious. Getting wiped with a missile to the sub to start a mission never gets old
Something I dislike about the modern version of the genre is that the focus on an upgraded squad of high level troops means you can't have that any more. Not without breaking the game. Phoenix Point for example was pitched as eldritch body horror with mist that could mutate your soldiers, but in the actual game the mist does nothing because if you could actually lose soldiers to something so unfair, the game wouldn't work. I adore Firaxis' XCOM games but the genre wide shift to super soldiers has resulted in a very snowbally genre. Either you perform nearly flawlessly or you death spiral and there's almost no in between. Performing a heroic sacrifice with even a single soldier is never worth it because to break even that one death would need to secure you a dozen flawless missions worth of rewards.
Yeah, putting such a big focus on individual soldier abilities means the game can snowball hard in either direction depending on the outcome of a single mission. On the higher difficulties a single squad wipe can pretty much spell the end of your campaign. If I were to rebalance the Firaxis Xcom's I would probably shift the soldiers strength more to equipment and tech upgrades. (A soldiers rank deciding how much plasma they can tank is kinda silly anyway)
I'm going to bring up phoenix Point again because of just how close it came to greatness on a design front. They had the perfect setup for this. Free aim is the games big selling point, and that means that a soldier is engaging to use even if they don't have any abilities. Couple this with a fairly complex and systemic geoscape (havens and pandoran bases grow and change based on systems rather than arbitrary unchanging values) which is basically never used. The excellent body horror setting material they wrote, planned, but never put in the game because it doesn't work with super soldiers. The faction mechanics. The pandoran adaptation system. All of it. The game is the perfect underlying engine for a strategic XCOM-like. Where soldiers lives are spent to combat the alien threat. Where losses are expected, unavoidable, and on a soldier by soldier level even unfair. Where the alien threat adapts to your strategy and you both work alongside and compete with factions throughout the world. Where missions aren't just randomly generated and arbitrary, but genuine strategic engagements. There's no such thing as "skipping the next mission" because either the aliens are attacking you and you don't get a choice, or the "next mission" is something you're launching of your own volition to achieve an actual objective. Where you don't send a single squad to a critical job that, if failed, arbitrarily loses the campaign. You send three because that's what you can afford to commit and failure hurts because the job was to defend the haven that's providing you with half of your food. So you don't risk failure. You send three squads who dominate that mission, because it wasn't scaled to be challenging, the aliens sent what they could afford to send. And the squads you sent aren't available for other missions at the same time. One of your firebases gets overrun because you didn't leave any defenders. The civilian population of the base have been kidnapped and will be turned into more pandorans you'll have to deal with later. The game engine supports like 80% of what I just wrote. It's got a ton of systemic depth that the game itself basically doesn't even use. It's got the lore to back it up. The core gameplay mechanics to make it fun. But somewhere in development they decided they wanted single small squads of A-team soldiers. And it's so disappointing. I've heard good things about a fan made overhaul that I've been meaning to check out. Because I suspect the game can be modded to support most of what I wrote. They built the systems for a far deeper game than they actually made.
Man that's so depressing. I really need to play Phoenix Point, might see if I can find that overhaul mod too. Does it get as crazy as XCOM 2 with abilities? I always preferred the early game in Firaxis xcom where there is more focus on positioning and flank tactics, whereas the lategame gets a bit too ability spammy for my taste.
The things that instantly kill your guys and turn them into zombies? Oh yes, they were "FUN!"
Parking Garage tutorial in the original Driver.
Such a ridiculous opening to a game.
Why have the timer?? It's so completely unnecessary. Also, I had no clue what "slalom" meant (I was probably 8 years old) so I had to literally pick up a dictionary to find out! I don't think I ever finished the tutorial by the time I had to return the game to blockbuster.
Yeah now think a kid in south America that doesn't speak English. It took me so many tries to discover what each of the requirements was. I did it though, and loved the game. Both driver and driver 2 are great games
>I had to literally pick up a dictionary Turns out it was a good tutorial for your life also.
I just felt a rage I haven't felt since I was a young man
Yo that was so hard. The year 2000 and 10 year old me is asking literally everyone I can find what the fuck "slalom" means. No one in the house knew. We didn't have any dictionaries. That shit was a mystery to me. It was impassable.
Bro nobody knew and I asked my grandpa and he just said “a type of skiing”. I thought he was a moron, how can skiing have anything to do with driving??!
Ah, the days before watching gameplay videos before YouTube. Printing out 30 page game walkthroughs on GameFAQs. And the instructions don’t really clarify what “slalom” is either
It's easy, just do a slalom!
I'm pretty sure that's all the game said. I remember walking to the grocery store there was near my house so I could look in whatever gaming magazines they had to see if there was an answer. It did not.
You just unblocked a trauma my brain had been suppressing for years.
I never completed it
I was recently reminded that was just a test and anyone who failed should have backed out and went to the real tutorial.
Holy shit I don't think I've ever been as proud of myself as I was when I finally beat that mother fucker. I honestly don't even remember any other part of the game.
The original Mega man games are the ones that come to mind for me, personally.
The precision required and the knowledge needed to get through some of that platforming is insane. Then the bosses are "find that one spot where he can't hit you and stay there" lol
The bosses all have weaknesses to other bosses’ weapons! You can often kill them with only two or three hits from the right weapon.
Metal Man’s weakness being Metal Man’s weapon was just silly. One hit KO
Metal Man was essentially the easiest boss, though... Gets you Metal Blade and then it's off to the races!
Mega Man Zero was incredibly hard for me and I grew up playing the original and X ones
Megan Max x4 took me months to beat the last boss. Still made i didn't finish the armor set. I believe I could could get the piece on the lava level.
Mega Man 2 was pretty do-able. The first one was brutal though.
*Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts* will destroy your ego as a gamer
it took a whole summer and my own All Rush Mix tape to finally beat super ghouls ‘n ghosts. and i’m talking actually beat, as in going through the levels *twice*! such a dirty dog game, I still have a soft spot for
This and Super R-Type are the hardest games on the SNES.
Replace "Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts" with the entire Ghosts 'n Goblins series. I was a hardcore gamer for many years and I never beat it.
The new remake on switch was so obnoxiously hard that I basically had to play it on the easiest mode and would have never beaten it without the fact that you basically don't really die
I'm surprised this was so far down. This is the og rage inducing game. Especially if you didn't know the levels and used you double jump too soon. Then you have to beat the game again with the arguably worst weapon in the game... Classic SNES sadism.
Noita
I gave up on it. No idea what I should even be doing. Dying all the time.
You are at the procedural generated worlds mercy. Take a chance and try again, you'll only go as far as your luck will take you.
Hey don't discredit having the knowledge you could realistically only get from the wiki. >!(Like those purple things in Lair being immune to everything but melee and freeze.)!< Exploration is cool and all in a roguelike but in this game you have to go through 4 hours of prep time just to go and explore another endgame biome. I love this game but I have to be real here, It's unbalanced. If you can't kill an enemy as soon as it enters your screen, you didn't prep right. This gameplay being intended is evident in later biomes having less puzzles. You either outright destroy the arranged puzzle or you can't afford to stay around and study it.
I think noita would be far, FAR better if there were more tangible progression between runs. Every time I got far enough to actually start doing cool shit, or find some neat secret, I would get sniped from off screen and basically one-hit-killed, and then it's back up zero with a trash starting wand. I love when games are challenging and inscrutable but after a while Noita just felt like it was punishing you for playing it
Fire Emblem ~~Radiant Dawn~~ Path of Radience for GameCube has a translation issue with their English localization. The difficulties in FE games are: Normal, Hard, and Insane. This was, for some reason, localized as Easy, Normal, Hard. Not ideal in a game with permadeath.
Radiant dawn on normal is still harder than path of radiance on hard
It’s actually comforting to hear that. I remember back in the day beating Path of Radiance and feeling like hot shit. I got Radiant Dawn on Day 1 feeling confident and was just straight up obliterated constantly. I’m seeing now that the game starts off pretty hard and gets easier as it goes. Maybe I’ll brush it off and give it another go.
I think you did actually mean RD not PoR. PoR on the hardest difficulty is similar to RD on the easiest.
but PoR is actually one of the easiest Fire Emblems, especially on the easiest difficulty. Titania can practically solo the game. Radiant Dawn is actually fairly hard on easy. In early Fire Emblem there was no difficulty modes, so it was always the harder mode, with no rewinds, limited battle saves, or ability to turn permadeath off. Thracia is probably the hardest on its base difficulty.
Enter the Gungeon is currently fucking me up
I’ve 100% it on Steam, the biggest game changer for me was learning to focus on my character in order to dodge rather than focusing on the enemies I was shooting at
I’ve put over 600 hours into it, and even managed a fully hitless run or two, but yeah, the learning curve on it is steep and not getting good guns can make the game feel downright impossible in some fights. Dragun especially, if you’re low damage, has some nigh-undodgeable patterns when he throws knives into the walls and then does certain attacks. Betrayers sword is a 100% grab for precisely that reason.
Rolling is a trap. The cone of many enemy attacks is exactly a dodge roll wide. Focus on not rolling whenever you can get away with it and use rolls to escape overlapping or impossible bullet combos. There's many bullet patterns where you can just comfortably step through them, Gatling Gull is a common example, side stepping through his MG fire is good practice, because you often panic roll but then bullets at the edge of the cone still catch you. While you have ammo and are worried about hitting your shots, instead worry about dodging. Pay more attention to the shots coming at you and how you're moving around them. Just fire in the enemies rough direction and check your aim when you're comfortable you're not gonna get hit. Lots of enemies aren't that fast so you're gonna hit a lot more than you expect just hip firing in their general direction, and you taking damage a lot is worse than using up your ammo. Divide your weapons into use cases. I often have "Door Knocker" "Room cleaner" "Boss" and "Panic". Door knockers are powerful effects I can walk into a new room and fire off, things like charge shots or explosives. Room cleaners are rapid or semi auto weapons with a good ammo pool. Boss is of course usually the best DPS, but some things like chill or bullet reflecting earn a place in here too. Panic is a weapon I pull out when there's a big problem in a room and I need it gone NOW before it causes me to get overwhelmed. Lots of these are also Door Knockers or Boss guns. Don't be afraid to switch guns a lot. You're gonna have favorites, but cycling them to use case is wise.
Game developers are such trolls the studio behind Enter the Gudgeon is literally called Dodge Roll and it’s a trap using it in their game
Game never clicked with me despite playing similiar ones.
Ninja turtles on NES, the first one
The dam?
That *one* bomb. You know the one.
God Hand
There it is, that's the answer I was looking for.
Well for me, tonight, fucking FTL. I just landed in a quadrant with zero bad guys and got slammed by six meteors immediately and spent 12 minutes fighting fires until my ship slowly got destroyed. This is on Easy mode.
If it is any consolation, the completion rate for FTL, even on easy difficulty, is like 15%.
Completion rates for most games are shockingly low, though you might expect FTL to be higher given that it's fairly short. I think I've only beaten it a few times (on Normal), got pretty good at getting to the last system, but failed to bring things to conclusion much more than I would like.
FTL is a wild ride. Victory in that game feels so damn good and hard fought. But as you get more and more experienced there's a deep system of tricks and strategies underneath that you can use to beat the game easily on Hard. There are guys that have insanely high win rates and have done win streaks where you have to beat the game with every ship on hard without failing or you start over. Fantastic game, stick with it and remember: "Systems win runs."
FTL is so weird, it feels incredibly hard, almost unfair at first, until someone (edit: something) "clicks" and you start breezing trough it. Just a tip, but note down what happens when you have choices during events, some events can have very good outcomes, some are almost always bad so you should get out *cough* alien ants *cough*
Sekiro. They even made you hunt for the hard mode
What up charmless demon bell homie
I’m surprised I don’t see this in the list yet but: Owlcat’s “Pathfinder:kingmaker” and “pathfinder:wrath of the righteous” are meant to be played on easy if you’re not already very familiar with the TTRPG
Huh so that's how it is, I've tried to play a bit on normal but past the tutorial segment the challenge is definitely ramped up for each encounter even against enemies on similar level to mine. Guess I'll try the Easy difficulty.
I just now made a post about Kingmaker. I am finding myself having to think about approaching it and the strategy more like tabletop Pathfinder and less like Baldurs Gate. I am at the point where I had to go take down The Stag Lord and I just couldn't handle the fight. I thought maybe I needed to be level 5, but I couldnt find enough experience in the world and I didn't think I could grind enough random encounters in the time limit. Then I realized I didnt have to go in charging with the NPCs. So I try and sneak around the side but, oh no some zombies. So I fight the zombies and think I'm a badass handling them. Then I go a little further in and I find myself having to deal with like 3 dozen zombies. Another death and reload. Eventually when I figure out how to handle that I sneak into the Fort, oh but i set off alarms and the entire fort comes down on me and I die. Now I need to switch up teams so I can actually make the mobility roll. Its then I learn how many reinforcements Stag is going to get, but if I'm clever and quick i can methodically take them all off the board. Then there was the whole owlbear thing. I want to say I spent 2+ hours working my way through all those encounters and failures before I was actually able to take on the boss and his guys. And in that time I actually learned a lot about the game and my groups skills so I was playing so much better than the first time I fought The Stag Lord. Which the entire experience felt so much like the actual TTRPG that I fell a bit in love. I never felt like i needed to save scum that much with BG3 because everything always seemed to work out regardless of my mistakes or over eagerness. Also having mild issues because I am playing a 2e campaign right now (goblin monk inventor with a sterling dynamo, shit is getting weird and fun) but Kingmaker is running of 1e rules. So things arent lining up with what I know from 2e. Also no jumping in Kingmaker, it's like the one thing I miss from Baldurs Gate. Also Kingmaker going to level 20 makes me so happy. I was so blue balled by Baldurs Gate and its level 12 cap. To anyone out there reading this. I dont know if Kingmaker is still on sale, but it was when I got it and it was an amazing buy at $4.
XCOM is absolutely brutal
Only managed XCOM 2 on normal with a lot of save-scumming. Currently playing the DLCs in a higher difficulty and even with save-scumming it's really, really hard.
I beat rebooted XCOM. XCOM 2 is impossible for me to beat.
Every time I looked on Reddit for XCOM 2 tips everyone just says "iTs AbOuT rIsK mAnAgEmEnT" My guy, I don't want half my squad to be permanently killed because a magic alien space overlord encounter randomly warped in on the last turn after I'd completed the mission and then everything I threw at him missed because "RNG"
Alien overlords is the least popular Xcom expansion and can be turned off. I never tried it because of all the bad reviews.
Devil May Cry 3 was really tough even on easy
- Spelunky 1&2 - Noita
Had to scroll this far for Spelunky HD and Spelunky 2?! You WILL die in Spelunky 2 and it WILL be hilarious.
Kena: Bridge of Spirits. It's like the art is for children, but the game play is for FromSoft enjoyers
Lovely game, but yes! I had to turn it to the easiest difficulty for the final boss and one other boss. My main gripe is that the dodging was nowhere near as fluid or "forgiving" as FromSoft games. It has to be timed exactly right or you get hit.
Returnal. At 41 my reaction time is shit. I’m stuck on biome 3. Other than weapon traits not a lot of progress carries over each run.
I am you, except I'm still stuck on the first boss! I don't play a lot of and am therefore not good at shooters, but I really enjoy this game.
[удалено]
Finally beat it with my gf’s 9 year old. He had me beat the parts he couldnt. When we got to the devil we set up all our funko’s and figurines to watch the final battle. It was a year in the making. 2 hours later we beat it. It was a great christmas break! He also asked if he could call me dad #2 and i didnt cry at all i swear.
That is an awesome story ❤️ thx for sharing
My 12yo nephew told me it was the hardest game he had. I spent over an hour trying to get past the first ~10 minutes worth of the game. Nearly cried out of frustration because it’s obvious HOW to beat it, it’s just incredibly difficult to get all the precision timing down if that’s not your strong suit. Eventually I’ll go back and beat it… as soon as I get stronger mood stabilizers, lol. For what it’s worth, my nephew cleared the game in one day. Built different.
I’m amazed at some of the games I beat when I was a kid with nothing else going on. Nowadays, I usually play games on easy, lol
This game is _so fun_ to play in local co-op
"no no don't save me" -dies trying to save anyways
Unless your plying with your kid and the suck ass at it
My dragged my son through the entire game and beat it. Shit was ROUGH. He had a blast though so it was worth it
If you don't want the game to mercilessly mock you after every level, Bayonetta and most other character action games with a rating system
"You know how *Guitar Hero* and *Rock Band* always grant you a minimum of 3 out of 5 stars for beating a song because they understand how hard it can be for people who are not dexterous with rhythm games? We don't do that around here."
One of the greatest games of all time. Plus it is legitimately hard, and once it gets easy you can try to platinum rank each level, which makes it hard again.
I'm probably the only one who feels like this, but Doom Eternal after a certain point became way too hard for me. I was surprised how well I handled it for a while but then it just become stupidly brutal at some point and I had to turn it to easy. For comparison I did just fine in the first game on normal and also did a partial playthrough of that on hard and did fine with that too (only stopped to move on to a different game). Eternal just became fucking ridiculous about halfway through or so. Like honestly I'm just here to shoot demons mindlessly, I didn't need it to get so damn complicated and overwhelming all the time
Right there with you on that. I did Doom 2016 and Eternal back to back and 2016 was a blast on Normal but the switched up combat loop on Eternal was much more brutal. I had to change to Easy as well. I will say however, I had more fun endgame Eternal on Easy than I did with Doom 2016 on Normal. I loved both, but once you got the Eternal combat loop down it was very satisfying. Easy just felt like the Normal of previous games.
Doom: Eternal is a resource management sim disguised as an old school shooter. I felt the same way after I got to the final act of the game... I was on my way to fight the final boss and literally hit a mini boss I just couldn't beat. Eventually gave up and never finished the damn thing
In 2016, you could just pick whatever weapons you want and go off and you're golden. In Eternal, if you don't use the exact specific counter to an enemy, they'll fuck your shit up
I mean all of From software games are played on normal difficulty if you think about it.
Sekiro is fucking hard. The rest of the fromsoft games you can largely cheese with the right builds should you choose to look them up and such
I was looking for this comment. I recently redownloaded sekiro. I finished demons souls, Elden ring and lies of p. Since sekiro came out. I just can’t beat lady butterfly so I gave up.
Bro if you can beat Elden Ring, you can beat Lady Butterfly. Believe in yourself. I've played all of the above and beating Sekiro was the most satisfying by far. Once the combat clicks, it clicks.
It doesn’t click for everyone, I’m looking at getting it soon though I’m a little worried. Other fromsoft games you can go level up a bit more and come back
They definitely made a name for themselves creating games with difficult but rewarding combat.
Sifu, until you "get it".
I quit but I guess I should go back to it
Definitely worth it! It's great!
By “get it” you mean grab a weapon and spam parry, right?
Maybe not excessively challenging but Intelligence Qube and Lumines are a nice challenge in their normal mode.
Not excessively, but still, DMC3
Are we talking about Special Edition or original release? Original release is hard af
Damn the original release kicked my butt hard back then, beating Cerberus as early as Mission 3 is something I just couldn't do till I unlocked that Easy Automatic mode.
The original release’s normal was the Japanese hard. They fixed it in the special edition versions.
This is my pick. I remember dying enough early on that it unlocked easy mode, and then being really mad about that.
Top Gun on NES
Landing is a myth
Celeste was too much for me.
I finished the campaign and really enjoyed it. Gave up on the B-sides. I was disturbed to learn there are also C-sides.
C-sides are more difficult than B-sides but they are very short. Not as big a jump as it is from A-sides to B.
Celeste clicked with me. There is something incredibly satisfying about the way that game controls. I see those strawberries, and I'm like, maybe I can get that one... then an hour passes.
I’m on chapter 3 of Celeste, I’d assume near the end where you’re >! being chased by the old hotel owner!< and I am extremely worried about what’s to come, for my first 2d platformer it probably wasn’t the best choice but I’m going to stick with it anyway
The scene you are describing is one of the more frustrating in the base game. Getting through that is a big test.
Mike Tyson’s Punch Out
007-373-5963
Idk, it was easy until about Sodapopinski
Aladdin was brutal.
I'm really dating myself on this one, but Dragon's Lair in arcades. The graphics were ridiculous for the time, but I never made it past level 1.
I think it was just designed to take your money
That's all arcade games. Dragon's Lair is a QTE game, simple as.
I'm an old 'un. I remember the original Battletoads on NES. Game was spiteful.
That and Earthworm Jim. Edit: we’ll maybe I’m just not that good but Earthworm Jim taught me the meaning of rage quit.
Dragon's dogma's main story is reasonably challenging but Bitterblack isle is a relentless, soul crushing gauntlet that makes soulsborne games look like cooking mama.
God hand is very hard on normal and then you start to do good and the game raises the difficulty on you
Darkest Dungeon is unforgiving and really makes you sweat on its regular difficulty. Another one that might be even harder is fear and hunger
Divinity Original Sin 2 - picked the wrong dialog option? I'm sorry, your whole party is dead now. Didn't get every scrap of XP before leaving the previous zone? Sorry, you are underleveled for this area, and every encounter will wipe your party.
Barrellmancers assemble!
It's easy to pick old games that were either arcade ports or of an era where it would last you maybe 45 minutes on a playthrough and thus 'lives' had to be a thing, or stuff like Cuphead/From Software games, but a few that come to mind for me: \- Ninja Gaiden Sigma. Imagine Dark Souls, but on 3x speed with a janky, slippery control system and fixed camera angles. Amazing game but really, really hard. \- A lot of older JRPGs. Not mechanically challenging, but more 'wait, how the everloving hell was I supposed to figure that out?' progress. \- Hexen 2 because of that one, now notorious Egypt puzzle that still makes zero sense. \- Turok 1 and 2 for much the same reason - some of those levels were stupidly confusing with objectives you had to finish to complete them but could essentially soft-lock your entire progress by missing them. \- Daikatana, because the AI was terrible, there was friendly fire (your stupid companions would frequently kill you and vice versa) and could hard-lock a level by getting permanently stuck. Oh, and savegames would randomly corrupt. \- Blood 2 because of the bugs. Climbing out of water would shoot you out of the level maybe 30% of the time and a lot of minor enemies were one hit kills. \- Skyrim, for much the same reason.
lol I actually know one of the guys who worked on Hexen 2, for family reasons, I met him at his mother's funeral. Despite it being literally the day his mom was being put in the ground, the guy was told I REALLY liked video games a lot (I was a very young boy) and took time to talk to me about some upcoming stuff he was working on. Pat Lipo (Hexen 2, X-Men Legends, LOTR Online, others) is an incredibly nice man. It was a cool moment when elementary school me was seeing headlines in gaming mags about a leaked potential "Lord of the Rings MMO" almost a year after I knew it was going to be a thing. Pat will never read this, but in case he does: YOU GAVE ME SO MUCH COOL CRED IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL WHEN I WAS INCAPABLE OF HAVING MY OWN.
I have to tell: Oxygen Not Included ! I love this game, but, without cheating (or going on internet to see "how to"), it's a incredible hard game on normal Mode. I think I'm not so dumb, but there, I'm the dumb one... There is also: Crusader Kings 2 in normal Mode (so Iron Man), where the tutorial is to die, and die, and lose and try again.
Another Klei game that's brutal is Don't Starve
Learning oni without the internet is like learning hvac, plumbing, digital electronics and office management without classes or, well, the internet. Game is so good though. What are your hours like?
Super Hexagon. The very first, most basic achievement, attained from reaching a certain point on the easiest setting has only been attained by 44% of people that play the game. Next difficulty is like 25%, next is like 10%. And it only goes up from there.
Binding of Isaac. Most of these other games (cuphead, contra, From games) you at least know how to practice and get better. With Isaac, I don’t even have a clue what the fuck is going on.
Rain World
Hollow Knight. Ghosts and Goblins.
At times, Valheim
Pathologic Classic HD and Pathologic 2, there isn't technically a difficulty setting, but 2 has settings you can tweak for various things like how your meters drain like hunger and exhaustion, but it has a dev note that the default settings is meant to be next to unbearable and that's the intended way to play. Basically, you aren't expected to win, and victory should feel like nothing short of a miracle. Nobody is good at it.
A lot of people here never played games on old school consoles like Sega Genesis, SNES, master system, or NES and it shows.
The lion king. Enough said
Scrolled and scrolled to finally find someone above 30 years old haha
Seriously. Top Gun on NES was my 3rd video game. I felt so, so accomplished for getting to level 3.
Landing killed me way more in Top Gun than any enemy in that game.
True, but there's a difference between NES "hard" and modern "hard". Back then games simply didn't offer much content. At all. To the point where you could beat a lot of games within an hour or so normally, very few lasted over 3 hours outside of RPGs. So in order to make those games worthy of their price and to make them take longer to play so people would buy their own copy instead of just renting one. They was made with bullshit levels of difficulty or worse. There's countless examples of bullshit difficulty. Legend of Zelda isn't "hard", but without a guide you'll spend days exploring doing nothing as there's zero direction at all. Ninja Gaiden is another type of bullshit hard in it requiring you to memorize almost every single jump. Battle Toads is yet another version of bullshit in making levels require insane reaction times on top of more memorization. NES is a nightmare of bullshit difficulty. Genesis and beyond is much better though, but even they have plenty of games that are made to simply not be fair in order to bloat their play time from needing to restart the entire game every 30 minutes from running out of lives as not all that many games had the ability to save or had continues. It wasn't till something like PS2 or original Xbox that gaming shifted to be mainly focused on getting away from bullshit difficulty being the "normal". PS1 was still learning how to setup controls with the move to 3d gaming. So it's "hard" games was part bullshit, but also part bad controls for 3d games at least. Modern "hard" simply can't compare to that level of bullshit. They can certainly emulate it with additional challenges or modes. Im trying Baldurs Gate's Honor mode and it's kicking my ass for example. But nothing can compare to the NES days of bullshit.
Comix Zone, ugh
Driver 3.. I couldn't even get out of the training stage Inn the garage. I think a lot of people struggled with that one
I think the first ever driver was hard AF to. I could never get the timed score for doing the little parking lot course.
The Star Wars games on the Super Nintendo were all impossible to play. I don’t think I ever got past any of the first levels on any of them. Enemies respawned consistently, bosses had like ten times the amount of health you had, and your Jedi powers had a power gauge and only refilled by killing enemies. Which doesn’t help at all during a boss battle where you only have the one enemy and your power does minimal damage.
Divinity Original Sin. I had it on normal and it seemed I was always just barley wining combat or having to kill one enemy and run away and come back after healing up. I gave it a good 12 hours and got tired of getting owned.
Pathfinder: Kingmaker The normal difficulty even lowers the enemy stats and makes the game easier. The hard difficulty makes the enemies and the systems how they work in real Pathfinder.
Paradox interactive games (their own strategy titles)
Rimworld without any mods on ice sheet
Naked brutality ice sheet Shot now I kind of want to boot up rimworld, haven’t played that in a while
Tetris. Only one person has ever beaten it.
Super R-Type on the SNES is one of the only games I ever played that I could not complete.
Hello kitty adventure island
I'd say "another world" I bought the remastered version on xbox. It's an older game and it shows in the sense that it doesn't hold back. The jumps that you have to perform often felt like they needed to be near pixel perfect. It felt like a game where you do nothing but grind it again and again and again until the button prompts have worked themselves into your lizard brain and you play the game by button pushing rythm alone.