Hardest/Most Annoying Stage (or Level)

The Core Video Games Forum
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So after seeing the nice success of the Crappiest Endings thread, I figured, why not make this one? Lots of hard and/or annoying levels out there in the wide world of games. Anyways, I’ll list a few:

Rogue Galaxy - Gladius Towers: Ugh, anyone who’s played the game knows how annoying these damn towers are. Basically, you have to make your way up two towers to fight some bosses. Problem is, the path to each boss has you going back and forth between the towers, and with RG’s dungeon design, makes it near maze-like. Add in annoying fights every 15-20 sec, and it becomes extremely annoying (and long). And then there’s the fact that once you kill one boss, you gotta head back down and start from the other one…fun. Not so much hard, but very time-consuming.

Cliffhanger (SNES) - The entire damn game: Seriously, whoever made this game should probably get the shit beat out of them. Aside from being a crappy brawler, some of the stages are just plain brutal (ex. any level that has you running from something). Jumping sucks too, since it’s hard to tell if a regular jump or a running jump will clear a gap. Simply put, you will die. A lot. And restoring health is few and far in between. One of the few games I own, but have never beaten (and probably never will). I probably couldn’t beat it with infinite lives if I tried. (Don’t think there’s any cheats for it though.) Look on Youtube to get a taste of what I’m talking about.

FF3: Crystal Tower: This isn’t necessarily hard, but given you’re playing the actual game, you have few places to save. That said, the last save point is right outside the Crystal Tower. Assuming you did the Eureka stuff, all you have left is the Tower itself. Between that point and the end of the game, you have essentially one more dungeon + 6 bosses, with absolutely no save point in between any of that. So if you lose, it’s back outside the tower. The DS version makes it a little easier with Quicksave and fully restoring your characters after a boss fight, but if you lose, it’s still back to your last save.

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Tower of Babel. Xenogears. GAWD. The stupid glitch which allows you to keep moving - but NOT JUMP - for a second while the random battles are starting means you’ll fall down a hell of a lot of times. >_<

If you want a full list, try here:

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Rouge Galaxy? So what? You put on space makeup?

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The driving levels in Bayou Billy. …Or, if you’re just a mere mortal, Bayou Billy.

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Speaking of driving levels any driving level in an Megaman game can automatically be considered crap (although they’re nowhere near the OMFG!!! level that the infamous Battletoads driving level was).

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7th Saga? hehe… I’m waiting for someone to mention Battletoads for the NES. In fact, we could probably name a lot of really hard stuff on the NES. Castlevania 1 was pretty fucking hard to beat in 1 sitting, for example. I think this topic of conversation needs to be more precise and refer to specific periods. There are different kinds of hard.

Honestly, one of the hardest things I’ve ever done was fight Schwann in Tales of Vesperia with only 1 life bottle on my first run through the game. It was fucking intense. I had my gf to give me a hand. To put things into context, its a fight where you have almost no healer and the boss can 1 shot some of his targets. It requires very precise maneuvering. It was extremely difficult but I succeeded.

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This.

Also, related (kinda), the Lost Sanctum of the recent Chrono Trigger DS. The biggest problem with this is how bad it seems by comparison to the rest of the game. Normally I wouldn’t consider any part of the original Chrono Trigger crappy, but the Lost Sanctum addition to the DS release was a god-awful, obnoxious fetch quest that just didn’t feel like it belonged in the same game. Everything from having to fly back and forth between the two eras for minor, arbitrary little nonsense, to the map design which was just plain terrible (trees do not grow in perfect, straight lines like that, Chrono Trigger did not have map design that bad, it was like a freaking RPGMaker game!)

Mega Man 8 : JUMP! JUMP! SLIDE! SLIDE!

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This. The video makes it look way easier than it is though. Whoever’s playing had a pretty much perfect run, and still came close to dying. I’ll quote one of the comments from the video:

Hiruko on super mode was the only video game obstacle I really tried to overcome that just never stopped owning me.

I also have every single coin in the game except for one last one on that last god damn super stage.

1 COIN AND BOSS AWAY FROM UNLOCKING IT ALL!!!

But you did it like a fucking pro. I literally sat there and tried for about 5 hours on one Saturday and gave up video games for about 4 weeks
This guy is probably not the most hardcore gamer ever, but that quote pretty much says it all.

Shinobi is solely responsible for me laughing my ass off when people complain about Ninja Gaiden.

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Agreed on the Lost Sanctum. What a terrible idea. X-X
Actually, let me amend that. It was a GREAT idea. It had terrible execution.

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To be on topic, the Cauldron fight in Odin Sphere. Actually, pretty much all of the final battles in Odin Sphere, unless you were psychic and KNEW that you should over-level your characters and get loads of items or you’d be raped in the Apocalypse. The Cauldron one is by far the worst, though.

Hurm. That stupid stage in Goldeneye 007 where you have to protect that Russian woman while she hacks into a computer. At least, if you’re a man and do it on the hardest mode. NOBODY LIKES ESCORT MISSIONS! God. They aren’t as much “challenging” as “not fun.” The stupid bastards always find a way to fall into bullets or swords or bubbles or whatever the fuck the weapon of the day is.

The water temple in Ocarina of Time. It wasn’t HARD so much as really fucking irritating if you tried playing without a guide, which I did. I ended up looking up the answer on the internet. I’m not proud.

And anybody that got past the FIRST stupid bikes level in Battletoads should remember the SURFING level. … Not fun. Not fun at all. “You mean, I have to do it again, only it’s more unforgiving!? DAMNIT!” I swear, the only reason I tried to beat that game is because I was like ten and I was sure that I’d get to see the Dark Queen’s boobs. I have no idea why, but I was.

A lot of God of War I and II was me spent trying to figure out what the fuck I was supposed to do next, because Kratos wasn’t in the EXACT RIGHT SPOT for some stupid ass event to happen. Fuck you, Kratos!

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The Cauldron wasn’t so bad on it’s own, it’s just that Velvet is the worst fighter of the five. I thought grown Leventhan was the worst. Or fighting Belial + Old Guy.

Never got the issue with the Water temple. It was standard Zelda stuff. It was just infuriatingly slow because of BOOTS ON BOOTS OFF BOOTS ON BOOTS OFF.

And my all time low was: Pokemon Red, Dark Cave. Why? I thought FLASH was only learnable by electrics and didn’t have a Pikachu (the only available electric by that moment). Didn’t even try and check if any other critter could learn it. Had to go THE WHOLE FUCKING CAVE BLIND AS A BAT.

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final fantasy 8 - ultemicas castle. I was irritated by the fact that you have to win your skills back from bosses (including the ability to save) and that some of the bosses were hard to find without resorting to a guide.

Also Chrono triggers Lost sanctum and Golden suns taopo swamp ( the first time played)

(if im allowed to mention pokemon without embarrassment - GoSiCr the burnt tower - most pointless area ever!! they all run away)

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I actually quite liked the idea of being stuck without abilities until you win them back. It was an interesting challenge.

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It wouldn’t be so bad if it wasn’t for the big one he mentioned: you need to learn HOW TO SAVE again.

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The Russian stage in Call of Duty: World at War where you have to crawl through the burning building. Clearly, the ordinary Russian conscript carrying a sniper rifle (for the first time) must be prepared to 1) know which windows Germans will prefer to appear from so he can point his rifle in that direction in advance; 2) never pause to use the scope, even from 50 feet away blind aiming at a crevice in the wall; 3) never miss <i>their heads</i>; 4) never stop moving; 5) know the full layout of the house, despite it being blindingly smoky and him never having been there; 6) never run over fire; 7) avoid <i>machine gun</i> and <i>flamethrower</i> fire from the dozens upon dozens of German soldiers who have inexplicably decided to assault this ordinary bourgeois house; when 1-2 well-placed shots will inevitably kill said conscript, sending him back to the start.

I think it’s the fifth extra stage at the end of Trauma Center, where the disease comes in four or so repeating waves too quickly to keep up with for more than a minute. To this day, I can’t even figure out how to harm it, let alone beat it.

Mario 3, world 8 level 2. This is not so hard anymore, but back in the day, it was always “the level I saved the P for.”

Donkey Kong Country was an easy game, but the ice level full of barrels was flagrantly harder than anything before or after. The rapid-spinning barrels near the end were killer. Worse, there was no save point for a few levels afterward, so even if you beat the impossible, you could lose it all.

In Return of the King for PS2, you had to run across this one bridge quickly, and it would collapse right after you ran straight across. If you delayed on the bridge at all, you wouldn’t make it. In multiplayer mode, the bridge was the same. The problem was, its timing was triggered by the first player on the bridge. To make it across, <i>both</i> players needed to simultaneously run onto the bridge. But the bridge was narrow, so two players couldn’t actually fit side-by-side. Moreover, some characters, like hobbits, were slower than others. If you were stuck even a little behind a hobbit, there’s no way you made it across. Worst of all: if one player died here, both automatically lost. Never mind that one player dying is totally okay everywhere else. And you’d start over at the beginning of the very long level.

The ending stages of Mega Man X2, where first you face all the X Hunters with their added immunities, then the normal bosses with added immunities, and of course the two forms of Sigma. Those four E tanks you thought you’d never need are suddenly critical. And if you die after using the E tanks, you better just use up the rest of your lives: you need to refill the E tanks in the desert level. That fight with Sigma’s head is one of the epic battles of video games.

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I’m tempted to show off by making a ZSNES video of me beating that final boss sequence with absolutely no powerups or life-ups. :stuck_out_tongue:

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Man, SG, didn’t you beat fucking X6 with no powerups? As in, the one where Sigma has the big energy cube of DESTRUCTION that fills the screen?

You should record THAT :stuck_out_tongue:

It just goes to show, a lot of games can be as hard as you make them.

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The first thing that came to mid for me was that Battletoads hoverbike level! Not even the Nintendo Power guide was enough to save you sometimes…

Lost Sanctum in the CT reissue almost put me off the game for good. That was SO poorly executed - it’s shameful.

I always had problems on the train level in Goldeneye… once I got to the part where I had to use the watch laser to burn the locks on the trapdoor, I was screwed. I couldn’t aim that thing accuractely under time pressure to save my life.

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The no Es I can now do, but I’d like to see it without any armor upgrades or hearts. Particularly with no jump-dash.

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Luigi’s Purple Coins. Oh god. Someone must’ve sinned a hell of a lot for Nintendo to come up with that punishment.

Pretty much all of the hidden stars on Braid. Particularly the one where you have to leave the console idle for (no joking) an hour and a half. Then come back to find your wireless controller automatically powered down after ten minutes.

A special portion of my hatred must go to getting the chaos emeralds in Sonic 2 on the Master System though. EVERY. SINGLE. ONE. required pixel-perfect jumping or, in one case, hang-glider operation. Fuck up even the slightest bit of it and you have no chance whatsoever of seeing the hidden final level/ending- and despite being addicted to that game for years, I never did.