Biggest Difficulty Spike You Have Ever Experienced

[DraikTempest]

There's a few games that I remember spiking pretty hard:

Dead or Alive 4 Kasumi Clone - Have fun with a teleporting enemy who can two shot you.

Terraria after Wall of Flesh - A whole new woooooooooooooooorld

Zelda: A Link to the Past - It's easy now, but I remember as a kid how hard Dark World seemed when i finally got ot it. Hell the first boss of Dark World wrecked me.

Last boss of Paper Mario and Paper Mario Thousand Year Door - Both start introducing some pretty cheap mechanics, and both require you to be on your A game to beat.

 

[EvilMaggot]

Diablo 2 last boss of Act 2.. cant remember the name... Duriel.. i think... rapes me everytime firsttime so back to grinding gear with resistances x)

 

[Brownie80]

Did I mention that every Uncharted game has a spike? Uncharted 1 turned into a survival horror game halfway-through, Uncharted 2 was the worst, with the second time you came back to the village in Chapter 19-Siege with those M32-Hammers and the next chapter had a tank that had insta-death spots, would destroy your cover, and took about 5 RPG blasts to destroy. Uncharted 3 had 3 difficulty spikes- The first part of the shipyard level (wide-open area, little cover, almost impossible to sneak, snipers on every single boat, lots of enemies that love to throw 437 grenades at your face, RPG-7 guys in an area you can only kill without getting killed yourself with a vulnerable turret) but I have gotten better at this section. The next one was in the ballroom on the ship and they will always try to flank you, and dealing with them will only get you shot by snipers, and the last one was when you and Sully get lost in the sandstorm, since the enemies have eagle vision!

 

[sageoftruth]

I hit quite a bump in Valkyria Chronicles. The first mission was a breeze. Simply run up to the enemy soldiers and shoot them and you won't lose. However, the second mission had me facing shock troopers for the first time, which sent me instantly from "obvious tutorial mission" to "what the heck am I supposed to do now?". I hadn't gotten far enough into the game to learn about the different classes and I spent hours trying to figure out how I was to defend the gate from these shock troopers, who could mow my characters down in seconds, while my rifle shots barely dented their health.

 

[sageoftruth]

Mine was the first Diablo game. Walking around and hacking and slashing like normal, feeling pretty good about yourself until you open the Butchers door. That fucker moves just as fast as you and hits like a truck. Him and King Leoric both are assholes, fuck them.

Yeah, I remember that. I was a warrior and was thinking, "Dexteriy? Hah! That's only for rogues." Boy was I wrong.

 

[sageoftruth]

Valkyria Chronicles.

The desert.

So you're enjoying the story, confident in the fact that you're still fairly early on, and then out of nowhere, your squad literally bumps into Emperor Maximilian in the middle of the damn desert! And he brought along his Giant Tank of Doom!

The game decided to bring the end boss into the middle of the story, and then afterwards, resume as if nothing had happened!

Ah! That's where I am right now. Wish me luck.

 

[Darth Rosenberg]

Not sure if he's had a mention yet, but Darth Malak would probably be mine. KotOR was a fairly easy game, but with the big boss I think I chugged an entire playthroughs worth of stims and health packs just to stay alive... The jammy git.

Seth in SFIV's also a jammy git who tends to be a much tougher threat than anyone else in Arcade, but once you figure out how to avoid getting trapped in his attack loops, he's manageable even on the highest diff.

 

[sageoftruth]

I beat God Hand yesterday, so I switched to Hard difficulty. I'm still trying to beat the first two enemies you encounter.

 

[Artaneius]

First time playing Quake II online. Seriously it was just so disheartening getting wrecked over and over. The funny thing was the majority of the other players felt the same, while the "tryhards" would just wreck everyone in their righteous might. It's funny looking back before matchmaking systems came in and say to yourself out loud it was a very bad time to be a casual gamer. You were forced to become a competitive/hardcore gamer or lose every single time.

 

[Zen Bard]

How about Seth, the final boss in "Street Fighter IV"? He has unblockable moves which he spams immediately after (or possibly while) you input your attack.

Actually, I'm not sure this counts as a "difficulty spike" as much as just an outright "cheap shot"!

 

[-Dragmire-]

Starbound's first boss, the alien spaceship(pre-patch).

Not sure if it counts though since it's not a completed game yet.

 

[demoman_chaos]

I have been playing Dragonball Z Budokai 3 again recently, and I noticed a lot of the DragonUniverse characters face random brick walls on their journey. This isn't so bad on your 2nd or 3rd run when you have more stats and skills, but a good chunk of fights are just controller-shatteringly frustrating.
This is not helped by among the most annoying features in a fighting game, the Dragon Rush. A 3 stage event where you have to guess which of the 4 face buttons the attacker will push, guess wrong and you take unavoidable damage via a drawn out cutscene while a lucky guess ends the ordeal. Many AI characters ABUSE THE FUCK out of it, which is done by going into a Hyper Mode (Which means you can only be stunned by attacks that have knockback, you can tank all normal hits without a hiccup) and doing a knockback attack. When the enemy goes Hyper, all you can do is try to run away and dodge which shatters flow. This relies ENTIRELY upon how generous the AI is, as it can decide if it picks what you did or not (much like the Ultimate Moves relying on a energy bar thing that the AI can decide if it wants to narrowly screw you or greatly screw you).

And while on the SNES thing, there's that level in The Lion King where Simba goes into exile. I never figured how to get past the rolling boulders.

Err.. you just run away from the big ones. If a porcupine is in your way, roll and carry on running. It is really THAT simple.

 

[elilupe]

This may be because I first played it as a kid, but the Riku II fight from the first Kingdom Hearts, where you lose the help of Donald and Goofy and have to fight possessed Riku in that little arena, was a crazy difficulty spike for me.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

I have been playing Dragonball Z Budokai 3 again recently, and I noticed a lot of the DragonUniverse characters face random brick walls on their journey. This isn't so bad on your 2nd or 3rd run when you have more stats and skills, but a good chunk of fights are just controller-shatteringly frustrating.
This is not helped by among the most annoying features in a fighting game, the Dragon Rush. A 3 stage event where you have to guess which of the 4 face buttons the attacker will push, guess wrong and you take unavoidable damage via a drawn out cutscene while a lucky guess ends the ordeal. Many AI characters ABUSE THE FUCK out of it, which is done by going into a Hyper Mode (Which means you can only be stunned by attacks that have knockback, you can tank all normal hits without a hiccup) and doing a knockback attack. When the enemy goes Hyper, all you can do is try to run away and dodge which shatters flow. This relies ENTIRELY upon how generous the AI is, as it can decide if it picks what you did or not (much like the Ultimate Moves relying on a energy bar thing that the AI can decide if it wants to narrowly screw you or greatly screw you).

And while on the SNES thing, there's that level in The Lion King where Simba goes into exile. I never figured how to get past the rolling boulders.

Err.. you just run away from the big ones. If a porcupine is in your way, roll and carry on running. It is really THAT simple.

I know but I could never figure out the rolling. Or just when I thought I did, I didn't, and Game Over. Timing was finicky.

 

[demoman_chaos]

I know but I could never figure out the rolling. Or just when I thought I did, I didn't, and Game Over. Timing was finicky.

You could practice it on the ones that appear in level one. The timing is actually quite simple, at least for me (I have played the HOLY FUCK out of the original Sonic games).

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

This may be because I first played it as a kid, but the Riku II fight from the first Kingdom Hearts, where you lose the help of Donald and Goofy and have to fight possessed Riku in that little arena, was a crazy difficulty spike for me.

what is especially frustrating about that part is, if you "die", you have to watch that damn cutscene all over again, bloody annoying as hell and breaks your combat momentum.

 

[FeralDynasty]

In Neverwinter, the dungeons start off fairly simple and around level 40 the final bosses for each dungeon just got to nightmare difficulty, especially with randoms leaving and joining constantly after every wipe. This is actually what broke the game for me, I really enjoyed it up until that point but there was a near nonexistant difficulty curve in the solo content and the group content was just unplayable.

 

[Nigh Invulnerable]

BATTLETOADS Turbo Tunnel. Seriously, screw that game with a rusty iron pole. Also, Guitar Hero 3's final tier. You'd be cruising along through that game on your chosen difficulty, and then suddenly fail pretty much any of the final tier's songs on your first attempts. Sheesh.

 

[DjinnFor]

Afro Samurai. Specifically, the Kuma boss fight.

Every boss had a trick or two you needed to learn to beat it. Kuma had a couple. First, he blocked/dodged all attacks most of the time unless he was in the middle of an animation. He had a pretty strong moveset that his AI would often abuse for cheap hits; you could avoid the cheapest using a focus backflip, a maneuver you literally never ever had any need for anywhere else. But the worst part was that you couldn't use the same move combo more than once, or he'd start blocking/dodging the latter hits or autocountering you in the middle of your attacks. Use the same set of moves even twice in a row, and not only would he take no damage but he'd probably autocounter you for massive damage. Fortunately there were hundreds of combos to choose from and you could reuse the same one a few times... but there wasn't a lot of difference between any of the combos, so there was no real reason to not spam the same attacks over and over in any other fight.

It took me literally three days to recognize that this was why he was so hard to beat. It's not immediately obvious, because he goes through multiple "forms" over the course of the fight and he takes a long time to kill. I thought he just really liked blocking attacks near the end of the fight.

Also, another fight I had trouble with was the first Metal Gear Rising boss, since it expects you to know how to parry (the only method of blocking in the game). I wasn't used to the Japanese convention of special attacks and maneuvers being performed through a combination of thumbstick input and button presses (you see this in fighting games like the classic QCF input for Ryu's fireball), and MGR never made how to parry clear. In MGR, you had to be standing still, and then press forward and attack simultaneously during an enemies attack animation to execute a parry. You couldn't parry if an enemy wasn't attacking you, and couldn't parry if the thumbstick wasn't in a neutral position to start (e.g. you were moving). With expert timing you'd do a more powerful version that stuns the enemy and automatically counterattacked, and this became a potent skill throughout the game. But since there's no other method of blocking attacks, and the boss has attacks that effectively long on to you, you needed to at least know how to parry quite well by the first boss.

Last one: The first Dark Souls boss

I challenged my cousin to beat it and it took her 7 hours over two days. Nuff said.