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5[[quoteright:299:[[VideoGame/TouhouShinreibyouTenDesires https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/rsz_difficulty.png]]]]
6[[caption-width-right:299:Seems like the gods need to git gud.]]
7%%
8->''"If you find yourself in the enviable position of being able to have your name added to those who win a 'pure' difficulty 10 win, please file a bug report with any tips you have on how we can (legitimately) upgrade the AI to counter your winning strategy. This back-and-forth arms race between the players and the developers has led to some of the most interesting innovations for all levels of AI for the game (and its predecessor), and it is also a very specific style of brutal gauntlet that certain dedicated individuals enjoy throwing themselves into."''
9-->-- ''[[Videogame/AIWarFleetCommand AI War 2]]''
10
11Harder Than Hard mode is a {{Difficulty Level|s}} that's {{exactly|WhatItSaysOnTheTin}} what it sounds like: a mode intended only for the most skilled players who are looking for the toughest challenge the game has to offer.
12
13To qualify for this trope, the difficulty level needs to be above any lower existing "hard" difficulty, and of course, '''be extremely difficult'''. If the game describes how each difficulty mode works, its explanation will often be an inversion of SurpriseDifficulty, in that the game makes clear just how hard things are going to get. Oftentimes this is {{unlock|ableDifficultyLevels}}ed by beating the game on the lower "hard" difficulty. Sometimes the game will even ask "AreYouSureYouWantToDoThat" on a menacing or foreboding warning screen, complete with a "yes"/"no" prompt, to emphasize that this mode is brutally difficult.
14
15How "fair" this difficulty mode is depends on the game. Games that are more skill based and want to encourage player improvement will stress that this difficulty is ''gruelling'', but not impossible, and that you will need to bring your best skills forward if you want to succeed. Some games may be all but impossible on this mode when you first unlock it, but after multiple playthroughs of the main game you'll earn the tools to complete it (though you should still expect it to be very difficult). Other times, this mode isn't even supposed to be fair, and the developers may warn the player, depending on whether or not they feel like being cruel. They may even go so far as to explicitly indicate that the game was not adequately play-tested, or might be {{unwinnable}} at that setting, or some blood-curdling warning along the lines of "don't play this".
16
17This difficulty setting tends to be infamous for making players cry and tear out their eyelashes from frustration of losing. Some games get so notorious for these modes that people will forget that normal (and easy) modes exist and only base their opinion on the hardest difficulty modes, even if the normal difficulty is actually pretty sane.
18
19In order to further emphasize these difficulty levels being largely optional, some games only reward the player with {{Cosmetic Award}}s and/or other [[BraggingRightsReward bragging rights]] instead of something more substantial upon clearing them. However, on rare occasions, especially in instances where the developers are actually encouraging players to improve their skils at the game instead of just punishing them, the reward for clearing this mode can indeed be [[ThankingTheViewer something truly special]].
20
21Common names for this include [[DareToBeBadass Expert, Master, Omega, Legend, Proud]], [[FearlessFool Impossible, Nightmare, Insane, Lunatic, Maniac, and Crazy]]. Many games give it IdiosyncraticDifficultyLevels treatment.
22
23Subtrope of NintendoHard and ChallengeRun. Often overlaps with FinalDeathMode, and sometimes with UnwinnableJokeGame.
24Compare RankInflation, BrutalBonusLevel, and {{Superboss}}. Contrast EasierThanEasy and MercyMode; can be NonIndicativeDifficulty in the rare case that this mode makes the game easier, which is most likely a bug or oversight.
25
26Expect {{speedrun}}ners to be able to beat these modes with total ease.
27
28----
29!!Examples:
30[[foldercontrol]]
31
32[[folder:Action Adventure]]
33* ''VideoGame/AnUntitledStory'' has "Simple", "Regular", and "Difficult". As an extra difficulty, it also has "Masterful" which is Nintendo Hard to the extreme. "Insanity" manages to top that by making your character a OneHitPointWonder.
34* ''VideoGame/ThreeDDotGameHeroes'' has standard mode, Creator/{{From|Software}} Mode, and VideoGame/{{Spelunker}} Mode. From Mode is basically Hard Mode, but Spelunker Mode ramps it up so you [[OneHitPointWonder die in one hit]], enemies are harder to kill, and [[FissionMailed you die when you dash into a wall]]. [[note]]With handy invincibility frames, too![[/note]]
35* Beat ''VideoGame/MegaManLegends 2'' once and you unlock Hard Mode. Beat ''that'', and you unlock ''Very'' Hard Mode.
36* ''VideoGame/MegaManZero'': where Hard Mode means no Cyber Elves, ''no charge shot'', and you take double damage from everything.
37* ''VideoGame/LuigisMansionDarkMoon'': [=ScareScraper=] has Normal, Hard, and Expert, the last of which fits this to a tee. The description literally states 'virtually impossible on your own', which in this case means 'if you're playing solo, expect to have to take on about 10-15 difficult enemies in one tiny room and get crushed'. Seriously, 20 odd floors of Hunter or Surprise mode on Expert is damn near suicidal, and 25 floors of Rush mode is basically a death wish. Endless also ends up coming under this, since it seems to start off on Hard and end up being as tough or even more so than Expert by about the 10th floor.
38* ''VideoGame/RabiRibi'' has two difficulties above Hard Mode, though they only buff the HP and damage of enemies without giving them new attacks - Hell and Bunny Extinction. [[NintendoHard There's achievements for completing the game's main story, post-game story, and boss rush modes for each of these modes.]] As well, on normal mode or below, you can get a special buff that gives a general stat increase if you die enough times. Not so for Hard, Hell, and Bunny Extinction modes. Still too easy? The Artbook DLC offers the Unknown and Impossible difficulties.
39* ''Franchise/TheLegendOfZelda'':
40** ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaTwilightPrincess HD'' has a Hero Mode that makes you take double damage, and the game also supports the Ganondorf Toys/{{Amiibo}}, which also causes you to take double damage. But individually, both of these don't qualify for this. Rather, these two modes can ''stack'', allowing you to use the Ganondorf amiibo while in Hero Mode, giving you ''quadruple'' damage. You can still breeze through the first half of the game, and regular enemies tend to be slow attackers that you have to wait for them to hit you, but later bosses and minibosses like Darknuts can be a real pain. [[spoiler:Especially considering the final boss is only easy normally because of his low damage output...]]
41** Completing one playthrough of ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaSkywardSword'' unlocks Hero Mode, which causes enemies to deal double damage and also stops hearts from dropping.
42** ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaBreathOfTheWild'''s Master Trials DLC includes Master Mode, which causes all enemies to become tougher and also lets them ''recover'' health if you go too long without dealing damage. Also, certain enemies like [[DamageSpongeBoss Lynels]] appear in more areas, there is one autosave file instead of five, and the mechanism preventing you from being one-shotted (instead leaving you with a quarter heart of health) is absent.
43* ''[[VideoGame/{{Momodora}} Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight]]'''s "Insane" difficulty, which the game describes only as [[DoNotAttempt "Don't even try this."]] In addition to the increased number of enemies on Hard mode, "Insane" also makes you a OneHitPointWonder. Obviously this makes the game rather unforgiving, but it has a helpful side-effect--on any difficulty, bosses drop special items if you kill them without taking damage, and with only 1 hit point, you're guaranteed the bonus drop... if you survive.
44* ''VideoGame/{{ActRaiser}}'' has Professional Mode, unlocked after completing the game normally, in which you play through all of the Action stages in one go, with only five lives, no continues, and no magic spells.
45* By reading a tablet twice in either ''VideoGame/LaMulana'' or [[VideoGame/LaMulana2 its sequel]], be it in the Mausoleum of the Giants or the opening ruins, the player can unlock Hard Mode. The games were already difficult enough without it, but Hard Mode adds tons more enemies, makes the bosses hit like runaway space shuttles, gives said bosses ''boatloads'' of hitpoints, and removes some small mercies which would otherwise make the game bearable. Said tablets even warn you [[SchmuckBait not to read them a second time.]]
46* Beating ''VideoGame/KenaBridgeOfSpirits'' on any difficulty unlocks Master Spirit Guide. In this difficulty, enemies become significantly more aggressive and many can one-shot Kena if their attacks connect. Rot will also lose courage whenever Kena gets hit by an enemy, meaning the player will have to master parrying and guarding to maintain the momentum in a fight.
47* ''VideoGame/SuperGearQuest'' has Brutal difficulty, where the attack damage of all enemies is cranked up to such a degree that [[PlayerCharacter Starter and Avatar Duo]] effectively have only one or two hitpoints; maybe three if the player goes to the effort of finding all the health and energy upgrades. In addition, certain bosses attack faster. For the cherry on top, there's even a counter displayed for how many times you die.
48[[/folder]]
49
50[[folder:Action Game]]
51* ''VideoGame/DevilMayCry'':
52** "Dante Must Die" in the games. "Heaven Or Hell" from the third game, where [[RocketTagGameplay both the main character and all enemies]] [[OneHitPointWonder die in one hit]], is somewhere between a gimmick mode and Harder Than Hard. "Hell and Hell," in the fourth game and [[VideoGame/DMCDevilMayCry the Ninja Theory reboot]], has ''only'' [[NoDamageRun the main character dying in one hit]] and is very much Harder Than Hard. Of course, if you perfected your style play on Sons on Sparda with no health lost, you, sir, are set...mostly.
53** In the initial US release of [=DMC3=], Easy was equivalent to Japanese Normal, Normal was equivalent to Japanese Hard, and US Hard is possibly the first time that Hard is Harder than Hard. The UpdatedRerelease made the difficulties more in line with the Japanese difficulties, wherein US Hard was rechristened "Very Hard".
54** The [[UpdatedRerelease Definitive Edition]] of ''VideoGame/DMCDevilMayCry'' included a new "Gods Must Die" difficulty, which ratchets the difficulty up to ridiculous levels, even beyond Dante Must Die. In addition to further increasing the amount of damage enemies give and take, every enemy spawns in [[SuperMode Devil Trigger]] mode and all consumable items and healing items are disabled.
55** The Special Editions of ''4'' and ''5'' also came with the "Legendary Dark Knight" mode, which has diffculty comparable to "Son Of Sparta", but enemies now spawn in far larger groups. Groups of over 20 to 30 are not unheard of.
56* The Xbox version of ''VideoGame/NinjaGaiden'' has a Very Hard mode, while ''Black'' and ''Sigma'' added Master Ninja, which was even harder. ''Ninja Gaiden 2'' also features a Master Ninja mode which is, arguably, even harder than Master Ninja in ''Black'' and the leaderboard for Master Ninja in ''Black'' had less than 1000 people. It's worth noting that the only requirement to be on this leaderboard was to actually complete Master Ninja mode.
57* ''VideoGame/GodOfWar'':
58** ''VideoGame/GodOfWarI'' has a God mode and (in [[VideoGame/GodOfWarII the sequel]]) a Titan mode. One section in the latter (the second titan minotaur), which is already hard in normal, becomes a purely luck-based affair. The enemies took more hits and hit harder, you received less orbs, and magic used substantially more magic - the game was not pulling any punches. Its a wonder they didn't try to replace the blades with [[JokeWeapon cotton swabs]].
59** ''VideoGame/GodOfWarIII'' once again trumps God and Titan with the Chaos Difficulty. It sure says something that the first game's Harder Than Hard difficulty is by now considered the Normal Difficulty.
60%%* The Super mode in the [[VideoGame/Shinobi2002 PS2 version]] of ''VideoGame/{{Shinobi}}'' is only available after completing the Hard setting.
61* ''VideoGame/DantesInferno'' has the Infernal difficulty setting, which comes with the considerably stern but sincere warning, "You are damned." On this difficulty, enemies and hazards dole out horrific damage, including regular enemies being able to one-shot you from maximum health, and Mana and health fountains giving back pathetic refills. It almost seems as though this mode was intended to be played on [[NewGamePlus Resurrection Mode]], as both it and the Infernal setting are unlocked after beating the game on any of the normal difficulties.
62* ''VideoGame/{{Bayonetta}}'': When you beat the game on Normal, you unlock Hard. Hard difficulty increases enemy health and damage taken and drastically changes up the enemy spawns, making tougher enemies spawn earlier. The first section of the ''tutorial level'' has [[DemonicSpiders Grace & Glory and Fairness]], to give an example. When you beat the game on Hard, you unlock the 'Non-Stop Infinite Climax' difficulty. It's just like Hard, but you don't get [[BulletTime Witch Time]] through normal means (that's what the "non-stop" means). [[ThisIsGonnaSuck Have fun with that.]] In ''VideoGame/Bayonetta2'' it's just called 'Infinite Climax', since it doesn't disable Witch Time like in the first game ... however that doesn't mean it's any easier; if anything, you'll desperately ''need'' Witch Time to stand a chance at this difficulty, because it messes with enemy spawns like in the first game. The {{Superboss}} of both games (Rodin) are also set in Infinite Climax difficulty and cannot be changed.
63* ''VideoGame/MetalGearRisingRevengeance'' has two such difficulties: Very Hard which changes enemy layouts, changes some enemy tactics on top of the usual hard mode changes (enemies getting more life/attack power, healing items heal less, etc). Revengeance is similar to Very Hard save for two things: Enemies inflict terrible damage with their attacks, easily killing you in 2-3 blows with a fully upgraded life bar. Good news? [[HardModePerks Your parry counter is powered up to do similar damage to them.]]
64* ''VideoGame/TransformersDevastation'' has Prime difficulty. As it states that "every trick in the book is required to survive", it's not kidding. Enemies can now kill you easily in seconds if you are careless. Good luck dodging around all those enemies without dying!
65* ''Manga/SaintSeiya: Sanctuary Battle''[[note]]or ''Saint Seiya Senki'' in Japan[[/note]] has God difficulty. Your Gold Saint with maxed stats that was kiling bosses with two hits and taking a hair worthy of damage from their attacks a few moments ago? Watch as the bosses become powerhouses that will [[NighInvulnerable shrug off anything but your strongest Cosmos boosted attacks]], while [[SuperStrength being able to kill you in four hits or less]], and once their health drops below 50%, activate their 7th Sense and [[LightningBruiser start moving and attacking so fast]] that unless you activate your own 7th Sense (that will consume your Cosmo gauge) you won't be able to get a single hit in.
66* In a similar vein to the above-mentioned ''Bayonetta'' (by [[Creator/PlatinumGames the same developer]]), ''VideoGame/TheWonderful101'' has 101% Hard, which is similar to Hard in many respects, with stronger enemies coming as early as the prologue with them moving faster and hitting harder. The chief difference though, is that time doesn't slow down at all when drawing a Wonder-Liner, which is how one picks an attack. Hope you can get used to not being safe when preparing an attack quickly.
67* ''WesternAnimation/AstroBoy: The Video Game'' has Hero mode, where the enemies' attack power and HP are nearly double that of Hard difficulty, meaning that even the police bots in the first level can KO Astro in two hits; the Super counter has a maximum of 3, and the effectiveness of Supers is significantly reduced.
68* Parodied in the Flash game ''Bobulous''. The game has four missions; each but the first unlocked after finishing the one before. The first three are: Counter-Attack ("Difficulty: normal"), Eradication ("Difficulty: hard"), and Space Hero ("Difficulty: [[NintendoHard very hard]]"). The final mission is Return Home ("Difficulty: impossible"); [[spoiler:when you select it, it is revealed that this mission is just celebration of your victory, and the game corrects the description to "Difficulty: impossible to lose"]].
69* The 2017 remake of ''VideoGame/WonderBoyIIITheDragonsTrap'' adds a Hard mode with a timer that periodically subtracts from the player's LifeMeter, along with ratcheting up the toughness of the monsters. Then came a patch that added a code to unlock an ''Extreme'' mode. It follows the same rules as Hard mode, but also eliminates all heart containers, forcing you to play the entire game with just ''one'' heart.
70* The ''Creator/MarvelKnights'' expansion for ''VideoGame/MarvelUltimateAlliance3TheBlackOrder'' features Nightmare, a version of the main game's Story Mode featuring the enemy-boosting vampiric curse from the Gauntlet mode's "Curse of the Vampire" campaign. Defeating afflicted enemies earns you S.H.I.E.L.D. tokens for use at the S.H.I.E.L.D. Depot. Due to Nightmare's difficulty, the game recommends the player to be at least level 40 before playing it for the first time.
71* The ''VideoGame/PrincessRemedy'' series: Other than the UnwinnableJokeGame difficulty of "reallyjoel's dad:
72** ''VideoGame/PrincessRemedyInAWorldOfHurt'': Master difficulty.
73** ''VideoGame/PrincessRemedyInAHeapOfTrouble'': DEATH difficulty.
74* ''VideoGame/HiFiRush'': Beating the game on any difficulty and unlocking the PostEndGameContent also unlocks the Rhythm Master difficulty, where you ''must'' keep your combo meter at a C grade or higher at all times or else get an instant Game Over.
75[[/folder]]
76
77[[folder:Beat 'em Up]]
78* ''VideoGame/StreetsOfRage 2'' has Very Easy (locked), Easy, Normal, Hard, Hardest, and Mania (also locked). On Normal, bosses typically only have upwards of three life meters; ''mini''bosses on Mania tend to have ''four''. Also, enemies will move very fast and will use their lesser-used, more powerful attacks more often.
79* Unleash the Fury difficulty in ''VideoGame/TheWarriors''. All enemies do extreme damage, most enemies are immune to instant kills from special rage attacks, and all of your Warriors have the Baseball Furies outfits while the real Furies use the Warrior models.
80* ''VideoGame/TheDishwasher'' on ''easy'' is already [[NintendoHard incredibly hard]]. On Samurai difficulty, everything, even zombies, move faster and can almost one-shot you. The sequel, ''Vampire Smile'', has ''greatly'' more balanced difficulty. Samurai is still wrist-crackingly difficult, though.
81* ''VideoGame/GodHand'' features a difficulty system that [[DynamicDifficulty scales]] based on your [[AwesomenessMeter performance]].. on Easy and Normal modes. On Hard mode, the difficulty scale is set to the highest level and will not decrease by any means. It doesn't help that even on Easy mode, the game is [[NintendoHard much harder]] than your typical title.
82* ''VideoGame/RiverCityRansom [[VideoGameRemake EX]]'', in addition for the standard Easy, Medium, and Hard, has "Crazy" and [[EasierThanEasy "Wussy"]].
83* Completing ''VideoGame/DoubleDragonNeon'''s already NintendoHard Normal mode unlocks Dragon mode. Beating ''that'' unlocks Double Dragon mode. Conversely, [[HardModePerks the higher difficulties also give you]] higher money and mithril drops from enemies.
84[[/folder]]
85
86[[folder:Driving Game]]
87* Casual players of the original ''VideoGame/SanFranciscoRush 2049'' will usually only see the first three tracks, with the latter two being classified as "Advanced." The fifth track, which is unlockable along with the fourth, is classified as "Extreme," and is chock full of right-angle turns and other obstacles intended to keep your speed low. The Special Edition has two extra even harder tracks. The sixth has several hard-to-hit shortcuts that must be unlocked in sequence, and if you screw up anywhere, they can be {{Permanently Missable|Content}}. The seventh has a lot of high hills with sharp turns along the way.
88* ''VideoGame/DaytonaUSA 2: Battle on the Edge'' is already a hard game, [[SequelDifficultySpike more difficult than the original]], but the UpdatedRerelease ''Power Edition'' adds a "Challenge" level which combines the three levels into one, and the AI there can wipe even a skilled racer's skills into the walls.
89* ''VideoGame/InitialDArcadeStage'' had Bunta Challenge. Objective: Beat a grossly overpowered vehicle. Then beat an even more grossly overpowered vehicle. Then beat a vehicle that will leave you in the dust the instant you make the tiniest error. And if he wins, you ''lose points''. No wonder Sega discontinued this after 3. It's brought back in ''The Arcade'', and it is just as NintendoHard [[ShooOutTheClowns as how it was]], increasing the maximum levels to exaggerate this trope. However, the point-deduction mechanic was removed.
90* ''VideoGame/NeedForSpeedShift''. Any of the Manufacturer duels. Just try it. The single opponent in these races is far more aggressive than in other types of races, and the grass or sand on the sides of the tracks may as well be black holes - once your car goes onto it, it's nearly impossible to even get back on the road, much less retake the lead.
91* ''VideoGame/FZero'':
92** ''VideoGame/FZero1990'' for SNES had an unlockable Master level. In this mode the most noticeable difference is that the normally laughable "filler cars" become serious competitors and can actually get first place. Oh, and certain tracks become [[{{Unwinnable}} literally impossible]] with certain cars (seriously, not even tool assisted cheating will help).
93** ''VideoGame/FZeroGX'' has Master difficulty in GP mode, and Very Hard difficulty in Story Mode. Beating all cups on Master unlocks the [[SceneryPorn visually-impressive]] AX cup, while beating individual Story levels on Very Hard unlocks extra racers, some of whom are some of the best in the game.
94* ''VideoGame/ForzaHorizon'' has an ''Insane'' difficulty setting, in which all CPU racers race like they were clones of Sebastian Vettel or of Michael Schumacher, and use effectively ALL of the shortcuts in the racetrack. However, if you play this mode with all driving assists turned off, you get a 125% bonus to the credits you earn after completing the race.
95* ''VideoGame/ForzaMotorsport 6'' has Unbeatable difficulty, in which the opponents have near-PerfectPlayAI along with [[TheComputerIsACheatingBastard cheating like a bastard to the max]], and those starting in the lead positions can be literally unbeatable.
96* The unlockable S-Class difficulty in ''[[VideoGame/SegaSuperstars Sonic and All-Stars Racing Transformed]]''. Thought Hard was difficult enough? S-Class will let you know '''there is a DAMN good reason why this game gets compared to F-Zero.''' The AI goes from passive to [[ArtificialBrilliance actively attacking you with pinpoint precision with items,]] [[SpitefulAI actively ramming you into the walls and off the track]], [[PerfectPlayAI and maneuvering the course's racing line perfectly, only falling victim to the most difficult obstacles in the game.]] The speed also ups from A-Class, going from "pretty fast" to "UTTERLY BLISTERING", with one mistake meaning you're gonna go flying into a wall and drop several places, and last but CERTAINLY not least, this is all combined with the innate difficulty of many of the courses, of which are usually a step up from your typical mascot racer and requiring utter mastery of the game's mechanics to win on S-Class. [[ThatOneLevel Burning Depths? Hope you know how to drift perfectly. Chilly Castle? Watch those hairpin turns and tight corridors.]] [[VeryDefinitelyFinalDungeon Race of AGES?]] Good luck. And then there's certain World Tour events like the Boost Challenges where you have to do near perfectly to win.
97* ''VideoGame/TrackMania United''. In Solo play, it has four standard difficulty levels; [[EasierThanEasy White]], Green, Blue and [[NintendoHard Red]]. However, it has a special difficulty tier: Black, which, unlike previous levels, has one race per scenario. In order to unlock Black-tier races, you ''must'' get a Gold medal in ''every single previous course'' pertaining to its respective scenario. And it doesn't help that Black-tier races are [[PlatformHell ludicruously hard]].
98* Difficulties in ''VideoGame/MarioKart'' games are 50cc (easy), 100cc (normal) and 150cc (hard), with some games adding [[LevelInReverse Mirror Mode]]. DownloadableContent for ''VideoGame/MarioKart8'' adds 200cc to the available difficulties. The other racers pull no punches when playing on 200cc, and due to the karts' "crazy fast" speed, some turns become insanely difficult with certain karts. Modded “VideoGame/MarioKartWii” takes it up even further with Item Rain, which is a whole new game mode by itself. Combine that with 24 players, [[TheComputerIsACheatingBastard impossible CPUs]], and [=200cc=], then Boy, you’re going for an insanely wild ride.
99* In ''VideoGame/FatalRacing'', the difficulty above "Hard" is "Impossible", which the manual defines as "Impossible unless you've had loads of practice or work for Gremlin or Interplay as a game tester."
100* ''VideoGame/JetMoto'''s intial difficulties are Amateur, Intermediate, and Professional. Winning a Full Season on Professional difficulty unlocks Master. Mind you, even Amateur is NintendoHard. The sequel goes a step further with Insane mode.
101[[/folder]]
102
103[[folder:Fighting Game]]
104* ''VideoGame/StreetFighterIV'' has "Easiest", "Very Easy", "Easy", "Medium", "Medium-Hard", "Hard", "Very Hard", and "Hardest". The only way to fight [[SNKBoss Oni]] is on the Hardest difficulty.
105* The ''VideoGame/SuperSmashBros'' series, the first two games have the following difficulties in the 1 player mode: Very Easy, Easy, Normal, Hard, and Very Hard. ''Super Smash Bros Brawl'' has Easy, Normal, Hard, Very Hard, and Intense. Intense is likely a reference to ''[[VideoGame/Kirby64TheCrystalShards Kirby 64]]'', which had an Intense difficulty for the minigames if you could beat the computer on Very Hard. ''[=3DS=]'' and ''[=WiiU=]'' have 10 difficulty tiers lifted from ''VideoGame/KidIcarusUprising''; the last three are "Infernal", "White Hot", and "Nothing Harder!".
106* ''VideoGame/DragonBallZBudokai 3'' has Z, ZZ, and ZZZ. These [[IdiosyncraticDifficultyLevels three levels]] invoke TheComputerIsACheatingBastard, especially if you're playing in [[ThatOneLevel Dragon Arena]], which ''loves'' to [[FakeDifficulty impose limitations on you during the most difficult of battles]]. Mercy be on your soul if you're playing as anyone who can't go beyond a 2nd level transformation and/or if you're up against [[ThatOneBoss Cell/Kid Buu/Broly/Omega Shenron/any of the Fusion characters]]. ''Especially'' the latter two. You'll need to resort to [[AIBreaker underhanded tricks]] and pray to God... ''a lot''. God help you if you try to tackle this on ZZZ. On this difficulty, ''everyone has maxed-out stats''. '''EVERYONE'''. This feat is impossible for you to do because there are seven parameters (each maxing out at 20) and ''you can only make it to level 100''. Do the math. [[BraggingRightsReward Well, at least you get a trophy from Goku acknowledging how you're "the strongest in the universe"... or something.]]
107* ''VideoGame/BattleArenaToshinden 3'' offers "Stress Relief", "Very Easy", "Easy", "Normal", "Moderately Hard", "Hard", "Very Hard", and "Impossible".
108* ''VideoGame/MagicalBattleArena'' has the suitably named Nightmare difficulty. Besides making your enemies hardier, they're now all extra aggressive in their attacks, and in the five on one MirrorMatch, will constantly attempt to surround you using {{Flash Step}}s making it nigh impossible for you to even attack. Oh, and those annoying but relatively harmless [[Anime/MagicalGirlLyricalNanohaStrikers Gadget Drones]]? They've remembered that they have {{Wave Motion Gun}}s and [[CombatTentacles tentacle grabs]], so now, they can also kill you. Needless to say, your computer-controlled ally is practically useless here and will be dead before you know it.
109* ''VideoGame/SoulCalibur 3'' has Easy, Medium, Hard, Very Hard, Ultra Hard, and Extremely Hard. And the game is defaulted to Extremely Hard, as difficulty levels only apply to two or three game modes. None of them are Story Mode.
110* ''Franchise/MortalKombat'' games typically have five difficulty levels: Very Easy, Easy, Medium, Hard, and Very Hard. To make matters worse, as of ''Mortal Kombat 3'', there was the Choose Your Destiny system, where you could choose how many enemies you fought. Yeah. Selecting the longest roster earned you the taunt "You Will Never Win!"
111* The ''VideoGame/{{Touhou}}'' fighting games are still ''Touhou'' games, so they have a Lunatic difficulty setting.
112* The ''VideoGame/BlazBlue'' games have Very Hard and Hell difficulty settings, but Score Attack Mode is set to a difficulty harder than Hell. In ''VideoGame/BlazBlueContinuumShift EXTEND'', Score Attack is not as difficult as a new mode, Unlimited Mars, where not only is the AI difficult set to the highest level, but ''every single enemy'' is an SNKBoss.
113* ''VideoGame/{{Weaponlord}}'' has Adventurer, Warrior, Barbarian, and Warlord. Thanks to [[SomeDexterityRequired the game's unforgiving controls]] and the overbearing AI, even the Adventurer (the easiest difficulty) feels like a hard mode. EasyModeMockery drives the knife even further in by making the endings only appear in the hardest difficulties.
114* In most ''VideoGame/DeadOrAlive'' games, there has been a Very Hard mode. Dead Or Alive 4 even lacked an easy mode. However, ''Dead or Alive 5'' takes this to a new level with its difficulties being: Rookie, Easy, Normal, Hard, Champ, Master, True Fighter, and Legend. Good luck clearing the survival courses on those last 4 difficulties. [[TheComputerIsACheatingBastard You'll need it]].
115* ''VideoGame/KillerInstinct'' (the 2013 one) has Noob, Easy, Medium, Hard, Killer, and ''Kyle'' difficulties, the last of which is named after one of the games' AI designers. Enemies on Kyle can basically combo/counter break you whenever they feel like it, make almost no mistakes, have amazing reads, and apparently learn how you play and adapt around that. To top it off, the TrueFinalBoss of the arcade mode ''always'' fights at Kyle difficulty.
116[[/folder]]
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118[[folder:First-Person Shooter]]
119* ''VideoGame/Destiny2'' features strikes which are basically missions that end in a boss battle. Nightfall takes the normal strikes and makes them more difficult and the difficulty is slowly ramped up. There are difficulty choices with hero being the easiest, followed by Legend, and then Master. Master was the hardest difficulty in the game up until Grandmasters came out. With grandmasters, your revives are limited and you can only get more by killing Champions. If you died, you must be revived to get back to the fight. Aside from every enemy becoming even more threatening, if everyone died, you were returned to orbit.
120* The video game adaptation of ''VideoGame/ShadowsOfTheEmpire'' gives us the Jedi difficulty setting, which turns the whole game into an endurance test of TrialAndErrorGameplay. Most enemy attacks (except from Droid enemies) will kill you in two or three hits, and health and ammo is much more scarce and their placement is changed around. NintendoHard doesn't even ''begin'' to describe the hair pulling insanity of this mode—-basically, you have to keep on your toes at all times and know the levels inside and out so you can anticipate ''every'' attack that comes your way--one or two slip ups anywhere, and you're done for. You'll struggle to even get past the first two stages on this setting. Oh, and you only get three lives, and collecting Challenge Points will barely net you even one or two extra lives in this mode. [[HardModePerks On the upside]], Dash's own laser pistol does much more damage as well (it can kill Imperial Troopers in one hit when the laser pistol is fully charged) so you can have ''some'' fighting chance of winning in this mode.
121* ''Franchise/{{Halo}}'':
122** The "Heroic" and "Legendary" levels in every game, with the versions in ''VideoGame/HaloReach'' described by Creator/{{Bungie}} as being "harder than any other ''Halo'' game." [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin They weren't kidding.]] (Heck, the Fuel Rod Shades, Revenants, Banshees, and Ghosts in "Pillar of Autumn" can already be an utter pain just on ''Normal''.)
123** This all however is put to the ground as "novice" stuff by the true hardcore of the hardcore of the community. The unnamed, unofficial, yet definitely intentionally programmed to be damned hard to do is the "Mythic" difficulty (otherwise known as "LASO", or "Legendary: All Skulls On"). It involves turning on all skulls in the game. Each skull basically turns up the difficulty in distinct ways by one level in terms of forcing the player to modify their playstyle in order to succeed, and THERE ARE MORE THAN 12 SKULLS. Even the ones that are basically "fun" skulls can still prove fatal if not accounted for, as they do still modify the game. The "Iron" skull even causes you to restart the '''entire level''' after dying '''once''' if you're playing solo, and some skulls make particularly deadly combinations, such as "Thunderstorm" (which causes all enemy units in the game to rank up) and "Mythic" (which just gives a straight-forward 100% health bonus to the already-hard-to-kill high-ranking enemies), and there's also the "Tilt" skull which makes the enemy shields even more resilient, with the original description being painfully true[[note]]"What was once resistance is now immunity."[[/note]], since getting through their shields without known methods such as using charged Plasma Pistol shots to deplete their shields (and that tactic is no longer valid from Halo 4 onward unfortunately...), will make you wallow in despair as your ammo runs drier and drier thanks to the infamous "Famine" skull making ammo scavenging a living hellscape. There is an entire community basically made to conquer this hell. Usually less than 100 people in the entire world accomplish the feat, and that's with [[http://halo.bungie.org/gameplay/halo3_slaso_2.0/ the]] [[http://halo.bungie.org/gameplay/odst_slaso/ community]]-[[http://halo.bungie.org/gameplay/reach_mythic/ built]] [[http://halo.bungie.org/gameplay/halo4_mythic/ guides]]! To go at it alone is virtual suicide. Bungie even based the ''Reach'' weekly challenges around completing levels Solo, Legendary, All Skulls On.
124* Even from the start, the ''VideoGame/{{Marathon}}'' series had the oath of the vidmaster, essentially a commitment to play the game as hard as possible. Not only do you only play the hardest difficulty, appropriately named as Total Carnage, but you are also tasked with ''punching'' every switch [[note]]Switches would also trigger when shot with certain guns, and some switches cannot be reached, so these must be shot.[[/note]] (which can often lead to problems), firing grenades whenever they were available, running by holding a key other than Caps Lock (turning on Always Run in the later Open-Source releases probably counts as the same thing), and killing all {{NPC}}s (who would attack you after a few already died). Needless to say, Creator/{{Bungie}} likes making hard games harder.
125* ''VideoGame/{{Doom}}'':
126** The Nightmare! difficulty in the first game, ''VideoGame/DoomII'' and ''VideoGame/FinalDoom'', added in v1.2 of the original ''Doom'''s release after Creator/IdSoftware supposedly received mail from fans complaining that Ultra-Violence was ''too easy''. Cheat codes are disabled, monsters move and react twice as fast, their projectiles fly twice as fast, and [[RespawningEnemies they respawn some time after death]]. The only plus is that you get double ammo from pickups, which is useful since you're probably gonna end up fighting most enemies ''more than once''. The fact that the game asks you whether you ''really'' want to play on it or not when you select it is telling:
127-->"Are you sure? This skill level isn't even remotely fair."
128** "Nightmare!" was one of the earliest incidents of a difficulty level released with the announced caveat by WordOfGod that it was both not fully playtested and [[TrollingCreator specifically made to be impossible to finish]]. Many a fanatic player, however, has succeeded in doing so.
129** Particularly annoying in Episode 4 of ''[[UpdatedRerelease The Ultimate Doom]]'' (Thy Flesh Consumed), where whole levels can be different depending on what difficulty you're playing on because items are moved around depending on difficulty. Naturally, Nightmare! makes these as hard to get as possible.
130** Source ports can separate the two parameters of "Nightmare!" into "fast monsters", that makes the mooks vicious, and "respawning enemies", that is self-explanatory. Those parameters can be applied regardless of difficulty, so you can customize your gameplay to have, for example, only a few but nasty enemies ([[EasierThanEasy I'm Too Young To Die]] with fast monsters), Ultra-Violence with more aggressive demons... or if you're into a SelfImposedChallenge, you can play Ultra-Violence with both parameters enabled, so you emulate "Nightmare!" ''without the double ammo pickups''.
131** The 2019 Unity ports of the classic ''Doom'' games eventually added an additional difficulty between Ultra-Violence and Nightmare! known as "Ultra-Violence+". It's the same as UV except with the fast monster behavior of Nightmare!, and anything that's normally flagged to only spawn in multiplayer (such as in co-op or deathmatches) will spawn anyway. Depending on the map, this occasionally has its benefits, like giving out a [[GameBreaker BFG]] on [=MAP01=] of ''Doom II'', but in the case of ''The Plutonia Experiment'', if you thought dealing with 13 [[DegradedBoss Cyberdemons]] in [[BrutalBonusLevel MAP32: Go 2 It]] was too much, how about dealing with '''35'''?
132** ''VideoGame/{{Doom 3}}'''s Nightmare mode has enemies doing about 3.5 times as much damage as normal, allowing them to kill you in less than a dozen hits or so. Additionally, you also constantly lose health every couple of seconds. To balance this out, your start out with the Soul Cube, which allows you to steal health from enemies.
133** ''Doom 3: Resurrection of Evil'''s Nightmare difficult goes beyond Harder Than Hard and into the realm of truly insane. Just like in regular ''Doom 3'', you constantly lose health throughout the game. Unlike ''Doom 3'', you don't have the Soul Cube around to steal health from enemies. As a result, you spend the entire game as a OneHitPointWonder, with death being instant if you ever take a single hit from any enemy.
134** ''VideoGame/Doom2016'' and ''VideoGame/DoomEternal'' offer Ultra-Nightmare. It's just as ball-breaking as Nightmare, except you have [[FinalDeathMode only one life]]; if you die outside of a Rune Trial, your save file is deleted and a small marker is placed showing how far you got if you're playing online. It's rather telling that most of the markers you find will be in the ''very first combat arena'' in ''Doom (2016)'' - [[InstakillMook a mere imp can kill you with a single fireball if you don't have armor]].
135* ''VideoGame/DukeNukem3D'', being a ''VideoGame/{{Doom}}'' clone, had "Damn, I'm Good", where in addition to being stronger, any enemy who left a corpse (basically, who wasn't killed by an explosion, the shrink or freeze weapons, or SQUISH!'d) would respawn, including the [[DegradedBoss clones of the first episode's boss]] who, in addition to being the strongest enemy in the game, would always leave a corpse even if you did blow him up, forcing you to waste another grenade or rocket to get rid of it.
136* ''VideoGame/{{Descent}}'' has its Insane difficulty.
137** The enemies have learned how to fire faster than you, dodge better than you, flank better than you, thus nearly all the enemies are DemonicSpiders, especially the GoddamnedBats in the second game, and all the powerups that are so vital to your survival are now pathetically ineffective. As an added bonus, your weapons take much more energy to use than normal, so you can easily run out of ammunition. And on the second game's Insane, the matcens ({{mook maker}}s) are inexhaustible.
138** In the PSX games, the Ace and Insane difficulties are hidden and must be unlocked via code. Due to the [[InterfaceScrew framerate drops]] when there are a lot of enemies on screen, and the even faster speed of projectiles such as missiles, Insane may be literally unbeatable here.
139* Helldivers 2 features 9 difficulties that ramp up the difficulty of the missions you do from adding side objectives, to increasing enemy spawns and introducing harder and tougher enemies on the bug side and robot side. The higher difficulty you do, the more XP and requisition slips you earn from the bonus multiplier at the end. The 9 difficulties in order are: [[EasierThanEasy Trivial]], Easy, Medium, Challenging, Hard, Extreme, Suicide Mission, Impossible and Helldive.
140* ''VideoGame/MetroidPrimeTrilogy'': Completing a game in the trilogy unlocks Hard Mode, called Hypermode in ''VideoGame/MetroidPrime3Corruption'' and the Wii compilation of all three games. Making your way through the game on the hardest setting is tougher than normal. Enemies become much smarter (Space Pirates are much more likely to gun you down from a distance and dodge your fire for example), they soak up much more damage and Samus herself takes much more damage from everything. The difficulty really spikes on final bosses though, especially Prime 3's final boss.
141* ''VideoGame/SeriousSam'' has Tourist ("for non-FPS players"), Easy ("for non-experienced FPS players"), Normal ("for experienced FPS players"), Hard ("for experienced ''Serious Sam'' players"), and Serious ("Are you serious?"). Beating the game unlocks Mental difficulty ("You can't be serious!"), which is as advertised because all the enemies ''are friggin invisible''!!! ''Revolutions'' introduces I Am Ugh-Zan, which uses Serious difficulty's enemy placement, boosts their combat stats, and randomly gives enemies a special modifier.
142* ''VideoGame/CallOfDuty'':
143** The description for "Veteran" difficulty is "You will not survive". They're not kidding. Even worse in the expansion ''United Offensive'', due to the sheer number of enemy soldiers at points. There's also ''[[VideoGame/ModernWarfare Call Of Duty 4]]'s'' Veteran, where enemies killed frequently hold out to draw their pistol and two-shot you. Staying out of cover for more than two seconds is entirely suicidal. And the enemies don't like when they can't shoot you. Their solution is to herd you from your safe hiding place with LOTS of grenades. There are many points where you're given the choice between getting fragged or getting ripped up by a machine gun.
144** This was particularly aggravating in "World at War", by Treyarch. In that game, if you didn't proceed forward fast enough, the game would try to get you to move by spawning grenades near you, even if you already killed all the enemies in the level. They came more frequently on harder difficulty levels.
145** ''VideoGame/ModernWarfare2'''s Veteran is available to be picked in Special Ops. [[EasierThanEasy "Casual" difficulty Recruit]] [[EasyModeMockery is not.]] No matter the implications of this, [[NintendoHard Veteran is still going to kick the ass of people who play on the very hard difficulties.]] In addition, Special Ops stays the same difficulty-wise regardless of if you play solo, or two-player coop. Trying to play Veteran Special Ops without a second player is akin to bungee jumping without a bungee cord. [[TooDumbToLive Your chance of survival is about the same.]]
146** To sum up how the difficulty feels during gameplay, here are the basics:
147*** On Recruit, the game is more or less a gritty action film. {{Mooks}} miss a lot, and their rounds aren't all that damaging. Timed objectives give out substantially more time. The number of enemies is dramatically reduced. Basically, it's very easy to do a no-death run.
148*** On Regular, the game offers a standard level of challenge and you will likely die a few times, but most situations can be won in a few tries with enough firepower and cover. So long as you don't make a habit of disregarding cover, then the game isn't all that hard.
149*** On Hardened, the game becomes a real challenge. There are more enemies, they hit more frequently, and can kill you in a few hits. You may need to get creative in how you deal with situations. The game is fair, so except for very few occasions, the game is not a LuckBasedMission, and the computer will not cheat.
150*** Veteran is close to impossible. Enemies come in much higher numbers, have noticeably more health, have much better aim, and to top it all off, TheComputerIsACheatingBastard and only lets you win on rare occasions. This is at least 2x harder than Hardened. Here, enemies love to survive what ought to be lethal wounds, go into last stand mode, and most infuriatingly, suddenly kill you with three rapid shots in such close succession that you can't do anything. Even more annoying is that the odds of being suddenly and unfairly killed increase inversely proportionally to the number of enemies remaining, so you can down four mooks at the start of a fight with no trouble, but the last enemy kills you the moment you stick your head out of cover!
151** ''VideoGame/CallOfDutyBlackOpsIII'' introduce the [[SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome Realistic difficulty,]] which turns you into a OneHitPointWonder.
152** ''VideoGame/CallOfDutyInfiniteWarfare'''s Specialist difficulty is just as hard. Helmets are your ONLY protection from headshots, take up one equipment slot, and are destroyed upon being hit. There is no automatic magazine reloading. If you get shot in the legs, you can't sprint. If you get shot in the arms, you have trouble using two-handed weapons and using ADS. No automatic health regeneration, meaning that you can only heal using nano-shots, which are stupid rare and take up equipment slots. Checkpoints are drastically reduced. Your gun can be shot out of your hands. And then there's IW's [[FinalDeathMode #YOLO]] mode. It's just as hard as Specialist, with a twist. No points for guessing what it is.
153* ''VideoGame/{{Turok}}'' (2008) has Normal, Hard, and Inhuman difficulties. Inhuman takes away your ability to instant-knife-kill dinosaurs, and also allows enemy soldiers to kill you with about half a second of sustained gunfire. So basically, just like how it'd be in real life.
154* ''VideoGame/SystemShock2'' adds 'Impossible' with the final patch. Players start with a mere trickle of health and gain laughable amounts with Endurance increases, making the Tank bonus upgrade an absolute must. Skills and abilities cost an absolutely prohibitive amount of cyber modules past the first level, and as a result hacking skill is ridiculously expensive to purchase - this is a moot point however, as hacking difficulty starts at an insane higher than 100% chance of failure on average before bonuses, and several security consoles are removed altogether in key areas loaded with cameras and turrets. Enemies are faster to hit, and learn new attack techniques. Vending machines also charge more than ever, and stop selling the recycler item that could earn you more money on easier settings. This is one Impossible setting that complies with truth in advertising.
155* ''VideoGame/{{Painkiller}}''[==]'s difficulty levels are named Daydream, Insomnia (normal), Nightmare, and Trauma. You have to beat Insomnia and get all the Black Tarot cards in order to unlock Nightmare, and you have to do the same on Nightmare to get to Trauma. On Trauma, there are no quicksaves, and no souls. That's right, the souls enemies release that give you that vital + 1 health bonus when you pick them up and turn you into an invincible demon every time you get 66 of them are no longer in the game. And this is the only way to unlock all the levels (Prison and Forest unlock on Nightmare and Trauma, respectively) get all the Black Tarot cards and see the [[HappilyEverAfter Good Ending]]... which isn't canon as of the expansion pack, but it's the thought that counts.
156* ''VideoGame/FarCry1''[==]'s "Realistic". First off, the game is already more challenging than most at the default levels, this just makes it worse. If you don't know how to take cover properly, or know where the armor is, you're fucked. Realistic difficulty dramatically increases the damage enemies do to your health, causing you to die after only a couple shots if you're not wearing armor. Which is, of course, realistic. (Your armor itself can still take several hits before failing, so the game is still beatable as long as you can find armor). However, realistic difficulty ''also'' '''increases''' the damage that enemies can take, so that even the basic grunts wearing nothing but a t-shirt can soak several assault rifle bullets before dying. Which is, obviously, not so realistic.
157* "Infamous" on ''VideoGame/FarCry2'' is roughly as close to reality as the game will get: running checkpoints or trying to take them out by rolling into them blazing away on the gun of your truck/boat is a good way to get ventilated within seconds, forcing players to sneak up on them and perform massive one-man ambushes with explosives and fire. Enemies are experts at seeking you out when you hide in buildings, turning stealth from a neat way to play into a necessity.
158* ''VideoGame/{{Crysis}}'' has Delta difficulty, which is ''supposed'' to be Harder Than Hard, as your health regenerates ''much'' more slowly. Additionally, there are a bunch of little handicaps such as no crosshair without a LaserSight or iron sights, you can't drive a vehicle and operate the rooftop machinegun turret at the same time, and [[BilingualBonus enemies all speak Korean]], making it harder for the player to gauge their moves. While Delta is generally considered the hardest difficultly, it also reduces every human character's health to more realistic levels, shifting the game closer to RocketTagGameplay. Delta is referred to as [[Series/TwentyFour Bauer]] mode in the game files.
159* ''VideoGame/Crysis2'' has this not for the players but for their computers. The graphic quality presets start with "high" and then go up from there ("very high", "ultra high", "extreme").
160* ''[[VideoGame/{{STALKER}} S.T.A.L.K.E.R.]]'' games have the harder-than-hard "Master" difficulty. It's perfect for people who have mastered the game on lower difficulty levels and know how to gain advantages over enemies who can take and inflict damage on par with the player but are much more numerous. People who don't know how to pull this off might as well map quickload and quicksave to a mouse button. Actually, scratch that: even people who DO know to pull this off will have to spend a lot of time reloading, because it takes only a ''moment'' of inattention to have your brains blown out. Just to set a parameter, the game is already NintendoHard on the ''easy'' difficulty setting. And some [[GameMod modders]] have released mod packs, notably ''MISERY'' and ''Oblivion Lost'', that make the games ''even harder''.
161* ''VideoGame/{{Quake}}'''s Harder Than Hard mode takes advantage of the game's in-game difficulty selection (in other words, a HubLevel), with the "Nightmare" difficulty only accessible through a secret hidden inside a magical pond. Then again, unlike ''Doom'' or many other examples here, the ''Quake'' Nightmare difficulty has few player handicaps and is in fact only slightly less manageable than Hard: the only additions are enemies attacking with relentless frequency and tending to stand still if they have a ranged attack, and [[ImmuneToFlinching immunity to stuns]] for five seconds after the first flinch.
162* ''VideoGame/QuakeII'': Hard+ mode is even more well hidden, accessible only through the console outside of a source port. Unlike the first ''Quake'', this one is significantly tougher than the "normal" Hard difficulty: enemies are faster and [[ArtificialBrilliance surprisingly intelligent]], have higher HP, their weapons deal much more damage, and they are ImmuneToFlinching.
163* ''VideoGame/QuakeIV'' had the General difficulty. Enemies did 3.5 times as much damage as normal, and thus could kill you in just a few hits if you didn't have armor (and you didn't even GET armor until after 2 or 3 levels). Even with armor, you could still die after just several hits. Enemies also had [[DamageSponge significantly more health]], to the point that even mid-level enemies like the Berserkers and Gunners required more than a full mag of assault rifle fire to kill. Finally, your Rhino Squad squadmates die at the drop of a hat, turning previously fun firefights into tedious [[EscortMission escort missions]], since you got an automatic game over if any of them ever died. Thankfully, unlike the game's spiritual predecessor ''VideoGame/Doom3'', your health does not automatically tick down over time so it's possible to avert the frustration of being a OneHitPointWonder.
164* ''VideoGame/SoldierOfFortune'' has the Unfair difficulty, where the noise meter is much more sensitive than on lower difficulty levels, making it much easier to spike it and get tons of RespawningEnemies. In fact enemies can randomly spawn as soon as the PADD meter reaches halfway or so. It's NintendoHard, but not quite as unfair as Doom's Nightmare difficulty. Even worse: ''[=SOF2=]'''s Soldier Of Fortune difficulty, which is FirstPersonShooter Hell, although there aren't many RespawningEnemies. The normal difficulties are already NintendoHard, this is something else.
165* In addition to their three standard difficulty settings, both ''[[VideoGame/GoldenEye1997 GoldenEye]]'' and its SpiritualSuccessor ''VideoGame/PerfectDark'' feature unlockable difficulty settings (called "007" and "Perfect Dark" respectively) that allow the player to alter the challenge by fine-tuning certain enemy properties: their health, accuracy, damage and reaction times. This allows players to set up a SelfImposedChallenge that is far harder than the standard difficulty settings. Level runs done with minimum enemy health and all other settings on maximum (meaning both player and perfectly-accurate guards will die in a single hit) are known as "Licence to Kill" (LTK) settings. Runs with ''everything'' set to maximum, so that guards have ''ten times more health than normal'', are known as "Dark LTK" runs. In ''VideoGame/GoldenEye1997'' this is stupidly hard since a dead foe doesn't drop enough ammo to kill the next one (though it [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gy85PlckrW0 is possible to complete certain levels]]; in Perfect Dark it's ''marginally'' more manageable thanks to the game's [[ChunkySalsaRule "quirk"]] that headshots on unshielded [=NPCs=] are always instant kills.
166** Said customisable difficulties can also be used in conjunction with the games' many unlockable cheat options, some of which make the game harder: the "Enemy Rockets" cheat, for example, arms every enemy in each game with a rocket launcher with infinite ammo.
167** ''VideoGame/PerfectDark'': The multiplayer mode allows players to set up deathmatches that involve bots of varying behaviour and difficulty level. "[=PerfectSims=]" and "[=DarkSims=]" have near-perfect accuracy and reaction times.
168** ''VideoGame/PerfectDarkZero'' features an unlockable fourth difficulty setting, "Dark Agent", which does away with the semi-RegeneratingHealth feature.
169** While the remake ''VideoGame/GoldenEyeWii'' has more modern trappings of [=FPSes=] like regenerating health, there's "007 Classic" mode, complete with health bar and armor pickups. True to this trope, it's also the hardest difficulty level of the game.
170* ''VideoGame/Left4Dead'':
171** The game has Easy, Normal, Advanced, and Expert. On Expert, The common infected deal 20 damage per hit, Hunters and Smokers do at least 30 damage per hit, Tanks can incapacitate a Survivor in one hit and then kill in two hits, and the Witch will instantly kill you if provoked. Friendly fire damage is significantly increased where a stray shotgun blast or few bullets can incap a Survivor.
172** And if the Director feels like being a {{Jerkass}} on Expert, he will spawn special infected on you ''repeatedly'' and/or keep spawning Tanks right in the beginning of the level. In fact, this is one of the factors in the difficulty setting - on lower difficulties, if the Director rolls a spawn combination that it thinks is unfair, it discards that combination and rerolls. On Expert, ''all'' rolls are used.
173** The sequel sports Realism mode, which is a ''mode of play'' instead of difficulty. Realism mode removes the colored auras around allies and items, making communication about who and what is where a must. Head shots to zombies are now more vital than ever since it will do more damage and more likely to kill in one shot than two shotgun blasts to the torso. To top it off, you can play Realism mode on any difficulty setting, including the already hard as hell Expert setting.
174* The [=PS3=] port of ''VideoGame/{{BioShock|1}}'' and the remastered version included in ''[=BioShock=]: The Collection'', in addition to the Easy, Medium, and Hard difficulties, have Survivor mode, which is described on the difficulty selection screen as "Every bullet counts." The very first enemy will kill you. And one of the trophies asks you to beat the game on Survivor without using Vita-chambers. This trophy is fittingly called "I Chose the Impossible."
175* ''VideoGame/BioShockInfinite'' has 1999 Mode. While in the other difficulties DeathIsASlapOnTheWrist, getting revived here costs 100 Silver Eagles and if you don't have enough cash, you will be [[ContinuingisPainful kicked back to the main menu and forced to restore a previous checkpoint]]. You are also forced to choose a weapon specialization that can't be changed again. Resources are more difficult to find, with Elizabeth taking longer to toss you items. Enemies dish out more damage and have more health, with even your regular garden-variety mook being able to overthrow you without difficulty; even an enemy with a simple wooden baseball bat can take away ¼ of your health on a single strike, let alone [[BossInMookClothing Handymen]]! To put the cherry on top, the achievement [[ThatOneAchievement Scavenger Hunt]] requires you to beat this difficulty without using any Dollar Bill vending machines. If you get to the [[MultiMookMelee zeppelin defense]] level, [[ThatOneLevel may God have mercy on your soul]] once the [[HeavilyArmoredMook Beasts]] come in with their [=RPGs=]. Seeking cover regularly, managing resources wisely, knowing the Infusion locations and also being filthy rich is the only way you are beating this difficulty. The name is a reference to ''VideoGame/SystemShock2'', a game released in 1999 and a heavy influence in the creation of ''[=BioShock=]'', to the extent that ''[=BioShock=]'' is considered a SpiritualSuccessor to ''System Shock''.
176* ''VideoGame/{{Killzone}} 2''. Let's see, Veteran makes the Helghast a pain in the ass to kill (your normally powerful side-arm is now worthless, and they can take four shots to the head - if you don't wind up shooting them in the neck), and amps the damage (if you're out of cover for more than five seconds, '''YOU WILL DIE'''). ''Coupled with a crappy cover system, where it can take precious seconds to stick and unstick from a wall while Helghast happily round the corner and shoot you, AND a jerky aim that can't be fixed.'' Now, picture this in Elite, where, in one or two shots, you die. With a long regen time, and ''cover that can blow apart in certain levels''. Also, there's no reticule.
177* ''[[VideoGame/FirstEncounterAssaultRecon F.E.A.R.]]'':
178** Extreme difficulty, in which you have roughly the same durability as the basic Replica Soldier, while being outnumbered by them by a few hundred to one. If you use your slow-motion power, it's just fairly challenging, but you try to beat the game without Slo-Mo it's crazy hard.
179** The sequel, ''Project Origin'', originally just had Easy, Normal, and Hard. However, the 1.02 patch for the game transformed Hard mode into Harder Than Hard by significantly increasing the damage done by enemy attacks, to the point that you died after just 8-10 bullet hits or 2 shotgun blasts or sniper rifle shots. Again, it's still manageable if you use Slo-Mo, but certain fights (most noticeably the final shootout) are super annoying.
180** The threequel, although easier than its predecessors, still has a harder-than-hard difficulty in the form of Insane mode, which is unlocked by completing the game on a lower setting.
181* ''VideoGame/AliensVsPredator2010'' has Nightmare difficulty. It's just like Hard (enemies do increased damage, have higher health, command prompts no longer appear on screen to tell you when to block or counter, aliens can no longer be knocked down in melee, and marines are much more aware of their surroundings) with the added handicap that there ''are no checkpoints'', so if you die at any point in a level you have to start over from the very beginning.
182* When you beat ''VideoGame/{{Killer7}}'', you get access to "Killer 8". In it you get an additional character with both a clip size and rate of fire drastically larger than any of the normal caricatures. However, the down side is that the enemies are faster and more deadly; just shooting at them normally does almost nothing, the weak points that you use to kill them instantly are now completely invisible, and the enemies give you less "blood" to level up and heal with. And the extra character has a metric ton of health (to the point that he's the only character besides [[SuperToughness Mask]] who can take more than one hit in this mode). Since resurrecting dead characters requires ButtonMashing as fast as you can until refill their health gauge, you better make sure he doesn't die if you value your thumbs.
183* The first two ''VideoGame/BrothersInArms'' games have Easy, Normal, Difficult, and Authentic difficulty modes. To unlock Authentic mode, the whole game must first be completed on Difficult mode. ''Hell's Highway'' has only three difficulties: Casual, Veteran and Authentic. In this game, to unlock Authentic mode, you just need to finish the game once. Regardless of the game, in Authentic mode, the difficulty is set very high, there are no save checkpoints, and suppression indicators are turned off by default, to make the game as close to an actual UsefulNotes/WorldWarII battlefield as possible.
184* ''VideoGame/PAYDAYTheHeist'' has Easy, Normal, Hard, and OVERKILL. Playing on easier difficulties would lock you out of certain heists, though a patch was made to allow all heists to be playable on at least Normal. Reaching the level cap of 145 would unlock OVERKILL 145+: enemies do more damage, have more health, and your bleedout timer is almost nonexistent after the first incapacitation.
185* ''VideoGame/PAYDAY2'' features a unique spin on this.
186** The difficulties cover Normal, Hard, Very Hard and [[IdiosyncraticDifficultyLevels OVERKILL]], with higher difficulty stacking higher rewards with greater opposition. However, should you level enough, PRO Heists become available on Hard and above; for even larger prizes, the game throws numerous curve-balls at the players, such as extra objectives, changes to the map, and/or other variables mixed in with even harder difficulties ''and with little warning''.
187** And then Overkill went and added the aptly-named Death Wish difficulty. The cameras on most maps are replaced with indestructible Titan cameras, security is increased, and little curve balls are thrown your way to make stealthing a heist much, ''much'' harder. The assault waves are no better, with new Gensec Elite SWAT troopers that can tear through armor and health in the blink of an eye. And as if that wasn't painful enough, they went and added an even tougher-to-kill Bulldozer. One that's even more heavily armored, and comes armed with a ''light machine gun''.
188** Then in 2016, two more Harder Than Hard difficulties were added. Mayhem and One Down. Mayhem acts as a sort of bridge between Overkill and Deathwish. Harder than the former, not quite as hard as the latter. One Down is ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin: Get downed after already being downed once, you're done. Oh, and the enemies are even meaner and tougher than on Death Wish.
189** And ''then'' in 2018, Overkill released an update that, among other things, reworked One Down entirely. Now called Death Sentence, you no longer have to worry about only having one down when playing on this difficulty, and enemy health across the board has been lowered by a third. But that's where the good news ends, as the spawn rate for special enemies, including the dreaded Bulldozers, has been increased a fair bit, and their damage output remains the same as before. And speaking of Bulldozers, their health has been doubled, and can now spawn in two extra flavours that were previously exclusive to Crime Spree: Medic Dozers, which combine the abilities and threat of the existing Medic and Dozer enemies into one deadly package, as well as Minigun Dozers, which use their gatling guns to cause a metric shitton of damage to the player (the latter can also spawn on Death Wish, by the way). Oh, and there's now a modifier to enable the One Down setting on any difficulty. '''WelcomeToHell'''.
190* ''Videogame/PAYDAY3'' returns to having OVERKILL as its hardest difficulty. Regardless if you're doing it stealthily or going loud, you'll be facing hefty opposition - stealth sees your pager count cut to two, two Security Modifiers added to make your life hell, and additional changes to the map for good measure, whilst loud sees cop spawn rates, damage and accuracy at their highest.
191* ''VideoGame/{{Metro 2033}}'' has the 'Ranger' difficulty levels, which are associated with their own achievements. Notably, it's not so much just 'difficult' as 'realistic': Ranger Easy disables your HUD and thus things like ammo counter and the crosshair (you have to use your watch or journal to know how much ammo you have left) and reducing looted ammo from clips of ten-plus bullets to one or two bullets apiece, making resource management a must. At this point, it becomes far more practical to depend on your knife for almost every single encounter, reserving your extremely scarce ammunition for dire emergencies. Using stealth practically becomes a requirement to deal with human enemies, who will otherwise kill you in extremely short order. 'Ranger Hardcore' ramps this up by making you even more fragile; one or two bullets will usually kill you, [[RocketTagGameplay though on the flip side most enemies die from one or two shots as well]]. However, due to the extreme scarcity of ammunition (100 dirty 5.45x39mm rounds might be all you find in an entire PLAYTHROUGH), you're going to end up using your knife for almost absolutely every single fight. Enemies are also more alert, making stealth essential but difficult.
192** ''VideoGame/MetroLastLight'' brings back the ranger difficulty modes. And things are worse this time around, because human enemies - who were the bane of your existence in Ranger Mode in ''2033'' but were mercifully rare -are much more prevalent in this game (althought fortunately they are also ''much'' more fair to stealthily dispatch compared to ''2033'')
193** Ranger and Ranger Hardcore are back in ''VideoGame/MetroExodus'', and yes, they are just as difficult as ''2033'' and ''Last Light'', perhaps moreso given the even larger preponderance of human enemies (thankfully the game keeps the fairer stealth system from ''Last Light'', mitigating some of the challenge). However, the difficulty REALLY ramps up in the last few areas, [[ThatOneLevel Novisibirsk]] in particular.
194* Originally, the highest difficulty in ''VideoGame/Postal2'' was Hestonworld, in which enemies did twice as much damage and every character in the game world was armed with a weapon. However, since they remained non-hostile towards you until you provoked them, if you used a [[StealthBasedGame semi-stealthy playstyle]] it could actually make the game easier, as the now-armed civilians would end up killing many of your enemies for you. The patch to the game added the They Hate Me difficulty, which was truly Harder Than Hard as it caused every character with a gun (including cops, neutrals, and allies) to automatically try to kill you on sight. The later ''Week in Paradise'' and ''Complete'' releases went even further with "Nightmare!/POSTAL!" and "Really Fucking Hard/Impossible" difficulties.
195* ''VideoGame/{{Vietcong}}'''s Vietnam difficulty. Like the ''Brothers in Arms'' example above, it has no HUD, no quicksaves or autosaves. And you thought [[NintendoHard the game was already very hard]].
196* ''VideoGame/KillingFloor'' started with Beginner, Normal, Hard, and Suicidal. Then owners of the game were complaining that Suicidal became too easy, so in its 2010 Christmas event, Tripwire Interactive added in [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Hell on Earth]], which further increases the damage and health boost given to enemies from Suicidal and retroactively nerfs the starting pistol as well as increasing the duration of the Fleshpound's [[RageBreakingPoint blitz of death]] on top of other conditions set in Suicidal.
197* ''VideoGame/Borderlands2'' has Ultimate Vault Hunter Mode. In this mode, all enemies are at ''four times'' as much health as True Vault Hunter Mode and ''regenerating health''. This sometimes makes it impossible to kill an enemy without using Slag damage amplification. Luckily, slag DOES give you three times damage amplification for non-slag guns, but generally makes you have a slag weapon on you at all times (Magic Missile grenade mod and Slagga anyone?).
198* Ultimate Vault Hunter Mode in ''VideoGame/BorderlandsThePreSequel'' received a heavy downgrade, due to both the exclusion of Slag in TPS... and how difficult UVHM was in ''Borderlands 2''.
199* ''VideoGame/TeamFortress2''
200** The [[ManVersusMachine Mann vs. Machine]] mode has four difficulty levels: Normal, Intermediate, Advanced and Expert, which is only available in the first maps Decoy, Coal Town and Mannworks. Like all missions in these maps, Expert missions start with 400 credits, but you have to fight large amounts of powerful and/or tricky robots since the first wave such as [[GiantMook Giant robots]], [[EliteMooks Steel Gauntlets]] and [[ShootTheMedicFirst Über Medics]][[labelnote:*]]Well, killing them in one hit is the hardest part[[/labelnote]]. Only fully coordinated teams can beat these missions, but without friends, you'll have to win the lottery to get good teammates.
201** A later update added an additional difficulty called "Nightmare", which is only used on one map, Ghost Town (a reskin of Coaltown). On paper it sounds incredibly difficult: it's only one utterly massive wave, so there's no checkpoints, ''eleven'' tanks total, and huge swarms of exceptionally strong robots, often giant-sized and/or with 100% guaranteed critical hits (all but ensuring OneHitKill attacks, even from a basic {{mook}} robot). [[SubvertedTrope However, in practice]], it's only about as hard as Advanced difficulty at worst because of the extremely generous amount of money given for upgrades right from the start and equally generous amount of money you get throughout the wave. The "Nightmare" title has more to do with it being a Halloween-themed map than its actual difficulty.
202* The "Uprising" mode in ''VideoGame/{{Overwatch}}'', in addition to Normal, Hard, and Expert, had Legendary difficulty, in which even [[TheGoomba Nulltroopers]] can easily shred you to pieces, [[GoddamnedBats Slicers]] can melt the payload in seconds, and tank Bastions can [[OneHitKill one-shot]] any non-Tank hero while soaking up tons of damage. Even teams comprised entirely of professional players have had difficulty taking this mode down. By the end of the event, a mere '''0.6%''' of attempts on Legendary (i.e. 1 in every 166 tries) had ended in victory, with the number being bumped ''slightly'' to 1% for the "All Heroes" version.
203* ''[[VideoGame/TheEndTimesVermintide Warhammer- The End Times: Vermintide]]'' has both Nightmare and Cataclysm difficulties. In both of them, friendly fire is turned on, and more special Skaven can spawn. Both also jack up the amount of health and damage that the Skaven have- in Cataclysm, a [[TheGoomba regular Skaven]] can kill a hero within four hits. However, both Nightmare and Cataclysm difficulties reward the player with much better loot in the loot game.
204* ''VideoGame/WolfensteinIITheNewColossus'' has the Mein Leben! mode. In Bring It On! and above, any direct and prolonged firefight will end ''badly'' as the nastiest enemies can kill you with only a handful of shots [[spoiler:even when you get your max health restored to 100 and a load of new abilities]]. Mein Leben! mode forces you to complete the whole game at this difficulty ''in a single run, with no saves or checkpoints'': if you die at any point, it deletes your save and forces you back to the very start.
205* ''VideoGame/TheAdventuresOfSquare'' has CUBULAR! difficulty. Enemies become more aggressive and move faster, enemy projectiles fly faster, and healing items are replaced with less tasty and ineffective ones. This difficulty also introduces a new enemy type, [[DemonicSpiders Rectangolier]]. [[LightningBruiser This purple eyeless robot can repeatedly crunch you to death, and fly really fast.]] It will keep chasing you until you die. Have fun.
206[[/folder]]
207
208[[folder:[=4X=]]]
209* Ordinarily the hardest difficulty on ''VideoGame/{{Civilization}} II'' was named Deity and really stacked the odds against you. However, since the penalties for the player and bonuses for the [=CPUs=] were generated algorithmically, editing the text file to insert more selections for difficulty level actually worked. So now you can have cities where the first few citizens are doubly unhappy!
210* ''VideoGame/{{Civilization}} III'' has Chieftain, Warlord, Prince, Monarch, Emperor, and Deity. One of the {{Walkthrough}}s in Website/GameFAQs says the possibility of winning a game in the last setting is ''theoretical.'' The ''Conquests'' ExpansionPack takes this even further by renaming the vanilla game's Deity to "Demigod" and adding a new, harder Deity to take its place. ''Conquests'' also added an even harder [[ShoutOut Sid]][[note]]as in Sid Meier, father of the Civilization franchise (thus, in a meta sense, higher in rank than any in-universe deities)[[/note]] difficulty level.
211* ''VideoGame/{{Civilization}} IV'' features eight difficulty levels, going up to Deity. The difference? Surprisingly detailed tips described exactly how badly the computer cheated for or against you in every other level. Deity's details? "Ha ha, good luck."
212* ''VideoGame/MasterOfMagic'' has an "Impossible" level. With all patches applied, this description wasn't far off the mark, given that TheComputerIsACheatingBastard. However, the Impossible level was fairly trivial to beat with the release version, thanks to various GameBreaker.
213* ''VideoGame/MasterOfOrion'' has an Impossible level, in which the AIs get huge bonuses to production and research. Experienced players can win, but ''not'' without difficulty.
214* ''VideoGame/GalacticCivilizations'' has no less than eleven difficulty levels for the game as a whole, and several more for the computer AI. The higher ones have charming names like "Crippling", "Masochistic", "Obscene", and "Suicidal". By this point the question is not ''whether'' the computer is cheating, it's ''how much''. The GalCiv wiki states that a computer AI set to "Ultimate" has an economy running four times faster than yours, with more points to spend on abilities than you do, and massively increased sensor range. Oh, and all its components are about half their normal size, so they can stick more of them on a ship. Suffice to say that any difficulty set to "Masochistic" or higher demands you use an AIBreaker, because otherwise the AI will [[{{Series/Firefly}} rape you to death, eat your flesh, and sew your skin into its clothing]], hopefully InThatOrder.
215* The ''Xtended Terran Conflict'' [[GameMod mod]] for ''[[VideoGame/{{X}} X3: Terran Conflict]]'' has the standard Easy/Medium/Hard settings, plus the optional [[XtremeKoolLetterz XTREME]] difficulty setting which can be enabled at any time, but is irreversible once enabled. It removes all capital ships and corvettes from sale at shipyards (forcing the player to rely on [[BoardingParty boarding]] to acquire them), removes all [[PortalNetwork Jump Drives]] from sale (effectively removing them from the game, except on [[TheBattlestar Superdestroyers]]), removes all [[SaveToken Salvage Insurance]] (forcing the player to save only at [[SavePoint space stations]]), while also [[TheComputerIsACheatingBastard dramatically increasing the spawn rate, number, firepower, and speed of enemy ships, far beyond that of what the player's ships are capable of]]. On the other hand, the increased amount of Pirates and the like means that they'll blow up a lot of freighters and make a lot of pilots bail out, allowing you to make a [[HardModePerks nice profit off of their raiding parties]].
216* ''VideoGame/EndlessSpace'' and ''VideoGame/EndlessLegend'' have several tiers of difficulties beyond the standard easy-normal-hard, all of which (including Hard) have progressively more [[NotPlayingFairWithResources resource cheats for the AI]]; Serious, Impossible, and Endless. DummiedOut code in ''Legend'' shows that Serious difficulty and above also had penalties for the player, such as more expansion disapproval in cities and higher military upkeep costs.
217* ''VideoGame/StarRuler2'' has the Savage AI difficulty, which causes GangUpOnTheHuman and grants the [[TheComputerIsACheatingBastard AI all sorts of cheats]].
218[[/folder]]
219
220[[folder:Hack and Slash]]
221* ''VideoGame/DynastyWarriors'':
222** In ''VideoGame/DynastyWarriors 6'', two additional modes can be unlocked beyond the standard-issue Easy/Normal/Hard. Those are 'Master' and 'Chaos'. Considering the way the ''VideoGame/DynastyWarriors'' games always work, I bet you figure you can just level a character to 50 in Free Play, and then use him to sweep through Chaos Mode with ease, right? Well, let's just say that Chaos Mode is DESIGNED for level 50 characters. And even with super high level characters, Chaos is absurdly difficult. You could spend 30 minutes playing perfectly, dancing around the enemy officers and picking them apart one at a time until there is just the head general left...Oh and that generic officer you bypassed 15 minutes ago, who's been chasing you the whole time, and is dashing at you right now. Oh look, he just pulled off a one hit kill.
223** Some of the games, such as the ''VideoGame/SamuraiWarriors'' games, have had Very Easy and (in the ''VideoGame/WarriorsOrochi'' games) Chaos as the only one above Hard. The names in the Japanese versions? ''Heaven'' and ''Hell''.
224** ''Chaos'' difficulty, in ''Warriors Orochi'' at least, is no different from Hard, for the most part. Enemies have the same HP (more or less), AI is the same, they deal the same amount of damage... the only difference is that their attacks completely ignore defence. A regular mook can now kill you in four hits. And you will often be surrounded by a few ''hundred'' mooks, with a few officers in the middle to spice things up.
225** ''VideoGame/BerserkAndTheBandOfTheHawk'' has four difficulty levels to choose from: Easy, Normal, Hard, and—you guessed it—'''Berserk'''.
226** ''VideoGame/HyruleWarriors'' has its own equivalent, Hero Mode, where enemies take and dish out a lot more damage. Your characters have to be close to the original level cap of 99 with at least a few power-ups from Adventure Mode to have a chance here.
227** ''VideoGame/HyruleWarriorsAgeOfCalamity'' difficulty varies from "Easy" to "Very Hard", and the DLC added "Apocalyptic" with extremely resistant and powerful enemies. Thankfully, the DLC also gives you a bonus weapon... If you play in Apocalyptic, you will need it.
228** Just like its [[Franchise/FireEmblem series of origin]], ''VideoGame/FireEmblemWarriors'' also has the "Lunatic" difficulty unlocked after beating Story Mode for the first time.
229* ''VideoGame/MuramasaTheDemonBlade'' has three difficulty levels: Muso, Shura, and Shigurui. Muso is standard 'easy' mode (well, 'easy' for ''VideoGame/OdinSphere'' veterans), Shura ups the HP and damage of all enemies and significantly ups their aggressiveness, and Shigurui (only unlockable after beating the game on Shura) is like Muso... Except your character is now a OneHitPointWonder. None of your enemies are. Enjoy.
230* In addition to the highest difficulties, ''VideoGame/{{Diablo}}'' games also have Hardcore mode, which is like {{Roguelike}}s in its difficulty in that you only get one life to play through the game with, and once you die, that's it for your character.
231* ''VideoGame/DiabloIII'' is an interesting case. When it first started it had four difficulties: "Normal," "Nightmare," "Hell," and "Inferno." ''VideoGame/DiabloII'' had the first three of these levels. Inferno was added to be the ultimate challenge, and when the game first came out the developers weren't sure it was even going to be possible to beat the game at that difficulty. The players did, of course. Eventually they nerfed and retooled the system, ultimately replacing it with an entirely new set of difficulty tiers: "Normal," "Hard," "Expert," "Master," and "Torment I" - "Torment VI," which ultimately means that ''Diablo III'' has 8 levels of harder than hard. Ultimately, though, even the most casual player will be able to function on Torment I with little trouble once they've hit the maximum level cap and gotten leveled gear. The Torment track has since been retooled to go as high as Torment X. This, however, isn't even the highest challenge in the game. The game also has timed "Greater Rifts" that go from 1 to 100 with Greater Rift 37 being roughly equivalent to Torment X. Such high Greater Rift levels are only reachable, besides exceptional skill, by playing the right class with the right combination of skills and items that happen to be rolled exceptionally well.
232** An update introduces levels up to Torment XVI. It buffs the enemies' health to ''16 million percent''. Have fun dealing with ''that''.
233[[/folder]]
234
235[[folder:Idle Game]]
236* ''VideoGame/AntiIdleTheGame'':
237** Completing 5 Medium Ascensions will unlock Hard Ascensions, which will strip out a lot of NewGamePlus bonuses and make some elements of the game more difficult or requiring more time or resource investment. Completing 5 Hard Ascentions unlocks ''Impossible'' Ascensions, which imposes level requirements on many mechanics as well as cooldowns on elements that could otherwise be (ab)used to gain large EXP bossts, such as Progress Boxes and Awesome Adventures's Energy Refills.
238** Subverted with the "Arcade" feature, where most of the minigames have Legend difficulty over Expert. However, Expert is the ''default'' difficulty, and was the only difficulty until additional difficulty levels were introduced. Played entirely straight with Another difficulty, which requires getting a 3.00 Rating on the game you want to play Another difficulty on first.
239** The "Battle Arena" feature on the surface has two difficulty levels: Casual and Hardcore. However, by equipping a certain accessory or a certain Invisible Ally, you can trigger Worst Moon versions of these difficulties, in which your stats are reduced in exchange for higher drop rates and chances to face rare and epic versions of monsters that drop better loot. Equipping ''both'' the accessory and Invisible Ally activates Apocalypse mode, which further reduces stats and also causes thunder to zap you every few seconds. Hardcore Apocalypse in particular is required for several raids and high-tier raid rewards.
240[[/folder]]
241
242[[folder:Interactive Fiction]]
243* The Creator/{{Infocom}} InteractiveFiction game ''VideoGame/{{Suspended}}'' had an "Impossible" difficulty level that [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin really was]] - a few turns into the game the sun goes nova, destroying your entire planet.
244* The game ''VideoGame/LogicalJourneyOfTheZoombinis'' features levels titled, by increasing difficulty, Not So Easy, Oh So Hard, Very Hard, and Very Very Hard. Interestingly, the game also uses DynamicDifficulty. Progressing further in the game not only unlocks the higher difficulties by will eventually ''lock you out of the lower ones''. By the end, every stage will be locked on Very Very Hard. This can actually render 100% Completion [[PermanentlyMissableContent impossible]] if you don't do well enough, as doing a NoCasualtiesRun of every individual difficulty level is required to get the monuments in Zoombiniville.
245* ''Nocked! True Tales of Robin Hood'' has Impossible difficulty: "You begin with nothing; may God have mercy on your soul."
246[[/folder]]
247
248[[folder:Light Gun Game]]
249* Most ''VideoGame/GHOSTSquad'' arcade cabinets have the mission difficulty levels go up to 4. Think that's hard? The other two arcade versions go up to level ''16'', and the Wii version to level '''''20'''''. This only affects the boss battles and certain parts of the game. For example: later levels of the third level require ''extreme concentration''. Taking too long to destroy a shield will get you killed, and especially with the last boss - if you don't time grenades right, you will be a second off, and you will get captured by the enemy leader and laughed at. (okay, not really.)
250* The Extended Cut of ''VideoGame/HouseOfTheDead: OVERKILL'' gains a Hardcore mode. In the [=PS3=] version, only headshots can kill mutants. In the ''Typing of the Dead'' mode for the PC version, you now actually have to type out the spaces in phrases with more than one word in them, and if you screw up even one letter, the phrase for that mutant resets and you lose your combo.
251* ''VideoGame/PointBlank1994'' has the "VERY HARD" stages, which are a step above the Advanced stages. They show up once for each group of 4 stages in Beginner and Advanced modes, replacing one of the four stages in that group. Additionally, there is a VERY HARD mode, in which the 16 stages consist ''only'' of the VERY HARD stages. ''Point Blank 2'' onwards renames the VERY HARD difficulty to Insane difficulty.
252[[/folder]]
253
254[[folder:Minigame Game]]
255* ''VideoGame/CookServeDelicious'' has Extreme Difficulty, which gives you a permanent +50% buzz boost (meaning a lot more customers come per day) and drastically decreases customers' patience (shortening the amount of time you need to successfully complete an order). Beating the game on the normal difficulty unlocks a NewGamePlus mode on Extreme which carries over your progress towards achievements, although it allows you to start a save file on Extreme at any time. The description of Extreme Difficulty warns you that it's impossible to beat.
256[[/folder]]
257
258[[folder:[=MMORPGs=]]]
259* In ''VideoGame/PhantasyStarOnline'', each new difficulty mode was a chance to grind your character up to the next weapon set, with better item drops, tougher enemies and an even more ludicrous final boss... ''except'' for the highest difficulty level, Ultimate, where the difficulty curve leaps up like you just cast Foie at its butt. Suddenly the attack patterns become more aggressive, new enemies you'd never encountered before appear, and even the most common of the old enemies are now throwing around instant-death spells.
260* ''VideoGame/PhantasyStarOnline2'' has several difficulty levels with better loot available on each, but there are different tiers based on what Episode you are playing.
261** For Episodes 1-3, that would be Ultimate Quests, which are set in corrupted regions of the planets you visited. Regular enemy attacks will melt you in seconds if you let them, and their aggression is off the charts. The boss can be handled solo if you know what you're doing and/or abuse Megiverse, but getting to it...
262** Episode 4 introduces Corrupted Amduskia, which is more of the same except it is meant to be challenged with a party. The mobs are just as merciless here, [[FromBadToWorse and then there are the actual bosses]].
263** Episode 5 gives us the Bewitched Woods, which is scaled higher than anything before it, so expect to die often if you dare to solo anything up to the boss.
264** Episode 6 gives the hardest content of the game at '''Ultra Hard''', which will rip you to shreds without a party at your back, and sometimes even then. And that is ''with'' some of the best gear in the game. [[ThisIsGonnaSuck Have fun.]]
265* In ''VideoGame/GranblueFantasy'', Raid battles have a difficulty scale from Normal, Hard, Showdown, Impossible, and Nightmare. Normal and Hard are the beginner-friendly contents that can be cleared with just a few weeks of grinding, depending on the player's characters, weapons, and summons. Showdown Raids are tailored for up to 30-man raids and the bosses can have millions of HP. But given the maximum number of participants up to 30, there is a high chance of success as long as everyone contributes bufffs, debuffs, and damage outputs. But this trope directly applies to the latter two: Impossible raids are like the Showdown-level raids, but the bosses have way more millions of HP, attack patterns, and will sometimes include sub-bosses. Nightmare raids are also like the Showdown-level raids, having almost the same millions of HP and attacks, but the player will have to fight the boss alone, with no back-up from other players.
266* ''VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft'':
267** With the release of the Ulduar raid instance in patch 3.1, all of the new boss encounters had triggerable "hard modes" with better loot, but they were of course harder. Then there was the {{Superboss}} of Ulduar, [[http://www.wowhead.com/npc=32871#comments Algalon the Observer]]. The first warning should be that Algalon ''lacks a regular difficulty'' - he is always hard mode. He earned his quasi-official title and tagline of "the Raid Destroyer" and "He feeds on your tears".
268** "He Feeds On Your Tears" is also the name of a special achievement where you have to defeat him on your first try without anyone dying. Then there's "Herald of the Titans" that requires you defeating him only using gear that has nothing better than what drops in 10-man Ulduar - this one is a 10man only achievement. The Argent Coliseum also has a similar achievement on 10-man mode, where you have to complete the raid without a single wipe and only wearing gear you could obtain up to and in Coliseum 10-man.
269** ''Mists of Pandaria'' introduced Challenge Modes for 5-man dungeons.
270*** Powerful gear is scaled down to a fixed point. More gear won't help you here.
271*** Everything hits harder. Some things are deadly if not appropriately handled.
272*** You cannot use the auto group filler.
273*** It is timed (with a leader board), although you still get rewarded for completing it despite the timer.
274*** To avoid excessive exploiting there is a quota to kill some non-boss [=NPCs=].
275*** To avoid distractions, enemies drop no loot. Only the completion grants a reward.
276*** To encourage rapid attempts, you can reset the dungeon at any time and take no durability damage from death.
277** ''Warlords of Draenor'' shuffled around the raid difficulties. Old Flexible became Normal. Old Normal became Heroic. Old Heroic became Mythic. But since they went to a single fixed size with Mythic (20 players), it enabled Blizzard to add unique mechanics that require certain class abilities to deal with. Mythic difficulty is truly "harder than hard" and is designed for the top 1% of the playerbase.
278** ''Legion'' removed the Challenge Mode system from dungeons and implemented the Mythic Plus system. Players receive keys which activate the mode, which gain levels on successfully completing a dungeon and lose a level on failing it. Completing higher level Mythic Plus keys offers increased rewards from the chest at the end of the dungeon and a weekly cache.
279*** Each dungeon has a fixed timer based on its overall length. Each player death reduces the timer by 5 seconds.
280*** The base health and damage of enemies is increased based on the level of the key.
281*** Three affixes that modify the dungeon experience are applied based on the level of the key. Examples include spawning additional trash mobs, boosting the stats of bosses, and reducing the ability of tanks to hold aggro.
282*** As in Challenge Mode, players are required to kill a certain amount of trash mobs in addition to the bosses.
283*** Players cannot change talents.
284* In ''VideoGame/RustyHearts'', all dungeons starting with the Wine Cellar have a difficulty tier above "Very Hard" called "Blood" mode, which can only be entered after reaching a high enough level (and meeting certain other conditions). Enemies in Blood-level dungeons are several levels higher than their Very Hard counterparts, and they attack far more aggressively. You also don't get experience points or gold for defeating enemies, but they do leave behind high-quality items that you wouldn't otherwise receive even on Very Hard.
285* The five Secret Dungeons in ''VideoGame/{{Elsword}}'' are generally harder than the normal dungeons of their respective towns, and come with a '''Hell''' difficulty. However, there is a chance for an NPC named Luto to appear in any room in the dungeon, and if you break the door he summons, you get sent back to the beginning of the dungeon, in '''Luto Mode'''. Enemies are even more dangerous in this mode, and with the difficulty scaled to match that of the highest-leveled party member, if you have a capped character in your party it's going to be one bumpy ride.
286* Offered in multiple flavors in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIV''. Each Primal has an "extreme" mode with more health, damage, and whole new mechanics while still keeping to the theme of the original fight. The endgame raid of 2.0 "The Binding Coil of Bahamut" was this as well, and part two of the raid chain had Savage Mode, which gave you nothing but {{Bragging Rights Reward}}s titles for clearing. The 3.0 endgame raid Alexander was designed with a normal and savage mode in mind, so that not only could more people play through the plot, but they could make the Savage mode even more facemeltingly difficult without alienating the less hardcore players. And topping even Savage are Ultimate Raids - brutal {{Boss Rush}}es designed to be the hardest challenges in the game, requiring perfect coordination, strategy, and mastery of each player's respective class. For extra difficulty, these can't be attempted in "unsynched" mode that allows to use overlevelled characters or gear.
287* ''VideoGame/StarWarsTheOldRepublic'' has most Operations available on Story, Hard and Nightmare difficulties. Nightmare adds new mechanics to existing encounters, occasionally adds some new encounters and grants access to achievements that the other difficulties don't have.
288* ''VideoGame/KingdomOfLoathing'' has a number of SelfImposedChallenge modes for its [[NewGamePlus ascension]] system. The most infamous one is "Bad Moon," and it's a doozy.
289** Unlike all other special game modes, Bad Moon is not available by default--to access it you must beat the whole game without using any [[FourLeafClover ten-leaf clovers]], creating no small amount of tediousness. [[GuideDangIt The game never tells you]] there's any benefit to avoiding clovers, or that Bad Moon even exists, until you do this.
290** Once you're in Bad Moon, the "fun" begins. All the skills, familiars, and so on you've accumulated in previous playthroughs, which you'd normally use to make the game easier/faster, is unavailable. Even your [[BribingYourWayToVictory paid content]] is unusable. New adventures show up in various places, which give you weird combinations of buffs and debuffs (some can be useful if you know where to find them, but most are negative). Even if you follow the best possible strategy, it will probably take you a couple of weeks to beat the game (normal runs can be done in a few days without much effort).
291** If, [[HundredPercentCompletion for some reason]], you want permanent access to Bad Moon, you must use the Black Cat familiar for the entire run. The cat will screw with you in combat to a ridiculous degree--randomly blocking your skills and items, stealing MP, cancelling your self-buffs, etc.--and just to add insult to injury, at the end of each fight it will randomly swat item drops into a sewer drain and distract you so you don't gain as much experience from winning the fight. Once again, the game does not tell you there's any reason to subject yourself to this, nor does it tell you where to get the Black Cat (it's in Noob Cave, a place you don't normally have any reason to visit).
292* In 2005 ''VideoGame/RuneScape'' released the [=TzHaar=] Fight Cave. If you can survive 62 waves (which translates into over two hours) of monsters steadily increasing in difficulty then you will find yourself faced with [=TzTok=]-Jad, a level 702 boss monster (at the time the highest level in the game by a wide margin) that uses multiple styles of attack with a maximum hit of 98 (for reference, the highest hitpoint level is 99). Because too many people were defeating Jad and devaluing the impressiveness of the reward for doing so, the fire cape (at the time of writing this the lowest level player to complete the minigame had only 25 combat), the developers of Old School Runescape decided in 2017 to release The Inferno which includes 68 waves of increasing difficulty (including multiple [=JalTok=]-Jads, a stronger version of [=TzTok=]-Jad) culminating in a final boss battle with [=TzKal=]-Zuk, a monster with twice the combat level of [=TzTok=]-Jad (plus another [=JalTok=]-Jad thrown in for fun once [=TzKal=]-Zuk's health has been lowered enough).
293[[/folder]]
294
295[[folder:Party Game]]
296* ''VideoGame/MarioParty2'' introduces Super Hard mode (AI can only be set to this difficulty during minigames, though). ''VideoGame/MarioParty3'' makes Super Hard mode an unlockable through playing through Story mode on Hard (you can also play Story mode on Super Hard). Following games have a similar difficulty for AI, almost always an unlockable. ''VideoGame/MarioParty9'' goes a step further and adds a Master difficulty level that can be bought from the Museum, which is a step up from Very Hard.
297* ''VideoGame/WarioWare'' games have a section where you can play randomly selected microgames with different stipulations that make them harder than hard. Something aptly named like Super Hard section has you playing microgames at the fastest possible speed, requiring instant reflexes. Sudden Death has you playing the hardest version of the microgames with only one life.
298[[/folder]]
299
300[[folder:Platform Game]]
301* ''VideoGame/GeometryDash'': [[ExaggeratedTrope Exaggerated with ''many'' difficulties above hard]]. The official levels have a "Harder" difficulty which is harder than the "Hard" difficulty, an "Insane" difficulty harder than the "Harder" difficulty, and a "Demon" difficulty harder than Insane. For fanmade levels which can get far harder than the official ones, extra rankings are added, with demon divided into Easy Demon, Medium Demon, Hard Demon, Insane Demon and Extreme Demon.
302* ''VideoGame/IWannaBeTheGuy'':
303** The difficulty levels are "Medium" (the ''[[NintendoHard easiest]]'' setting), "Hard", "Harder" and "Impossible." The [[NumericalHard only difference]] being the number of save points decreases, and "Impossible" is [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin quite accurate]] as it has ''none'', and with its [[PlatformHell gameplay]] just simply says '''you are not going to win'''. Most people just [[EndlessGame try to see how far they can go]].
304** Worse yet, playing on Medium will cause the game to [[EasyModeMockery mock you]] by giving The Kid a cute pink bow and having all Medium-exclusive points have "WUSS" instead of "SAVE" written on them. The idea is to man up and pretend Hard is the default difficulty.
305** "Impossible" is so hard that the creator of the game was publicly shocked to find out that someone had actually beaten the game on Impossible. The first official comment from the creator was "holy crap your not serious are you" (sic). To date, the number of people who are confirmed to have managed to beat the game on Impossible can be counted on one hand.
306* ''VideoGame/ViewtifulJoe'' has Kids, Adult, and V-Rated and Ultra V-Rated with the latter two being unlockable by beating the one below it. In Ultra V-Rated anything can kill you in one hit, and you lose the hit markers that show if the enemy is going to attack high or low. In fairness, enemies all have unique tells for if they're going for a high or low attack, so losing the hit markers means little if you're paying attention. However, you likely WILL die against each new kind of enemy you find until you learn its tells. Fire Leo, however, becomes ThatOneBoss, since the only tells during his spin attack are audio cues with only subtle differences between them.
307* ''VideoGame/PennAndTellersSmokeAndMirrors'' poked fun at this one with an impossible difficulty that was literally impossible. During the game you would get lasered, prompting the following quote:
308-->'''Lou Reed:''' ''This is the impossible level, boys. Impossible doesn't mean very difficult; very difficult is winning the Nobel Prize. Impossible is eating the sun.''
309* ''VideoGame/WarioLand4'' has a secret Super Hard difficulty level which puts health starting at one, adds about twenty times more enemies to the levels and massively cuts down on allowed time for level escapes and boss fights.And remember Palm Tree Paradise, the stage with the relaxing background vocals and the easiest aside from entry stage? On Super Hard mode you trip the Frog Switch ''as soon as you enter the stage''.
310* ''VideoGame/DynamiteHeaddy'' had a secret difficulty mode, activated by holding START to start the game '''after''' the level select code has been entered. Essentially, one hit kills you.
311* ''VideoGame/{{Iji}}'' has Normal, Hard, Extreme, and Ultimortal. The first three are pretty similar, you just recover less HP from red nanofields and can't level up as much, as well as enemies becoming smarter. Ultimortal (which you must beat Extreme to unlock) only lets you level up health (which means shotgun only and no skipping [[ThatOneBoss the penultimate boss]]), imposes TimedMission[=s=] and prevents you from healing any damage. If you can beat ''that'', you unlock the "[[CreatorInJoke reallyjoel's dad]]" difficulty. This makes the game effectively unbeatable by any human being -- except one developer's MemeticBadass father. The creators have posted videos of reallyjoel's dad "playing" at this insane difficulty as a joke (the videos actually depict a ToolAssistedSpeedrun).
312* In ''VideoGame/{{Ristar}}'', a game for the Sega Genesis, there's Normal Mode, Hard Mode... and Super Mode, unlocked through a password. On Super Mode one hit means game over. However, you do get unlimited continues.
313* ''VideoGame/CrescentPaleMist'', a game noted for being NintendoHard, has an Easy Mode, a Normal Mode, and a Hard Mode. After getting a certain Artifact from a certain enemy and spilling the blood of over 8,000 enemies in the original PC version ([[NotMakingThisUpDisclaimer we're not kidding]]), it unlocks Fear Mode. And what else is there after Fear Mode, you might ask?: Planeriel Mode, even worse than Fear Mode, and that's if you manage to find its artifact in the clutches of a BossInMookClothing.
314* ''VideoGame/DistortedTravesty'' has "Distorted" difficulty. According to the creator, the game was originally far more difficult than its final incarnation ([[NintendoHard this is saying something]]), so he removed some sadistically placed traps and made the bosses a lot easier. Distorted restores the game to its original incarnation. Even the game's creator admitted to having severe difficulty beating his own creation on Distorted (and even then he didn't manage it until long after the game's public release).
315* ''VideoGame/TheAngryVideoGameNerdAdventures'' has ''three'' different levels of this, [[SerialEscalation each harder than the last.]]
316** Beating the game's normal hard mode ("Old-School") unlocks "Hard as Balls", where the weapons are weaker, the enemies are stronger, the {{Check Point}}s are invisible, and you have two hit points, five lives, three continues, ''and'' must beat the game without saving.
317** Beating that unlocks "[[PrecisionFStrike Fucking]] Impossible", which, on top of everything from the above, makes you a OneHitPointWonder with no continues, [[CheckpointStarvation no checkpoints]], and no extra lives in the levels.
318** Beating ''that'' unlocks "YOLO", which is basically ''VideoGame/IWannaBeTheGuy'''s Impossible mode - one hit point, no saving, and you must go back to the beginning if you get hit ''once''. ''You Only Live Once!''
319* ''Lionheart'' for the Amiga has "Lionhard" above Hard.
320* ''VideoGame/KnyttStories'' categorizes custom levels based on genre[[note]]platforming challenge, puzzle, maze, impossible to lose and only there for the sake of SceneryPorn, etc.[[/note]], map size, and difficulty. Regarding difficulty, some tougher challenges are marked Very Hard, or even Lunatic. Lunatic is, notably, the only category in any aspect that defies the naming conventions. Very Hard levels are commonly NintendoHard, while Lunatic levels are even worse. There is a level titled ''Safety'', which is officially Lunatic, but has an in-level difficulty setting in which you can set it to something the level designer calls "Very Lunatic". Just let the fact that there's a level which is so hard that it gave the (already excruciatingly evil) Harder Than Hard difficulty its own Harder Than Hard difficulty sink in for a while.
321* ''VideoGame/MegaManSuperFightingRobot'' has an "Insane" difficulty, unlocked by beating the game on Hard, which multiplies the enemies' damage output and gives the bosses new patterns and attacks.
322* Scanning the Metroid Toys/{{amiibo}} in ''VideoGame/MetroidSamusReturns'' unlocks Fusion Mode, where Samus wears the [[VideoGame/MetroidFusion Fusion Suit]] and takes quadruple damage from enemy attacks and hazards.
323* ''VideoGame/MetroidDread'' has Dread Mode, which turns Samus into a OneHitPointWonder.
324* ''VideoGame/SonicHeroes'' has Super Hard difficulty. It's the Team Sonic campaign, where enemies are more numerous and durable, along with platforming elements becoming much more difficult.
325* ''VideoGame/SonicFrontiers'' 1.20 Update adds Extreme to the difficulty list that can only be unlocked by getting S-Ranks on all Battle Rush stages. In this mode, Sonic's stats are locked to Level 1 and [[OneHitPointWonder he can only take 1 hit before dying]], effectively making this Sega's answer to ''Devil May Cry'''s "Hell And Hell" mode. It can only be access when starting a new game, as the game locks you out of changing the difficulty setting mid-gameplay once you start an Extreme run.
326* The ''VideoGame/{{Skylanders}}'' games starting with ''[[VideoGame/SkylandersGiants Giants]]'' all have a "Nightmare" difficulty unlocked for beating the game once. In the first few games playing it required you to create a new save, as unlike the other difficulties it couldn't be changed mid-game, but in ''[[VideoGame/SkylandersSuperChargers SuperChargers]]'' this restriction was removed and also allowed you to play it right off the bat. Note that ''[[VideoGame/SkylandersSwapForce Swap Force]]'', ''[=SuperChargers=]'', and ''[[VideoGame/SkylandersImaginators Imaginators]]'' refers to this difficulty level as being "for advanced players with a [[BadassArmy vast army of Skylanders]]."
327* ''VideoGame/SuperMarioMaker'' has Super Expert, which is unlocked after clearing 100 Mario Challenge in Expert mode. Only six courses must be cleared to beat it, even fewer than Easy mode, but don't be fooled--courses in this category tend to be not only [[NintendoHard ridiculously difficult]] but also downright unfair, littered with sneaky deathtraps and TrialAndErrorGameplay. Even the best players often fail to complete this mode, especially if they try to do it [[SelfImposedChallenge without skipping any levels]]. Searching for Super Expert courses by themselves cannot be done with the in-game search filter--it's only possible on ''[[http://supermariomakerbookmark.nintendo.net/ Super Mario Maker Bookmark]]''.
328* Browser game ''Raider'', both episodes, have 3 dificulty levels, Begginner, Intermediate and Expert. Normally it wouldn't qualify for this trope but Expert is only unlocked after beating game at Intermediate which is ''already'' NintendoHard, and described as being for people who either already know the lever or feel masochistic.
329* ''VideoGame/HenryHatsworthInThePuzzlingAdventure'' has [[NewGamePlus Gentleman Mode]]. This difficulty takes an already challenging game and makes it ''harder'' by increasing the speed of the Puzzle Realm (and giving you less time to match pieces). In addition, the enemies deal much more damage and take less damage in return. Even if you buy every upgrade, you're still going to have a hard time dealing with everything the game throws your way. That includes the [[BrutalBonusLevel secret levels]] and the [[ThatOneBoss final boss.]] At least your save file has a spiffy gold hat to indicate this difficulty.
330* ''VideoGame/GianaSistersTwistedDreams'' has two unlockable difficulty modes: Hardcore (no checkpoints) and Uber-Hardcore ([[FinalDeathMode only one life for the entire game.]])
331* ''VideoGame/DonkeyKongCountry3DixieKongsDoubleTrouble'' has two cheat codes that make the game more difficult. The "HARDR" (Harder) code simply removes about a fifth of DK barrels throughout the game, and then there's "TUFST" (Toughest), which reduces the number of DK barrels throughout the game to ''four'' and [[CheckpointStarvation removes all Star Barrels]]. There are [[HardModePerks rewards for using these codes]]: a boost to your maximum completion percentage possible, with the absolute maximum of 105% only obtainable by nailing [[OneHundredPercentCompletion full completion]] on a TUFST file.
332* ''VideoGame/{{Muri}}'': The hardest difficulty out of four, and in a BilingualBonus, roughly means "impossible" in Japanese.
333* ''VideoGame/DinoRun'' has an Insane! difficulty, just barely beatable even after unlocking all of the powerups. Naturally it is the one that gives you the GoldenEnding.
334* ''VideoGame/{{Hargrave}}'' has the Grave Sectors, which are bonus levels reserved for players who have collected all the energy cells. Highlights include surfaces that alternate between mashers and sliding tables, claustrophobic hallways with floating barriers, vanishing platforms, and lined with spikes or lasers on nearly every surface, long conveyor belts lined with a couple dozen lasers, a gauntlet of energy orbs and flamethrower floors, and a cavern brimming with so many spikes that you'll have to master block creation and rapid wall dashing. Special mention also goes to one of the challenge rooms, which has you navigate a series of horizontal and vertical laser hallways in which the floors, ceilings, ''and'' walls are all lasers. You have to dash and wall kick your way across the pixels of blocks directly in front of and behind where the lasers emanate from. Let's just say you're going to die a ''lot.''
335* Above the Hard difficulty in ''VideoGame/RocketKnightAdventures'' is "Very Hard" and "Crazy Hard". These difficulties turn [[TheHero Sparkster]] into a OneHitPointWonder with one life and Crazy Hard gives you ''no continues'', meaning if you take a single hit, you're [[GameOver finished]]. Mitigated somewhat because you can collect extra lives.
336* ''VideoGame/{{Celeste}}'' mods:
337** In ''VideoGame/The2020CelesteSpringCommunityCollab'', levels are split between lobbies balanced around a difficulty of Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced, Expert, and Grandmaster, with maps being further split into color-coded difficulties in these lobbies with a meter pointing at green, yellow, or red depending on how hard it is in the lobby. "Heart of the Storm" and "Ultra Difficult", already in the Grandmaster lobby, are so hard they [[ReadingsAreOffTheScale crack the meter]].
338** The ''VideoGame/StrawberryJamCollab'', structured the same way, has four maps that break this meter, those being "Nelumbo", "Ivory", "Solar Express", and "Pinball Purgatory".
339* ''VideoGame/GreyArea2023'': The "Punished" difficulty level not only makes you a OneHitPointWonder like in the preceding "Painful" difficulty level (which acts as the game's standard "Hard" mode), it also [[CheckpointStarvation removes all checkpoints]], forcing you to go through each level without making any mistakes.
340[[/folder]]
341
342[[folder:Puzzle Game]]
343* ''Franchise/{{Pokemon}} [[VideoGame/PanelDePon Puzzle League]]'''s true ending can only be accessed on Very Hard. There's a Super Hard, but you don't get anything for your trouble except [[BraggingRightsReward a code to use a special character in Vs mode]]. Similarly, ''Pokémon Puzzle Challenge'' has Super Hard and Intense above Hard.
344* After beating [[VideoGame/PanelDePon Tetris Attack]] on Hard, you get a series of buttons to press that will allow you to play the game on Very Hard. Interestingly, the difficulty is still listed as Hard during the game, but you know the code worked because the difficulty-select screen's background turns red (and the enemies really are quite brutal). In the Japan-only Platform/GameCube sequel, beating Hard difficulty gives you the code for ''Super Hard'' difficulty, which is colored red like the preceding example. Clearing THAT will give you the code for ''Very Hard'', which is colored black and will put your skills to the ultimate test.
345* ''VideoGame/TetrisTheGrandMaster ACE'''s 150-line time attack mode has Normal, with somewhat ''TGM''-esque speed curve. Hi-Speed 1 starts the game off at somewhat high speed, Hi-Speed 2 starts the game off at instant-drop speed. Then there's Another mode, in which the game starts off at instant-drop and timings shrink down with more line clears, similar to Death mode from [=TGM2=]. ''Then'' there's Another 2, which constantly remains at Another's maximum speed.
346* The NES and Game Boy iterations of ''VideoGame/{{Tetris}}'' typically only allow you to start as high as level 9. However, a simple code allows you to set the starting level as high as 19.
347* The puzzle game ''Franchise/{{Kirby}} Star Stacker'' has "Normal" (Represented by a happy Kirby face), "Hard" (Hesitant), "Very Hard" (Angry), and "Super Hard" (EyePop) difficulty levels. If you clear all of the puzzles on those levels, you get the aptly-named "Insane!" (WingdingEyes) difficulty. On "Insane!", the clear objectives rarely ever drop below 100, there are no intermissions between stages, and you have to clear 50 puzzles (as opposed to 16 on the previous difficulty levels) in order to win the game. Scoring exceptionally well on the Score Attack and Time Attack modes also unlocks their own "Insane!" difficulty, where drop speed and line clear speed are always maxed out.
348* ''VideoGame/DrMario 64'' allows you to press two specific buttons to play on Super Hard difficulty, which doesn't pull punches, as you'd expect. In the Multiplayer, you can also press two combinations of buttons to ramp up the computer opponents to Hard and Super Hard as well. Good luck trying to beat [[FinalBoss Rudy]], [[{{Superboss}} Metal Mario, and Vampire Wario]] like this.
349* ''VideoGame/SuperHexagon'' has six difficulty levels. The first three are "Hard", "Harder", and "Hardest". Yeah that's right, the first difficulty level is Hard, and [[NintendoHard appropriately so]]. The unlockable ones are "Hardester", "Hardestest", and "Hardestestest".
350[[/folder]]
351
352[[folder:Real Time Strategy]]
353%%* "Brutal" in ''VideoGame/CommandAndConquerGenerals'', though it should be noted that the game features no "Easy".
354* ''VideoGame/CommandAndConquer 3: Tiberium Wars'' adds AI personality modes, including a special mode called "Steamroller". Beating a Brutal Steamroller AI in a duel is a serious challenge even for highly experienced C&C players (but mostly because TheComputerIsACheatingBastard). The Xbox 360 version takes the AI difficulties from the PC version and adds [[TookALevelInBadass forty levels of ass-kicking.]] The ''medium'' difficulty setting will have an AI spamming you with Mammoth Tanks inside of ''five minutes.''
355* ''VideoGame/{{Myth}}'' is a particularly amusing example of Creator/{{Bungie}}'s tendency to have little ditties referring to each level's difficulty setting; beating the game on higher levels would apparently give your character greater notoriety - from "The taste of success will turn to ashes in your mouth" to "In an age not yet dawned, your name will be spoken of as a God!"
356* When adding AI Bots to a skirmish game in ''VideoGame/SupremeCommander'', the difficulty modes for each AI run from Easy to Hard to [[TheComputerIsACheatingBastard Cheater]]. It gets better in the Forged Alliance expansion pack - to provide a challenge for the elite tournament-level players, even the 'normal' difficulty setting plays with maximum efficiency. Said tournament-level players will wipe the floor with its bad tactical decisions, but the other 99% of the player base will wonder how the hell to get rid of the strike-force sized tank squadron that comes knocking on your doorstep two minutes in. Needless to say, the cheating AI levels are just brutal.
357* ''VideoGame/PlagueInc'' and ''Plague Inc: Evolved'' has Mega-Brutal. {{Lampshaded}} in the difficulty's description: "For players who thought Brutal was Casual!"
358* ''VideoGame/StarcraftII'':
359** Difficulties in the base game: Casual, Normal, Hard, and...'''Brutal'''. Described as "For Starcraft II veterans."
360** Co-Op Missions take this to an absurd degree with the addition of Brutal +1 through Brutal +6. While Brutal is generally far more forgiving due to the extra abilities granted to commanders in this mode, the Brutal + difficulties add harmful effects to the map, or buffs to the enemy units. These can be effects as innocuous as Fog of War being permanent and revealed territory going unexplored once more when it's out of your line of sight. It can also be effects as nasty as all enemies being permanently cloaked, instantly deploying a hostile copy of any of your structures they destroy in the spot they destroy them, or instantly healing any enemy unit back to full strength the first time it dies. There's over 30 possible modifiers, and it picks up to four at random depending on difficulty. And you don't get to see them until right before the mission starts. Good luck.
361* If you win an honest game of ''VideoGame/AIWarFleetCommand'' with two level-10 AIs, then you need to report it as a [[http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=8373 bug]]. Level 10 is appropriately named "Doom." ("Hard" is level 8). In the sequel, even ''one'' level-10 AI being beaten without an excess of cheese is to be reported as a bug, and several of the greatest intelligence improvements have come from those reports.
362[[/folder]]
363
364[[folder:Rhythm Game]]
365* ''VideoGame/EightBeatStory'' has Expert and [[spoiler:Mother]] difficulties above hard. The latter is available only during events.
366* ''VideoGame/AikatsuPhotoOnStage'' had legendary difficulty above hard, which is available in select songs.
367* ''[[VideoGame/FrequencyHarmonix Amplitude (2016)]]'' has the standard "Easy", "Normal", "Hard", and "Expert" difficulty settings. The reward for completing all of the songs on Expert is the "Super" difficulty, which uses the same patterns as Expert, but 1) energy does not regenerate at checkpoints, 2) completed tracks regenerate faster, and 3) the only available power-up for use is the Multiplier.
368* ''VideoGame/{{Arcaea}}''[='=]s chart difficulty level scale goes from 1 to 9, and then ''9+''. And beyond that, [[spoiler:''10'' is a rating reserved for hidden boss song tracks (of which there are currently two: Grievous Lady and Fracture Ray) which require unlocking by playing the story chapter's song (which has a 9+ rating for the Future difficulty level) in the same song pack with some variation of the featured character, under certain conditions.]]
369* ''VideoGame/BeatSaber'': Expert and Expert+, both of which are noticeably harder than Hard. Exaggerated with the Music/{{Camellia}} pack, whose charts are typically a difficulty step above what they're listed as. So yes, on these songs, even Hard is harder than Hard on other songs.
370* ''VideoGame/{{Chunithm}}''[='=]s difficulties go Basic, Advanced, Expert, and ''Master''. Certain songs go even further and have ''WORLD'S END'' charts, which usually have [[GimmickLevel gimmicks not seen in other songs]], like [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hikLHOuM2gQ DDR-style stops]]. ''Chunithm NEW'' would later add a more traditional super-hard difficulty, known as Ultima.
371* ''VideoGame/CrossBeats'' and ''crossbeats REV.'':
372** Both games feature a Hard chart difficulty followed by Master and, in ''REV.'' only, Unlimited. Not every ''REV.'' song has an Unlimited chart. To unlock the Unlimited chart for a specific song, you need to fulfill a particular requirement (such as getting an S+ grade or a Full Combo). [[HardModePerks Clearing a chart on Unlimited well enough will give you an additional Rank Point boost on top of what you'd normally get.]]
373** The {{Life Meter}}s, particularly on ''crossbeats REV.''[[note]]Survival is not available in ''CROSS×BEATS''[[/note]]: Normal, Survival, and Ultimate. Ultimate is similar to Survival (gauge starts out full and you pass if you have any life at the end like on Normal, but unlike Normal, run out and it's an instant GameOver), ''but'' only Flawless judge ranks will increase your meter by a small amount--''one tenth of a percent'' to be exact--anything else will subtract from the bar instead. This makes it one of the few rhythm games where it's plausible to fail in the middle of a combo, or worse, ''without breaking combo at all''. [[HardModePerks Clearing a chart on Survival or Ultimate will append a multiplier to your Rank Points.]]
374* ''VideoGame/CytusII'' has Easy, Hard, and Chaos difficulties (with Hard being more akin to Medium and Chaos to Hard). Certain songs also have Glitch charts, which are mostly unlocked through the [[RandomlyDrops CAPSO system]], and have very tricky charts, with many of them being {{Gimmick Level}}s.
375* ''VideoGame/DanceDanceRevolution'' has a difficulty named Oni/Challenge. For most songs, this is a difficulty harder than the usual Maniac/Heavy/Expert mode (names varying between versions). Good luck if the song is a boss song, as the Expert chart will be among the hardest Expert charts of all songs in the game, and the Challenge chart will be even harder than that.
376* ''VideoGame/{{DJMAX}} Online'' offers Easy, Normal, and Hard difficulties for its songs. Okay. Then there's "MX," which is made hard not only by more difficult charts, but also penalizes you for excess button presses (referred to as [=FAULTs=]) and charges you 150 MAX (in-game currency) just to play it; for reference, you get about 10-20 MAX every time you finish a song, so to break even you should only play MX mode once every approximately 7-15 songs. Finally, there's "SC," which stands for "Super Crazy," and its charts live up to the name.
377* ''DJMAX Technika'' has Lite, Popular, and Technical charts. If you're playing on a machine with Platinum Crew enabled, you can also gain access to Special charts, which, most of the time, are even more difficult. Fortunately, Special chart courses in Platinum Crew mode have the normal lifebar, rather than the stricter ''VideoGame/BeatmaniaIIDX''-style lifebar of Technical mode. ''Technika 2'' goes back to ''DJMAX'''s traditional naming conventions (Normal, Hard, and Maximum).
378* ''VideoGame/EliteBeatAgents'':
379** The game has "Breezin'" and "Cruisin'" which are available when the game starts. Beating "Cruisin'" unlocks "Sweatin'". Beating "Sweatin'" (a feat in itself) unlocks "Hard Rock". Each difficulty has its own main character with the same two sidekicks for the first three difficulties. "Hard Rock" replaces the Agents with the Divas (basically their DistaffCounterpart). Interestingly, Hard Rock is just Sweatin' with smaller buttons, a quicker pace, and of course, [[DamnYouMuscleMemory everything is backwards]]. Have fun.
380** The Japanese game ''VideoGame/OsuTatakaeOuendan'' has the exact same difficulty structure (though named "Light-heartedly", "Boldly", "Fervently", and "Gracefully" Cheer, from easiest), as ''EBA'' was a localized port of ''Ouendan''. ''Ouendan'' is more difficult overall though, as you cannot review a level when you fail to see how to improve, and you can't skip the cutscenes - groan. Oh, and you know how much the spinners are a pain in ''[=EBA=]''? They were specifically made ''easier'' than they were in ''Ouendan''. On top of that, while all of EBA's Hard ROCK! charts are the same as Sweatin's, only turned 180 degrees, some of ''Ouendan'''s Very Hard charts not only do that, but also make alterations to some of the charts; notes that are normally stacked will now be spread out, and the fourth part of "Shanghai Honey" now has notes at eighth-note intervals instead of quarter-note intervals, all while being spread out like quarter notes.
381** Quicker pace means the buttons appear more suddenly, the actual speed of the song and notes to hit is not changed. This means you have to react more quickly to new markers appearing, with the slight benefit that less markers appear on-screen at a time, and possibly the timing is a little easier to see visually. Essentially like speed modifiers or hyperspeed in other rhythm games.
382** ''Ouendan 2'' actually adds the occasional extra beat for songs in the Very Hard mode, presumably to trip up players who [[DamnYouMuscleMemory assume it'll be identical to the Hard mode based on what they know from the previous games]]. The fact that these extra notes are so few and far between actually makes them more insidious. However, it does now let you skip cutscenes, something that's appreciated after the twentieth consecutive restart on a Very Hard mode song.
383** If you get enough overall points you can make ''Ouendan 2'' even harder by pressing a small icon on the select difficulty screen to get rid of the shrinking circles. And if you want to make all three games even harder you can calibrate your DS so that everything is reversed ('Mirror Mode').
384** Also, the whole DS series is casual play compared to difficult beatmaps in ''VideoGame/{{Osu}}''. The official difficulty names are Easy, Normal, Hard, Insane and Expert (though difficulties called "Expert" are uncommon; more often, Extra is used); however, players that make beatmaps [[https://osu.ppy.sh/wiki/en/Ranking_Criteria/Difficulty_naming are free to name the difficulties of their maps however they want as long as the names make sense]]: if a difficulty name doesn't seem to have any relationship with difficulty (and instead is named after [[https://osu.ppy.sh/b/293224 a]] [[https://osu.ppy.sh/s/41686 player]] or something [[https://osu.ppy.sh/s/1521219 vaguely related]] to the song), expect something really hard.
385* ''VideoGame/{{GITADORA}}'' traditionally has Basic, Advanced, and Extreme. ''[=GuitarFreaks=] & drummania XG'' introduces the Master difficulty, which is only available on some songs.
386* ''VideoGame/GrooveCoaster'':
387** The series except for the smartphone versions have Extra difficulty, which requires clearing a song's Simple, Normal, and Hard charts to unlock, with the added requirement of an S rank on each of those charts if playing the arcade version.
388** Zigzagged regarding Master difficulty in ''Groove Coaster Wai Wai Party'', which replaces Extra and only requires clearing the Hard chart to unlock. Tracks with existing Extra charts have the Extra chart assigned to the Master slot, playing this trope straight. If a track doesn't have an Extra chart, the Hard chart is put in the Master slot and a new chart that is between Normal and Hard is put in the Hard slot (usually it's just the existing Hard chart but with a few notes taken out), subverting this trope.
389* ''VideoGame/GuitarHero'':
390** The difficulty levels in the original game are Easy, Medium, Hard, and Expert. In ''VideoGame/GuitarHero III'', Hard feels like Expert used to, Expert feels like an abomination, and ''[[ThatOneBoss Through the Fire and Flames]]'' is on a level all its own. There are also cheat codes that [[SelfImposedChallenge raise the difficulty]] to utterly terrifying levels. (Like turning off the fretboard entirely, leaving you to play the song from memory. Good luck with that.)
391** ''Guitar Hero: Metallica'' and ''VideoGame/GuitarHero: Smash Hits'' added Expert+, a new difficulty exclusive for drums that adds a second bass pedal for songs whose part requires it. Thought YYZ and Beast and the Harlot were tough on Expert? Try to keep up with [[Music/RushBand Neil Peart]] and [[Music/AvengedSevenfold The Rev]] at full speed.
392* ''VideoGame/TheIdolmasterCinderellaGirls Starlight Stage'' has Debut, Regular, Pro and Master as its regular difficulties, where the hardest Master songs already surpass SIF Expert. During events, however, the event song receives a special MASTER+ difficulty, which is exactly as you might expect.
393* ''VideoGame/InTheGroove'' does something very similar, with an Expert difficulty above the usual Hard difficulty. The ''easiest'' difficulty rating of any Expert chart is 9. They range up to 13, [[BrokeTheRatingScale even though the scale maxes out at 12]]. Compare to the hardest DDR boss songs at the time, which were rated no higher than 10 on a comparable scale, though some would have fit as an 11 if they were in [=ITG=].
394* ''VideoGame/{{KALPA}}'':
395** Thumb Mode difficulties go Normal, Hard, Hard+, and Abyss, the last of which is only available on some songs. However, in practice they play more like "Easy", "Normal", "Hard", and "this trope"; difficulties through Hard+ are available right off the bat for unlocked songs, with [[UnlockableDifficultyLevels Abyss charts needing to be unlocked]] by clearing Hard+ with a target grade or higher, [[BribingYourWayToVictory or]] by spending [[PremiumCurrency Fragments]].
396** Multi-Finger Mode difficulties ''start'' at S. Hard, which is followed by S. Hard+ (meaning there is no Multi-Finger equivalent of Normal), with some songs also having Chaos and/or Cosmos difficulties, which again require clearing the S. Hard+ chart with a target grade or better or by spending Fragments. Chaos charts tend to have song-specific {{gimmick|Level}}s, while Cosmos charts are usually straighter examples with some of the hardest charts the game has to offer.
397** On a different axis, Thumb Mode difficulty ratings go from 1-21, with charts harder than level 21 being rated 21'''+'''. For Multi-Finger Mode, difficulty ratings go from S1-S25, then S25'''+'''.
398* ''VideoGame/LoveLiveSchoolIdolFestival'' had Expert difficulty, originally restricted to limited charts. While some of the expert hits are decently passable, the B-Sides take it to the point where players who use their thumbs rather than index fingers begin to have a severe disadvantage. The version 4.0 update then made the Expert charts permanent and introduced Master difficulty, which demonstrated to players that relatively speaking Expert's difficulty ceiling isn't that high. (Ironically, several Master songs are actually easier than the Expert versions because Master songs tend to be full charted and prioritize fast reflexes, which means they lack the tricky patterns that tend to trip people up on Expert).
399* ''VideoGame/{{maimai}}'' has Master difficulty above Expert. Unless you're playing on a machine with online funcionality disabled, you need an S rank (97% Achievement Rate) or higher on a song's Expert chart to unlock the Master chart. Then there's Re:Master difficulty which takes it up a notch, requiring a clear of the Master chart.
400* ''Neon FM'' has the Hard range of chart difficulties, and then beyond that there's the Very Hard difficulty range. ''Then'' there is Pro Mode, which is the song's hardest available chart but instead of being bumped down a difficulty if you run out the LifeMeter, it's an instant GameOver.
401* Most songs in ''[=O2Jam=]'' have Easy, Normal, and Hard charts. You can pay to unlock [[NintendoHard "Super Hard"]] versions of songs, which are existing songs with new, harder-than-Hard charts. For example, the song "Eleventh Hour" is a manageable level 10 song on Hard, and a nightmarish level 32 song on Super Hard. One particular song, "Electro Fantasy," has an "HD" (no, not high-definition) remix with its own set of notecharts, and it is extremely difficult, even on Easy difficulty.
402* ''VideoGame/Persona4DancingAllNight'' has Easy, Normal and Hard modes, with Hard being pretty difficult. But you can also use items to apply modifiers to any song, and one of the modifiers being that ''all the notes disappear''. [[spoiler: And then you unlock the true hardest difficulty level!]]
403* ''VideoGame/{{Phase}}'' starts with easy, medium and hard levels. By completing marathon mode at higher difficulty levels, you can unlock "expert" and "insane".
404* In ''VideoGame/{{Phigros}}'', the difficulty levels go Easy (EZ), Hard (HD), ''Insane (IN)'', ''Another (AT)'', and ''Special (SP)''. Insane has to be unlocked by getting an A rank on the Hard chart. Another is only available for a few songs, requires an A rank on the Insane chart, and the fact that an Another chart exists is not revealed until you unlock it. Special charts are {{Secret Level}}s; they require performing actions that are at best vaguely hinted in the loading tips, or [[GuideDangIt not at all]], and only some songs have them. "[=MopeMope=]" is the only song to have ''both'' AT and SP charts.
405* ''VideoGame/PopnMusic'' has 5- and 9-button charts for songs. Then there's the "Hyper" difficulty, which is a harder 9-button difficulty. And then there's "EX," which pushes the challenge yet another notch.
406** Beginning with the 12th installment, '''VideoGame/{{Beatmania}} IIDX'''s difficulties were renamed from "Light 7," "7 Keys," and "Another" to "Normal," "Hyper," and "Another." The idea is that Normal/Light 7 is for casual players, Hyper is for more experienced players, and Another is for even better players.
407*** Most Bemani rookies shouldn't have a problem with Pop 'n Music's 5-key, but some people in the IIDX fandom have recounted seeing numerous casual IIDX players get absolutely ''clobbered'' by Light 7. Many of them cannot clear literally ''anything'' other than 5.1.1. The fact that all three levels have gone up (considerably) over time, and Konami ''still'' needed to make yet another level (Black Another), really tells you how incredibly dedicated the IIDX fanbase is. Speaking of which...
408*** ''IIDX 15 DJ TROOPERS'' also added unlockable BLACK ANOTHER charts. you had to clear the song on ANOTHER to get its BLACK ANOTHER chart (if it had one), and you can expect them to be in a field of their own, with one of them having 2626 notes total in just 2 short minutes, equal to 21 notes per second for the whole two minutes.
409*** ''beatmania IIDX 21 SPADA'' introduces the ✝LEGGENDARIA difficulty, similar to BLACK ANOTHER, available only for the Spada✝leggendaria series of [[BossBattle Extra Stage songs]]. While the ✝LEGGENDARIA charts are a few steps down from BLACK ANOTHER charts, they are still not for the faint of heart; all of the ✝LEGGENDARIA charts are rated 12 (out of 12) and exceed 1900 notes. "Verflucht"'s ✝LEGGENDARIA chart is known for having the most notes of any arcade ''IIDX'' chart, at ''2401'' notes.
410** ''Lunatic Rave 2'', a simulator of ''beatmania IIDX'', has three well-known ratings scales. The first is the standard 1-12 scale, transplanted straight from ''IIDX''. No surprises here. Playing this trope straight is the "hard" scale, which goes from 1 to 24, with level 1 being considered ''the equivalent of an 11 or 12 on the standard scale''. Above 24 is the "Overjoy" scale, from 0 to 7, and charts on the Overjoy scale...well...the less discussed about them, the better.
411* ''VideoGame/PumpItUp'':
412** The game has Normal mode and Hard mode. And then there's Crazy mode, which has charts that will make even the hardest of DDR charts look like walks in the park with relentless streams of notes as well as notes that make you hit ''three'' or even ''FOUR'' arrows at once (which require you to use your hands to hit unless you have Xbox-huge feet). What, not good enough for you? For those who like to use two pads at once, there's the Freestyle mode, which is the easier doubles difficulty, and the aptly-named Nightmare mode. And there is at least one song requiring all five buttons, albeit at the end of a song after a short break in steps so that it won't mess you up unduly. Most dancers drop to hands and feet, using their knee or posterior to hit the center button. Songs with 3-4 arrows are fairly common at high difficulties.
413** Doing fine with the normal mutli-arrow madness? Try any song difficulty marked "Another" for a harder version with stranger steps. Some of these, like Bee, actually have stepcharts on Another meant to be impossible.
414* In ''VideoGame/{{RAVON}}'', the three "standard" difficulties are called [[IdiosyncraticDifficultyLevels Enjoy, Handzup, and Core]]. Then there is the fourth difficulty level, Overnight, in which not only are the note patterns even harder than on Core, but the chart uses a 6x4 grid rather than 5x3 like the other three difficulties and the game starts making use of patterns where the player has to press three or more notes at once, whereas lower difficulties only have up to two simultaneous notes.
415* ''VideoGame/ReflecBeat'' has Special difficulty, which is above Basic, Medium, and Hard. It is available only on a subset of songs. One song, "STELLAR WIND", subverts this trope, as its Hard chart is rated a 10+ but the Special chart is rated only a 10. ''Reflec Beat: The Reflesia of Etertnity''[='=]s White Hard difficulty is another subversion: it's usually just the Hard chart with ''Reflesia''-exclusive mechanics such as Big Bang Objects and Switch Long Objects added to the chart.
416* ''VideoGame/RockBand'' keeps the Easy, Medium, Hard, Expert difficulties. ''Rock Band 2'' also lists difficulties for all the instruments on each song from 0 to 5 dots ... or 5 demon heads for the truly brutal songs. ''Rock Band 3'' has "Pro" modes which use special controllers and certainly fit the bill, particularly for guitar, bass, and keys.
417* ''VideoGame/SoundVoltex Booth'' has Novice (NOV) and Advanced (ADV), followed by Exhaust (EXH).
418** The sequel, ''Sound Voltex II -infinite infection-''adds the Infinite (INF) difficulty level, available only for new select songs introduced in this game. The third game in the series, ''Sound Voltex III GRAVITY WARS'', adds the Gravity (GRV) difficulty, which is the equivalent of Infinite but for charts introduced in ''GRAVITY WARS''. And every entry onward has its own new difficulty: Heavenly (HVN) for ''Sound Voltex IV HEAVENLY HAVEN'' and Vivid (VVD) for ''Sound Voltex VIVID WAVE''.
419** However, from ''HEAVENLY HAVEN'' onwards, some charts have a fourth/fifth difficulty named Maximum (MXM). And it's the hardest difficulty overall, putting previous songs with previous difficulties to shame.
420* ''VideoGame/SpinRhythm'': The XD difficulties. Then there are custom levels, which get more than twice as hard as the base game hardest level (Teminite - ''Believe'').
421* ''VideoGame/TaikoNoTatsujin'' has Easy, Medium, Hard, and "Oni" or Demon difficulties.
422* ''[[VideoGame/TakumiCubic TAKUMI³]]'' has Normal and Hard difficulties, followed by ''Master''. Normal and Hard only ever have you press one or two notes at a time, but Master charts have patterns that require playing with three or more fingers. There is also ''Insanity'' difficulty above Master, and the ''Ravage'' difficulty that is mainly used for {{gimmick|Level}} and [[JokeLevel meme]] charts.
423* ''VideoGame/TheTrickyMod'': In contrast to the usual Easy, Normal, and Hard difficulties, the only difficulty available for the BrutalBonusLevel ''Expurgation'' is "[[TheComputerIsACheatingBastard Unfair]]".
424* ''VideoGame/WorldDaiStarYumeNoStellarium'' appears to have four difficulty levels per song: Normal, Hard, Extra, and Stella, although they are more like "Easy", "Normal", "Hard", and "this trope" in practice since Normal through Extra are available right off the bat and Stella requiring meeting specific criteria on Extra. If you hold down the difficulty icon for Stella on certain songs and then proceed through with playing the song, you are instead introduced to Olivier difficulty, withh the song and difficulty information splash screen shattering to reveal that difficulty. Then, clearing that chart will make Olivier charts for other songs available in the shop, ''if'' you can clear it. Olivier charts have their own difficulty scale; instead of the 1-29 scale for Normal through Stella, Olivier charts use a Roman numeral system of I-VIII and while the previous difficulties can be feasibly done with thumbs, Olivier charts ''mandate'' more than two fingers due to having chords of three or more notes, chord streams, and other such patterns. The lower-rated charts (around Olivier I-III) have more reasonable patterns that are more in line with Extra charts, but the higheer-end charts have note density and technical patterns that make Stella charts look like the tutorial.
425[[/folder]]
426
427[[folder:Roguelike]]
428* Although it's not an official difficulty, ''VideoGame/TheBindingOfIsaac: Afterbirth+'' introduced the [[ThatOneSidequest Ultra Hard challenge]], where no hearts ever drop, all enemies are [[EliteMooks champions]], the player suffers from Curse of the Labyrinth (first 8 floors are fused into 4 giant floors), Lost (disabled map), Maze (random chance of getting teleported every time you pass through a door), and Blind (the sprites of all powerup items are replaced by the same "?" symbol) every floor, every boss fight is [[DualBoss Double Trouble]] when possible, the player has to go to the Dark Room instead of The Chest, and Mega Satan is the final boss. [[NintendoHard It's somewhat unfair]], but as it's a challenge, only has to be done once.
429* ''VideoGame/CryptOfTheNecrodancer'': Is [[OneHitPointWonder Aria]] too easy to play? Have no trouble avoiding gold as Monk? Your reflexes and rhythm sharp enough to handle Bolt? Can you beat an All Zone Run with every character back-to-back? Then you get the honor of unlocking Coda, who has all the disadvantages of Aria, Monk, and Bolt. To sum it up, you die in one hit, picking up gold kills you, you're stuck using a plain old dagger, and you have to hit every beat ''at double speed''. The character select screen even describes it as "Probably Impossible!". To convey how brutal this challenge is: Out of a playerbase of over half a million players, less than '''30''' people have verified legitimate Coda All Zones clears. Also worth mentioning that merely ''unlocking'' Coda is in itself an extremely difficult challenge. To do so, you must win an All Characters run. That means beating the game in All Zones with the other nine characters, in a row, without dying or restarting, including the insta-death on gold Monk, the blazingly fast Bolt, and mandatory flawless Aria. The fact that you can play them in any order you want is barely a relief to one of the most grueling, stamina-testing, and mastery-evaluating modes the game includes. First-timers beating this mode can expect to spend around ''two and a half hours'' of playtime, just to unlock a character that is considered even harder than the challenge required to unlock it.
430* ''VideoGame/DarkestDungeon'''s Stygian Mode takes an already hard game and gives higher enemy stats, doubled upgrade cost, and a time and death count limit of 86 weeks and 12 deaths, and failure will result in your save file being permanently deleted.
431* The later dungeons in ''VideoGame/DesktopDungeons'' can get pretty tough, but if that's not enough for you, you can prep a Vicious Token, bumping up any dungeon's difficulty to that of the [[BonusDungeon Bonus Dungeons]].
432* ''VideoGame/{{DRL}}'', has, similarly to original Doom, the [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Nightmare!]] difficulty. The player is slower, enemies come in spades (''fifty'' enemies on a single floor are not uncommon), they are more aggressive and more accurate. And they [[RespawningEnemies respawn]] for good measure (unless you know how to dispose of their corpses). Have fun. At least some benefits from the EasierThanEasy mode (double ammo, double healing, double power-up duration and an experience) are back.
433* ''VideoGame/RiskOfRain2''[='s=] alternate gamemode, Eclipse, is a super hardmode that evolves as it goes along. Every time you successfully complete a run on Eclipse mode, a modifier is added to the character you beat it as which makes it harder up to level 8 where your healing is slashed, fall damage is fatal, the enemies are more powerful, and damage becomes permanent.
434* Many ''VideoGame/NetHack'' variants allow you play as a Convict, which means you start the (already difficult) game nearly starving and chained to a heavy iron ball.
435* ''VideoGame/SlashEmExtended'' has the Alien race and Bleeder role, carrying large disadvantages like being weighed down by a heavy, undroppable stone and taking double damage. In a game that is NintendoHard already, this means only the most experienced players will even survive the early levels with them. There are also some ways to make the game harder by giving the player character a certain name: "Blindfox" (the character is forever unable to see), "Hippie" (can't recognize items and monsters for what they really are) and "lostsoul" (start on a deep dungeon level as a level 1 character, with no easy way to escape).
436* In ''VideoGame/TalesOfMajEyal'', the Nightmare difficulty features higher monster levels (and with that, more and better skills) - but this a "standard" Hard mode (of an already hard game). Then there's Insane mode - compare Nightmare to Normal, and apply the difficulty increase to Nightmare. And ''then'' there's Madness, the true Harder Than Hard mode - to get the idea, apply the difficulty increase mentioned earlier to Insane. After a year since this mode was introduced to the game, there are nine recorded wins out of about 6000 attempts. Again, have fun.
437[[/folder]]
438
439[[folder:Role-Playing Game]]
440* ''VideoGame/AdventureStory'': One of the effects of Epic difficulty is that NonLethalBottomlessPits deal 20 damage, compared to Easy's 5.
441* ''VideoGame/AtelierSophieTheAlchemistOfTheMysteriousBook:'' has Easy, Normal, Hard, and Despair.
442* ''VideoGame/BaldursGateIII'' added a new difficulty setting in its fifth major patch called "Honour Mode". A step up from the already-challenging Tactician Mode, Honour Mode sets itself apart in four key ways. Firstly, SaveScumming is impossible: the game only allows one save file on Honour Mode, which is deleted upon loading up the campaign. Second, boss encounters are ''much'' more difficult. Third, there are a set of harsher rules in place, adding more challenge to battles and inventory management. And finally, {{Permadeath}} is in place: if you suffer a TotalPartyKill, the campaign ends, and you will need to start over from the beginning of the game.
443* ''VideoGame/DarkSouls2'': While the main game is [[NintendoHard famously difficult]] already, those who crave an extra challenge can join the Covenant of Champions (available at the very start of the game) to up the ante even further. Not only are enemies' stats increased and yours decreased so that enemies are roughly twice as powerful as the vanilla game, the enemy AI is noticeably improved to use better tactics, other players will invade you more often, you cannot summon friendly players for co-op, and as of the ''Scholar of the First Sin'' content release, it makes all enemies spawn indefinitely (in the regular game, defeating an enemy around 15 times will have it stay dead permanently).
444* The Nightmare mode in ''VideoGame/DragonAgeII'' was, infamously, never fully playtested. As the game was developed and released in a hurry, this was never fixed. As a consequence the [[FriendlyTarget Friendly Fire]] feature of Nightmare makes it nigh unplayable, as any playable characters who deal area-of-effect damage are liable to wipe your entire party.
445* The multiplayer mode in ''VideoGame/DragonAgeInquisition'' shipped with three difficulties: Routine, Perilous, and Threatening. A patch eventually added the Nightmare difficulty, which is this...and then there's Heartbreaker, which was accidentally made available in the Nightmare patch.
446** In case Nightmare difficulty just wasn't hard enough for you (enemies have much higher health, resurrecting party members restores only the minimum amount of health to survive), the Trespasser DLC added "Trials", optional difficulty features for the single-player game which the player can toggle on or off. These include giving the enemy AI more and harder-hitting abilities, randomly promoting enemies, making all enemies scale to at least the player's level, and making all health potions heal only 1 health. These even come with the explicit warning that they may occasionally break your game. But for many dedicated players, playing on anything less than Nightmare with at least ''some'' Trials suggests a lack of dedication.
447* ''VideoGame/DragonsCrown'' has an unlockable Hard mode after beating the game the first time, then an ''Infernal'' mode after beating the game on Hard. And if you manage to beat the final boss on Infernal you can go to '''Ultimate''' difficulty.
448* The ''VideoGame/EpicBattleFantasy'' series has Epic difficulty, which drastically increases enemy stats, alongside providing foes additional bonuses such as replacing skills with stronger versions, gaining additional {{Status Buff}}s, and so on. Going into some specifics:
449** ''VideoGame/EpicBattleFantasy1'' simply [[NumericalHard increases enemy Attack, Magic Attack and HP by 40%]], as indicated by the difficulty's description of "140%". [[EarlyInstallmentWeirdness Unlike later games]], enemies aren't given any new attacks, buffs, etcetera.
450** ''VideoGame/EpicBattleFantasy2'' increases enemy Attack and Magic Attack by 40%, but doesn't raise HP.
451*** The ''[[CompilationRerelease Epic Battle Fantasy Collection]]'' rerelease of [=EBF2=] adds three difficulties above Epic. The hardest, Epic+++, ''doubles'' enemy Attack and Magic Attack.
452** ''VideoGame/EpicBattleFantasy3'' increases enemy Attack and Magic Attack by 60%. Like [=EBF2=], HP remains unaffected.
453** ''VideoGame/EpicBattleFantasy4'' doubles enemy Attack and Magic Attack, increases enemy HP by 40%, and cuts the speed at which player {{Limit Break}}s charge by 20%.
454** ''VideoGame/EpicBattleFantasy5'', much like [=EBF4=], doubles enemy Attack and Magic Attack, and increases enemy HP by 40%, but slows Limit Break charge speed by 30% instead. Additionally, certain enemies exhibit improved AI, choosing the element players are weakest to when attacking.
455* ''VideoGame/EternalTwilight'' has an interesting example of this due to the developer responding to player opinions. In versions before 1.0.8, the highest difficulty was simply named "Hard" and the other two difficulties were "Easy" and "Normal." After players struggled too much on Normal, the developer renamed the three difficulties to Normal, Hard, and Hell without changing any of their modifiers. What was originally supposed to be considered a standard Hard mode became something higher than that due to a simple name change and reevaluation of what players considered Hard.
456* ''VideoGame/{{Fallout}}'':
457** In ''VideoGame/FalloutNewVegas'''s Hardcore mode[[labelnote:*]]Which is a separate modifier than game difficulty, which just affects your damage done and taken.[[/labelnote]], ammo has weight, Stimpaks and Rad-Away heal over time instead of instantly, crippled limbs can only be healed by a doctor or special items, [[{{Permadeath}} dead companions stay dead]], and [[WizardNeedsFoodBadly food, drink and sleep are required]] to prevent a progressive decrease in stats leading to eventual death.\
458 Project director J.E. Sawyer released a GameMod for the PC version that makes it even more hardcore. Base carrying weight is reduced by 100, the XP increase rate is halved, dehydration, hunger, and sleep deprivation rates are doubled, Stimpaks have weight and most are "expired", making them less effective, among other changes. On the plus side, it's also a rebalance patch that makes several early game items and PowerArmor more effective.
459** In ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 4}}'', Survival difficulty originally merely made HP recovery and Rad removal much slower, made most normal enemies bullet sponges, and greatly increased the frequency of [[BossInMookClothing Legendary enemies]]. However, the 1.5 update completely overhauls it to include all of the trappings of ''FNV'''s Hardcore mode and then some more, such as diseases that have to be treated with antibiotics or crafted herbal medicines, fatigue, no fast-travel except to the Institute and back out above it, no EnemyDetectingRadar unless you have a Recon scope, [[CheckPointStarvation saves restricted to beds]], limb damage from being overencumbered, more lethal combat damage to both the player and enemies, and slower enemy and loot respawns. Unlike ''FNV'', followers aren't subject to {{Permadeath}}[[labelnote:*]]Doing so could make the main quest unwinnable because some companions are needed to advance it.[[/labelnote]]; they are instead sent back to their place of recruitment if KO'ed and you are unable to heal them.
460* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyCrystalChronicles: Echoes of Time'' has Normal, Hard, and Very Hard selectable when you go to do a NewGamePlus after beating the previous difficulty level. What they don't tell you is that each subsequent play-through of Very Hard is actually harder than the last, all the way up to the 10th time you do so. At Very Hard 10, a level 99 character who was leveled with stat growth items so as to max all their stats at 999 will still take hundreds of damage from attacks in the ''first area'' of the game.
461* Event dungeons in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyRecordKeeper'' have Heroic difficulty, in which enemies often drop 5-star items, on top of the reward for completing and mastering the dungeon also consisting of 5-star items. + difficulty is even harder than Heroic, and ++ difficulty is ''even harder'' than +. This progression continues to this day as Power Creep grows worse with time. After ++ came +++, then Ultimate, then Ultimate+, then Ultimate++, then Apocalypse, then Apocalypse+, finally there's ??? stages that hide their true level and can range upwards of difficulty 350 (the aforementioned Heroic caps at difficulty 99, and Apocalypse+ is 220).
462* The Expert difficulty mode in ''VideoGame/GreedFall'', which adds more enemies in addition to making them stronger and faster. Skill points must also be allocated with thought, as players generally need to commit to one of the three builds and being a JackOfAllTrades will backfire.
463* ''VideoGame/HeartsLikeClockwork'': The game's hard mode is named "Ambitious" and the difficulty above that is named "Abstract Nonsense." According to the developer, Abstract Nonsense was made to satisfy players who thought her last game's hard mode wasn't hard enough.
464* ''VideoGame/HorizonZeroDawn'' and [[VideoGame/HorizonForbiddenWest its sequel]] have Ultra Hard, available after beating the game once. Enemies are far more perceptive and aggressive, enemy health bars are hidden, you gather fewer resources at a time, and merchants' wares are more expensive.
465* ''Franchise/KingdomHearts'': The recurring Critical difficulty is a step up from Proud, the equivalent of a standard Hard. Max HP is cut (the percentage varies between games), enemies do twice to three times the amount of damage, and in some games the player's damage output is cut in half. You'll also get EXP Zero for free, in case you want to do a LowLevelRun on top of everything else.
466* ''VideoGame/LegendOfMana'' only allows Normal difficulty the first time through, but on accessing NewGamePlus, lets players also pick Nightmare and No Future modes. At the last option, even with a level-capped character and some of the ultimate reward weapons, players might be overwhelmed by a single [[KillerRabbit rabite]]. Furthermore, if you choose No Future, you cannot switch out of it mid-playthrough and then come back to it later.
467** Specifically, No Future mode results in ''every'' enemy being level 99, along with boosted offense and defense. Playing this mode without a level 99 character and some of the best armor in the game means you're dead in one hit. With those two things? ...two hits.
468** No Future returns in the ''VideoGame/TrialsOfMana'' remake, and in addition to insane enemy stats, you're limited to three of up to twelve kinds of items per fight, your level is forcibly reset, and all boss encounters are ''timed''. [[ThisIsGonnaSuck Consider yourself amply warned.]]
469* ''Lords of Xulima'' is a really prominent example. On the lowest difficulty setting enemies will be very slow and die in 1 hit. On the next lowest enemies are still heavily hamstrung. On the third a few new rules kick in but the game's still fairly easy with some common sense building. The fourth is the same as the third but you cannot save scum. The fifth and hardest starts with the fourth and then buffs it. Massively. Then adds a bunch of optional bosses, some of which are harder than the storyline bosses AFTER the storyline bosses were buffed. And given minions, better skills, AI, regeneration... It is entirely beatable with rock solid tactics and timing, but only two people have done so in as many years. One of them made it, the other used an exploit.
470* ''VideoGame/MassEffect1'' has the unlockable "Hardcore" (after finishing the game once) and "Insanity" (after finishing a playthrough on Hardcore) difficulties, the latter of which proves to be, well, ''insane''. It's not impossible to beat but you'll have to get up to level 50 just to reach a point where every battle ''isn't'' a brutal, intense life-or-death struggle. Insanity doesn't just [[NumericalHard make the enemies have more health and do more damage]] - [[DynamicDifficulty all enemies scale up as your level does]]. And all Bosses, Sub-bosses, non-Mooks constantly use powers and have immunities to everything you can throw at them.
471* ''VideoGame/MassEffect2'' gives us the difficulty levels named the same (which are available from the start), but unlike the first game, [[PlayerCharacter Shepard]] has no immediate access to immunities and such (besides a few bonus skills that temporarily increase shields for up to 100%), has to rely solely on their trusty health, shield and cover, and most importantly, has to do so with limited ammo. As the difficulty ramps up, enemies become smarter, faster, more accurate and ALL OF THEM gain damage resistances such as shields (making them perfectly on par with Shepard and the squaddies) and/or an armor layer. Add to this a bonus damage percentage of about 9000%, which means that if out of cover, 3 shots from an assault rifle will drop all of Shepard's shields, and about five shots will outright kill them.
472* ''VideoGame/MassEffect3'' takes it further with its co-op multiplayer mode. Originally, there were three difficulty modes, Bronze, Silver and Gold, which were roughly equal to Normal, Hardcore and Insanity in the singleplayer mode, in addition to spawning harder enemies earlier and more the higher the difficulty. And ''then'' the ''Earth'' expansion pack added the Platinum difficulty, which ramps up the health and damage of enemies ''even more'' as well as adding enemies from other factions. Normally, even on Gold, you wouldn't face the toughest enemies until at least Wave 3, but Platinum spawns these as early as Wave 1. Not just that, but later waves add in enemies from other factions, which means that you will now fight all the game's DemonicSpiders '''at the same time'''.
473* ''VideoGame/MonsterHunter'':
474** Most {{Updated Rerelease}}s have G-Rank missions (known in later games as Master Rank missions), coming after the already tough High Rank. Enemy health and attack power is buffed up even more than High Rank, to the point that some enemies' moderately powerful attacks can two-shot you from maximum possible health, even if you have decent defense. Just like High Rank, you spawn in a random spot of the map and supplies are not delivered until far into the mission. Some enemies gain new attacks, and some move and attack faster (''double speed'' Great Jaggi, anyone?). And there's always the chance you could end up running into a really nasty unexpected monster like Savage Deviljho or Apex Rajang on every mission. The game expects you to take on these missions with up to four players, and are balanced as such. Good luck soloing them. Accessing these missions often requires defeating an extremely durable DamageSpongeBoss that can take a while to defeat even with G-Rank weaponry. You earn top-of-the-line materials to make the game's [[InfinityPlusOneSword Infinity +1 Swords]], but at this point they're less GameBreaker and more ''necessary to survive''. And that's before you get into the actual missions, some of which throw multiples of ThatOneBoss ''at the same time''. Only the best hunters succeed here.
475** ''VideoGame/MonsterHunterWorld'' has Arch-Tempered Elder Dragons, special quest-only variants with massively increased health and damage along with modified mechanics. They're specifically designed to be a challenge for players who have already mastered the game.
476* For ''VideoGame/NiNoKuniIIRevenantKingdom'', the game being too easy was a chief complaint, so much that it even turned some off from buying it. Version 1.03, released on June 22, 2018, added a Hard difficulty level, as well as an Expert one, both which greatly amped up the difficulty, but provided better treasures from both monster drops and certain chests as a reward.
477* In ''VideoGame/OdinSphere'', collecting all text, recipes and alchemy mixtures, or simply beating the game in the UpdatedRerelease, grants you access to Heroic Mode. In Heroic Mode, your HP never increases, which means you both have to get ''really'' good at dodging attacks and do everything you can to increase your attack power.
478* ''VideoGame/TheOuterWorlds'': Supernova difficulty can only be selected during new game, if you change the difficulty down during the game, you cannot change it back up. It entails the following:
479** Enemies have more health and deal more damage.
480** You must eat, drink and sleep to survive, as measured by hunger, thirst and exhaustion bars unique to this difficulty.
481** Companions will die ''permanently'' when downed in battle
482** Crippled body and limb conditions can only be healed by sleeping in beds.
483** You can only sleep inside your ship.
484** You can only fast travel to your ship.
485** You can only manually save inside your ship.
486** There are less autosaves than the other modes.
487** Weapons and armour perform far worse at lower durability.
488* ''VideoGame/ParasiteEve2'' has a long list of regular difficulty-levels, including 'Extreme', which rendered the already-tough Armored Golems nearly indestructible, capable of taking several grenade-hits head on. And then there's 'Nightmare', which basically has you start out with less than half your normal health, and removes most of the weapons from the game. Yep, that's right - the arsenal that you'd normally accumulate, from stores and pickups, just isn't THERE anymore. Neither is most of those nice boxes of 'Infinite Common Ammo'. And you can't refill non-ammo weapons, such as the Taser, Laser, and Flamethrower attachments until right before the final boss. There's a few places where you can fill up on the basic 9mm ammo, but other than that, every bullet counts. You'll end up fighting your way through the first half of the game (including a boss-fight against a three-story mutant giant with a face-mounted flame-thrower) armed with an LP-08 Luger - and the second half of the game will be fought mostly with a bayonet-equipped assault-rifle, since you have to save all your good ammo for the bosses. And the enemies are nearly as tough as they are in Extreme.
489* ''VideoGame/Persona3'' originally featured two difficulty levels, Easy and Normal. The expansion ''Persona 3 FES'' added Hard mode, which took the already difficult Normal Mode and cranked it up. (In addition, the bonus chapter has all the difficulty of Hard Mode, with the added bonuses of denying Social Link and Persona Compendium use.) ''Persona 3 Portable'' takes it even further by adding '''Maniac''' mode, in which enemies hit twice as hard as normal (as opposed to 1.5 times as hard in Hard mode), certain Weapon Fusions are unavailable, and the game's NewGamePlus feature is disabled for that cycle, forcing you to start ''all over again''. No summoning Lucifer at level 5 for you!
490* This has carried over to ''VideoGame/Persona4 Golden'' (where it's listed as "Very Hard"), with a fitting description:
491-->"Do you hate yourself, or are you supremely self-confident? This difficulty requires a strength of heart that never gives in."
492* ''VideoGame/PersonaQShadowOfTheLabyrinth'', has the Risky difficulty. Not only is it incredibly hard, but it brings back that otherwise-absent series standard of [[WeCannotGoOnWithoutYou instant loss if the protagonist dies]]. Furthermore, while the other four difficulty levels can be switched between at will, once you pick Risky you're locked into it for the whole game. Playing the Persona 3 story on Risky leaves you with the difficult issue of the protagonist being weak to the instakill Dark spells (which mean that if an enemy uses one on him it ''will'' hit and kill him), which are more common here than in any other SMT game. As in, the AI can just choose to make you immediately Game Over against certain enemies and there isn't a whole lot you can do about it.
493* ''VideoGame/Persona5'' has a DLC difficulty above "Hard" called "Merciless", which gives enemies even higher stats ''and'' turns everyone into a GlassCannon by adding a [=2.5x=] multiplier to critical damage. If you get a critical hit, technical or exploit a weakness, every opponent and party member other than bosses can be killed instantly.
494* ''VideoGame/PillarsOfEternity'' has Path of the Damned. On Path of the Damned, all encounters have more enemies, enemies have boosted accuracy and defense, and enemies have mode-exclusive abilities. There are also two modes that can be turned on: Expert disables all independent help options, including [=AoE=] displays, unrestricted stash access, and detailed quest updates, and Trial of Iron limits you to one save file, [[FinalDeathMode which is deleted upon death]]. Activating both on Path of the Damned effectively makes the game Harder than Harder than Hard.
495* ''VideoGame/SacredEarthSeries'': In ''VideoGame/SacredEarthPromise'' and ''Sacred Earth - New Theory'', Hard mode multiplies enemy stats by 1.25 while Nightmare mode multiplies enemy stats by 1.5 on top of giving them additional skills. Considering enemies are fairly strong even on normal difficulty, that 1.5 multiplier is no joke. The description for that difficulty also recommends saving a lot because the player is probably going to die a lot.
496* Maniacs difficulty in the newer ''Franchise/ShinMegamiTensei'' games, as well as the Apocalypse DLC difficulty in ''VideoGame/ShinMegamiTenseiIVApocalypse''.
497* ''VideoGame/SoaringMachinariae'': Expert mode shares Hard mode's EXP and gold rate, nullification of EN regen and save point HP restoration, and reduced guarding effectiveness. However, it also doubles non-guarded damage to Iris and prevents the difficulty from being changed for the rest of the playthrough.
498* ''VideoGame/StarOcean'' since ''Star Ocean 2'' has the unlockable Universe Mode, while ''Till The End Of Time'' gave a forth tier diffculty in 4D Mode, later called in ''The Last Hope'' onwards as Chaos Mode, where it is most easily summed up by saying if you select this difficulty, Tri-Ace hates you and wants you to fail.
499* ''VideoGame/SwordOfTheStars: The Pit'' has "Insane" and "Seriously?!" (this one available only with the DLC) difficulties. How bad is "Seriously?!" There are only two recorded clears of it.
500* ''[[VideoGame/TalesSeries Tales of...]]'' games feature an unlockable difficulty for a NewGamePlus file usually called Mania or Unknown.
501** This difficulty level is unrelentingly brutal. Some monsters with multi-hit attacks can drop you from 100% HP to 0% in the blink of an eye. Some bosses, especially the ones that use [[LimitBreak Mystic Artes]] become absolute nightmares. ''VideoGame/TalesOfVesperia'' bosses such as [[spoiler:Duke's true final form, Schwann, Alexei, and Kratos]] possess the potential to instantly kill your entire party with their Mystic Arte.
502** Unknown in ''VideoGame/TalesOfTheAbyss'' is a little ridiculous: the very first battle against a common enemy in Unknown will take [[ScratchDamage 1 damage]] from all of your attacks!
503** ''VideoGame/TalesOfZestiria'' actually offers six different difficulty modes. Normal is default, but there is also Simple for those that want things really easy. Moderate is the next step up and Hard is actually the fourth hardest. The hardest are Intense and Chaos. Both of these can actually be accessed in a regular playthrough, but you have to fight a number of Battles on Hard to unlock Intense and a number on Intense to unlock Chaos. In a New Game Plus, Intense and Chaos are available by default, but aren't nearly as challenging necessarily because you can unlock a number of boosts, including as much as 6X EXP per battle.
504* ''VideoGame/TokyoMirageSessionsFE'': It has Lunatic mode, unlocked after you finish the game's first playthrough. While on any other difficulty you're allowed to switch, if you pick Lunatic you're locked into it so that there's no respite. Your characters deal 50% less damage than usual, while enemies deal 50% more. Nothing is carried over from the playthrough before it except for costumes. The one perk is that the shops have all their items immediately available instead of making them available as you advance in the game.
505* All of the titles in the ''VideoGame/TrailsSeries'' have the option of Nightmare difficulty. This difficulty is intended to be this if you choose it from the start. If you choose it on NewGamePlus, however, you can carry all your levels and equipment, etc., from the first playthrough, which effectively makes it ridiculously easy throughout most of the game right up until around the end when your levels become comparable to those of the enemies again.
506* ''VideoGame/UnleashTheLight'' has three difficulty levels for the Black Hole: Normal, Hard, and Diamond. Hard Mode temporarily empties your inventory in the beginning, while Diamond Mode also removes the stars needed to time blocks.
507* ''VideoGame/ValkyriaChronicles'' has EX Hard Mode available as DLC content. Basically, you cannot take Edelweiss; your troops, even maxed out at level 20 with all upgrades, will fall over to a slight breeze; and everything headshots you, ''including enemy tanks''.
508* ''[[VideoGame/ValkyrieProfile Valkyrie Profile 2]]'' features an interesting form of NewGamePlus mechanics. When you complete the game and the bonus dungeon, your next playthrough is somewhat more difficult. If you beat the game enough times to max out the difficulty spike, every enemy in the game has been ramped up by ''250%''. ''Covenant Of the Plume'' fully expects you to not go for [[EarnYourHappyEnding path A]] until a NewGamePlus. Trying to complete the A path stages on your first playthrough is...unadvisable.
509* ''VideoGame/TheWitcher2AssassinsOfKings'' has the Insane difficulty. You take even more damage and it makes death permanent. You die, the saves of that playthrough are deleted and you have to start the game from the beginning. The 2.0 patch also adds Dark Mode. It's even harder than Insane but without permanent death and it adds some new item sets which have to be completed or you will take damage over time when they are equipped. It also slightly changes the lighting of the game to be darker.
510* Jupiter's ''VideoGame/TheWorldEndsWithYou'' starts off on Normal, gives you Easy, then gives you Hard, then lets you unlock Ultimate yourself. To get the ''real'' ending you have to go back and beat all the bosses on Hard or Ultimate, though it ends up being a BraggingRightsReward due to the extreme briefness of the extra scene.
511* ''VideoGame/XenobladeChronicles2'' has a normal difficulty, an easy difficulty, and a unique "Custom" difficulty- but the star of the show is "Bringer of Chaos" mode, and it is completely ABSURD. It does a variety of things, such as increasing enemy attack power and frequency, multiplying enemy HP, reducing your Special and Party Gauge recharge, decreasing your critical rate, making it harder for tanks to keep aggro, halving your HP restoration, and making enemies more resistant to Driver Combos. The only way you can make the game more difficult is by going absolutely insane with the aforementioned Custom difficulty- for instance, in Bringer of Chaos, enemy attack power is multiplied by x1.25; the max you can go to in Custom is ''x2.5.'' Luckily, both of these are only available if you own the Expansion Pass.
512* ''VideoGame/ZankiZero'': Setting the difficulty to V amps up the challenges in dungeons by a nook, giving enemies triple damage, higher costs for using Score, status aliments happening faster, lower attack power, and making bosses respawn as well.
513[[/folder]]
514
515[[folder:Shoot 'em Up]]
516* The shoot-em-up ''Space Megaforce'' (also known as ''VideoGame/SuperAleste'') has five difficulty settings: Normal, Hard, Hyper, Tricky, and Wild. The latter two cause enemies to fire bullets at you when they die.
517* ''VideoGame/GunNac''. One of the options on ''Gun Nac''[='=]s configuration screen is labeled "(No) Ricochet of Bullets", which implements the same "dying shot" behavior from enemies. However, "ricochet of bullets" is an independent setting, thus making it available for the game's four difficulty levels.
518* ''Franchise/TouhouProject'':
519** Each game has Easy, Normal, Hard, and Lunatic. Whereas Hard is considered arcade-level difficulty (as described in ''Embodiment of Scarlet Devil''[='=]s difficulty select), Lunatic is where the game series derives half of its infamy, especially for fans new to the ShootEmUp genre; the other half comes from the Extra Stages. And then there are people who give the games CAVE-like Ultra Modes, which sometimes only seem possible because the maximum number of bullets on the screen is limited by the game. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGTLt9K7OhM Observe Touhou 12 on Ultra Difficulty.]]
520** ''VideoGame/TouhouShinreibyouTenDesires'' has some spellcards, which, when played and captured on all the other difficulties in spell practice mode, can then be played in a ''fifth'' difficulty: Overdrive.
521* ''VideoGame/{{Tyrian}}'':
522** The game has three difficulty levels (Easy, Normal, Hard) and ''three more'' hidden difficulty levels, called Impossible, Suicide, and Lord of Game. Impossible doesn't live up to its name, only being a little tougher than Hard. Suicide comes close to living up to its name, given how fast the enemy shots fly. Lord of Game is so hard you won't be accusing any difficulty below Suicide of being too hard. Pray to Zinglon if you end up having to play a level with lots of automated turrets on it on this difficulty.
523** [[spoiler:Type "ENGAGE" at the main menu and]] you get access to a hidden gameplay mode (which unlike the other hidden gameplay modes does allow you to save your game). The catch is that you end up on Lord of Game difficulty (though there is a trick you can use to lower the difficulty ... to Suicide), your ship's weapon is pretty wimpy, and you have to figure out the game's special moves to really have a chance of making any progress.
524* The famously difficult ''VideoGame/CrystalQuest'' was designed for first and second generation Platform/{{Mac}}s, with the option to play at uninhibited speed on the latter's faster CPU. High scores obtained in this mode appeared in italics.
525* ''VideoGame/MushihimeSama'' has three difficulty settings: an "Original" mode with fast, though minimal bullets; a "Maniac" mode with denser, BulletHell-style bullets and a more complex scoring system; then there's "Ultra" mode, which is Maniac mode on horse steroids; in fact, if you try to select Ultra, you get a warning screen that asks if you really want to try it--it's THAT bad. Good luck on beating it without getting a seizure. The Black Label ExpansionPack of ''Mushihime-sama Futari'' (which in the arcade version was an UpdatedRerelease) replaces Ultra mode with God mode. However, God Mode is actually ''[[NonIndicativeDifficulty easier]]'' than Ultra; suicide bullets, for instance, are far less common, and there's much more (deliberately-implemented) slowdown. Its TrueFinalBoss, despite having a much more grandiose presentation than Ultra's, is also easier due to the aforementioned slowdown, and even has a ''safespot'' in her last phase.
526* ''VideoGame/{{Darius}}'':
527** ''Darius Gaiden'', in addition to the four main modes (Easy, Normal, Hard, and Very Hard) has two unlockable modes: Very Easy and Abnormal. Choosing the latter difficulty is almost the equivalent of playing a ''[[BulletHell danmaku]]'' shooter [[HitboxDissonance without the ridiculously small hitbox]].
528** ''Dariusburst Another Chronicle'' has two sets of stage trees. The basic one has three start points, labeled Easy, Normal, and Hard. The second one, the Exceed tree, has start points labeled [[AddedAlliterativeAppeal Expert, Extreme, and Exceed]].
529* The freeware BulletHell ShootEmUp ''[[http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~cs8k-cyu/windows/noiz2sa_e.html Noiz2sa]]'' offers an endless mode with four levels of difficulty: Normal, Hard, Extreme, and Insane. The first three difficulty levels share the same music, but [[ThisIsGonnaSuck Insane has its own music]].
530* ''VideoGame/{{Raiden}} IV'', in addition to two EasierThanEasy difficulties, one of which disables bullets, and the Very Hard setting, has the harder than harder than hard Ultimate difficulty. The Ultimate difficulty speeds up BulletHell with enemy bullets thrown at players in ''less than one second each'', to make ''VideoGame/{{Recca}}'' facepalm in comparison.
531* ''VideoGame/{{DeathSmiles}}'' normally allows you to select a difficulty level for each stage (Level 1, 2, or 3). Mega Black Label mode has an extra setting - Level 999 - where the bullets fly fast and furiously at you, and enemies leave behind large amounts of suicide bullets when they die.
532* ''VideoGame/AlltynexSecond'' has the ludicrous Suicide Bullet difficulty only unlockable by beating the game on hard.
533* ''VideoGame/{{Phalanx}}'' on the SNES has "Funny" as the hardest difficulty.
534* "Cruel" in ''[[VideoGame/{{Aleste}} Robo Aleste]]''. (In the Japanese version, where difficulty levels are named after ninja ranks, the highest difficulty is "Nukenin," meaning Fugitive Ninja.)
535* ''U.N. Squadron'' on SNES has a hidden "Gamer" difficulty setting, selected by highlighting Hard in the Options menu, holding X and A on controller 2, and pressing Right on the D-Pad.
536* ''VideoGame/RType'':
537** ''Super R-Type'' has a "Pro" setting, which is not selectable from the Options menu. You have to beat the game on Hard, and then you will play the second loop on Pro mode for the GoldenEnding.
538** ''R-Type Final 2'' introduces two difficulty levels above "R-Typer", the original hardest difficulty: "R-Typer 2" and "R-Typer 3". Unlocking each requires beating the game on the preceding difficulty.
539* ''Gate of Thunder'' has three difficulty levels: Normal, Hard, and Devil.
540* ''VideoGame/{{Stellavanity}}'' has six difficulty levels: Easy, Normal, Arcade, Hard, Nightmare, Pandemonium. Hard is already extremely challenging. Nightmare is ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin. Pandemonium? The less it's discussed, the better.
541* ''[[VideoGame/JamestownLegendOfTheLostColony Jamestown]]'' starts with four difficulties: Normal, Difficult, Legendary, and Divine. Beat all of those (and you will, since in order to unlock all the levels, you need to ultimately beat every preceeding level on Divine), and you earn the right to purchase an even harder difficulty level called Judgement.
542* ''Re: VideoGame/LunacyStar'' has four normal difficulty levels the main game can be played on: Beginner, Standard, Advanced, as well as Hopeless, which is already a Harder Than Hard mode. Then there's a Touhou-style Extra stage, which can only be played on Second Story, a fifth difficulty, which unlike its Touhou counterparts is considerably harder than Hopeless. THEN there's a ''sixth'' difficulty, called Chaos Drive, which can only be played in a few specific attacks in Attack Practice mode, and puts both Hopeless and Second Story to shame. ''Then'', all of the above can be played along with Turbo Mode, a special option which makes everything 50% faster. Turbo Advanced is already a complete nightmare.
543* Subverted by ''Starhall Redthel'', which at first glance appears to be an example with its three difficulty levels being named Original, Hell, and Chaosside. However, the game considers the normal baseline game mode to be Hell, while Original contains EasyModeMockery.
544* The Platform/SegaGenesis version of Creator/{{Toaplan}}'s ''Hellfire'' has the hidden "Yea Right" difficulty. It is [[RegionalBonus only available for the US version of the game]] and is unlocked by [[spoiler:setting the difficulty to Hard in the options menu and then [[WaitingPuzzle waiting about a minute]].]] While the Easy and Hard difficulties each grant 10 continues, [[HardModePerks this one gives you 99 of them]].
545* The ''VideoGame/ThunderForce'' series has "Very Hard" for ''II'' for the Sharp X68000, "Mania" for ''III'', "Maniac" for ''IV'', "Master" for ''V'' for the Platform/PlayStation, and "Maniac" again for ''VI''.
546* ''VideoGame/LenEn'', based on ''Franchise/TouhouProject'', has Easy, Normal, Hard, and lastly "Unreal" rather than "Lunatic". It's aptly named. The Extra stages also come in three difficulties: Easy, Normal, and the appropriately-named ''Absurdly''.
547* ''Storm the House 3'' has very typical difficulty level names (Easy, Normal, Hard) up until the last one: WHY GOD!?
548* ''[[VideoGame/EpicBattleFantasy Bullet Heaven 2]]'' has Normal, Hard and Heavenly. On top of increasing the bullets normally fired, the latter two cause enemies to release [[TakingYouWithMe suicide bullets]] upon death, with Heavenly increasing these as well. In addition, there's a list of handicaps you can buy and use that can ramp the difficulty up when combined with Heavenly. Suffice to say, this game ranges from accessible to downright NintendoHard, even if not as bad as some of the above examples.
549* ''VideoGame/BlueRevolver'' has Parallel difficulty above Normal and Hyper. Whereas Normal keeps the [[DynamicDifficulty rank]] locked to the two lowest of five levels and Hyper offers the full range of rank, Parallel keeps it locked at max level and introduces a TrueFinalBoss at the end of the game if you get there on one credit.
550* ''Robotron 64'' zig-zags this, with the difficulty levels being Easy, Normal, and then jumping right to Insane. Easy [[EasyModeMockery ends the game after level 100 out of 200, telling the player to try playing on Normal]]. Normal is the full 200 levels and is [[NintendoHard a relatively difficult game]]. Insane difficulty cranks up the quantity and speed of the enemies further and is supposedly so difficult that even the dev team couldn't clear it.
551* After completing ''VideoGame/{{Drainus}}'' once on any of the three initially-available difficulties (Easy, Normal, Hard), you unlock Ridiculous difficulty (in addition to [[ArrangeMode Arcade mode]]), with the description warning that "no claims of difficulty will be entertained." Enemies fire thick clouds of revenge bullets when destroyed, some enemies that once fired bullet streams now fire continous lasers that, while absorbable, are harder to get counterattack charge from, and instead of your ship losing a powerup when getting hit and only getting destroyed if you get hit with no powerups left, [[OneHitPointWonder you simply die]] unless you have a shield powerup that can take the hit.
552* After clearing ''VideoGame/SolCresta'' on Hard difficulty (or clearing the loop numbered as "Level 04" starting from any lower difficulty), you unlock Platinum Hard difficulty, which features more drastic changes than just "enemy attacks are denser and/or faster": Shields are now capped at only one, activating a three-ship formation attack uses up its token and you have to collect the token to use that specific attack again, said formation attacks have shorter duration, and losing a life resets your Sol Gauge back to zero.
553[[/folder]]
554
555[[folder:Simulation Game]]
556* ''VideoGame/{{Silent Hunter|Series}} 4'' has "Realistic", which many players will actually consider the standard difficulty: any (warfare) simulation game which comes with anything less than an almost completely realistic mode tends to get scolded for it by the hardcore fans of the genre. Unrealistic modes are for people looking for a game instead of a simulation.
557* ''VideoGame/AceCombat'':
558** The series (as of ''VideoGame/AceCombat04ShatteredSkies'', at least) features difficulty modes Expert and Ace, wherein the 'missile warning' sound (which usually means 'oh crap, evade!') is on so often that it basically becomes white noise. However, Ace mode has its upside too. It's much easier to get an S ranking on all missions on Ace than any other difficulty. Mind you, it's because you ''have'' to fly well to even survive.
559** Also, in ''VideoGame/AceCombat5TheUnsungWar'', the Ace difficulty tripled the speed with which your plane's kill gauge filled up, allowing for ''much'' faster upgrading.
560** ''VideoGame/AceCombat6FiresOfLiberation'' has an Extreme and Aces difficulty mode. Extreme is hard enough, where just one missile can kill you. In Aces mode, you can be killed with just 3-4 machine gun rounds and any damage you take cannot be repaired by resupply. Oh yeah, and in everything after hard, the hundreds of missiles being fired at you will basically ''hunt you down''.
561* The ''VideoGame/TraumaCenter'' games allow you to choose between Easy, Normal, and Hard difficulty settings for most stages. The [[{{Superboss}} post-story X operations]], on the other hand, are locked to "Extreme"... and they most definitely [[NintendoHard live up to the title]]. ''Trauma Team'' goes one further by making "Specialist" mode, stated by WordOfGod to be equivalent in difficulty to Extreme, available on ''all missions''.
562* In ''VideoGame/{{Rimworld}}'':
563** Extreme is the hardest difficulty setting. Compared to the next-highest difficulty, raids are more frequent (and larger and more heavily-armed), selling prices for goods are lower (and buying prices are higher), crop yields are lower and diseases are more frequent. For additional difficulty, go for Randy Random as your storyteller so you can get the ''really'' nasty events like Toxic Fallout from the very start (Cassandra is harder on the late game, as Randy will sometimes give you a break).
564** Sea Ice is the hardest biome to start on. The land is extremely cold, and there is no soil to plant or grow crops or trees - until hydroponics technology is developed, all food and wood must be imported. Animals are practically non-existent, so your colonists will probably have to [[NoPartyLikeADonnerParty resort to cannibalising fallen raiders]] (or ''visitors'') to survive. The only upsides are that nothing spoils thanks to the chill, and that for a good while anyone that tries raiding your site [[SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome will probably freeze to death before they've even seen you]].
565** Naked Brutality is the hardest starting scenario. You begin with a single colonist who crashlands on the planet with nothing, not even the clothes on their back. They at least start with some technologies like electricity, though.
566** Nothing stops you from combining these to your heart's content if you really want something difficult. Though trying Naked Brutality on a Sea Ice biome is not recommended because you will simply freeze to death before the day is over, making it literally impossible.[[note]]It can be done if you choose some Sea Ice close to land and immediately send a caravan to a more docile environement such as a "mere" Tundra. [[/note]]
567* ''VideoGame/DeadInVinland'' has the typical easy (Nice Vacation), medium (Survival), and hard (Extreme Conditions) modes, plus an "ironman" option that can be used with any of them which restricts you to a single save (likely to result in an UnwinnableByDesign scenario), ''plus'' the unusual option of fully customizable difficulty where you can adjust a few dozen sliders controlling various formulas and variables in the game mechanics to make the game harder than hard, EasierThanEasy, all sorts of SelfImposedChallenge, or just...a strange mix. It does, however, warn that extreme values on the sliders are likely to make the game either completely unwinnable or trivially easy.
568[[/folder]]
569
570[[folder:Sports Game]]
571* ''VideoGame/PunchOut'': In the Wii game, surviving long enough in the (hard by itself) Mac's Last Stand mode gives you Champions Mode, accessible via Exhibition when choosing an opponent in Contender or Title Defense. Every opponent can floor Little Mac with a single punch.
572* Most EA sports games feature one such mode like this.
573** The ''VideoGame/MaddenNFL'' franchise in particular features the "All Madden" difficulty setting. Not only will the opposing AI suddenly become dangerous competent, but your own players will suddenly become much more incompetent. Try not to RageQuit when your franchise QB is intercepted by a defender making a borderline physically impossible grab or when your elite tackling-machine linebacker gets trucked by a 3rd-string running back.
574** EA Sports FIFA has the Legendary difficulty, which is recommended to ''not touch the difficulty''. The AI is 100% precise and it will score goals that you don't even expect to happen. Worse is that the opponent goalkeeper defends like the best of the world even when its overall is 60. Yours? It will let the ball to enter when it's possible.
575** To top it all off, there's the Ultimate difficulty exclusive to the FIFA Ultimate Team.
576* NBA 2K has the "Hall of Fame" difficulty. Like the "All Madden" difficulty, the opposing CPU would be hypercompetent while your teammates would look like they haven't touched a basketball in their lives, even the ''SUPERSTARS''.
577[[/folder]]
578
579[[folder:Stealth-Based Game]]
580* ''VideoGame/MetalGear'':
581** The original ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid'' has "Easy", "Normal" and "Hard" plus an unlockable "Extreme" setting after clearing any of the default modes once. In Extreme mode, the Soliton Radar is turned off (just like in Hard), enemy soldiers have better hearing and vision and are more aggressive, items don't respawn once they're picked up, Snake has a lower carrying capacity and his health is no longer restored after defeating a boss (with only a few exceptions), and [[ThisIsGonnaSuck the torture sessions with Ocelot are even longer]]. And to put the icing on the cake, every boss gets an additional buff on top of the one Hard already gives them, including Revolver Ocelot running ''even faster'', or the time between Cyborg Ninja's KaizoTrap energy blasts becoming ludicriously short. The torture sessions were made easier in the Japan-exclusive ''[[UpdatedRerelease Integral]]'' edition, but everything else is just as hard it was in the American and European versions.
582** In ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid2SonsOfLiberty'', the European version added a "European Extreme" setting (also present in the later ''Substance'' editions), which was even harder than the standard Extreme setting (achieving this by changing a guard's field of vision so that they can spot the player from ''any distance away'', not just if he's 15-20ft in front of them). There's also an option called [[SelfImposedChallenge "Game Over if Discovered"]] that ends the game if an enemy guard discovers the player's presence. Some consider this a mercy option however, as in most situations if you get found on such difficulty levels you ''will'' die, without question. The 30 or so continues per area is a mere distraction to the real challenge of European Extreme mode: the bosses. A double-shot instant-kill Fortune; then a part where you have to defuse bombs before their timer even began; fighting all 25 of the mass-produced Metal Gear [=RAYs=], and finally, a PressXToNotDie sequence that at one point required medical attention to fix a locked thumb. The PressXToNotDie sequence during the finale of the game on European Extreme actually became ''easier'' when ''Metal Gear Solid HD Collection'' was released, as time limit for the scene was reduced to a third of what it originally was.
583** ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid4GunsOfThePatriots'' upped the ante with five IdiosyncraticDifficultyLevels, the hardest being "The Boss Extreme", which ups the ante more than hard by adding the following: being spotted below 45% camo is almost always an alert; camo levels below 70% attracts attention even over huge distances; attracting attention means guards immediately charge straight towards you; potential allies (e.g. freed militia hostages) are now a massive pushover; and it only takes a few hits to be killed. The Big Boss emblem takes this even further: Beat the game on The Boss Extreme, with zero alerts, zero kills, zero health/recovery items, no cheat items, and without dying. ''In under 5 hours.'' Thankfully, SaveScumming is an option in the fourth game.
584* ''VideoGame/{{Thief}} 1'' and 2 have three difficulty levels: Normal, Hard, and Expert, with Thief 3 adding Easy. The harder difficulties reduce Garrett's max health, enforce his ThouShaltNotKill policy for human opponents (or for certain missions, reduce the number of enemies you're allowed to knock out,) raise the required amount of loot, add more secondary objectives, and avert the InstantWinCondition trope by forcing the player to make their escape after fulfilling all their other objectives. Among fans, Expert is usually the most popular, as the added objectives and loot requirements ensure a more thorough level exploration experience.
585* ''VideoGame/{{Hitman}}'' series:
586** ''[[VideoGame/HitmanAbsolution Absolution]]'' includes the "Purist" difficulty. To summarize; the game gives you zero help; no HUD, no instinct vision[[note]]Lets you see through walls, enemy paths and objects of interest; the game is '''very''' hard without it.[[/note]], nigh-omnipotent enemies, low health, high suspicion, no checkpoints, and extra enemies. The game's difficulty select lists off every advantage and disadvantage you get on each level; the Purist level is a list of everything you ''lose'', ending with "Just a crosshair". As the difficulty description puts it:
587--->''"This is a challenge for a true perfectionist. You know every rule, every detail, and all environments by heart. Even then you will die trying.''"
588** ''VideoGame/Hitman2016'' introduced the ''Professional'' difficulty. In Professional, some relatively normal items, such as wrenches or hammers, ''are suspicious'', guards are faster to react, and sightcones are wider. Killing someone in a bloody manner will permanently ruin their disguise (preventing 47 from disguising as them), all Opportunities are forcibly disabled, there are more cameras and guards in the level, combat is even more dangerous than normal, and you can only save exactly once per mission (the Autosaves are gone too). At least Professional lets you retain Instinct. Have fun!
589** ''VideoGame/Hitman2'' and ''VideoGame/Hitman3'' adds Master difficulty [[note]]Professional is the equivalent to Normal in this game[[/note]]. A fair few of 2016's Professional Mode's changes apply here as well, such as bloody kills ruining disguises, and well as the single save slot and no autosave system. However, they differ in a number of key ways; The cameras spawns are now fixed (so no extra camera's), the new weapon suspicion system is removed (presumably because it limited player creativity), and guards are no quicker to react to anything you do than normal. This seems to be much more balanced for more player freedom, while still retaining some of the previous games' restrictions.
590* The promised Perfectionist difficulty in ''VideoGame/SplinterCell Blacklist'' seems to be this as it is a return to classic stealth play, removing melees from the front and Execute ability.
591* A good way to make ''VideoGame/YandereSimulator'' Harder than Hard is to kill one of the Student Council members: even if it's the first week of the game, doing so puts the school atmosphere at a permanently low percentage, meaning everyone's awareness is heightened, and cameras and metal detectors will be installed in the school, meaning there's two more ways Yandere-chan can get caught doing something illegal. (Of course, you'd have to be ''trying'' to get this mode, as killing a Student Council member is in itself difficult, thanks to their heightened senses, access to pepper spray, and ability to send Yandere-chan to the guidance counselor.)
592[[/folder]]
593
594[[folder:Survival Horror]]
595* So you beat ''VideoGame/SilentHill3'' on Hard Mode? Congratulations. Now beat the ''ten'' Extreme mode settings. This game is notable for having two difficulty mode selections to make. "Action" set how hard the combat was, and "puzzle" set the difficulty of the puzzles. On the highest puzzle difficulty, the FIRST real puzzle in the game requires advanced knowledge of the complete works of Shakespeare to complete, with no context given in-game. It is one of the easier puzzles.
596* ''Franchise/ResidentEvil'':
597** The [=GameCube=] remake of the [[VideoGame/ResidentEvil1 original game]] starts you off with Hiking and Mountain Climb difficulties, which are renamed Easy and Normal respectively after completion and Hard is added. Beat it again for Real Survivor, where the storage boxes no longer allow the player to deposit items in one location and withdraw them at another, in addition to disabling the auto-aim. Make it through that and the player will get to enjoy [[InvisibleMonsters Invisible Enemy]], which does [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin exactly what you'd expect]].
598** ''VideoGame/ResidentEvilOutbreak File #2'' has Nightmare mode, which doubles enemy damage and reduces healing items to three quarters of their usual potency.
599** ''VideoGame/ResidentEvil2Remake'' has Hardcore mode. Enemies are strong enough to down Leon and Clare in just two hits, certain health items don't restore as much health, the number of additional item pouches you can collect are cut in half, autosaving is disabled, and you have to use ink ribbons to manually save your progress. Additionally, using special weapons and saving more than three times can bring down your score.
600** ''VideoGame/ResidentEvil3Remake'' tones down Hardcore mode so that it still autosaves and using infinite weaponry won't detract your score. However, it has Nightmare mode and Inferno mode to compensate.
601*** In Nightmare mode, enemies are tougher and more aggressive, enemy and item positions have been reshuffled, and certain enemies that don't appear until late in the game show up much sooner (such as the [[RegeneratingHealth Pale Heads]] and [[TentacledTerror NE-α parasite zombies]]).
602*** Inferno mode; enemies are lethal to the point where you're practically a OneHitPointWonder, there are less item boxes and typewriters to use, autosaving is disabled, and you get even less resources when crafting.
603** ''VideoGame/ResidentEvil4Remake'' takes the [[VideoGame/ResidentEvil4 original]]'s Professional mode and gives it some added difficulty to it. In addition to stronger enemies and more costly items, autosaving is disabled, perfect parries are the only parries that can be performed, and DynamicDifficulty no longer works. Furthermore, if you desire an S+ rank, you have to play the game on this mode on a fresh save (meaning no NewGamePlus perks) within 5 hours and 30 minutes and a limit of 15 manual saves. The one upside is that, in this mode, all weapon modifications are available from the start as opposed to them being unlocked as you progress.
604** ''VideoGame/ResidentEvil5'' has Professional mode as well, except here you're essentially turned into a OneHitPointWonder ''and'' the resuscitation timer is dropped to three seconds, from about 15. The fact that nearly ''all'' the enemies in the game are fast, have projectile weapons, and[=/=]or are just generally resilient only makes matters more complicated. The shortened resuscitation timer actually makes it easier to survive WITHOUT healing items, since any healing spray takes over a second for your character to pull out and use, whereas without any healing items you snap your partner out of it with a good, instantaneous thump on the chest.
605** ''VideoGame/ResidentEvil7Biohazard'' has harder difficulty setting for the main game and its [=DLCs=]:
606*** The main game has "Madhouse" mode: Enemy and item layouts have changed, enemies in general are also stronger and much more durable, Ethan's regenerating health has been disabled, autosaves are almost completely turned off, and manual saving requires finding cassette tapes to use (just like the ink ribbons and typewriters from the earlier games).
607*** ''Not a Hero'' features "Professional" mode: Chris starts off with a mere knife, enemy layouts have changed and they spawn much more frequently, and ammunition is more scarce.
608*** ''End of Zoe'' features a mode called "Joe Must Die": enemies appear in greater numbers and at points different than on Normal mode, supplies are more scarce, cassette tapes are required to save your progress, and there are additional traps that can ''guarantee'' instant death should you trigger them.
609** ''VideoGame/ResidentEvilVillage'' brings back Hardcore mode, but is toned down to where it's mostly just enemies being harder hitting and having less available resources. However, the game has an additional mode titled "Village of Shadows" to make up for it. In that mode, checkpoints are farther in-between each other, the number of enemies are increased in each area, certain enemies found much later in the story appear earlier, there are even less resources to work with, and every enemy overall are much stronger and have increased health.
610* ''VideoGame/FatalFrame'' had its highest difficulty be Nightmare for the first and second game. The player needed to know how most of the ghosts moved and achieve Fatal Frames decently enough, while also managing to balance out their items and especially their film. Then the games got ported to the XBOX and had another difficulty added: ''Fatal''. Most of the stronger ghosts and bosses can OneHitKill the player easily, and even weaker ghosts take over a third of the health off with a single hit. Mastering Fatal Frames and keeping a close eye on the health bar are vital to win.
611* ''VideoGame/FaithTheUnholyTrinity'' has Marathon Mode, you must complete all 3 chapters in one sitting, and death sends you all the way back to the first chapter.
612* ''VideoGame/TheEvilWithin'' has two hard modes: Nightmare and AKUMU (the latter of which is only unlocked upon finishing the main game once). In both difficulties, enemies are stronger and more perceptive, uncommon enemies (such as the [[EliteMooks Ruvik Haunted]]) show up much sooner, resources are even more limited, and your HUD is disabled (meaning you can't tell if an enemy is within range). However, the key difference with AKUMU mode is that [[OneHitPointWonder taking damage from literally]] ''[[OneHitPointWonder anything]]'' [[OneHitPointWonder will kill you instantly]].
613* ''VideoGame/TheEvilWithin2'' has Classic Mode. While uncommon enemies fortunately don't appear sooner, this difficulty adds to Nightmare mode by preventing you from upgrading your stats or weapons, disabling autosaves, and limiting you to 7 manual saves over the entire game.
614* ''VideoGame/ParasiteEve2'' had Bounty (Golems and other EliteMooks are '''nearly everywhere'''), Scavenger (very low supplies and a tenth of your initial health), and Nightmare Mode (both at once, though you get 50% initial health instead of 10%). And you can't use the benefits of [[NewGamePlus Replay]] Mode.
615* ''Franchise/FiveNightsAtFreddys'':
616** ''VideoGame/FiveNightsAtFreddys1'' has "4[=/=]20 Mode", which can be accessed during [[LevelEditor Custom Night]]. Step 1 to use it: survive all nights ([[spoiler:[[NeverTrustATitle all six of them]]]]) to unlock Custom Night, which allows you to tweak the [[KillerRobot animatronics]]' aggressiveness from 1 to 20, with 1 being super easy and 20 being ridiculously hard. Step 2: Set all four murder machines' AI to 20. Step 3: [[NintendoHard Prepare to die]]. 4[=/=]20 Mode is ''extremely'' brutal, necessitating absolute perfection from the player and the favor of the RandomNumberGod. Notably, the developer Scott Cawthon thought that it was literally impossible to beat and didn’t bother programming an achievement for it. But due to the LordBritishPostulate, a few brave souls made it till morning with adrenaline in their blood, luck at their side, [[BringMyBrownPants and soiled underwear in their pants]]. Upon hearing about this, Scott Cawthon updated the game so [[BraggingRightsReward a third star on the start screen]] could be there for all to see.
617** ''VideoGame/FiveNightsAtFreddys2'' has the return of the unlockable 1-to-20 (now 0-to-20, with zero being completely deactivated) [[LevelEditor Custom Night]], once again unlocked by surviving all nights ([[spoiler:[[NeverTrustATitle all six of them, again]]]]). Another thing that’s different: you don’t have four {{killer robot}}s to tinker with. [[SerialEscalation You have 10 of them.]] It’s officially called [[AntagonistTitle Golden Freddy Mode.]]
618** ''VideoGame/FiveNightsAtFreddys3'' doesn't have Custom Night, as there's only one active animatronic that you have to deal with for your nights ([[spoiler:[[RuleOfThree which there are six of again]], though Springtrap only appears in five]]). However, one of the unlockable menus is "Cheats", which can be used to make your game easier... or harder, with the "Aggressive" option. [[spoiler:Beating Aggressive Nightmare (Night 6) without any actual cheat gives you the fourth and final star.]]
619** ''VideoGame/FiveNightsAtFreddys4'' is notable in that it technically has TWO; the first is Nightmare Mode, as in the third game, unlocked after clearing Night 6 and revealing one of the franchise's most infamous cliffhangers upon completion. With all seven nights properly completed, there is also an unlockable ''eighth'' night; the return of 4/20 Mode, this time unlocked by typing "20202020" in the Extras Menu, removing the Nightmare Mode tab and replacing it with 20/20/20/20 Mode.
620** Custom Night returns in ''VideoGame/FiveNightsAtFreddysSisterLocation'', this time with difficulty levels explicitly named Easy, Medium, Hard, and Very Hard and a variety of animatronic set-ups (ranging from just three active to all ten active) to choose from. The absolute hardest Custom Night is "Golden Freddy" mode on Very Hard where all ten animatronics are set to -- what else? -- 20.
621** Now joining the roster is ''VideoGame/UltimateCustomNight'', which has nearly ''all'' the animatronics from previous games, 50 in total. And you can adjust their AI from 0 to 20. Everyone, say hello to 50/20 mode. Which, again, Scott Cawthon himself can't beat. [[LordBritishPostulate A few incredibly skilled and lucky Youtubers have]].
622* ''VideoGame/{{Outlast}}'':
623** The first game has Normal, Hard, Nightmare. Nightmare makes enemies more stronger, smarter, and better aware of your presence, the noises that Miles makes become louder, and your battery capacity is lowered to just 2 as opposed to 10. Following the release of its DownloadableContent, ''Outlast: Whistleblower'', the game was patched to include an additional difficulty setting titled "Insane". It's the same difficulty level as Nightmare, except checkpoints have been completely disabled.
624** The [[VideoGame/OutlastII 2017 sequel]] brings back Insane mode, which makes Blake a OneHitPointWonder, alongside its longer length and the difficulty overall being increased.
625* ''VideoGame/AloneInTheDark'': Insane difficulty in ''Illumination'' is harder than Hard difficulty, but not actually that difficult. Enemies have 3 times as much health and deal 50% more damage, but if your character is even somewhat decently leveled it's actually not that tough.
626* ''VideoGame/ColdFear'' has two difficulty settings. In Normal mode, Tom is fairly MadeOfIron for a survival horror protagonist. In Extreme mode? ''Almost any source of damage'' is a OneHitKill.
627* ''VideoGame/AlienIsolation'' has Nightmare Mode:
628** There's no HUD, so you can't see your health bar, flashlight battery, or ammo count.
629** Your map is disabled, making it easier for you to get lost.
630** The motion tracker glitches all the time and will occasionally show an error screen, so you can't tell when hostiles are approaching you.
631** Supplies are much scarcer, making it more difficult to craft anything, and when you do scavenge enough supplies, it's literally a life-or-death decision between making a medkit or a Molotov; plus, you really have to conserve your ammo and your crafted weapons and choose the right moments to use them.
632** The flamethrower itself, the most effective weapon against the Alien, burns through fuel more quickly with one shot.
633** And to top it all off, the enemies are more perceptive.
634*** The paranoid human survivors have better aim.
635*** The Working Joes will kill you instantly unless you're at full health.
636*** The Alien itself is much more aggressive and adapts to your strategies quicker. It stays out of the vents for longer periods of time. And the tackle where the Alien just damages you? That's been removed, and now any contact with it is instant death.
637[[/folder]]
638
639[[folder:Third-Person Shooter]]
640* ''VideoGame/MaxPayne''
641** The first ''VideoGame/MaxPayne1'' has New York Minute Mode, where you have a clock counting down that is never more than one minute long and has to be refilled by reaching certain parts of the level within that time. If the minute runs out, you die. You can get a few extra seconds from killing bad guys, but there are too few bad guys to make a safe run even remotely possible.
642** ''VideoGame/MaxPayne2TheFallOfMaxPayne'' starts you out on the already difficult Detective setting, which unlocks Hardboiled, Dead Man Walking, and New York Minute modes. Beat Hardboiled, and you get access to Dead on Arrival. How hard is Dead on Arrival? The cheat code to unlock it is "hell", if you need a hint. Dead On Arrival is exactly the same as Hardboiled with one exception: [[SaveGameLimits you can only save four times per level]]. Because most players are used to [[SaveScumming saving after every gun fight in a level]], it takes a significant change of gameplay to get through.
643** ''VideoGame/MaxPayne3'':
644*** First off there's Hardcore, which lowers your health to the point that a second of sustained fire will kill you, and is quite stingy with BulletTime meter boosts gained from killing enemies.
645*** Then there's Old School, which is just like Hardcore, except that Last Man Standing-the ability to come back from death by killing the enemy that killed you-is disabled. And if you're playing on Arcade mode, ''the cover system is disabled''-making survival impossible without either finding something to crouch behind or abusing [[LeapAndFire shoot-dodge]].
646*** New York Minute returns-in both normal and Hardcore variations. The normal New York Minute is identical to previous games. Hardcore New York Minute is ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin, New York Minute with the handicaps of Hardcore Mode. Oh, and if you die in this mode, [[FinalDeathMode you have to start over from the first chapter]].
647* ''VideoGame/GearsOfWar'' and its sequel have the Insane difficulty level, and Hardcore wasn't anything to laugh at either.
648** Insane is no pushover. If you even ''think'' about taking damage you'll die. This is not helped by the fact that all enemies turn into bullet sponges and they all gain dead eye accuracy. Even Wretches are a two-shot kill. Some sections of the game that you flew through on lower difficulty levels now become controller-hurlingly difficult. And in the sequel [[FromBadToWorse it gets worse]]. All the same difficultes from the original remain, but now you have one-shot ticker swarms, bloodmounts and reavers, the Kantus priests can revive any locust not irreparably damaged, and good luck surviving the set pieces and vehicle sections. Some fights as this difficulty can take more than an hour to just make it part a few enemies. To make it even worse AI teammates bleed out on Insane resulting in a game over if you don't revive them in time; combined with the ArtificialStupidity of your allies this can be very frustrating as they get downed in exposed places forcing you to break cover and in all likelihood die trying to save them.
649** Insane mode got even worse in the third game. The past two games put you in a 'down but not out' state if you lost too much health, even on Insane difficulty. The third installment ''removes this feature altogether,'' immediately killing you if you lost too much health. And yes, the aforementioned pitiful damage resistance from the last two is retained. At the very least they added Arcade mode, which allowed you to continue on if one of your human teammates bit the dust. Solo gamers are SOL, though.
650** Insane makes the final boss of the third game beyond the impossible in difficulty. Avoiding the instant death attacks and the theron guards trying to flank you simultaneously is easy compared to dealing enough damage to knock the boss off the tower before [[spoiler: she kills Adam]] which is an instant game over; the fact that the tower has a set amount of health essentially makes this a timed escort mission.
651** The ammunition you receive from fallen enemies and crates does not increase. Quite literally, if you don't make the majority of all the rounds you fire hit the enemies in the head, then you will run out of ammo.
652* ''VideoGame/RedFaction'' has "Impossible" mode, which would almost be literally impossible if it weren't for the Save Anywhere ability, especially in the Platform/PlayStation2 version with its clunky dual analog controls. Enemies are very fast and good at dodging and hiding, almost never miss, and can kill you in just a few shots. Several enemies in the latter game can see and kill you ''through solid walls''.
653* Completing ''VideoGame/PN03'' on a NewGamePlus with a Professional ranking on all 50 Trials and the overall game unlocks the {{stripperific}} Papillon Suit, which makes Vanessa a OneHitPointWonder. Combined with Hard Mode, this makes the game an exercise in masochism.
654* ''VideoGame/AlienSwarm'':
655** The game has Easy, Medium, Hard, and the aptly-named Insane difficulty. Not only are the aliens significantly tougher and more numerous on Insane, the game will also spawn the most difficult-to-manage aliens straight away in the first campaign. To drive the point home, the game already starts out with [[DemonicSpiders Parasites]] in the beginning of the Insane campaign - whereas in Hard they didn't appear until past the halfway mark.
656** Valve updated Alien Swarm with, among other things, an even harder difficulty, "Brutal". How hard is it? At the time of its release, no one on the Alien Swarm development team had successfully completed a level on Brutal.
657** The difficulty in Brutal lies in its incorporation of the A.I. Director seen in VideoGame/Left4Dead. Imagine Insane's already tough enemies with all the damage resistance and attacks, and now imagine that they no longer appear from their usual set locations, but wherever the Director feels like and you've got a good gist of why Brutal is so nasty.
658* ''VideoGame/FreedomFighters2003'' has the Revolutionary difficulty, in which you have the exact same amount of health as the Soviet soldier enemy Mooks you're fighting (i.e. it only takes 10 assault rifle hits to kill you). The difference is there's only one of you, and hundreds of them. Attempting to Rambo your way through the game is outright suicide, and unless you know how to use cover effectively and make good use of your allied squad, you're not going to get very far at all.
659* ''VideoGame/WinBack'''s Sudden Death mode, which makes you a OneHitPointWonder, as well as the {{mook}}s.
660* ''VideoGame/ShadowsOfTheEmpire'' mildly subverts this: The fourth difficulty level, Jedi, makes all attacks much stronger. Both yours and enemies'.
661* ''Franchise/DeadSpace'':
662** ''VideoGame/DeadSpace'' has the Impossible difficulty, unlocked after beating the game. Enemies hit harder and take a lot more punishment while Isaac is weaker and easier to kill.
663** ''VideoGame/DeadSpace2'' features the unlockable Hardcore difficulty, in which resources are even more scarce than Zealot mode, enemies are stronger, and when you die you must restart from your last save point instead of checkpoints and you can only save 3 times.
664** ''VideoGame/DeadSpace3'' makes it even worse. While you can save whenever you want, dying [[PermaDeath forces you to start the whole game over]].
665* The ''VideoGame/{{Uncharted}}'' series has its "[[IdiosyncraticDifficultyLevels Crushing]]" difficulty, in which enemies can take more hits (four or five, usually, but some can take even more), and Drake can take one or two. This is amplified in the remaster with Brutal. Most of the time, enemies kill Nate instantly. Ammo pickups are only a portion of what they normally are. Even people who exploit the "Use tweaks before beating this difficulty" glitch, and give themselves infinite ammo and one-hit kills say that it's still horrifyingly difficult.
666* ''VideoGame/KidIcarusUprising'' has ''10'' difficulty settings on a single sliding bar (0.0-9.0), the top three of which fit this trope. [[IdiosyncraticDifficultyLevels Intensity 9.0]] is even called [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Nothing Harder!]]
667* ''VideoGame/{{Vanquish}}'' has God Hard mode, where there are no weapon upgrades, and sticking your head out for more than a second will get you [[OneHitKO one-hit killed]].
668* ''VideoGame/RatchetDeadlocked'' has 5 difficulties: Couch Potato, Contestant, Gladiator, Hero, and Exterminator, the last of which is unlocked by the player beating the game on any difficulty. Although the enemies all hit way harder, it shouldn't be much of an issue for players who've played any of the previous games in the series on [[NewGamePlus Challenge Mode]], particularly because the weapon upgrade system in this game's Challenge Mode lets you turn ''every'' weapon into an [[InfinityPlusOneSword Infinity+1 Gun]].
669* ''VideoGame/Splatoon2'': In Salmon Run mode, the ranks and associated difficulty are, in ascending order: Intern, Apprentice, Part-Timer, Go-Getter, and Profreshional. It seems like difficulty tops out at Profreshional, but a team averaging 600 points or more in Profreshional rank will encounter what is known as '''''Hazard Level MAX!!''''', in which Golden Egg quotas and boss spawn rates are at their maximum.
670* ''{{VideoGame/TAGAP}} 3'' has the "Challenge Overdose" mode, which was added in a post-launch update. Enemies are stronger, wear armor, spawn more quickly and have better reflexes. Also, you lose your RegeneratingHealth ability and you cannot have extra lives (eating a OneUp pill just gives you full health instead).
671* ''VideoGame/TheLastOfUs'' has two of these. First is the "Survivor" difficulty, where ammo and supplies are scarce, enemies are more perceptive and strategic, the "Grab" prompts are disabled, making it harder to perform stealth attacks, Joel's "Listen Mode" -- which allows him to detect enemies from a distance -- is also disabled and item pickups no longer flash white to indicate themselves, making them easy to miss if players haven't memorized where they are. Secondly, there is "Grounded" difficulty, which also disables the HUD (making players unable to see their health, their gun clips or how many shivs are in their possession), removes several mid-level checkpoints and all enemies are capable of killing Joel in just a couple of hits regardless of health upgrades. On the plus side, Joel's pistol and revolver do additional damage, with the latter killing all non-armored, non-Infected humans in one shot regardless of where you hit them. Arrows will also turn into one-hit kills against all enemies short of clickers, even if they are aware of you.
672[[/folder]]
673
674[[folder:Tower Defense]]
675* ''VideoGame/BloonsTowerDefense'':
676** Extreme difficulty in BTD5 is reserved for three of the hardest maps in the game: Main Street, Bloontonium Lab, and Tar Pits. They are unlocked at rank 50, 55, and 60, and cost 25, 50, and 50 monkey money to play, respectively (ranks may be different in the iOS/Android and Steam releases). Note that due to Main/NonIndicativeDifficulty, a few Advanced or Expert maps may be considered harder than the first two, but the latter may very well be the hardest in the series!
677** [[IdiosyncraticDifficultyLevels Impoppable]] difficulty in the mobile and Steam releases. You only get [[OneHitPointWonder one life]] and no way to gain more, towers are ''20%'' more expensive than Medium (or 10% more than Hard), bloons are 5% faster, M.O.A.B.-class bloons have '''double health''', and [[spoiler: round 85 has ''5'' Z.O.M.G.s]]! Good luck beating it on the above Extreme-level maps...
678** And then a Halloween update introduced Mastery mode, not a standard difficulty but a ''mode of play'' that can be set to '''any''' difficulty. Bloons are 1 rank up but your bloon-pop income is halved, making farms an absolute necessity for survival. And the "any difficulty" bit includes the ''already harder-than-hard'' Impoppable! Again, '''''good luck.'''''
679* ''VideoGame/BloonsMonkeyCity'':
680** The game has difficulty ratings for individual tiles, which give a rough indication of the difficulty of the automatically generated bloonsends. With that comes ''two'' levels of this trope: "Very Hard" (difficulty meter has 5 red dots) and "Impoppable" (5 ''dark red'' dots!).
681** Hardcore mode[[note]]Flash version only, unlocked at city level 10[[/note]] increases tower prices, brings income penalties sooner, and bloon rushes may be tougher. It may not qualify on its own,but it can be '''brutal''' on a tile rated Hard or harder. At least you get the HardModePerks of doubling your city cash, bloonstones, bloontonium, and city honor winnings![[note]]Bloonstones from special events are unaffected, meaning only the bloonstone reward from [[NoDamageRun a No Lives Lost run]] is affected, ''if'' you manage such a run. The latter two rewards are exclusive to [[PlayerVersusPlayer Monkey Vs. Monkey]] defense.[[/note]]
682** If you can and are willing to face harder tiles early on, it's possible to capture ''very few'' Easy Red-bloon tiles until level 10. Once Hardcore Mode is unlocked, you can then capture all the remaining easy tiles in said mode for a hefty bloonstone injection. Be warned that doing this in the second city is harder...
683* ''Bloons TD 6'' has a total of '''''6''''' gamemodes unlocked after beating a map on Hard, divided into 2 paths.
684** The top path contains the following:
685*** Magic Monkeys Only: You are limited to the ninja, wizard, alchemist, druid, and super monkeys, plus the hero of your choice (Obyn Greenfoot, anyone?).
686*** Double HP [=MOABs=]: All MOAB-class bloons are doubly strong, so get those anti-MOAB towers ready.
687*** Half Cash: Starting cash and income from bloon pops, farming towers, continues, and supply drops is halved. [[note]]It used to be Half Starting Cash, which reduced ''only'' the starting amount, but was basically mitigated by Monkey Knowledge.[[/note]]
688** The bottom path contains 3 modes that get ''even harder'':
689*** Alternate Bloon Rounds: Stronger bloons come at you sooner than normal. This includes round 5 camo, round 10 lead, round 24 ''camo lead'', and fortified [=MOABs=] as early as round ''40''.
690*** Impoppable: [[OneHitPointWonder One life]] with no way to gain more (except Pre-Game Preparation from the Powers Monkey Knowledge), the game starts at round ''6'' (Hard starts at 3), towers cost 20% more than normal, and bloons are 25% faster, and you have to beat round 100, [[spoiler: when the B.A.D. first appears]]. It even has its own base medal like in its predecessor!
691*** C.H.I.M.P.S.: No '''C'''ontinues (must restart from scratch when you lose), '''H'''earts lost (one life tops, similar to Impoppable), '''I'''ncome from basically anything except bloon pops, '''M'''onkey Knowledge of any sort, '''P'''owers (including Insta-monkeys), OR '''S'''elling of towers.[[note]]Premiums are also banned, so don't waste your money if you were thinking of cheesing it with Double Cash.[[/note]] This mode also picks up the round 6 start and round 100 end from Impoppable. As if this isn't hard enough, there's a '''''black''''' version of the C.H.I.M.P.S. medal that is obtained by [[spoiler:beating this mode ''in one sitting'', meaning quitting or crashing the game forfeits the special medal]]. '''Good. Luck.'''
692** There's also Boss Bloon events, which has you face off against a slow but increasingly powerful colossal blimp that takes massive amounts of firepower to take down, and you have to deal with its special effect for every 25% of its HP you remove. For reference, a Fortified B.A.D., the single strongest bloon in standard modes, has about 98,000 HP, and that doesn't appear until Round 140. Tier 5 Bloonarius has 3 ''million'' HP and shows up at Round 120. On top of that, there's the Elite Boss mode that give Boss Bloons even more [[{{Pun}} inflated]] stats. How much HP does Tier 5 Elite Bloonarius have? '''40 million'''. And Elite Bosses also activate their abilities every 1/8th HP lost. You'll either need to know every trick in the book with nearly maxed out Monkey Knowledge to beat an Elite Boss, or [[BribingYourWayToVictory use a bunch of Insta Monkeys and Powers]] (and even ''that'' alone isn't enough).
693[[/folder]]
694
695[[folder:Turn-Based Strategy]]
696* ''Franchise/FireEmblem'':
697** "Maniac" in the Japanese version of ''VideoGame/FireEmblemPathOfRadiance'' increases enemy headcount, enemy bulk and adds more promoted units where none existed prior. The absence of this mode in favour of an EasierThanEasy mode led to a GameBreakingBug in the sequel (in which early copies do not recognise [=PoR=] save data that includes files set to Easy, and crash if the save data is attempted to be loaded).
698** The US version of ''VideoGame/FireEmblemRadiantDawn'' [[DifficultyByRegion had the names of its difficulties jacked around with]], so Japan's "Maniac" is US "Hard." However, the international release ''does'' make several difficulty tweaks [[note]]including making Resolve work all the time instead of some of the time, adding the Dawn Brigade's Unique Weapons, some minor number tweaks to certain weapon's Hit and Crit stats, and simplifying the Forge mechanic[[/note]], so JP's Maniac difficulty... ''is'' harder than international Hard.
699** The ''VideoGame/FireEmblemShadowDragonAndTheBladeOfLight'' remake, ''Shadow Dragon'' now has six difficulties, the easiest of which is 'normal'. The five different hard modes are, in order: Hard, Brutal, Savage, Fiendish, and Merciless. Merciless is regarded as one of the hardest earlygames of all things Fire Emblem, beating out Binding Blade and Radiant Dawn's hard mode earlygames.
700** The ''VideoGame/FireEmblemMysteryOfTheEmblem'' remake, ''New Mystery of the Emblem'', goes up to "Lunatic" mode, which is ''even worse than'' ''Shadow Dragon'''s Merciless. Beat Lunatic? Welcome to "Lunatic-Reverse", in which enemies always attack before you do, ''even on your own turn''.
701** Continuing the series' trend of SerialEscalation, ''VideoGame/FireEmblemAwakening'' introduces Lunatic+. Stat-wise enemes are identical to regular Lunatic (which is just as insane as the ''New Mystery'' version), but they're given unique SecretAIMoves such as Vantage+ (same effect as the Lunatic Reverse mode mentioned above), Luna+ (all attacks halve your defence) and Pavise+ (all ''your'' attacks do half damage). Oh, and these skills are given to ''basic Mooks''. [[OhCrap Bosses are even worse.]] Good luck, you'll need it.
702** ''VideoGame/FireEmblemHeroes'' usually has three different difficulty levels. Normal, Hard, and Lunatic, all of which are similar to how they were in the above games. However, the ''New Mystery'' update featured a [[DefeatMeansFriendship Grand Hero Battle]] for Legion that introduced a new, even harder difficulty mode: ''Infernal''. Infernal mode features [[TheComputerIsACheatingBastard excessively jacked up stats for every enemy that the player can never hope to match]], to the point where even the most basic grunts are actually [[BossInMookClothing Bosses In Mook Clothing]], as well as changed enemy placement so that strategies that work on the lower difficulty levels won't work anymore. And to make things worse, Legendary Marth's battle introduced an even more insane difficulty called Abyssal. Abyssal gives the enemies Sacred Seals and even crazier statlines.
703** ''VideoGame/FireEmblemThreeHouses'' added "Maddening" difficulty in update 1.0.2 which, in addition to halving experience compared to Hard mode, jacks up all the enemy stats, sometimes to absurd levels, gives enemies more skills to abuse, such as Lancebreaker+ and Pass, even on the first few chapters, and certain bosses now ''move'', leading into EarlyGameHell. For example, the mock battle in Ch 1 has you face Lv 7~9 enemies, ''6~8'' levels higher than most of your entire roster. NewGamePlus makes it ''slightly'' easier on this difficulty in the early game, but if you clear this difficulty on a New Game file, you get a new title screen, so there is incentive to starting fresh on the hardest difficulty.
704** ''VideoGame/FireEmblemEngage'' has the "Maddening" difficulty, where in addition to reducing experience and SP earned and increasing the stats of enemies, also limits the amount of skirmishes on the world map immensely, where the first one does not spawn until after Chapter 11, [[spoiler:just after you lose the Emblem Rings of Marth, Sigurd, Celica, Micaiah, Roy and Leif but gain Lyn and Lucina's Emblem Rings]], usually around 3~4 skirmishes spawn total before the last chapter whereas Hard difficulty usually spawns around in the double digits before the last chapter outside of Tempest Trials and DLC Paralogues, and even said skirmishes are a higher level than the average of your highest internal level of a certain amount of your allies, so even grinding there is a challenge, as well as promoted generic enemies having exclusive skills tied to their class, such as Griffon Riders having Darting Blow, Paladins having [Weapon]breaker and Snipers having Seal Def, so generic enemies are still a threat to the endgame. There is also the fact that on your first playthrough on Maddening that level ups are at a fixed RNG, so what stats you see on that level up is what you get and SaveScumming will not fix that (although Tiki's Emblem Bracelet from the DLC gives stats from unmodified "near misses" on level ups), but beating Maddening has the second playthrough onwards have the option to switch it to random like on the easier difficulties.
705* ''VideoGame/TotalWar'' difficulty has the standard easy to hard system, and then also has expert. Here, all enemies get a combat and morale bonus, which in Expert in ''VideoGame/RomeTotalWar'' is so great that you get ridiculous situations where cavalry beat phalanxes and such. That said, its still far from impossible to win... except with some factions. If you really want harder than hard, in the XL mod for ''VideoGame/MedievalTotalWar'' pick the Volga-Bulgars on expert in the high period. One province, with all the other factions in the area starting stronger than you, and the Mongols rampage in against you around ten turns in, making it a race against the clock to fight your way as far west as possible before 13000 Mongol soldiers come rampaging in off the eastern edge of the map. ''VideoGame/TotalWarShogun2'', however, really sets up a challenge. You no longer get to pause the game and give orders at the same time, the save function is removed, preventing SaveScumming in a manner not unlike ''VideoGame/DiabloII''[='=]s Hardcore mode, you lack your minimap and the enemies are vicious and uncomprimising. On top of this, the AI is hugely improved from previous titles.
706** Taken even further in ''VideoGame/TotalWarAttila'', with the 2 Roman Empires. See, the games actually include 2 separate difficulty ratings, one for overall difficulty and one for the difficulty of the specific faction. Until Attila, the hardest faction difficulty was Hard, and had shown up a number of times in Shogun 2 and its expansions, as well as earlier games. In Attila, East Rome is rated Very Hard, and West Rome is rated ''Legendary'', meaning that playing as West Rome with the overall difficulty set at Legendary is considered by the designers to be the hardest Total War has ever been. How hard is it? At turn one you have 7 armies to protect over 70 cities and towns, about a third of which could be attacked in the first 10 turns, another third are at risk of rebellion in the same time frame. You don't have the money to build up your economy and prevent rebellions/invasions at the same time, and because a mini ice age is coming, every few years all your regions become less fertile (all difficulties), meaning less money and food from your farms. To cap it all off, everyone hates you and the Huns, which in game are portrayed as the harbingers of the apocalypse, are actively chasing every barbarian tribe towards you. That is, for the first time in a Total War game, instead of conquering or sacking a town, you can ''burn it to the ground'', and the Huns do this to every town they take, so the survivors of every faction they attack flee directly into your underprotected empire. By about 40 turns in, you'll be at war with a dozen different factions on 4 different fronts. It's a fairly reasonable strategy to simply abandon hard-to-defend areas like the British Isles and the Balkans in order to give yourself a shorter border to cover.
707* ''VideoGame/HeroesOfMightAndMagic'' typically have 1 or 2 difficulty levels above hard, each gives more advantages to the AIs while handicapping the player, up to one starting with no resources at all! The fifth game's easy, medium and hard difficulty levels each have a similar description (who is it for, what it affects), while the highest, Heroic has this:
708-->Tell us if you can finish the game playing on this difficulty level - we are not sure whether it is possible.
709* ''VideoGame/SuperRobotWars'':
710** "EX-Hard Mode" throughout the installments locks the DynamicDifficulty at "Hard" for an entire play-through, giving all enemies higher stats and stronger attacks. Meanwhile, unit and weapon upgrades, the purchase of pilot skills, character stat and terrain rating increases are rendered more expensive, though some games may outright ''forbid'' any form of upgrades for players.
711** ''VideoGame/SuperRobotWarsX'' introduces the Expert Mode right off the bat and it turns the game into an EarlyGameHell where enemies get more upgrades than players can keep up for the most part. Be prepared to reload the game over and over due to RandomNumberGod being terrible to players.
712** ''VideGame/SuperRobotWars30'' introduces the "Super Expert +" difficulty where ''everything'' that players can use to level grind like the "Front missions" is banned. In addition, experience points needed to level up is increased from 500 to ''4000'', repair[=/=]resupply grinding will not work, and game over grinding will not work due to the game not allowing players to get any resources gained during the mission. Meanwhile, spirit commands that allow players to play safely on enemy turns are banned like "Foresee"[[note]]Allows another ally to completely dodge an attack once[[/note]]. Finally, if ''any unit'' dies, it's an ''automatic game over''.
713* ''VideoGame/{{IMGCM}}'' has "Hell" and "Serious" difficulty in both main story quests and limited-time events. [[HardModePerks It’s very difficult yet you’ll get more rewards that are very worthy.]]
714* ''VideoGame/SymphonyOfWar'': The "Lunatic" mode added in Version 1.01 adjusts the AI to be far more difficult than the previous hardest mode, as well as [[FinalDeathMode enforced "Ironman" save rules]].
715[[/folder]]
716
717[[folder:Turn-Based Tactics]]
718* ''[[VideoGame/XCOMUFODefense X-COM]]'' has Superhuman for its Harder Than Hard setting... unfortunately, the first game had a bug that locked difficulty to Beginner. This resulted to complaints that Superhuman was too easy, so the people making the MissionPackSequel (who didn't know about the bug) jacked up the difficulty of the game to what Superhuman was supposed to be. End result? The NintendoHard game known as ''[[VideoGame/XCOMTerrorFromTheDeep Terror from the Deep]]''!
719* ''VideoGame/XCOMEnemyUnknown'':
720** It, for difficulties, has Easy, Normal, and Classic. Above Classic is 'Impossible'. Then there's a togglable option called "Ironman Mode", which disables all but one constantly-updated autosave. This makes it impossible to undo mistakes; every move is for keeps. Ironman Impossible was said to be possible only in theory. [[LordBritishPostulate Naturally, people did it]].
721** As if in retribution, the developers released 'Second Wave' difficulty options. Some of these are relatively benign; others make the game a nightmare. The ones listed below are possibly the worst offenders, though there are ''many'' more. Starting with some options unlocked by Normal and Classic:
722*** Marathon: all research and build times and costs are multiplied by 3, 2, 2 respectively, among other things.
723*** Diminishing Returns: satellite price goes up with every one built.
724*** Results Driven: the higher a country's panic level, the less money you get from them.
725** Options unlocked ''by beating Impossible'', which are naturally more difficult than the others:
726*** True Loss: all equipment on a killed soldier is lost forever.
727*** War Weariness: all monthly funding decreases over time, eventually dropping to zero, leaving mission rewards and the sale of alien items and corpses the only means of income.
728*** E-115: [[{{Unobtainium}} Elerium]] now has a half-life of 15 days, meaning you lose around 4.5% of it every day on average.
729** It is probably ''literally impossible'' to beat the game with Ironman mode '''and''' all of the "Second Wave" options. In fact, you're more likely to ''win the lottery'' several times over than make it past the first year this way!
730* The almost-official ''VideoGame/JaggedAlliance 2'' patch 1.13 adds an "INSANE" difficulty level. Due to the nature of this patch, however, this simply makes the game more engagine, and not necessarily that difficult. Expect lots of enemies and a little bit of TheComputerIsACheatingBastard. If this isn't hard enough for you, there's a configuration option you can set to use the "new aggressive AI". What this does is has the enemy constantly hammer your towns with attacks rather than the normal behaviour of giving you some time to recover. Couple this with the Queen having unlimited forces on insane difficulty, and it's very unlikely you'll ever capture more than the first town.
731* ''VideoGame/InvisibleInc'' has Expert Plus difficulty, if you've beaten the game on Expert. Expert is described as "the game's default setting"; Plus, meanwhile, is "a bit ridiculous". In addition to harder levels, you won't be able to see enemy lines of sight (a crucial thing to be able to see) if you can't see its source, you start with less power for hacking, and simply knocking out security guards will raise the [[StalkedByTheBell Alarm Tracker.]]
732* While the Hard Campaign in ''Black Hole Rising'' is merely NintendoHard and the "[[NonIndicativeDifficulty Hard]]" Campaign in ''Dual Strike'' is laughably easy due to it being treated as a NewGamePlus, the Advance Campaign from the original ''[[VideoGame/NintendoWars Advance Wars]]'' is truly a test of willpower and sanity for even the best players. All semblance of balance gets tossed out the window as your enemy's forces are buffed to ridiculous levels while your own army gets neutered into oblivion, and some missions throw in FogOfWar where there previously was none just as an additional middle finger to the player. Most missions are only winnable by exploiting the [[ArtificialStupidity bad habits of the AI]], and even then you'll usually only win by the skin of your teeth - an even ''slightly'' more competent AI would likely render the mode flat-out impossible. Merely ''finishing'' the Advance Campaign is a Herculean feat, while S-Ranking it is territory reserved exclusively for gods and madmen.
733[[/folder]]
734
735[[folder:Wide Open Sandbox]]
736* ''VideoGame/WayOfTheSamurai'' has Instant Kill difficulty, where ''everything'' is a OneHitPointWonder. Fun when you can kill the final boss in one hit, not so fun when one miscued attack or failed block means you're dead. This actually makes some ways of completing the game almost impossible - have fun attempting any of the {{Escort Mission}}s or fights alongside allies.
737* ''VideoGame/{{Minecraft}}'':
738** Difficulty settings mostly just affect how much damage the monsters deal and how serious starvation is. Whether you're in Easy, Normal, or Hard, death works the same way: you drop everything you're carrying and immediately respawn at the last bed you slept in or (if the bed has been destroyed or moved) your original starting position. How painful this is depends on how much stuff you had, where you died, etc. It also has "hardcore" mode, though, which locks your world onto the hardest difficulty and ''[[FinalDeathMode forces you to delete your world if you die]]''. If you're playing Hardcore on multiplayer, the game instead [[DeaderThanDead bans you from the server permanently]].
739** But without a doubt the greatest difficulty of plain vanilla Minecraft is Ultra Hardcore (UHC). Like the ''regular'' hardcore mentioned above, you only get one life to survive. But instead of being able to regenerate health as long as your hunger bar is full enough, the only way to get your health back is by eating golden apples, which are quite expensive and difficult to acquire; or drinking potions, which are very dangerous to obtain, although very renewable once you have them. This is to some degree a SelfImposedChallenge, since you can't select "Ultra Hardcore" as a game mode--you have to pick Hardcore and use a cheat command to disable RegeneratingHealth. Some private servers, such as Mindcrack, hold UHC events where several people are placed randomly on a bordered off world and fight to the death, gladiator-style.
740** {{Parodied|Trope}} with the [[https://minecraft.fandom.com/wiki/Java_Edition_3D_Shareware_v1.34 2019 April Fool's version]], whose "Obligatory nightmare mode" constantly saps the player's health bar until they die, which shows the following [[HaveANiceDeath death message]]:
741---><playername> was too soft for this world
742* ''VideoGame/{{Terraria}}'':
743** Master Mode. Not only do bosses and enemies have their extra attacks from Expert Mode, but their health is now three times what it was on Normal, and their attacks do ludicrous amounts of damage. The player will drop ''all'' their money upon death instead of half or 3/4ths. The only saving grace afforded to the player is the addition of one extra Accessory slot.
744** Entering the seed "for the worthy" to generate a world will generate an extra-difficulty world. The game is automatically bumped up one tier in difficulty (ie, if you enter "Classic" difficulty, it will put you on "Expert"; and if you enter "Master" it will put you on a hidden difficulty called "Legendary"), bosses are either smaller or larger than normal (whichever makes them harder to fight), all bunnies are explosive, lava pools generate as far up as the Underground layer, live bombs can drop from trees or pots, and all demons in the Underworld carry Guide Voodoo Dolls (meaning it's extremely easy to accidentally summon the Wall of Flesh). However, the Red Potion, which otherwise inflicts every status debuff and effect in the game, will instead strengthen the player in such worlds.
745** Entering the seed "get fixed boi" creates a world with all the above mentioned effects of "for the worthy", plus starting in the underworld, having the entire surface covered in both the evil biomes with massively enhanced enemy spawn and movement rates, huge amounts of randomly placed lava-generating crispy honey blocks you have to carefully mine around, an overabundance of traps, the hunger mechanic from the ''VideoGame/DontStarve'' crossover seed, and you have to fight all three Mechanical Bosses at once (there is no way to make them spawn individually) as a combined amalgamation known as "Mechdusa".
746* ''{{VideoGame/Valheim}}'': One update allowed the player to customize their world's difficulty level (such as how many items are lost on death, whether ores and metal can be taken through portals, etc.). Hardcore mode takes all the assorted difficulty options and combines them (no map, no portals, items are lost on dying, you can't leave a boss dungeon if the boss is still alive, and of course enemies are tougher and spawn faster).
747[[/folder]]
748
749[[folder:Non-Video Game Examples]]
750%%* Parodied in "If All Video Games had Impossible Mode" by ''WebAnimation/DorklyOriginals''. [[https://youtube.com/watch?v=XVufwgmXHKs Part 1]] and [[https://youtube.com/watch?v=Rwqd9-ee2nk Part 2.]]
751* In ''VisualNovel/SpiritHunterNG'', the rules of Kakuya's Game are said in-universe to be much more difficult for Akira than its previous victims - where they had to play mundane games with Kakuya, like marbles or hide-and-seek, Akira has to pacify vengeful ghosts that can kill him and his friends in a variety of gruesome ways. Rosé explains that Akira is basically stuck on Kakuya's 'Nightmare Mode'.
752* In North America, ski slopes are designated with colored shapes that denote difficulty: green circle (easy), blue square (medium), black diamond (hard), and double black diamond (this trope).
753* The {{pinball}} game ''Pinball/TheMandalorian'' has "Impossible Play", an optional mode which sets the difficulty as high as possible (including removing the ball save period entirely and shortening the timer for {{Timed Mission}}s) ''and'' renders the player unable to keep a flipper raised for more than a few seconds at a time.
754* Parodied in WebVideo/StevenHe's "When 'Asian' is a difficulty mode" series of videos, which basically depict playing a video game where the player-character is a OneHitPointWonder to the littlest things that aren't successfully blocked, like a stray leaf gently being blown onto him or stepping onto a stick on the ground in a stealth game, or using quick-time PressXToNotDie events where the inputs are such things as [[WellDoneSonGuy "Impress Father"]] or needing to counter "Social Anxiety" or [[MemeticMutation "Emotional Damage"]]. Apparently [[NationalStereotypes Asian gamers are so hardcore]] a fourth level beyond "Hard" was needed just for them.
755[[/folder]]
756

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