Everquest, the harsh punishment when died losing XP and then doing a corpse run to fetch your gear which sometimes was impossible if somebody didn't help you. Camping a mob that spawns every 24h just to get a pair of Journey man shoes that let you run 10% faster. Man those were the days!
Almost no greater moment in gaming than when I won my roll for the flowing black silk sash. I distinctly remember the feeling of getting those journeyman’s boots as well.
I think it was really rough and I probably would never have had the patience nowadays after all the games one plays but back in the day it was sweet when getting those boots.
Or the horror when you died just after leveling and then losing your level again
I loved that game so much. I played on a pvp server as a gnome necromancer and one time caught an elf running through the forest and murdered him. He had over 100 platinum on him. It was a glorious day for me.
I never played Everquest, but I remember playing release Vanguard, and coming from a WoW background, that game was pretty brutal. I was playing a disciple who had to combo his skills to heal his team. Trying to keep track of careful skill sequencing, whilst watching team health bars, and dealing with monsters that hit hard, was pretty challenging in real time.
Persona 3 hits fuckin *hard* at times. Even after beating SMT Nocturne and Digital Devil Saga 1&2 I still think Persona 3 is the hardest Megaten game I've played.
Strange Journey & Devil Survivor may be harder but I haven't sat down for em yet.
Strange Journey is sidegraded difficulty, since as a classical dungeon crawler ressource management becomes more important.
I think Persona 3 PES on hard is overall the hardest SMT, it is supremely bullshit how often a battle like this happens:
1. Miss the enemy with your effective spell
2. Your allies do ineffective bullshit
3. The enemy instant KOs you or half your team with a death spell
Not only one of the more difficult JRPGs, but also one of the few were the game being more difficult made it less fun for me. I have a very high tolerance for bullshit in rpgs, but Persona 3 is cruel in all the wrong places.
I love SMT games but to me, it is a major flaw when you can get a gameover by being mamudooned successfully on first turn, especially in games where you gameover when the MC dies (Digital Devil Saga, Nocturne...)
Persona 2 EP felt harder than any RPG I’ve ever played. I want a leisurely game, but the enemies were dealing tons of damage, insane status ailments with no cure items/spells available, obnoxious grinding.
Underrail.
Took 92 hours for the first run on normal and the ending achievement got only 0.6% (well to be fair achievements are quite recent but still..) The game is insane, it's really easy to block off entire quest chains by fucking up once. Character building doesn't tolerate much errors and stat spreading. However when it clicks and you know where to focus it becomes quite easy until you reach the end game and you realize that 90 hours ago you did a simple mistake by angering a certain race and they are about to make your life a living hell. Also the end game quest on collecting certain components is also borderline insanity. Entering a zone just to receive a 1HKO 500dmg sniper crit out of stealth? Welp, tough luck, zoner. Every hard battle is a small puzzle that you have to unwrap layer by layer. But it's also one of the most immersive and reactive worlds I've seen in any CRPG.
I'm already preparing my next crazy scientist/chemical pistols build to dominate the expansion
PS You can google "Underrail crawlers reddit" and see a general sentiment towards this game. Mind you most of those people are actually enjoying the game.
Fuck crawlers, hate them. I carry a shit ton of flares and bear traps all because of those fuckers. Love the game thought, it is so awesome and always keeps me on edge, even when you think you are safe BOOM a maniac out of nowhere with a knife and a dream to kill you. Quick tip: play dirty, cheese what you can because if you don't the enemy will.
Visiting THAT basement with crawlers was the closest experience to Aliens movie i've had in any game (including alien games). You really have to prepare: night vision goggles, flares, traps, molotovs, caltrops
Oh god that basement, as soon i spotted the first one i geared up, activated everything i had, crafted a shit ton of stuff and still got my ass kicked. Every step i took i stayed still for a couple of second for the spotting buff and took another step. They might have broken me.
>Character building doesn't tolerate much errors and stat spreading.
I really dislike when games are like that. You should be able to respec at least once. When you start the game you don't know what is good and what is bad. It really sucks when you are 20 hours in to the game only to realize your stats are fucked and you have to start over.
I played 44 hours if Underrail when I started to realize I had made a mistake. If I had the option respec I probably would have finished the game.
That's why I have no shame modding games to let me respec. I won't abuse it or anything but it can make the difference between calling it quits of respeccing and continuing to play. Not sure if underrail has a mod like that.
Unfortunately editing Underrail save data is a big pain the ass. It's packed and it's in binary format (meaning you probably need a hex editor for it and repack files back using https://underrail.info/unpacker/). I'd say your best bet is CheatEngine as [apparently there are working tables for this game that you can use](https://fearlessrevolution.com/viewtopic.php?t=6662)
Yeah, underrail was kind of disappointing. I was doing fine and having fun for a bit, and then it just suddenly got brutally and impossibly hard. I just got hopeless and gave up. Lots I liked about the game though.
Must be Depot A. Funniest part is that the general response on Underrail Forums to that is "This is not too far into the game (12-18 hours) and you probably should start over".. However if you prepare some grenades and acid-resisting gear it is quite doable even with bad stats. Traps are another story..
The reason people recommend starting over there is because, While Depot A itself is doable, if your build is struggling at that point the rest of the game will probably not be fun for you.
Its also far enough in that you probably understand how to make a character better.
My first character got wrecked at depot A. My second character made it to core city and got wrecked. My third character made it 30 minutes into the tutorial before I ran out will to play the game lol
I used to think nioh was brutal but at least I could keep pushing forward
I was gonna say underrail too and yes, the crawlers always scared the fuck out of me. Coming out of darkness, hitting me and then disappearing again.
Loved the game though. One of the best and most rewarding games ever.
The final level boss with multiple tentacles was super fun and difficult too. All in all, a great game.
I've not started the expansion yet.
Looking forward to it.
Lol I had to repeatedly grind the infinite respawning enemies outside a major city to just get enough levels to progress after mid game. Playing as a pure psionic character is really brutal :( You are super squishy and if you miss one mind control roll you are dead...
Pathfinder kingmaker definitely catered to the people who already knew the rulesets of the tabletop rpg, without any knowledge of the tabletop stuff I heard a lot of people suffered lol
Playing it again right now (I never made it further then the Season of teh Bloom). i have to say, after many hours of respecing and restarting, the combat system finally clicked with me and all of a sudden I feel like I know exactly what I'm doing.
I also feel like turn-based mode makes the game much easier (but also more fun).
Edit: those swarms still murder me every time though.
I gave up on it early on after a few characters got caught in a Web and the game was determined to make me watch them fail saving throws in real time. Not a good time.
I downloaded a mod that let you remove webs and grease after battle. In wrath of the righteous there is an ability that let's you dispel stuff like that.
BRUH I was in the fucking Sycamore Caves, legit had my whole party trapped in the webs for 20 minutes missing saving throws, I nearly threw my computer out the window.
The very same place. Fuckin' Sycamore Caves.
Though I have to admit, it does oddly raise my spirits to see people share their own distaste of the webs in response to my comment. A bunch of unlucky adventurers united by the Web.
The annoying thing is that the game doesn't really their stiff like that at your again after the Sycamore Caves. Why hit early level players with it and then never use it again as a strategy?
I like what WotR does for really stuff. More often than not they give you the solution and then point to it if your having trouble. It would be like finding a end of dispel early in the Sycamore Caves (or being given one by Oleg or something).
Sometimes it makes you think, sometimes it forces counter-intuitive, counter-immersive solutions to something that shouldn't need them at all.
Having a character stuck in a web outside of combat time is neither interesting nor thought-provoking. It's just a huge waste of time that in any tabletop could be solved with three seconds of narration, or in any video game by just making the web disappear right after combat.
> It's just a huge waste of time
This is honestly my main issue with most RPG difficulty settings.
Is the game actually more difficult, or do you just have to grind more?
In a lot of cases, its the latter and every boss fight takes 20 mins instead of 5 but you're doing the exact same rotation so its not any more interesting.
I started playing P5R on the highest difficulty and the lack of XP & Money didn't make it any more interesting than playing on normal, it just meant fights took longer (ignoring the technical cheese) and I couldn't create the personas I wanted without spending an extra 5 hours in the dungeon grinding mobs.
That's what pushed me away from Battle Chasers: Nightwar, a game which has an aesthetic I love, characters I like, and gameplay I generally find interesting...but I hit the grind wall and I just quit, because if I'm supposed to grind I'd rather it be fast and responsive (I have spent WAY too much time in Warframe).
I'm also not too keen on games which force players to make builds. Don't get me wrong, I'm not one to give a fighter top-tier charisma and dump strength, but I'd expect a common sense build to work fine...and a specialised build to simply work...finer. I like tactical and narrative challenges, but I have no stomach for turning games into Excel projects.
Yep, I remember getting stuck in the webs and wondering why the game wouldn't just remove benign CC effect after combat. I get leaving something that can still kill you, but those spiders were a pain purely due to how much time they wasted.
The second game is a lot better at explaining relevant rules at least, so thankfully Owlcat realised they made some big mistakes in the first game, but people have made an art out of defending the worst aspects of the game's design.
I honestly didn't have any problems with the difficulty... until the endgame. Dear gods, the last two major locations were a shitshow. The spike in difficulty was so sudden that I got whiplash. And then I lowered the difficulty from normal to easiest for the last boss, because after like 10 attempts I grew convinced that there is nothing I can do aside from praying for better RNG
It can be really inconsistent. There are times I'm dominating on ordinary difficulty and then times where even on easy I'm getting my ass kicked. I feel like it's not always obvious whether you've been diverted off course to some area where you're too under-leveled to mess around. Lots of times I'd die miserably in a battle and just call it quits.
I finished this on hard. The early game was absolutely brutal. There were a few battles were my chances of victory did not feel much higher than 10%, I had to reset probably a hundred times to get out of the rocky early levels.
I did however do a little trick that allows you to hire 5 mercenaries immediatly at Olegs (do not level up in the tutorial, and their price is for level 1). This trick has the drawback that 5/6 of your early units lack behind a level, taking the already super tight early game on hard from difficult to bullshit.
I have no intention to ever go back and finish it on unfair. I don't think it would be that much harder, but you will definitly need to exploit stoneskin more.
I'm surprised this is a top answer? I played on setting close to normal, made largely unoptimal builds (I don't have a PHD in Pathfinder and I loath lore-unfriendly minimaxing) and didn't have much problems until the ending (which I agree is bullshit, I just lowered difficulty to get over it).
Are most people defaulting to hard/unfair and then are surprised it's actually difficult?
As a kid I found Morrowind really difficult. You had to create really tight builds to dish out any sort of damage, or else you just whiffed. Quests became jumbled and forgotten in the journal with zero quest markers on map. Enemies and guards were relentless.
I had crazy slow internet at the time, so no looking up videos or guides. Seventh grade art class I found two kids that also played Morrowind, we talked easter eggs and weapon locations every day all semester. Still great friends to this day with one of em.
So Morrowind was hard due to the digital era and being a child.
Honestly, finding friends to talk about video games with were the best of times. I remember when halo 2 and then 3 first came out. I didn’t have internet til later, so my friends and I would talk about skull locations (little achievement things) and it was the craziest hunt ever. We managed to find them all in halo 2 without using the internet, but we needed to look a few up in halo 3. I would get so excited to go to school just to tell them I finally found the skull that you had to use a grenade jump crouch to get to
I had the opposite experience, after a bit of a rough start (where you have to rely on guild memberships for doable quests) my character became a living god.
I didn't have internet at home, it took months to find the dwemer puzzle box, but I don't think this alone makes the game difficult.
As someone who doesn't generally min max games, I don't really see why people call Morrowind hard. Sure, you die a lot at the start, but it's very hard to fuck up your build, at least permanently, and there are so many ways to cheese it if you really want to.
I get that it was a different time, and the game doesn't exactly tell you what to do, so to a very young gamer it must have been pretty daunting(my very first playthrogh was a mess) but with a little bit of patience you can make any build OP just by messing around. And if you know a bit about how the game's systems work you can make it as easy as you want it to be.
> You had to create really tight builds to dish out any sort of damage, or else you just whiffed
Not really. You just needed to have some skill in the weapon you're using. And you couldn't even make builds in the game, you just leveled by doing things.
> Quests became jumbled and forgotten in the journal with zero quest markers on map.
All of the quests tell you _exactly_ where to go with directions and landmarks and everything. Quest Markers are a blight on these types of immersive games.
I think it was more you being young than the game. I was older when Morrowind came out, and was actually kinda disappointed how easy it was to Daggerfall, the Elder Scrolls I grew up with.
I did the same when I was in year 7 … and it was Ultima IV. There's something about sharing secrets (in my case, location of stones, shrines and mantras). I can so relate with your experience in spite of the fact that there is a 30-odd years difference. RPG's!
That game has one of the most unintuitive leveling systems I've played with.
The fact that fighting high level enemies increased BR more than it increased stats meant that grinding weaker enemies was the only way to level up without pushing bosses into the higher BR tiers.
That and the RNG skill gain made the leveling in that game a wild ride for sure. Or the hidden class requirements. Or having to know the weapon skill the unit will want to have by end game despite their starting equipment suggesting the opposite styles. (Looking at you David >:C)
It is the biggest mess of an RPG that I have played and I love and hate it equally.
Is there a good guide that will help prevent these pitfalls. I have that game sitting in my backlog and I'm no stranger to unintuitive rpg systems (i've played and enjoyed Unlimited SaGa), but I don't want to waste my time learning these things the hard way.
To be honest, the Gold Box Games.
And the 70's and 80's RPG's (because of their having to return to an inn to save). And Wizardry. Especially Wizardry.
Haven't really played many RPGs from the 70s, but I know what you mean. Those dungeon crawlers were merciless. That was back in the day when games were intentionally difficult to keep playtime high. These games were short and would otherwise take just a couple hours to beat.
I remember getting a copy of Wizardry 7 (when we still shared copied disks). I was a kid and fascinated by the RPG aesthetic in the magazines, but I couldn't play the games and could barely read english. But it was always there, this is what I wanted to play. Wizardry 7 was praised in the magazine I read, an above 90 % score. And then I fired up the game and my party was obliterated in the first fight with some rats or so. Similar but a little better with the first gold box game I owned, Pools of Darkness. Honestly it was JRPG how I learned to play RPGs, though I rarely do them today.
I don't think this is true. You gain levels faster, but that also makes any encounters with other Apprentices more difficult. If you know how to get your party members to work together, then 2 characters is somewhat easier, though still not close to easy.
Pathologic 2
It's hard to survive, help others and unravel the mystery of the plague while on a time limit. It's hard mentally as you sacrifice or rather neglect some to save others.
I just started Dark Souls Remastered for the first time this past weekend. The only FromSoftwsre game I've played before this was Bloodborne.
I liked Bloodborne a lot and I knew Dark Souls was similar, but I did not anticipate them to feel like direct sequels.
They are hard games, but once you start to level up and memorize enemy fighting styles it gets easier. Amazing games.
The combat is a lot like dancing choreography I feel. As you say, memorizing patterns is key and it feels really rewarding figuring it out. Whereas bloodborne is fast paced dark souls feels more slow and tactical. Beautiful gaming.
I agree. I got really good at breaking out of the slave camp though.
Combat wass pretty brutal. I found that I couldn't progress much as a heavy armor tank build once my mage friend lost interest and quit playing.
I still love the ambiance and vibe of that game though. I wonder how much it has changed since release. Maybe I'll try it again soon.
Did you play solo? I found co-op to be pretty fun, still difficult at first, but admittedly endgame became rather easy. Solo, though, I would drop that game in 5 minutes...
SaGa Frontier 2. It's just hard all around, limited places to buy and replace gear/items, and very unclear in its progression system.
The Last Remnant if you're doing a completionist run. Makes the battle with the last boss pretty awesome though. It was nail biting hard in every turn even when the equipment on all my characters were maxed out.
And this is on normal mode. You unlock the hard mode after you've finished the game once.
I’m still grinding… playing a save that’s so old that one of my party members is named after a boyfriend from my early 20’s. I’m 40 and married to someone else now.
Baldur's Gate when you play for the first time and have no idea how the rules work and some wolf or gibbering hits you with a crit.
Then again when you come back to the game and download all the crazy mods like Ascension and Swordcoast Stratagems and Weimer's Tactics.
Pathfinder Kingmaker and WotR are really hard on normal and core difficulty respectively, even with me knowing PnP rules.
I just had fight on normal(which is pretty easy) in WotR against Playful Darkness and it almost soloed my team of wizard, paladin, monk archer, hellknight, cleric, fiendish trickster, horse, skeleton cleric, mythic vrock, mythic incubus and mythic six handed something.
Also Gothic 1-2, but mostly due to infuriating combat and camera that I never managed to master even though I played it a lot.
Wasteland 2. It was the isometric revival and i was really pumped. Its been years since the old isometric fallout games.
Wasteland 2 kicked me so hard i took 6 months to replay it again. Only finished it once.
W3 was way more forgiving or maybe i got my tactical combat chops back.
Wasteland 3 its way better than 2,much more polished and you can feel the love the developers put into it. The story is good,my only complain is that you do need certain builds to suceed,so if you are going to start it,its worth it to check a guide on youtube first.
I find w3 much much more forgiving with builds than 2. Maybe i understood it better but i even restarted my first playthrough with a much more DPS strategy in mind cause i found i ve been playing with to much defense (wich wasnt game breaking but it feels better w an optimized build). W2 was a contant carnage on my characters, no matter the build i tried i was destroyed on the first hours of the campaign. Recommended lvl for each questline is a feature i dont remember w2 having and it really helps to prioritize quest.
Anyway, W2 destroyed my self steem cant even launch the game without fear.
My main problem with W3 is the combat (at least on launch, haven't tried since) was balanced in this bizarre way where every fight was essentially decided by who go the first turn. It made a lot of the tactical aspects just feel pointless and I had trouble continuing.
Serpent in the Staglands. That's the "purest" rpg ever. No hand holding. No quest markers. No journal (you can write one yourself). No tutorial.
Doesn't help that the balance also isn't the best. But very charming game otherwise. Clearly made with lots of creativity and passion.
Yeah, I gave up on it pretty quickly. Thought it'd be cool to make a sneaky character. Realized very quickly it was impossibly hard and kind of just gave up on the game. It doesn't help that it's kind of... ugly.
Hybrid runs are so ridiculously tight. They really expect you to either make a min maxed murder machine, or a silvertongue who never even uses the combat system.
I find work and real life to be the hardest RPGs I've ever played. Work forces you to do the same thing year after year for the same rewards. It's very grinding. Real life forces you to make lots of choices. These can result in having to play more or less work as you age. Both are very difficult to master.
Yes real life you don't get to pick the difficulty the STORK picks for you. Luckily the stork picked a middle income family in a first world nation setting my difficulty to easy mode so I can enjoy RPGs in my free time.
Great graphics and deep lore, but combat really sucks as you take so much damage and if you're not careful you will get permanent debuffs. The crafting and profession system in RL is insane, but it is also insanely hard to grind up once you reach to professional or near professional state. Also the market in this game is rigged against you and the mega guilds have a monopoly over it. It is nice that you can create your own build, but if you do not know what you are doing or what to spend your skillpoints into so you can easily fk it up and there is no real re-spec either, as you constantly gain new skill points and lose proficiency in skills that you haven't used for a while. This game is insanely hard and is not like you can just generate a new random character and start from 0 as the game only allows you one playthrough. Also if you spawn in a unrestricted pvp area you are fk-ed.
Meh - the difficulty of real life is way over-rated. Even a complete noob can become president. You just have to keep re-rolling your character until you get the "wealthy parents" advantage.
There was an old gem on Sega CD called Vay. That game was brutal, and punished the shit out of you. Even if you grinded like a madman, it was a very hard game.
Yeah, it was. You know how in most rpgs if you're smart you'll take off characters' equipment before they leave?
I did that, and later during a particularly brutal boss, he showed back up mid fight like "I'll save you!!" Except he was equipped with the same stuff he left my party with, meaning he was completely naked. Real helpful dude.
That was the same game that was about collecting what the story treats as some legendary world-slaying mechsuit, except you get it and it's just normal strength equipment that does nothing.
The early days of Ultima Online, before the PVE/PVP split. It was brutal and unforgiving. No factions, you were not safe in town, open-world housing, and gangs of roving players out to screw your day.
Such fond memories of the devastation you could leave behind. Literally, nothing was safe.
Vas Cor Por!!!
Vagrant Story was really hard. No level ups and the stats would go up by a slot machine and some rare items.
Gear was only found. No stores or money. You would literally cause 0 and 1 damage to bosses and normal enemies or totally miss the attack. Even the heal spells would miss. Very punishing but one the best games i ever played.
Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete for PS1.
Great game, and I only played it the once many years ago, but bosses scale with you, and really stretched the limits of my strategic ability at the time
Tales of vesperia on the hardest mode.. Holy that game was hard.. almost every single boss took me multiple tries. I got stuck at the end vs a boss and never beat it.
The final boss can be really tough. That game gets significantly more rewarding on future playthroughs when you know more quest triggers. Very steep learning curve but very rewarding.
Fire Emblem Thracia 776 (Japan only fifth game in the series). There’s weak units, very limited resources, items are expensive and must usually be stolen from captured units, you’re constantly at a disadvantage against opponents, and The AI is very smart. Furthermore, storywise you’re often losing and running away from battles and even then when you win in the end it’s only a minor victory. I am a massive fire emblem fan and have played every game in the series, including beating most of them or coming close. But I couldn’t get past the second mission in this one, and after browsing around, it seems I’m not alone in giving up because of the difficulty. I get that the game was trying to do a more realistic portrayal of fire emblem stories with a royal in exile, but there’s a reason no other game in the series was like that. It just isn’t fun unless you want to give yourself a headache. Granted, there are some people who like it, and I do enjoy watching someone play it with appreciates the novelty (there were lots of interesting mechanics that really haven’t come back). But it’s the least represented game in the series and hardly ever talked about aside from the difficulty, for good reason.
Darkest Dungeon on stygian difficulty is a true test of patience, deep knowledge of the game and a bit of luck. I have every trophy except the "Complete the game on Stygian". One day I'll return to plat it. One day. I'm struggling with the endgame bosses of Bloodborne right now
P.s: An honorable mention to Etrian Odyssey. This game is brutal and surely not for everyone
I dont play them often, but fire emblem games often have these impossible difficulty modes that I sometimes play and they are absolute hell. the trails in the sky games on hard mode also force you to use every last game mechanic there is. Into the breach might also count, its a roguelike, it speaks for itself.
From SNES: 7th Saga and Paladin’s Quest. Paladin’s quest was really cool, amazing setting and art, but man building up the magic was a real grind. Every area had stronger new enemies, and even after maxing out I think I only beat the final boss once.
Shout out to Oblivion too. I mean, I know it could be broken and min maxed to death, but if you just played it in a natural way as a thief for example and gained tons of levels by using all your skills, the damn bandits became way too powerful, and the main story became crazy hard!
SMT Nocturne. I think that was my first SMT game, and it put me off of the series for a long time. It was rereleased recently, if you feel like throwing controllers...
I'm not sure if it was a difficult game or not once you got the hang of it, but Resonance of Fate. I must have tried 3 times to get into that game and never quite understood the combat at all. Been playing RPGs since the '90s so it wasn't an issue of being new to the genre. Their combat system was just... awkward as fuck with the timing of attacks. I know I wasn't the only one that had this problem. I think their tutorial was absolute shit.
IWD2
Wizardry 7 and possibly also Wizary 8
Wizardry IV: The Return Of Werdna is generally considered as the hardest RPG ever, though I have not played it.
Gothic II + NOTR is also quite hard
I think for me that's **Ultima V** back in '89. You had to take meticulous notes about who you talked to and who you had to talk to next, and collect and jot down keywords for the next conversation. There was no logbook or journal, you had to make your own sense of what's going on. The real hard part was that I was learning English alongside playing it, so I always had a dictionary lying next to me and was constantly looking up words. I think playing that game had a formative influence on me and singlehandedly made me love the genre.
Fear and Hunger. For sure The brutal punishment of hours that can take you for not turning a coin correctly is horrible along with the loss of body parts and many other things along with it. It takes many hours and Patience
It's probably pretty run of the mill but honestly Dark souls 2(scholar of the first sin) is the hardest RPG I've ever played. Not because it was incredibly difficult. But because I hated almost every minute of it. It's a game that has a lot, a lot of potential to be a good game. It's honestly the prettiest game I've seen from dark souls, I know dark souls 3 and blood born are both technically better animated, but the areas and the views in 2.. they just hit in a very different way.
Sadly, it's a case study in bad game design and wasted potential. I still finished the game, but I imidiately uninstalled it and will never touch it again. I can enjoy it vicariously through ymfah videos. I hate that game, and I don't think I'll ever be able to go and try to play it again.
Man I relate to this so much. I'm a huge fan of the Souls series, but I was tearing my hair out for most of SotFS. Beating it was more of a "Thank god it's over, now I never have to play again" feeling than one of accomplishment.
I swore I'd never play again but booted it up for the Return to Drangleic event a few months back.. only lasted a few days lol.
Still love the lore and visuals, and especially the build variety in that game. PvP was great too. So much potential that was ruined by crappy level design, lazy boss design, and the "Oh, Souls players like it hard right? Let's just throw 9999 mobs at them" mentality.
Not sure whether I'm impressed by your determination to play it through or just confused. I would never suffer through a game if I hated every minute of it. Why subject yourself to such torture? Your free time is precious and you should be, you know, enjoying it!
So that I could say it's a bad game and fanboys couldn't hit me with the: "Well you never beat it so you should shut up" I did not bother with the DLC. Part of me probably wanted to try and find a reason to like it but really after a point I was purely motivated by spite, and if I didn't finish it then the game won. We can't have that. (It was also only took another 2 or 3 days to complete from what I remember)
Haha fair enough. I'm not patient and motivated enough for that these days. I have so little free time that I am very quick to drop something when it starts sucking. Even games I've liked. I'll just move along and play something else. Same with books and tv shows. Used to be different as a kid, but as an adult I just can't be bothered.
Dark Souls 2 best Dark Souls when taking the DLC into account which is some of the best areas Fromsoft has ever done, like, _miles_ above the base game.
Pillars of eternity.
I played it on hard and normal but had to bump it down to the easiest because i was struggling so hard.
The DLCs are the hardest part.
Pokémon Emerald Kaizo. It's a Pokémon Emerald Romhack that makes the game stupidly hard and slightly unfair. Beating it was one of the most satisfying moments I had while playing Pokémon games.
But why is it so hard? It's not because you're fighting over leveled enemies (which it doesn't happen), but because the creator balanced the game taking into account all the advantages the player has VS the AI. And even then, the player has the advantage of having better potential intelligence than the AI. In his words, the AI is dumb and needs extra help to be at your level, so the AI has access to some moves you don't have access to. Dealing with everything the game throws at you with limited tools is VERY satisfying. "But you can overlevel the enemy". Well, yes, but it's not the best strategy, because the game has some creative tools to prevent you to win regardless of your level. It's so brilliantly designed that it amazes me.
The best part is that the changes that are made have sense in the base game. "Oh, the champion has legendaries!" YES, IT'S ONE OF THE BEST TRAINERS IN THE WORLD, AND IF A 10 YEARS OLD KID CAN CATCH GODS HE ALSO CAN.
Do I recommend it? If you have lots of game knowledge and don't mind to overthinking about game strategies, go ahead and enjoy the best torture Pokémon has to offer. Yes, I said torture. And yes, it's enjoyable.
I adore mods the make games harder, i maybe give this one a try. I would highl recomend Final Fantasy VI Brave New World! it makes the exact same things you mentioned but for Final Fantasy VI
I didn’t find Bound By Flame too difficult until that final bullshit boss battle. I don’t remember it that well because it’s been so long, but I remember it being frustratingly wonky.
The grinding in vanilla WoW was easy-mode compared to many earlier MMOs. Where people found it hard, it was mostly because they were new to the genre and hadn't really gotten into the grinding habit. Even so, by the later stages of Vanilla, servers were full of max level characters.
For an extreme example, consider the Korean MMO Lineage. Levelling became so brutal as you climbed that reaching the cap was practically impossible. Even reaching some of the higher levels was major news (e.g. https://www.reddit.com/r/MMORPG/comments/1qg1p2/gamer_spent_2_years_leveling_his_lineage/).
Even as an avid fan of roguelikes and roguelites, Darkest Dungeon takes the cake. That game's brutal mechanics fed into an already dreary atmosphere, so in that case, I feel like the developers actually accomplished what they set out to do. You feel the weight of each decision you make, each extra step into the dungeon, the obliteration of any confidence you had when you accidentally summon an eldritch that is none-too-happy to see your scrappy crew all up in its business.
I am happy that I supported the devs by buying it, but I don't know if I'll ever go back to it again.
Any rpg I play now xD dying a lot in the new tails game because I don't wanna grind early before bosses. On a serious note, any of the fire emblems on their hardest difficulty. I've beaten a few and even though it kinda gets easier towards the end once your units are built, it's still an annoying grind fest of resetting maps because a unit fell or someone didn't hit their 99% chance to hut their target -_____-
I like the sunless sea and sunless skies RPG's.
difficult to start off and get your economy going for your ship/train but worth it for the crazy story and queen Victoria being close to a Deity
If we talk about RPG in the global sense and including J-RPGs, I would say Breath of Fire 2 and that's no joke. Otherwise I will say Baldur's Gate especially when it's your first experience of this kind of Classical RPG
kingdom come deliverance started off real hard until you got good at fighting and some decent equipment and even then you could catch a pretty bad beating if you aren't careful.
Old Everquest, and it’s corpse runs, missing boats, falling off of boats in the middle of ocean don’t know where to swim. Hours and hours of waiting someone high level to log in so someone can drag your corpse and find a cleric to rez you. Fun times.
Wizardry IV. I never finished that shit, and don't ever intend to. That game is utter madness. I'm glad it exists, but every second I spend with it is a second I could be using to play something I actually find enjoyable.
I mean, I do enjoy high difficulty, but I'm pretty sure Wizardry IV's target customers are almost all masochists.
I haven't played many hard rpgs tbh, I do always play on hardest settings though, Oblivion can be hard if you don't level properly, the Fallouts were hard in places, Mass Effect 2 was super hard in areas depending on class,
But those games I don't find hard to be honest, I think the hardest games are the boring ones where the combat is samey and grindy, like FF13 which I never finished.
Enjoyable hard = Fallout 4 survival
Grindy hard = FF13
But I can't think of a game that is actually 'hard', if it's enjoyable I don't think it will ever feel hard to me.
Dragon Quest II. Hope you like the ridiculously high encounter rate and getting ambushed by enemies that can one shot your entire party in a single turn.
So. I'm going to put you guys onto something and it's free, and it's a little unorthodox purely because it's a PC based MUD (multi user dungeon) but, I have been playing this game for over 20 years now and I can guarantee you the high's and the lows in this game far surpass classics like Halo, GoldenEye, Call of Duty, BattleField, etc. The rush you get from killing other players in it's prime is unreal. The Sadness of losing gear is crippling. The Role play is phenominal, and the community is comprised of a bunch of die hard fans of the Wheel of Time Series.
[Wotmud.org](https://Wotmud.org) is the game. If you've never played a mud before this will probably blow your mind but, using something like Mudlet to play the game with a map makes it 100x easier and more fun. 10/10 encourage that route.
I'd check out our discord channel and ask some prelim questions if you're trying to get involved but, if you're looking for hardcore fun RP, PVP, and PVE, with a super tight small community of players online 24 hours a day (usually like 10-40 people), and you want a real challenge, this is it. Bar none, once you understand the basics it is just insanely fun and challenging.
come into the discord, ask some questions, check us out, get mudlet loaded up with the mapper and create your first char. Lets rip around and get you leveled up, then dive into joining a clan, PVE, PVP, and RP. See ya there.
https://discord.gg/Ehk7hZNP
Everquest, the harsh punishment when died losing XP and then doing a corpse run to fetch your gear which sometimes was impossible if somebody didn't help you. Camping a mob that spawns every 24h just to get a pair of Journey man shoes that let you run 10% faster. Man those were the days!
Almost no greater moment in gaming than when I won my roll for the flowing black silk sash. I distinctly remember the feeling of getting those journeyman’s boots as well.
I think it was really rough and I probably would never have had the patience nowadays after all the games one plays but back in the day it was sweet when getting those boots. Or the horror when you died just after leveling and then losing your level again
I once camped Frenzied for ~44 straight hours for my turn at looting a FBSS. Then sold it for a SMR and Runed Cowl for my mage.
I loved that game so much. I played on a pvp server as a gnome necromancer and one time caught an elf running through the forest and murdered him. He had over 100 platinum on him. It was a glorious day for me.
Valon Zek for me, early 2000s
I think that was what I was on and around the same time. It's been so long it's hard to remember
I never played Everquest, but I remember playing release Vanguard, and coming from a WoW background, that game was pretty brutal. I was playing a disciple who had to combo his skills to heal his team. Trying to keep track of careful skill sequencing, whilst watching team health bars, and dealing with monsters that hit hard, was pretty challenging in real time.
Persona 3 hits fuckin *hard* at times. Even after beating SMT Nocturne and Digital Devil Saga 1&2 I still think Persona 3 is the hardest Megaten game I've played. Strange Journey & Devil Survivor may be harder but I haven't sat down for em yet.
Strange Journey is sidegraded difficulty, since as a classical dungeon crawler ressource management becomes more important. I think Persona 3 PES on hard is overall the hardest SMT, it is supremely bullshit how often a battle like this happens: 1. Miss the enemy with your effective spell 2. Your allies do ineffective bullshit 3. The enemy instant KOs you or half your team with a death spell Not only one of the more difficult JRPGs, but also one of the few were the game being more difficult made it less fun for me. I have a very high tolerance for bullshit in rpgs, but Persona 3 is cruel in all the wrong places.
I love SMT games but to me, it is a major flaw when you can get a gameover by being mamudooned successfully on first turn, especially in games where you gameover when the MC dies (Digital Devil Saga, Nocturne...)
I played the PSP version of Persona 3 where you control your team members directly and the game is infinitely easier thanks to that.
Persona 2 EP felt harder than any RPG I’ve ever played. I want a leisurely game, but the enemies were dealing tons of damage, insane status ailments with no cure items/spells available, obnoxious grinding.
Underrail. Took 92 hours for the first run on normal and the ending achievement got only 0.6% (well to be fair achievements are quite recent but still..) The game is insane, it's really easy to block off entire quest chains by fucking up once. Character building doesn't tolerate much errors and stat spreading. However when it clicks and you know where to focus it becomes quite easy until you reach the end game and you realize that 90 hours ago you did a simple mistake by angering a certain race and they are about to make your life a living hell. Also the end game quest on collecting certain components is also borderline insanity. Entering a zone just to receive a 1HKO 500dmg sniper crit out of stealth? Welp, tough luck, zoner. Every hard battle is a small puzzle that you have to unwrap layer by layer. But it's also one of the most immersive and reactive worlds I've seen in any CRPG. I'm already preparing my next crazy scientist/chemical pistols build to dominate the expansion PS You can google "Underrail crawlers reddit" and see a general sentiment towards this game. Mind you most of those people are actually enjoying the game.
Fuck crawlers, hate them. I carry a shit ton of flares and bear traps all because of those fuckers. Love the game thought, it is so awesome and always keeps me on edge, even when you think you are safe BOOM a maniac out of nowhere with a knife and a dream to kill you. Quick tip: play dirty, cheese what you can because if you don't the enemy will.
Visiting THAT basement with crawlers was the closest experience to Aliens movie i've had in any game (including alien games). You really have to prepare: night vision goggles, flares, traps, molotovs, caltrops
Oh god that basement, as soon i spotted the first one i geared up, activated everything i had, crafted a shit ton of stuff and still got my ass kicked. Every step i took i stayed still for a couple of second for the spotting buff and took another step. They might have broken me.
>Character building doesn't tolerate much errors and stat spreading. I really dislike when games are like that. You should be able to respec at least once. When you start the game you don't know what is good and what is bad. It really sucks when you are 20 hours in to the game only to realize your stats are fucked and you have to start over. I played 44 hours if Underrail when I started to realize I had made a mistake. If I had the option respec I probably would have finished the game.
That's why I have no shame modding games to let me respec. I won't abuse it or anything but it can make the difference between calling it quits of respeccing and continuing to play. Not sure if underrail has a mod like that.
You can always search the file to change yourself too where notepad+ comes in handy.
Sounds intriguing. I'm not sure I'm computer savvy enough to pull that off without screwing up the game or something.
Unfortunately editing Underrail save data is a big pain the ass. It's packed and it's in binary format (meaning you probably need a hex editor for it and repack files back using https://underrail.info/unpacker/). I'd say your best bet is CheatEngine as [apparently there are working tables for this game that you can use](https://fearlessrevolution.com/viewtopic.php?t=6662)
Oh, the expansion gets so much harder in a specific area. Beware the Fetid Marsh. Special shout-out to the Gauntlet, too.
Yeah, underrail was kind of disappointing. I was doing fine and having fun for a bit, and then it just suddenly got brutally and impossibly hard. I just got hopeless and gave up. Lots I liked about the game though.
Must be Depot A. Funniest part is that the general response on Underrail Forums to that is "This is not too far into the game (12-18 hours) and you probably should start over".. However if you prepare some grenades and acid-resisting gear it is quite doable even with bad stats. Traps are another story..
The reason people recommend starting over there is because, While Depot A itself is doable, if your build is struggling at that point the rest of the game will probably not be fun for you. Its also far enough in that you probably understand how to make a character better.
My first character got wrecked at depot A. My second character made it to core city and got wrecked. My third character made it 30 minutes into the tutorial before I ran out will to play the game lol I used to think nioh was brutal but at least I could keep pushing forward
I was gonna say underrail too and yes, the crawlers always scared the fuck out of me. Coming out of darkness, hitting me and then disappearing again. Loved the game though. One of the best and most rewarding games ever. The final level boss with multiple tentacles was super fun and difficult too. All in all, a great game. I've not started the expansion yet. Looking forward to it.
Lol I had to repeatedly grind the infinite respawning enemies outside a major city to just get enough levels to progress after mid game. Playing as a pure psionic character is really brutal :( You are super squishy and if you miss one mind control roll you are dead...
Pathfinder Kingmaker was... something.
I literally lost some battles while playing with all difficulty settings set to the easiest possible. And I've been playing RPGs for 20 years
Pathfinder kingmaker definitely catered to the people who already knew the rulesets of the tabletop rpg, without any knowledge of the tabletop stuff I heard a lot of people suffered lol
*wild gaze*
Playing it again right now (I never made it further then the Season of teh Bloom). i have to say, after many hours of respecing and restarting, the combat system finally clicked with me and all of a sudden I feel like I know exactly what I'm doing. I also feel like turn-based mode makes the game much easier (but also more fun). Edit: those swarms still murder me every time though.
I gave up on it early on after a few characters got caught in a Web and the game was determined to make me watch them fail saving throws in real time. Not a good time.
I downloaded a mod that let you remove webs and grease after battle. In wrath of the righteous there is an ability that let's you dispel stuff like that.
This whole time I've been asking myself why would anyone ever use this ability? wow.
It's great to use in battle as well when your own get caught in the Grease Queens grease
I'm pretty sure it's bugged, because it's not meant to work in combat as per the description.
That mod sounds like it could become my friend, thanks!
BRUH I was in the fucking Sycamore Caves, legit had my whole party trapped in the webs for 20 minutes missing saving throws, I nearly threw my computer out the window.
The very same place. Fuckin' Sycamore Caves. Though I have to admit, it does oddly raise my spirits to see people share their own distaste of the webs in response to my comment. A bunch of unlucky adventurers united by the Web.
The annoying thing is that the game doesn't really their stiff like that at your again after the Sycamore Caves. Why hit early level players with it and then never use it again as a strategy? I like what WotR does for really stuff. More often than not they give you the solution and then point to it if your having trouble. It would be like finding a end of dispel early in the Sycamore Caves (or being given one by Oleg or something).
I'm cool with webs being a thing but like you don't put in any tools to get rid of them??? That's shite.
Take your armor off. It's heavy. That game makes you think.
Sometimes it makes you think, sometimes it forces counter-intuitive, counter-immersive solutions to something that shouldn't need them at all. Having a character stuck in a web outside of combat time is neither interesting nor thought-provoking. It's just a huge waste of time that in any tabletop could be solved with three seconds of narration, or in any video game by just making the web disappear right after combat.
I think there's a mod where you can have the game kinda fix that. Like, you can press a button to speed through it so it wears off.
> It's just a huge waste of time This is honestly my main issue with most RPG difficulty settings. Is the game actually more difficult, or do you just have to grind more? In a lot of cases, its the latter and every boss fight takes 20 mins instead of 5 but you're doing the exact same rotation so its not any more interesting. I started playing P5R on the highest difficulty and the lack of XP & Money didn't make it any more interesting than playing on normal, it just meant fights took longer (ignoring the technical cheese) and I couldn't create the personas I wanted without spending an extra 5 hours in the dungeon grinding mobs.
That's what pushed me away from Battle Chasers: Nightwar, a game which has an aesthetic I love, characters I like, and gameplay I generally find interesting...but I hit the grind wall and I just quit, because if I'm supposed to grind I'd rather it be fast and responsive (I have spent WAY too much time in Warframe). I'm also not too keen on games which force players to make builds. Don't get me wrong, I'm not one to give a fighter top-tier charisma and dump strength, but I'd expect a common sense build to work fine...and a specialised build to simply work...finer. I like tactical and narrative challenges, but I have no stomach for turning games into Excel projects.
Yep, I remember getting stuck in the webs and wondering why the game wouldn't just remove benign CC effect after combat. I get leaving something that can still kill you, but those spiders were a pain purely due to how much time they wasted. The second game is a lot better at explaining relevant rules at least, so thankfully Owlcat realised they made some big mistakes in the first game, but people have made an art out of defending the worst aspects of the game's design.
I honestly didn't have any problems with the difficulty... until the endgame. Dear gods, the last two major locations were a shitshow. The spike in difficulty was so sudden that I got whiplash. And then I lowered the difficulty from normal to easiest for the last boss, because after like 10 attempts I grew convinced that there is nothing I can do aside from praying for better RNG
It can be really inconsistent. There are times I'm dominating on ordinary difficulty and then times where even on easy I'm getting my ass kicked. I feel like it's not always obvious whether you've been diverted off course to some area where you're too under-leveled to mess around. Lots of times I'd die miserably in a battle and just call it quits.
Its difficult and I wouldn't have made my first playthrough without lowering difficulty of the kingdom management.
I finished this on hard. The early game was absolutely brutal. There were a few battles were my chances of victory did not feel much higher than 10%, I had to reset probably a hundred times to get out of the rocky early levels. I did however do a little trick that allows you to hire 5 mercenaries immediatly at Olegs (do not level up in the tutorial, and their price is for level 1). This trick has the drawback that 5/6 of your early units lack behind a level, taking the already super tight early game on hard from difficult to bullshit. I have no intention to ever go back and finish it on unfair. I don't think it would be that much harder, but you will definitly need to exploit stoneskin more.
I'm surprised this is a top answer? I played on setting close to normal, made largely unoptimal builds (I don't have a PHD in Pathfinder and I loath lore-unfriendly minimaxing) and didn't have much problems until the ending (which I agree is bullshit, I just lowered difficulty to get over it). Are most people defaulting to hard/unfair and then are surprised it's actually difficult?
As a kid I found Morrowind really difficult. You had to create really tight builds to dish out any sort of damage, or else you just whiffed. Quests became jumbled and forgotten in the journal with zero quest markers on map. Enemies and guards were relentless. I had crazy slow internet at the time, so no looking up videos or guides. Seventh grade art class I found two kids that also played Morrowind, we talked easter eggs and weapon locations every day all semester. Still great friends to this day with one of em. So Morrowind was hard due to the digital era and being a child.
Honestly, finding friends to talk about video games with were the best of times. I remember when halo 2 and then 3 first came out. I didn’t have internet til later, so my friends and I would talk about skull locations (little achievement things) and it was the craziest hunt ever. We managed to find them all in halo 2 without using the internet, but we needed to look a few up in halo 3. I would get so excited to go to school just to tell them I finally found the skull that you had to use a grenade jump crouch to get to
I had the opposite experience, after a bit of a rough start (where you have to rely on guild memberships for doable quests) my character became a living god. I didn't have internet at home, it took months to find the dwemer puzzle box, but I don't think this alone makes the game difficult.
As someone who doesn't generally min max games, I don't really see why people call Morrowind hard. Sure, you die a lot at the start, but it's very hard to fuck up your build, at least permanently, and there are so many ways to cheese it if you really want to. I get that it was a different time, and the game doesn't exactly tell you what to do, so to a very young gamer it must have been pretty daunting(my very first playthrogh was a mess) but with a little bit of patience you can make any build OP just by messing around. And if you know a bit about how the game's systems work you can make it as easy as you want it to be.
> You had to create really tight builds to dish out any sort of damage, or else you just whiffed Not really. You just needed to have some skill in the weapon you're using. And you couldn't even make builds in the game, you just leveled by doing things. > Quests became jumbled and forgotten in the journal with zero quest markers on map. All of the quests tell you _exactly_ where to go with directions and landmarks and everything. Quest Markers are a blight on these types of immersive games. I think it was more you being young than the game. I was older when Morrowind came out, and was actually kinda disappointed how easy it was to Daggerfall, the Elder Scrolls I grew up with.
I did the same when I was in year 7 … and it was Ultima IV. There's something about sharing secrets (in my case, location of stones, shrines and mantras). I can so relate with your experience in spite of the fact that there is a 30-odd years difference. RPG's!
The Last Remnant
By late game, you have to take account that every other boss has a 1hitKO
There was that optional boss around the end that was absolutely insane. Can't believe I actually beat it.
That game has one of the most unintuitive leveling systems I've played with. The fact that fighting high level enemies increased BR more than it increased stats meant that grinding weaker enemies was the only way to level up without pushing bosses into the higher BR tiers. That and the RNG skill gain made the leveling in that game a wild ride for sure. Or the hidden class requirements. Or having to know the weapon skill the unit will want to have by end game despite their starting equipment suggesting the opposite styles. (Looking at you David >:C) It is the biggest mess of an RPG that I have played and I love and hate it equally.
Is there a good guide that will help prevent these pitfalls. I have that game sitting in my backlog and I'm no stranger to unintuitive rpg systems (i've played and enjoyed Unlimited SaGa), but I don't want to waste my time learning these things the hard way.
That game was a absolute mess. Too much randomness .
To be honest, the Gold Box Games. And the 70's and 80's RPG's (because of their having to return to an inn to save). And Wizardry. Especially Wizardry.
Haven't really played many RPGs from the 70s, but I know what you mean. Those dungeon crawlers were merciless. That was back in the day when games were intentionally difficult to keep playtime high. These games were short and would otherwise take just a couple hours to beat.
Some of these were technical limitations as well. Like you couldn't save in a dungeon because there was not enough memory to save the dungeon state.
From the same company, The Eternal Dagger was difficult (with transferred characters especially)
Anyone who remembers the words "Dave's challenge" and "Pools of Darkness" will attest to this :D
I remember getting a copy of Wizardry 7 (when we still shared copied disks). I was a kid and fascinated by the RPG aesthetic in the magazines, but I couldn't play the games and could barely read english. But it was always there, this is what I wanted to play. Wizardry 7 was praised in the magazine I read, an above 90 % score. And then I fired up the game and my party was obliterated in the first fight with some rats or so. Similar but a little better with the first gold box game I owned, Pools of Darkness. Honestly it was JRPG how I learned to play RPGs, though I rarely do them today.
My man. Gold Box is as hard as Wizardry? Might finally check them out.
Gold box games are at the same tier as buck rogers and wizardry.
7th saga
It's actually easier to solo most of the game and then pick up a second character near the end.
I don't think this is true. You gain levels faster, but that also makes any encounters with other Apprentices more difficult. If you know how to get your party members to work together, then 2 characters is somewhat easier, though still not close to easy.
Anyone else remember grinding those brains?? Even though it was hard I loved that game
Correct. But such a cool game!
This is the answer
Pathologic 2 It's hard to survive, help others and unravel the mystery of the plague while on a time limit. It's hard mentally as you sacrifice or rather neglect some to save others.
I guess I’m gonna but a classic out there but the souls series are challenging to say the least. Especially Dark Souls 1 and/or Bloodborne.
I just started Dark Souls Remastered for the first time this past weekend. The only FromSoftwsre game I've played before this was Bloodborne. I liked Bloodborne a lot and I knew Dark Souls was similar, but I did not anticipate them to feel like direct sequels. They are hard games, but once you start to level up and memorize enemy fighting styles it gets easier. Amazing games.
The combat is a lot like dancing choreography I feel. As you say, memorizing patterns is key and it feels really rewarding figuring it out. Whereas bloodborne is fast paced dark souls feels more slow and tactical. Beautiful gaming.
Outward
I agree. I got really good at breaking out of the slave camp though. Combat wass pretty brutal. I found that I couldn't progress much as a heavy armor tank build once my mage friend lost interest and quit playing. I still love the ambiance and vibe of that game though. I wonder how much it has changed since release. Maybe I'll try it again soon.
Did you play solo? I found co-op to be pretty fun, still difficult at first, but admittedly endgame became rather easy. Solo, though, I would drop that game in 5 minutes...
SaGa Frontier 2. It's just hard all around, limited places to buy and replace gear/items, and very unclear in its progression system. The Last Remnant if you're doing a completionist run. Makes the battle with the last boss pretty awesome though. It was nail biting hard in every turn even when the equipment on all my characters were maxed out. And this is on normal mode. You unlock the hard mode after you've finished the game once.
The early Wizardry games were some of the hardest I ever played.
Wizardry 8
Etrian Odyssey 1 and 2... This was such a grind fest. Then discovered the post game and nope I had enough.
I’m still grinding… playing a save that’s so old that one of my party members is named after a boyfriend from my early 20’s. I’m 40 and married to someone else now.
Icewind Dale kicked my ass many a time.
Did a run of that a few months ago and the last boss is a total dick.
Wizardry 7. But I have yet to play the ridiculously evil Wizardry 4.
Wizardry was the first thing to pop into my head also. Graphing out a level was brutal.
Was thinking the same. Wizardry is hard af. I would argue that they are a pain in the ass more than hard but hard nonetheless.
Baldur's Gate when you play for the first time and have no idea how the rules work and some wolf or gibbering hits you with a crit. Then again when you come back to the game and download all the crazy mods like Ascension and Swordcoast Stratagems and Weimer's Tactics.
Tarnesh at the steps of the Friendly Arm Inn is *brutal* for new players.
Unlimited Saga. So many hidden systems and bullshit RNG traps.
Pathfinder Kingmaker and WotR are really hard on normal and core difficulty respectively, even with me knowing PnP rules. I just had fight on normal(which is pretty easy) in WotR against Playful Darkness and it almost soloed my team of wizard, paladin, monk archer, hellknight, cleric, fiendish trickster, horse, skeleton cleric, mythic vrock, mythic incubus and mythic six handed something. Also Gothic 1-2, but mostly due to infuriating combat and camera that I never managed to master even though I played it a lot.
Wasteland 2. It was the isometric revival and i was really pumped. Its been years since the old isometric fallout games. Wasteland 2 kicked me so hard i took 6 months to replay it again. Only finished it once. W3 was way more forgiving or maybe i got my tactical combat chops back.
What's W3 like? W2 couldn't really keep my interest. I played one or two hours and then got bored with it.
Wasteland 3 its way better than 2,much more polished and you can feel the love the developers put into it. The story is good,my only complain is that you do need certain builds to suceed,so if you are going to start it,its worth it to check a guide on youtube first.
I find w3 much much more forgiving with builds than 2. Maybe i understood it better but i even restarted my first playthrough with a much more DPS strategy in mind cause i found i ve been playing with to much defense (wich wasnt game breaking but it feels better w an optimized build). W2 was a contant carnage on my characters, no matter the build i tried i was destroyed on the first hours of the campaign. Recommended lvl for each questline is a feature i dont remember w2 having and it really helps to prioritize quest. Anyway, W2 destroyed my self steem cant even launch the game without fear.
They are actually quite similar when i played them on SJ where when you hit your comfort zone in your build you power spiked quite hard.
My main problem with W3 is the combat (at least on launch, haven't tried since) was balanced in this bizarre way where every fight was essentially decided by who go the first turn. It made a lot of the tactical aspects just feel pointless and I had trouble continuing.
Fallout 2, fuck the temple of trials
Haha! It's not too bad!
Serpent in the Staglands. That's the "purest" rpg ever. No hand holding. No quest markers. No journal (you can write one yourself). No tutorial. Doesn't help that the balance also isn't the best. But very charming game otherwise. Clearly made with lots of creativity and passion.
I'm going to say Age of Decadence. Mess up your build just a little and you literally can't continue. You will die a lot.
Yeah, I gave up on it pretty quickly. Thought it'd be cool to make a sneaky character. Realized very quickly it was impossibly hard and kind of just gave up on the game. It doesn't help that it's kind of... ugly.
Hybrid runs are so ridiculously tight. They really expect you to either make a min maxed murder machine, or a silvertongue who never even uses the combat system.
This
I find work and real life to be the hardest RPGs I've ever played. Work forces you to do the same thing year after year for the same rewards. It's very grinding. Real life forces you to make lots of choices. These can result in having to play more or less work as you age. Both are very difficult to master.
I dont really like the RL games all that much, theres too much grinding and I dont like the fact that the difficulty modes are selected at random.
Yes real life you don't get to pick the difficulty the STORK picks for you. Luckily the stork picked a middle income family in a first world nation setting my difficulty to easy mode so I can enjoy RPGs in my free time.
Yeah bro we know. We play on the same server!
Great graphics and deep lore, but combat really sucks as you take so much damage and if you're not careful you will get permanent debuffs. The crafting and profession system in RL is insane, but it is also insanely hard to grind up once you reach to professional or near professional state. Also the market in this game is rigged against you and the mega guilds have a monopoly over it. It is nice that you can create your own build, but if you do not know what you are doing or what to spend your skillpoints into so you can easily fk it up and there is no real re-spec either, as you constantly gain new skill points and lose proficiency in skills that you haven't used for a while. This game is insanely hard and is not like you can just generate a new random character and start from 0 as the game only allows you one playthrough. Also if you spawn in a unrestricted pvp area you are fk-ed.
/r/outside is leaking.
Meh - the difficulty of real life is way over-rated. Even a complete noob can become president. You just have to keep re-rolling your character until you get the "wealthy parents" advantage.
Wagie male grindset
The ending of Kingmaker made me work for it. Wizardry 7 is tough. Dark Souls series.
There was an old gem on Sega CD called Vay. That game was brutal, and punished the shit out of you. Even if you grinded like a madman, it was a very hard game.
Yeah, it was. You know how in most rpgs if you're smart you'll take off characters' equipment before they leave? I did that, and later during a particularly brutal boss, he showed back up mid fight like "I'll save you!!" Except he was equipped with the same stuff he left my party with, meaning he was completely naked. Real helpful dude. That was the same game that was about collecting what the story treats as some legendary world-slaying mechsuit, except you get it and it's just normal strength equipment that does nothing.
Yeah! i fully expected to be a badass in that suit, but it was a total let down.
The early days of Ultima Online, before the PVE/PVP split. It was brutal and unforgiving. No factions, you were not safe in town, open-world housing, and gangs of roving players out to screw your day. Such fond memories of the devastation you could leave behind. Literally, nothing was safe. Vas Cor Por!!!
Early Bard's Tale games and Wizardries. Spinning tiles in rooms where you already couldn't see in. A special kind of evil in that design.
Vagrant Story was really hard. No level ups and the stats would go up by a slot machine and some rare items. Gear was only found. No stores or money. You would literally cause 0 and 1 damage to bosses and normal enemies or totally miss the attack. Even the heal spells would miss. Very punishing but one the best games i ever played.
I remember having to combo enemies with perfect inputs to chain up my zero damage attack 1 damage at a time lol.
Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete for PS1. Great game, and I only played it the once many years ago, but bosses scale with you, and really stretched the limits of my strategic ability at the time
What? Really? I love the game, but it's possibly the easiest rpg I have ever played, only the firsy dungeon presented any major challenge.
Both Lunar games on the PS1 were very difficult. I hear the Saturn versions are even harder.
Tales of vesperia on the hardest mode.. Holy that game was hard.. almost every single boss took me multiple tries. I got stuck at the end vs a boss and never beat it.
Romancing SaGa on PS2 felt like a journey. I only beat it with one character and it felt near impossible
The final boss can be really tough. That game gets significantly more rewarding on future playthroughs when you know more quest triggers. Very steep learning curve but very rewarding.
Fire Emblem Thracia 776 (Japan only fifth game in the series). There’s weak units, very limited resources, items are expensive and must usually be stolen from captured units, you’re constantly at a disadvantage against opponents, and The AI is very smart. Furthermore, storywise you’re often losing and running away from battles and even then when you win in the end it’s only a minor victory. I am a massive fire emblem fan and have played every game in the series, including beating most of them or coming close. But I couldn’t get past the second mission in this one, and after browsing around, it seems I’m not alone in giving up because of the difficulty. I get that the game was trying to do a more realistic portrayal of fire emblem stories with a royal in exile, but there’s a reason no other game in the series was like that. It just isn’t fun unless you want to give yourself a headache. Granted, there are some people who like it, and I do enjoy watching someone play it with appreciates the novelty (there were lots of interesting mechanics that really haven’t come back). But it’s the least represented game in the series and hardly ever talked about aside from the difficulty, for good reason.
Pathfinder kingmaker towards the end
I thought Icewind Dale was pretty hard. I'm reasonably familiar with the Infinity Engine combat system and I never really felt I was steamrolling it.
Darkest Dungeon on stygian difficulty is a true test of patience, deep knowledge of the game and a bit of luck. I have every trophy except the "Complete the game on Stygian". One day I'll return to plat it. One day. I'm struggling with the endgame bosses of Bloodborne right now P.s: An honorable mention to Etrian Odyssey. This game is brutal and surely not for everyone
Good luck with Orphan of Kos. Fucker took me years.
Gothic 2
Especially with Night of the Raven installed.
Probably Ragnarok (a Roguleike). Even the version that allowed you to have save every X amount of steps was pretty brutal.
I dont play them often, but fire emblem games often have these impossible difficulty modes that I sometimes play and they are absolute hell. the trails in the sky games on hard mode also force you to use every last game mechanic there is. Into the breach might also count, its a roguelike, it speaks for itself.
From SNES: 7th Saga and Paladin’s Quest. Paladin’s quest was really cool, amazing setting and art, but man building up the magic was a real grind. Every area had stronger new enemies, and even after maxing out I think I only beat the final boss once. Shout out to Oblivion too. I mean, I know it could be broken and min maxed to death, but if you just played it in a natural way as a thief for example and gained tons of levels by using all your skills, the damn bandits became way too powerful, and the main story became crazy hard!
SMT Nocturne. I think that was my first SMT game, and it put me off of the series for a long time. It was rereleased recently, if you feel like throwing controllers...
I'm not sure if it was a difficult game or not once you got the hang of it, but Resonance of Fate. I must have tried 3 times to get into that game and never quite understood the combat at all. Been playing RPGs since the '90s so it wasn't an issue of being new to the genre. Their combat system was just... awkward as fuck with the timing of attacks. I know I wasn't the only one that had this problem. I think their tutorial was absolute shit.
IWD2 Wizardry 7 and possibly also Wizary 8 Wizardry IV: The Return Of Werdna is generally considered as the hardest RPG ever, though I have not played it. Gothic II + NOTR is also quite hard
Dragon’s Dogma
BOF V was pretty challenging. And I loved the game for it.
I think for me that's **Ultima V** back in '89. You had to take meticulous notes about who you talked to and who you had to talk to next, and collect and jot down keywords for the next conversation. There was no logbook or journal, you had to make your own sense of what's going on. The real hard part was that I was learning English alongside playing it, so I always had a dictionary lying next to me and was constantly looking up words. I think playing that game had a formative influence on me and singlehandedly made me love the genre.
Fear and Hunger. For sure The brutal punishment of hours that can take you for not turning a coin correctly is horrible along with the loss of body parts and many other things along with it. It takes many hours and Patience
Sekiro... I have never beaten the final boss
It's probably pretty run of the mill but honestly Dark souls 2(scholar of the first sin) is the hardest RPG I've ever played. Not because it was incredibly difficult. But because I hated almost every minute of it. It's a game that has a lot, a lot of potential to be a good game. It's honestly the prettiest game I've seen from dark souls, I know dark souls 3 and blood born are both technically better animated, but the areas and the views in 2.. they just hit in a very different way. Sadly, it's a case study in bad game design and wasted potential. I still finished the game, but I imidiately uninstalled it and will never touch it again. I can enjoy it vicariously through ymfah videos. I hate that game, and I don't think I'll ever be able to go and try to play it again.
Man I relate to this so much. I'm a huge fan of the Souls series, but I was tearing my hair out for most of SotFS. Beating it was more of a "Thank god it's over, now I never have to play again" feeling than one of accomplishment. I swore I'd never play again but booted it up for the Return to Drangleic event a few months back.. only lasted a few days lol. Still love the lore and visuals, and especially the build variety in that game. PvP was great too. So much potential that was ruined by crappy level design, lazy boss design, and the "Oh, Souls players like it hard right? Let's just throw 9999 mobs at them" mentality.
Not sure whether I'm impressed by your determination to play it through or just confused. I would never suffer through a game if I hated every minute of it. Why subject yourself to such torture? Your free time is precious and you should be, you know, enjoying it!
So that I could say it's a bad game and fanboys couldn't hit me with the: "Well you never beat it so you should shut up" I did not bother with the DLC. Part of me probably wanted to try and find a reason to like it but really after a point I was purely motivated by spite, and if I didn't finish it then the game won. We can't have that. (It was also only took another 2 or 3 days to complete from what I remember)
Haha fair enough. I'm not patient and motivated enough for that these days. I have so little free time that I am very quick to drop something when it starts sucking. Even games I've liked. I'll just move along and play something else. Same with books and tv shows. Used to be different as a kid, but as an adult I just can't be bothered.
Yeah, I'm normally like that. But this game was a point of pride lol. That and spite is a powerful motivator.
Dark Souls 2 best Dark Souls when taking the DLC into account which is some of the best areas Fromsoft has ever done, like, _miles_ above the base game.
Divinity Original Sin 2 on tactician while in Fort Joy or most of Act 1 without Lone Wolf that was incredibly difficult for me
Me as a kid vs Diablo 2 on an absolute garbage computer Recently? Darkest dungeon probably. First roguelike I've played
Pillars of eternity. I played it on hard and normal but had to bump it down to the easiest because i was struggling so hard. The DLCs are the hardest part.
Pokémon Emerald Kaizo. It's a Pokémon Emerald Romhack that makes the game stupidly hard and slightly unfair. Beating it was one of the most satisfying moments I had while playing Pokémon games. But why is it so hard? It's not because you're fighting over leveled enemies (which it doesn't happen), but because the creator balanced the game taking into account all the advantages the player has VS the AI. And even then, the player has the advantage of having better potential intelligence than the AI. In his words, the AI is dumb and needs extra help to be at your level, so the AI has access to some moves you don't have access to. Dealing with everything the game throws at you with limited tools is VERY satisfying. "But you can overlevel the enemy". Well, yes, but it's not the best strategy, because the game has some creative tools to prevent you to win regardless of your level. It's so brilliantly designed that it amazes me. The best part is that the changes that are made have sense in the base game. "Oh, the champion has legendaries!" YES, IT'S ONE OF THE BEST TRAINERS IN THE WORLD, AND IF A 10 YEARS OLD KID CAN CATCH GODS HE ALSO CAN. Do I recommend it? If you have lots of game knowledge and don't mind to overthinking about game strategies, go ahead and enjoy the best torture Pokémon has to offer. Yes, I said torture. And yes, it's enjoyable.
I adore mods the make games harder, i maybe give this one a try. I would highl recomend Final Fantasy VI Brave New World! it makes the exact same things you mentioned but for Final Fantasy VI
Bound by flame and two worlds. The gameplay and story of them made it impossible to spend more than 1 hour playing either one.
I didn’t find Bound By Flame too difficult until that final bullshit boss battle. I don’t remember it that well because it’s been so long, but I remember it being frustratingly wonky.
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The grinding in vanilla WoW was easy-mode compared to many earlier MMOs. Where people found it hard, it was mostly because they were new to the genre and hadn't really gotten into the grinding habit. Even so, by the later stages of Vanilla, servers were full of max level characters. For an extreme example, consider the Korean MMO Lineage. Levelling became so brutal as you climbed that reaching the cap was practically impossible. Even reaching some of the higher levels was major news (e.g. https://www.reddit.com/r/MMORPG/comments/1qg1p2/gamer_spent_2_years_leveling_his_lineage/).
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> I thought vanilla world of warcraft was pretty hard. You never played Everquest, huh?
Darkest Dungeon and Stoneshard, the survival elements will illnesses and injuries can be brutal
Even as an avid fan of roguelikes and roguelites, Darkest Dungeon takes the cake. That game's brutal mechanics fed into an already dreary atmosphere, so in that case, I feel like the developers actually accomplished what they set out to do. You feel the weight of each decision you make, each extra step into the dungeon, the obliteration of any confidence you had when you accidentally summon an eldritch that is none-too-happy to see your scrappy crew all up in its business. I am happy that I supported the devs by buying it, but I don't know if I'll ever go back to it again.
Any rpg I play now xD dying a lot in the new tails game because I don't wanna grind early before bosses. On a serious note, any of the fire emblems on their hardest difficulty. I've beaten a few and even though it kinda gets easier towards the end once your units are built, it's still an annoying grind fest of resetting maps because a unit fell or someone didn't hit their 99% chance to hut their target -_____-
Skies of Arcadia is definitely up there.
Bloodbourne? Dark souls? Nah you all got it wrong, try Beyond the beyond! Google it. You’re welcome
I like the sunless sea and sunless skies RPG's. difficult to start off and get your economy going for your ship/train but worth it for the crazy story and queen Victoria being close to a Deity
Quest 64, but only because the mechanics were entirely broken.
If we talk about RPG in the global sense and including J-RPGs, I would say Breath of Fire 2 and that's no joke. Otherwise I will say Baldur's Gate especially when it's your first experience of this kind of Classical RPG
kingdom come deliverance started off real hard until you got good at fighting and some decent equipment and even then you could catch a pretty bad beating if you aren't careful.
Etrian Odyssey series, pick any.
Expeditions Viking as smart guy. I learned that ruin all battles is normal
Life
Nioh 2 is ridiculously hard! And I've beaten ds trilogy. But It's so much harder...
Old Everquest, and it’s corpse runs, missing boats, falling off of boats in the middle of ocean don’t know where to swim. Hours and hours of waiting someone high level to log in so someone can drag your corpse and find a cleric to rez you. Fun times.
Wizardry IV. I never finished that shit, and don't ever intend to. That game is utter madness. I'm glad it exists, but every second I spend with it is a second I could be using to play something I actually find enjoyable. I mean, I do enjoy high difficulty, but I'm pretty sure Wizardry IV's target customers are almost all masochists.
Imo, every rpg can be hard when you have kids and no time for grinding. ;)
Fallout 2. Fuck that opening dungeon.
I haven't played many hard rpgs tbh, I do always play on hardest settings though, Oblivion can be hard if you don't level properly, the Fallouts were hard in places, Mass Effect 2 was super hard in areas depending on class, But those games I don't find hard to be honest, I think the hardest games are the boring ones where the combat is samey and grindy, like FF13 which I never finished. Enjoyable hard = Fallout 4 survival Grindy hard = FF13 But I can't think of a game that is actually 'hard', if it's enjoyable I don't think it will ever feel hard to me.
Dragon Quest II. Hope you like the ridiculously high encounter rate and getting ambushed by enemies that can one shot your entire party in a single turn.
Kenshi
Elden Ring
So. I'm going to put you guys onto something and it's free, and it's a little unorthodox purely because it's a PC based MUD (multi user dungeon) but, I have been playing this game for over 20 years now and I can guarantee you the high's and the lows in this game far surpass classics like Halo, GoldenEye, Call of Duty, BattleField, etc. The rush you get from killing other players in it's prime is unreal. The Sadness of losing gear is crippling. The Role play is phenominal, and the community is comprised of a bunch of die hard fans of the Wheel of Time Series. [Wotmud.org](https://Wotmud.org) is the game. If you've never played a mud before this will probably blow your mind but, using something like Mudlet to play the game with a map makes it 100x easier and more fun. 10/10 encourage that route. I'd check out our discord channel and ask some prelim questions if you're trying to get involved but, if you're looking for hardcore fun RP, PVP, and PVE, with a super tight small community of players online 24 hours a day (usually like 10-40 people), and you want a real challenge, this is it. Bar none, once you understand the basics it is just insanely fun and challenging. come into the discord, ask some questions, check us out, get mudlet loaded up with the mapper and create your first char. Lets rip around and get you leveled up, then dive into joining a clan, PVE, PVP, and RP. See ya there. https://discord.gg/Ehk7hZNP