I'm surprised that you didn't mention Unlimited Saga on the PS2. I never managed to finish that game because the battle system just didn't make any sense. I still have it but I'm not sure if I'm going to attempt it again.
5:32 beat dragon quest 2, the only thing thatsbhard about it is getting the other characters at low levels. I didn't get the first character until i was lv 14. With more than enough gold to buy the best current equipment for them. Then it wasnt till that characters were 20 to get the 3rd character. I was near max lv when i went to go for the last level to beat the boss and game. It was difficult, but with a ring to give mp back it wasn't all that hard especially when i was high enough to skip most fights.
beyond the beyond is criminally underappreciated. it got poor reviews when it was released because its 'cliche' rpg storyline and gameplay were out of fashion at the time, but you had to actually use your mana pool and inventory thoughtfully to make it through the dungeons. this made it feel so much more rewarding than taping your attack button down and going afk like you can do to beat every final fantasy game.
Played so much ByB, my brother and I grinded through an entire summer, got to the last boss, unleashed everything we had on him, only to find out he had a second final form, we were spent and couldn't win. Never did go back to try again and we never will, lol .
Criminally man, it was my first PS1 RPG and I only picked it on a whim because I thought since it came in a multiple CD jewel case that it had multiple disks like FF7/8/9, I think that may have been a design choice to trick dumb 10 year olds like me back than haha
@@SevenGC89 A lot of one-disc games needed those cases because their manuals were too wide to fit into the insert slot of a regular jewel case. Fond memories of the game here, too, though - it had a graphical charm that reminded me of Shining Force and Shining in the Darkness (and I later learned it was the same development company, just renamed). And, as David said, it was a traditional JRPG in the vein of the 16-bit era, in a time before developers really started to understand the PlayStation's capabilities - and before FF7 pretty much redefined RPGs of that era. It was indeed rather difficult - for a long period of time, your team includes a cursed warrior and THREE physically-flimsy casters - but it never struck me as insurmountable. And, late game, once upgraded classes and optional party members were available (not to mention Samson was hale and whole again), it was a lot more fun to play around with.
Nick Carroll Understandable! My problem with this game, and many others,( at that time) was the box art would be cool as hell, but then the game just runs over you 🤣. As I got older, I’d start to learn about product marketing, advertising, etc.. To this day though, I find games people call amazing, but I just can’t get into the game in any aspect.
@@ligleriana3393 I remember renting it, and understanding why Game Informer trashed it. Wow, I'm dating myself. The gameplay frustrated me the most. It just felt clunky and annoying. I'm glad my first PS1 RPG was Wild Arms instead.
I got both my sons into gaming and it's the ultimate bonding experience. Was strange for me when my oldest (who'll be 20 soon) absolutely destroyed me in a game and I worked so hard to eventually beat him and I learned that he let me win! LOL I wonder if my youngest (who is 7) will eventually get into RPGs. He likes when I play zelda and all but it might be a while before he gets into something like final fantasy. Good times
@@dante5247 yeah, i know alot of people get the hang of them pretty fast, unfortunatelly, i wasnt one of them. as a side note, i had the same problem with the dragon quest games.
@@marcosdheleno I have the elemental spells down, but after playing every Persona game and most SMT’s, I still have a hard time remembering the buff and debuff names
@@scottwagner25661. Ma- = applies to all (blank if not). 2, suk=agility/accuracy, tar=attack, rak=defense. De = undo 3. unda = debuff, ukaja = buff. Take the relevent parts from parts 1,2,3 and you have the explanation even if some are misspelt (though be aware that some games will apply full party even without the Ma- prefix)
I'm currently struggling with Nocturne but I'll get there. So far no guide used but it makes figuring out some stuff difficult. I'm gonna beat this game someday though:D
Classics Gamer Alex Once you get to the Obelisk, it might be a good idea to start using a guide, because that’s when the dungeons start becoming very frustrating and labyrinthine.
Loved it too. The descriptor for Hard mode was too interesting for me to refuse. And when I saw a friend play Normal mode, I couldn't help but think he was playing the wrong difficulty. Indeed, "those who seek the thrill of death" was correct... As well as dozens if not hundreds of hours lost from many game overs.
@@CrazyFriendlyGamerAlex gotta say, back in the day Double Golem gave me one hell of a hard time, and magus isnt a chump either on your first playthrough
I had to stop midway to read the “it’s masochistic, not machoistic” comments. To be fair, machoistic sounds like it’d be a great new word to add to the vernacular.
@@rpatte06011987 Thank you very much. I'll need all the support my allies can muster if I am to win the presidential election in 2024. I'm going to make america great again...again...
Beyond the Beyond actually had a bug that made the game WAY easier. There were items that were supposed to half the magic damage you take for a battle but for some reason the effects last the ENTIRE game. Use your resist orbs/jewels ASAP in that game!
I'm not sure if that's a bug or if the designers meant for the player to do that because resist jewels/orbs are hard to come by if you don't poke around everywhere. That said enemies that spam magic damage to the group are always a major threat and Liches/Necromancers can potentially inflict a total party wipe with Void. Magic resistance is great but it won't save a player who just rushes in without a plan. There are other bugs (which are definitely bugs) that can screw things up. Confusion can cause solo enemies to completely miss turns. The duration of Attack and Defense can glitch up causing the spells to end prematurely. I even once managed to glitch up Tont so that he couldn't cast Firedrake. The game would just throw up the "just stands around" error message and skip him. Had to save and reboot the game to fix that one. That's just stuff I've seen through normal play. Deliberately screwing around with the game causes... well, more severe bugs to pop up.
Well, the only thing I can say is I doubt it's meant to be permanent considering resist jewels can be bought for a mere 1000G. Something that strong would probably be more expensive it was meant to be a permanent effect! I also don't think they would need to be battle items if the effect was meant to persist beyond one battle.
@@ladyabaxa One-round party wipes with death magic. The horror. If Void doesn't account for 70% of party member deaths in this game, you're doing something seriously wrong.
I played Dragon Quest 2 on the NES and remember getting horribly lost. Glad Final Fantasy 4 DS got an honorable mention because it shocked me how often I died on that game...and it's one of my favorite games! Good video! Loving your content!
Y's 3. I grinded the flying monster you can hit that keeps respawning at the beginning. I did this with rubber bands to hold the up d-pad and attack and leaving the game on all day and night. The next day I started the game full experienced. All hail the cheese.
Just came across your channel - about 15 videos in I thought "I wonder if he's played 7th saga?" and then boom! Here it is!! I have nightmares of that desert area prepping for the impossible apprentice fight. Honestly didn't realize it was because I was leveled up too much D:
Ragefat I totally forgot! (It’s been a while since I played.) It was so satisfying to use devastating combos after defending. That system is so well done, except that some of the moves are way to hard to figure out.
I was totally not expecting ARF. Not because it’s not difficult, but because its actually pretty obscure. Thanks for giving it it a well-deserved spotlight. It feels good to know that my insanely troubled playthroughs of the game are not a unique experience. I’ve played it enough to know that there actually a few areas where you can be borderline soft-locked due to high difficulty in tandem with an inability to develop your party. I both love and despise that game with a burning passion. I’m glad you gave it more recognition.
My mom bought crystalis on sale when I was a kid. Was amazing. Level 3 thunder sword for the win. I spent so much time playing it. Wish it was put on switch or something.
"Beyond the Beyond" needs a remake and a sequel. In the Sequel, main characters would explore the Underworld on a quest to search for Kevins and find out how Shutat became evil.
I'm surprised that Phantasy Star II for the Sega Genesis didn't make the list of hardest RPGs ever. In Phantasy Star II, you have to traverse difficult to navigate dungeons, enemies overpowered, having high experience levels don't result of major character growth, and the final two bosses like Dark Force and Mother Brain are hard to beat.
YEAH Nocturne is no joke and also their is this moment when a fucking weakling mobs cast an Instant-Death spell at your main character and also these freaking ambushes.
Jayesper You gotta be real cautious in Nocturne’s early game. You could die very easily. After you reach Asakusa, though, the game will progressively get easier until the final battle, which can be brutal if you go for a certain ending.
Vagrant Story is an undersold and perhaps underrated gem for the PS. I put many hours into that game. Loved it! It's definitely weird getting used to, so I could understand it getting an honorable mention.
Its such a weird game. Like most hard RPGs its not actually as difficult to win as it is to learn. Its easy to become strong in that game, but super hard to learn the mechanics that allow you to do so.
Yeah you right but the first runthrough is difficult because of the lack of Wepeon Skills and the lack of extra Hp etc after Boss fights. But the Game is so fun to play i like it xD.
Vagrant is a Western RPG though.. Although the title said 'Hardest RPGs', he specified JRPGs in the video, which are nearly all turn based. Although that Ys game technically isn't a true JRPG either.
I bought and beat Crystalis the year it came out. I never found it that hard. I play a lot of RPGs, and always make sure to talk to every NPC when I first get in to a town. I never had an issue doing everything in it, still own that cart, too.
@Robert Hunter i never even brought up avgn. Cadtlevania and Zelda 2 are the worst games in their series cause they went off the path of what made them unique and good. i was loling cause because there is a good way to be "cryptic" and still be good. Castlevania 2 suffered heavily from mistranslations.
Props for shouting out Beyond the Beyond! Love that game. Really difficult challenges and puzzles, and bosses are just downright cruel! The story (at least the first half) was awesome too! Near the end it kinda trailed off, but still one of my all time favs.
Beyond the beyond was my first and favorite ps1 rpgs. Loved the antagonists(Ramue and Shutat) and the soundtrack was perfect. I would walk around and read bookshelves in the castles just to hear the soundtrack.
I don’t play any rpgs you’ve talked about I just find your commentary and the game’s themselves entertaining. You also always show footage of the games and promotional material that make it a fun watch regardless, oh and even though your voice isn’t the smoothest I put this shit on while I drift off sometimes. Thanks David hope your life is nice
No way Crystalis is on this list! It released when I was around 11 or 12 and I found it to be average difficulty. I think I rented it and beat it over a weekend.
Honestly, Nocturne really isn't that difficult. You have complete freedom of what you'll learn, and you have the chance to learn every ability in the game. Not to mention a certain Fiend on your side will give you a consistent ultima-healer for the duration of the entire game. What I would say is far more difficult is the Digital Devil Saga which is also on the PS2. Compared to Demi-Fiend and later demons, you'll never have any real elemental defenses outside of the elemental shields that last the turn they were cast. Boss fights are far more puzzle than brawl, and you never feel like you have an ace strategy you can relax with. Adapt or be devoured.
Ive played pretty much all the SMT games, not necessarily recently, but still as an overall package I think Nocturne on Hard is most difficult. Single encounter wise probably Stephen on Apocalypse in SMTIV A
Strongly disagree with Nocturne as the first pick. It's pretty manageable when you know what you're doing and aside from battling it's actually quite accessible in terms of navigation and progression compared to earlier games in the series If you're playing it like any other rpg good luck tho...
Well. Did you play on the incorrect difficulty or on Hard? Kidding, but having played Nocturne on hard and then seeing my friend play on Normal. Normal just felt wrong. But yeah, Nocturne is hard, but I don't think it's the hardest RPG out there. Not sure what would be the hardest RPG though.
depends on the version and difficulty, when you play on maniac mode, you can literally die in any battle. i remember one dying in the first battle because my guy missed and the magatama guy hit and criticaled me. also most random battles on the hardest diffulty can kill you instantly
all i am saying is that the learning curve is steeper than most, and the battles harder than most games, i beat the game on the hardest dif and went through the labrytinth. you need to use strategy to win, and even then strategy isnt enough sometimes because of cheap ai lmao. still an amazing game
Like this page and what I do here? Consider supporting me on patreon! www.patreon.com/davidvinc Top 10 Hardest JRPGs Part 2 can be found here: th-cam.com/video/bUBz6lD-MC4/w-d-xo.html [0:29] - 10) G.O.D. [1:39] - 9) Final Fantasy 3 [2:46] - 8) The 7th Saga [4:00] - 7) Crystalis [4:58] - 6) Dragon Warrior 2 [6:10] - 5) Black Sigil: Blade of the Exiled [7:15] - 4) Beyond the Beyond [8:32] - 3) Arc Rise Fantasia [9:44] - 2) Ys3: Wanderers from Ys [11:04] - 1) SMT: Nocturne
@@louiegilalano7685 afaik SMT series is only RPG series where instant kill can go beyond 100% accuracy and also one of few RPG where status skills are deadly matter.
There is a trick. The stats at level up are NOT random. They are pre-set per level up at the end of a battle, however... if you save before the battle, then kill, you get a different roll on level up. So... in otherwords, you can make yourself a lot stronger if you save before you level up. If you're doing this via emulator, you can make a quick save state. It's a bit of a pita, however your toon is significantly stronger by the time you face the apprentices. Other trick of the trade, I don't take a side kick until level 40'ish. That way you get an uber sidekick with impossibly good stats. Though, tbh, You can do the entire game solo if you're Valsu.
Phantasy Star 1 even hid the final boss. You walk in circles in a big dungeon (first person with all the same wall texture) You have to find a wall you can walk through
Just recently beat the original Dragon Warrior II. You just upped my self esteem quite a bit! Also, can't wait until Crystalis comes out on Switch! Thanks so much for the great video!
Sentient Ricecake I recently beat it too. He’s right! The encounter rate is ridiculous and enemies can cast defeat which sucks! Glad I finally beat it though : )
@@astevens1919 It was on the SNK 40th anniversary collection which first came out for Switch. And it's also on the NES app you get as part of the switch online subscription service. I played it for the first time through the latter and thought it was excellent. I wouldn't say it as hard as other games on the list. Just a little silly with how you need to keep swapping your sword to the right element to damage enemies and how some bosses simply can't be hurt until you reach a certain level. If it weren't for those bosses, you could get through the game without grinding at all which would have been novel for its time.
There are also other things that make Black Sigil unnecessary hard. There actually IS a way to flee from battles but it's not even printed in the booklet. Only at a certain area in the desert, a character in your party mentions to better avoid a battle with sandworms and to walk a certain path to avoid them (since they are strong as hell, have thousands of HP, while you are still in the lower 100's and they WILL use a 1 hit kill or at least a 2 hit kill attack when their HP is getting low), which is impossible if you want to fully explore the dungeon/map you're in and get the good items. But because I didn't know how to flee from battles, I was more or less "forced" to level up and fought every foe up to this point so this might give you an advantage in battle - but only slightly. With the use of the right skills and the right character combo attacks, you're able to deal huge damage on the sandworms and the EXP is quite rewarding for the next few levels, despite using up a lot of potions. I never had an issue with the bugs and glitches but the seemingly eternal and mazy dungeons you mentioned with very limited healing and saving spots, combined with inhuman difficulty spikes (normal opponents that leave your party at 10 to 50% HP) can be really taxing on your nerves and you can only bring up to 8 or 9 of the same potions so you have to use them wisely. You will also be alone or separated from your party at some occasions, which doesn't make things easier for you. And quite in the beginning, before the sandworm stuff, there is a dungeon and you meet a new character who joins temporary, but you can't use magic. Some of those things are totally uncalled for.
"Nobody really liked Zelda 2" Lots of people like Zelda 2, just there isn't all that much overlap between people who like Z2 and people who like other Zelda games. On that note, guess what the most popular Zelda game in Japan is! No, I'm not kidding.
I literally had nightmares as a child from getting murdered by Red Dairas over and over trying to get that stupid Hammer at Death Mountain. Today, I can complete the game in about 3 hrs, give or take. It's not as bad I once thought it was.
Hahaha I had my comment ready to go... "You forgot Ys III, The craziest RPG I've ever beaten"... But it made the list! I remember being maxed out and those last two bosses were ridiculous. Finally beat them after about 20 to 25 times. Great list and video, as usual!
I remember playing crystalis up to the point where you are in the water area. I never could figure out what to do or where to go. Then years later, i randomly booted it up and found the key i needed in a random cave and it completely opened up the path to completion. That was an unexpectedly splendid day.
Any RPG that uses the "Enemies Level Up With You" mechanic can just go die in a fire. Because there are only TWO ways that can go. You either don't understand how the obtuse system works and you're constantly pathetically weak the entire game to the point of wanting to rage quit. Or you understand the system well and learn how to cheese it so you're boringly overpowered the entire game, taking all menace and tension out of battles. There is NO inbetween. Final Fantasy 8 is one of the worst offenders. You can't even make the usual "Enemies Level Up With You To Discourage Grinding" excuse that systems like this uses, because of the fucking Draw system. Until you learn to refine items into spells, the only way you can get spells is to let enemies wail on you while you Draw magic from them 3 or 4 spells at a time.... hundreds of times. And then you have to run, because killing the enemy can make you level up and leveling up just makes the enemies harder in the long run. So they just replaced Level Grinding with the somehow even less fun Spell-Draw Grinding. And then you learn how to refine. Then you just max out your pay grade by cheating on your exams with an answer guide (because the questions are always the same). Run around in the school for hours until you grinded enough money to buy 30+ tents. Refine them until you have the maximum number of Curagas. Junction them into your party's HP stats. Boom. If you avoid needless fights from that point on, you're basically untouchable for the first 2 discs. Making the game a different kind of boring slog. No tactics, no strategy. Just read a guide and draw spells. Don't do that, the game is a frustrating pain gauntlet. Do that, and the game is a Fisher Price toy for babies. "Fun"
EvilSandwich you could always just not do that. It's not like letting the enemies level up with you is going to make the game "hard." The only place where enemies can be tough is the Island Closest to Heaven/Hell.
"you could always just not do that." It's a console RPG. Figuring out how to optimally raise your characters is 90% of the interactive part of the game.
Radiant Dawn is only hard in Part 1 + the beginning of Part 2. The game becomes a joke the further you get. Thracia 776 is not as difficult as everyone says either. The only really difficult parts about it are same turn reinforcements, and just not being told about things and mechanics in the game that you pretty much need. A lot of the things people say is hard about it, like staff misses or 99% hit cap involve occurrences so rare that they're not worth worrying about. Awakening Lunatic+ is easily the hardest FE game ever
Woah that Black Sigil game looks really cool! Love the artstyle and the sprite work. I wonder if there are any patches to fix the bugs and decrease the encounter rate.
In Y's 3 you can literally sit there and press up and attack on the first screen in the quarry and get OP in the first area,making the rest of the game a breeze.
FTR, "sigil" is not pronounced like "seagull" but rather "sijjul"; also, "tensei" is pronounced like the English phrase "ten say" and does not sound like "tenshi". Finally, I should mention Mario & Luigi: Dream Team, where most of the game *is* amenable to grinding, but the giant battles, including one just before the final boss, are not affected by grinding (the predecessor, Bowser's Inside Story, worked similarly, but the giant battles weren't quite so difficult or complicated).
Oh dear god, I remember playing Beyond the Beyond years ago, and the thing I remember most is getting absolutely lost trying to find the next place I was supposed to go to at one point near the beginning of the game and just giving up.
I bought recently few mini consoles(Sega mini, Playstation classic,SNES mini coming soon), and i keep returning to your channel since RPG`s are my favorite game genre. Lot of things to hear and discover. :)
A lot of people frowned upon it because of the bad voice acting, if you don't like it shut it off and enjoy all the other great stuff about the game is what I always told them.
to be fair the voice acting for the 2 main characters did get better those 2 were very bad in the first few hours of the game but later on you notice that the voice actors got accustomed and did improved, and i love the strategy in the boss fights , sadly my game broke around the time i was looking and fight they legendary beast or whatever they are called, i remember you literally had to find and chase down one of them in the sky while flying just to fight it.
Phantasy Star II deserves more than an honourable mention. Some of the massive dungeons with confusing layout, the large amount of grinding needed, and the general enemy strength should put this on here. The only saving grace is using Shir for the Visiphone.
My personal top 3 hardest (that I've played): 1 -- Ys III 2 -- 7th Saga 3 -- Dragon Quest 2 (NES) Glad to see I'm not alone on those three. Of those, I've only finished DQ2 so far. I had no idea the stat growth was broken. Makes sense. Those orbs were so hard to find. And that final dungeon run was beyond brutal. Oddly enough, I absolutely love the Shin Megami Tensei games. Nocturne was hard, but it was no where near Ys III hard.
@@CrazyFriendlyGamerAlex On top of dungeon layouts being designed to torture you, boss battles are extremely brutal and enemies have severely diminishing returns on the XP they grant if you are higher level then them, so you are forced to fight bosses several levels above you and if you want to grind XP it will probably require you to fight at least 100 battles to gain one level.
I had a turbo controller and found a spot in Ys 3 where worms kept coming and the turbo attacks killed them. Left it on overnight, saved in the morning, then set it up again and went to school. When I came home I was unstoppable. Cool boss designs, especially Garland
Damn! I can't believe that I am just now realizing that you mentioned "Beyond the Beyond." That game is awesome! It took me years to progress in that game but it will always be one of my favorites. I still have it tucked away haha.
Grew up with a few of these. Beyond the Beyond will always stand out as the rpg my uncle just could not beat. He tried to grind out the money for a ship at one point to reach an island. But the max cash you can get is 1 short of the cost of the ship. This only made him over leveled in the end and I still remember him having troubles with certain fights. Good times.
My issue with Dragon Warrior 2 was that it took an insane amount of grinding to get to a level where enemies in a new territory wouldn't just slaughter you. Granted, all of the Dragon Warrior games required a good amount of leveling up, but DW2 was the most tedious of the NES installments. And it seemed like it took longer to build up levels. Plus you never get to a point where the enemies at the end are easy to beat. Even the non-bosses, like the Golden Baboons (or whatever those things were) can wipe out your whole party instantaneously by using Sacrifice. Regarding Zelda 2, I have to say I feel I'm one of the few who really liked that game. It gets a bad rap in my opinion. Yeah, grinding is a pain, but the world you get to explore is freaking huge compared to the first one. And going through the various catacombs was quite fun.
A game that deserves to be on the list is definitely Unchained Blades Rexx, that game is pretty brutal at the beginning and while it eases up a bit after the halfway point when you get more characters it more than makes up for it with the final dungeon and the post game super-dungeon; seriously, that place is hell.
Man, good video. Brought back some good memories. I wish I could still get into these kind of games. Beyond The Beyond ruled. I bring that game up often.
You're supposed to write down what the NPCs tell you in dragon quest 2(its like an adventure game), they tell you hints of where all the crests are except the star crest which is in an obvious place. You have to be smart and figure out to get through the dungeons which have great design. Its the best rpg game on the nes by a long shot.
Even when you level grind before the last castle, and have best gear, you still face multiple boss fights in a row that can party wipe you easily at any point. That game was brutal.
As someone who's beaten DW 2, it was super fucking ridiculous and untested once you got the boat, The world was just so big, but empty and brutal encounter heavy. I played through it as an ode to the series and am on 3 now, but I really had to convince myself to finish it. The crest hunt is just the start. There's also the water/lava cave filled with OP killer machines, the cave to Rhone (hello randomly having to restart because you fell in an unmarked hole) with its randomly snaking final path (also back to the start or hello 4 Green Dragons and 4 opening blazing breaths to total party kill), then the Rhone plateau's total party kill enemies (Ice ghosts and Gold Batboons). Get through all of that and the rest isn't bad until you reach Malroth, where you either kill him in 4 attacks or 40 depending on how many times he decides to fullheal himself.
Not for the faint of heart. I managed to beat him on my 3rd try from grinding up in levels, using defense once and letting Orfeo die and spamming healall. It helps having determination to beat it(from the game itself being fun) and abusing run.
Oh I remember having that Ys game as a kid. I quickly found ways to exploited it and max out my stats on screen 2. Holding down attack makes the character swing continuously and quite a few monsters will fly at you continuously in a number of spots. Clam down attack, go to bed and win game.
@@iamnotyourbuddyGUY Same. Playing 3 right now. Encounter rate is ridiculous and its easy to lose track of objectives, but as far as being an outright challenge, I'd say normal for jrpg.
Very interesting video but SMT Nocturne isn't difficult as such. It's fair, with clear rules for battle and the ability to make super powerful allies. Granted, you'd need a guide to do that. ^_^ Though...Matador - but that boss is there to teach you how to play. Have you ever tried playing a JRPG called Shinsenden for the NES? It has a translation and it brutal - horrendous encounter rate, with mobs of powerful enemies, but it has a fun system where you can capture enemies in a gourd and make them fight for you.
Yeah, was thinking..."Where's Unlimited SaGa, the game where the world record speedrun spends an hour just trying to craft the right equipment because everything in this game is RNG, and which requires in-depth knowledge of gameplay mechanics just to bring up the damn menu?"
@@hardatk27 Yeah. I've played and enjoyed almost every other game in the series (With the exception of Scarlet Grace, which I haven't gotten very far into yet and need to find the time to continue), so I'm a pretty big fan, but USaGa was just too much for me. It's a miserable experience for very little payoff, and I say this having played through the awful Edelritter and Battle of South Moundtop scenarios three times in SF2 because I love the rest of the game that much.
@@SamWeltzin I love scarlet grace. The primary "draw" (pun intended) for USaGa is the art and animation. It's lovely. I'm not a big fan of the battle system but I'm probably going to revisit the game sometime. It just has that certain "something."
omg i love beyond the beyond as a kid i never made it past the first disc. i loved the fact that hitting the x button at the right time could help you block, crit, or double attack. that game was so epic
The best trick with that game is that once you get the ship, sail to the wrecked castle town in the southwest of the inner sea. Not only do you get what's-her-name the monk that heals as a party member, but there's a hidden guy there that sells an item that you can use to halve magic damage. The thing is, the game is so badly programmed that the effect NEVER goes away, even after the battle ends. That character (and anyone else you use a copy on) are now permanently resistant to magic. It turns the rest of the game from an absolute slog with an impossible last boss into "doable with consistent healing" (like from monk girl!)
Sounds like you've been playing the NES version of Ys III. You should try the TGCD version. Or better yet, forget it's existence entirely and just play Oath in Felghana, where almost everything that's broken about the game is fixed.
NES version is MUCH harder because of the different exp to level requirements. Also, the NES version actually had a higher framerate and smoother animations than the TGCD version, despite the TGCD version being the better version by far. fun fact.
@@tamarawinnett4138 I would STRONGLY recommend that you hold off on playing Ys Origins until after you've played Ys Book I & II. Not only will Origins spoil a good chunk of Ys Book I & II (especially Book I), but you won't fully appreciate several parts of Origins without having first played the first 2 games. At the very least, if you've already played through most of Origins, wait to play the Fact storyline (unlocks after you beat one of the 2 starting storylines) until after you play Book I & II, as the Fact storyline is the "true" storyline (the one that actually happened, and explains a bunch of stuff from Book I and II). Chronologically Origins may have come first, but it's basically a game full of supplementary stuff to expand on the universe the first 2 games created. Yes, it can be played alone, but as I said, to get the greatest enjoyment out of it you'll want to play the first 2 games first.
@@tamarawinnett4138 Oh, and every single version of Ys VI is drastically different. SNES version, TurboGrafx CD version, and the newest Memories of Celceta version. Memories of Celceta is the "official" canon one since it came out, but most fans still consider the TGCD version the best of the bunch. The SNES and TGCD versions were not released in English, but fan-translations of both are available. For the TGCD version, you want the DUB translation, it replaces all the spoken dialogue with English voice acting (I'd look for a pre-patched ISO, the patching process is a pain, and prone to error, assuming you manage to find the VERY specific ISO dump needed to let you patch it), there's also a version of the translation that just translates the text, but that's an older one (by the same group) and you miss out on 70% of the actual story.
There's a Genesis version of Ys III as well, don't know how they handled it though. I have played the SNES version (which, pretty sure I thought was released in the US? I need to look that up) on an emulator. I've read about it being the most grind-heavy of the ports, something like that. It's been QUITE a long time since I played it, maybe under a decade. But from what I recall, yeah, you walk in a dungeon and die in like three hits or something, but after ceaseless grinding you can make it to a point where they become negligible. But then there's a boss/sub-boss somewhere in a room below. Never figured out how to kill it, I don't think I could proceed further without it being dead, and I was pretty much capped off as far as leveling goes for the enemies in that area. After dying for trying to fight that thing after being less than a minute in that room so many times I just gave it up. I'll probably go back to one of the other versions next time I try it.
Glad to see some of my favorites but really tough games like Dragon Quest 2, 7th Saga, Arc Rise Fantasia and Nocturne. Another modern, great RPG that's really tough, is Resonance of Fate. I really recommend it if you're looking for something different, challenging battle system, with great music. It's being remastered soon too!
@@princelorian Gonna sound bad, but that's wrong. It would be Tensai if it were pronounced that way. If you're trying to make a comment on the games being boring, you failed. Good job.
I played through FF3 on the DS. That game was pretty tough. I still haven’t beat the optional iron giant boss lol. I have all the onion knight gear too. 🤷🏻♂️
What I did is stripped all armor and beat up the characters until I needed armor. 3 hours of grinding equals about 5000 hit points each switching jobs the hole way. I was picking up gold armor before the canoe at the castle where I wasn't supposed to be at.
I played both Final Fantasy 3 and 5 and found that the fifth installment was harder EDIT : I change my mind ... Neither final fantasy 5 not 3 are as difficult as final fantasy tactics ... That game is brutal
Did you play Final Fantasy 4 DS, iOS, Android? They are harder than the SNES version is. If you don't know what you're doing, the enemies will waste you as they hit hard so you'll need to level grind. Also in Final Fantasy 1 for NES, the Ice Cave level was torture and hard to walk through with enemies with their death spells, You'll be lucky if your 4 party members survive and gets the floater item safely. Also the Final Fantasy 7 boss fights Ruby Weapon, Emerald Weapon is tough to beat and can wipe out your party members if you're not prepared to fight them.
I found 5 to be much easier compared to 3 (I have played both version of 3 and 5 DS and SNES/NES. ) And 3 is a bit more difficult, but neither are as hard as this vid makes them seem
I loved the story in Black Sigil. I ended up having to use cheats that turn off random battles. I then made fights appear on whim with it so I also put a x4 exp cheat as well. Was able to finish most the game thanks to that. Otherwise I'd probably never make it to the magicless realm. Main characters sister was the most enjoyable character in the game. She was funny and really cared for and protected the main char. Such a long game too.
Nocturne wasn't bad at all especially once you grasped the concept of the press turn, very rewarding! The pain in the ass was and is the demonic compendium, that was a nightmare especially when it it came to skill inheritance and growth 😭
I grinded that game so much I even got spells past what the guide showed you that you would learn. God that game had its moments of difficulty. The dungeon of switches he showed was brutal.
Valkrie Profile Covenant of the Plume,Yggdra Union,Knights in the Nightmare and Gungnir are all tactical rpgs I think are harder than Fire Emblem Thracia 776.
Honorable mention for the SNES: Lagoon. The bosses and enemies there are ludacris hard. It would be easier, when the sword animation would more like that from Zelda: A link to the past, but in Lagoon it is so close to the enemy.
It's a solid list but Ys III is really the odd man out. A lot of the challenge comes from too many people treating it as a “hack and slash” and quickly dying accordingly. Once you apply some basic strategy and understand it’s not a “low-level game”, it becomes very manageable, especially given that you can save almost anywhere.
Even without an insane overnight grind I found Ys III to not be difficult. Sure it wasn't FF6 easy, but it wasn't all that grueling either IMO. I'd probably also put FF2 over FF3 for difficulty, though that game is far more exploitable. I'd also make an argument for Robotrek for the SNES and Quest 64, though both games can easily be exploited too, and are really bad to boot.
There were only 2 challenging parts in Ys III. 1. If you didn't bother to level up at all. Even speed runners take the time to almost max out their stats because if you don't, some of the later bosses and Ballacetine Castle become impossible. 2. The fight with Galbalan. No boss until this point provides any type of challenge but suddenly you're finding yourself going from A-Z.
Even Book 1&2 could be considered difficult if you're dumb and try to rush. The game lets you know if you're underpowered when you go in an area and get hit around by enemies and take a ton of damage. Y's 3 just didn't telegraph it as well I guess. I don't know. I had the Turbo CD one and played it from time to time. It wasn't really a hard game for me.
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I'm surprised that you didn't mention Unlimited Saga on the PS2. I never managed to finish that game because the battle system just didn't make any sense. I still have it but I'm not sure if I'm going to attempt it again.
5:32 beat dragon quest 2, the only thing thatsbhard about it is getting the other characters at low levels. I didn't get the first character until i was lv 14. With more than enough gold to buy the best current equipment for them. Then it wasnt till that characters were 20 to get the 3rd character. I was near max lv when i went to go for the last level to beat the boss and game. It was difficult, but with a ring to give mp back it wasn't all that hard especially when i was high enough to skip most fights.
beyond the beyond is criminally underappreciated. it got poor reviews when it was released because its 'cliche' rpg storyline and gameplay were out of fashion at the time, but you had to actually use your mana pool and inventory thoughtfully to make it through the dungeons. this made it feel so much more rewarding than taping your attack button down and going afk like you can do to beat every final fantasy game.
Played so much ByB, my brother and I grinded through an entire summer, got to the last boss, unleashed everything we had on him, only to find out he had a second final form, we were spent and couldn't win. Never did go back to try again and we never will, lol .
Criminally man, it was my first PS1 RPG and I only picked it on a whim because I thought since it came in a multiple CD jewel case that it had multiple disks like FF7/8/9, I think that may have been a design choice to trick dumb 10 year olds like me back than haha
@@SevenGC89 A lot of one-disc games needed those cases because their manuals were too wide to fit into the insert slot of a regular jewel case.
Fond memories of the game here, too, though - it had a graphical charm that reminded me of Shining Force and Shining in the Darkness (and I later learned it was the same development company, just renamed). And, as David said, it was a traditional JRPG in the vein of the 16-bit era, in a time before developers really started to understand the PlayStation's capabilities - and before FF7 pretty much redefined RPGs of that era.
It was indeed rather difficult - for a long period of time, your team includes a cursed warrior and THREE physically-flimsy casters - but it never struck me as insurmountable. And, late game, once upgraded classes and optional party members were available (not to mention Samson was hale and whole again), it was a lot more fun to play around with.
Been playing the og FFI lately, that shit's nothing like what you described. Maybe the newer ones are easy idk.
That was one of my first PSX rpgs, Samson being cursed pretty much most of the game made battles harder but I still stuck with it.
My father actually beat Dragon Warrior Part 2 on NES, THEN, we both beat Beyond Beyond.. It was a tough gaming life lol.
I hated beyond the beyond, and not even for the punishing mechanics. I just could get into it.
Nick Carroll Understandable! My problem with this game, and many others,( at that time) was the box art would be cool as hell, but then the game just runs over you 🤣. As I got older, I’d start to learn about product marketing, advertising, etc.. To this day though, I find games people call amazing, but I just can’t get into the game in any aspect.
@@ligleriana3393 I remember renting it, and understanding why Game Informer trashed it. Wow, I'm dating myself. The gameplay frustrated me the most. It just felt clunky and annoying. I'm glad my first PS1 RPG was Wild Arms instead.
Liglerian A; You were lucky to have a Father like yours.
I got both my sons into gaming and it's the ultimate bonding experience. Was strange for me when my oldest (who'll be 20 soon) absolutely destroyed me in a game and I worked so hard to eventually beat him and I learned that he let me win! LOL
I wonder if my youngest (who is 7) will eventually get into RPGs. He likes when I play zelda and all but it might be a while before he gets into something like final fantasy.
Good times
FF3's Cloud of Darkness is probably the hardest endgame boss I've ever had to beat.
Dragon Quest 2 was one of my first RPG's. That made the rest of them seem easy lol
to me, what makes SMT so hard, is trying to remember what spell does what, its borderline learning how to read a new language!
Really? It didn't take me that long to guess what the skills do u can tell pretty well by the names or just by playing a little
@@dante5247 yeah, i know alot of people get the hang of them pretty fast, unfortunatelly, i wasnt one of them.
as a side note, i had the same problem with the dragon quest games.
@@marcosdheleno I have the elemental spells down, but after playing every Persona game and most SMT’s, I still have a hard time remembering the buff and debuff names
@@scottwagner25661. Ma- = applies to all (blank if not).
2, suk=agility/accuracy, tar=attack, rak=defense. De = undo
3. unda = debuff, ukaja = buff.
Take the relevent parts from parts 1,2,3 and you have the explanation even if some are misspelt (though be aware that some games will apply full party even without the Ma- prefix)
Crystalis was one of my favorites! So many memories. There was also The Magic of Scheherazade. Amazing game!
Crystalis rocked! I didn't remember the difficulty till he reminded me.
Glad you put Nocturne here. I beat it special ending but had to use a guide. Every battle felt like a boss battle. Love it
I'm currently struggling with Nocturne but I'll get there. So far no guide used but it makes figuring out some stuff difficult.
I'm gonna beat this game someday though:D
Love the music while fighting. Makes those punches your main char throws feel like a ton of bricks. So satisfying.
Classics Gamer Alex Once you get to the Obelisk, it might be a good idea to start using a guide, because that’s when the dungeons start becoming very frustrating and labyrinthine.
Loved it too. The descriptor for Hard mode was too interesting for me to refuse. And when I saw a friend play Normal mode, I couldn't help but think he was playing the wrong difficulty. Indeed, "those who seek the thrill of death" was correct...
As well as dozens if not hundreds of hours lost from many game overs.
“These are the top ten hardest Jrpgs of all time!”
*as footage of Chrono Trigger is shown*
The irony
I thought the same thing XD
Well, CT is kinda tough....but only during bossbattles. Or maybe when you don't know the pattern .... Anyway, yeah, it's ironic indeed:D
Took me forever to kill magus
@@CrazyFriendlyGamerAlex gotta say, back in the day Double Golem gave me one hell of a hard time, and magus isnt a chump either on your first playthrough
It’s certainly not the easiest...
I had to stop midway to read the “it’s masochistic, not machoistic” comments. To be fair, machoistic sounds like it’d be a great new word to add to the vernacular.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHZSBWBZNXNSNZ
i'm ded
LOL Me too. My brain just couldn't let it go ...
I'm a macho man, so the word machoistic suits me very very well. Also, the election was stolen from me....
@@residentrump3271 the Whites still support you Mr. President.
@@rpatte06011987 Thank you very much. I'll need all the support my allies can muster if I am to win the presidential election in 2024. I'm going to make america great again...again...
Beyond the Beyond actually had a bug that made the game WAY easier.
There were items that were supposed to half the magic damage you take for a battle but for some reason the effects last the ENTIRE game. Use your resist orbs/jewels ASAP in that game!
I'm not sure if that's a bug or if the designers meant for the player to do that because resist jewels/orbs are hard to come by if you don't poke around everywhere. That said enemies that spam magic damage to the group are always a major threat and Liches/Necromancers can potentially inflict a total party wipe with Void. Magic resistance is great but it won't save a player who just rushes in without a plan.
There are other bugs (which are definitely bugs) that can screw things up. Confusion can cause solo enemies to completely miss turns. The duration of Attack and Defense can glitch up causing the spells to end prematurely. I even once managed to glitch up Tont so that he couldn't cast Firedrake. The game would just throw up the "just stands around" error message and skip him. Had to save and reboot the game to fix that one. That's just stuff I've seen through normal play. Deliberately screwing around with the game causes... well, more severe bugs to pop up.
Well, the only thing I can say is I doubt it's meant to be permanent considering resist jewels can be bought for a mere 1000G. Something that strong would probably be more expensive it was meant to be a permanent effect! I also don't think they would need to be battle items if the effect was meant to persist beyond one battle.
@@ladyabaxa One-round party wipes with death magic. The horror. If Void doesn't account for 70% of party member deaths in this game, you're doing something seriously wrong.
I played Dragon Quest 2 on the NES and remember getting horribly lost.
Glad Final Fantasy 4 DS got an honorable mention because it shocked me how often I died on that game...and it's one of my favorite games!
Good video! Loving your content!
Dragon quest 2 nes isn't a bad game, Is most difficulty.
DQ2 was easy
@@topew7137 that's pretty awesome! I'm glad it was easy for you - I had a heck of a time remembering where I'd been and what happened lol
Y's 3. I grinded the flying monster you can hit that keeps respawning at the beginning. I did this with rubber bands to hold the up d-pad and attack and leaving the game on all day and night. The next day I started the game full experienced. All hail the cheese.
genesis version has a glitch where you can max level instantly
Your description of the original FFIII sounds like a summary of real life!
I didn't find that one hard. Seemed balanced to me.
"machoistic"
"seagull"
Black Seegill
Shin Megami *Tenshi*
Maybe he has dyslexia.
I think whoever writes the scripts forgets to take into account the fact that the narrator is semi literate
Just came across your channel - about 15 videos in I thought "I wonder if he's played 7th saga?" and then boom! Here it is!! I have nightmares of that desert area prepping for the impossible apprentice fight. Honestly didn't realize it was because I was leveled up too much D:
Sooo many resets on those apprentice fights!
6:05 I'm sorry, but......It's not 'macho-istic', is 'maso-chistic'
nor is is 'black seagull, it's pronounced si-jil >.
Haha you wanker *is is. Plus! You edited it
He screwed that up so bad I had no idea that's what he meant. I thought he made up a new word, macho-istic, having the quality of being macho.
Man, that's embarrassing. Makes him look like an idiot.
ramiel555 Im so glad someone pointed these out!
It's also pronounced Shin Me-ga-mi Ten-say.
What a rpg where you have to use your defend skill. Errorr in the Matrix!
This is one reason why I love Legend of LeGaia. You don’t have a chance if you don’t defend sometimes.
@@dracoerrarus4834 At least there the command is also needed for refiling your spirit gauge and extending your attack gauge.
Ragefat I totally forgot! (It’s been a while since I played.)
It was so satisfying to use devastating combos after defending. That system is so well done, except that some of the moves are way to hard to figure out.
@@dracoerrarus4834 yeah..., try that mechanic with Valsu, the healer...
Final Fantast 7 has moments where it is MORE benificial to defend rather than to attack.
I was totally not expecting ARF. Not because it’s not difficult, but because its actually pretty obscure. Thanks for giving it it a well-deserved spotlight. It feels good to know that my insanely troubled playthroughs of the game are not a unique experience. I’ve played it enough to know that there actually a few areas where you can be borderline soft-locked due to high difficulty in tandem with an inability to develop your party. I both love and despise that game with a burning passion. I’m glad you gave it more recognition.
My mom bought crystalis on sale when I was a kid. Was amazing. Level 3 thunder sword for the win. I spent so much time playing it. Wish it was put on switch or something.
It is
It's available through NES Online from signing up for Nintendo's online service on the Switch.
Hd remake would be amazing. The game rocked!
"Beyond the Beyond" needs a remake and a sequel.
In the Sequel, main characters would explore the Underworld on a quest to search for Kevins and find out how Shutat became evil.
Machoistic? You mean “masochistic?” Great list. Keep up the good work.
Lol I read this just as he mentioned it
I'm surprised that Phantasy Star II for the Sega Genesis didn't make the list of hardest RPGs ever.
In Phantasy Star II, you have to traverse difficult to navigate dungeons, enemies overpowered, having high experience levels don't result of major character growth, and the final two bosses like Dark Force and Mother Brain are hard to beat.
Many years of my youth were spent teying to beat Crystalis. Loved it so much.
That feel when I was killed in nocturne on the very first turn because the tutorial fight monster which takes two hits to kill had him crit me.
God it even has you die in tutorials? Damn man.
YEAH Nocturne is no joke and also their is this moment when a fucking weakling mobs cast an Instant-Death spell at your main character and also these freaking ambushes.
Jayesper You gotta be real cautious in Nocturne’s early game. You could die very easily. After you reach Asakusa, though, the game will progressively get easier until the final battle, which can be brutal if you go for a certain ending.
@@yaboi2500 With a pierce physical build on the demi-fiend it's manageable
Vagrant Story is an undersold and perhaps underrated gem for the PS. I put many hours into that game. Loved it! It's definitely weird getting used to, so I could understand it getting an honorable mention.
And its hard as fuck :D
Its such a weird game. Like most hard RPGs its not actually as difficult to win as it is to learn. Its easy to become strong in that game, but super hard to learn the mechanics that allow you to do so.
Yeah you right but the first runthrough is difficult because of the lack of Wepeon Skills and the lack of extra Hp etc after Boss fights. But the Game is so fun to play i like it xD.
Agreed. Once you get use to it, the game is incredibly fun.
Vagrant is a Western RPG though.. Although the title said 'Hardest RPGs', he specified JRPGs in the video, which are nearly all turn based. Although that Ys game technically isn't a true JRPG either.
I bought and beat Crystalis the year it came out. I never found it that hard. I play a lot of RPGs, and always make sure to talk to every NPC when I first get in to a town. I never had an issue doing everything in it, still own that cart, too.
Same here. Crystalis is one of my favs of all time and I've played it to death back in the day. Of course I had Nintendo Power to get me though it.
I replayed it recently and beat it in 4-5 hours. i have a system. and it doesn't hurt to remember most of it. Great game, even better music.
@Robert Hunter there is a difference between being hard and just being dumb. That's like saying castlevania 2 is a good game lol
I do remember Crysalis being hard. Maybe because I was 10 when I got it. I did eventually beat it. Felt like it was just hard enough though.
@Robert Hunter i never even brought up avgn. Cadtlevania and Zelda 2 are the worst games in their series cause they went off the path of what made them unique and good. i was loling cause because there is a good way to be "cryptic" and still be good. Castlevania 2 suffered heavily from mistranslations.
Props for shouting out Beyond the Beyond! Love that game. Really difficult challenges and puzzles, and bosses are just downright cruel! The story (at least the first half) was awesome too! Near the end it kinda trailed off, but still one of my all time favs.
Beyond the beyond was my first and favorite ps1 rpgs. Loved the antagonists(Ramue and Shutat) and the soundtrack was perfect. I would walk around and read bookshelves in the castles just to hear the soundtrack.
@@adambanon3263 exactly, the soundtracks 👌👌
I don’t play any rpgs you’ve talked about I just find your commentary and the game’s themselves entertaining. You also always show footage of the games and promotional material that make it a fun watch regardless, oh and even though your voice isn’t the smoothest I put this shit on while I drift off sometimes. Thanks David hope your life is nice
No way Crystalis is on this list! It released when I was around 11 or 12 and I found it to be average difficulty. I think I rented it and beat it over a weekend.
Honestly, Nocturne really isn't that difficult. You have complete freedom of what you'll learn, and you have the chance to learn every ability in the game. Not to mention a certain Fiend on your side will give you a consistent ultima-healer for the duration of the entire game.
What I would say is far more difficult is the Digital Devil Saga which is also on the PS2. Compared to Demi-Fiend and later demons, you'll never have any real elemental defenses outside of the elemental shields that last the turn they were cast. Boss fights are far more puzzle than brawl, and you never feel like you have an ace strategy you can relax with. Adapt or be devoured.
Oh god, the Demi-Fiend bonus boss in DDS has got to be one of the nastiest bosses ever conceived in RPG history!
I played DDS before Nocturne, and I actually liked the DDS games more. I also agree, I had a harder time with them than with Nocturne!
I'd argue that Strange Journey was worse honestly.
Ive played pretty much all the SMT games, not necessarily recently, but still as an overall package I think Nocturne on Hard is most difficult. Single encounter wise probably Stephen on Apocalypse in SMTIV A
MetalSmasherGaming I could never finished him .
Haha I remember I finished the 7th saga, dragon warrior 2 (nes) and beyond the beyond. Those were some great times.
Yeah. 7th Saga was the most brutal one for me. Fortunately I enjoyed it enough to tread on.
Dq2 is the oddball of the series. Try 3 it’s the best of the early games
Strongly disagree with Nocturne as the first pick. It's pretty manageable when you know what you're doing and aside from battling it's actually quite accessible in terms of navigation and progression compared to earlier games in the series
If you're playing it like any other rpg good luck tho...
I'd put Strange Journey over Nocturne tbh, purely because of Ouroboros and Mem Aleph
I agree Arc Rise Fantasia is easily harder than it.
@@ephemeralbro Its true that some bosses are harder than the ones in Nocturne, but the random encounter are far easier.
Well. Did you play on the incorrect difficulty or on Hard?
Kidding, but having played Nocturne on hard and then seeing my friend play on Normal. Normal just felt wrong.
But yeah, Nocturne is hard, but I don't think it's the hardest RPG out there. Not sure what would be the hardest RPG though.
If you're playing on Hard then it's definitely worthy of being on the list. Lots of people die on just on the tutorial
SMT is not that hard when you understand the mechanics and that buffs/debuffs and status ailments are way more powerful than they are in most games
Yeah, I agree and touched on that in the video. It's a refreshing change for buffs and debuffs to actually matter in a game
Well no shit. But if you're going into it the same way you would go into most RPGs, it's going to knock you on your ass.
depends on the version and difficulty, when you play on maniac mode, you can literally die in any battle. i remember one dying in the first battle because my guy missed and the magatama guy hit and criticaled me. also most random battles on the hardest diffulty can kill you instantly
@@briandavid5134 "you die a lot on the hardest difficulty."
And?
all i am saying is that the learning curve is steeper than most, and the battles harder than most games, i beat the game on the hardest dif and went through the labrytinth. you need to use strategy to win, and even then strategy isnt enough sometimes because of cheap ai lmao. still an amazing game
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Top 10 Hardest JRPGs Part 2 can be found here: th-cam.com/video/bUBz6lD-MC4/w-d-xo.html
[0:29] - 10) G.O.D.
[1:39] - 9) Final Fantasy 3
[2:46] - 8) The 7th Saga
[4:00] - 7) Crystalis
[4:58] - 6) Dragon Warrior 2
[6:10] - 5) Black Sigil: Blade of the Exiled
[7:15] - 4) Beyond the Beyond
[8:32] - 3) Arc Rise Fantasia
[9:44] - 2) Ys3: Wanderers from Ys
[11:04] - 1) SMT: Nocturne
Hey was just wondering which games were in the opening cut scenes?
SMT series feels like the amalgamation of pure suffering whose angels brought into the earth ....
@@louiegilalano7685 afaik SMT series is only RPG series where instant kill can go beyond 100% accuracy and also one of few RPG where status skills are deadly matter.
davidvinc played and beat all 10 games.
Phantasy Star 2 is super hard also
*"Black Seagull!"*
Lmfao
and Shin Megami tenshi... these lists are always full of people mispronouncing the easiest of words
Insufferable voice...
I never got to play it. Look s fun.
The original Dragon Warrior was hard as hell. I remember wandering to the south on the map and getting carved up by enemies.
F***ing Demon Knight.
Hard but gets easier if u can cope with the amount of grinding and ridiculous levels of random encounters
7th saga is one of my fav games of all time. Apprentice battles aren't that bad if you know whT you're doing, but steep learning curve.
Im glad to see im not one of the rare people who know that game. Loved it.
I kinda hated it but beat it cause I lived rpgs
There is a trick. The stats at level up are NOT random. They are pre-set per level up at the end of a battle, however... if you save before the battle, then kill, you get a different roll on level up. So... in otherwords, you can make yourself a lot stronger if you save before you level up. If you're doing this via emulator, you can make a quick save state. It's a bit of a pita, however your toon is significantly stronger by the time you face the apprentices. Other trick of the trade, I don't take a side kick until level 40'ish. That way you get an uber sidekick with impossibly good stats. Though, tbh, You can do the entire game solo if you're Valsu.
other note: how many turns in a battle can ALSO effect your level up stats. So.. defend couple turns and then kill may give a different level up roll.
@@rkocourek1977 most RPGs are like this. Use to do it in dragon quest 3
Dragon Warrior 2 was really hard. True story.
Phantasy Star II on Genesis had some downright grueling dungeons
And featureless identical walls with first person perspective. Totally agree that's one of the roughest
my favorite is that one dungeon early on you start outside the entrance and have to walk around im like wtf is this lol
That game was good for 2 years kept trying to level up the thief to learn her final spell
Phantasy Star 1 even hid the final boss.
You walk in circles in a big dungeon (first person with all the same wall texture)
You have to find a wall you can walk through
PSII dungeons are the worst in all of the RPGs I played. Perhaps this subject could be for another video!
Just recently beat the original Dragon Warrior II. You just upped my self esteem quite a bit! Also, can't wait until Crystalis comes out on Switch! Thanks so much for the great video!
Sentient Ricecake I recently beat it too. He’s right! The encounter rate is ridiculous and enemies can cast defeat which sucks! Glad I finally beat it though : )
Crystalis was one of those cornerstones of my childhood.
I beat it when I Was like..seven.
Proudest moment of my life? Maybe..maybe..
Did something get announced about a release on the switch?
@@astevens1919 It was on the SNK 40th anniversary collection which first came out for Switch. And it's also on the NES app you get as part of the switch online subscription service. I played it for the first time through the latter and thought it was excellent. I wouldn't say it as hard as other games on the list. Just a little silly with how you need to keep swapping your sword to the right element to damage enemies and how some bosses simply can't be hurt until you reach a certain level. If it weren't for those bosses, you could get through the game without grinding at all which would have been novel for its time.
I'm so glad TH-cam is returning to the countdown over gameplay format made by people who actually play tons of games
There are also other things that make Black Sigil unnecessary hard.
There actually IS a way to flee from battles but it's not even printed in the booklet. Only at a certain area in the desert, a character in your party mentions to better avoid a battle with sandworms and to walk a certain path to avoid them (since they are strong as hell, have thousands of HP, while you are still in the lower 100's and they WILL use a 1 hit kill or at least a 2 hit kill attack when their HP is getting low), which is impossible if you want to fully explore the dungeon/map you're in and get the good items. But because I didn't know how to flee from battles, I was more or less "forced" to level up and fought every foe up to this point so this might give you an advantage in battle - but only slightly. With the use of the right skills and the right character combo attacks, you're able to deal huge damage on the sandworms and the EXP is quite rewarding for the next few levels, despite using up a lot of potions.
I never had an issue with the bugs and glitches but the seemingly eternal and mazy dungeons you mentioned with very limited healing and saving spots, combined with inhuman difficulty spikes (normal opponents that leave your party at 10 to 50% HP) can be really taxing on your nerves and you can only bring up to 8 or 9 of the same potions so you have to use them wisely. You will also be alone or separated from your party at some occasions, which doesn't make things easier for you.
And quite in the beginning, before the sandworm stuff, there is a dungeon and you meet a new character who joins temporary, but you can't use magic.
Some of those things are totally uncalled for.
"Nobody really liked Zelda 2"
Lots of people like Zelda 2, just there isn't all that much overlap between people who like Z2 and people who like other Zelda games.
On that note, guess what the most popular Zelda game in Japan is! No, I'm not kidding.
My fav Zelda game.
Castlevania 2 and Zelda 2 were gems if you ask me!
I literally had nightmares as a child from getting murdered by Red Dairas over and over trying to get that stupid Hammer at Death Mountain. Today, I can complete the game in about 3 hrs, give or take. It's not as bad I once thought it was.
Hahaha I had my comment ready to go... "You forgot Ys III, The craziest RPG I've ever beaten"... But it made the list! I remember being maxed out and those last two bosses were ridiculous. Finally beat them after about 20 to 25 times. Great list and video, as usual!
Arc Rise Fantasia deserves much more recognizement, the bosses batles are really challenging but the strategy necessary makes it so good to get trough
I hope we get a HD remaster of ARF. We'll most likely won't.
I remember playing crystalis up to the point where you are in the water area. I never could figure out what to do or where to go. Then years later, i randomly booted it up and found the key i needed in a random cave and it completely opened up the path to completion. That was an unexpectedly splendid day.
Any RPG that uses the "Enemies Level Up With You" mechanic can just go die in a fire. Because there are only TWO ways that can go. You either don't understand how the obtuse system works and you're constantly pathetically weak the entire game to the point of wanting to rage quit. Or you understand the system well and learn how to cheese it so you're boringly overpowered the entire game, taking all menace and tension out of battles. There is NO inbetween.
Final Fantasy 8 is one of the worst offenders. You can't even make the usual "Enemies Level Up With You To Discourage Grinding" excuse that systems like this uses, because of the fucking Draw system. Until you learn to refine items into spells, the only way you can get spells is to let enemies wail on you while you Draw magic from them 3 or 4 spells at a time.... hundreds of times. And then you have to run, because killing the enemy can make you level up and leveling up just makes the enemies harder in the long run.
So they just replaced Level Grinding with the somehow even less fun Spell-Draw Grinding.
And then you learn how to refine. Then you just max out your pay grade by cheating on your exams with an answer guide (because the questions are always the same). Run around in the school for hours until you grinded enough money to buy 30+ tents. Refine them until you have the maximum number of Curagas. Junction them into your party's HP stats. Boom. If you avoid needless fights from that point on, you're basically untouchable for the first 2 discs. Making the game a different kind of boring slog.
No tactics, no strategy. Just read a guide and draw spells. Don't do that, the game is a frustrating pain gauntlet. Do that, and the game is a Fisher Price toy for babies.
"Fun"
EvilSandwich you could always just not do that. It's not like letting the enemies level up with you is going to make the game "hard." The only place where enemies can be tough is the Island Closest to Heaven/Hell.
It's easy enough to cheese the system to make all the enemies pathetically easy. Making the battles FUN is another story.
You don't have to do all of what you just said, you know.
"you could always just not do that."
It's a console RPG. Figuring out how to optimally raise your characters is 90% of the interactive part of the game.
@@JD-xz1mx correct. Doing so to the point of breaking the game however is completely optional
Beyond the Beyond battle system looks cool as hell. I was even more surprised to see it was made by Camelot. Loved the GS series.
No mention of Fire emblem Thracia 776 or Radiant dawn?
Radiant Dawn is only hard in Part 1 + the beginning of Part 2. The game becomes a joke the further you get. Thracia 776 is not as difficult as everyone says either. The only really difficult parts about it are same turn reinforcements, and just not being told about things and mechanics in the game that you pretty much need. A lot of the things people say is hard about it, like staff misses or 99% hit cap involve occurrences so rare that they're not worth worrying about. Awakening Lunatic+ is easily the hardest FE game ever
Radiant Dawn isn’t hard
Definitely on Fire Emblem - that's a once you die there's no coming back
You mean 6. I still get PTSD from that 4th room.
Thracia 776? Didn't you mean "Fire Emblem: Priest Mugging Simulator"?
Nice list! Crystalis was so frustrating as a kid, glad to know I was doomed to fail back then.
Machoistic is now I world I will use in real life.
4:00 - Crystalis isn't a hard game! There's a few parts that took awhile to figure out, but it isn't hard.
Woah that Black Sigil game looks really cool! Love the artstyle and the sprite work. I wonder if there are any patches to fix the bugs and decrease the encounter rate.
In Y's 3 you can literally sit there and press up and attack on the first screen in the quarry and get OP in the first area,making the rest of the game a breeze.
FTR, "sigil" is not pronounced like "seagull" but rather "sijjul"; also, "tensei" is pronounced like the English phrase "ten say" and does not sound like "tenshi". Finally, I should mention Mario & Luigi: Dream Team, where most of the game *is* amenable to grinding, but the giant battles, including one just before the final boss, are not affected by grinding (the predecessor, Bowser's Inside Story, worked similarly, but the giant battles weren't quite so difficult or complicated).
Oh dear god, I remember playing Beyond the Beyond years ago, and the thing I remember most is getting absolutely lost trying to find the next place I was supposed to go to at one point near the beginning of the game and just giving up.
I bought recently few mini consoles(Sega mini, Playstation classic,SNES mini coming soon), and i keep returning to your channel since RPG`s are my favorite game genre. Lot of things to hear and discover. :)
Thank you David for praising Arc Rise Fantasia, nice to know someone else has a great respect for it. One of my favorite RPGs of all time.
Yeah, it's a fantastic game, it's the only game for the Wii that I have LP'ed and probably will be the only one I do for the system.
A lot of people frowned upon it because of the bad voice acting, if you don't like it shut it off and enjoy all the other great stuff about the game is what I always told them.
Adam Urquhart I liked arc rise Fantasia but the voice acting was atrocious
davidvinc the last story and xenoblade Chronicles were both amazing jrpgs
to be fair the voice acting for the 2 main characters did get better those 2 were very bad in the first few hours of the game but later on you notice that the voice actors got accustomed and did improved, and i love the strategy in the boss fights , sadly my game broke around the time i was looking and fight they legendary beast or whatever they are called, i remember you literally had to find and chase down one of them in the sky while flying just to fight it.
I've played a few of these. DW2's final boss was just batshit. Lagoon deserves an honorable an Honorable Mention also. Good vid.
FFIII is one of my all-time favorite games! I love it to death.
I enjoyed it somewhat myself and oddly enough would of put the first FF on this list before it.
Pichuscute battle theme is gud
Phantasy Star II deserves more than an honourable mention. Some of the massive dungeons with confusing layout, the large amount of grinding needed, and the general enemy strength should put this on here. The only saving grace is using Shir for the Visiphone.
crystalis was amazing!
Yes!
My personal top 3 hardest (that I've played):
1 -- Ys III
2 -- 7th Saga
3 -- Dragon Quest 2 (NES)
Glad to see I'm not alone on those three. Of those, I've only finished DQ2 so far. I had no idea the stat growth was broken. Makes sense. Those orbs were so hard to find. And that final dungeon run was beyond brutal.
Oddly enough, I absolutely love the Shin Megami Tensei games. Nocturne was hard, but it was no where near Ys III hard.
I really think SMT : strange journey is harder than Nocturne :o
In what way is it difficult then?
@@CrazyFriendlyGamerAlex The sector layouts and puzzles are a complete hell
@@CrazyFriendlyGamerAlex On top of dungeon layouts being designed to torture you, boss battles are extremely brutal and enemies have severely diminishing returns on the XP they grant if you are higher level then them, so you are forced to fight bosses several levels above you and if you want to grind XP it will probably require you to fight at least 100 battles to gain one level.
I had a turbo controller and found a spot in Ys 3 where worms kept coming and the turbo attacks killed them. Left it on overnight, saved in the morning, then set it up again and went to school. When I came home I was unstoppable. Cool boss designs, especially Garland
Love the Grandia music at beginning.
Damn! I can't believe that I am just now realizing that you mentioned "Beyond the Beyond." That game is awesome! It took me years to progress in that game but it will always be one of my favorites. I still have it tucked away haha.
I beat Chrystalis back in the day,,, I remember it being hard, but I dont remember these difficulties.
It was the where the hell do you go parts for me. The rest was doable.
@@jc.1191 I think I beat it missing one of the primary items.
Grew up with a few of these. Beyond the Beyond will always stand out as the rpg my uncle just could not beat. He tried to grind out the money for a ship at one point to reach an island. But the max cash you can get is 1 short of the cost of the ship. This only made him over leveled in the end and I still remember him having troubles with certain fights. Good times.
Funny I beat Dragon Warrior 2 back before they had Internet plus I adored Zelda 2 especially after you got the downward thrust.
I did as well... huge pain in the ass 😂😂😂
Got DQ2 for my android.
Zelda 2 is still a fav of mine.
My issue with Dragon Warrior 2 was that it took an insane amount of grinding to get to a level where enemies in a new territory wouldn't just slaughter you. Granted, all of the Dragon Warrior games required a good amount of leveling up, but DW2 was the most tedious of the NES installments. And it seemed like it took longer to build up levels. Plus you never get to a point where the enemies at the end are easy to beat. Even the non-bosses, like the Golden Baboons (or whatever those things were) can wipe out your whole party instantaneously by using Sacrifice.
Regarding Zelda 2, I have to say I feel I'm one of the few who really liked that game. It gets a bad rap in my opinion. Yeah, grinding is a pain, but the world you get to explore is freaking huge compared to the first one. And going through the various catacombs was quite fun.
@@stevenalexander6713 I only had trouble during the Final boss' area.
A game that deserves to be on the list is definitely Unchained Blades Rexx, that game is pretty brutal at the beginning and while it eases up a bit after the halfway point when you get more characters it more than makes up for it with the final dungeon and the post game super-dungeon; seriously, that place is hell.
I've never heard of anyone not liking Zelda 2. It's my personal favorite.
Zelda 2 takes way too much shit. I played as a kid. It was badass then....and it's still badass now.
Man, good video. Brought back some good memories. I wish I could still get into these kind of games. Beyond The Beyond ruled. I bring that game up often.
You're supposed to write down what the NPCs tell you in dragon quest 2(its like an adventure game), they tell you hints of where all the crests are except the star crest which is in an obvious place. You have to be smart and figure out to get through the dungeons which have great design. Its the best rpg game on the nes by a long shot.
Dragon quest was my best game 2,3,4 until they release chrono trigger
The Dragon Quest games are pretty great, too bad they've been ripped off so many times and are mostly underrated.
Even when you level grind before the last castle, and have best gear, you still face multiple boss fights in a row that can party wipe you easily at any point. That game was brutal.
As someone who's beaten DW 2, it was super fucking ridiculous and untested once you got the boat, The world was just so big, but empty and brutal encounter heavy. I played through it as an ode to the series and am on 3 now, but I really had to convince myself to finish it.
The crest hunt is just the start. There's also the water/lava cave filled with OP killer machines, the cave to Rhone (hello randomly having to restart because you fell in an unmarked hole) with its randomly snaking final path (also back to the start or hello 4 Green Dragons and 4 opening blazing breaths to total party kill), then the Rhone plateau's total party kill enemies (Ice ghosts and Gold Batboons).
Get through all of that and the rest isn't bad until you reach Malroth, where you either kill him in 4 attacks or 40 depending on how many times he decides to fullheal himself.
Not for the faint of heart. I managed to beat him on my 3rd try from grinding up in levels, using defense once and letting Orfeo die and spamming healall. It helps having determination to beat it(from the game itself being fun) and abusing run.
Oh I remember having that Ys game as a kid. I quickly found ways to exploited it and max out my stats on screen 2. Holding down attack makes the character swing continuously and quite a few monsters will fly at you continuously in a number of spots. Clam down attack, go to bed and win game.
1:00 "GODDAMN!" on a Super NES jRPG called "GOD" lmao! I might just play this game based on that alone
SMT3 is hard, but fair hard.
Man I love Beyond the Beyond. Always made me think of what Shining Force would be if it were a traditional style rpg
It made me think of what a less than stellar 16 bit jrpg were on a 32 bit system. and oh yeah, it pretty much was.
Tbone Jenkins You can try Shining the holy ark
Great vid. Several of these ive never heard of. Just nodding along to everything you said about crystalis. Subscribed
What, don't have the guts to take on Phantasy Star 2 or, especially, 3?? ;)
Handy thehandle I found 3 easy compared to 1 and 2
@@iamnotyourbuddyGUY Same. Playing 3 right now. Encounter rate is ridiculous and its easy to lose track of objectives, but as far as being an outright challenge, I'd say normal for jrpg.
Very interesting video but SMT Nocturne isn't difficult as such. It's fair, with clear rules for battle and the ability to make super powerful allies. Granted, you'd need a guide to do that. ^_^ Though...Matador - but that boss is there to teach you how to play. Have you ever tried playing a JRPG called Shinsenden for the NES? It has a translation and it brutal - horrendous encounter rate, with mobs of powerful enemies, but it has a fun system where you can capture enemies in a gourd and make them fight for you.
There's a disturbing lack of SaGa in this video.
Seriously... If you know, you know
Yeah, was thinking..."Where's Unlimited SaGa, the game where the world record speedrun spends an hour just trying to craft the right equipment because everything in this game is RNG, and which requires in-depth knowledge of gameplay mechanics just to bring up the damn menu?"
@@SamWeltzin USaGa is affectionately known as the JRPG Final Exam, in some circles.
@@hardatk27 Yeah. I've played and enjoyed almost every other game in the series (With the exception of Scarlet Grace, which I haven't gotten very far into yet and need to find the time to continue), so I'm a pretty big fan, but USaGa was just too much for me. It's a miserable experience for very little payoff, and I say this having played through the awful Edelritter and Battle of South Moundtop scenarios three times in SF2 because I love the rest of the game that much.
@@SamWeltzin I love scarlet grace. The primary "draw" (pun intended) for USaGa is the art and animation. It's lovely. I'm not a big fan of the battle system but I'm probably going to revisit the game sometime. It just has that certain "something."
omg i love beyond the beyond as a kid i never made it past the first disc. i loved the fact that hitting the x button at the right time could help you block, crit, or double attack. that game was so epic
The best trick with that game is that once you get the ship, sail to the wrecked castle town in the southwest of the inner sea. Not only do you get what's-her-name the monk that heals as a party member, but there's a hidden guy there that sells an item that you can use to halve magic damage. The thing is, the game is so badly programmed that the effect NEVER goes away, even after the battle ends. That character (and anyone else you use a copy on) are now permanently resistant to magic. It turns the rest of the game from an absolute slog with an impossible last boss into "doable with consistent healing" (like from monk girl!)
Sounds like you've been playing the NES version of Ys III. You should try the TGCD version. Or better yet, forget it's existence entirely and just play Oath in Felghana, where almost everything that's broken about the game is fixed.
NES version is MUCH harder because of the different exp to level requirements.
Also, the NES version actually had a higher framerate and smoother animations than the TGCD version, despite the TGCD version being the better version by far. fun fact.
That's good to know. I'm just getting into the Ys games finally (started with origins). I just be Ys 1, #2 next for me!
@@tamarawinnett4138 I would STRONGLY recommend that you hold off on playing Ys Origins until after you've played Ys Book I & II. Not only will Origins spoil a good chunk of Ys Book I & II (especially Book I), but you won't fully appreciate several parts of Origins without having first played the first 2 games.
At the very least, if you've already played through most of Origins, wait to play the Fact storyline (unlocks after you beat one of the 2 starting storylines) until after you play Book I & II, as the Fact storyline is the "true" storyline (the one that actually happened, and explains a bunch of stuff from Book I and II).
Chronologically Origins may have come first, but it's basically a game full of supplementary stuff to expand on the universe the first 2 games created.
Yes, it can be played alone, but as I said, to get the greatest enjoyment out of it you'll want to play the first 2 games first.
@@tamarawinnett4138 Oh, and every single version of Ys VI is drastically different. SNES version, TurboGrafx CD version, and the newest Memories of Celceta version. Memories of Celceta is the "official" canon one since it came out, but most fans still consider the TGCD version the best of the bunch.
The SNES and TGCD versions were not released in English, but fan-translations of both are available. For the TGCD version, you want the DUB translation, it replaces all the spoken dialogue with English voice acting (I'd look for a pre-patched ISO, the patching process is a pain, and prone to error, assuming you manage to find the VERY specific ISO dump needed to let you patch it), there's also a version of the translation that just translates the text, but that's an older one (by the same group) and you miss out on 70% of the actual story.
There's a Genesis version of Ys III as well, don't know how they handled it though.
I have played the SNES version (which, pretty sure I thought was released in the US? I need to look that up) on an emulator. I've read about it being the most grind-heavy of the ports, something like that. It's been QUITE a long time since I played it, maybe under a decade. But from what I recall, yeah, you walk in a dungeon and die in like three hits or something, but after ceaseless grinding you can make it to a point where they become negligible. But then there's a boss/sub-boss somewhere in a room below. Never figured out how to kill it, I don't think I could proceed further without it being dead, and I was pretty much capped off as far as leveling goes for the enemies in that area. After dying for trying to fight that thing after being less than a minute in that room so many times I just gave it up. I'll probably go back to one of the other versions next time I try it.
Glad to see some of my favorites but really tough games like Dragon Quest 2, 7th Saga, Arc Rise Fantasia and Nocturne.
Another modern, great RPG that's really tough, is Resonance of Fate. I really recommend it if you're looking for something different, challenging battle system, with great music. It's being remastered soon too!
It's Shin Megami Ten-se-i, not "tenshi".
Pichuscute
Ten say ey
TEN-SIGH
@Larry
Ten-say is another way to right this. But you don't say the end of the word twice, lol.
@Prince
wut
Pichuscute ten say eeeee
@@princelorian Gonna sound bad, but that's wrong. It would be Tensai if it were pronounced that way. If you're trying to make a comment on the games being boring, you failed. Good job.
I played Dragon Warrior (1) on NES and it made me fall in love with RPGs. Only played 2 and 3 on Gameboy color though (lol).
I played through FF3 on the DS. That game was pretty tough. I still haven’t beat the optional iron giant boss lol. I have all the onion knight gear too. 🤷🏻♂️
What I did is stripped all armor and beat up the characters until I needed armor. 3 hours of grinding equals about 5000 hit points each switching jobs the hole way. I was picking up gold armor before the canoe at the castle where I wasn't supposed to be at.
Josh Beekman
You’re thinking FFII.
nocturne is really fun but it only scratches the surface of hard shin megami tensei games, Strange Journey for the DS is harder afaik
I played both Final Fantasy 3 and 5 and found that the fifth installment was harder
EDIT : I change my mind ... Neither final fantasy 5 not 3 are as difficult as final fantasy tactics ... That game is brutal
Did you play Final Fantasy 4 DS, iOS, Android? They are harder than the SNES version is. If you don't know what you're doing, the enemies will waste you as they hit hard so you'll need to level grind. Also in Final Fantasy 1 for NES, the Ice Cave level was torture and hard to walk through with enemies with their death spells, You'll be lucky if your 4 party members survive and gets the floater item safely. Also the Final Fantasy 7 boss fights Ruby Weapon, Emerald Weapon is tough to beat and can wipe out your party members if you're not prepared to fight them.
Did you not create a dual wielding berserker in FF5? Because that kind of breaks the game for long stretches.
Man the resurrection black bomb thingies were annoying
it was more complex but i don't think it was harder. when you understand how it works, it gets pretty easy.
I found 5 to be much easier compared to 3 (I have played both version of 3 and 5 DS and SNES/NES. ) And 3 is a bit more difficult, but neither are as hard as this vid makes them seem
I loved the story in Black Sigil. I ended up having to use cheats that turn off random battles. I then made fights appear on whim with it so I also put a x4 exp cheat as well. Was able to finish most the game thanks to that. Otherwise I'd probably never make it to the magicless realm. Main characters sister was the most enjoyable character in the game. She was funny and really cared for and protected the main char. Such a long game too.
FF2 was harder than 3...granted it was not that easy at the end.
Nocturne wasn't bad at all especially once you grasped the concept of the press turn, very rewarding! The pain in the ass was and is the demonic compendium, that was a nightmare especially when it it came to skill inheritance and growth 😭
Great video mate 👊
Glad to hear someone talk about Arc Rise Fantasia... although I haven’t finished, and now I’m a little scared of facing the last bosses
Beyond the Beyond was great to me. Dope soundtrack too
Played it as well. Loved it!
I grinded that game so much I even got spells past what the guide showed you that you would learn. God that game had its moments of difficulty. The dungeon of switches he showed was brutal.
@@DarrenR84 Advisor Glade kicked my ass for months
I was so innocent when I first played BtB. How could I have known? I was not ready.
Good list! I came here expecting to not find Alundra so I could come to the comments and name drop it.
Valkrie Profile Covenant of the Plume,Yggdra Union,Knights in the Nightmare and Gungnir are all tactical rpgs I think are harder than Fire Emblem Thracia 776.
Michael Lewis the dept heaven (gungnir,knights,yggdra) are great games.
Freddy Martinez Rivera could have been better though.
I own two of those and have never actually played them. I gave up on my PSP awhile ago. I wonder if it still works.
Knights in the Nightmare T_T
Forever shall it haunt my dreams.
Covenant wasn't that hard if you've played any prior VP titles. :)
Honorable mention for the SNES: Lagoon. The bosses and enemies there are ludacris hard. It would be easier, when the sword animation would more like that from Zelda: A link to the past, but in Lagoon it is so close to the enemy.
It's a solid list but Ys III is really the odd man out. A lot of the challenge comes from too many people treating it as a “hack and slash” and quickly dying accordingly. Once you apply some basic strategy and understand it’s not a “low-level game”, it becomes very manageable, especially given that you can save almost anywhere.
All you had to do was find a spot where the enemy kept coming at you. Put something on the attack button and leave it over night
VegasLowBlower such as the first bats xD I was upset that game made the list.. The only hard time I had as a young kid was with the final boss.
Even without an insane overnight grind I found Ys III to not be difficult. Sure it wasn't FF6 easy, but it wasn't all that grueling either IMO. I'd probably also put FF2 over FF3 for difficulty, though that game is far more exploitable. I'd also make an argument for Robotrek for the SNES and Quest 64, though both games can easily be exploited too, and are really bad to boot.
There were only 2 challenging parts in Ys III. 1. If you didn't bother to level up at all. Even speed runners take the time to almost max out their stats because if you don't, some of the later bosses and Ballacetine Castle become impossible. 2. The fight with Galbalan. No boss until this point provides any type of challenge but suddenly you're finding yourself going from A-Z.
Even Book 1&2 could be considered difficult if you're dumb and try to rush. The game lets you know if you're underpowered when you go in an area and get hit around by enemies and take a ton of damage. Y's 3 just didn't telegraph it as well I guess. I don't know. I had the Turbo CD one and played it from time to time. It wasn't really a hard game for me.