Biggest Difficulty Spike You Have Ever Experienced

[Poetic Nova]

Driver 2 had atleast one nasty difficulty spike in every city in undercover mode, but one was notoriously crazy:

Spoiler

Chase the gunman

Timer that changed time everytime you restarted the the mission (ranging from 1:45 to 2:45) enemy vehicle had solid granit car so it could ram through everything, ramming into it knocks you back and to make matters worse: lots of lag if you managed to reach the canyon parts of the chase. It's still the toughest mission I've ever completed in my book and never going to do it again.

 

[Atmos Duality]

Spoiler: This crap right here:

This crap right here:

I don't think I need to elaborate any further on the subject.

Yeah, I was expecting someone to bring up the Wiegraf+Velius fight from Final Fantasy Tactics.
Wiegraf is hilariously easy to cheese to death, and the trick to Velius is to rush his subordinates off them, then force him to waste turns nuking only one or two party members at once with Cyclops.

But the first time anyone plays through that, they have no idea what's coming or how to cheese it.
(especially if they've been relying on Agrias and/or Mustadio for regular battles)

And the worst part of that difficulty spike: the following mission, Roof of Riovanes is much, much worse IMO. Because the entire battle hinges on either you bringing uber-fast units, or praying that Rafa isn't a fucking moron on her first turn.

90% of the time, Rafa is a fucking moron.

I've watched her rush the assassins, and get annihilated. Attack Elmdore physically, get Hamedo'd and then annihilated.
Or rush PAST Elmdore to charge one of her shitty Mantra spells, kiting the Rape Posse to her, putting them out of my range, resulting in her getting annihilated.

Most of those occurring before my units got a single turn.

 

[MHR]

Rogue Legacy new game+ has a pretty difficult curve. All the enemies turn into their deadlier big brother forms, often with double the size, double the health, double the bullet spewing. New Game++ is even worse when all the fodder turns into about the equivalent of a miniboss.

The easiest parts become the bossfights. The main strategy usually devolves into avoiding all the trash and sprinting towards the end.

 

[Someguy 24]

The Sephiroth fight in Kingdom Hearts 2.

 

[ShinyCharizard]

Tales of Vesperia, Gattuso boss (basically a gaint wolf). He is one of the first few bosses (about...5 hours into the game?), and he is largely considered to be the most difficult boss in the game. I would put him on line with some of the optional bosses that are typical in RPGs.

Im pretty sure he is the third boss in the game in fact. He can two shot party members, and spawns pretty difficult mobs.

I'll second Gattuso. What a crazy boss he was. Walk into the fight, 10 seconds later everyone is dead.

 

[EHKOS]

Frickin' Punch Out man. I don't think I'll ever get past Great Tiger. Then again, a lot of the old NES titles had to be difficult so you felt you got your moneys worth. Still, I have a lot of trouble with older games.

 

[oversoon]

Battletoads - race level.
Earthworm Jim - "Down The Tubes".
God of War - from Aries forward.
Killzone 2 - boss fight with Radec.

 

[ecoho]

Tales of Vesperia, Gattuso boss (basically a gaint wolf). He is one of the first few bosses (about...5 hours into the game?), and he is largely considered to be the most difficult boss in the game. I would put him on line with some of the optional bosses that are typical in RPGs.

Im pretty sure he is the third boss in the game in fact. He can two shot party members, and spawns pretty difficult mobs.

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)

lol I kinda hate that boss now but the first time I fought him I kicked his but pretty easily sense I spent, I shit you not, 6 hours trying to figure out were to go at the hill. I kept going in and out and just killing roaming mobs till I finally gave up and looked up were to go. Suffice to say hes pretty easy to beat if your level 25 and can stun lock him to death.

OT: tales of symphonia the fucking sword dancer. Ok so hes a bonus boss and hes supposed to be hard but dam if he isn't a big omg if you fight him when you first see him, Or if you prefer mid game when THAT fight happens.....I just beat the hardest boss yet!.....wait whats going on another fight....OH SHIT!/dead.

 

[Leemaster777]

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.

 

[WhiteFangofWhoa]

Several people have mentioned Riovanes Castle already, soooo...

2nd is probably the Song of Nephilim in Xenosaga Episode I. A maze of tight corridors and switches making it impossible to avoid fights, and said fights are lightyears ahead of the previous dungeon. Virtually every enemy abuses Boosting like mad, with the worst of them being the flamethrower-wielding Realians (androids) that can strike your entire party for over 1/3 of their health (did I mention your best healer is missing since you're here to rescue her?). There are two difficult bosses at the end of it, and they are fought back-to-back with no chance to recover.

I was good enough with the battle system to beat a scripted 'hopeless' boss fight in that game, and the Song still drove me crazy, which I suppose is entirely appropriate.

Special mention to Peaceful Rest Valley in Earthbound. Can't cure Mushroomization, can't cure Colds, must hurry through victory screens to avoid dying from exploding trees, and you're all alone with less than 120 HP to your name most likely. And you must do the first half of it twice before gaining Paula's help for the journey back.

 

[Johnny Impact]

It makes complaints about the new, forgiving XCOM games seem quaint and bemusing.

"forgiving"? The RNG in the new game is such a fucking *****, I shouldn't ever be missing 90%+ shots, especially when I save it the turn before and try it 25+ times with multiple people.

Actually the game uses a list of pregenerated numbers. If your roll was a 92, you will miss your 90% shot no matter how many times you reload, because your "roll" will not be randomly generated, rather it will always be the next number on the list. Savescumming won't help. I believe Firaxis used the list specifically to prevent people savescumming to play the "perfect" game.

As for "shouldn't ever miss on 90%," you are of course merely venting and understand your statement is wrong. You will miss roughly one tenth of the time. As someone who lost a linchpin Support Colonel because a 99% shot failed, I sympathize.

OT: Switching from regular to Classic difficulty on the new XCOM. As a veteran of the original game, the new one seemed almost a cakewalk in comparison. After beating it on Normal, I switched to Classic. My first two missions resulted in total party wipes. My guys could be hunkered in high cover and the Sectoids would one-shot them anyway. Sheesh!

 

[A Weakgeek]

It makes complaints about the new, forgiving XCOM games seem quaint and bemusing.

"forgiving"? The RNG in the new game is such a fucking *****, I shouldn't ever be missing 90%+ shots, especially when I save it the turn before and try it 25+ times with multiple people.

Spoiler

OT: I don't play games on high difficulties usually, so I don't often meet a RIDICULOUS challenge to overcome, but I did play spec ops: the line on hard mode recently, and the last mission definitely jumped in difficulty.

Spoiler: just in case you haven't played the game

it is where you don't have lugo anymore and are storming uphill zig zagging across the road from cover to cover with having 2 machine gun turrets firing on you at all times. Also having tons of goons firing at you too jumping over the damn walls. This level is very frustrating because even behind cover it only takes about 3 solid hits for you to die, which can happen in the matter of time from you leaning out of cover to shoot and getting maybe one shot off, so taking out those machine guns and picking the right paths to sprint to was a bit tricky, and if you were lucky enough to have the grenade launcher attachment on your rifle, it took some pretty damn good skill to line up the shot just right to arc into the bunker and hopefully take out the turret user. Of course that was usually futile as another guy would spawn and take his place on the gun before you could bumrush that bunker.

I believe the way the RNG works is that the rolls are generated many actions in advance, as such, saving just before is not going to change the outcome.

 

[ccggenius12]

The most memorable ones for me are just older JRPGs in general. You're going along, just playing, but eventually the game screeches to a halt because you need to go grind for some obscene period of time to advance. I suppose that's more poor game design than difficulty, but that's what comes to mind for me.

 

[DementedSheep]

Going from normal to classic in Xcom. Especially month 3 when most of my satellites got shot down by a ship I could nothing to because my interceptors weren't good enough. Needless to say next time I did not neglect researching upgrades for them.

It makes complaints about the new, forgiving XCOM games seem quaint and bemusing.

"forgiving"? The RNG in the new game is such a fucking *****, I shouldn't ever be missing 90%+ shots, especially when I save it the turn before and try it 25+ times with multiple people.

Spoiler

OT: I don't play games on high difficulties usually, so I don't often meet a RIDICULOUS challenge to overcome, but I did play spec ops: the line on hard mode recently, and the last mission definitely jumped in difficulty.

Spoiler: just in case you haven't played the game

it is where you don't have lugo anymore and are storming uphill zig zagging across the road from cover to cover with having 2 machine gun turrets firing on you at all times. Also having tons of goons firing at you too jumping over the damn walls. This level is very frustrating because even behind cover it only takes about 3 solid hits for you to die, which can happen in the matter of time from you leaning out of cover to shoot and getting maybe one shot off, so taking out those machine guns and picking the right paths to sprint to was a bit tricky, and if you were lucky enough to have the grenade launcher attachment on your rifle, it took some pretty damn good skill to line up the shot just right to arc into the bunker and hopefully take out the turret user. Of course that was usually futile as another guy would spawn and take his place on the gun before you could bumrush that bunker.

I believe the way the RNG works is that the rolls are generated many actions in advance, as such, saving just before is not going to change the outcome.

Yep, it's like that specifically to stop people reloading to reroll. I think enemy within adds an option to turn this off so save and reloading works but otherwise the only way to turn a miss into a hit is if you use a different solider with a higher hit chance because your rolls remain the same.

 

[RedBackDragon]

For years and years i was never able to get through grand theft auto san andreas because of the mission early on where you have to customize a low rider and then do some kind of hydraulic meet to get sweets sister off of cesar villapando.

The rely sad thing is that dark souls poped into my head first before i realized that even dark souls dident hold me back for as long as that stupid low rider mission did.

 

[suitepee7]

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: "..."

did you choose master key as your item? if you did, you can skip the majority of blighttown, there is only one dart blower i encountered unless i wanted to explore a lot, which because it's blighttown, i didn't. anyway, if you got the master key then from firelink go down the elevator as if you were heading to new londo ruins, but instead of going down, go right into a tower, then across a narrow wooden bridge in valley of the drakes then boom, back entrance of blighttown.

also there's only 4 ways to combat toxic, blooming purple moss clump (iirc drops off the trees in darkroot garden), remedy (sorcery), divine blessing or resting at a bonfire. also use the spider shield (bandit starter, or loot in the depths) to block toxic build up if you know where the darts are coming from. all of these combined meant i didn't mind blighttown so much, but without the knowledge of the back entrance, i would have been pretty pissed.

OT: for me the biggest spike is street fighter 4, seth. i enjoyed SF:IV quite a bit, until i met him. he's a dick. he has too much health, does too much damage, and is such a jump up from any of the normal characters... hate that guy

 

[Icehearted]

Two I can think of...

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.

Oh good god this! It took ages of failed attempts before I had that one golden run through this game. I learned this game is a cheating ***** early on. Once I got the hang of it it was manageable, but damn this game doesn't hold your hand for long. Try too hard to get away with too much too soon and you're essentially walking your team into a meat grinder.

So many fond memories.

 

[Trunkage]

Xcom enemy unknown classic to impossible. Yeah the missions were hard, but the stupendous spike in the situation room panic world map. You'd be lucky enough to last the first month without losing 8 countries. I wouldn't mind the missions difficulty from impossible, and the panic level difficulty from classic. I don't mind saying that I cheated to keep the panic level down for the first month. It takes a lot for me to even consider cheating but that did.

During Dark Souls, I got to the team up boss in Anor Londo. I didn't realise you could upgrade weapons (or anything. I actually had to look it up). I couldn't get anything above 5 so that fight was god awful. The Four Kings on New Game+ is so difficult I've stopped, considering every other boss until then I didn't die

 

[SmallHatLogan]

The Four Kings on New Game+ is so difficult I've stopped, considering every other boss until then I didn't die

Havel's armour, Grass crest shield, two hand your weapon and just tank those motherfuckers. Chug estus when needed. It might make you feel a bit cheap but it gets the job done.