What game mechanic or boss could you just not overcome?
What game mechanic, boss or puzzle in a game got you to give up?
For me it was a drivers license test in Gran Tourismo 2 on the Playstation. I was so into racing sims that I had a decent steering wheel and pedals set (like $80 in 1999). I even found a better coffee table to more comfortably fit it all. I had so many hours into GT1, various NASCAR entries, MOTO Racer, various Need For Speed games, etc.
GT2 had a system where you had to upgrade your license to unlock more tracks. There was one where you had like 15 or 20 seconds to slolem through a course and then do it in reverse. After hours almost every night for a month straight of getting to within .5 seconds of qualifying for the license to unlock more tracks I just couldn't anymore. I gave up racing/car sims for nearly 15 years until XBox heavily pushed Forza Horizon and I gave it a try.
It certainly didn't help that I had just recently been scarred from being stuck in a similar system in X-Wing vs TIE. There was a training mission where you had to take your X-Wing through a course with barrel rolls before you unlocked something (another ship or more dangerous missions?) that I was stuck on. After like 6 weeks of getting within a second or less to completion I finally found a cheatcode to bypass it. By then the damage to my enjoyment of the game had been done and I never did finish that game.
I'm not sure if I was able to beat Andross on the final level of Star Fox 64. I have a memory of a cutscene, but it's just as likely that I was watching my older brother or one of his friends.
A few months ago I found our old 64 and a bunch of games. Cleaned it up, bought some cables and I before I knew it I was getting my ass handed to me by Andross once again. It was perfect.
I know it's not mechanically impressive or incredibly difficult, but I kind of enjoy the fact that I haven't been able to beat him myself. It's like being able to hold onto a piece of my childhood even as I grow older. No matter what happens, Andross will be there to talk shit about my father and kick my ass.
There's actually multiple versions of that fight, depending on the path you took to get there. Getting the best fight requires the hardest path.
Robot Andross or Brain Andross?
Landing the jet on the aircraft carrier in Top Gun
Beating the snake level on Battletoads, probably attempted it a 100 times.
BATTLETOADS.
If I remember my deep history gaming lore, Battletoads set the commonly-known-at-the-time standard for the height of difficulty in games.
The bike level? Ugh. Uuuugh AaaaAAHH!
I think I got past it one time, promptly died and never made it back.
I have absolutely zero regrets about using save states in emulators for games like Battletoad.
I played Double Dragin and Battletoads (or whatever the name was) and I never finished it. I was ale to make it to the last boss, but couldn't do it... Good game, hard! I like games like that, they really challenge you to do your best.
This is going to sound silly, but Flowey from Undertale. I don't have the best manual dexterity or hand-eye coordination and Flowey was too hard for me to beat. I had to have my husband do it for me.
The underwater level of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for the NES. The only time I remember getting past it was at a friend's house during a sleepover. After defusing the last bomb, we spent a few minutes taken completely aback, we weren't planning on having to actually play through level 3 and beyond.
The electric hit boxes were so touchy, too. You're panicked to disarm the bombs and keep swimming into objects that hurt and stop you, wasting valuable time.
Oh man, I haven't thought about that game or level in forever. Like the other reply it sucked to get into a panic loop where you were rushing, touch something, lost time only to panic even more..
That might have been the first level that required me to reach a zen like state before I beat it, lol
I came here to find my people. This is one of those things that I bring up with anyone near my age to instantly make a connection. Sort of like a shared trauma.
Zelda bosses really, really stress me out. Not one in particular, all of them. I don't work well under time pressure; I get frustrated not being able to figure out the specific 'boss' mechanic under that pressure; and even if I'm able to make some progress, the 'a-ha! Part-2' boss makes me feel demoralized.
But I love all the others aspects of the games! I loved exploring in botw and just ignored the main story line. In totk, I'm getting my partner to fight the bosses for me.
I'm not alone! I adore the Zelda games, but the bosses (and some of the other enemies, to be honest) in the 3D ones really spike my anxiety. I think I must get too invested, coupled with the reasons you mentioned. I loved the concept of Majora's Mask, but that constant time limit was no bueno.
I do much better with turn-based games.
They really ought to make an easy mode for the game. I personally have no trouble with the difficulty, but 90% of the game is so chill that I'd almost recommend it to my mom. But that 10% of difficult combat means that there's no way she could progress. She couldn't beat a Lynel or any of the bosses or even a difficult Bokoblin. But she could definitely ride horses around, explore caves, take pictures of stuff, etc.
I think it was Sonic the Hedgehog 2's Casino Night Zone. There was a bouncy object that you needed to get low enough to squeeze by (or that is what 6 year old me decided). A friend and I must have played that level about 200 times and managed to glitch it one time to get through. We couldn't believe it or replicate it but we were through! Fast forward a week and my 4 year old cousin comes over and wants to play. HE DELETES THE SAVE FILE!!! I never gotten past it again!
Sounds like it might've been the Barrel of Doom from Sonic 3? You can only imagine why it got that name, loads of people got stuck in the same spot!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNNm04RIhvY&t=283s
This is it!!!! Oh man, I can't believe this is a well known thing. Honestly, watching that video provides a surprising level of catharsis and I cannot believe those are the game mechanics to make it work. The hours spent on that freaking barrel!!!!!
Thanks for the link!
You're welcome, glad I could provide that for you!
I don't even need to click the link to know what you're talking about... And to hear the trauma of Carnival Night Zones music.
That being said. I do have some fond memories of the Sonic games as a kid. I love replaying them now and speed running them
The music in that stage is weirdly bad in that level. I prefer the prototype version.
I wouldn't say it's 'bad', it's just horrifying.
It also feels extremely repeatative. So by minute six or seven of exploration you feel psychotic.
Ansem in Kingdom Hearts I, final battle. Could not complete that, and I spent months trying to beat it.
Turns out, if you skip Monstro (Pinochio's world) and move onto the other worlds, eventually Monstro doesn't become a world you can land on again as it gets swallowed by darkness iirc. The problem with this is that Monstro is where you learn the ability to high jump, and to defeat Ansem int he final battle he is about 1.5 times off the ground and it requires you to have high jump. There is no way to defeat him without it. I believe this was patched in the re-releases. Drove me absolutely nuts for years that I never defeated him and finished the game.
I always fail to overcome puzzles that require long-term memory or moon logic. Those are puzzles that require guessing or the distortion of their own rules in order to be solved.
Which is most puzzles in video games.
Although I consider it a poor choice, I can understand why they would use long-term memory as a source of difficulty. But moon logic pisses me off.
I'm pretty sure every single classic adventure game is basically "Moon Logic - the game".
There is also the dreaded and ubiquitous pixel hunting, and "word hunting", its equivalent in text games.
Good, logical puzzles are incredibly hard to find. I suppose Professor Layton has many of those, but it also has plain math problems so at some point I just feel like I'm back in class. Oh, well.
My favorite puzzle game is Portal 2 precisely because every puzzle makes sense without being overly complicated, needlessly obscure, or downright homework.
Yeah, nothing turns me off of a game like a puzzle where the solution is just....random. The clues don't necessarily have to be handed to you but it shouldn't be painful to find either (if they even exist). If I walk into a room and there is a book that reads "Two brothers walked to the Three Mermaid Spring to watch their One true love..." I would expect the combination to be 2-3-1, right? If the book doesn't exist and I'm left to just randomly try numbers until I go online to find a walkthrough that's like "The solution is 231, the number of Peruvian roses the game author had as a child" then I'm simply uninstalled that game.
I love adventure games, specially point and click, but most of the puzzles infuriates me and I end up looking for a guide online.
A lot of them does not make any sense and I feel people solve it by pure luck.
I can highly recommend Slice & Dice if you want some measure of control on puzzle solving. Because it has undo, and the way you order things has a very logical path, you can definitely work your way out of most every fight... though every now and again you'll Roll Too Low to fight your way out of it. It's just so incredibly satisfying to build your way to a working set of combos and eeking out just the right way to save your team's life. :)
Where should I even start? :-)
Baldur's Gate 1 - back in the day I made it to thelast boss, but him and his aides and room full of traps was really too.much for my party. Never finished the game. I plan to though. Strangely, I have finished BG2 without problems, piece o cake I would even say.
I gave up everytime on Morrowind's main quest. The game is so big it ain't needed to pursue some higher good and you still have many many many things to do.
I had to restart Star Wars Knight of the Old Republic 2 once because my firat character was too weak to bea final boss (you go 1 on 1) - bad build from my side. That was kinda pain, as the game is like 50+ hours, not 10 like other or many modern games.
I couldn't beat Yunalesca in Final Fantasy X back in the days. It is three-stage late game boss and the third stage always wiped the floor with me. I was rushing through the game because of the great story (the best I have ever experienced in any game) and I came in underpowered. I have beaten her in 2017 when I came into he fight fully prepared and actually wiped the floor with her :-D Did overkill for around 40 000 damage (she had 60 000 in her final form I believe).
I almost gave up in Earthlock where you have to fight some guardian boss. I didn't pay that much attention to all the mechanicsof the game and I couldn't bruteforce my way though this boss... Eventually read up on it and beaten it. Final boss was ok if I recall correctly.
My first playthrough of Witcher 3 was (because of my friend's suggestion) on Death march (highest) difficulty with enemies auto-leveling with me (so even the easiest enemy from the start of the game can kill you in a few hits even in late game). I got stuck in a fight with a few rats. RATS! They bite for around 1/4 of your health, are almost invisible (small) and hard to target and there was like eight of them in a small room you had to clean. I switched auto-leveling off for this fight and I don't feel any shame in doing so.
There are probably many more games that I can't remember right now.
To be fair that final boss is really annoying to fight. I also had difficulties with fighting her, to the point where I just cheesed it with frag mines (thankfully I had a lot) that I took advantage of the ai path finding. And just Force healed myself, and kept regretting of not choosing any of the dark side powers, like you just a terrible build from me because I decided that my person was going to be the paragon of light. So, when I finally beat her, I was really happy.
My second character was pragon of light. I use the power where you freeze enemy in place (Static/stasis field?) And leveled my primary attribute andused gear to get even more so nothing can resist that power. And even final boss and even three lightsabers after her (or before? I don't remember) couldn't resist most of the time. Piece of cake, hitting static objects that don't fight back :-D
Re: KOTOR: Same story for me except with the first game. I simply did not have a build that could survive Malak. It also didn't help that I was like 8 at the time and didn't fully understand the game's systems (auto-level-up'd my whole way through lol). I ended up "beating" him by discovering that there was a cheat code where if you plugged in a second controller and hit the right combo, it turned him into a Twi-lek dancer and skipped the fight. I promise I'm not making this up haha.
It happened to me in KotOR 2 because I played it first. When I played KotOR 1 many years after that, I found Malak pretty ok. I have replayed KotOR 1 once more and foind him ok again. I had my share of experience with KotOR games at that point I guess.
It's always nie to run into a game where you really have to intentionally mess up your character to be unable to beat the final boss. That validates all playstyles and is a really nice touch, imo.
I didn't know much about the game mechanics at the time. Internet wasn't that fast and that full of information back then... So I made kinda all-rounder character that was great in a party but not that much on her own. It wasn't intentional, I really made poor choices unknowingly.
But I still lliked the playthrough! The game was amazing and me not being able to beat the boss din't ruin it for me. I simply started over with newly acquired vital information :-) I like these kind of games where you learn by playing and sometimes it's better to let go current playthrough and start over with new information and adapt the next playthrough.
I remember those awful GT2 license tests. Everything fun about that game was locked behind the license tests as well. The tests didn’t allow you to collide with walls in the slightest.
I remember it would send you down Leguna Seca. There was also a part with a Dodge Viper and that car would constantly spin out.
But if you cleared them all you could do the rally car races which unlocked the best car in the game.
I do remember it had a used RX-7 which could carry you through most of the early game, then the Skyline which could handle most of the rest. They were cheap to upgrade, had a large upgrade pool, and handled great.
The license tests sucked so bad. I had a friend who was good at the game who'd beat them for me. Thank god for him or I don't know if I ever would have been able to play the later parts of the game.
Ah, the Suzuki Escudo. So ridiculous. Doubly so because there was a pseudo-F1 car in the game that the Escudo was still better than. I seem to recall that I was mildly disappointed in GT3 to find out that it wasn't the easy-button instant-win that it used to be.
Looking back I have no idea how I managed to do it. I think maybe there was a ghost camera that let you see the CPU do it and I watched that? Or maybe I went to my grandpa’s house and looked it up on GameFAQs?
I don't remember having much trouble with the GT2 license tests as a kid -- I attribute most of that due to it being a billion years ago when I was a kid.
Except for the Laguna Seca Viper one, I remember that one vividly. The Dodge Viper was my favourite car at the time as a little kid, and I remember doing that one test over and over again to get it. Can't power through at the wrong time or you oversteer, have to be really careful with your weight balance or you'll swing out, but can't go slow at all or you won't make it in time.
I did end up clearing it but it was hard, and I think it was one of the few that I saved a replay for. I think thats a great test, its hard, but nailing the driving to get even a bronze on it really encapsulates the skill of driving.
The one the sticks out most in my mind is the whole sequence of fights at the end of Metal Gear Solid. I was just a kid and to defeat REX took months in its self, then I had to fight Liquid... that probably took me longer than the REX fight.
I did eventually get through it, with the patience only a kid from the 90s, with about 4 different games total, has.
The one that still sticks out to me was the final battle in FFVII. My party was underleveled and I ended up with a glitch where I dropped a save point next to a ladder so I couldn't leave to grind out a few levels/restock items.
Emerald weapon for me. I was high enough level that EW got a bump (like triple HP.) Since this was OG version there was no way to skip the animation for knights of the round table which was almost 2 and 1/2 minutes long with each of my characters casting twice per turn. Never did beat them.
It was the bosses of FFVII that are the very reason why I live the meme of never using the large or mega heal items and same them all "just for bosses", lol.
God, I haven't thought of that issue in literally decades. Wow. I can't remember why I know about it, but something tells me it wasn't pleasant.
They certainly pulled zero punches on the first boss, especially considering it's a tutorial/intro level. Even I, as a diehard AC fan, took a few tries to get past it. They really want you to learn mobility as you won't be getting the walking tank parts until much later in the game and even then the stagger mechanic is key to boss fights.
They hinted at it in trailers and gameplay videos, but the strategies in boss fights is often to go full bore the entire time, up close and personal, as you will be outgunned and they have a dead zone up close where things like the Helicopter's missiles can't get to you as they have to fire outward.
I usually play the same and there's a corner in that stage that allows you to jet back and forth between two pieces of cover and dodge the missiles to do so, but it was tedious and often failed due to not getting out of the way of side arcing missiles soon enough. It's possible and easier to do later in the game with gear, but the first mission required the aggressive approach.
Man, I had a couple buddies in high school who were deep into the GT games, and would unlock every single thing you could, and then replay it just for fun. It only took me watching them play a couple of times and seeing the amount of detail and finesse involved to realize it was not something I would find enjoyable to play in the slightest, haha.
For me, the firs one that comes to mind is beating Gannon in the second Zelda game on NES. Hot damn, the amount of times my brother tried to beat it I don't even want to recall. The fact that there's no saving in that game and you start from scratch after the third death made it all the more frustrating...sigh
You mean no saving mid fight, and having to start the dungeon over? There was definately saving in Zelda 2, would take too long to finish in one sitting
You could have your character saved, but have to start over from the beginning area every time, going through every dungeon and monster instance on the way to the final area. You couldn't save in any further towns or other points. So that did make it a bit less onerous, not having to collect all your items and stats every time, but by the time you got to Gannon again, it was still pretty rough to get there without dying once or twice along the way. And although there are a handful of extra lives throughout the game, once you get them and use them the first time they don't respawn after that.
7c in Celeste, just too many perfect dashes, jumps and grabs.
I eventually beat it, but chapter 7 ("a side", just to beat the game) was almost too much for me, it took me way too long to beat it and effectively killed the game for me. Once I finished it I was satisfied and knew I couldn't handle something .1% harder so I never did the harder levels.
The recent one for me has been the Radagon and Elden Beast in Elden Ring. Man, I loathe Radagon at this point. Getting this far in the game has been a huge gamer moment for me and I really want to finish it.
Ugh I feel that. For me it was Maliketh. It was my first souls game and I played a sorc (ranged) so I didn't have the skills to keep up with his attacks. I finished the game but I never really "beat" Maliketh, I just crutched on Tische and ultimately got lucky on the successful attempt.
Radagon/Elden Beast is brutal. Two difficult fights back to back. I haven't fought either in a while but from what I remember and what I've seen watching streamers do it, Radagon can actually be very predictable if you know what to look for and how to exploit each move. EB was the exact opposite in my experience lol, so.... Good luck!
Yeah... That fight took me an all nighter to beat. I found it the hardest boss by far. I definitely recommend grinding some money (look up "Elden Ring bird farm" if you don't know what that is to easily grind runes), then taking a long and hard look at your build, see what it is you need to beat them (such as more stamina, more health, more damage, etc.) and level it up. After dozens of attempts, I grinded some more levels, got some more health, and beat them.
Also don't be afraid to use Rennala and a Larval Tear to completely respec from scratch and try a different build. One thing I tried was slightly tweaking what I had before to better fit the fight.
You can look up where the Miner's Bell Bearing items are and use them to make all but the last smithing stone buyable in infinite amounts, then get any weapon you wanna try at almost max level.
Radagon's attack that always gets me is the fly-up-in-the-air hammer down attack. You have to roll in a specific direction to not get hit by the AOE. A few of his attacks become windows though when you realize which ones you can strafe around and cause him to miss. Elden Beast is super annoying and can decide to take a ton of time depending on when he decides to fly away. Some of his windows (like the fire breath) are crazy long windows to get charged R2s off if you stand far away enough from the attack. Elden Stars is straight BS though.
Lion King - level 2. The swinging monkeys level
That level is not actually too hard; it's really more that it's poorly telegraphed and that makes it frustrating. There are a few light puzzle elements in the game, like the swinging monkeys, that I actually like in theory but isn't super great in practice.
Really the whole game isn't as difficult as the reputation would have you believe. It's no Castlevania or Ghosts and Ghouls. That being said, the end boss is complete BS, requiring you to pull off a move that's not only difficult to use but there's nothing anywhere in the game (or even the manual, to my recollection) that would explain how to pull it off.
I agree with this, I definitely struggled with this initially when I was a kid but once you know what's going on it's very fast to get through this part. Just a disclaimer I am terrible at games and have no patience.
I had the game on Gameboy, never got past that level, and it was even harder than the SNES version! 0 warning when to jump or crouch, and 0 time to react. https://youtu.be/DeBPKQz0UJk?si=LA1usHot4qNJWzU-
DK64 is one of my favorite games of all time. It requires you to beat four levels of original-style Donkey Kong to reach the final boss. I have never fought the final boss.
That killed me too. I 101%d the entire game, but couldn't beat the arcade a second time to get the Nintendo key. Never beat the final boss either. I don't know what they were thinking making that a required part of the game. At least the game to get the Rareware key could be cheesed pretty easily. But even so, it's not good game design to throw those in there and make them required.
The final bosses of both the Batman game and Ninja Gaiden game for NES. They were very similar in that they had obnoxiously long and tough levels to get through and then you had to fight back to back difficult bosses. The Batman game had you go up a shitty vertical clocktower and fight Firefly who could two hit kill you and then you immediately had to fight the Joker. Ninja Gaiden had an equally difficult stage to get through which tons of flying enemies that were difficult to predict and would knock you into open pits, then you had to fight the bosses with whatever lives, health, and whatever the ninja power ammo/mana was called. I was generally good at "Nintendo hard" games and beat many other kids couldn't, but these games I could never beat.
A complete annoyance of mine are the insane level end bosses in some games. Games like Metal Gear Solid, Descent II, one of the Doom remakes spring to mind.
I'm talking about the bosses where it takes like 40 or more hits of the strongest weapon in the game (or 100 hits from a "great" weapon) while they can one shot you even with max health/armor eevn before they go into "rage mode."
I don't recall MGS giving me trouble, but Doom did with both the Cyberdemon (act 2 boss) and the Spiderdemon (act 3 boss). Descent II I embarrassingly didn't reach the final boss because I kept getting lost in one of the later levels.
It was one of the early MGS games where you were fighting a guy on a traincar and pits kept opening up. The very first time I played it was bugged and he got trapped and couldn't move or teleport around.
However, after that it took me f o r e v e r to find the right way to beat him.
The White Palace in Hollow Knight. Not the Path of Pain or whatever, the level itself. Can't do it. There's one part in particular with sawblades moving up and down and you have to walk through it with perfect timing. Even with all the charms that make it "easy" I just can't do it.
It's like they wanted the game to turn into Super Meat Boy at that point. Exactly where I burned out as well. Incredible game but requiring that sequence for the good ending was a bad idea.
I love that game and played two times, but that place gave me trauma. I love some challenge, but not like that.
You know the part in Deus Ex Human Revolution with the electric lady and theres water on the floor? Got to that point, couldn't beat her and just stopped playing. Sure there was something I missed but I just uninstalled the game and moved on.
OH MY GOD I had the exact same experience!! Exact! BUT, I replayed it just a few years ago and turns out - there is ABSOLUTELY a trick to it!
You have no idea how angry I was when I beat that boss this time round in 10 minutes. Didn't even die once. Must have tried upwards of 50 times my first time round.
I'm on mobile and can't easily find that walkthrough, but seriously just Google Deus Ex boss fight electricity or something and you'll get the trick.
Also, game holds up very well (except that non-lethal isn't implemented great but ah well), so I deff recommend going back to it!
I think the definitive/ultimate/whatever edition fixes it to make a nonlethal playthrough viable. Unlike the original where it was "nonlethal... except the bosses."
Oo thanks for that info, glad to hear! And yes that's exactly what I meant, esp because there's nothing like investing all your skills in stealth... only to find out that 1) ya gotta kill anyway and 2) lol sucks to be you have fun trying to do any damage at all against this killing machine
Ace Combat 7's elevator climb. It's the last thing you do too. It's just as tight as the tunnel run right before it (maybe a bit tighter, either way there isn't much margin even for the smaller aircrafts) but vertical this time, and there's, well, elevators also ready to collect you, at least they're immobile.
I did it once. And completely by chance and can't do it again.
There's also any light gun segment in any Yakuza to a lesser degree, I'm on PS4 so I can't point'n'click.
There was a game called Titus the Fox in the 90s that I couldn't figure out at all. I think I couldn't even get to the 2nd level, and as an avid player of other side scrollers like Prehistorik and Lion King, this was really frustrating.
Not sure if it counts, but Fallout 2 would bug out right before the final scene. I ended up watching it on YouTube.
On a slightly different note, INFRA was great, but gave me so much motion sickness that I could never finish. :(
Oh god, Titus the Fox! That game was brutal! I managed to get to the end of level 2 after weeks, then gave up at the trash bins that kept hammering me...
I honestly wonder if Titus (the company) was founded by trolls. They made some truly disappointing games.
Persona 5 Royal, Okumura boss fight. I tried it like 15 times and got destroyed every single time. Even with recommend setup I just couldn't deal enough damage in 2 turns to get past green robots.
So I just cheesed it with endgame personas, no regrets.
I managed but no judgement here. That one boss is a notorious stain on otherwise masterpiece of a game. Its completely out of balance with the rest of the game in terms of difficulty
Funnily enough, I could only beat that fight by bumping the difficulty up because it increased the damage of your crits.
Frostpunk - Survivor difficulty - New World scenario. I just couldn't figure out the right combo for keeping settlers warm, fed, healthy, and upgrade tech all at the same time. I actually had to quit after 3 solid days of retrying because I was getting irritated more than having fun.
Astral Chain, the final boss.
I enjoyed the game, despite the game, which is probably why I didn't feel compelled to fully beat it. The mechanics were a lot of fun - but the storyline was a little wackier than I tend to like - so as a result I didn't feel a compulsion to see "me" beat it, and was content to just watch some cutscenes on YouTube.
Still, the mechanics to control two characters at once were neat, if not a little fiddly. Would love to see another entry in the series.
The final boss in Barbarian for Amiga 500.
I hacked and slashed through all the warriors just for that stupid magician to come down into the arena and one shot me with his magic. I tried blocking, I tried rolling, I tried jumping, but could never get the timing right. It did not help that you had to start over from the beginning every time. I have seen videos on it now, but I never bothered going back.
A sort of low intensity hindrance, but I was intent on clearing the 2016 Mad Max game to 100% because the car-to-car battles between points of interest made even the more mundane tasks fun just for the trip there, but the designers made the mistake of making the game much easier as you progress through it: when you have cleared enough fortresses and shanty towns, road patrols and roaming bandits become much less common, all while your car becomes more powerful as you upgrade it. So by the end of the main quest it's just too boring for me to spend considerable time on.
I very nearly gave up on Elasto Mania because some of the later levels were incredibly difficult for me. But in that case I persevered because they challenge your skill more than your tolerance for the mundane and boring.
I remember being completely stuck in Skate 2 on a mission where you just needed to reach a certain score and do a couple harder tricks in an indoor halfpipe. I could never get the tricks to land and I eventually gave up after a couple hours of attempts lol.
That and the big monkey boss in Sekiro. Parrying has never been one of my strong skills in other From Soft games and that boss kicked my shit in before I could even react.
I completely forgot about the guardian ape! I managed to defeat it by watching a lot of cheese videos on YouTube. Did you know eventually you get to fight two ape bosses at the same time? Fun! I was going to respond to this post and say one of the final bosses in Sekiro was too much for me but I didn't because I feel like I could have defeated him if I really tried. I just really did not enjoy that game and didn't see the point of putting myself through that.
I've watched many people stream first playthroughs of sekiro, and the one thing I've noticed is that the people who try to play the game like it's Dark Souls the whole way through, and don't try to master the mechanics of the game all give up at the final boss. If throughout the game you are learning what it's trying to teach you, then the final boss is certainly doable, but it challenges you on all fronts requiring you to not have cheesed earlier content.
This is what I love about Sekiro and probably why it's my fav action game of all time!
If anyone has some time to kill and likes watching the process of gradual incremental improvement, I made a montage of every boss I fought (in the order I fought them in); the refinement is real!
Yeah I ran into the double trouble right after defeating the first. Completely accidentally.
This was both a blessing and a curse because:
I somehow beat them on the first try and I attribute that only to the fact that I just beat the lone ape. I do not think I can do that again in another playthrough. I stopped to rest a bit after that one.
Sekiro is a great game but I flat out quit right after Genichiro and having to face Owl. I just couldn't put myself through another intense learning process. It's odd because, unlike you, I actually like the game (and all other FromSoft games), and I wanted to complete it, but I just mentally couldn't do it anymore.
This thread actually inspired me to fire up the game again! Since playing Sekiro I've played other games with similar gameplay like Ghosts of Tsushima and that Star Wars game. Playing those made me realize I wasn't being nearly aggressive enough with Sekiro. I'm not that far yet and I don't know if I have time to play through it all anytime soon but so far it has been a lot easier and more enjoyable. I used to really struggle with the mini-bosses and would get extremely frustrated but so far I've defeated 3 without them killing me at all. I've also been flying through the stages which might partly be because I remember them surprisingly well but also from just being more aggressive and not relying so much on stealth.
I used to spend nearly all my time playing DJ Max Portable 1 and 2, and I was pretty dang good at it. Pentavision had a (rarely used) online competitive leaderboard, of which I was a regular. However, there was one mission in Mission Mode that I just could not beat. In Mission 69 (did they do that intentionally?) the UI moves around left and right on the screen randomly, and you can only break 35 times while playing some of the toughest songs in the game. I could manage everything except the last song, Nightmare. The combination of the fast BPM, insane amount of notes, and the UI bouncing back and forth makes my eyes cross and I get instantaneously nauseous. Not to mention the hand cramping after trying it multiple times in a row. It shocks me knowing there are people who can actually do it.
DJ Max Portable 2 - HeLLord
COD Black Ops.
IIRC there was some snowy mission where you had to do a jump at a specific spot. I did get past it but it took way too many tries. Then there was some mission in a shipyard or container port and you need to follow a guy around without being detected... I just gave up after several tries. I figured that I'd just get stuck somewhere else again.
Speaking more broadly, stealth mechanics will often have me quit or just not buy a game.
The (I believe) final fight in Call of Juarez 1 or 2 (I forget). It's a box canyon where you are surrounded by what seems like an endless amount of enemies and zero cover where they are at differing levels of surrounding cliffs. I can get 6 or 7 of them before dying. I tried it so many times before giving up and moving on to the next game. I've had many of these over the years but this one stands out as the most impossible for me.
It was a game for a teenage criminal investigator group called TKKG.
You have to solve a crime in a point and click game, but me and my friend always got stuck at the same point (this was back then, when the thought to just search for the solution online never crossed our minds). There was a vicious dog chained on the stairs leading to a boathouse and he wouldn't let us through.
My friend went on vacation in the mountains in a foreign country and apparently met a german family, where the kid also played this game. According to him, you have to find a dog cake, to calm the dog down. We sadly could never find it....
Your story reminds me of the Death Stranding update that added a new car (in a game with only 3 vehicles), but locked it behind completing a racetrack with a perfect time. I spent hours trying to do it, but never even came close to the needed time. Particually frustrating when the rest of the game very rarely required any kind of speed.
The Grant ending for Jurassic Park for Sega Genesis. Just could not figure it out! Looking back, I don't know how they expected kids to decipher the correct solution algorithm, especially since you only minimally interacted with the 2d environment to begin with.
I think I've only beaten 1/6 of the Gold Box D&D games I've played despite spending quite a lot of time on them.
Maybe it's time to revisit them with guides as necessary...
I beat all of the forgotten realms gold box series except the last one (pools of darkness). They tended to be really free form in how you approached them, they just took forever and could absolutely let you walk into unwinnable situations (which was part of the fun).
I despise looting or games that make you have to break immersion so that you’re looking in nooks and crannies for stuff for side quests unlocks. Spamming “E” going room-to-room while the dialogue is stuck in a loop, “Hurry! Help me open this jammed door!”, just doesn’t make for an enjoyable experience for me.
The final boss in Shovel Knight. I tried so many times, and I couldn't keep coming back to it, only to remember the level and try and fail again. I get the point of video games, but it stopped being fun for me. I own a plague night shirt and cosplay as a person that's beaten the game and played again. I'm a big fat phoney.
Shovel Knight was the game I was thinking of too for this question.
For me, it was the Tower of Fate Entrance where I bounced. First, I was having difficulty with the screens where you ascend to the entrance on the outside -- hesitate too long on the platforms that fall after a single touch, or if the flying rodents don't quite align correctly and you fall back down to your doom. Then after getting inside I could never quite get the knack of the walls that move up and down and crush you against the static walls.
I realized I just wasn't having fun anymore, so I looked up some videos to see what was ahead and realized it only got worse. So then I just watched through to the ending and moved on.
First level of the Lilo and Stitch GBA game. I couldn't get past this claw that would come down to grab at you, with you shooting at it when it would rise back up. Years later as a teen or adult I tried again, finally got past it, and found out there was more to the level. Between that and Frogger (which I also couldn't get past the first level), I was convinced for years that I just sucked at "level games".
Meanwhile, one I actually DID overcome eventually: Salamence in the original Pokémon Ranger. The game works by drawing loops around Pokémon to catch them. If they touch the loop, attack the loop or you lift your stylus, the loop breaks and you have to start over completely. Salamence needed something like 18 loops, and it moved a LOT. Usually you could have a partner Pokémon use some assist skill, like paralyzing them or making loops double-power, but with Salamence you could only use your Plusle/Minun, and it was immune to them.
It took months for me to beat it, not helped by the fact I'd get rusty between attempts since I could only face Salamence and thus couldn't practice on others. And knowing you can only do a match you're near-guaranteed to fail is bad for morale. One day I entered a sort of zen-like state and finally captured it, and was just so damned relieved. I don't remember any other challenge from that game, but Salamence is the reason I can never replay Pokémon Ranger on a new save file. I doubt I can ever reach that zen-like state again.
The final boss level in Helltaker. It suddenly went from "Slow paced thinky puzzle game" to "High speed twitchy trap dodging" for just one level, and reaction times are not my strong suit.
Some of the early action-RPG mix games had a mechanic that ultimately led me to never completing the game. Basically, when you're able to switch between characters and the game basically forces you to switch between them, especially in battle... that mechanic drives me crazy.There's an old set of Spyro the Dragon games where he ultimately teams up with another dragon, and I was never able to finish it because of the switching. In a similar situation, I've never finished Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch because I couldn't get the "switch between characters" thing figured out.
The goddamn bats in level 2-2 and 3-2 of Ninja Gaiden. Those devs definitely know how to fuck up your cadence.
Nameless King from Dark Souls 3
I had to google "dark souls 3 hard boss" to remember the name, and it spared no time in its answer: "This list has been updated to include some more of the hardest DS3 bosses.
1 Nameless King.
..."
It's this fella: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SyFNPZN82kg
An optional boss in an area near the end of the game. I tried it a few times and I was just not doing enough damage compared to the amount of work for it to seem possible. Even after beating the game I figure it wasn't something I wanted to spend enough time on. Even Malenia from Elden Ring I managed to beat, but Nameless King I resigned to being beat by.