Truly difficult games

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Law said:
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.
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This is one of my favourite games, whenever I make a new friend or start a new job I try to get them in on it. No-one has ever played it, everyone ends up loving it. It's absolutely brutal at times.
 
Dfackt0 said:
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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My usual playstyle for these games is basically the opposite of Sekiro, a big, slow weapon with medium armor so I can tank 1-2 hits while relying on rolling for survival. But I’m probably just trash at games in general though, my initial post here was going to be “every game before the 5th console generation,” because I never beat a single video game before the late 90’s. I thought that was the universal experience before youtube and I saw how many people could actually beat Super Mario Bros. :lit:
 
Lurkerish Kandor said:
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?
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Agree, but I guess its super subjective to begin with.

There's games that are tons of trial and error, like Dwarf Fortress or Traditional Roguelikes, but could be heavily mitigated by a guide.
Stuff like Osu or Bullet Hells are tough, but not really any different than pixel perfect jumps.
Roguelikes also can be pretty tough, but that can come down to randomness.
There's also classic streamerbait that most would discount, like Getting Over It.

I guess I'd personally say Sifu was pretty tough.
 
Super Castlevanía 4 is really hard not because your jumps need to be pixel perfect but because every enemy can knock your ass off stairs and ledges. The boss rush before Dracula is also pretty difficult, unless you cheat with save states of course (I picked that one specifically because I never really played much of the NES ones).
 
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Starlancer starts off easy enough, but about midway through it becomes painfully obvious your wingmen are useless and you need to do everything. Flying from one allied ship to another to shoot down torpedoes is exhilerating the first time, but then you realize you have to do it practically every mission. This is in stark contrast to Freespace 2, which came out a couple years earlier and you could rely on your wingmen to cover objectives you couldn't get to if you ordered them to do so. I don't think I ever beat it. Probably should try again, I still have my discs.
 
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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I owned several of the early ones as a kid. Even the "easier 3D platforming" ones were fucking hell to get through. Wonder why they decided to make it so ballbustingly hard.
 
Super Meat Boy. I gave up after completing about 70% of it. You're expected to perform whole series of split-second inputs and it just stops being fun. I don't have the patience of a speedrunner to repeat the first 3 seconds of a difficult level 70 times.
 
Lurkerish Kandor said:
So what qualifies as hard, then?
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Rule of thumb is that it's "actually hard, yet fair" if you can beat it and "artificial difficulty" if you can't

The Evil Midnight Bomber said:
Super Castlevanía 4 is really hard not because your jumps need to be pixel perfect but because every enemy can knock your ass off stairs and ledges. The boss rush before Dracula is also pretty difficult, unless you cheat with save states of course (I picked that one specifically because I never really played much of the NES ones).
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Safe to say 1 and especially 3 are in fact harder

Achtung Bitter said:
The Immortal by Will Harvey.
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I like how you can die by going down a ladder incorrectly. You don't often see that kind of sadism, especially nowadays.
 
It's an interesting question, because I think "difficulty" is much different now than it was say, back in the 90s before the Internet and walkthroughs. I'm an adult, my free time is fleeting, so I have no qualms about using a walkthrough if I'm stuck on a section in a game even if I feel retarded afterward for not figuring it out after 10-15 minutes of fumbling around. Even games that are infamously difficult like Ninja Gaiden Black can be figured out with enough time and recognizing patterns of bosses which can be done by watching walkthroughs, since you can rewind, slowdown, etc. while watching and with enough practice and pattern recognition, you will beat that boss. And with games that can be emulated, there's savestates and rewinding.. Which, you can argue that's not how to "truly" beat a game, but it is an option and if I don't want to play the same goddamn stage of Super Ghouls n Ghosts fifty times to get past it, I'm using savestates.

So with all that context in mind, the only game that I can think of that is truly difficult even in 2025 to a byzantine degree, is Drowned God. I think the main reason why it's difficult at least for me, is because at its core, Drowned God is a Myst-like point-and-click adventure game, but made with the moon logic of a legit schizo.
I'm terrible at solving puzzles already, even though I do enjoy a lot of point-and-clicks. But I think even for people that like puzzles, and aren't logically challenged like I am, would have a difficult time with Drowned God. Even with following a walkthrough, the game's internal logic is really dense and takes a lot of time to unravel. There are layers upon layers of references to ancient religion, old books, X-Files conspiracies, history, and a bunch of other shit that I feel like you need a textbook just to understand what the fuck is going on half the time. I can't really say if it's a good game, but it is a fascinating game, and one that I think about a lot. It was also made by a guy that went schizo and killed his family... or might have been murdered by someone or some other entity entirely, to this day no one is really sure. And of course, sloptubers have made videos about that, but I find the game Mr. Harry Horse made much more interesting, and even more confusing. Check it out:
 
Xarpho's Return said:
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.
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On the notion of "frame perfect jumps", execution definitely counts in the context of difficulty. If a particular kind of physical sports can be relatively "harder" than another due to a barrier of physical execution then there's no reason why games can't be said to be difficult due to execution either.

Anyway my pick is Ikaruga, difficult both to master and to play normally, shmups are already difficult by normal game standards but ikaruga also combines needing good reaction time with fairly strong memorization/puzzle elements (that you can't game with walkthroughs, because the memorization also requires good execution)

 
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I didn't have any issues with base game Elden Ring Shadows Of The Erdtree was officially too hard for me.

Not in the sense that it was impossible for me to beat it because I did beat it but is so hard, and so autistic and over the top I didn't feel satisfied when I 100% it and just felt like my time was wasted.

I really really hope that's not the baseline for their next games after they finish the two live service slop games they're currently making because I probably won't enjoy them.
 
Crash Bash got ridiculously tough in the later levels. I even replayed it a few years ago thinking it was just me sucking at it as a kid but once I hit the relic challenges I sang a different tune.
 
La-Mulana 1 and La-Mulana 2, the remake of 1 makes things alot more coherent and adds some quality of life stuff but its mostly the same.

the difficulty comes from the puzzles, alot of which require alot of esoteric knowledge about ancient cultures and also the complexity of just how many puzzles there are, and its entirely up to you to have a pen and paper to write down specific puzzles because the game doesn't hold your hand in any way other than the ability in game to "copy" text from certain objects so you can read them anywhere.
the actual combat can be hard in that oldschool way too.
 
Zenos Yae Viator said:
La-Mulana 1 and La-Mulana 2, the remake of 1 makes things alot more coherent and adds some quality of life stuff but its mostly the same.

the difficulty comes from the puzzles, alot of which require alot of esoteric knowledge about ancient cultures and also the complexity of just how many puzzles there are, and its entirely up to you to have a pen and paper to write down specific puzzles because the game doesn't hold your hand in any way other than the ability in game to "copy" text from certain objects so you can read them anywhere.
the actual combat can be hard in that oldschool way too.
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For those that don't know, La-Mulana is like a Indiana Jones non-random Spelunky with unexpected puzzle elements. The games are really great and I appreciate that as a player you break out a notepad voluntarily to jot down maybe unrelated info or expand on routes in rooms. Unlike some indie pieces of shit where there's the *wink-wink* we force you to interact with tangible objects in your own personal space ~because we can manipulate you, we're the real game~.

The La-Mulana's start hard enough but then you discover the layers of it all and it becomes 8/16bit action-Myst in a way. Maybe they could be called a Mystvania.
 
Friendly Primarina said:
R/C Stunt Copter on PSX is the most difficult game I have ever played. It starts out simple enough, but coordinated flight requires a level of finesse I simply don't have. Made harder by the irritating leafnigger who shits on you for losing.
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First game that came to mind.
People (dumb people) cry about the RC Helicopter mission in GTA Vice City but that is nothing compared to the first level of R/C Stunt Copter.
Anyone know any other good R/C Helicopter simulators?

Relatedly all the GTA games on PS2 kicked my ass. There's so many tough missions and the PS2 controller doesn't help. The cargo ship sniping mission in GTA III took me weeks because of how bad aiming on the analog stick is.
 
I love difficult games, let me recommend some for you:

XCOM The Long War Mod is quite difficult but so much fucking fun. The Game without this Mod seems like a child birthday in comparison. If you are even remotely interested in Tactical Games, this is absolute peak - even to this day.

Hearts of Iron 4 The Fire Rises Mod has a high level of difficulty and it is all the better for it. Highly recommended!

Are you into Pokemon? Try Pokemon Reborn or Rejuvenation - just ignore all the Story stuff, this shit sucks. Everything else is extremely good! There are countless difficulty hacks and Fangames, you will find something for sure!

Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous is also pretty tough even on Normal difficulty. Especially if you are not familiar with the Pathfinder Ruleset or lack experience with RPGs in general.

Carrion was also a bit tough but not overly so. Still just an amazing little gem of a game.

Blasphemous is very hard but also very good and stylish. My favourite 2d-Soulslike for sure.

Fire Emblem: Conquest on Lunatic is absolutely insane but still the best Fire Emblem to date. Every win feels so sweet, careful planning is highly rewarded. Chapter 10 stands tall as the best Tactical Gameplay experience to this day. The difficulty feels like it is completely handmade and carefully crafted and not just stats cranked up to eleven. It is a very curated experience from people who understand difficulty and how to ramp it up over the course of a full game. Permadeath, limited resources including EXP, degrading weapons - Good stuff!

The OG Phoenix Wright Trilogy is another kind of difficulty. Mechanics are easy but some cases will test your intelligence and logical thinking to the extreme. It is mental difficulty and not mechanical. Amazing stuff!

Crimsonland is so oldschool even oldschool shit seems new in comparison. It is a simple Bullet Hell game, where you kill thousands of insects. It is very good, very underground and very tough.

Sunless Sea and Sunless Skies are also quite difficult but more in a narrative sense than a mechanical. You will suffer and die a lot, being under constant pressure. But the Atmosphere and sense of exploration is second to none. VERY highly recommended.

Football Manager, if you can look past the Excel Graphics is very tough and unapologetic. Building a good tactic, growing a club, signing players, not getting broke and so much more to juggle. Not many games out there that reward knowledge as much as this one. But you need to be highly autistic to enjoy it.

Rimworld on 500% Threat Scale will fuck your ass without lube and won't even buy you a dinner afterwards.

Lobotomy Corporation is tough, quirky and fun as hell but it can become very frustrating if you die late into the game and need to start over. It can also become a bit repetetive after some time. Still very fun and unique. Good OST, too

Shadows of Forbidden Gods is such an underground, janky game - it lives so far underground even Mole People seem like heavenly creatures in comparison. You play an evil god and try to corrupt the Hero Party and the whole world in many different ways. It is sooooo good but sooo rough around the edges, i can't really recommend it without a big warning. If you like games like this you will absolutely love it. If not it will be like pulling teeth. You need to be able to immerse yourself into the whole world and setting. But the mechanics run pretty deep, are complex and the difficulty is unforgiving. You need to earn your win, that is for sure.

That are all games i can think of at the moment that aren't already very well known like Elden Ring or Hollow Knight.
 
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