This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
akagoldfish: For your consideration- the Air Castle in Phantasy Star IV. A huge map (two distinct maps really) with two HARD bosses, one of which has an absolutely devastating whole party attack, and the whole place is crawling with tons of tough monsters who usually prevent escape. I can not think of another single dungeon in the whole game that comes close to this one in terms of hair-pulling scarpieness.
Novaheart: Okay this page is getting 'too big' Its hell trying to move to different sections of categories. Suggest to split this page into sub-pages, like with That One Boss?
Reflextion: Seconded. I'd do it myself if I had any sort of confidence in my trope-fu.
Caswin: Wait... wasn't Casino Night all but devoid of enemies or deathtraps? The boss was one of the harder ones, but the level? Mind, there are a few entries there that seem out of place (why complain about Metropolis Zone when the Sky Fortress is right around the corner?), but I don't follow this at all.
- Agreed. Casino Night can be cleared quickly and painlessly so long as the player abstains from playing the slot machines. Probably %90 of bad things that happen in this level are the fault of compulsive gambling. However, I can't say Sky Fortress is more of a Scrappy than Metropolis. Even Sky Fortresses brutal disappearing platforms and bastard of a boss get easier with time, while the many, many deathtraps in the three-stage Metropolis Zone will still cause controller-throwing even after many plays (although strangely, the Metropolis Zone boss is the easiest to the point of being a joke).
Citizen: For goodness sake, a plot-insignificant FF sidequest does not deserve two paragraphs period, let alone two paragraphs of spoiler tags. Pruned.
- Also, let's not forget Labyrinth Zone from Sonic 1 (Down The Drain in the extreme), Oil Ocean Zone from Sonic 2 (awkward slippy oil slopes, annoying music, tedious bits where you're slowly passed between odd vacuum cleaner things and the goddamned seahorses) and Altitude Limit from Sonic Rush (oh boy, one-hit kill lasers!)
- Really? I found Oil Ocean a relief after the Everything Trying to Kill You Mystic Cave Zone, and the music kind of relaxing.
Tanto: Oil Ocean isn't difficult; just tedious. (And the music is fine, although I'll admit it suffers in comparision to Mystic Cave Zone, but there's no shame in that.) Altitude Limit suffers from the same problems as every other level in Sonic Rush — cheap enemy placement and blind leaps. If you're willing to put up with Rush as a whole, Altitude Limit is fine. It's actually one of the more fun levels since there are more opportunities for tricks. As for Labyrinth Zone, it's got a whole spiel all to itself in Down the Drain, so there's really no need to repeat it, yes?
Tanto: Lightning Look-Out tells its lightning strikes...it's not that difficult once you've learned the pattern. (You can bait them to a certain spot, then double back.) I can do it in one try, going in cold, these days.
Peteman: Can I nominate the section of Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time where you have to navigate a rather large stretch where you can fall to your death fairly easily and you've had your Dagger of Time stolen?
djkates: Edited "all but" into the X6 example. It actually is possible to make it through the section after High Max with the Shadow Armor — I've done it — but it's extremely difficult.
Tanto: The Lost World in DKC2? Really? I'll grant you Squawks's section of Animal Antics, but that's one-fifth of one level. The rest of the world is no harder than the rest of the game. Klobber Karnage gets criticized by some people, but that's the fault of emulation problems, not the game itself. (It's fine on a real system.)
I say thee nay.
Danel: Well, The Lost World is supposed to be very hard - it's a bunch of hidden levels that casual players will never get to. I'd say it's a fair bit harder than the rest of the game, but understandably so.
I'd like to note that, for the record, I like the water levels in the Zelda games. I loved the Water Temple, and I enjoyed the one in Twilight Princess too. Does that make me odd?
Tanto: Yes, yes it does.
Ah, Tubular. It's been a while since I've heard anyone bitch about that level. Two words: Blue Yoshi. Makes the level (all levels, really) a snap.
A Blue Yoshi and a Cape is about as game-breaking as it gets when you're talking platformers.
Kizor: Removed mention of World In Conflict's penultimate level, as it seems to be personal opinion - and my own puts the hate on the one where you're supposed to occupy a small point long enough to construct fortifications when it, your units, and the fortifications are being bombarded. Wiped out mention of the Cloister of Trials puzzles in FFX on the way there, as it had been infested with Thread Mode and the Cloisters were simple enough to brute-force without much difficulty.
- Basically any time you're in wolf form in Twilight Princess.
Tanto: Bullshit. You don't spend enough time as a wolf in Twilight Princess.
Bob: The Swamp Dungeon isn't water-themed. It's booby-traps-and-floors-covered-in-spikes-themed.
- What about the Swamp Dungeon in A Link to the Past? That one's just cool.
- Marble Garden Zone in Sonic 3 also qualifies; uber-steep hills, out of control tops, spikes everywhere, hideously-placed spiked maces and crushing spiked pillars, and enemies that like to pop out of nowhere...
Insanity Prelude: Oddly enough, I loved that level (except for the end boss of act 2, which is just a bitch.)
Mman: Shouldn't someone trim that insanely long Elite Force entry (I haven't played it, so I can't)?
Kalle: I'm just going to take it out for the time being until someone who's played it can write a better one. @_@ Wall of text, indeed. Later: All right, I got sick of having the original entry pasted in my Notepad with nowhere to put it for posterity, so I simply trimmed the fat to what I hope covers the gist of it.
GG Crono: Does anybody else here think that the Pyramid from Final Fantasy V qualifies? Hard to navigate, traps out the yin-yang, a series of insane monsters you can't escape from, AND you're missing a party member? Gaaah.
Ninjacrat: Master Knight? Let it go.
Should this be marked subjective? Levels which some people find very difficult other people might find very easy.
Twilightdusk: Cut out most the examples from Brawl:
- Cruel Brawl. You can't kill the little alloy buggers, and if they even touch you, it's a one-hit KO. Oh, and the level is about the size of a postage stamp. Of course, you have to kill either five or ten of them if you want their trophies. The only way to succeed is to use a flying character and go under the level, making them commit suicide after you, which is both cheap and asinine.
- It's not the only way to beat the level - this troper has managed over five kills with every Star Fox character, Captain Falcon, and Ganondorf. The spoiler tagged-method above is merely the easiest method to use. Mind you, that said method is the easiest confirms that even for experts, this is the Scrappy Level.
- And then, there's Boss Battles on Intense. Almost every attack is a OHKO and there are no continues.
- You think Boss Battles on Intense is bad? This troper has recently been trying to beat it without hearts using Captain Olimar and has nearly succeeded with a good few runs managing to get to Tabuu. And he has just managed a bad experience with Subspace Emissary Intense. Two words: Battlefield Fortress. That level is just obscene. Try it with initial characters, you will be upset by the first and fourth sections. The first section is just horrible because Marth isn't good against the Sword Primids. And the fourth section is just rape central. Get past it, period? Humph. Good luck. To say nothing of the fact that your stock isn't restored at the start of the section.
- Cruel Brawl. You can't kill the little alloy buggers, and if they even touch you, it's a one-hit KO. Oh, and the level is about the size of a postage stamp. Of course, you have to kill either five or ten of them if you want their trophies. The only way to succeed is to use a flying character and go under the level, making them commit suicide after you, which is both cheap and asinine.
When you are playing a game mode which is explicitly labeled as a harder version of a different one, or playing the standard game on Harder Than Hard difficulty, YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO COMPLAIN! If the levels in question were just as annoying on the lower difficulties, then you can call it a scrappy level, but this page is not for griping about the higher difficulty levels (which on many games, feel like they were made to be as impossible as you can get while not being physically impossible).
Aaron Em: Re 'A Game of TAG' — Oh, c'mon, you can't say it's not even a little bit fun to tag a Basilisk and watch it get chopped to scrap by anti-fighter beams...
Robert Bingham: Definitely have to agree with whoever put down Goldeneye's Aztec. That level was brutal. In addition to the opening deathtrap and the final ladder climb, you've also got the vent screens, which you can't see through but your enemies can, and with the aforementioned high-damage assault rifles and lasers, it makes it damned hard to get to the end with the health that you need to survive the final ladder climb. I tend to call levels like these "screamer levels," as they make you want to do just that in addition to the Cluster F Bombing you're going to be doing throughout.
Danel: The World Of Warcraft entries really need to be purged, especially since in many cases they're not so much "universally loathed" as "mildly inconvenient". Also: Thunder Bluff has a "lack of proximity" to other capitals? It's about two minutes away from Orgrimmar in flight! I suppose compared to the other horde capitals you might have a point, though, given that one can reach the other two almost instantly from Undercity... but compared to the Alliance capitals its a lot more convenient.
Gloating Swine: We don't need two entries that say the same damn things for Advance Wars' Crystal Calamity. I've rewritten it to combine the unique complaints of each, nuked the discussion in the main page, and generally reduced the amount of Thread Mode that it was spawning.
Gloating Swine: Crystal Calamity still does not need two all but identical mentions in threadmode. It wasn't that Scrappy people.
Trouser Wearing Barbarian: This page is in need of some serious trimming.
Narwhal: I understand it's good for people to vent their frustrations, but this is just ridiculous. If I ever want to read a huge wall of text, I know where to look. Can't we just hack off about half the article? The page doesn't need that many examples, does it?
Freezair For A Limited Time: There Is No Such Thing As Notability... So how on earth would we decide what to trim? I'd advocate a split, but I'm guessing a cut would just make a lot of people angry all at once.
djkates: I'm also going to suggest a split. I'd do it myself, but I'd probably mess up big time. By genre seems the best way to do it.
Lord Seth: This definitely needs to be organized somehow (probably by genre, possibly split off into their own articles).
Eric DVH: My my… Well, I just organized everything. This is what I was thinking about doing to Goddamned Bats (creating Demonic Spiders was a silly idea in my opinion.)
Eric DVH: Just looked at Goddamned Bats, somebody already did it! Doing it inside-out like that is probably better too.
Cryognosis: Cave Story presses...are not at all hard in the final caves. My weapon of choice was the machine gun and they were easy. You could always just run right past them after blasting any enemies ahead. To add hurt to the presses, I always turn around and shoot them after passing under. Really easy to start/stop to, too. Granted, on the other hand, the significant battle that real heroes face >.> <.< ...Is an unpleasant surprise to any first-time throughs...
Master Knight: I nominate The Canyon on higher difficulties in Brawl's Subspace Emissary. Believe me: the difficulty spike is enormous. I'm getting to uploading a video about it as we speak. The problem is that you have to survive very nasty swarms of enemies the whole way through. It's particularly bad because the last several enemies are Giant Primids accompanying a Rototurret. Unless you exploit the AI, expect your 4 stock to be eaten up.
priopraxis: While everyone agrees about Cid, Kuja's palace is trivial if you have LVL 5 Death, and the Oielvert enemies that clone you can be insta-killed with the item Soft.Although I suppose they are still examples if people hate them.
Ephraim225: This Troper nominates Gaea's Cliff at the beginning of Disc 2 in Final Fantasy VII. There's a random encounter running around that will use Magic Breath, which kills your entire party in one hit. How to avoid this? The game doesn't give a hint, so This Troper wanted to put it on the discussion page for some feedback.
K.o.R: If I recall correctly, the Magic Breath attack is Fire, Ice and Lightning all at once. The way the game mechanics work, if you are strong vs/immune to/healed by any of the constituent elements of a multi-element attack, you're strong vs them all. Which is why Kujata can be a really not-useful summon sometimes.
Cliché: "The Mario Kart series' Rainbow Road tracks are universally reviled."
- Sorry, had to get this out of my system. Does this sentence mean I am the only one that thinks that people whining about Rainbow Road are pansies, to put it meanly?
Duneflower: Someone explain the bit about Full Throttle to me? I never had any problem with the bike fights beyond what seemed reasonable for the situation...but then again, I've never even heard of Scumm VM...
Rebochan: ScummVM is an emulator needed to run the classic Lucas Arts adventure games (written in the SCUMM engine) on pretty much all modern systems. It does everything pitch-perfect...except the bike fights. For what it's worth though, I'd heard of people playing it before the era of Scumm VM that really struggled with them. Even Yahtzee called them out in his Psychonauts review.
kitsunezeta: Oh, god where to begin on my list of complaints on the bike fights... well, for starters, I had (once) somehow made the game unwinnable due to making a specific enemy that had a specific item dissappear altogether (it was the ONE enemy you needed either the wood plank or the... fertilizer, I think, for.), and said enemy was also a pain in the ass to begin with. Then there's some of the fights that are just plain irritating to figure out which weapon you're ideally supposed to use (and one of the fights you HAVE to win requires ONE specific weapon). and all this was done in ACTUAL DOS (not the command prompt in Windows, and not Scumm VM - Micro Soft Disc Operating System.)
- You get 1.5 seconds to cast Reflect - and if it's not Rosa's turn, LOSE. - Reason that was given for removing Trapdoor difficulty antihype.
I don't know what version of FF 4 you're looking at, but the Trapdoor doesn't approach anywhere near that sort of speed in either of the two I've played in recent memory (Advance, which does have... problems when it comes to speed, I will grant, and DS), where I used this tactic on all of them with no trouble. If it's not Rosa's turn? Of course it's going to be Rosa's turn, because you will have specifically left it on her turn once it comes up, and Trappy takes ages to even use his scanning move, let alone the followup. The first Trapdoor you ever fight, before you know what they do, has an argument. Any later ones are simplicity incarnate. I will take this opportunity to note I didn't have any previous/outside knowledge that the attack would be reflectable, so it isn't like the tactic isn't flagrantly obvious, given my general thickness in these regards.
Be: I think everyone can agree that Shock and Awe Extreme deserves this status, but I'm not sure where to put it. I stuck it in the Fighting Game section, but any other suggestions would be appreciated.
TheSpeakman: "And how about the mission where you have to act as some sort of air pirate" I don't remember it, but I think I'm going to go play it. That sounds badass. Added to Aladdin example, as previous example seems to not have gotten to the level after, which is equally if not more hellacious. Thankfully, the next one is in the Genie's Lamp, and I love that level so much I just skip right to it (ABBAABBA at the pause screen).
