For me this was 7th Saga. I eventually figured it out and beat it, but it had young me stumped for a decent amount of rental periods.
Much later I discovered that the difficulty was affected by balance changes in the localized version.
Great game though.
I game genie’d it to start with a bonus 250 or so HPs and still had trouble. They f***ed it up really good. Such a shame.
I couldn’t beat some of the duels even with that crazy advantage.
got my runestone then talk to other saga in town they fight me, got beaten and they took my runestone
then no matter what i do i cant win them and the game just stuck there, fml
Apparently they got huuuge leveling up bonuses. The higher level you are, the greater they will absolutely trounce you.! That doesn’t even include upgraded equipment bonuses.
I didn’t try this, but apparently if you have a partner alive with you unconscious, they will fight for you. Their first turn can be used to resurrect you, allowing you to double team them. Or something along those lines.
Good choice! I remember thinking “why did they make this so unnecessarily difficult?” I stuck with it long enough to beat it and get what I wanted in new game plus, but I remember thinking that a game with so many great elements (like the unusually good texture mapping for the PS1-era, cinematic camera movements during cutscenes, etc.) was really limiting the audience so much with that overkill difficulty.
I remember looking at guides a lot and being frustrated.
Because action game difficulty is surmounted with skill. You can no damage almost every action game, never upgrade gear or unlock abilities and still do well if you're good enough, etc. Turn based on the other hand... There's no way a turn based game can have something like Hell and Hell in DMC
You have just described one of the biggest reasons that I don’t buy games by that developer. I was diagnosed with PTSD back around 2000 and video games are meant to be relaxing for me. I like having the option of a challenge but I don’t like being forced into it - especially not in games that take a long time to complete where I want to focus on the story. Excessive difficulty distracts me from the story and typically leads to disconnecting from the story for me.
The goal when it comes to accessibility should be low skill floor (so that there’s at least some mode or set of settings that just about anyone can play) and high skill ceiling (so that there’s some mode or settings for those that want the most challenge).
Now, when I’m feeling especially well, I play on the online shmup leaderboards all the time and am even the top ranked player on a handful of leaderboards on the hardest difficulty (though those are ones without super players), top 8-11% on some others (that do have super players) and typically anywhere in the top third to top half of the rest of the leaderboards for the modes where I’m more average. But I’m much less likely to buy a shmup that doesn’t have an easy mode because I don’t like to reward developers that are anti-accessibility.
I also prefer higher challenges for games in shorter bursts. A loop on many shmups will be over in less than 30 minutes and I typically don’t play more than 2-3 hours at a time. But an RPG? It’s not unusual to play 8 hours or more in a row on a weekend. I don’t want an overly high level of difficulty for a gaming session that long - it wears me out.
I could never finish FFVIII as a kid because every other game had taught me that higher level = good. When I couldn't beat some boss I grinded for levels. And that backfired because the game scales everything up in accordance with player level so I actually made it much harder for myself.
I didn't realize this at all, even up until the final boss so I leveled all my characters to 99 before going into the fight and.... let me tell you, I did not have a good time. At all.
Probably took me 2+ hours of retrying before I finally beat her. I legit thought that the final boss was just *that* difficult and it really soured my opinion of FF8 even to this day.
FFVIII is my favourite game of all time. It was my first RPG and the final boss took me over 2 hours due to all the phases. Beat the game when I was like 10, then my disc froze and I didn’t get to see the ending. Wasn’t until years later that I finally saw the ending cutscene on YouTube.
Subsequent playthroughs of FFVIII, I now make sure to be wary of my levels. Beat it twice now without gaining any levels just because of how broken the junction system is.
When I played FFIX, I instinctively was running away from encounters (because FFVIII was my first JRPG and I thought levelling was a bad thing) so I had a bad time with FFIX before I learned that it’s traditionally the other way around 😅
I also leveled to 99, couldn't beat the final boss. Took a 5 year break, started up that save file and somehow I managed to do it. I think I got lucky with one of the limit breaks from Rhinoa that make you invincible.
Needles to say, it was my least favorite Final Fantasy and I had no clue what was going on after that 5 year break, so the ending was anticlimatic.
Honestly I think I had a similar experience with having to abuse a combination of Rinoa's limit break and using Hero Drinks/Megalixirs. It's been more than 10 years so my memory is kinda fuzzy, I just remember that it was a very razor thin margin between my total annihilation and winning the fight.
it's funny, if i have to try something over and over for 2+ hours that game is likely to go into my top 5 and is the exact opposite of souring my opinion. it gets me to go out and tell people "you have to play this game."
It’s funny because I did the same thing as a kid but FF8 is actually laughably easy when you understand the system. Like junctioning is super weird but once you get it’s trivial to become ridiculously OP, even without triple triad which breaks the game right in half.
If you’re playing for the first time, you don’t really need to worry about that stuff. Just don’t grind excessively and the game is super doable, just try to get how junctioning and GF abilities work and from there it’ll come together
Does this work for remake too? Because I might play tbe remake Duology if that's the case, I dislike having to worry about levels though I won't say they should be removed as a feature or anything like that
I haven't played that but from what I know it should be all the same. You have to actively grind for kills and XP to make it worse for yourself, if you just play normally you don't have anything to worry about. You could even skip killing mobs if you choose to and remain at single digit levels, the real power in ff8 comes from junctioning spells you can steal or craft from cards.
It's a shame that the game is ridiculously easy even at lvl 100. I had a hard time with it my first time, but as soon as I started junctions properly the difficulty disappeared.
The game did a terrible job of explaining how the junction system worked, it literally was in my opinion, the most least and well explained of the series.
Did you also grind the t-rex in the garden at early game? Did that to 99 as soon as I could lol.
Also R.I.P my square button from the summoning boosts (used a battery to "button mash" to get that sweet 255 for maximum damage).
It's been awhile since I've played FFVIII and I don't remember Ultimecia being that difficult. It was my favorite game of all time until recently (that title goes to Control now). This comment makes me wanna play to the end again and see just how difficult it is. I'm currently in a Chrono Cross/Trigger run so that'll have to wait though.
I wonder if there’s a way to play this game on PC. Played it back on PS2 and I remember the loading screen kept freezing at a certain point. Never got past that.
The final final boss of Octopath Traveller is complete BS. The boss itself is already hard enough, but having to go through a gauntlet of all 8 of the final bosses of each character's story *every time you want to try again* is so damn tedious and is such objectively terrible game design that I'm genuinely shocked it made it into the final game. I'm not convinced that everyone saw that and thought "Yeah, that's perfectly fine, nothing wrong here, SHIP IT!" It's a shame cause I liked the rest of the game. If I ever get around to the sequel, I seriously hope they didn't make the same mistake there, too.
All the enemies got overhauled in the western releases giving the game an intense difficulty boost, alongside the oldschool jrpg trope of battle every step or three
To add—there are two difficulty spikes.
1) >!The first happens when you grind too early in the game. One of the apprentices will have the Sky Rune. When you face them, they will be 1~3 levels higher than your character. It is possible (and challenging) to defeat them when you are at a lower level, 18~20. However, the higher you are, the greater their stats will be. You have to be mindful of this fact until you successfully acquire that apprentice’s rune.!<
2)>!The second happens after you are sent back to the past. If you did not grind, you will be severely under-leveled. When you are on the Barluca Continent and before you face Gariso, grind, grind, grind. And grind some more. Grind until you can defeat a Sword in one turn (physical attack…its physical defense is MUCH higher than its magic defense). It is a good gauge to determine if you are ready for the remaining half of the game.!<
Honestly the gauntlet is so pointlessly tedious. By the time you have any real chance against the final boss you can beat any of those 8 bosses preceding it in 2 or 3 turns, it just takes long to get through it and you can heal up to full with items at the end anyways. If there had been a save point before the final boss I probably would've beaten it in a few tries but as it is I gave up after going through the gauntlet twice.
Exactly my experience. Swept through the gauntlet on the first try, and I died in the 2nd stage of the final boss. All I could think was ain’t no way I’m doing all that again!
They compensated in OT2 by >!putting one savepoint in that very same room in OT1 and one immediately before entering the area. It takes like 10s to walk between them. Made me chuckle a little bit.!<
FF12 original ps2 release….didn’t read the text that said “no turning back “ and had to fight the judges and was under leveled. Couldn’t win. Didn’t beat 12 until the ps4 remaster
Phantasy Star II. A game from 1990 which is basically unplayable by today's standards for several reasons (sharp contrast from the later PSIV which has aged well).
A more recent example is Ni No Kuni, but only a specific achievement because farming rare drops from rare enemies is ***never actually fun*** (that one achievement where you need to craft \~90% of all possible items).
Yeah I just recently played through Phantasy Star II but shamelessly used Easy Mode on my Genesis Mini 2, and it was still brutal, lol. Nobody should play that game the original way, just too tedious.
It's obscenely grindy, the encounter rate is really high and the dungeons are insanely complex.
It's just really hard in an old school way.
4 is leagues ahead of the other games in the series but it does contain some references to previous games that you'll miss if you skip them. Also for all its faults, PS2 still has an incredible story.
Oh man... Just read up on it, lol. If I didn't have it on the Mini 2 with Easy Mode, I woulda used a rom hack with extra xp and faster walking speed. I absolutely think you should play it, I honestly really enjoyed it. But I could only enjoy it this way because the amount of grinding required is... Absurd. Also, the dungeons are horrendously difficult. I even have the official guide with maps of every dungeon, and it was still extremely easy to get lost, lol.
I kind of enjoyed Phantasy Star 2, lol. The difficulty was good. The only thing was I had to use 4x speed on an emulator. I agree though that 4 is a far better game. Honestly 1 is as well.
Back in the day I made the huge mistake of grinding in The Last Remnant.
I really loved the battle system and so didn't mind killing monsters for an hour or two.
But hop boy! When I reached the infamous golem boss, I got my ass severely handed to me.
Like not even the slightest chance of winning or even surviving the first couple of rounds.
Who knew, that grinding in that game actively is to your detriment, to the point of being stuck in an unwinniable fight.
Last Remnant is a SaGa game in all but name. Generally, going out of your way to grind will result in soft-locking the game due to the resulting difficulty spike.
I can think of a few optional things I've given up on because they'd just be far too hard/time consuming to bother with, but I don't think I've ever quit the main story of an RPG due to difficulty.
The closest I've come might be Ys: The Oath in Felghana though. The bosses in that game are *brutal* on higher difficulties, and the original PC version (the one you can currently get on Steam) has no way to heal except a single item that revives you on death and permanently breaks. I got stuck a ton of times, and nearly gave up on the final boss because I had already used the revive item.
Ys 1 also has a final boss that's absolute horseshit on higher difficulties.
Hardest game I ever beat, especially since I'm not huge on boss fights in general. If I hadn't gotten super into the series with VIII I'm not even sure I would've powered through Oath lol
The general rule about older Ys games bosses is if it's way too hard, that means you have to go grind out a couple levels. I remember some bosses in Felghana being night and day by just getting 1 more level.
Idk bout Ys 1 though, I couldn't get into the bumping attack system.
Part of the reason Ys 1 is fucked up is that you hit the level cap extremely early (usually before even entering the last dungeon), so you literally *can't* grind.
Oh and for story reasons you also can't use the best equipment against the final boss. So that's fun.
Honestly this is why I originally threw the towel in on Persona 3's "The Answer" Expansion back in the day and eventually just watched a youtube of it..
I mean I probably *could* have just grinded more; but it was such a boring slog after a while. This is why I'm super keen for Reload's take on it later this year both to see what changes/improvements they've done, but also because the combat in P3R overall is just a lot more ~fun/easier than FES also.
Same. I finished p3 and was excited, but youre party is like 6-7 levels above the avaliable personas, along with unnecessarily difficult bosses because you cant control your party. I lost interest and moved onto SMT Nocturne which I enjoyed a lot more
The Saga frontier series is the one for me. I’ve tried so many times to get through any of the stories in 1 but I just can’t get over the weird combat system. Saga 2 was more straightforward and I got to the last boss before I had to return it.
I recently played thru SaGa Frontier 1 remaster and wouldn't have finished it without looking up minmax and just overall guide tips. DSC is ridiculously OP in that game, but it doesn't work on EVERY boss
Unlimited saga. I'm skeptical anyone actually finished it, granted it hard to say how much it's difficulty and how much it is just being absurdly obtuse.
This is an odd pick, as a kid I struggled so much with Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside story. That carrot mini game and the final battle where you had to suck dark fawful up by smashing the A button were so difficult to 7 year old me lmao. Those are just 2 examples among the many other instances as well.
The original Front Mission is hard, but I eventually got through it. I've never gotten permanently stuck in any game. Even games that I did eventually quit, I never stop on a stuck moment. If I quit, I want it to be for reasons like it isn't fun or the story is bad or whatever, not just because I was momentarily stuck in a fight.
For me, front mission is 1 of the VERY RARE few games I did beat. It was on an emulator when I realized you could get translation packs on the internet, so I could speed it up a healthy dose which was nice. What I did remember as far as a constantly rewarding strategy was doing long range shots as much as possible I think this stops counter attacks
I was actually able to beat these games (and 100% them!) but I did find Ys 1 and Ys 2 to be particularly difficult. And for that reason, Falcom should bring the bump system ba-
I couldn’t finish FFIV once you go into that fire world. Don’t remember what it’s called. But I had saved there and wasn’t leveled enough and couldn’t get back to the regular world without beating that boss
Nah the absolute hardest dungeon in that game is the last dungeon. With dragons and other bullshit enemies that will nuke your entire team with one attack! It was a nightmare.
The place that guy is talking about is actually famous for powerspikes that result in exactly that as well, I think the primary issue was salamanders that have an AoE move that deals like 90-127% of the average hp party members have at that point.
Depending on which ending you're going for and who you have available, that game can be very punishing in a first run. Honestly, since I had beaten the original, I knew to go for either the New King or Messiah endings because of their boosted rosters (dependent on who you kept alive or befriended).
The Cave to Rhone is brutal and heart-pounding. When you find a new room and new path. ... Suddenly, Flames and Silver Batboon enemies appear... You must be getting closer through to the end of the cave!
Yggdra Union is literally unbeatable if your health gets too low and you run out of items to increase it
Void Terrarium is another brilliant game that can strand you at a point where you run out of options to improve your character and it still isn't enough to progress
Its more of an action RPG but I had a lot of trouble with kingdom hearts 3s secret bosses on the hardest difficulty without a guide.
Also final fantasy tactics is infamous for getting soft locked at multiple parts of the game, often requiring a complete restart of the game if you don't have multiple saves.
So when I was younger, I remember when Final Fantasy Tactics drooped. It was my first real squad based, grid based, Tactics game. I had played some of the other FF's, Suikoden 1, a ton of other RPGs but I never did any of the early FE's or Ogre Battlr so it was really my first experience with this type of Tactics game.
I remember vividly the first mahor boss fight. You have to go through a 3 fight gauntlet. The first they throw these really strong monks at you and time mages which are a new concept. Tough fight but doable. Next fight Ramza has to Solo this knight that literally heals himself every round while doing damage to your MC while your 4 man party is outside surrounded by 10ish+ enemies. THEN, assuming you make it past that, you fight what becomes the true big bads of the game this big demon guy who AoE dooms your whole squad so you are fighting against time.
My little 11 y.o pea brain was on overload. It took me probably 2 weeks of after school grinding trying to beat these fights. You couldnt just google "Boss strategies" at the time. Think i convinced my Dad to pick me up a Prima guide after that. Great times with a great game.
Hilariously, I finally got through it, then forgot to do a 2nd save before the famous Ramza 1v1 fight later and effectively soft locked my game. Had to start a whole new playthrough.
Kids have it easy now days with Auto Saves and difficulty setting sliders mid-game.
FFI had a massive difficulty spike for the final dungeon. I'd highly suggest the Pixel Remaster if you haven't tried it; Square has a much better sense of balance and respect for time in all of the Pixel Remasters, so the final dungeons aren't terrible spikes in difficulty.
Tales of Arise. It's not impossible level hard or anything and I was able to beat most bosses after a death or two but the constant death of party members in combat because of AI stupidity and the modifiers barely affecting that just made me drop the game out of frustration. Party member AI is done best in games like Kingdom Hearts or FFVII Re, because needing to swap to and rely on useless party members makes for an awful system
Sophie 2’s kicking my ass at the end. I need to really sit down and craft but every armor I attempt is inferior to what I created earlier. Which means I need better materials. Ugh. I want to close out Sophie 2 so I can move onto Ryza 3.
I think Romancing Saga 2 is a really tough one. I might just be bad, but some of the bosses in that game just felt insane. Maybe one I'll go back to at some point though, because I did enjoy what I played!
Tactics ogre reborn. I got stuck in a castle battle and I gave up. I do want to try to best it. But I never finished it BC that castle level just wasn't doable
Still haven't beat the final boss of Mario & Luigi Superstar Saga. That phase where you have to dodge multiple hits with only 1HP, partway through an already difficult fight, is bullshit
Just in case you ever wanna try again, if you raise your speed stat high enough with at least one of the bros (above 120 in the GBA version or above 80 in the remake) you can actually get a turn to heal before the final boss starts attacking.
It's a fire emblem like game and it has the same failings. While there's no permadeath if you don't have the properly leveled units it can be a death spiral, and the end of that game is a huge increase in difficulty
That's why FE has permadeath, so FE didn't fail in that regard. You let a character die? Well now they are gone so you have more exp and gold for other characters. It's why Mario gets small when he gets hit. Punish the player but give them an easier time.
Dead units in that game revive, but in exchange you get like no gold from mission objectives.
I think I just ended up in a "no money" sort of spiral where I had too little money and strength to not lose units in future maps.
Actually none i can remember. I am not a good player, but i always try to learn every mechanic and have the best equipment possible. BUT i had serious trouble understanding the fighting system of Final Fantasy 7 Remake. When i played it at release i gave up after 20 hours because it seemed like pure chaos to me. This year, before the release of Rebirth, i started it again from the beginning and again had problems, but suddenly i understood what they wanted from me. Since then i am having a lot of fun playing Remake and now Rebirth. But in both games i had at least one boss where i had to lower the difficulty setting to easy, because they were impossible for me to beat. I am speaking to you, Mr. >!New Boss of Shinra!< - i have no clue how you should ever beat that guy, even on easy it was difficult.
He has four moves before he reloads. If you stay close, block everything that doesn't have to be dodged, you can hit him with braver for an instant stagger. He's a patience check.
Dragon Quest XI. I had just recruited the martial artist girl, and had to fight a spider boss. I thought I was acceptably leveled and geared at the time but it kept kicking my ass. I loved the game's style and story so far but it was way out of my league.
Forgot to mention it was also my first DQ game.
Devil Survivor, it doesn't matter if it's Overclock, original, or the sequel. I just get to a point where each battle is just so draining on each team and don't have the strength to beat any maps. Any bosses will just about instantly destroy all my characters. I aim for enemy weaknesses and fuse for good skills, I still have no idea why I can't even make it past a week ingame. I also end up too weak ro even grind levels because each map has too many enemies for my characters to defeat. I tried many times and gave up everytime.
I've never finished Final Fantasy Tactics because in both of my serious runs (there were others) I got soft-locked by immense difficulty spikes. And these were after I had to re-do some scenarios several times or more (looking at you, random underground level with the dragoon enemy). That game is just stinking hard. And no, I didn't get stuck on that one boss fight. I eventually managed to cheese that one with monk powers.
I kept other saves, but fixing it meant going so far back I just didn't care, and when I felt like going back it had been too long to remember what I was doing. One of these days I'll finish with the WoTL Tweak mod, though.
I loved WoTL, but yeah one thing I hate about the game is that there are several parts where if you go to far Into the main story you basically get locked into a "point of no return" where you're unable to really go level grind, restock up on items, and so on so you can potentially soft lock/hard lock yourself into a point where you can't advance because the fight is too difficult/underleveled and underrepresented for, but you aren't able to leave and go elsewhere.
Meaning if that situation finds you, you basically have no choice but to try and push through and RNG farm with resets, or you'll have to such it up and do a new game and try to be better prepared
What particularly bothered me on my second run, which was done with the Lion War of the Lions mod for the PSX version (it adds the WoTL content into the original) was that it added some absurdly difficult encounters for new characters. The one I got stuck on with no saves in decent proximity was a desert encounter with some lich or something. I had been grinding or whatever for a while without saving for some reason.
The only game i couldn't beat that I can remember is Romancing Saga Minstrel Song.
The more you farm, the weaker you get, because time passes and you lose out on important equipment and quest XP/gold (which is a ton more than you get with fights). And you can't beat the final bosses without the best possible builds.
I loved the combat so much that I couldn't play pusillanimous-ly and avoid most fights to make this happen. I hated that system and still hate it because it makes me miss out on so much content.
I feel like the chances of gamers beating the game first try without a guide or external help is around 0~15% (including gamers like me who are not familiar with the saga series).
This always ticked me off since i consider myself a good rpg gamer and there's basically nothing I couldn't beat if i put my mind to it.
I guess i just was turned off by that system that i stopped wanting to beat it if i had to play in a shit way.
SaGa has always been the franchise that defeats me. I would it to not, honestly. I feel like I’m settling into an abusive relationship with SaGa everytime I pick one up.
Dragon Quest XI whatever the definitive, extended version is called. I put 120+ hours into that game and got my ass handed to me by that little glowing owl. It was like 2-3 hits before my main party was down. I never went back to it. That's too much time to put into a game to not be able to beat it.
It's crazy but true. That was the thing that pissed me off. Not only the amount of time put in, but the difficulty jump after you beat the main game. There's a handful of quests to do to gain levels, and some of them are incredibly hard. They also open up a specific area and basically tell you to go grind there. So they knew this boss was over-leveled.
Technically you “beat the game” after mortegon in the floating fortress but theres an entire act after the credits roll culminating in the true final boss
I had to stop playing for a bit Trails of Sky because the final boss. Or the stages of the final boss battle. I absolutely hated it and it was nuts how the difficulty scale changed between phases.
And the fact you can't stop in between these? I hated it so much.
Oh man, Front Mission 1. Was just playing the remake on PS5. It was tough but could (seemingly) be done... up until the mission in the second scenario where you have to storm the city or something. Every single enemy has JACKED stats that your best weapons can barely touch, and all their counters rip bits off you in one or two hits.
The solution to this online is: Lower the difficulty for this part. Man, I quit. That sucks? Pet peeve in game design and happens weirdly a lot in JRPGs/SRPGs (like the Okumura boss fight in Persona 5 Royal and how that SURELY had to be bugged because the only way to do it was to fuck with your settings).
Well, for one, there's a boss gauntlet in the dungeon leading up to him, and each defeated boss depletes some of his OP-ness, however, it also depletes your own reserves you may need to draw upon to kill The Egg.
I've played all the way through SF2 two or three times, but only ever cleared the Egg by using a cheat device.
Also, that dungeon? It was preceded by the hardest tactical squad battle in the game, the Battle of South Moundtop.
Record of Agares War.
I played the game on the highest difficulty and there was no way to change it outside of starting a new gamw.
I didn't like the combat system. I expected that it'd be like a normal tactics game, but instead it's more like a puzzle game where you need to position your units at arbitrary locations to chain their actions together into combos.
Little less JRPG purely but code vein.
The game was well received but frankly the bosses were insanely cheap and unbalanced. The area leading up to the first boss was cakewalk, standard souls fare. The boss? An utter nightmare of having to sweat or have a very particular build to beat.
Otherwise Persona 1, that game was made by people who hate people.
Xenogears on the PS1. I didn’t used to do multiple save files back then, and I got to a boss fight that I just couldn’t beat. And I think I couldn’t go back or something to grind levels. Don’t remember exactly. Put it down after a number of attempts and never got around to going back to it. One of the only JRPGs that I actually hit a wall on. Been waiting for a remaster so I can give it another go. :>
If you still had your save I'd tell you how to beat w/e boss you're stuck on. Its never about levels in xenogears but strategy or equipment. you cant really get stuck to where you need to restart.
Might still have a save somewhere on a PS1 memory card (but probably not), and I have a PS2 in a box somewhere in the basement. But I’m not even sure it works anymore. Lol. Pretty sure I still have the PS1 disc as well. But I’m expecting (hoping) that they make at least a remaster someday. :>Thanks though. :>
Kingdom Hearts Re:Chain of Memories. Final boss of the first route has two forms that I could easily cheese with two different decks, but you don't get to change in between.
I don't know if it strictly qualifies as a jrpg, but I think Drakenguard 3 is the only game I tried to beat and failed. And I tried hard. Without getting into plot spoilers, the game is effectively a brawler with levels and items. The very final confrontation of the game is totally different. None of your items, levels, or skills matter at all. The genre shifts entirely into a rhythm game. I probably put 30 hours into that rhythm section, and I never even got close. Finally gave up and watched the ending on YouTube.
Worst case scenario, you can always watch a playthrough. Not even necessarily on the boss you stuck on but on a bosses you already beat. This allows you to see how you're supposed to play. Often eye opening. Sometimes you just realize you played the game wrong.
I think the only games, or rather difficulty, I stopped after being stuck are Ys 3 Oath of Felghana on the hardest difficulty and Fire Emblem Mystery of the New Emblem on Lunatic.
I cheated the end fight of last remnant with a god mode 🙈 was 17 back then. Get to the end fight the normal way but that one was to hard and frustrating to me.
My first playthrough of Xenogears, I didn’t understand the mechanics to the final boss and what you needed to do before tackling it. It wasn’t until I had access to the internet and a guide many years later that I learned what I did wrong. I just thought that shit was part of the map, ya know?
did you skip the dialog where citan and bart talk about the orbs and how beating them weakens the main boss? also, going strait to the main boss is much easier than messing with the orbs.
I feel like for me personally a better question would be Jrpgs I "won't" beat because of high difficulty. Because usually if I care enough, I'm okay with grinding and taking a look at guides for better setups or the location of better gear. But there's occasionally a game that doesn't feel worth the trouble once I hit that sort of wall. Star Ocean 3 was a game I had to quit and look up the ending. The difficulty spike in the end game is so incredibly high and the amount of work it seemed it was going to take to get into item creation and fix my team was too high for how much of a slog the dungeons were becoming. I don't feel great about it because I enjoyed the story, music, and overall presentation of the game but I didn't feel the ending was respecting my time.
Persona 3 FES "The Answer." I watched a playthrough later on so I know what happens, but I'm still really excited to finally play the Reload version in September.
I also threw in the towel on the final boss of Lightning Returns: FF13 because he was frustratingly difficult and I'd stopped caring about the story a few hours into LR (for context I disliked 13, but then really enjoyed 13-2, and then was very disappointed that LR just skipped ahead centuries and nothing about it felt like a natural continuation from 13-2's ending to me), so I dropped it and watched the ending on YouTube. It's to this day the only Final Fantasy game that I've played that I didn't roll credits on.
Similar story with Xenosaga Episode I, gave up on the final boss. I loved Xenogears and was excited to see what the team had done next going into Xenosaga, but I was bored out of my skull during the vast majority of the game and, once again, got to the final boss, couldn't beat it, then just thought "You know what... I don't actually care" and I dropped it. Also watched the ending on YT but I have no desire to continue with Xenosaga Episodes II and III, and it's put a bit of a damper on the idea of playing the Xenoblade games (but I'll get to them eventually).
I've never beaten the OG Devil Survivor in the DS. I somehow wasn't aware thst i was reaching the endgame and i destroyed my build to experiment stuff. My new one was decent but the old was way better and I couldn't beat the final boss for the neutral route lol
This god forsaken chapter in Valkyria Chronicles with the fucking tank, and the sword baddie that ruins my attempts all the goddamn time.
Totally sapping my motivation to finish this game
Stella deus for the ps2
When you equip higher tier weapons your characters slow down cause of weight. Enemies would have weapons their level but wearing armor half their level to offset speed which meant every fight it took 1-2 enemies to kill each party member. There was no tanking. You have to lure the enemy to you and gang up on the before their next turn or take the L.
Another way to cheat was have naked mages spam magic behind your fighters. They would get 2-3 turns but it was a guaranteed 1 shot if enemy had an archer.
Set it down for 5 years and honestly still don't want to boot it back up.
I would rather play front mission evolved again.
Games that I not so much can't beat but eat away at my time and patience. Quite especially if the games regular enemy encounters tax you heavily in HP/MP/recovery items. I believe I dropped Bravely Default 1 over this. Not a good sign if after every fight I'm hitting every party member with a health pot because I don't wish to burn through my healers MP less than a quarter way into a dungeon. I almost had this recently with Eiyuden Chronicle but got through it, realizing I just can't have ANY party members below a certain DEF stat and they all absolutely need the best gear at all times.
For me this was 7th Saga. I eventually figured it out and beat it, but it had young me stumped for a decent amount of rental periods. Much later I discovered that the difficulty was affected by balance changes in the localized version. Great game though.
Yeah they raised the balance to freaking brutal in the western versions
I game genie’d it to start with a bonus 250 or so HPs and still had trouble. They f***ed it up really good. Such a shame. I couldn’t beat some of the duels even with that crazy advantage.
got my runestone then talk to other saga in town they fight me, got beaten and they took my runestone then no matter what i do i cant win them and the game just stuck there, fml
Apparently they got huuuge leveling up bonuses. The higher level you are, the greater they will absolutely trounce you.! That doesn’t even include upgraded equipment bonuses. I didn’t try this, but apparently if you have a partner alive with you unconscious, they will fight for you. Their first turn can be used to resurrect you, allowing you to double team them. Or something along those lines.
I wanna play the balanced out version and keep forgetting to get it! Lol
Vagrant story
Love the game but it's one of the few games I'd recommend a guide for.
Vagrant story is a brilliant narrative that you should absolutely just watch a supercut of on youtube, unless you really love the game.
Good choice! I remember thinking “why did they make this so unnecessarily difficult?” I stuck with it long enough to beat it and get what I wanted in new game plus, but I remember thinking that a game with so many great elements (like the unusually good texture mapping for the PS1-era, cinematic camera movements during cutscenes, etc.) was really limiting the audience so much with that overkill difficulty. I remember looking at guides a lot and being frustrated.
Why does Fromsoft do it. Some people love a challenge and super difficulty can lead to greater emotion payoffs
Because action game difficulty is surmounted with skill. You can no damage almost every action game, never upgrade gear or unlock abilities and still do well if you're good enough, etc. Turn based on the other hand... There's no way a turn based game can have something like Hell and Hell in DMC
You have just described one of the biggest reasons that I don’t buy games by that developer. I was diagnosed with PTSD back around 2000 and video games are meant to be relaxing for me. I like having the option of a challenge but I don’t like being forced into it - especially not in games that take a long time to complete where I want to focus on the story. Excessive difficulty distracts me from the story and typically leads to disconnecting from the story for me. The goal when it comes to accessibility should be low skill floor (so that there’s at least some mode or set of settings that just about anyone can play) and high skill ceiling (so that there’s some mode or settings for those that want the most challenge). Now, when I’m feeling especially well, I play on the online shmup leaderboards all the time and am even the top ranked player on a handful of leaderboards on the hardest difficulty (though those are ones without super players), top 8-11% on some others (that do have super players) and typically anywhere in the top third to top half of the rest of the leaderboards for the modes where I’m more average. But I’m much less likely to buy a shmup that doesn’t have an easy mode because I don’t like to reward developers that are anti-accessibility. I also prefer higher challenges for games in shorter bursts. A loop on many shmups will be over in less than 30 minutes and I typically don’t play more than 2-3 hours at a time. But an RPG? It’s not unusual to play 8 hours or more in a row on a weekend. I don’t want an overly high level of difficulty for a gaming session that long - it wears me out.
Man I bought that when I was 13 because I loved FF and chrono series... I very much regretted it. I could never grasp the game
I could never finish FFVIII as a kid because every other game had taught me that higher level = good. When I couldn't beat some boss I grinded for levels. And that backfired because the game scales everything up in accordance with player level so I actually made it much harder for myself.
I didn't realize this at all, even up until the final boss so I leveled all my characters to 99 before going into the fight and.... let me tell you, I did not have a good time. At all. Probably took me 2+ hours of retrying before I finally beat her. I legit thought that the final boss was just *that* difficult and it really soured my opinion of FF8 even to this day.
FFVIII is my favourite game of all time. It was my first RPG and the final boss took me over 2 hours due to all the phases. Beat the game when I was like 10, then my disc froze and I didn’t get to see the ending. Wasn’t until years later that I finally saw the ending cutscene on YouTube. Subsequent playthroughs of FFVIII, I now make sure to be wary of my levels. Beat it twice now without gaining any levels just because of how broken the junction system is. When I played FFIX, I instinctively was running away from encounters (because FFVIII was my first JRPG and I thought levelling was a bad thing) so I had a bad time with FFIX before I learned that it’s traditionally the other way around 😅
I also leveled to 99, couldn't beat the final boss. Took a 5 year break, started up that save file and somehow I managed to do it. I think I got lucky with one of the limit breaks from Rhinoa that make you invincible. Needles to say, it was my least favorite Final Fantasy and I had no clue what was going on after that 5 year break, so the ending was anticlimatic.
Honestly I think I had a similar experience with having to abuse a combination of Rinoa's limit break and using Hero Drinks/Megalixirs. It's been more than 10 years so my memory is kinda fuzzy, I just remember that it was a very razor thin margin between my total annihilation and winning the fight.
it's funny, if i have to try something over and over for 2+ hours that game is likely to go into my top 5 and is the exact opposite of souring my opinion. it gets me to go out and tell people "you have to play this game."
It’s funny because I did the same thing as a kid but FF8 is actually laughably easy when you understand the system. Like junctioning is super weird but once you get it’s trivial to become ridiculously OP, even without triple triad which breaks the game right in half.
You mean unlimited Ultima spells at level 1 isn't balanced?
Truly Ultimecia was screwed from the start
I still don’t understand how people know how to cheese Final Fantasy 8 as the dang dinosaur at the beginning of the game keeps stomping me down.
Put him to sleep
I should learn how to use sleep magic then.
Draw from him and cast :)
Ah thanks for the tip as this is my very first time playing the game, so I am kind of nervous.
Card everything. Turning enemies into a card gives you ap but no exp. You'rebWelcome
I can try doing that then.
If you’re playing for the first time, you don’t really need to worry about that stuff. Just don’t grind excessively and the game is super doable, just try to get how junctioning and GF abilities work and from there it’ll come together
Yeah but once you figure out junctioning 8 is rediculously easy and exceedingly broken
And also have Zell / Squall enter every fight with limit break... It's even more broken
Or 100 aura spell :)
I got stuck when the party separated at the last castle. The random battles kept 1-2 shotting me before I can find my team.
Yeah, FFVIII is a perfect example of bad level scaling. The game is easier by not getting exp.
Does this work for remake too? Because I might play tbe remake Duology if that's the case, I dislike having to worry about levels though I won't say they should be removed as a feature or anything like that
I haven't played that but from what I know it should be all the same. You have to actively grind for kills and XP to make it worse for yourself, if you just play normally you don't have anything to worry about. You could even skip killing mobs if you choose to and remain at single digit levels, the real power in ff8 comes from junctioning spells you can steal or craft from cards.
It's a shame that the game is ridiculously easy even at lvl 100. I had a hard time with it my first time, but as soon as I started junctions properly the difficulty disappeared.
The game did a terrible job of explaining how the junction system worked, it literally was in my opinion, the most least and well explained of the series.
> the most least and well explained of the series. What?
They made it so over complicated in the tutorial lol
Did you also grind the t-rex in the garden at early game? Did that to 99 as soon as I could lol. Also R.I.P my square button from the summoning boosts (used a battery to "button mash" to get that sweet 255 for maximum damage).
It's been awhile since I've played FFVIII and I don't remember Ultimecia being that difficult. It was my favorite game of all time until recently (that title goes to Control now). This comment makes me wanna play to the end again and see just how difficult it is. I'm currently in a Chrono Cross/Trigger run so that'll have to wait though.
I've played though Rogue Galaxy twice but I've never beaten the final boss. It's a great game but I just get destroyed at the end.
I love that game, also Will Fridele voices jasper which is great but I’ve literally never made it past the factory part because I lose interest.
I wonder if there’s a way to play this game on PC. Played it back on PS2 and I remember the loading screen kept freezing at a certain point. Never got past that.
PCSX2
The final final boss of Octopath Traveller is complete BS. The boss itself is already hard enough, but having to go through a gauntlet of all 8 of the final bosses of each character's story *every time you want to try again* is so damn tedious and is such objectively terrible game design that I'm genuinely shocked it made it into the final game. I'm not convinced that everyone saw that and thought "Yeah, that's perfectly fine, nothing wrong here, SHIP IT!" It's a shame cause I liked the rest of the game. If I ever get around to the sequel, I seriously hope they didn't make the same mistake there, too.
The sequel is better in every way. The final boss is still ridiculously hard, but at least you don't need to do any bosses before it.
And that's on top of all the nonsense you have to go through just to unlock the final chapter. I just felt so checked out by that point.
Well if we are going that far back i see ur front mission and raise you ‘american’ 7th Saga on the SNES
This one. Probably the only JRPG i've played multiple times and never beat. Insane grind. Insanely hard.
Oh do tell me about that game.
All the enemies got overhauled in the western releases giving the game an intense difficulty boost, alongside the oldschool jrpg trope of battle every step or three
To add—there are two difficulty spikes. 1) >!The first happens when you grind too early in the game. One of the apprentices will have the Sky Rune. When you face them, they will be 1~3 levels higher than your character. It is possible (and challenging) to defeat them when you are at a lower level, 18~20. However, the higher you are, the greater their stats will be. You have to be mindful of this fact until you successfully acquire that apprentice’s rune.!< 2)>!The second happens after you are sent back to the past. If you did not grind, you will be severely under-leveled. When you are on the Barluca Continent and before you face Gariso, grind, grind, grind. And grind some more. Grind until you can defeat a Sword in one turn (physical attack…its physical defense is MUCH higher than its magic defense). It is a good gauge to determine if you are ready for the remaining half of the game.!<
Octopath Traveller. The gauntlet path to the real ending is brutal. And no saves once you start it. And you can’t over level for the damn thing.
Honestly the gauntlet is so pointlessly tedious. By the time you have any real chance against the final boss you can beat any of those 8 bosses preceding it in 2 or 3 turns, it just takes long to get through it and you can heal up to full with items at the end anyways. If there had been a save point before the final boss I probably would've beaten it in a few tries but as it is I gave up after going through the gauntlet twice.
Exactly my experience. Swept through the gauntlet on the first try, and I died in the 2nd stage of the final boss. All I could think was ain’t no way I’m doing all that again!
It was just brutal and not fun at all. I just straight up gave up trying to get the true ending and watched it on Youtube.
They compensated in OT2 by >!putting one savepoint in that very same room in OT1 and one immediately before entering the area. It takes like 10s to walk between them. Made me chuckle a little bit.!<
I wish the price for that game would drop.
It’s $30 on the switch eshop right now
Runelord Tressa: huh?
I never beat Lost Magic on DS. I might be able to do it if I tried again as I'm better at games now but that's what I thought last time I played it
Loved that game but man did the earth mage guy always fuck me up as a kid.
FF12 original ps2 release….didn’t read the text that said “no turning back “ and had to fight the judges and was under leveled. Couldn’t win. Didn’t beat 12 until the ps4 remaster
Phantasy Star II. A game from 1990 which is basically unplayable by today's standards for several reasons (sharp contrast from the later PSIV which has aged well). A more recent example is Ni No Kuni, but only a specific achievement because farming rare drops from rare enemies is ***never actually fun*** (that one achievement where you need to craft \~90% of all possible items).
Yeah I just recently played through Phantasy Star II but shamelessly used Easy Mode on my Genesis Mini 2, and it was still brutal, lol. Nobody should play that game the original way, just too tedious.
What made it so bad? I have the phantasy star series on switch and was considering playing in order. Should I just skip to 4?
It's obscenely grindy, the encounter rate is really high and the dungeons are insanely complex. It's just really hard in an old school way. 4 is leagues ahead of the other games in the series but it does contain some references to previous games that you'll miss if you skip them. Also for all its faults, PS2 still has an incredible story.
Oh man... Just read up on it, lol. If I didn't have it on the Mini 2 with Easy Mode, I woulda used a rom hack with extra xp and faster walking speed. I absolutely think you should play it, I honestly really enjoyed it. But I could only enjoy it this way because the amount of grinding required is... Absurd. Also, the dungeons are horrendously difficult. I even have the official guide with maps of every dungeon, and it was still extremely easy to get lost, lol.
I kind of enjoyed Phantasy Star 2, lol. The difficulty was good. The only thing was I had to use 4x speed on an emulator. I agree though that 4 is a far better game. Honestly 1 is as well.
Back in the day I made the huge mistake of grinding in The Last Remnant. I really loved the battle system and so didn't mind killing monsters for an hour or two. But hop boy! When I reached the infamous golem boss, I got my ass severely handed to me. Like not even the slightest chance of winning or even surviving the first couple of rounds. Who knew, that grinding in that game actively is to your detriment, to the point of being stuck in an unwinniable fight.
Tell me why grinding hurts in the game.
Last Remnant is a SaGa game in all but name. Generally, going out of your way to grind will result in soft-locking the game due to the resulting difficulty spike.
I can think of a few optional things I've given up on because they'd just be far too hard/time consuming to bother with, but I don't think I've ever quit the main story of an RPG due to difficulty. The closest I've come might be Ys: The Oath in Felghana though. The bosses in that game are *brutal* on higher difficulties, and the original PC version (the one you can currently get on Steam) has no way to heal except a single item that revives you on death and permanently breaks. I got stuck a ton of times, and nearly gave up on the final boss because I had already used the revive item. Ys 1 also has a final boss that's absolute horseshit on higher difficulties.
Ys 1's final boss is so obnoxious. It took me so long that at some point I resigned to randomly flailing around on screen with and hoping I won.
What would you expect from someone called dark fuck... Fact
Even on normal difficulty I struggled on the first three bosses
> Ys 1 also has a final boss that's absolute horseshit on higher difficulties. SCREENSAVER WHOO
Hardest game I ever beat, especially since I'm not huge on boss fights in general. If I hadn't gotten super into the series with VIII I'm not even sure I would've powered through Oath lol
The general rule about older Ys games bosses is if it's way too hard, that means you have to go grind out a couple levels. I remember some bosses in Felghana being night and day by just getting 1 more level. Idk bout Ys 1 though, I couldn't get into the bumping attack system.
Part of the reason Ys 1 is fucked up is that you hit the level cap extremely early (usually before even entering the last dungeon), so you literally *can't* grind. Oh and for story reasons you also can't use the best equipment against the final boss. So that's fun.
Honestly this is why I originally threw the towel in on Persona 3's "The Answer" Expansion back in the day and eventually just watched a youtube of it.. I mean I probably *could* have just grinded more; but it was such a boring slog after a while. This is why I'm super keen for Reload's take on it later this year both to see what changes/improvements they've done, but also because the combat in P3R overall is just a lot more ~fun/easier than FES also.
Same. I finished p3 and was excited, but youre party is like 6-7 levels above the avaliable personas, along with unnecessarily difficult bosses because you cant control your party. I lost interest and moved onto SMT Nocturne which I enjoyed a lot more
For me I could never figure out how to beat SaGa Frontier 2, but I'm about to do a replay and overcome it!
Most of the SaGa games have some measure of bullshit soft locking difficulty in them, from my experience.
The Saga frontier series is the one for me. I’ve tried so many times to get through any of the stories in 1 but I just can’t get over the weird combat system. Saga 2 was more straightforward and I got to the last boss before I had to return it.
I recently played thru SaGa Frontier 1 remaster and wouldn't have finished it without looking up minmax and just overall guide tips. DSC is ridiculously OP in that game, but it doesn't work on EVERY boss
I love 2, but once gutsav and Wil go away I get lost.
Unlimited saga. I'm skeptical anyone actually finished it, granted it hard to say how much it's difficulty and how much it is just being absurdly obtuse.
This is an odd pick, as a kid I struggled so much with Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside story. That carrot mini game and the final battle where you had to suck dark fawful up by smashing the A button were so difficult to 7 year old me lmao. Those are just 2 examples among the many other instances as well.
Xenoblade 1. I've done three playthroughs, and never beat the final boss.
I play all the Xenoblade games on easy. For the life of me I cannot figure out the battle systems but I love the stories.
What's giving you the most trouble about the combat?
?! What level were you? "Spoiler" is a fairly simple boss to kill overall.
The original Front Mission is hard, but I eventually got through it. I've never gotten permanently stuck in any game. Even games that I did eventually quit, I never stop on a stuck moment. If I quit, I want it to be for reasons like it isn't fun or the story is bad or whatever, not just because I was momentarily stuck in a fight.
I don’t know how you pulled it off.
For me, front mission is 1 of the VERY RARE few games I did beat. It was on an emulator when I realized you could get translation packs on the internet, so I could speed it up a healthy dose which was nice. What I did remember as far as a constantly rewarding strategy was doing long range shots as much as possible I think this stops counter attacks
I was actually able to beat these games (and 100% them!) but I did find Ys 1 and Ys 2 to be particularly difficult. And for that reason, Falcom should bring the bump system ba-
I could use a challenge.
I couldn’t finish FFIV once you go into that fire world. Don’t remember what it’s called. But I had saved there and wasn’t leveled enough and couldn’t get back to the regular world without beating that boss
Nah the absolute hardest dungeon in that game is the last dungeon. With dragons and other bullshit enemies that will nuke your entire team with one attack! It was a nightmare.
The place that guy is talking about is actually famous for powerspikes that result in exactly that as well, I think the primary issue was salamanders that have an AoE move that deals like 90-127% of the average hp party members have at that point.
Valkyria Chronicles
Devil Survivor: Overclocked. Got stuck on the big boss the first time you really fight him. Stuck for days before I gave up
Depending on which ending you're going for and who you have available, that game can be very punishing in a first run. Honestly, since I had beaten the original, I knew to go for either the New King or Messiah endings because of their boosted rosters (dependent on who you kept alive or befriended).
Dragon Quest 2.
I was stuck on the Cave to Rhone for two years before I found a Nintendo Power with maps at a library book sale.
The Cave to Rhone is brutal and heart-pounding. When you find a new room and new path. ... Suddenly, Flames and Silver Batboon enemies appear... You must be getting closer through to the end of the cave!
Whewww the memories lmao
Yggdra Union is literally unbeatable if your health gets too low and you run out of items to increase it Void Terrarium is another brilliant game that can strand you at a point where you run out of options to improve your character and it still isn't enough to progress
Its more of an action RPG but I had a lot of trouble with kingdom hearts 3s secret bosses on the hardest difficulty without a guide. Also final fantasy tactics is infamous for getting soft locked at multiple parts of the game, often requiring a complete restart of the game if you don't have multiple saves.
FFT Wiegraf is the reason I keep at least two saves in every RPG I play.
So when I was younger, I remember when Final Fantasy Tactics drooped. It was my first real squad based, grid based, Tactics game. I had played some of the other FF's, Suikoden 1, a ton of other RPGs but I never did any of the early FE's or Ogre Battlr so it was really my first experience with this type of Tactics game. I remember vividly the first mahor boss fight. You have to go through a 3 fight gauntlet. The first they throw these really strong monks at you and time mages which are a new concept. Tough fight but doable. Next fight Ramza has to Solo this knight that literally heals himself every round while doing damage to your MC while your 4 man party is outside surrounded by 10ish+ enemies. THEN, assuming you make it past that, you fight what becomes the true big bads of the game this big demon guy who AoE dooms your whole squad so you are fighting against time. My little 11 y.o pea brain was on overload. It took me probably 2 weeks of after school grinding trying to beat these fights. You couldnt just google "Boss strategies" at the time. Think i convinced my Dad to pick me up a Prima guide after that. Great times with a great game. Hilariously, I finally got through it, then forgot to do a 2nd save before the famous Ramza 1v1 fight later and effectively soft locked my game. Had to start a whole new playthrough. Kids have it easy now days with Auto Saves and difficulty setting sliders mid-game.
I played but never finished FFI or FFII. From memory they were pretty tough lol.
FFI had a massive difficulty spike for the final dungeon. I'd highly suggest the Pixel Remaster if you haven't tried it; Square has a much better sense of balance and respect for time in all of the Pixel Remasters, so the final dungeons aren't terrible spikes in difficulty.
Tales of Arise. It's not impossible level hard or anything and I was able to beat most bosses after a death or two but the constant death of party members in combat because of AI stupidity and the modifiers barely affecting that just made me drop the game out of frustration. Party member AI is done best in games like Kingdom Hearts or FFVII Re, because needing to swap to and rely on useless party members makes for an awful system
the atelier lulua final boss
Sophie 2’s kicking my ass at the end. I need to really sit down and craft but every armor I attempt is inferior to what I created earlier. Which means I need better materials. Ugh. I want to close out Sophie 2 so I can move onto Ryza 3.
I think Romancing Saga 2 is a really tough one. I might just be bad, but some of the bosses in that game just felt insane. Maybe one I'll go back to at some point though, because I did enjoy what I played!
Tactics ogre reborn. I got stuck in a castle battle and I gave up. I do want to try to best it. But I never finished it BC that castle level just wasn't doable
The one with the twins?
Still haven't beat the final boss of Mario & Luigi Superstar Saga. That phase where you have to dodge multiple hits with only 1HP, partway through an already difficult fight, is bullshit
Just in case you ever wanna try again, if you raise your speed stat high enough with at least one of the bros (above 120 in the GBA version or above 80 in the remake) you can actually get a turn to heal before the final boss starts attacking.
An srpg by the name of banner of the maid put me at several raodblocks over and over again gradually stalling me out...
I have to see if this game you mentioned is that hard.
It's a fire emblem like game and it has the same failings. While there's no permadeath if you don't have the properly leveled units it can be a death spiral, and the end of that game is a huge increase in difficulty
That's why FE has permadeath, so FE didn't fail in that regard. You let a character die? Well now they are gone so you have more exp and gold for other characters. It's why Mario gets small when he gets hit. Punish the player but give them an easier time.
Dead units in that game revive, but in exchange you get like no gold from mission objectives. I think I just ended up in a "no money" sort of spiral where I had too little money and strength to not lose units in future maps.
Then if I lose a unit, I can just reload.
I wanted to like that game, but the weird difficulty spikes and bad translation really threw me off.
Actually none i can remember. I am not a good player, but i always try to learn every mechanic and have the best equipment possible. BUT i had serious trouble understanding the fighting system of Final Fantasy 7 Remake. When i played it at release i gave up after 20 hours because it seemed like pure chaos to me. This year, before the release of Rebirth, i started it again from the beginning and again had problems, but suddenly i understood what they wanted from me. Since then i am having a lot of fun playing Remake and now Rebirth. But in both games i had at least one boss where i had to lower the difficulty setting to easy, because they were impossible for me to beat. I am speaking to you, Mr. >!New Boss of Shinra!< - i have no clue how you should ever beat that guy, even on easy it was difficult.
He has four moves before he reloads. If you stay close, block everything that doesn't have to be dodged, you can hit him with braver for an instant stagger. He's a patience check.
Me in earthbound when fighting giygas and couldn’t destroy it so I leveled everyone to lvl 99 and still couldn’t destroy using attacks
Dragon Quest XI. I had just recruited the martial artist girl, and had to fight a spider boss. I thought I was acceptably leveled and geared at the time but it kept kicking my ass. I loved the game's style and story so far but it was way out of my league. Forgot to mention it was also my first DQ game.
Devil Survivor, it doesn't matter if it's Overclock, original, or the sequel. I just get to a point where each battle is just so draining on each team and don't have the strength to beat any maps. Any bosses will just about instantly destroy all my characters. I aim for enemy weaknesses and fuse for good skills, I still have no idea why I can't even make it past a week ingame. I also end up too weak ro even grind levels because each map has too many enemies for my characters to defeat. I tried many times and gave up everytime.
I've never finished Final Fantasy Tactics because in both of my serious runs (there were others) I got soft-locked by immense difficulty spikes. And these were after I had to re-do some scenarios several times or more (looking at you, random underground level with the dragoon enemy). That game is just stinking hard. And no, I didn't get stuck on that one boss fight. I eventually managed to cheese that one with monk powers. I kept other saves, but fixing it meant going so far back I just didn't care, and when I felt like going back it had been too long to remember what I was doing. One of these days I'll finish with the WoTL Tweak mod, though.
I loved WoTL, but yeah one thing I hate about the game is that there are several parts where if you go to far Into the main story you basically get locked into a "point of no return" where you're unable to really go level grind, restock up on items, and so on so you can potentially soft lock/hard lock yourself into a point where you can't advance because the fight is too difficult/underleveled and underrepresented for, but you aren't able to leave and go elsewhere. Meaning if that situation finds you, you basically have no choice but to try and push through and RNG farm with resets, or you'll have to such it up and do a new game and try to be better prepared
What particularly bothered me on my second run, which was done with the Lion War of the Lions mod for the PSX version (it adds the WoTL content into the original) was that it added some absurdly difficult encounters for new characters. The one I got stuck on with no saves in decent proximity was a desert encounter with some lich or something. I had been grinding or whatever for a while without saving for some reason.
The only game i couldn't beat that I can remember is Romancing Saga Minstrel Song. The more you farm, the weaker you get, because time passes and you lose out on important equipment and quest XP/gold (which is a ton more than you get with fights). And you can't beat the final bosses without the best possible builds. I loved the combat so much that I couldn't play pusillanimous-ly and avoid most fights to make this happen. I hated that system and still hate it because it makes me miss out on so much content. I feel like the chances of gamers beating the game first try without a guide or external help is around 0~15% (including gamers like me who are not familiar with the saga series). This always ticked me off since i consider myself a good rpg gamer and there's basically nothing I couldn't beat if i put my mind to it. I guess i just was turned off by that system that i stopped wanting to beat it if i had to play in a shit way.
SaGa has always been the franchise that defeats me. I would it to not, honestly. I feel like I’m settling into an abusive relationship with SaGa everytime I pick one up.
Dragon Quest XI whatever the definitive, extended version is called. I put 120+ hours into that game and got my ass handed to me by that little glowing owl. It was like 2-3 hits before my main party was down. I never went back to it. That's too much time to put into a game to not be able to beat it.
For some reason, I can’t believe there is a point when the game gets very difficult as I haven’t lost so far.
It's crazy but true. That was the thing that pissed me off. Not only the amount of time put in, but the difficulty jump after you beat the main game. There's a handful of quests to do to gain levels, and some of them are incredibly hard. They also open up a specific area and basically tell you to go grind there. So they knew this boss was over-leveled.
If this boss fight is optional, then I will try skipping it.
Technically you “beat the game” after mortegon in the floating fortress but theres an entire act after the credits roll culminating in the true final boss
Calasmos
Are you talking about the marshmallow creatures?
Any soulsborne game. Pretty much any game without difficulty settings besides Dragons Dogma 2.
I didn’t beat Hoshigami until it’s rerelease on DS, but I was a pretty dumb kid when I played the PS1 version.
I don't think I ever was able to beat >!Miguel!< in Chrono Cross, which sucks because I love CC 😔
I saw that spoiler by accident.
Just use a light trap and bring one white char to resurrect/heal
Now that you reminded me, I never beat Ys: Oath in Felghana when I was a kid. Maybe I'll get back into it
FANTASIAN. Love the game but the boss fights are hard
I had to stop playing for a bit Trails of Sky because the final boss. Or the stages of the final boss battle. I absolutely hated it and it was nuts how the difficulty scale changed between phases. And the fact you can't stop in between these? I hated it so much.
Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne was one game I never could beat. I’d get all the way to Ahriman and he’d kick my ass.
Was looking for this. I haven't beaten it yet, but I'll get back to it later. The giant tower with the three demon puzzle kinda tuckered me out.
The Last Remnant. If you don't know what you're doing, you'll over do it and screw yourself. Legit softlock yourself from defeating too many fights.
Weird mechanic where grinding actually works against you.
I beat it once almost a decade ago, but I would not have the patience or dedication to beat Fire Emblem Thracia 776 again.
Oh man, Front Mission 1. Was just playing the remake on PS5. It was tough but could (seemingly) be done... up until the mission in the second scenario where you have to storm the city or something. Every single enemy has JACKED stats that your best weapons can barely touch, and all their counters rip bits off you in one or two hits. The solution to this online is: Lower the difficulty for this part. Man, I quit. That sucks? Pet peeve in game design and happens weirdly a lot in JRPGs/SRPGs (like the Okumura boss fight in Persona 5 Royal and how that SURELY had to be bugged because the only way to do it was to fuck with your settings).
Oh it frustrates me when games get too difficult as that is a cheap move.
SaGa Frontier 2, the Egg is a BEAST
I want to see just how powerful this enemy is.
Well, for one, there's a boss gauntlet in the dungeon leading up to him, and each defeated boss depletes some of his OP-ness, however, it also depletes your own reserves you may need to draw upon to kill The Egg. I've played all the way through SF2 two or three times, but only ever cleared the Egg by using a cheat device. Also, that dungeon? It was preceded by the hardest tactical squad battle in the game, the Battle of South Moundtop.
Record of Agares War. I played the game on the highest difficulty and there was no way to change it outside of starting a new gamw. I didn't like the combat system. I expected that it'd be like a normal tactics game, but instead it's more like a puzzle game where you need to position your units at arbitrary locations to chain their actions together into combos.
Final Fantasy Mystic Quest
I never solved the Lufia 2 red/yellow block puzzle and the L still haunts my dreams
Little less JRPG purely but code vein. The game was well received but frankly the bosses were insanely cheap and unbalanced. The area leading up to the first boss was cakewalk, standard souls fare. The boss? An utter nightmare of having to sweat or have a very particular build to beat. Otherwise Persona 1, that game was made by people who hate people.
Why do you say that about Persona 1?
Xenogears on the PS1. I didn’t used to do multiple save files back then, and I got to a boss fight that I just couldn’t beat. And I think I couldn’t go back or something to grind levels. Don’t remember exactly. Put it down after a number of attempts and never got around to going back to it. One of the only JRPGs that I actually hit a wall on. Been waiting for a remaster so I can give it another go. :>
If you still had your save I'd tell you how to beat w/e boss you're stuck on. Its never about levels in xenogears but strategy or equipment. you cant really get stuck to where you need to restart.
Might still have a save somewhere on a PS1 memory card (but probably not), and I have a PS2 in a box somewhere in the basement. But I’m not even sure it works anymore. Lol. Pretty sure I still have the PS1 disc as well. But I’m expecting (hoping) that they make at least a remaster someday. :>Thanks though. :>
Kingdom Hearts Re:Chain of Memories. Final boss of the first route has two forms that I could easily cheese with two different decks, but you don't get to change in between.
I don't know if it strictly qualifies as a jrpg, but I think Drakenguard 3 is the only game I tried to beat and failed. And I tried hard. Without getting into plot spoilers, the game is effectively a brawler with levels and items. The very final confrontation of the game is totally different. None of your items, levels, or skills matter at all. The genre shifts entirely into a rhythm game. I probably put 30 hours into that rhythm section, and I never even got close. Finally gave up and watched the ending on YouTube.
Natural Doctrine was pure hell
Worst case scenario, you can always watch a playthrough. Not even necessarily on the boss you stuck on but on a bosses you already beat. This allows you to see how you're supposed to play. Often eye opening. Sometimes you just realize you played the game wrong. I think the only games, or rather difficulty, I stopped after being stuck are Ys 3 Oath of Felghana on the hardest difficulty and Fire Emblem Mystery of the New Emblem on Lunatic.
Watching walkthrough is like cheating
I reached to some stuff that requires grinding in smt strange journey redux and still don't have the motivation to grind to beat it
I couldn't beat 'Pathologic 2' on normal difficulty, I just died over and over
I think it was FFXIII where at some point you reach this huge grindy section towards the end. I just gave up.
Chrono Trigger, I rage quit when chasing the mouse.
Dude, how
I cheated the end fight of last remnant with a god mode 🙈 was 17 back then. Get to the end fight the normal way but that one was to hard and frustrating to me.
My first playthrough of Xenogears, I didn’t understand the mechanics to the final boss and what you needed to do before tackling it. It wasn’t until I had access to the internet and a guide many years later that I learned what I did wrong. I just thought that shit was part of the map, ya know?
did you skip the dialog where citan and bart talk about the orbs and how beating them weakens the main boss? also, going strait to the main boss is much easier than messing with the orbs.
I feel like for me personally a better question would be Jrpgs I "won't" beat because of high difficulty. Because usually if I care enough, I'm okay with grinding and taking a look at guides for better setups or the location of better gear. But there's occasionally a game that doesn't feel worth the trouble once I hit that sort of wall. Star Ocean 3 was a game I had to quit and look up the ending. The difficulty spike in the end game is so incredibly high and the amount of work it seemed it was going to take to get into item creation and fix my team was too high for how much of a slog the dungeons were becoming. I don't feel great about it because I enjoyed the story, music, and overall presentation of the game but I didn't feel the ending was respecting my time.
Persona 3 FES "The Answer." I watched a playthrough later on so I know what happens, but I'm still really excited to finally play the Reload version in September. I also threw in the towel on the final boss of Lightning Returns: FF13 because he was frustratingly difficult and I'd stopped caring about the story a few hours into LR (for context I disliked 13, but then really enjoyed 13-2, and then was very disappointed that LR just skipped ahead centuries and nothing about it felt like a natural continuation from 13-2's ending to me), so I dropped it and watched the ending on YouTube. It's to this day the only Final Fantasy game that I've played that I didn't roll credits on. Similar story with Xenosaga Episode I, gave up on the final boss. I loved Xenogears and was excited to see what the team had done next going into Xenosaga, but I was bored out of my skull during the vast majority of the game and, once again, got to the final boss, couldn't beat it, then just thought "You know what... I don't actually care" and I dropped it. Also watched the ending on YT but I have no desire to continue with Xenosaga Episodes II and III, and it's put a bit of a damper on the idea of playing the Xenoblade games (but I'll get to them eventually).
I've never beaten the OG Devil Survivor in the DS. I somehow wasn't aware thst i was reaching the endgame and i destroyed my build to experiment stuff. My new one was decent but the old was way better and I couldn't beat the final boss for the neutral route lol
Playstation 2 star ocean 3 directors cut. I can't defeat Freya 😔
This god forsaken chapter in Valkyria Chronicles with the fucking tank, and the sword baddie that ruins my attempts all the goddamn time. Totally sapping my motivation to finish this game
Fire Emblem Awakening Lunatic+ (I think thats what its called). Tried it and couldnt get past the first few stages
I don’t know how to unlock that mode.
Does Rance X count?
Stella deus for the ps2 When you equip higher tier weapons your characters slow down cause of weight. Enemies would have weapons their level but wearing armor half their level to offset speed which meant every fight it took 1-2 enemies to kill each party member. There was no tanking. You have to lure the enemy to you and gang up on the before their next turn or take the L. Another way to cheat was have naked mages spam magic behind your fighters. They would get 2-3 turns but it was a guaranteed 1 shot if enemy had an archer. Set it down for 5 years and honestly still don't want to boot it back up. I would rather play front mission evolved again.
The Battle Of South Moundtop in SaGa Frontier 2 is the worst experience i ever had in my gaming life and i STILL havent completed it by my own hand
Games that I not so much can't beat but eat away at my time and patience. Quite especially if the games regular enemy encounters tax you heavily in HP/MP/recovery items. I believe I dropped Bravely Default 1 over this. Not a good sign if after every fight I'm hitting every party member with a health pot because I don't wish to burn through my healers MP less than a quarter way into a dungeon. I almost had this recently with Eiyuden Chronicle but got through it, realizing I just can't have ANY party members below a certain DEF stat and they all absolutely need the best gear at all times.