What’s the most egregious example of a difficulty spike in any video game you’ve played?

[Celebrate Nite]

World 1 - collectathon, you practice getting used to the gimped jumping and the weapon aiming mechanics.
World 2 - HOLY SHIT EVERYTHING IS OUT TO FUCKING KILL YOU INCLUDING SPIKES EVERYWHERE!!!

The game only has 4 worlds by the way.

 

[30+GameOvers]

View attachment 5799640
World 1 - collectathon, you practice getting used to the gimped jumping and the weapon aiming mechanics.
World 2 - HOLY SHIT EVERYTHING IS OUT TO FUCKING KILL YOU INCLUDING SPIKES EVERYWHERE!!!

The game only has 4 worlds by the way.

Rayman did something similar too
Never underestimate cartoon mascot platformers

 

[Psyduck]

Rayman did something similar too
Never underestimate cartoon mascot platformers

I hear that. All i remember during the last time i played through this was "this isn't a hard game, why am i dying so much here?"

Surprised the Water Temple from Ocarina of Time hasn't been brought up. Then again, last time i played it the only part i struggled with was finding a switch that was kinda hidden off by the camera angle. Smooth sailing before and after that.

 

[Book Thief]

Then again, last time i played it the only part i struggled with was finding a switch that was kinda hidden off by the camera angle

Funny you say that. There's a minor detail change in the 3DS remake that I don't think many people noticed.

In the room with the Middle Level Water Switch, there is a camera pan that focuses on a rising platform when the player activates it.

However, in the 3DS remake, the camera's focus has been changed entirely.

This is because there is a key hidden down below the rising platform. With the way the camera was focused in the original, I imagine a lot of kids playing it didn't realize there was another path underneath that floating platform, leading to a lot of frustration, especially in an era without internet walkthroughs and Let's Plays. Heck, I remember getting stuck my first time.

 

[Quintex96]

surprised this was not posted yet.

View attachment 5797703

That's not the capra demon, besides once you get to them you have already killed dozens of silver knights and got past the bullshit archers on the ledges outside.

My vote goes to the Croatia mission in C&C 3, For some reason all mp balance changes also affected the campaign mode so what is meant to be a base defence mission pretty much forces you to go on the offensive immediatly or you get your shit pushed in.

 

[Psyduck]

Funny you say that. There's a minor detail change in the 3DS remake that I don't think many people noticed.

In the room with the Middle Level Water Switch, there is a camera pan that focuses on a rising platform when the player activates it.

However, in the 3DS remake, the camera's focus has been changed entirely.

This is because there is a key hidden down below the rising platform. With the way the camera was focused in the original, I imagine a lot of kids playing it didn't realize there was another path underneath that floating platform, leading to a lot of frustration, especially in an era without internet walkthroughs and Let's Plays. Heck, I remember getting stuck my first time.

Lmao that's exactly what i was trying to reference, forgot it was a key and not a switch then.

All it took was one misleading canera angle and i got stuck for days

 

[30+GameOvers]

I mentioned the NeXt Gen Pokemon XD romhack I am playing, and something came to mind.
The game is much more difficult than vanilla, usually with better Pokemon and higher levels. However, the real difficulty curve starts in Cipher's Key Lair, around the end portion of the game. Pokemon around that point are in their 50s, then out of nowhere a Cipher Peon ambushes you and has a full team filled with Pokemon in their 60s, including Shadow Pokemon. That was a wake up call, you can easily wipe out there if you're not careful. The Admin at the end also has a Shadow Regirock that can wreck your team if you're not prepared.
From that point onwards, every fight is difficult: There is an optional boss fight against a level 75 Groundon you cannot catch, all trainers have usually full teams of late 50s-60s Pokemon with competitive movesets and bosses have smogon tier strategies and Pokemon with what I'm pretty sure are max IVs and EVs. They also have at least one Shadow Legendary Pokemon on their team to boot.

Special mention goes to the final boss fight against Greevil: First he fights you with a full team of level 60 Pokemon that have shadow moves despite being normal. Then, the cover Shadow Lugia shows up and it's beefier than ever, you can barely scratch it and it always seems to one hit your Pokemon no matter what. If you didn't bring a team that can weaken it enough to capture or just saved your Master Ball, then good luck. Oh, and after you catch or defeat XG001, Greevil has a spergout and challenges you to a battle with a full team of the toughest non-legendary Shadow Pokemon in the game. That's 13 Pokemon, one being a boss Legendary Shadow encounter, on one healthbar as you never get healed or given a chance to do so outside of battle.
Even better, right after the credits, the game plops your inside the Pokemon Lab. There is a Legendary Trainer waiting outside to challenge you, with a full team of competitive 60s Pokemon. At that point, you probably depleted your potion and revive stock, so if you're not careful you will be critically low on them when you fight him as you cannot leave the lab until you defeat him(thankfully there is a healing machine and PC inside, but no wild Pokemon so you're SOL if you don't have good matchups against him or underleveled Pokemon). At that point, every single generic Trainer rematch encounter is also beefed up to level 60s with Shadow Pokemon, first one I battled had a Shadow Latios so this should be fun.

I'm actually going to write about this in more detail when I am done with the game, in the Pokemon thread, but I might as well write about the difficulty spike now. With how easy these games are, you really get caught off guard when the game actually forces you to sweat, and this was a good kind of workout all the way thru(even tho my progress came to a screeching halt in Cipher Key Lair onwards, forcing me to grind EXP and farm money for supplies). Can't think of an analogue to this in the vanilla games, there is usually a few hard encounters but not a straight up difficulty curve unless you're doing some sort of challenge run where you gimp yourself.

 

[WULULULULU]

Even if you bought it, just go into the modlist and deactivate it. You'll still be able to recruit the flagellant.

Wait, I don't think so. Flagellant is locked into the expansion IIRC. Then again Flagellant isn't really effective against Crocs modded or otherwise.

 

[Asian tech support]

Wait, I don't think so. Flagellant is locked into the expansion IIRC. Then again Flagellant isn't really effective against Crocs modded or otherwise.

The flagellant, districts, and CC are all separate content instances. You still have to own CC but you can select both him and districts and skip CC.

I'm just bringing this up because I like flagellant and keep CC off until I'm ready to tackle it.

 

[Safir]

Since I'm here and replaying Arcanum, the fucking Dwarf clan lair. Have fun dealing with enemies that break your weapons. Hope you bought enough fatigue potions to wade through an ocean of blood.

I have the dog eat them while I run around and everyone else waits. It takes time but costs nothing.

---
Vepar in Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon 2 Ep. EX is pure assrape, bitch is fat, has two phases / health bars, and there's ice and spikes everywhere. An easy fight if you have Hachi, who's fat, immune to ice AND spikes, and as long as mana lasts immune to damage. But there's no Hachi in EX, EX features the characters from CotM1 and thus the most durable character is Zangetsu himself.

I won the boss rush mode in CotM1 with these characters (there's no easy mode for the boss rush), I can use them, I just can't beat the squid bitch.

 

[Pissmaster]

I’d argue many Disney games on the platform were artificially difficult, Mickey Mania, Quackshot and Pinocchio come to mind. Never managed to beat either of these back in the day.

Oh yeah, here's a NES game I had as a child: Mickey Mousecapade. It took me over thirty years to notice that it's not named "Mickey's Mousecapade".

Starts out okay enough, plays kind of like Mega Man. There are five levels in total, and that longplay video only makes it to level 2 at the 7:15 mark. The video's total runtime is 19:06. The second level is so short, I had forgotten all about it, and it lasts exactly a minute in that longplay.

Then comes level 3, The Woods. If it's the 90s and you don't have internet access yet, this is the end of the game. Thanks for playing.

Okay so, the level looks like this:


As you progress through and go through the doors, the trees change colors, indicating seasonal changes. The trick is to walk through the right ones to cycle through Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter in order. Easy enough, right? Well, here is a guide on how to beat it. In summary, Spring and Summer are easy enough to figure out. In order to advance on the Autumn screen, you need to avoid the first two entrances you see, and shoot a tree that's farther down in order to open a hidden entrance. Before, you just walked through the second tree to advance, but now the second tree will take you back to Spring. There is no indication that you are supposed to shoot a particular tree.

Then you finally make it to Winter, and it gets worse. There is a hidden door, but that, too, takes you back. You are supposed to walk all the way to the right of the map, loop it, and then shoot the first tree after the Start sign to open it and progress. This is another mechanic that's not explained to you, and you are supposed to just know to do, somehow.
That is the end of arbitrary nonsense in this game. The fourth level is literally four screens long, and even shorter than the second. Here is a complete map:

And then the last level is pretty normal.

That game is not great.

 

[Calandrino]

Oh yeah, here's a NES game I had as a child: Mickey Mousecapade. It took me over thirty years to notice that it's not named "Mickey's Mousecapade".

I had to look that up because it looks way too trash to be a Capcom Disney game... turns out it was developed by Hudson Soft, published in USA by Capcom. Hudson had their bright spots but yeah that tracks.

 

[Celebrate Nite]

Micky's Mousecapade makes more sense when you realize it's based on Alice in Wonderland

Only thing that's not related is Captain Hook.

 

[Dysnomia]

Surprised the Water Temple from Ocarina of Time hasn't been brought up. Then again, last time i played it the only part i struggled with was finding a switch that was kinda hidden off by the camera angle. Smooth sailing before and after that.

I will always hate this temple. Some say the difficulty problem is overated. But it's more of a frustration problem really. The amount of times you have to go into the menu to switch out the iron boots doesn't help. Thank God they fixed that in the 3DS remake.

The only good part of the Water Temple is the Dark Link fight. Everything else is a slog.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole 2]

Driver 1. Getting past the start screen is pretty easy. you just press start, but then the game crushes your balls with the mandatory tutorial for the fucking game.

 

[Camo Fox]

Yakuza Kiwami final boss fight... If you didn't grind out all the learnable skills via the tournament and etc. It's hell. The checkpoint can bring you back 20+ minutes in time depending on how long it takes you. enemies revive, multiple health bars, if you know you know. It's arguably not that bad if you *did* grind the requisite skills out, but, I didn't, and I did manage to win on my first try without having tiger drop (among other things) and running out of health potions in phase 2. I'd gotten through it without too much trouble up to that point, but even if you do have the better moves it's legendarily difficult.

Speaking of Yakuza; the first encounter with Ryuji Goda in Kiwami 2 is such bullshit. If you use your healing items getting to the fight it's impossible without cheesing

 

[Osama Bin Laden]

Yakuza: Like A Dragon comes to mind. Even with spending multiple hours on retarded substories and grinding out shit, towards the end of the game is fucking near impossible.

I capped off at Chapter 12/13, I've tried replaying this game multiple times but idk. the game is too difficult for me to even want to enjoy it

 

[Ibanez RG 350EX]

Driver 1. Getting past the start screen is pretty easy. you just press start, but then the game crushes your balls with the mandatory tutorial for the fucking game.

"Tutorial" makes it sound much friendlier than it is. It's more like "show that you can already perform everything in this game at a high level with no coaching or explanation and under a strict time limit".

 

[KingofSomething]

Yakuza: Like A Dragon comes to mind. Even with spending multiple hours on retarded substories and grinding out shit, towards the end of the game is fucking near impossible.

I capped off at Chapter 12/13, I've tried replaying this game multiple times but idk. the game is too difficult for me to even want to enjoy it

What are you getting stuck on? I can't think of anything that hard walls you besides the bonus dungeon and that section flat out tells you to grind it out first

 

[Whoopsie Daisy]

King's Field.

Here's a sword and some shit armour, but it's ok because you can mooch over to that lighthouse. See, everything is OK. Try having a walk through that cave and oh, you're dead. Git Gud.

Mega-lo-mania (Tyrants fight through time)

Enjoying the game? Yeah? It's pretty cool isn't it? Struggling balancing your population between levels and worlds? Yeah? Well fuck you, now we're making you spunk all of your people on one level. Good luck repopulating with 30 people when the CPU breeds like rats. Oh and your civvies are now super units because lol, why not?