Biggest Difficulty Spike You Have Ever Experienced

[Trucken]

Jagged Alliance 2 goes from an enjoyable, tactically juicy romp to a white knuckle march of horror that even aggressive save scumming can be hard pressed to overcome. It makes complaints about the new, forgiving XCOM games seem quaint and bemusing.

As much as I love Jagged Alliance 2 (and it's a lot, it's my favorite game ever) I'll be the first to admit that it's hard as fuck. I've never beaten it on anything other than Novice as it only takes a few hours for the game to become your worst goddamn nightmare. I mean, Drassen and Chitzena falls easily, Cambria can be kinda difficult (the old university can be a nightmare with all the explosives lying around). But after that, Grumm? Alma? SAM sites 2 & 3? Save scumming like a mother.

 

[bpm195]

Dance Dance Revolution has the most ridiculous jump in difficulty when you switch from any home version to the same game's arcade version. After playing the home version for a while I was able to beat 8 footers, but when I went to the arcade I had to drop to 5-6.

 

[vid87]

Any battle with those twins though was terrible. I think the developers knew how OP they were and intentionally made the win condition just getting one of them to critical health - actually defeating everyone would have been a nightmare.

They're total cheaters to boot. Check out how they can equip headbands as accessories.
One of them can even dual wield katanas; which isn't possible for player units.

And their insta-kill, don't forget about the insta-kill.

 

[cahtush]

Cerberus from Devil May Cry 3....and actually from Kingdom Hearts 1 as well. In both of those cases he is the second boss (possibly third depending on what path you take in KH)

Came here to post Cerberus, too. Well, the Kingdom Hearts one, at least.

I just replayed Kingdom Hearts recently for the first time in years (thanks to the 1.5 Remix), and God damn, I had forgotten how much of a pain in the ass Cerberus was.

I mean, at that point in the game, you don't have High Jump yet, so just REACHING him to do damage is a chore. Your choices in healing are extremely limited (unless you skipped this level and went to Deep Jungle first to get the Cure spell). Magic doesn't do jack to him, and you can barely cast any that early in the game. He's got several long-range magic attacks, and his physical attacks hit like a truck. Speaking of, you can really only hit him when he starts attacking physically, and because of that, it's EXTREMELY risky to go in for any decent combo.

Forget Sephiroth. Forget Kurt Zisa. Forget Unknown. CERBERUS gave me more trouble than any other boss in the game.

This for me too.
Just started playing it again recently, the first time i played it many many years ago i never realized that you weren't supposed to fight the heartless at the tutorial island. As it turned out 8 year old me was really bad at video games.

But anyways, that cerberus fight is like hitting a brick wall. Ended up cheesing it by letting Goofy and Donald slowly chip away at it while i ran around avoiding its ranged attacks.
I'm not sure how anyone is able to beat it without ludicrous grinding.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

Cerberus from Devil May Cry 3....and actually from Kingdom Hearts 1 as well. In both of those cases he is the second boss (possibly third depending on what path you take in KH)

Came here to post Cerberus, too. Well, the Kingdom Hearts one, at least.

I just replayed Kingdom Hearts recently for the first time in years (thanks to the 1.5 Remix), and God damn, I had forgotten how much of a pain in the ass Cerberus was.

I mean, at that point in the game, you don't have High Jump yet, so just REACHING him to do damage is a chore. Your choices in healing are extremely limited (unless you skipped this level and went to Deep Jungle first to get the Cure spell). Magic doesn't do jack to him, and you can barely cast any that early in the game. He's got several long-range magic attacks, and his physical attacks hit like a truck. Speaking of, you can really only hit him when he starts attacking physically, and because of that, it's EXTREMELY risky to go in for any decent combo.

Forget Sephiroth. Forget Kurt Zisa. Forget Unknown. CERBERUS gave me more trouble than any other boss in the game.

This for me too.
Just started playing it again recently, the first time i played it many many years ago i never realized that you weren't supposed to fight the heartless at the tutorial island. As it turned out 8 year old me was really bad at video games.

But anyways, that cerberus fight is like hitting a brick wall. Ended up cheesing it by letting Goofy and Donald slowly chip away at it while i ran around avoiding its ranged attacks.
I'm not sure how anyone is able to beat it without ludicrous grinding.

It's been a year and a half or so, but I think I remember jumping on his leg/backside and smashing the fuck out of one of the heads with a couple combos, then running away like hell inbetween hits. Didn't work perfectly and occasionally when they would do the "chomp chomp really fucking fast and do massive amount of damage" my body would get caught in it when I was trying to hit, but I think I made it through in one fight and not having to restart. To be honest leon and yuffie were more of a pain in my ass at the time

 

[BloatedGuppy]

As much as I love Jagged Alliance 2 (and it's a lot, it's my favorite game ever) I'll be the first to admit that it's hard as fuck. I've never beaten it on anything other than Novice as it only takes a few hours for the game to become your worst goddamn nightmare. I mean, Drassen and Chitzena falls easily, Cambria can be kinda difficult (the old university can be a nightmare with all the explosives lying around). But after that, Grumm? Alma? SAM sites 2 & 3? Save scumming like a mother.

I assume you've played with the 1.13 "mod" installed? The Drassen counterattack really needs to be seen to be believed.

 

[Requia]

Getting to the galactic core in Space Pirates and Zombies. You just barely get the hang of things and suddenly the enemies get multiple huge near invulnerable ships with better weapons than you have access too.

 

[Garrett Horvath]

Dark Souls has just this second pissed me off with a difficulty spike, causing me to quit the game and check out The Escapist. I got to Blighttown, and was happily plodding along killing weird looking mosquitoes and giant guys with clubs, when suddenly I notice I'm being shot at by a bunch of zombies with blowdarts, and despite blocking the darts I've been poisoned.

"No worries!" I think, "The game just gave me a giant stockpile of poison curing moss a couple of areas ago."

"Nope!" Interrupts Dark Souls "This isn't poison, this is toxin, which is obviously completely different."

Me: "..."

Dark Souls: "By the way, you're dead."

Me: "..."

Haha I hate these dudes, they are completely unfair to new players who don't know where they are. Once you realize their darts can be blocked with a shield and that they DON"T respawn once you finally kill them, they become a lot easier.

 

[Ihateregistering1]

Path of Exile. I made it through the first two acts with pretty much no problems, but holy cow do they turn up the difficulty when you hit act 3. Suddenly the enemies hit much harder, there are way more unique enemies, and the bosses are freakin' killers.

It's also kind of unfair, because the bosses do a ludicrous amount of elemental damage. I'm still stuck on General Gravicius because I only have 25% fire resistance and he basically kills you in two hits if you don't have at least 50%.

 

[Ultress]

Metroid Prime 1 was not a particularity hard game but the first trek into the Phazon mines is a right pain. A long endurance run with hard hitting enemies that all have a specific weakness.It just really comes out of no where and will kick your ass if your not expecting it.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

Path of Exile. I made it through the first two acts with pretty much no problems, but holy cow do they turn up the difficulty when you hit act 3. Suddenly the enemies hit much harder, there are way more unique enemies, and the bosses are freakin' killers.

It's also kind of unfair, because the bosses do a ludicrous amount of elemental damage. I'm still stuck on General Gravicius because I only have 25% fire resistance and he basically kills you in two hits if you don't have at least 50%.

yeah the final boss in PoE makes Diablo look like a fucking child in comparison, I figured he wouldn't be anything to sneeze at but DEAR GOD, dying 30 times in the same battle is a pain in the ass when I steamrolled most of the acts.

 

[sovietmisaki]

Jak 2: That one mission where you had to run a gauntlet of Krimson Guard troopers. In the water slums of Haven City. My younger sister and I, failed like a few dozen times before we finally succeeded.

Company of Heroes: Before I learned of a certain sneaky strategy of cleverly using paratroopers, Mission 13: Mortain Counterattack was a battle that completely stumped me to no end, especially due to those damn 88mm guns tearing apart my armor like there was no tomorrow.

Dawn of War: Dark Crusade: fighting most of the other armies wasn't exactly too painful, although that changed when I had to defend against an invasion of Eldar forces encroaching on one of my larger territories (I was playing as the Space Marine faction this time around). where this most other armies, I would've easily wiped the floor with them, since I could actually see them most of the time. Not so in the case of my fight against the Eldar in this particular battle. Their invisibility nearly rendered my forces useless, and I was fending off 3 AI controlled opponents, until I scraped together a victory after spending about 3 hours of rooting them out, one by one.

 

[Isra]

Final Fantasy XI: Absolute Virtue & Pandemonium Warden. Because it's the best Square Enix could do without being able to shoot a flare up your arse and pour fire ants down your throat while Richard Simmons gives you a lap dance to Cher music.

 

[Blitsie]

The final fucking boss of fucking Metal Gear fucking RISING! Everything in that game had a good scale of difficulty, until THIS bastard suddenly hits you like a freight train at 100MPH, and just... ARGH! Didn't help I had no healing items by the time I got to him. That one chapter along took me 45 minutes, said the game when I finally won. Jesus >.>

That FREAKING piece of debris he sometimes decides to throw at you is the worst, always either timed it wrong so the thing actually clips through me for the last slice (killing me) or I end up being so in the fight I rush it, missing (and getting killed).

The DLC is actually a fantastic example of difficulty spike out of nowhere as well, if you play the main game on normal you'll have a relatively challenging time, apart from Armstrong nothing will result in you grinding your teeth. But when you jump into the DLC afterwards, especially Jetstream Sam, the game pins you against the wall out of nowhere and beats the absolute living crap out of you. I got completely owned by regular mooks in the first ten minutes like it was nothing.

 

[mrdude2010]

That would probably be psychonauts. I'm not saying the ending sequences are the hardest thing I've ever done, I'm saying the difference between helping Napoleon's cousin with his problems and that absolutely ridiculous platforming section right after you kill the tank are on two completely different powers of e^rt

 

[snave]

The Global Financial Crisis

 

[Ieyke]

There's an answer for this.

I think the graph speaks for itself.

 

[Drakmorg]

The last boss of Golden Sun 2 was awful. Nothing much in that game had really given me notable trouble until then, and then suddenly I'm constantly getting my ass kicked. I eventually concluded that I was just under-leveled, and then gave up because I didn't have the patience of grind.
I only ever finished that game because I went back to it out of curiosity, using a code that made the protagonists from the previous game all max-leveled with the best equipment and loads of permanent stat-boosting items to give to my main party because I didn't really care anymore. And hell, even using the guys who were literally twice the level of my main party by the end of the game didn't even make it a complete cakewalk.

 

[6_Qubed]

Not a videogame, but Heroclix. My first time playing it, the old hand who was graciously letting me borrow his pieces for the game had to give me what amounted to a small lecture before I could even read the abilities on the various character's cards. I mean, I thought going with the likes of Punisher and Clark Kent would be self-explanatory, right? Punisher's got a sniper rifle and attacking from range is always good, and Clark Kent is Clark Motherfucking Kent. But now I've gotta learn why Toughness is different from Willpower, why Mastermind is different from Outwit (or Leadership for that matter), and then I gotta learn how you use Alter Ego pieces and why picking Clark Kent means you're getting bargain bin Superman, and why this guy Phobos with the fuck-off huge axe is more useful for forcing re-rolls on your opponent than he is for being a fucking Fear God with a fuck-off huge axe.

The upside, though, is that once you do finally manage to digest the initial infodump, you can do cool shit like turn Clark Kent into Bargain Bin Superman and then next turn fly over and punch a dude so hard he explodes. Which is how I won my first game, actually.

 

[Amaror]

Damn Might and Magic: Heroes 6.
The singleplayer campaign is so f***ing imbalanced, it's not even funny anymore.
I am used to Ai cheating to not make it too easy on the player, but the game is designed to be rushed through, which is no fun whatsoever in any Heroes game.
The AI just keeps spawning bigger and bigger armies out of f***ing nothing.
You can have the situation were you own the entire map, but one castle AND THE AI STILL PRODUCES MORE CREATURES THAN YOU!
That game is just so shit i can't even describe it.
The game has been out for over a year and even received an expansion allready and this shit has not been fixed.
Just disgracefull.