Truly difficult games

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Xarpho's Return

Xarpho's Return

has sort of lost it
True & Honest Fan
kiwifarms.net
Joined
Sep 29, 2022
I was screwing around with Super Mario Bros. DX and realized how much more difficult it was with the Game Boy's smaller screen.

It got me thinking--what are some TRULY DIFFICULT games? By "hard" I don't mean "enemies are bullet sponges" or "frame perfect jumps" or even "extremely difficult puzzle games" (those can be defeated with a walkthrough) but truly difficult games, stuff you can't just use a walkthrough with or are just made to stretch out a game's content.

Do they exist, though? Most "hard" games are covered under those three categories (or just RNG).
 
Neptune's Pride.
It's not difficult cause of rng or bullet-sponge enemies. It's difficult cause it's an online play-by-mail real time boardgame that takes a week to play and focuses on negotiation and diplomacy between real people.
 
Silksong? Havn't even played it but all the complaints and negative reviews seem to be from difficulty.
 
Xarpho's Return said:
By "hard" I don't mean "enemies are bullet sponges" or "frame perfect jumps" or even "extremely difficult puzzle games" (those can be defeated with a walkthrough) but truly difficult games
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To me this comes off as an oxymoron.
If difficulty isn't the mechanics of the game being very complex, punishing, and requiring intense practice, then what's difficulty?

I could say Metroid X-Fusion is "really fucking hard", but that comes down to platforming that's extremely precise, enemies that do fucktons of damage to you (like multiple health bars per hit), and the creator purposefully obscuring how to move forward.

But then you might say "that's not 'hard', that's just cranking up damage numbers, designing jumps around the limits of what's possible in engine physics and input timing, and intentional dickish map-design".

So what qualifies as hard, then?
 
I guess bullet hells. You can memorise some of the patterns, but you need a steady hand and quick reaction times to actually beat any of the games at the hardest difficulties. Mushihimesama as an example. Despite the game being less than half an hour long, you are only allowed to take around 5–7 hits before you game-over.
 
I predict this thread devolving into a pissing match about how easy every single game is, so nerds can posture about the most important thing in life: being good at video games.
 
Hardest game I can remember from my childhood was a segment in Jak II where you were stuck in some slum town over some water with very tight pathways that you have to fight an endless wave of cops until you make it to the main town to escape them. There were no check points, and dying didn't restore your ammo so it only got harder if you fucked it up.
 
Hearts of Iron 4.

A game that I have never beat was a NES game called Karnov. I don't know if it's because I suck or the game is actually hard.
 
Fucking Rayman. Not that hard to get through until you get to the last level and realise you need to backtrack through the whole game and play every level pretty much perfectly to get all the little pink things. And if you run out of lives you have to start the whole game again.
 
Sekiro is actually pretty hard, even as someone who has beaten dark souls 1-3 I still haven't managed to beat it. You actually have to learn how to use the mechanics and get better at the game or you simply can't progress. It's fair, but tough.
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Womble of Wimbledon said:
Fucking Rayman. Not that hard to get through until you get to the last level and realise you need to backtrack through the whole game and play every level pretty much perfectly to get all the little pink things. And if you run out of lives you have to start the whole game again.
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Speaking of Rayman, Rayman Origins had some ball-bustingly difficult timed stages. Several of the same levels appeared in Rayman Legends a couple years later, but with the difficulty dramatically reduced.
 
Jason_Cruiser said:
I guess bullet hells. You can memorise some of the patterns, but you need a steady hand and quick reaction times to actually beat any of the games at the hardest difficulties. Mushihimesama as an example. Despite the game being less than half an hour long, you are only allowed to take around 5–7 hits before you game-over.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=bf0xkLOlQqw:1425
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most CAVE games fall under this, it took people 12 years to 1cc the true final boss of Saidaiojou
 
Shadow Empires. It's an autistic strategy game about war on a postapocalyptic world. The manual has a 15 page section on logistics that you'll actually want to read because without understanding that system your armies [or entire civilization] will potentially starve to death.
 
147573952589676412927 said:
Sekiro is actually pretty hard, even as someone who has beaten dark souls 1-3 I still haven't managed to beat it. You actually have to learn how to use the mechanics and get better at the game or you simply can't progress. It's fair, but tough.
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Seconded, the combat feels so nice and I’ve completed most other major souls-likes, but as someone who sucks at things like parry timing this is my white whale. Similarly I really struggle with Lies of P.
 
bango skank said:
Seconded, the combat feels so nice and I’ve completed most other major souls-likes, but as someone who sucks at things like parry timing this is my white whale. Similarly I really struggle with Lies of P.
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devils advocate over here, i have less than 100 hours and I completed the Mortal Journey Boss rush challenge last year, it was difficult but it took me <15 tries, but that may just be an intuition about sword fighting thing
Sekiros weird and its difficulty varies heavily from person to person
 
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