The Hardest JRPGs You’ve Faced

[mortuz]

Some JRPGs reward you with charming worlds and epic stories, but a special few are infamous for their sheer difficulty. This thread is for talking about those games that pushed you past your limits.

• Which JRPGs stand out as the toughest you’ve played, and what made them so challenging?
• Do you prefer games that test you with punishing boss fights, tricky dungeon designs, or complex systems that require careful planning?
• Have you ever had to grind endlessly or restart a run just to figure out the “right” way forward?
• What victories are you most proud of, and what defeats still haunt you?

Whether it’s Shin Megami Tensei’s merciless demon encounters, Etrian Odyssey’s labyrinthine maps, or hidden gems that few people know about, this is the place to swap strategies, trade survival tips, and debate what truly makes a JRPG “hard.”


Let’s hear your stories — the brutal defeats, the clutch wins, and the lessons learned along the way.

 

[Segadude113]

Saga Frontier and Chrono Cross. I hate the way those games are played. It goes against everything I learned about RPGs.

 

[Sorion]

The 7th Saga, God damn it that game is brutal, even if you grind the first boss of the game wipes you out in 2 or 3 hits, the more you grind the harder some battles will get

 

[nobitakun]

Any souls game would be here. I don't recall specific games now, but also any RPG game that would render farming futile because it is focused on player skill to parry / dodge / timing. Those push me past my limits of "I want to regulate difficulty depending on the time invested".

 

[Cardboardtubeknight Cardboardtubeknight]

Super Mario RPG Armageddon. I never got passed Mack

 

[jon2]

The 7th Saga, God damn it that game is brutal, even if you grind the first boss of the game wipes you out in 2 or 3 hits, the more you grind the harder some battles will get

This

Aside from that, Lufia 1 as well. The real slow map movement + no sign high random encounters really grates on the nerves. Learned to stock up on Sweetwater early on...

 

[X y b e r - S k u ll]

Outside of ROMhacks or mods, I'd probably say some of the SMT games gave me some trouble, specifically the Devil Survivor games and SMT 4.

 

[mortuz]

Fire Emblem: Thracia 776

It's still the hardest FE game and it pushes the limits to handle with everything you've got.

 

[Dr.Kisaragi]

Saga Frontier 2 Vagrant Stories, King field those rpgs are hard but I really like when you finish is really a accomplished

 

[UnDubious]

The 7th Saga, God damn it that game is brutal, even if you grind the first boss of the game wipes you out in 2 or 3 hits, the more you grind the harder some battles will get

I didn't struggle THAT much with 7th Saga, unlike what everyone says, but I think I picked one of the only strong teams. I had the cyborg as a main and I'm not sure who joined me (this was over 10 years ago), either the healer or a wizard. Grinded a bit, but all in all, I was ok.

Phantasy Star 2 is rough because the dungeons are so long and overly complex. My routine was to always do each dungeon in two visits. The first time, trying to pick up as many treasures as I can, etc., then warp out, come back, and head straight for the exit. It's faster to do that then level grind like crazy on the overworld, since the monsters in the dungeons are usually a little stronger.

In terms of grinding, the obscure Genesis RPG Maten no Soumetsu, which was translated a few years back, is the grindiest I've ever seen. You can't progress for more than 30 minutes without having to stop to level grind for a long time. Usually I hardly ever level grind in 16-bit RPGs - I tend to think people exaggerate when they say you have to, they're just afraid of using all their resources. But in this game you literally cannot advance unless you grind 4-5 times more then you're actually playing. I gave up on it entirely, it's pretty much broken.

 

[RustySK]

JRPG difficulty is really hard to gauge for me - usually some grinding or knowing ahead of time what you're about to fight or how the underlying gameplay systems work and how to break them will trivialize just about anything, since most of these games are pretty much number crunchers.

I suppose SMT If... and SMT III: Nocturne would be up there with their puzzle-style skill check bosses and resource draining dungeons? Or maybe Romancing SaGa 2, since the structure itself is so punishing, grinding is literal self-sabotage and you're not guaranteed to get the skills you need to break the game over your knee?

And I mean if we're counting (Japanese) TRPGs as well, I'm right there with you, Thracia should be up there as well - enemies are powerful, the level design is brutal at times and even simple resource management is a challenge if you don't understand what the game wants you to do.

 

[RomanZZZ]

Some JRPGs reward you with charming worlds and epic stories, but a special few are infamous for their sheer difficulty. This thread is for talking about those games that pushed you past your limits.

• Which JRPGs stand out as the toughest you’ve played, and what made them so challenging?
• Do you prefer games that test you with punishing boss fights, tricky dungeon designs, or complex systems that require careful planning?
• Have you ever had to grind endlessly or restart a run just to figure out the “right” way forward?
• What victories are you most proud of, and what defeats still haunt you?

Whether it’s Shin Megami Tensei’s merciless demon encounters, Etrian Odyssey’s labyrinthine maps, or hidden gems that few people know about, this is the place to swap strategies, trade survival tips, and debate what truly makes a JRPG “hard.”


Let’s hear your stories — the brutal defeats, the clutch wins, and the lessons learned along the way.

earthbound saga

 

[dniw]

I never beat Final Fantasy X. I got stuck on the boss fight with Seymour Flux.

 

[Sorion]

I didn't struggle THAT much with 7th Saga, unlike what everyone says, but I think I picked one of the only strong teams. I had the cyborg as a main and I'm not sure who joined me (this was over 10 years ago), either the healer or a wizard. Grinded a bit, but all in all, I was ok.

Phantasy Star 2 is rough because the dungeons are so long and overly complex. My routine was to always do each dungeon in two visits. The first time, trying to pick up as many treasures as I can, etc., then warp out, come back, and head straight for the exit. It's faster to do that then level grind like crazy on the overworld, since the monsters in the dungeons are usually a little stronger.

In terms of grinding, the obscure Genesis RPG Maten no Soumetsu, which was translated a few years back, is the grindiest I've ever seen. You can't progress for more than 30 minutes without having to stop to level grind for a long time. Usually I hardly ever level grind in 16-bit RPGs - I tend to think people exaggerate when they say you have to, they're just afraid of using all their resources. But in this game you literally cannot advance unless you grind 4-5 times more then you're actually playing. I gave up on it entirely, it's pretty much broken.

Ohhh you made the right decision right there, the cyborg is easily the tankiest character in the game which mitigates the high damage of most boses, and also the wizard and the elf (valsu and esuna) are the most reliable partenrs of the game and not very likely to betray you (yeah, that can actually happen hahaha)

 

[Orclease]

The original Phantasy Star. When I was a kid this game was tough as there was little direction on what to do and no map system. Today it's not too bad with internet resources.