The Hardest Games

[Kamako]

1. I accidentally cheesed the Bell Gargoyles fight by summoning another player

Peeps feel very strongly about the "intended" way to play Souls games. For me personally, I try to complete each game without summons on a first playthrough, using the deprived class and without upgrading my HP. I've always enjoyed the challenge that brings. I also think PvP invasions are brilliant and should be encouraged whenever possible, but some people can't stand the idea of possibly being invaded and *maybe* losing XP. To each their own. But it's kinda gratifying to hear you felt that way about summoning.

2. I came back to Capra after beating the Moonlight Butterfly

I didn't even realise you could do that.

3. Fighting Super Ornstein got me to finally learn how to skinny-roll between his legs.

Nicely done! I found it super unintuitive to roll any way but backwards from enemies for a long time in Souls games. That got me killed plenty. It can be hard to guage whether their hitbox will block you from passing under them.

I get alot of enjoyment out of feeling intimidated by a new enemy or boss when it all still feels fresh - feeling like each enemy poses an almost insurmountable challenge. Once that feeling wears off and you realise almost every enemy goes down in 3-4 hits and is likely stun-locked the whole time, the feeling gets replaced with how breezy the playthroughs become. And enemy shrieks eventually just become hilarious. I hope you enjoy playing through the other games in the series. :)

 

[Jambhala]

I'm bad at games so my barometer for difficulty is way off, but Vagrant Story for ps1 may be one of the hardest games I've played. It's incredibly pretty and very polished for a ps1 game though, so it's worth playing

 

[Eclipse14]

I hear Baiten Kaitos is also rather tough.

The first game is actually fine, some obtuse moments and a couple rough fights aside. Origins also gains some infamy because Disk 2 literally opens up with a fairly obnoxious boss fight.

That said, they can be called "tough", but most RPGs shouldn't be anywhere near the classification as being among the hardest games made, even for the systems they're on unless there's a very clear problem that makes it so. 7th Saga for SNES is a good example (a rather bad case of rebalancing and if the wrong apprentice shows up halfway through the game, you're just screwed).

 

[Studmonkey]

Yo,
so recently I started playing Ghosts 'n Goblins for the NES, which is touted as one of the hardest games ever made (it even boasts as such on the wiki page) and I've gotta admit, it's pretty tough!
But it's got me thinking about what really are the toughest games ever to get an official release.

Whilst Ghosts 'N Goblins is kicking my ass, I wouldn't consider it one of the hardest I've tried. For one thing, when you run out of lives, you can just continue from where you left off (and even from the most recent checkpoint!) Whereas there are some games - mainly older titles, that give you 2-3 lives and that's yer lot. You lose them, you start over, without so much as a "Tough luck, buddy".

So, what do you reckon are the hardest games you've ever played or heard of? And what's the toughest game you've ever beaten legitimately (i.e. No cheats or unintended skips etc.) Bonus points if the game has no difficulty adjustment options, and where dying isn't "the point" of the game.
Oh, and I know there are plenty of games out there that simply cannot be beaten due to a design flaw, and I'm personally not considering those. I'm talking about games that have a definitive ending that can be reached through skilled play, or by having a comprehensive knowledge of the game's tricks and traps.

For me, I've never beaten Altered Beast or Taz-Mania for Sega Genesis. Pretty shameful as well considering Altered Beast only has 5 levels! I know there're harder games out there than those though...

The hardest game for me is HNRA count down to the championship psp the controls were decent during the drag races it's the stages and the rubs where it's amped up to 12 I can't keep up and don't know what tune is suitable for each course the pros are faster than me of the starting line and their reaction time are better than me

 

[Ikagura]

Alien Soldier got either Supereasy or Superhard

Some Treasure games becomes infamously hard when you go for max difficulty.

 

[Yousef]

Sonic heroes is really hard. Each subsequent playthrough gives me brain damage than the last.

 

[Jeanfranc]

The modern Ninja Gaiden trilogy on Master Ninja difficulty are among the most hair-rippingly hard 3D Action games ever made. The games throw everything at you, death is often only a single slip-up away, and using exploits and cheese becomes near mandatory.

To beat Black on MN you have to become a Ninja yourself. Base difficulty is too easy though, as much as I hate Sigma it's good that hard mode is available from the start there.

Post automatically merged: Mar 28, 2025

I can't wait to play these. I always get confused as to what version to pick up though...hmm...

Avoid the Master Collection for I and II, it's the Sigma versions.
Play Ninja Gaiden Black on OG Xbox and II on 360 (note: Black II is just Sigma II but in unreal engine 5, it's not the original)

 

[Kamako]

I just beat the first round of Ghosts N' Goblins! Feelsgoodman

 

[Bakuma1997]

I just beat the first round of Ghosts N' Goblins! Feelsgoodman

Congrats!



you beat the easy mode

 

[Stingy Perry]

The 1st Gen Armored Core and the Kings Field series on the PS1 those were the pre-Dark Souls hard games published by From Software.

 

[thanonyx]

Anyone who manages to beat Super Meat Boy deserves a medal.

 

[solnK!]

I just beat the first round of Ghosts N' Goblins! Feelsgoodman

You´re a god among mortals

 

[Asian girls lover]

Ninja Gaiden Sigma, never been able to finish it.

 

[rugal]

fighting game
dragon bruce lee story the eu version
a really hard and annoying game on snes
one really need to learn attacks moves in the game in order to beat it

the last boss is hard

platform
i wanna be the guy
mega man 1 2

castlevania simon quest since its time based to get the true ending

shooter
panzer dragon and panzer dragon orta
all metal slug really hard to finnish with the lifes you start with

rpg
wild arms 2 to get 100% is gard since many optional bosses are insane hard
and the labyrinth in glaive le cable is crazy hard since the labyrinth moves after every time you move

action rpg
ys 1 to 3
brandish 1 and 2

puzzle games
lolo 1 to 3

 

[_oBSOLEte_]

I think that the hardest game I've ever beaten is R-Type 2.
And the hardest game I've seen people beat with no misses might be Beat Saber Ghost Expert+.

 

[Pandaprewmaster325]

A hard game? Hmmmm if I have to answer an I philosophical way I would say there is no hard game its about understanding the mechanics and mastering them

But honestly thats a bit of a bullshit answer , so my genuine answer would be Sudden strike basically the dark souls of RTS unforgiving game , I love games that are challenging like Final Fantasy games aren't absurdly difficult but rather challenging games each with a nice difficulty scaling save for FF2 uhm uhm that game is hard at the start but after kasion castle and the cave of tropical people its ezzz

But yeah if I have to talk about difficulty its pretty much sudden strike.

I like when devs punish you hard for mistakes it makes you learn in a harsh way sure you may not like it when it happens but you look back and laugh at what you used to fail at.

However a "hard" game depends on the game are the controls trash? Are the enemies pretty hard to kill? What's causing this "difficult" gameplay? A game like silent hill 1 and resident evil can be pretty tough on hard and mind you I only play on hard I don't care if its first time , in these games save points can be a bit far from one another so dying is kinda big deal , well not for me as I play using emulator so I use the emulator save sometimes however I place restrictions about how I use it , like I must save in-game when I wanna quit the game , even then emulator save doesn't save your ass like that one time I got stuck in kasion castle in FF2 when I beaten the boss but I was too weak to escape the castle so I just went back and warped out there was no way forward , or like the SH1 bee bossfight which I had to use a cheat to bypass cuz I wasted a lot of ammo on other things...

A really hard game isn't so much of a game a custom campaign for WarCraft 3 known as to the bitter end , is magnificent and very challenging.

 

[Big Finger Jim]

I've gotten trhough a few chapters of the 2004 Ninja Gaiden. Chock it up to me just sucking, but I've played a lot of stuff and that shit bust my ball all the way to the stratosphere, and I still 2.5 of these to go.

 

[DragonMals]

I think my review of Touhou Gendanshou: Unlimited Heroes should be enough to explain how hard the game is. I hate how this was my first exposure to playing Touhou.

 

[Blamhammer]

The hardest game I've completed must have been God Hand. It does come with variable difficulty but that works in your favor.
You get knocked down, difficulty goes down, you adapt, difficulty goes back up. I find it better than going straight to game over if you mess up.

 

[Kamako]

Congrats!

you beat the easy mode

I just properly finished Ghosts N' Goblins with no save states!!
I FEEL
STRONGTH WELLING

I didn't think the game would be all that tough, and in many ways, it was very manageable (stages 1, 4 and even 5 are very do-able, and that's half the game!) but oh man, stages 2, 3 and 6....AND having to do it twice over with the right weapons equipped...damn. That was pretty tough!

 

[DeadVoivod]

I don't have time to play hard games, so I cheat and I'm able to beat them plus actually enjoy them. I played Elden Ring, like 50% through, I never would have even touched it, but I liked the exploring part quite a lot.

 

[LaserMoose]

I just properly finished Ghosts N' Goblins with no save states!!
I FEEL
STRONGTH WELLING

I didn't think the game would be all that tough, and in many ways, it was very manageable (stages 1, 4 and even 5 are very do-able, and that's half the game!) but oh man, stages 2, 3 and 6....AND having to do it twice over with the right weapons equipped...damn. That was pretty tough!

Highly recommend its sequel, Ghouls n' Ghosts, if you haven't had the chance to play it yet! It's a personal favorite of mine. Just finished another playthrough of it last night via the Saturn release.

The added ability to attack upwards and downwards dramatically changes the gameplay, in my opinion for the better.

I understand if you're burnt out on the gameplay of the series at the moment, though.

I don't have the opportunity to promote GnG very frequently so I have to do so when I can!

 

[Kamako]

Highly recommend its sequel, Ghouls n' Ghosts, if you haven't had the chance to play it yet! It's a personal favorite of mine. Just finished another playthrough of it last night via the Saturn release.

I don't have the opportunity to promote GnG very frequently so I have to do so when I can!

Congrats on another successful playthrough!
I may switch on to it next yep... I've just done 3 NES classics in a row pretty much, so this might be the time to swap over to SNES :)

 

[LaserMoose]

Congrats on another successful playthrough!
I may switch on to it next yep... I've just done 3 NES classics in a row pretty much, so this might be the time to swap over to SNES :)

Thank you! It kept me up all night last night, as stage 5's final section is brutal on both cycles.

By the sounds of it you're looking at Super Ghouls n Ghosts on SNES; my playthrough was the Arcade version of Ghouls n Ghosts, which has a Genesis port as well.

I'm surprised you played the NES version rather than the arcade release! I actually haven't played through the NES release myself, as I've generally stuck with the Arcade releases of the games. Still, that's a great accomplishment! These games are very difficult, but very rewarding.

 

[Kamako]

Thank you! It kept me up all night last night, as stage 5's final section is brutal on both cycles.

By the sounds of it you're looking at Super Ghouls n Ghosts on SNES; my playthrough was the Arcade version of Ghouls n Ghosts, which has a Genesis port as well.

I'm surprised you played the NES version rather than the arcade release! I actually haven't played through the NES release myself, as I've generally stuck with the Arcade releases of the games. Still, that's a great accomplishment! These games are very difficult, but very rewarding.

Oh wow!
I'm still really unfamiliar with the series, beyond knowing they're notorious for their difficulty. It was only once I was well in the reeds of the NES port did I realise it was a port at all of the arcade original!
I'll look up the differences between Ghouls N' Ghosts and Super Ghouls N' Ghosts and figure out which to play next (will likely be the Genesis or SNES entries as I already have them setup)