What has been the biggest difficulty spike you've encountered in games? Ashen's Seat of the Matriarch dungeon still torments Community coordinator Alex. Let us know yours below!
For me, it's got to be _Catherine_ - a weird, puzzle-horror game (recently re-released on PS4). Its beginning levels were rather clever and challenging... but, suddenly, it went full-blown nightmare mode. It was like walking into a brick wall. Still the game I've ever turned the difficulty mode down on.
I dont consider that a difficulty spike. I'd argue something only qualifies as a difficulty spike if difficulty actualy spikes when you play a game the intended way. In the right order. It's like saying after unequiping your good weapons and skills in an RPG that the game has a difficulty spike when in fact your just not playing as intended. There is a difference between a game having a harder moment, aka a spike, because of the game being programmed to have that spike, or because of you giving yourself handicaps (by accident or on purpose doesnt matter). Meanwhile a real difficulty spike means things are actualy getting harder during a normal playtrough of a game. Like in KH1 for example a certain boss with a really long cutscene up front that could not be skipped during PS2 era including a sleeping princess.. wont say more due to spoilers for those who have not played but those who have..you know who I mean. Another example of an actual difficulty spike is the stone guardian in kena bridge of spirits. Everything prior to that was pretty easy. But after this boss several other bossed become kind of crazy. Or another kingdom hearts example, in the DS game DAYS, Leechgrave. An actual fromsoft example for me would be Ornstein and smoug. When playing DS in the ''right'' order, they still are a spike for new players (especialy those without ranged magic or pyro) Maybe the gargoyles count as well as the first spike.
The Valkyrie in God of War. Not the queen but the one in Muspelheim (fire realm) - Gondul. All the Valkyries were a difficulty spike compared to the game but Gondul was the one I found the hardest. The others I defeated in maybe 2-3 tries but Gondul took ages. I wasn't expecting her to be so much stronger than the others. Sure the queen was harder but she used the moves of the others, so by the time I reached her I knew what to do or what to avoid. Gondul was a nightmare. Honorable mentions: The Dahaka from Prince of Persia Warrior Within and Lavenza from Persona 5 Royal.
@@kingoftherevolution4855 I was also maxed out and playing on merciless. The thing that turned it into a difficulty spike wasn't that it was that difficult but the fact that it forced me to play quite differently. Before Lavenza I could pretty much solo anything, even on merciless. Even the twins weren't that hard. Before I was the main damage delaer and healer, and my party was the support and provided buffs, but that fight changed everything. I had to be the support and my party was the main damage dealer. Maybe it was my play style that made it difficult or that I was playing on merciless, but it was a spike for me and that's not considering Lavenza's OPness and the required conditions for each round of turns. I even had to go back to church and relearn the Fire Break skill for Ann, which I never used and discarded as soon as I found a new skill.
Dude, for real! For me it was this freaking delivery missions, and that one time you have to meet Ashlyn out at the pumping station. Then in Jak 3 when you’re going out to the desert to pick up artifacts in a sandstorm. Ugh. Nightmares, I tell you.
When you've just started feeling confident in Final Fantasy XV, maybe even a little cocky, so you stay up past nightfall to see what monsters appear. Only takes one smacking around by an Iron Giant to realize you're nowhere near ready to go up against what lurks in the dark of night.
Biggest difficulty spike for me was in MGS1 as a ten year old. Meryl’s frequency code. “It’s on the back of the CD Case.” Took me a week to realise the code was on the back of the physical copy of the game.
One that comes to mind is escaping from the slums in Jak 2. I was cruising along until that mission and almost turned the game off. Finally beat it and went on with the game. I forgot how hard Jak 2 and 3 could be.
If that's the section where you're running along the wooden platforms on the water and you have an army of enemies gunning you down then yeah. I still have nightmares anout that!
That mission in the slums is a nightmare with all those guards and bombs in/on the water. Otherones, at least for me, are those yellow HellCats, those three huge warbots attacking to the rebel base and that giant spider. Even tho that last one may not be as much of the difficulty spike than the other three, it's a somekind of nightmare to me.
Kena: Bridge of Spirits 1st boss messed me up for the longest time. I spent the first couple hours giving my Rots the perfect hats to only be slapped around by that first boss not 2 minutes later.
Hell house in Final Fantasy 7 Remake was a massive spike in difficulty, found most of the fights straight forward up until that point. It took me 8 hours straight to complete then another 5 straight on Hard mode. Though, finally after 160 hours of playtime I've got a grip of it & can defeat it in under 4 minutes
Before I realized the elemental change I thought all magic would heal it. So I had to use Aerith’s neutral attacks. It always moved quickly out of range for Cloud. Now it can be quick.
@@ASLTheatre I see that definitely would've cause massive issues for you & lots of frustration I bet. My big mistake was I thought you were to use the element it was showing not realising it would be the opposite. one.
@@theaiden5285 Yeah absolutely agree with that when I was in hard Mode I had a total of like 10 MP for Cloud & 80 for Aerith made it insanely difficult.
The original Monster Hunter has a bunch of difficulty spikes. Playing and discovering this game for the first time was amazing! To start with you're just running around the hills and forest picking up mushrooms and maybe dodging the occasional Bullfango. Then, your first level-up Proper Monster Hunt is to take on FIVE Velociprey at once! It was total chaos, they leap all over the place while screeching and trying to kill you, and I was screaming and running in and out of the area to get some hits in and recover. But I did it! Then, the next level-up difficulty spike is your first bird-like wyvern, the feared Yian Kut-Ku. This thing had me on the ropes, flying all over the jungle and smashing me into the ground with its massive beak. It took me a few tries, but I got it down! After that, you have learned the skills to take out a bunch of similar monsters. The Velocidrome. The Gypceros. The Cephadrome. You confidently sprint through Velocidrome packs on your way to the "real" challenge. And then you encounter the highest wall of all, the Rathalos. I observed that if you keep getting KO'd in a hunt, upgrade your armour. If you survive but the hunt times out, upgrade your weapon. I had to do both, plus learn the Rathalos' moves and behaviour, and utilise ALL of my hunter tools to take it down. After that, the rest of the game is pretty much a plateau. You casually dispatch Yian Kut-Ku in under 30 seconds, and look at a Rathalos/Rathian pair thinking "yeah I can take them". Only the elder dragon Fatalis adds an extra little bump at the end.
As a Trophy Hunter, I have to say that all Batman: Arkham Knight Trophies (including the many DLC ones) are pretty fair and doable, and then comes the Community Challenges DLC. It's one of the very few games I still don't have 100% for...
Demon's Gate destroyed me too, and also taught me an important lesson- make multiple save files, because when I went to load my save again, I was presented with the words "Data is corrupted".
Yakuza Like a Dragon, where you go up against two characters from previous games simultaneously who are a much higher level than you, unless you grind.
I beat the tutorial in Driver for the first time 4-5 years ago and I felt like I had finally achieved balance in my life. It was an awesome moment for me. Felt like I had completed a full game.
Driver is actually the hardest game I've ever completed, and yeah - that tutorial is the second hardest mission in the game. If anybody remembers the last mission...it's completely bonkers insane. Don't remember how many goes it took me, but I don't think I'd have the patience for it today.
The Driver tutorial is only slightly troublesome. I never had an issue with it. But that last mission!! I had to take a decade+ break before returning to the game for the last mission. It's like a hacked version of the game, the opponents are so loony!!
@@thisguy4505 Exactly! They all just ram into you full speed. I don't remember exactly how I beat it, but I must have had a good/lucky run or something. Absolutely mental.
Ah yes, the freaking Demons Gate, I still remember my first encounter with that thing even after 20+ years. I think I ended up defeating it by pure luck, with just one party member alive and summoning Bahamut as a last resource. Fun times.
I always got Omnislash from the Gold Saucer before going to the Temple of the Ancients, and that together with either Great Gospel or Fury Brand on Aerith made Demon's Gate right easy.
As a kid I completed driver, brother wiped my save (memory card days), then I tried again and it took a literal week of nights to get out the tutorial, mostly as it was my first touch of gamer rage hahaha
@@deetsitmeisterjd was that the one with the lunatic kamikaze FBI cars. I've unlucked that tutorial at all my friends, in the end i was a master at it, they all thought i was some gaming god.
@@vinniamsterdam700 I was that same guy among my friends! And yes, this was the one where you could weave towards a telephone pole / light pole while the cops were chasing you and dodge it and they'd smash right into them. Cop Tunnel Vision..lol
@@vinniamsterdam700 We're reminiscing over what was called "The Presidential Run", boys! That was the final mission. Kamikaze cops indeed!! Pro tip: drive on the sidewalks as MUCH as possible lol 🤣
I'm with Dave that the Driver tutorial was insanely difficult. I will even put my hand up and say that I am one of those people that never got past the tutorial, so I have never played any other part of the game.
When I fought the demon's gate I had Vincent on my party and his flipping limit brake HEALED demon's gate so I was properly stuck on the temple for a good while. :)))))
Get Seal Piece At Water Slums in Jak II was an absolute nightmare. Some playthroughs I can muscle my way out after a few attempts, but sometimes I get absolutely bogged down for hours. Unless you’re in the flow it’s bloody relentless.
I'm glad there's a lot of talk about the slums mission in Jak 2, that game had some obscenely difficult levels compared to the first game. That and the one where you're being chased by the tank from the perspective of the tank's camera.
Eggmanland from Sonic Unleashed The game had been pretty fun up until that point. But then suddenly the difficulty ratchets up to ungodly levels. It took me a full day just to finish that one level.
Not sure I can pinpoint biggest difficulty spike but some bosses that I remember really giving me problems: 1) Wiegraf’s 2-phase battle where he transforms from Final Fantasy Tactics 2) Legend of Dragoon’s first battle with the water dragoon woman in castle 3) Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne’s Matador
I'll add a point for Legend of Dragoon as you can't even set it down and come back in a few days because the required muscle memory for that games combat system is super perishable.
Digimon World 3. I didn't have trouble as a kid, since I overlevelled so hard I already had a full party of mega digimon when to got to the South Badlands and Mobius Desert back then. I would start a new save over five years later and barely scrape by each and every fight in the South Badlands when I had been trouncing everything in all the previous areas, because my level was low enough that I was pretty far from getting even a single Mega. Even the Coelamon in some of the underwater segments were hell with how strong they were, which makes me wonder exactly how much I had grinded for hours and days upon end as a kid and how I had that much patience. Oh and Ash, get a bow. It's very useful for pulling stuff one by one, even if you don't intend to use a bow often. The Misbegotten in Castle Morne for example will just let you lure them over and take them out one at a time from the entryway.
Funny thing for me is that "Grinding" is only in need of patience if you're trying to get it over with as quickly as possible. If you're just having fun leveling monsters? it's not really grinding to you it's just playing.
The Seymour difficulty spike I hit was the fight at the Gagazet mountain peak. I think that was the first time I had to turn around and do some grinding. FFX is such a great game. I have high hopes for FFXVI
The thing with that fight is they expect you to steal from the guy who heals Seymour with potions, but logic makes you think “me stealing 1 potion from him shouldn’t change anything because he has an infinite supply of them it seems” but apparently not. Does not help that most of the enemies in that hallway before hand were kind of annoying to fight so you don’t really want to grind up levels there either.
Killzone 2 had a pretty tough last level and boss fight. Going for the platinum, I remember playing on the hardest difficulty (Veteran or Elite) and being stuck in the courtyard for about a month. After finally making my way past through sheer luck, I spent a further 3 months trying to take down Radec.
Final Fantasy Tactics for PS1. I used the Rob method of grinding over-levelling. Most battles are fine - they're set level, but this one specific fight you have to do scales upwards - you take on a number of chocobos - and if you're too high level, they are really nasty chocobos, especially for the characters you have at that point.
There were several of those for me in that game. Surprise hero only fight(s) come to mind specifically. I'm somehow beat it but I'm still not sure what happened for the last 3rd of the game.
Final Fantasy Tactics. Two quest make or break you, Inside Riovanes Castle 1&2. There is a save opportunity before RC1, if you use it and can’t beat RC1 or RC2, you have to start the game over. RC1 is a 1v1 fight, and you can easily get 2 shot, if you’re not leveled a bit. The second fight is a traditional fight, but, it’s a narrow walkway you fight on, and range can destroy you while the boss wrecks havoc. Make an addition save file, so you can go back and not get locked.
Goro and Saejima in Yakuza Like A Dragon. The game was fairly easy, then those two came in. I had more trouble with them than I did with Amon in the True Final Millennium Tower.
Oh dear, Rosie mentioning Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine made me think of that mini game in Trails of Cold Steel IV. There are some opponents which are easier and some which are quite difficult at first but can be beaten with some practice. But then there are those who just drop one thing after the other at maximum speed and each of them is a perfect fit. Forget thinking about where to best place my blocks - I can't even recognise colours as fast as those opponents drop them....
The Driver tutorial was brutal the first couple of times I did it, but it remains my favourite bit of that game. The feeling when you eventually aced it was never matched in the rest of the game.
Rosie, I will give you the ONLY advice I have figured out for Stage 2. You can't only think about each chain at a time. You have to set up multiple small chains at time, that you can get rid of, ALL at the same time to beat him. And even then, for me it would cut close. Stage 3? I have made it there 5 times, and haven't even come close.....
Insane mode in castle crashers. I'll just say that the mode operates on the 10x rule. Most enemies in the game have 10x their health and do 10x their damage. This is ludicrous by the final levels.
Sen Armstrong in metal gear rising revengeance, the whole game is a bit of a difficulty spike but the final boss in particular is a bit mental, takes a while to get a grip on what's going on and what you have to do
Blood Will Tell on PS2. It's a pretty difficult Hack n Slash but when you fight Dororo possessed by Dragon Brood in chapter 2, it's a big jump in difficulty. The final boss Behemoth is also a harsh jump with a 50 hit chain sequence required to finish it off (I never managed it). Honorable mentions are the first Eidolon fights in FFXIII, Hunters in the Resident Evil series, and when you first encounter a giant bird type enemy in The Last Remnant remastered.
I remember struggling with the behemoth fight until i gave in and looked online. There was a weapons list and one of those weapons was a sword that gave 3 slashes per hit and it was in the final boss room of Daigo's castle. I was so relieved when i went back to the behemoth and finished it off easily thanks to that sword.
Did you know that was put in there specifically because Disney was afraid that no kid would buy the game (instead just rent it) if they could beat it within a few weeks?
One difficulty spike I wasn't ready for, and more likely never will, is The Witch Doctor boss battle in The Human Village level in Disney's The Jungle Book game from 1993. It was all fine and dandy, when those three monkeys were standing on each others shoulders. But when they split up... ARGH! I just can't handle them. I just can't shoot in one direction and dodge the shots from two or three directions at the same time. It might be needless to say I had never beated that boss. It's so difficult and it's not even the last boss. You get to fight it in somewhere half way through the game.
In line with Robs entry. I always found the train heist in FF8 having a difficulty spike. Not the boss fight but the clunky controls of dropping down the side of the train and trying to input codes without being caught. But pressing up was like asking Lara crofts butler to hurry and squall would jankily make his way back up just in time to be caught. Every time. I was 9/10 but I hated it. Side not I didn’t have a memory card cap no saves. Failing this was a proper game over for me
I would say Caelid but the environmental cues were aggressively warning me away long before my clueless self was super murdered. There was a fight against Deathstroke in a Batman game from a few years back. It was one of the game's earliest boss fights, and it was by far the most challenging aspect of the whole game, which oddly enough never rose to that level of difficulty again for the rest of its run. It was a curious difficulty spike, in that it was more surprising as a design decision than time consuming or frustrating.
Great shout for Driver, Dave. I was 7 years of age when that game was released. We bought it and I had no idea what a Slalom was. Had no internet to find out either!! Never played it again xD
My 15 minutes of "fame" was when I was a freshman in college living in the dorms because I could beat the Driver tutorial and had a save on my memory card right at the beginning of the game after the tutorial, lol.
I remember playing Arkham Knight on knightmare mode, and when you enter the blimp and have to fight all goons. Took me ages to get all those combos perfect
Most recent one for me was Ni No Kuni 2 (played purely because of Rob) and I had finished the game, beaten all the side content only had 1 trophy left for the plat that was easy so decided to start up the DLC missions. I hadn't really seen or heard anything about the DLC but figured I beat Faraway Forest 12 levels under what I had seen most people online beat it at sonic was feeling confident and got to the point I had to fight Mausinger again and oh my god was he insane. Teleport combos that if you mistimed the dodge would one shot you, room filling fireball attacks, just pure chaos but I managed it after a few attempts and then it was on to the next boss. There was no way, she had more health than anything, summoned adds, AoE damage along her movement path, arena wide AoE, homing shots and all of it lethal. There ended my attempt at the DLC and now I am just going to get the plat and call it good enough. PS. Looked it up online afterwards and saw multiple people say they couldn't get past her with maxed out levels and gear and even more people who gave up at Mausinger.
I always recall the difficulty spike towards the end of God Of War Ascension - think it was a vertical lift or something that I beleive was patched a week or two after launch. I remember deliberately not downloading that patch in order to make sure I did it the OG way.
Poor Rosie. I got stuck on stage 6 for a while. Skwheel, a pig blob on wheels. Mind you, this was many moons ago on my actual Sega Megadrive/Genesis console. I eventually beat it, and the rest of the game.
For me, it is a PS2 game called Mafia. Beginning of the game is pretty fun, and not too difficult until you get to... The Race. All Mafia players know about the race. It's a difficulty spike that is strictly based on how poorly the car handles and how precise you have to be with the driving. The Definitive Remake made it easier, but it's still not easy on the hardest difficulty.
Hades with his Extreme Measures pact of punishment on. Knew it was going to be tough but damn it's so much harder than I was expecting still haven't got it yet
I got the wretch in Elden Ring, because while you're just given a bad starting weapon, everything is at 10 from the start, it feels like the default class, but supposed to be "worse than that."
Massive difficulty spikes: 1. Elden Ring. You can go to some seriously high-level continents very early, almost FF2-style, and get rekt over and over. 2. FF2, the world map is not gated at all, meaning one wrong turn means eating LV16 magic, which is the highest rank in the game, as soon as you take your very first steps into an area where you simply shouldn't be. 3. Zone of the Enders 2: The final boss, actually. You've gone through so many ordeals and obtained ULTIMATE POWER, killing everything in one or two hits, and then it's time for the showdown with the Big Bad... Except he doesn't go down in one hit, because you can't hit him. As your attacks bounce off his energy barrier, he sends homing attacks while being unblockable and unbreakable AND teleporting around the stage. In the words of Cloud Strife, this guy are crazy.
I was playing Ace Combat 7 last night. The 5th mission had me tearing my eyebrows out (I’m bald). Trying to stop bombers destroying your base when every 5 seconds you have a missile chasing you, so frustrating, dual shocks nearly went flying.
Same! I got stuck on a mission with a storm and you’re flying through canyons while not being able to see anything, and you have to help your guys escape before they get shot down. Haven’t touched the game since, but I think about giving it another shot often.
Am I the only one that thought Dave was going to talk about Bloodborne when he started talking about stage 1? Central Yharnam scared off so many players
I always thought it was called Demon wall. I was getting up extra early before school for about 2 weeks to farm exp so that I could beat that god damn boss!
I think I shared this with you before many year ago where you even read the comment on Access Granted. It was in Ratchet and Clank 2 the glider segment on planet Dobbo, that one bit kept me stuck for months! Every day I would give it a few tries and then just go grind weapon exp and bolts, by the time I finally beat it I had bought everything even the best weapon in the game which costs 1 mill. Bolts!
solaire sweatshirt? For From some big ones I can think of is owl in sekiro and malenia in elden ring as well as Old Hunters and Ringed City DLC obviously especially if NG+(playing for the first time). Although there's been many in a bunch of games. Kinda hard to explain exactly
The difficulty spike got me was through a patch: Cyberpunk 2077. Patch 5 increased the difficulty in Easy (the only difficulty I could play when it came out). I had to relearn how to do various sections and encounters because of it. At least I can play on normal now. The other difficulty spike is in Ghosts and Goblins. First zombie, easy kill. Second Zombie, a little more difficult. Then the game turns it up to 11. I have yet to beat the first level in that game.
Yakuza: Like a dragon, the Majima, Saejima fight. I know it's a deliberate difficulty spike and you are forced to grind, but still those bosses are hard.
Jak and Dexter 2. That mission in the docks where all the Police come towards you and you have to leave the docks. Or Bloodbourne after you have beaten Rom the Spider.
I would say yugioh forbidden memories. So in the beginning in ancient egypt you can manage to play eith your starting deck and upgrade it with some cards you win but the spike comes when you get to the present. In the present you enter the tournament where your opponents all use high lv monsters where your deck is still on a medium size. Only with luck you can get through it or you have to grind and pray you get some strong monsters.
in Alien Isolation when the player is tasked with investigating the San Cristobal medical facility that's when the game starts having the xenomorph hunt you for real and your options for dealing with the creature a limited to a revolver and what ever items that you've been able to craft.
When I played the wetch I made sure to not do anything until I bought me some armor and I worked as fast as possible to replace my club with the longsword
RE4 on Profesional. Leaving the village towards the castle. There is the cabin fight but otherwise is rather trivial, mainly regular Ganados, one El Gigante and Big Cheese. But then the game throws at you WATER ROOM, Verdugo, Double El Gigante, Novistadors, The elevator, and so much more. The spike was real, the Island is actually easier IMO with all the upgrades and armament.
The last Gauntlet Race in Horizon Forbidden West almost broke me. I won all the other races on the first try, they weren't even that hard. Then I get to the last one and no joke, I stopped counting at attempt #40. I was so close to giving up on the game in general. It felt INSANELY difficult to me, especially after the other ones were so easy to beat.
Disc 3 in Legend of Dragoon you go to this area for the Wingly town and you can't leave the area until you beat it if you don't bring enough potions that's it game over. My last save before that area was 13 hours before getting there that difficulty spike is why I hold onto as many potions as I can now. lol
Whenever we talk about difficulty spikes I immediately think of most early 2000's arcade shmups. The lever 3 difficulty spike in those sorts of games is a gawdammed cliche.....
I had little problem with driver, I actually done the garage part using the keyboard on pc. My brother couldn't do it though, so I had to do it for him.
The very first time I played Dark Souls 3, I chose "deprived" as my class. I was an RPG stat nerd who wasn't super familiar with Souls games and I thought "Those stats are even and give me the greatest chance to customize my character how I like!" Iudex Gundyr was a hard wall for that young, impressionable idiot.
Ratchet & Clank games tend to have at least 1 trophy 🏆that's WAY too hard to attain considering they're 'games for kids'. "Faster than a Speeding Amoeboid" - Get a time of 1:35 on the Rilgar hoverboard race. (This is an INSANE time to ask for) "My Blaster runs REALLY REALLY Hot" - set the new High score on 'My Blaster Runs Hot' in the arcade (R&C A Crack in Time). Skill and LUCK become ONE here. Don't know if they count as 'difficulty spikes' but they feel like really hard challenges compared to what the rest of the game(s) expect from you. Play those challenges NOW as an adult and try to figure out how kids (intended target audience) are supposed to do them. Start that gamer rage while they're still young I guess...
What has been the biggest difficulty spike you've encountered in games? Ashen's Seat of the Matriarch dungeon still torments Community coordinator Alex. Let us know yours below!
One that comes to mind is Kena: Bridge of Spirits final boss. It was so unexpected compared to the rest of the game.
Also the Valkyrie final boss on god of war, I may or may not of turned to easy ...
Concrete Genie - Boss fight(there was literally no fighting up to that point). Still don't know what I had to do, but somehow I pulled it off.
For me, it's got to be _Catherine_ - a weird, puzzle-horror game (recently re-released on PS4). Its beginning levels were rather clever and challenging... but, suddenly, it went full-blown nightmare mode. It was like walking into a brick wall. Still the game I've ever turned the difficulty mode down on.
Sister Friede 🙂
The biggest difficulty spikes are just accidentally going the wrong way in a souls game
Caelid
I thought it would be exciting in the same room that the game is in.
@@devshah2939 nah, catacombs from ds1 at the start of the game.
@@devshah2939 Oh look, a chest! I wonder what's insiiIIIAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
I dont consider that a difficulty spike. I'd argue something only qualifies as a difficulty spike if difficulty actualy spikes when you play a game the intended way. In the right order. It's like saying after unequiping your good weapons and skills in an RPG that the game has a difficulty spike when in fact your just not playing as intended. There is a difference between a game having a harder moment, aka a spike, because of the game being programmed to have that spike, or because of you giving yourself handicaps (by accident or on purpose doesnt matter). Meanwhile a real difficulty spike means things are actualy getting harder during a normal playtrough of a game. Like in KH1 for example a certain boss with a really long cutscene up front that could not be skipped during PS2 era including a sleeping princess.. wont say more due to spoilers for those who have not played but those who have..you know who I mean. Another example of an actual difficulty spike is the stone guardian in kena bridge of spirits. Everything prior to that was pretty easy. But after this boss several other bossed become kind of crazy. Or another kingdom hearts example, in the DS game DAYS, Leechgrave. An actual fromsoft example for me would be Ornstein and smoug. When playing DS in the ''right'' order, they still are a spike for new players (especialy those without ranged magic or pyro) Maybe the gargoyles count as well as the first spike.
The Valkyrie in God of War. Not the queen but the one in Muspelheim (fire realm) - Gondul. All the Valkyries were a difficulty spike compared to the game but Gondul was the one I found the hardest. The others I defeated in maybe 2-3 tries but Gondul took ages. I wasn't expecting her to be so much stronger than the others. Sure the queen was harder but she used the moves of the others, so by the time I reached her I knew what to do or what to avoid. Gondul was a nightmare. Honorable mentions: The Dahaka from Prince of Persia Warrior Within and Lavenza from Persona 5 Royal.
No knowledge of moves prepared me for the last valkyrie. Had to turn it to easy just for her, to get the plat. She was nuts.
VALHALLA!
The only Valkyrie I had trouble with was the Queen. I could see and anticipate her movements but had a hard time reacting to the moves quick enough.
@@kingoftherevolution4855 I was also maxed out and playing on merciless. The thing that turned it into a difficulty spike wasn't that it was that difficult but the fact that it forced me to play quite differently. Before Lavenza I could pretty much solo anything, even on merciless. Even the twins weren't that hard. Before I was the main damage delaer and healer, and my party was the support and provided buffs, but that fight changed everything. I had to be the support and my party was the main damage dealer. Maybe it was my play style that made it difficult or that I was playing on merciless, but it was a spike for me and that's not considering Lavenza's OPness and the required conditions for each round of turns. I even had to go back to church and relearn the Fire Break skill for Ann, which I never used and discarded as soon as I found a new skill.
Those Valkyries were just too hard to beat so I didn't complete those missions. You can beat the game without killing them all
Jak and Daxter to Jak 2 was a ridiculously big leap in difficulty
I was thinking the exact same thing.
Dude, for real! For me it was this freaking delivery missions, and that one time you have to meet Ashlyn out at the pumping station. Then in Jak 3 when you’re going out to the desert to pick up artifacts in a sandstorm. Ugh. Nightmares, I tell you.
When you've just started feeling confident in Final Fantasy XV, maybe even a little cocky, so you stay up past nightfall to see what monsters appear.
Only takes one smacking around by an Iron Giant to realize you're nowhere near ready to go up against what lurks in the dark of night.
Biggest difficulty spike for me was in MGS1 as a ten year old. Meryl’s frequency code.
“It’s on the back of the CD Case.”
Took me a week to realise the code was on the back of the physical copy of the game.
This is a good one. I was stuck on that one for a while also back in the day. So weird to think bank on the time before we all had internet.
One that comes to mind is escaping from the slums in Jak 2. I was cruising along until that mission and almost turned the game off. Finally beat it and went on with the game. I forgot how hard Jak 2 and 3 could be.
If that's the section where you're running along the wooden platforms on the water and you have an army of enemies gunning you down then yeah. I still have nightmares anout that!
@@bruce_leon1044 Yup, that's the one. Came out of nowhere.
That mission in the slums is a nightmare with all those guards and bombs in/on the water. Otherones, at least for me, are those yellow HellCats, those three huge warbots attacking to the rebel base and that giant spider. Even tho that last one may not be as much of the difficulty spike than the other three, it's a somekind of nightmare to me.
Kena: Bridge of Spirits 1st boss messed me up for the longest time.
I spent the first couple hours giving my Rots the perfect hats to only be slapped around by that first boss not 2 minutes later.
That's a good one. You really don't see it coming because the game seems so cute otherwise, only to throw a proper Soulsborne boss at you.
Hell house in Final Fantasy 7 Remake was a massive spike in difficulty, found most of the fights straight forward up until that point. It took me 8 hours straight to complete then another 5 straight on Hard mode. Though, finally after 160 hours of playtime I've got a grip of it & can defeat it in under 4 minutes
Before I realized the elemental change I thought all magic would heal it. So I had to use Aerith’s neutral attacks. It always moved quickly out of range for Cloud. Now it can be quick.
@@ASLTheatre I see that definitely would've cause massive issues for you & lots of frustration I bet. My big mistake was I thought you were to use the element it was showing not realising it would be the opposite. one.
On normal mode it took ages, but hard mode, after you'd fought the other fights and used up your mp, was just unfair.
@@theaiden5285 Yeah absolutely agree with that when I was in hard Mode I had a total of like 10 MP for Cloud & 80 for Aerith made it insanely difficult.
Man I loved that fight, was so hopeful it was a sign of more unique enemies in the arena. Sadly not!
2 difficulty spikes in FFX. Gagazet Seymour and Yunalesca. Even now when I play, knowing how they attack, I can sometimes be overwhelmed
The original Monster Hunter has a bunch of difficulty spikes. Playing and discovering this game for the first time was amazing! To start with you're just running around the hills and forest picking up mushrooms and maybe dodging the occasional Bullfango.
Then, your first level-up Proper Monster Hunt is to take on FIVE Velociprey at once! It was total chaos, they leap all over the place while screeching and trying to kill you, and I was screaming and running in and out of the area to get some hits in and recover. But I did it!
Then, the next level-up difficulty spike is your first bird-like wyvern, the feared Yian Kut-Ku. This thing had me on the ropes, flying all over the jungle and smashing me into the ground with its massive beak. It took me a few tries, but I got it down!
After that, you have learned the skills to take out a bunch of similar monsters. The Velocidrome. The Gypceros. The Cephadrome. You confidently sprint through Velocidrome packs on your way to the "real" challenge.
And then you encounter the highest wall of all, the Rathalos.
I observed that if you keep getting KO'd in a hunt, upgrade your armour. If you survive but the hunt times out, upgrade your weapon. I had to do both, plus learn the Rathalos' moves and behaviour, and utilise ALL of my hunter tools to take it down.
After that, the rest of the game is pretty much a plateau. You casually dispatch Yian Kut-Ku in under 30 seconds, and look at a Rathalos/Rathian pair thinking "yeah I can take them". Only the elder dragon Fatalis adds an extra little bump at the end.
As a Trophy Hunter, I have to say that all Batman: Arkham Knight Trophies (including the many DLC ones) are pretty fair and doable, and then comes the Community Challenges DLC. It's one of the very few games I still don't have 100% for...
Demon's Gate destroyed me too, and also taught me an important lesson- make multiple save files, because when I went to load my save again, I was presented with the words "Data is corrupted".
Yakuza Like a Dragon, where you go up against two characters from previous games simultaneously who are a much higher level than you, unless you grind.
I beat the tutorial in Driver for the first time 4-5 years ago and I felt like I had finally achieved balance in my life. It was an awesome moment for me. Felt like I had completed a full game.
Driver is actually the hardest game I've ever completed, and yeah - that tutorial is the second hardest mission in the game. If anybody remembers the last mission...it's completely bonkers insane. Don't remember how many goes it took me, but I don't think I'd have the patience for it today.
The Driver tutorial is only slightly troublesome. I never had an issue with it. But that last mission!! I had to take a decade+ break before returning to the game for the last mission. It's like a hacked version of the game, the opponents are so loony!!
@@thisguy4505 Exactly! They all just ram into you full speed. I don't remember exactly how I beat it, but I must have had a good/lucky run or something. Absolutely mental.
I remember this from years ago "YOU WANNA PLAY THIS GAME OR NOT, I SAID SLALOM!!" still love all the old Friday Features, classics :)
Rob’s Friday features since day 1 are 👌🏻
@@Alex-ue4ze couldn't have said it better myself :)
Ah yes, the freaking Demons Gate, I still remember my first encounter with that thing even after 20+ years. I think I ended up defeating it by pure luck, with just one party member alive and summoning Bahamut as a last resource. Fun times.
I always got Omnislash from the Gold Saucer before going to the Temple of the Ancients, and that together with either Great Gospel or Fury Brand on Aerith made Demon's Gate right easy.
As a kid I completed driver, brother wiped my save (memory card days), then I tried again and it took a literal week of nights to get out the tutorial, mostly as it was my first touch of gamer rage hahaha
That's terrible! But a lesson in persistence and determination!
@@deetsitmeisterjd was that the one with the lunatic kamikaze FBI cars.
I've unlucked that tutorial at all my friends, in the end i was a master at it, they all thought i was some gaming god.
@@vinniamsterdam700 I was that same guy among my friends! And yes, this was the one where you could weave towards a telephone pole / light pole while the cops were chasing you and dodge it and they'd smash right into them.
Cop Tunnel Vision..lol
@@mayhemmcfly4229 i remember that last mission beeing difficult but also hilarious.
@@vinniamsterdam700 We're reminiscing over what was called "The Presidential Run", boys! That was the final mission.
Kamikaze cops indeed!!
Pro tip: drive on the sidewalks as MUCH as possible lol 🤣
I'm with Dave that the Driver tutorial was insanely difficult. I will even put my hand up and say that I am one of those people that never got past the tutorial, so I have never played any other part of the game.
When I fought the demon's gate I had Vincent on my party and his flipping limit brake HEALED demon's gate so I was properly stuck on the temple for a good while. :)))))
I am ashamed to say I could not get past the Driver tutorial. Straight back to Blockbuster it went!
I remember playing Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine on Sega Genesis. Spent many hours playing it as a kid. :)
Get Seal Piece At Water Slums in Jak II was an absolute nightmare. Some playthroughs I can muscle my way out after a few attempts, but sometimes I get absolutely bogged down for hours. Unless you’re in the flow it’s bloody relentless.
I'm glad there's a lot of talk about the slums mission in Jak 2, that game had some obscenely difficult levels compared to the first game. That and the one where you're being chased by the tank from the perspective of the tank's camera.
Eggmanland from Sonic Unleashed
The game had been pretty fun up until that point. But then suddenly the difficulty ratchets up to ungodly levels. It took me a full day just to finish that one level.
Not sure I can pinpoint biggest difficulty spike but some bosses that I remember really giving me problems:
1) Wiegraf’s 2-phase battle where he transforms from Final Fantasy Tactics
2) Legend of Dragoon’s first battle with the water dragoon woman in castle
3) Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne’s Matador
I'll add a point for Legend of Dragoon as you can't even set it down and come back in a few days because the required muscle memory for that games combat system is super perishable.
Digimon World 3. I didn't have trouble as a kid, since I overlevelled so hard I already had a full party of mega digimon when to got to the South Badlands and Mobius Desert back then. I would start a new save over five years later and barely scrape by each and every fight in the South Badlands when I had been trouncing everything in all the previous areas, because my level was low enough that I was pretty far from getting even a single Mega. Even the Coelamon in some of the underwater segments were hell with how strong they were, which makes me wonder exactly how much I had grinded for hours and days upon end as a kid and how I had that much patience.
Oh and Ash, get a bow. It's very useful for pulling stuff one by one, even if you don't intend to use a bow often. The Misbegotten in Castle Morne for example will just let you lure them over and take them out one at a time from the entryway.
Funny thing for me is that "Grinding" is only in need of patience if you're trying to get it over with as quickly as possible. If you're just having fun leveling monsters? it's not really grinding to you it's just playing.
First fight against Seymour in FFX, when he has two other guado buddies that heal him... I just couldn´t understand how that fight was sooo difficult.
The Seymour difficulty spike I hit was the fight at the Gagazet mountain peak. I think that was the first time I had to turn around and do some grinding. FFX is such a great game. I have high hopes for FFXVI
Yes times 10 to this. Any Seymour fight in FFX was an exercise in patience
The fight on mount gagazet really got me too.
@@Golgottha plus in the beginning you thought for sure, this was the LAST time the demon cockroach would come back😂
The thing with that fight is they expect you to steal from the guy who heals Seymour with potions, but logic makes you think “me stealing 1 potion from him shouldn’t change anything because he has an infinite supply of them it seems” but apparently not. Does not help that most of the enemies in that hallway before hand were kind of annoying to fight so you don’t really want to grind up levels there either.
Killzone 2 had a pretty tough last level and boss fight.
Going for the platinum, I remember playing on the hardest difficulty (Veteran or Elite) and being stuck in the courtyard for about a month. After finally making my way past through sheer luck, I spent a further 3 months trying to take down Radec.
Final Fantasy Tactics for PS1. I used the Rob method of grinding over-levelling. Most battles are fine - they're set level, but this one specific fight you have to do scales upwards - you take on a number of chocobos - and if you're too high level, they are really nasty chocobos, especially for the characters you have at that point.
My team got wiped out by a party of three of them for the exact same reason; made me scared to ever over grind in an RPG again
There were several of those for me in that game. Surprise hero only fight(s) come to mind specifically. I'm somehow beat it but I'm still not sure what happened for the last 3rd of the game.
Final Fantasy Tactics. Two quest make or break you, Inside Riovanes Castle 1&2. There is a save opportunity before RC1, if you use it and can’t beat RC1 or RC2, you have to start the game over. RC1 is a 1v1 fight, and you can easily get 2 shot, if you’re not leveled a bit.
The second fight is a traditional fight, but, it’s a narrow walkway you fight on, and range can destroy you while the boss wrecks havoc.
Make an addition save file, so you can go back and not get locked.
I only ever played the GBA version, I don't remember that, I must have cheesed my way through it somehow.
@@Banquet42 did you play FFT Advanced, or normal FFT? The regular FFT on Ps1 and PSP is what I’m referencing.
@@tommyfraz. It must have been FFTA now I think about it, that would explain it. Apologies for being confused!
Goro and Saejima in Yakuza Like A Dragon. The game was fairly easy, then those two came in. I had more trouble with them than I did with Amon in the True Final Millennium Tower.
Yup, had to went back to the sewers to farm invested vagabond lol
Happiest game over ever that fight was badass.
Oh dear, Rosie mentioning Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine made me think of that mini game in Trails of Cold Steel IV. There are some opponents which are easier and some which are quite difficult at first but can be beaten with some practice. But then there are those who just drop one thing after the other at maximum speed and each of them is a perfect fit. Forget thinking about where to best place my blocks - I can't even recognise colours as fast as those opponents drop them....
The Driver tutorial was brutal the first couple of times I did it, but it remains my favourite bit of that game. The feeling when you eventually aced it was never matched in the rest of the game.
Rosie, I will give you the ONLY advice I have figured out for Stage 2.
You can't only think about each chain at a time. You have to set up multiple small chains at time, that you can get rid of, ALL at the same time to beat him. And even then, for me it would cut close.
Stage 3? I have made it there 5 times, and haven't even come close.....
Insane mode in castle crashers. I'll just say that the mode operates on the 10x rule. Most enemies in the game have 10x their health and do 10x their damage. This is ludicrous by the final levels.
Sen Armstrong in metal gear rising revengeance, the whole game is a bit of a difficulty spike but the final boss in particular is a bit mental, takes a while to get a grip on what's going on and what you have to do
Blood Will Tell on PS2. It's a pretty difficult Hack n Slash but when you fight Dororo possessed by Dragon Brood in chapter 2, it's a big jump in difficulty. The final boss Behemoth is also a harsh jump with a 50 hit chain sequence required to finish it off (I never managed it). Honorable mentions are the first Eidolon fights in FFXIII, Hunters in the Resident Evil series, and when you first encounter a giant bird type enemy in The Last Remnant remastered.
I remember struggling with the behemoth fight until i gave in and looked online. There was a weapons list and one of those weapons was a sword that gave 3 slashes per hit and it was in the final boss room of Daigo's castle. I was so relieved when i went back to the behemoth and finished it off easily thanks to that sword.
The "I can't wait to be king" level in the SNES Lion King.
Did you know that was put in there specifically because Disney was afraid that no kid would buy the game (instead just rent it) if they could beat it within a few weeks?
@@AhsimNreiziev Yes! I heard that. That is so messed up.
One difficulty spike I wasn't ready for, and more likely never will, is The Witch Doctor boss battle in The Human Village level in Disney's The Jungle Book game from 1993. It was all fine and dandy, when those three monkeys were standing on each others shoulders. But when they split up... ARGH! I just can't handle them. I just can't shoot in one direction and dodge the shots from two or three directions at the same time. It might be needless to say I had never beated that boss. It's so difficult and it's not even the last boss. You get to fight it in somewhere half way through the game.
In line with Robs entry. I always found the train heist in FF8 having a difficulty spike. Not the boss fight but the clunky controls of dropping down the side of the train and trying to input codes without being caught. But pressing up was like asking Lara crofts butler to hurry and squall would jankily make his way back up just in time to be caught. Every time. I was 9/10 but I hated it.
Side not I didn’t have a memory card cap no saves. Failing this was a proper game over for me
I would say Caelid but the environmental cues were aggressively warning me away long before my clueless self was super murdered. There was a fight against Deathstroke in a Batman game from a few years back. It was one of the game's earliest boss fights, and it was by far the most challenging aspect of the whole game, which oddly enough never rose to that level of difficulty again for the rest of its run. It was a curious difficulty spike, in that it was more surprising as a design decision than time consuming or frustrating.
Just call it the Chooseday Checklist already!
Great shout for Driver, Dave. I was 7 years of age when that game was released. We bought it and I had no idea what a Slalom was. Had no internet to find out either!! Never played it again xD
My 15 minutes of "fame" was when I was a freshman in college living in the dorms because I could beat the Driver tutorial and had a save on my memory card right at the beginning of the game after the tutorial, lol.
I remember playing Arkham Knight on knightmare mode, and when you enter the blimp and have to fight all goons. Took me ages to get all those combos perfect
The second hardest part was defending Ivy
I remember playing mgs2 and the fight against those metal gear rays was very difficult and tedious for me
Turtles on NES, the water level. Also High Road in Crash bandicoot remake.
Most recent one for me was Ni No Kuni 2 (played purely because of Rob) and I had finished the game, beaten all the side content only had 1 trophy left for the plat that was easy so decided to start up the DLC missions. I hadn't really seen or heard anything about the DLC but figured I beat Faraway Forest 12 levels under what I had seen most people online beat it at sonic was feeling confident and got to the point I had to fight Mausinger again and oh my god was he insane. Teleport combos that if you mistimed the dodge would one shot you, room filling fireball attacks, just pure chaos but I managed it after a few attempts and then it was on to the next boss. There was no way, she had more health than anything, summoned adds, AoE damage along her movement path, arena wide AoE, homing shots and all of it lethal. There ended my attempt at the DLC and now I am just going to get the plat and call it good enough.
PS. Looked it up online afterwards and saw multiple people say they couldn't get past her with maxed out levels and gear and even more people who gave up at Mausinger.
Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine! I had it in a compilation cartridge back on the Sega Mega Drive about 10 years earlier!
I always recall the difficulty spike towards the end of God Of War Ascension - think it was a vertical lift or something that I beleive was patched a week or two after launch. I remember deliberately not downloading that patch in order to make sure I did it the OG way.
Poor Rosie.
I got stuck on stage 6 for a while. Skwheel, a pig blob on wheels. Mind you, this was many moons ago on my actual Sega Megadrive/Genesis console. I eventually beat it, and the rest of the game.
12:45 Funny quirk of Rosie: sometimes she will simply repeat a joke someone says
Nail bat absolutely melts the demon wall
As soon as Rob said FF7 I knew it was going to be Demons Gate 🤣
For me, it is a PS2 game called Mafia. Beginning of the game is pretty fun, and not too difficult until you get to... The Race. All Mafia players know about the race. It's a difficulty spike that is strictly based on how poorly the car handles and how precise you have to be with the driving. The Definitive Remake made it easier, but it's still not easy on the hardest difficulty.
Xcom 2- fighting rulers before the patch. My god. To this day I don't understand how I managed all that.
Hades with his Extreme Measures pact of punishment on. Knew it was going to be tough but damn it's so much harder than I was expecting still haven't got it yet
are we not even going to mention KENA? that game escalated quickly!
Yeah the ending was brutal. My GOTY 2021🔥
@@dewaalvandercolff251 mine too, great game!
Haven't watched it yet, but I'll be disappointed if encountering Majima and Saejima for the first time in Yakuza like a Dragon isn't on this list.
That was a rough boss fight. I was happy to see Goro and then furious and then dejected. It was a roller-coaster of emotions
I got the wretch in Elden Ring, because while you're just given a bad starting weapon, everything is at 10 from the start, it feels like the default class, but supposed to be "worse than that."
I loved Mean Bean Machine! One of my favorites growing up.
The court house in Wolfenstein 2 is as close as I have come to throwing my controller at the TV.
I had totally forgotten about that level! Or more accurately, repressed the memory of it for my own sanity...
@@MrHabushi I remember how pissed off I was to discover that it was a dream sequence! 🤬
Massive difficulty spikes:
1. Elden Ring. You can go to some seriously high-level continents very early, almost FF2-style, and get rekt over and over.
2. FF2, the world map is not gated at all, meaning one wrong turn means eating LV16 magic, which is the highest rank in the game, as soon as you take your very first steps into an area where you simply shouldn't be.
3. Zone of the Enders 2: The final boss, actually. You've gone through so many ordeals and obtained ULTIMATE POWER, killing everything in one or two hits, and then it's time for the showdown with the Big Bad... Except he doesn't go down in one hit, because you can't hit him. As your attacks bounce off his energy barrier, he sends homing attacks while being unblockable and unbreakable AND teleporting around the stage. In the words of Cloud Strife, this guy are crazy.
I was playing Ace Combat 7 last night. The 5th mission had me tearing my eyebrows out (I’m bald). Trying to stop bombers destroying your base when every 5 seconds you have a missile chasing you, so frustrating, dual shocks nearly went flying.
Same! I got stuck on a mission with a storm and you’re flying through canyons while not being able to see anything, and you have to help your guys escape before they get shot down. Haven’t touched the game since, but I think about giving it another shot often.
Am I the only one that thought Dave was going to talk about Bloodborne when he started talking about stage 1? Central Yharnam scared off so many players
I always thought it was called Demon wall. I was getting up extra early before school for about 2 weeks to farm exp so that I could beat that god damn boss!
I think I shared this with you before many year ago where you even read the comment on Access Granted.
It was in Ratchet and Clank 2 the glider segment on planet Dobbo, that one bit kept me stuck for months! Every day I would give it a few tries and then just go grind weapon exp and bolts, by the time I finally beat it I had bought everything even the best weapon in the game which costs 1 mill. Bolts!
solaire sweatshirt? For From some big ones I can think of is owl in sekiro and malenia in elden ring as well as Old Hunters and Ringed City DLC obviously especially if NG+(playing for the first time). Although there's been many in a bunch of games. Kinda hard to explain exactly
I actually make myself forget the demon wall and get that extremely unpleasant suprise every time I play FFVII 🤣.
Rosie mentioned Mean Bean Machine 😮 That was the first game I completed when I was 3. Absolutely love it!
The seal piece at the Water Slums in Jak 2. *Vietnam Flashbacks*
I remember doing that driver tutorial when I was 12 on mouse and keyboard, it took me quite a while.
The difficulty spike got me was through a patch: Cyberpunk 2077. Patch 5 increased the difficulty in Easy (the only difficulty I could play when it came out). I had to relearn how to do various sections and encounters because of it. At least I can play on normal now.
The other difficulty spike is in Ghosts and Goblins. First zombie, easy kill. Second Zombie, a little more difficult. Then the game turns it up to 11. I have yet to beat the first level in that game.
The dev trials in CTR NF, Velo was hard enough but the devs were insane. Took me literal days
Yakuza: Like a dragon, the Majima, Saejima fight. I know it's a deliberate difficulty spike and you are forced to grind, but still those bosses are hard.
Jak and Dexter 2. That mission in the docks where all the Police come towards you and you have to leave the docks.
Or Bloodbourne after you have beaten Rom the Spider.
Mean Bean Machine 2P mode has one of the best music tracks put to game.
Aaahh.. Puyo puyo. That game still give me nightmares! To get the platinum in Judgement you had to play a lot of Puyo Puyo...
Does midgar zolom in early game considered as difficulty spike or beginner's trap? Tho you can skip it with chocobo
Great video lad keep up with the good work
I would say yugioh forbidden memories. So in the beginning in ancient egypt you can manage to play eith your starting deck and upgrade it with some cards you win but the spike comes when you get to the present. In the present you enter the tournament where your opponents all use high lv monsters where your deck is still on a medium size. Only with luck you can get through it or you have to grind and pray you get some strong monsters.
in Alien Isolation when the player is tasked with investigating the San Cristobal medical facility that's when the game starts having the xenomorph hunt you for real and your options for dealing with the creature a limited to a revolver and what ever items that you've been able to craft.
When I played the wetch I made sure to not do anything until I bought me some armor and I worked as fast as possible to replace my club with the longsword
"Does anything not make you furious Rob? Dont get mad at that one.." LOL Ash
RE4 on Profesional. Leaving the village towards the castle. There is the cabin fight but otherwise is rather trivial, mainly regular Ganados, one El Gigante and Big Cheese. But then the game throws at you WATER ROOM, Verdugo, Double El Gigante, Novistadors, The elevator, and so much more. The spike was real, the Island is actually easier IMO with all the upgrades and armament.
The wall boss (demon gate) on final fantasy 7. With an aeris who was so underpowered, was something that plagued me and my friends.
The last Gauntlet Race in Horizon Forbidden West almost broke me. I won all the other races on the first try, they weren't even that hard. Then I get to the last one and no joke, I stopped counting at attempt #40. I was so close to giving up on the game in general. It felt INSANELY difficult to me, especially after the other ones were so easy to beat.
Bloodborne has a view ones I not so fondly remember:
Unseen village
Forbidden woods
Upper cathedral ward
And that damn fishing hamlet🤣🤣
Disc 3 in Legend of Dragoon you go to this area for the Wingly town and you can't leave the area until you beat it if you don't bring enough potions that's it game over. My last save before that area was 13 hours before getting there that difficulty spike is why I hold onto as many potions as I can now. lol
The thing about DR:MBM as the further you go along if you can just survive and maybe get a few chains the ai gets overwhelmed and messes up.
Whenever we talk about difficulty spikes I immediately think of most early 2000's arcade shmups. The lever 3 difficulty spike in those sorts of games is a gawdammed cliche.....
Ash: Look at me, I am Nathan now.
I had little problem with driver, I actually done the garage part using the keyboard on pc. My brother couldn't do it though, so I had to do it for him.
The very first time I played Dark Souls 3, I chose "deprived" as my class. I was an RPG stat nerd who wasn't super familiar with Souls games and I thought "Those stats are even and give me the greatest chance to customize my character how I like!"
Iudex Gundyr was a hard wall for that young, impressionable idiot.
I mean, you weren't wrong though. You could just grind a few more levels and call it even. yeah, not that easy but.....
Yeah "Demons gate" was my first ever proper difficulty spike too 😩
Ratchet & Clank games tend to have at least 1 trophy 🏆that's WAY too hard to attain considering they're 'games for kids'.
"Faster than a Speeding Amoeboid" - Get a time of 1:35 on the Rilgar hoverboard race. (This is an INSANE time to ask for)
"My Blaster runs REALLY REALLY Hot" - set the new High score on 'My Blaster Runs Hot' in the arcade (R&C A Crack in Time). Skill and LUCK become ONE here.
Don't know if they count as 'difficulty spikes' but they feel like really hard challenges compared to what the rest of the game(s) expect from you.
Play those challenges NOW as an adult and try to figure out how kids (intended target audience) are supposed to do them. Start that gamer rage while they're still young I guess...
7:14 "I've heard tales of people who couldn't get past the tutorial, and that was their experience of Driver." I feel personally attacked.
First playthrough of Diablo 2 The Act 2 boss Duriel is notoriously difficult and was an immense uptick in difficulty.