Hardest. Level. Ever.
 

Okay, you all know you've played one. A level (or entire game) that is so infuriating, so broken, so repetitive, so irritating, so SOMETHING that you swear off ever playing that level again. Let's hear everyone's gaming horror stories.

Mine is in Lego Star Wars 2, the Hoth level. I've already written this in chat, so I'll just repaste it here since I don't think I could outdo myself.

HAY GUYS LETS MAKE A HOTH LEVEL, IT'S NOT LIKE 50,000 GAMES HAVE DONE THIS ALREADY! NOT TO MENTION LET'S MAKE IT THE HARDEST LEVEL IN ANY GAME FUCKING EVER! Fuck, it's not enough that this level makes no goddamn sense compared to the movie, but the controls on the speeder are completely backwards, the bombs you have to drag to blow shit up are too easily destroyed, there are TOO MANY FUCKING ENEMIES so you die a shitfuckload, and the ending area where you have to kill a bunch of different groups of enemies is fucking IRRITATING because the camera sucks balls. :aargh: :aargh:

I'd probably have to go all the back to games like Ninja Gaiden 1 or Battletoads for the NES. Ninja Gaiden specifically during Stage 6, because dying during any of the three final bosses meant ALL the back to the beginning of the level from 6-3 to 6-1 again.

Battletoads was just brutal as hell once you got about halfway in no matter what. Unless you were ready to be dragged out kicking and screaming or you had a partner with you, that was pretty much off limits.

Oh shit, and I can't forget Athena. Oh Athena, how I loathe thee. A game in and of itself so fucking ridiculous that if you took ONE WRONG PATH in any stage, you could end up being sent all the way back to the BEGINNING OF THE GAME. Not to mention getting through the later stages was hard as hell. But from the ashes of that came my love of using Athena Asamiya in King of Fighters, so I can't argue too much. SNK FTW.

Deadly Towers.

Did anyone ever figure out what the fuck you're supposed to do in that game?

(PS, moo, you're a wuss for hating on the Hoth level.)

Eternal Engine from Sonic Adventure 2. Swore off the game for over a year because of the marriage of some of the worst level design and some of the cheapest hits I've ever dealt with. I can't tell you how much fun it is to lose your last life right before reaching the goal of a stupidly long stage because a homing missile from off-screen made you let go off the crane handle. The emerald levels were boring, yeah, but Eternal Engine is the closest I've ever come to making a frisbee out of a CD.

Special mention goes to Alundra, which I hated for making me feel stupid. One time I became angry enough that I bit my memory card in revenge. That's right. Such is the power of this game's effect on my blood pressure.

You think Mo0 would have some god damn skill at a game, complaining about LEGO STAR WARS.

Fuck you. You want hard? Ninja Gaiden is hard. NES TMNT was hard. The second half of Trauma Center for the DS is hard. I don't think anyone has ever beaten Hoshigami: Ruining Blue Earth.

LEGO STAR WARS. What the hell.

Okay, fine. When I think of something I've done that is harder (which I will be able to eventually), I'll edit it into my original post.

Guts Man's level in Megaman 1. Fuck. That may well have been the first time I swore, even as a small child. Of course, I swore at it again when I played it on the Anniversary Collection, and then again on Megaman Powered Up.

Goddamn dropping platforms.

Yo, right here.

And I hate every fucking minute of it. God that game was horrid.

LIES.

I call shenanigans. Unless you're an idiot, you would have given up on that game half way through. Either that or h4x.

I feel dumb with this one, but the one level that drove me the most nuts out of any game was the freakin' Labyrinth Zone on the first Sonic the Hedgehog game. I never could beat Robotnik on that level. LAME. *sigh*

I can't think of a single game I've played that was harder than either Ghosts 'n' Goblins or Super Ghouls 'n' Ghosts. Both are among the hardest games ever made, especially when you consider we were playing them back in the day where if you died, you didn't get to go back to a save point or use a password (and I played these pre-emulator). No, you started back from the freaking BEGINNING. And of course, the beginning even had those little red fucks who would just swoop down and kill you.

Nope. A friend of mine and myself set out to beat that piece of shit one summer, and we damn well did it. I did Hoshigami, and he sat through all of Final Fantasy VIII. I think I got the better end of the deal. Nowhere in Hoshigami are they all from the same fucking orphanage.

Hoshigami isn't that hard. The problem with the game really is that melee weapons are almost entirely useless. They pretty much force you to rely on that gay coin based magic system to do reliable damage and it's really sucky. I managed to plow through the game relatively easy once I caved in and did it 'the right way'. Was it worth it? No, probably not. It really was a terrible game.

Hardest level ever eh? For me it's a boss. Alma from Ninja Gaiden: Black. I would get my ass whooped from all of her throwing pillar pieces at me. I have a few other hard ones that pissed me off greatly but none of them compare to Alma.

Some others that have fallen short of the anger levels that Alma has made me reach is the Harrier on MGS 2 on Extreme, MGS1 Snake's Zako Survival on Substance, MGS1 Snake's Grenade levels (no grenade launcher), sneaking levels & hold up levels (I always would feel my face turning red when I would get pissed off) on Substance.

Also others that would qualify are Brock from Dead Rising (he can be tough if you don't know the technique to defeating him), Carlito confrontation #2 on Dead Rising (his sniper rifle has a nasty knockback in addition to a lot of damage from one bullet). Cyber Demon from Doom 3 on Veteran difficulty (my FPS skills suck ass anyway), Cassidy from Darkwatch on Deadeye difficulty (she's a lot harder that Tala in my view).

TMNT I is fairly difficult..especially the end of level 2 and those idiotic jumps in level 3.

Battletoads was hard once you hit the speedster level. THen that one with a saw behind you...madness.

And someone must have disliked the world when they made Beyond the Beyond. It starts out OK, then soon, you're fighting uber powerful mages who all have an attack that smashes the ENTIRE PARTY. Very annoying.

The only game I can think of off the top of my head was the speeder bike levels on Battletoads. The fact that just about every version of the game that ever came out had that damn level in it pissed me the hell off.

I was never able to beat that stage (well, I did like once or twice, but then the next stage on the SNES version where you had to hug snakes as they took you through a spike-filled level always got me if the bikes didn't), and never liked the Battletoads game because of it (and it sucks too because the first level was fun).

I swear though, it's probably just because of that damn speeder bike stage that Battletoads never became a successful game series. I'm guessing enough people got pissed off at that one stage that it never got to compete with the Ninja Turtles games, which I'm sure Battletoads was a rip-off of that series (luckily, other than the first one, the TMNT games were pretty good and more importantly, fun).

The hardest level, by far, is dodonpachi daioujou's 2-5 stage. The level is only playable after completing the entire game, and continuing into post-game, forfeiting your right to place your high score at the end of stage 5.

This is the hardest I can think of, even if there's something that could match it. I refuse to play it because it's pointless.

Edit: Oh, watching that video again, I totally forgot that the final form of the boss can't be damaged by bombs, which just makes it nearly impossible.

Holy shit. The operations are some of the most frustrating tasks I've ever faced in a video game. I got through the chapters alright, but the X challenges have made me wanna chuck my DS at the nearest living thing. Instead I just waste my next chance just stabbing the patient to death out of frustration, then trying again on the following retry. ;_;

The SnowFly Forest in Vagrant Story was a nightmare, I spent a week of on/off playing to get through there.

Also damaging to my confidence of being a good gamer is the 8th (plutonium boss) zone, from Blaster Master.

Stage 4 of Ikaruga... without continues and taking the most chains that you can, of course.

You know, that level always gave me problems too, but for a slightly different reason: it scared the hell out of me. I hated that "drowning timer" song back then, and I found it really difficult to get to each air bubble before my life ran out, so the level drove me nuts. Eventually I would just turn off the system when I got to the level. I never did beat it either, I just ended up using a level select code to continue on (which I didn't find out about until like a month after I had given up trying to get past Labyrinth Zone).

Appropriately, I also found a few levels from Ecco: Defender of the Future absolutely insane. Even when I used a walkthrough later, it was still a HUGE chore to get through. There were a number of them, but some such as the Egg Chamber near the end were just ugh. I never want to have to go through that part again, although I can't even tell why it's so frustrating...in theory it sounds easy, but I could just never pull off what you needed to do to get past it.

Some of the secret levels from Yoshi's Island were annoying, if only when trying to complete them with 100%, getting hit with no stars in backup from an inch before the finishing circle, jeez but I hated the sound of that baby crying.

Battletoads (Genesis) -
Level 11: Only reason I had problems with it was because my Genesis controller didn't like my up button sometimes. Unfortunately, you REALLY need it in that level. Plus the corners were a bitch.

Level 12: I fell to my death time after time after time again. Whether it'd be the bouncing platforms going to the bottom of the screen and I'd fall off when I didn't even push a damn button, or the cheap ass clouds with their one hit kills or when they blew me off the stage. Thankfully the boss was a cinch.

Sonic the Hedgehog 3 & Knuckles - Sandopolis Act 2: I got stuck in a neverending loop of slides and loops on one part, and I didn't get to the lights quick enough so I was easy pickings for the ghosts.

Super Mario Bros. -

World 8 Level 2: Everyone has had problems with this at some point or another. The LONG jump where you have a short pipe, a little pit, a little ground platform, a little pit, a little ground platform, and then the LONG pit. Many lives were wasted on that level.

World 8 Level 3: You know the part where you have to go through that barrage of Hammer Bros.? Unless you had fireballs, you sure as hell had a tough time getting through them. Even timing their jumps right would prove useless because you'd have to dodge a hammer in the process.

Agreed on 8-2 and 8-3! That was some hard stuff! I think that the final stage in Castlevania III : Dracula's Curse ranks up there as well. Spiders, axe armors, bats, bats, bats, and those trickey clock gears. What a nightmare.

Last few levels for Trauma Center and Ghouls 'n Ghosts. I must try Battletoads sometime.

Eh the Super Mario Bros one was just trial and error.

The only battletoads one I had a hard time with was the one level with the rocket ship that you had to fly. I think it was the first one.

Um, and the Sonic one with Sandopolis, it wasn't the lights that pissed me off it was the fucking timer. I got stuck and well the timer and it's easy to get into the neverending espeically if your knuckles and like to fly off like I do with his ability.

This is probaly going to sound stupid but Expert mode on Bark at the Moon for Guitar Hero was a bitch.

I fucking hated MGS2 Extreme's Metal Gear RAY section.

Not so much because of the difficulty, but the length and redundancy of it all.

Dust Man's stage from Mega Man III for Game Boy springs to mind. The level has a combination of crushers and spikes that made it impossible to beat. I don't think I've ever beaten it without a Game Genie.

Two immediately spring to mind here:

The mid-game area in Megamana Zero 2 (with the flying ships). Pulled my hair out for about 3 hours...Forget if I cleared it or not, but I haven't played the game since.

Level 3 in Contra 3. Each time I got a little bit further as I learned the patterns...Still can't beat the boss yet.

Also, there's the battle at the end of Chapter 3 in Final Fantasy Tactics, but that was more cheap than actually being difficult...If you're not set to Autopotion-X-potion or aren't horrendously overpowered compared to the surrounding fights, you're screwed. Doubly so, since you're forced into the battle if you save at the one prior to it and can't backtrack.

I second Stage 8 of Blaster Master - I never could get through it.

The only one that I can think of a the moment is the Water Temple from Ocarina of Time. I hated that level so much, I'd still be on it if I hadn't of consulted a walktrough for the damn thing.

Those last levels on Ecco: The Dolphin. How I hated those.

Yeah, I'll agree with that for the last part. I saved and I wasn't sufficiently buffed and usually died within a few hits. To be able to get past it, I had to start completely over at the beginning of the game and buff up before getting stuck in that trap again (also kept an additional save right outside just in case).

Wasn't a hard battle, just impossible if you didn't know it was coming.

Level 8 in Blaster Master isn't that hard, I think it's Level 4, the one where you get the hover is hardest really. Only reason level 8 is hard cause if you don't know where you going you aint going to go far.

Clinger Winger, from BattleToads.

http://img509.imageshack.us/img509/4...7522205xz5.png

When I tried my luck at killing Elec Man with the Buster in Megaman 1. It got me swearing multiple times.

Also one of the level in Megaman 8 where your into a little jet car or whatever. This level was hard as hell. It's in the final stages of the game... Can't remember when exactly.

Oh I remember going through that. You took on damn near all the RAYs that were stored there. One step from them and you're dead. Hell, one bullet or laser from them and you were dead, because extreme didn't give you many rations. Spent most of my time kneeling on that fight.

Dunno if this is the stage you're talking about, but I had a hard time at the beginning part of the first Wily stage in Megaman 8 when you're on the rocket board. Jump jump! Slide slide! Jump jump! I somehow always managed to jump to my doom, especially on the last jump that got you out of that part. :( The boss was a bit of a pain too.

The hardest level is Catcher Chocobo in FFX. Never mind the fact it's not actually a level, but that damn game made me want to throw my PS2 out the window...twice.

Pretty much lots of the NES games had hard levels...and they've all been mentioned in this thread already. I'm glad the later games aren't so difficult anymore.

That is exactly the level I am talking about. I told myself, if this level is the sign of anything to come, I will never finish this game. The following levels ended up being really easy though.

By the hover one, I mean the rocket one. There was a rocket to Battletoards... That was even faster then the car on what stage 2 plus I always just took the secret warp point in stage 2 to go to that boogieboard one.

Half the Megaman games on the original NES I can't play cause I'm so used to PS/SNES Megaman with the fancy movies lol.

Last boss from pc98 "Night Slave" - fucking bio-shit. I just say "fuck, fuck, fuck" but i cannon beat this bio-shit. Somebody play that game? Nice shooter 8)

Im with you there man, that game has got to be the hardest game I have ever played and to think that Normal took me 47 retrys.... Im never going to try to beat that game again even if the 1 of the secret costumes has Ayane completely nude. (not a real costume)

The last level of R-Type is needlessly hard, especially given that if you die once and lose all your power-ups you pretty much have to start the whole bloody game again to stand a chance and the collision detection on the original is somewhat suspect at best.

Also, there's one strategy battle near the end of Saga Frontier (2 possibly, the one that got a PAL PS1 release) where you have to survive four turns or something and the enemy army just swarms down and fucks you over in two normally. It took me fucking days to crack that one.

lmao! I hear you man, I got stuck at Alma and just didn't bother playing the game anymore. Took me around 6 months before I picked it up again to finish the rest.

Hello... people?

I K A R U G A

My god, that game is ridiculously hard through and through. I never got past the third stage and now that I probably spent hundreds playing it at arcades I want it on Dreamcast or whatever system it's available on.

Super Ghouls N' Ghosts is probably the hardest game that I've ever played that I actually FINISHED. But I was a kid back then, drugs hadn't slowed down my brain yet.

Galerians was a hard fucking game too, but it never hooked me enough to keep me playing it to hone my skills at it. As far as I know, the copy that I played is still gathering dust on a local video store's rental shelf.

However, the hardest game I've EVER played is Carnage Heart on the PSOne. If you didn't have a Ph.D. in biomechanics your ass was fucked when building a mech in this game. I think this is pretty much where my hate of mechs spurned from and the reason why I hate Neon Genesis Evangelion.

It's not exactly a level but a boss from Kingdom Hearts 2. Namely the one winged angel himself. The cheasy bastard.

That game was soooo easy. The first Kingdom Hearts was a hell of a lot harder. Are you sure you don't have your Kingdoms crossed?

Yeah, that place was a bitch, but I eventually beat it. It is definitely the hardest part in the game so far (I'm near the end right now, I believe). I can't remember if it tops some of the stuff in MMZ1, but if not counting bosses or anything like that, I think it does.

I'm going to have to agree. At least on KH1 I could Strike Raid the hell out of him and heal myself like crazy. I was finally able to beat him at Lvl 65 on KH1. On KH2, it wasn't until I reached level 82 or 83 that I was finally able to bring him down.

Oh God. Yeah. That's SaGa Frontier 2. It's you as David's Army versus the rather invincible might of Gustave's Steel Soldiers and other units. That's brutal as dog fucking Christ. I have never beaten that. Gotten to the last turn before dieing, but that's was it.

Lies, I used to be able to single credit this and single life the first three stages back when I played this on a daily basis (I never could chain much though). I haven't played it in over a year though so the chances of me being that decent at it.nowadays are slim to none. Also, you played Ikaruga in the ARCADE? Is your memory not a tiny bit off here sonny?

Nope. There was this arcade in Santa Monica that had it when I'd go visit my friend Maria at UCLA. I don't even know if that same place is there anymore though, I haven't been down there since 2002.

IIDX has some very hard songs in it, harder than other music games. The song Mei is probably the hardest one in the game.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_C0ukDFnT3o

This is a video of the game autoplaying through the song. The middle section is completely ridiculous.

I want the Beatmania soundtracks now. That shit was awesome~

Damn, seriously. First thing I did after watching that vid was hightail it over to VGMCentral and search like madman for that song.

Too bad I couldn't find it :(

Okay, hard stage... Timesplitters II: ROBOT FACTORY on Hard. Playing the game on hard is awesome, I was amazed at how I was utilizing EVERYTHING in the stages. Level design was superb, and I can honestly say it's the last great FPS ever made... until you hit Robot Factory. It's just so unconventional. You're shooting the sci-fi handgun in close quarters, and I always get hit by my own shots. THOSE DAMN SENTRY BOTS take a trillion hits to kill, and you can't even get a good shot hiding from them (if you can see it, it WILL be shooting at you). I still haven't beaten it, haven't even made it to the checkpoint :(.

For me it was a boss, the last boss from Castlevania: Lament of Innocence.
Man that was hard, I had to use all my healing itens, to pass through him (I had the maximum number of each healing item), not to mention my life was at the last scratch and I had to try to kill him about 10 times.

I say the entirety of Mega Man Zero 1, especially the final levels. The bosses in that game were stupidly hard. I never could beat it without an emulator and save states. Every game after that was easy enough (although the aformentioned airship part of Zero 2 was a huge pain in the ass).

The Gradius series as a whole is also pretty tough, mainly because if you die towards the latter end of the game you're pretty much screwed due to lack of powerups.

Edit: Mei from IIDX? Not the hardest song anymore. Try IIDX 13 DistorteD's One More Extra Stage, Nageki no Ki, or IIDX 11 RED's OMES, Scorpion Fire (both on autoplay)

That actually reminds me of the one battle during Red's quest (the beast guy that needed five rings) in SaGa Frontier where you need to get team combos in order to beat them. I was never able to get anything over a 3x combo to happen reliably, and doing the same sets of moves from one battle to the next wouldn't always result in a combo, so I could never figure out how to beat that boss. Sucks because I had already finished about half of the characters' stories and I was kinda enjoying the game.

Oh. We're taking variable difficulty level games into consideration?

Try playing God of War on God Mode. I have NEVER been able to beat the Minotaur God on God mode... :(

The only boss I had trouble with in Lament was the one in the bottom of his castle. Forgot his name, he was a total bitch.

Any of the MMs for Super Nintendo were easy with the new moves.

Nageki no ki has already been AAA'ed, which is why I didn't name that song. And while neither Mei or Scorpion Fire have been AAA'ed, people are closer to getting Scorpion Fire, which is why I named Mei. All three are quite ridiculous though, and utterly impossible to 99% of people who play the game.

I guess I'll have to say Galamoth from Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. I was on this boss for a while.

Haha wow. The Ikaruga arcade cabinet is extremely rare and only pops up in the weirdest of places. We had one down here for awhile in my town. Of course it didn't get much use because of the difficulty, and eventually it was replaced for a Dance Dance Rehasholution. I'm not even sure if that gets any use either. Haven't been to the arcade for a very long time.

Yeah, Ikaruga's hard. It is. But it's nowhere near as hard as what I've already mentioned.

Symphony of the night instantly becomes an incredibly easy game once you pick up the Chysagrim sword from those float head things in the reverse library. It has a katana style multi hit effort you can use while moving and is very powerful to boot. Using that and a couple of Heaven swords for their two-weapon combo makes Galamoth a piece of piss.

Another one I remembered earlier was the last mission as the Church in Syndicate Wars. You get about a minute to run the entire length of a long level with hundred of people shooting at you. Playing on the PS1, the analogue controller simply doesn't give you enough speed around the screen with the pointer to do it.

Also, anyone ever play the American Revolt expansion for the original Syndicate? I only ever managed to finish two of the missions on that, it was insanely hard. My average survival time on the Atlantic Accelerator was about 20 seconds...

Sweet Christ. Was it a passing AAA or failing due to that BS at the end? All of the pretty rythmatic chords would make it easy to score on, but there's still the dumb mashing parts.

The final, hidden hell level of Cave Story (Doukutsu Monogatari) where you go against Ballos is by far the most infuriatingly difficult level I have ever played. I got sick of trying to make it through there that I just hacked the save profile to give me 9999 HP, because I just wanted to see the end.

nightmare 3nd time on DMC1 on level dante must die and Zanac on MSX,when play stage 6 and 7 without losting any live

Am I the only one who found Duriel hard from Diablo 2 no matter how well leveled/euiped you are? Especially in hell and playing single player.

I only found that hard because it would FUCKING FREEZE for a few minutes before you entered his area. And them BAM, he was already bashing you. I think he had freeze as well, but it awsn't really that hard because I usually played on USEast. I don't think there was anyone in D2 that was really that difficult, since they made bots and shit which could do the work for you.

Duriel is definitely the first real obstacle when it comes to singleplayer. I'd say that beating the Ancients alone in Hell is far more difficult though.

Yeah but Elixir, I am talking about single player mode, not mulitplayer. There is a slight difference due to drops and possibly playing with other people.

He just had the pallaidin's frost aura that slowed you. I didn't have net till a good year or so later after of playing D2 when it first came out.

Well aware about the Crissaegrim. I didn't even realize the potential of this weapon until well after Galamoth. I jumped 10 levels killing golden knights near the big clock before facing Dracula. That was the 4th time I had beat the game, but the first time I actually bothered going through the inverted library.

Double Post:
I would also like to mention the later levels of Kirby: Canvas Curse for NDS. I lost a couple of Styluses out of frustration. ><d