Line #63 NintendoHard/RolePlayingGames


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9	* ''VideoGame/The7thSaga'' is definitely up there. Monsters do grotesque amounts of damage to your paltry HP and give little experience or gold (and have unlimited MP of course), both spells and attacks fail very often. Oh, and there's a group of other adventurers roaming around trying to complete the same quest as you are, and are always a couple levels higher than you are. If you run into the wrong one at one of the forced fights with one of these guys, the game can be very nearly unwinnable. On top of this, [[DifficultyByRegion the game was altered to give less EXP and fewer level-up bonuses in the American version.]] The various other, computer-controlled adventurers do not have this disadvantage; they level up at the Japanese rate, quickly outgunning you. Since their levels scale to yours, this means you're increasingly damned as the game goes on.
10	* ''VideoGame/TheAgeOfDecadence'' is insane. You aren't playing the average videogame superhero, no. Its TurnBasedCombat is always lethal. It takes SaveScumming to clear some fights, others are simply unwinnable. Even with a well-built character, you will die. Even the loading screens tell you so. Oh, and designing a good character is up to TrialAndErrorGameplay to figure out all the skillchecks you need to pass.
11	* ''VideoGame/AtelierLilieTheAlchemistOfSalburg3'', the third game of the ''VideoGame/AtelierSeries'', has a reputation for being hellishly difficult compared to its contemporaries. It perhaps is not "hard" in the traditional, Battletoads sense, but getting anything other than a very "generic" ending requires that you plan out your entire approach to the game before you even start playing; you must plan what you'll do ahead of time in terms of whole game-years. And a lot of the endings require that you do a ''lot''. The amount of planning required makes this one Nintendo Hard for a lot of folks and hurt the sales of the game.
12	* The final boss fight in ''VideoGame/BaldursGate'': ''Throne of Bhaal'' becomes this if you have the ''Ascension'' mod installed. Amellisan is already a MarathonBoss by herself, but with ''Ascension'' she turns the fight into a BossRush by [[spoiler:''summoning the BigBad and his [[TheDragon Dragon]]'' from the second game, then summoning ''the main villains of this game'']]. Oh, and she keeps summoning her DemonicSpiders while this is going on. And all this can be potentially followed up by [[spoiler:her getting Sarevok to FaceHeelTurn if you don't redeem him, impress him enough with your evil-ness, or use a mod to romance him]] and [[spoiler:turning Imoen into [[SuperpoweredEvilSide the Slayer]]]], which deprives you of two party members, one of whom is generally regarded as the best in the game. [[BlatantLies Have fun.]]
13	** ''Every'' Bhaalspawn fight in ''Ascension'' becomes so much harder, to the point that the very first one is nigh impossible if you didn't import your party from the previous game and thus have to fight her by yourself. Yaga-Shura, for example, has his HealingFactor lowers slowly over the course of the fight instead of all at once, he can hurl fireballs whenever he feels like it, is accompanied by a quartet of powerful lieutenants, and his army at least doubles in size, turning into TheWarSequence.
14	* ''VideoGame/BatenKaitosOrigins'', a vicious example of a SequelDifficultySpike. It got rid of the FakeDifficulty that ''Eternal Wings'' suffered from, and replaced it with ''real'' difficulty. While it starts out reasonably challenging, the game quickly builds all three of your characters into DifficultButAwesome {{Glass Cannon}}s. Most enemies can cut through your health in just a couple turns, and bosses have specials that will utterly devastate your party. LevelGrinding and item farming won't help you here; skill, quick thinking, patience, and reflexes are what you'll need to get through. Fans have compared it to ''Franchise/ShinMegamiTensei'' and ''VideoGame/DarkSouls'', and with good reason.
15	* ''VideoGame/{{Bloodborne}}'', from the [[SpiritualSuccessor same lineage]] as ''VideoGame/DemonsSouls'' and ''VideoGame/DarkSouls'', is also actually somewhat easier than its parents (especially for seasoned ''Souls'' veterans) thanks to its faster-pace gameplay and healing system that rewards aggressive play, along with its addition of effective ranged weapons. [[RunningGag Guess what?]] It's ''still'' NintendoHard -- especially once NewGamePlus comes around, which is so difficult that [[WordOfGod Hidetaka Miyazaki himself admitted]] that he could barely beat it.
16	** It doesn't help that NewGamePlus adds some minor FakeDifficulty elements in the form of ''[[PaddedSumoGameplay freaking enormous]]'' health pools that turn every single enemy into damage sponges and every single boss into a tedious MarathonBoss, even with good gear.
17	* ''VideoGame/BravelyDefault'' is filled with dozens of {{Game Breaker}}s, some accessible from very early on. The game is well aware of this, [[EasyLevelsHardBosses which is why every single boss is fully capable of wiping out your party if you make the slightest mistake]]. Near the end of the game, ''they'' start using the game breakers on ''you''.
18	* ''Videogame/DarkestDungeon'' opens up with a paragraph explaining that the game is designed to be harsh and that you must be prepared to deal with losses and sacrifices. Enemies hit hard and can inflect both health and stress damage, driving you heroes to madness. Failing to properly provide for your heroes' health and sanity and equipping them for a dungeon run will result in injury or stress buildup. Bosses are merciless and can be deadly even if you know their mechanics and properly prepare for it. You're given the option to just cut loose a hero whose quirks and afflictions become to expensive to manage anymore, because new heroes are always arriving each week. But as you learn the game's mechanics, how to prioritize enemies, and how to manage health and stress, you'll be able to take on even the toughest enemies and emerge victorious. You can even [[spoiler: avoid the final boss's one-hit kill attacks if you can deal enough damage in a single attack to finish it.]]
19	** Stygian/Bloodmoon difficulty ramps it up even more by introducing a time/death limit. Failing to clear the game in the allotted number of weeks or suffering too many deaths will trigger an instant Game Over, along with the deletion of your save file.
20	* The tagline for ''VideoGame/DarkSouls'' is "Prepare to Die". It's not kidding. Even the weakest mooks can kill you in seconds if you're careless. And many of the bosses could be considered examples of ThatOneBoss. The environment is also trying its best to kill you, with traps and bottomless pits aplenty. Level grinding only gets you so far, the game will punish you if you don't learn from your mistakes. And just when you think you've got the hang of things, NewGamePlus ramps up the difficulty.
21	* ''VideoGame/DarkSoulsII'' is somewhat easier than the original on a first playthrough. Then NewGamePlus outdoes the first game ''[[OhCrap big time]]''. In addition, the ''Lost Crowns Trilogy'' DLC puts the vanilla game and the first ''VideoGame/DarkSouls'' to shame. The ''Scholar of the First Sin'' UpdatedRerelease takes this trope up to eleven -- for example, now there's a freaking Guardian Dragon (a late game boss fight/DegradedBoss) in one of the very first areas.
22	* ''VideoGame/DemonsSouls''. Yes, it is insanely, frustratingly, tear-inducingly hard, but it's because it's a game that DEMANDS mastery. A dedicated (and PATIENT) player will slowly inch his/her way through the game, slowly learning stages inside out and building his/her character up. With persistence, the player might even thrive. But after beating the game, [[NewGamePlus it's new game plus time]], which is even HARDER!
23	** And after beating that, it's on to New Game++. And then New Game+++. There is no known limit. While the jump in difficulty between everything but the first plus is lower, there is no limit to the amount of pluses, and it gets harder each time.
24	* ''VideoGame/DigimonWorld3'' was released by 2003 but had several quirks one would expect to see in the first-era [=RPGs=]. The enemy set changes brutally from one area to another, and if an incautious player take the wrong turn he may end fighting enemies that can [[TotalPartyKill defeat your whole team]] without getting damaged. Status effects are outright broken and bosses tend to abuse them, while you only get to learn such skills near the endgame. Every now and then you're forced to fight against a GiantSpaceFleaFromNowhere who is very powerful (woe you if you show up without full health), and some sections of the game are just [[TrialAndErrorGameplay impractical]] to figure out without a guide, to say nothing about special digivolutions that require [[GuideDangIt specific stat training and digivolution levels]].
25	* The 1975 ''VideoGame/{{dnd}}'' computer game is brutal. You only have about a 50% chance of beating an enemy of your level, physically attacking still lets enemies hits you, and if you die, you lose everything and a new dungeon is randomly generated. Spells make the game easier, but the best ones also damage you, you need spells to heal, you have only have a small number of spells, and worse of all, you can't regain spell usages without backtracking all the way to the entrance to dungeon in the first level. You can beat the final boss on level 17 and still have to fight through the whole dungeon again, backwards, with all the enemies ten times stronger, and if you die, you have to start at level 1 on level 1 no better than when you started.
26	* ''VideoGame/DragonQuest'':
27	** The first few games certainly qualify although all the games in that series are harder than average.
28	** ''VideoGame/DragonQuestI'': The difficulty curve ensures that it's not just the Dragonlord that will require you to grind to an acceptable level. You'd expect to be able to comfortably take on the next Beef Gate once the mooks you've been grinding on start going down in one hit, right? Nope; the stronger enemies will annihilate you in just a few turns until you gain two or three more levels. Better weapons and armor don't really overcome a lack of EXP, either, particularly when you can't survive long enough to reach the towns that sell it.
29	** ''VideoGame/DragonQuestII'':
30	*** You will need to level grind INTENSELY this time out, and even when you do, it isn't enough. This is because the game was made on such as short time span (development started in April and ended in December), they just didn't have enough time to playtest the late game.
31	*** The Gold Batboons/Bat Demons will randomly cast Sacrifice, wiping themselves out and taking your whole party with them. There's no way to prevent this. And they can do this in the very first round before you even have a chance to do anything if so inclined. At least the Rockbombs in ''VideoGame/DragonQuestIII'' and beyond would wait until you pounded them to near-death.
32	*** Adding to this, in the NES version, the run option wouldn't always be effective in Rhone Plateau (even if all characters are maxed out in levels).
33	*** There is only ONE MP restoring item (Wizard's Ring). However it could break at any time and could only be won via the Lottery.
34	*** The remix is easier, mostly thanks to extra stuff/boosts in the remix, but Rhone Plateau remains pretty hard regardless.
35	** ''VideoGame/DragonQuestIX'': The developer has stated this to be the goal, with the following rationale: "People can always find out information on the Internet-- like that's part of the game experience."
36	** ''VideoGame/DragonQuestXI'': The Draconian Quest options is a set of limitations that the player can turn on when starting a new game. This includes harder enemies, no escaping from battles, no shopping, lesser to no experience points from weaker monsters, "shypox" that makes the Hero miss turns in combat and temporarily unable to talk to [=NPCs=] due to remembering something embarrassing, and not being able to equip any armors. The Switch version dropped "no running" for three new ones: a souped up version of shypox that affects the whole party, game over when the Hero drops in battle, and the ability for [=NPCs=] to give wrong info to the Hero. Needless to say, turning more than two of those will make the game much harder.
37	* ''VideoGame/EarthBoundBeginnings'' is often considered the most difficult of the series. A very high encounter rate that plagues you through out the game even if you're not trying to level grind, but you will have to a lot thanks to the DifficultySpike found in later areas in which almost everything is a DemonicSpider. WordOfGod confirms that the final area is highly unbalanced due to wanting the game finished soon.
38	** The encounter rates are so brutally high, that a player could leave a battle, take one step and immediately be put into another one.
39	** The game is also notoriously cryptic. Townsfolk are rarely helpful, most of the time offering flavour text instead of help, and to add insult to injury [[ScrappyMechanic some of the NPCs can even sneeze on your face and give you a cold]], which acts like posion and causes Ninten to lose health overtime (it doesn't help that it can only be cured with a trip to the doctor at a hospital, which isn't cheap, or by using Mouthwash, which you don't get until the latter half of the game), and finding the 8 Melodies often requires checking every item that might vaguely stand out (including A Doll in Ninten’s house, a single random cactus in the desert, a canary and a sign just to name a few) toward which the game only gives vague clues (to be fair, there is one NPC in Magicant that tells you the locations of the 8 Melodies... after you've reached the peak of [[TheVeryDefinitelyFinalDungeon Mt. Itoi]] near the end of the game). Enemies can do a truckload of damage from the first dungeon (hell, just from the moment you exit your house and try to the reach ''the first town in the game'') and things spiral out of control by the time the party reaches Yucca Desert, and the difficultly only gets worse from there.
40	** Amazingly, the original Japanese release was even harder, with more complex dungeons and bullshit tricks (like a random character sending you back to the start of a dungeon if you don’t answer his questions correctly). These were altered for the unreleased US version (which was later released on the Wii U virtual console).
41	* ''VideoGame/TheElderScrollsIIIMorrowind'' is not a game that holds your hand. You have a very short tutorial before the game dumps you into the world. There are no quest markers, so you need to rely on notes and directions from the [=NPCs=], leading to many GuideDangIt moments. At early levels you will miss most of your attacks (a low-level player character misses often even when [[HitBoxDissonance you clearly hit the enemy polygon]]) and fail to cast spells (not helped by offensive magic being very weak at early levels). Your health and magicka will not regenerate unless you rest. And there is no map based fast travel, so you need to use either fixed-location transportation (boats, silt striders) or one-way teleportation (spells and scrolls). Though others enjoyed the challenge and were in turn annoyed when the creators made drastic changes for the [[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsIVOblivion following game]] in the series, such as switching from in-game directions to a simple target-seeking GUI compass and reduced the combat difficult with massively overdone LevelScaling.
42	* ''VideoGame/EternalTwilight'': The game is advertised as having a complex battle system where spamming normal attacks will result in game overs. Failure to pay attention to the unique mechanics of the game and the characters' unusual playstyles make the higher difficulties nearly impossible. The bosses and enemies are all balanced with the assumption that the player has been keeping up with crafting new gear, and even then, it's necessary to know when to guard and to learn each boss's personal gimmicks.
43	* ''VideoGame/EtrianOdyssey'' tries its hardest to recapture this, with huge dungeons you have to map yourself, enemy encounters that are either extremely strong or love status effects, expensive equipment and items, and of course the infamous [=F.O.E.s=]. The SkillScoresAndPerks system means you can freely customize your characters' skill builds, but it's all too easy to end up with poorly-built-up characters that make fighting more dangerous threats a nightmare, forcing the player to have their characters [[SkillPointReset Rest]], and Resting comes with a level penalty (''-10 in the first game,'' -5 levels in the 2nd and 3rd games, -2 levels in the 3DS games). And you only get 1 Skill Point per level, meaning that every allocation decision counts. But hey, what else would you expect from [[Creator/{{Atlus}} the same company]] behind ''Franchise/ShinMegamiTensei''?
44	* Although over the last few years the difficulty of ''VideoGame/EverQuest'' has been drastically reduced through various measures, the game was originally deliberately designed to be as brutally difficult as possible. It allowed you to play by yourself until level 5 to 10 or so; after that, the game became rapidly harder to play alone until it became outright impossible for all but some specific character classes that can avoid direct combat. Some choice Nintendo Hard decisions:
45	** Not giving you any in game map nor even a compass, combined with...
46	** ... Making towns extremely large and maze like (the wood elf town and dark elf town are somewhat legendary for this), to say nothing about dungeons.
47	** ... Starting night blind races in incredibly dark zones (Toxxulia Forest).
48	** Making it so that if you discover you need to flee a battle, you cannot (due to the game slowing you down when you run low on health, and increasing the chance of you being stunned when attacked from behind)
49	*** Oh yes, and mobs never, ever stop chasing you (unlike, say, [=WoW=]). The only way to escape is if you load into another zone, or the mob dies, or ''you'' die... or you aggrodump the pack onto some other poor, unsuspecting player. The last option is a bannable offense, by the way. A panicked cry of "Train!" ''means'' something in this game.
50	** Requiring players who ARE grouped together to spend literally weeks just getting ''keyed'' for certain dungeons (finding random items that allow you to finish a quest for a key, often with drop rates of less than 0.1%)
51	** Making your character lose all their equipment upon death, requiring they find their way back to their corpse, without any equipment.
52	** Making characters lose 10% of a level upon death, undoing literally days of work for one mistake.
53	** Having powerful aggressive enemies in low-level zones, such as Level 30 griffins in East Commonlands, a zone where Level 12 players ventured.
54	** Some levels (the infamous "hell levels") require 4 times the amount of XP to progress through, meaning the 10% of a level upon death becomes, essentially, 40%
55	** The later expansions were increasingly geared towards the 1% of the player base which had finished the previous expansion (the so called "über guilds"), meaning that there are rapid plateaus of difficulty -- the idea being that you are expected to spend months "farming" bosses by killing them over and over in groups of literally dozens of players to get the equipment required to take down the next plateau's bosses. Due to the game originally being envisioned as a Pay Per Hour system, as most online games were when the game began development, some of these decisions were extremely suspect.
56	** And if that isn't insane enough, [[FollowTheLeader nearly every other MMO afterwards]] seemed to think that all of the timesinks, frustration and the kind of game design that would be considered horrible in a single-player game was a ''good thing''.
57	** All that being said, EQ has been majorly nerfed over the years. The game has a compass and a rudimentary but functional map system, corpse runs have been done away with completely, exp loss on death is minimal, hell levels no longer exist and leveling in general is far easier, and mercenaries (computer controlled heroes you can hire) were added to make soloing possible.
58	* The ''VideoGame/FalloutNewVegas'' add-on ''Dead Money''. You're stripped of all items in your inventory when you begin the adventure, so you have to make do with what you can scrounge up. The entire location is filled with pockets of poisonous gas that erase big whacks of your health (even if you have the perk that makes you immune to regular poisons [[labelnote: About the poison]]The Cloud, the clouds of poison gas that inhabit the casino grounds, was made by the MadScientist group in Big Mountain to kill the Chinese and used the casino as a ''testing ground'' for it and the suits the Ghost People are stuck in. It's no ordinary poison.[[/labelnote]]) and liberally salted with mines, frag grenades, and bear traps. [[PlayerCharacter The Courier]] has an ExplosiveLeash locked around their neck, which will go off if they get too near any radios or intercoms (some of which you can't turn off or even destroy) or if any of the NPC companions are knocked out at any time. And the only enemies around are DemonicSpiders that don't take extra damage from head shots, wield weapons that have a high chance of crippling a limb with each hit, and have a tendency to ''get back up after you kill them'' [[spoiler:Unless you chop them to bits or let Dog eat them]].
59	* ''VideoGame/Fallout4'' itself is fairly easy. Survival mode, however is not. You start with a limited base carry weight. Ammo has weight now. You are required to eat, sleep and drink regularly. Diseases are rampant, which either require materials & Chemist or a Doctor to cure. Damage is severely lowered for you and severely raised for enemies. Rad Away (and other drugs) make you weak and susceptible to disease. Finally, there's no fast travel.
60	* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyI'' is definitely this. Those of you used to the later games are in for a nasty surprise when you plug in your NES or [=WonderSwan=] Color (or, by extension, "Normal" mode of the [=PlayStation=] remake). A series of glitches severely limits the damage output of basically every single class bar the Monk, and your source of healing inside dungeons is severely limited. Spell use is limited, and several spells literally don't work. The abundance of OneHitKill attacks (and, thanks to more glitches, a lack of ways to protect yourself from them) can make certain dungeons downright miserable. Later updates to the game streamlined the inventory and equipment systems, made certain battle commands easier, and most importantly fixed the worst of the bugs. Plus, the casting system of "limit X uses per level per day" was replaced with the familiar {{Mana}} system in remakes.
61	** While a number of bugs from the NES version were fixed in the PSX version (such as the bugged spells and weapon effects) and made it a bit more fair for the player, although still stacked against them, the Intelligence bug for offensive/healing spells was still present until the ''Dawn of Souls'' remake.
62	** Ironically, changing to a Mana system essentially ''depowered'' mages: in order to counter the fact that mages would be able to cast ''many'' more spells (Flare and Holy every round? '''HELL YEAH!'''), all enemies received a particularly large boost to magic defense, such that a black mage casting Flare (level 8 spell, 40 MP) is significantly less effective than a fighter smacking an enemy around with Haste (level 4 spell, 16 MP) and Temper (level ''2'' spell, ''4'' MP).
63	* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyII'' will chew you up and kick your ass ''simultaneously'' if you aren't leveling up your characters' abilities intelligently (and the original version didn't really tell you how to do so).
64	** To make it really suck, in order to level your weapon skills and spells, you need to fight enemies of a rank that's higher or at least, not too far below your current weapon skill. How do you know their rank? In the Origins remake and further, you can use the bestiary in the collections menu under Config. In the original NES release, good luck. If you don't know the Rank mechanic, you can spend hours grinding on enemies and wonder why your spells and weapon skills aren't going up at all!
65	** Once you understand the quirks of the use-based leveling system, the game doesn't seem too bad... until you encounter enemies that can apply a status debuff as part of their ''normal'' attack. If an enemy applies either sleep, confusion, or paralysis, it's faster to just reset from your last save point. The trouble if an enemy can cause a debuff, it'll have a high chance to, so your party just be permanently locked into those debuffs unless the enemy either focuses on someone or misses enough times. The flip side is that this also can work to your advantage, but good luck finding weapons that apply a debilitating status effect.
66	* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyIII'', while more manageable than the previous two games, was still difficult on the Famicom, thanks partially to a lack of save points, justified by hardware limits. Then it was re-released on the DS, and rather than add save points, the best jobs were nerfed, and the bosses were granted double turns and much greater HP. You'll have to [[ForcedLevelGrinding Grind, Grind, Grind]] if you ever hope to finish it. You are forced to beat the final dungeon and its five bosses in one go, with death meaning having to do it all over again from beginning, and even before that, there is [[ThatOneBoss Garuda]].
67	** Another issue with the game is there's no semblance of turn order. There may be something to influence when someone goes first, but it's literally impossible to plan out strategies because of the random turn order. So your basically left in situations where, for instance, you need to heal, but you don't know if your healer will actually go in time to do it.
68	* The DS remake of ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyIV'' fits this to a T. While the original in the U.S. was somewhere between the Japanese release and the later ''Easy Type'' version, this is in a league of its own. To count the ways...
69	** Enemies will murder your party outright when you encounter a new set. Either in sheer numbers (good luck with 6 death zombies) or because they have some powerful AOE spell that they can cast over and over, [[TheComputerIsACheatingBastard for free]].
70	** Encounters tend to happen every two steps, tops.
71	** No amount of LevelGrinding can save you... mostly because enemies give abysmally low amounts of experience points.
72	** Same with MoneyGrinding, for the same reason. It's a good thing Creator/SquareEnix decided to leave fortunes lying around though.
73	** Items you need also tend to be scarce, and they're ridiculously expensive.
74	** If you try to take advantage of known weaknesses (such as hitting Scarmiglione with Fire, which he is still weak to), the bosses will ''all'' counter with an extremely powerful attack that can outright kill most of your party.
75	** Thanks to New Game+, though, the game is only somewhat difficult the first time. It becomes laughably easy the second and third playthrough.
76	* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyV'' can either avert this or play it straight depending on how the player wears his/her thinking cap. If you're not taking advantage of the many game breaking combinations available to you; FFV can be a difficult game. If you're thinking or understand the use of the job system, it's one of the easier games.
77	* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyThe4HeroesOfLight'', intended as a GenreThrowback to classic 80's [=RPGs=], lacks many of the AntiFrustrationFeatures common to newer games like saving at any time, [[BagOfSharing unlimited inventory shared among the entire party]], and being able to specifically target enemies of your choice.
78	* ''VideoGame/GuildWars2'' manages this on some of its jumping puzzles. Most have only one correct path which can be difficult if not impossible to spot on your own. Many jumps are extremely exacting, allowing only a slim margin of error for positioning and timing. Enemies are also present and can interfere with knockbacks, slows, crippling, and all other manners of annoyance. If you die without a partner, your only choice is to start the entire puzzle over again, which may also be required if you miss even a single jump.
79	** One particularly aggravating puzzle had a ceiling located at just the right height so if you don't jump at exactly the right moment, you'd be knocked to the ground and have to spend a minute running back to the jump. The puzzle was eventually removed and replaced with one where falling off at any point means restarting the ''half hour'' long puzzle.
80	*** Mesmers can avert this with their Portal spell. By placing a portal at your feet just before attempting a difficult jump, you'll be able to zip right back should you fall, simply by placing another portal connecting to the first one. This tactic serves as a safety net of sorts. Needless to say, Mesmers are highly sought-after partners for difficult jump puzzles.
81	** Super Adventure Box, a retro-inspired GameWithinAGame, is clearly designed to evoke memories of Nintendo's golden days. While the main paths through the levels are relatively simple in comparison to the jumping puzzles, getting OneHundredPercentCompletion requires grinding through some especially exacting jumping puzzles. And that's before you enter [[PlatformHell Tribulation mode]].
82	* The supposed "first level" missions in ''VideoGame/IcewindDale'' for the PC were so difficult and so prone to cause the death of the [=PCs=] that most new players to the game were told "right after you begin the game, use the cheat code to boost yourself to third level.''
83	** Worse are the later Single-Character missions, especially (of course) at Hard difficulty. Just when your party is balanced enough at rock-paper-scissors tactics to make it through the main game, you have to pick a single character to survive a long sequence of varied types of enemy.
84	** Open the game's config file and notice the flag "Nightmare=0". Set it to 1 and start a new game, using your maxed out characters. [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Enjoy your first fight with goblins forged in hell by Satan's own hand.]]
85	* ''VideoGame/JourneyOn'': The developer states that the boss battles in this game are meant to be challenging due to their gimmicks. There is also no currency system, making it hard to farm healing items outside of grinding mobs. The game only gets harder if the player is going for the low Darkness Affinity achievement, which limits the amount of MP they can spend in one playthrough while trying to go for the hardest ending.
86	* ''Franchise/KingdomHearts'' started adding in [[HarderThanHard Critical Mode]] from the second game's UpdatedRerelease on, to the point that even Americans can finally experience it legitimately in ''VideoGame/KingdomHearts3DDreamDropDistance''. The series had been moderately difficult, [[ThatOneBoss certain boss fights aside,]] but Critical Mode makes even the weakest of mooks highly lethal to you. And don't even get one started on the bosses getting balls to the walls tough.
87	** And if that wasn't enough for you, the Final Mixes for ''VideoGame/KingdomHeartsII'' and ''VideoGame/KingdomHeartsBirthBySleep'' offered an ability at the game's start when playing Critical and to later installments/versions: ''EXP Zero''. Aside from bonus stats earned from boss fights to make it plausible, the most hardcore of players are given the opportunity to LowLevelRun the games on their hardest difficulties at ''Level 1''; by the end game, pretty much everything can kill you in one or two hits if you don't have certain abilities and the sheer ''skill'' to prevent it.
88	*** ''VideoGame/KingdomHeartsIII'' takes Critical Mode to its logical extreme. It is not a joke when the ''Tutorial Boss'' can curbstomp you. Hope you brought Ultima Weapon from New Game + because it only gets worse from there.
89	*** The DLC is absolutely insane even on difficulties that aren't Critical. The first 10 or so hours of it isn't particularly difficult, but once you get to the Limit Cut episode the difficulty spike is intense. The vast majority of the members of the new Data Org you'll face here are all on the same level as the hardest super bosses in previous games... in a series that is infamous for its Nintendo Hard Super Bosses. And then once you get through all of those, you have the SECRET episode, which contains a Super Boss which according to WordOfGod was designed to be so hard as to "make people cry". He definitely achieved what he set out to do, but when you have 14 Super Bosses all on the same level as some of the most difficult bosses in all of video games, it gets exhausting.
90	* ''VideoGame/LegendOfLegaia''. The "fighting game" battle system, while neat at first, quickly became extremely tedious and past the first couple dungeons, it made most NORMAL battles last close to five minutes. Worse, from the middle of the game onward if you did not spend obscene amounts of time grinding then you didn't stand much of a chance against the bosses.
91	* ''VideoGame/LiarJeannieInCrucifixKingdom'' doesn't have an experience system and instead requires the player characters to equip items in order to gain stats and skills. Figuring out a good stat and skill build for the bosses is not easy, especially when the bosses all have different gimmicks and enjoy spamming status effects.
92	* ''VideoGame/LieOfCaelum'': The in-universe retro game, Star Warrior, is intentionally balanced as a reference to the difficulty of real retro [=RPGs=]. There is only one party member, upgrades are expensive, and the RNG can be brutal when it comes to healing and enemy crit rates.
93	* ''VideoGame/LordsOfTheFallen'' takes many inspirations from ''VideoGame/DarkSouls'', including the sheer nightmarish difficulty. On some occasions it can be even harder due to the much slower speed of the combat. Players have to learn the positions of enemies as they progress through the levels, or be cut down. Bosses have patterns, but it can take many deaths before they can be learned and exploited.
94	* ''VideoGame/LoserReborn'': Even on the easiest difficulty, the enemies will take advantage of buffs and elemental attacks in the same way as the player, allowing them to KO party members easily. Worse yet, the game's inn functionality can only be used once per playthrough and there's only one revival consumable, meaning you can only get away with two KO's. Items and gold are scarce and random encounters disappear after defeating the boss of their floor, making it hard to afford equipment upgrades.
95	* The second half of ''VideoGame/MarioAndLuigiDreamTeam'' fits this trope to a T. Early on, it's not much harder than a typical ''VideoGame/MarioAndLuigi'' game is by that point, but once you get to the Ultibed quest, the game ramps it up into high gear. Especially the giant battles. The first two aren't horribly difficult, but starting with Earthwake, they WILL mop the floor with you if you don't have pixel-perfect timing. Plus some of the mini-games have a ScrappyMechanic similar to [[VideoGame/DonkeyKong64 Beaver Bother]].
96	** On the other hand, you can restart battles as often as you like and even have an easy mode option for everything but the giant battles. Then there is the hard mode... which also makes the giant battles even more unforgiving and losing a battle means gameover.
97	* ''VideoGame/MSSagaANewDawn'''s difficulty is okay until you lose the WhiteMage, [[spoiler: Aeon]], leaving you with only one effective healer with enough TP to handle the massive healing jobs. Tristan has Full Heal, sure, but he'll be busy spamming [[AttackDrone Fin Funnel]] before he has a chance to use his very low TP to heal the others. Upgrades are extremely expensive, and you'll be stuck with very underpowered suits by the endgame unless you do serious LevelGrinding to take on [[ThatOneBoss numerous cloned boss machines and Burning Gundam]] in order to get stronger units. Bosses and crystal marked enemies hit very hard and merciless due to the fact that you must be able to handle their fixed action patterns by that time.
98	* ''VideoGame/NocturneRebirth'' has difficult bosses that can easily wipe out parties that lack proper resistance to their elemental and status attacks. Normally, this wouldn't be a problem by most [=RPG=] standards, except that the equipment needed to resist these attacks are usually {{Rare Random Drop}}s. While the main characters can grind for passive abilities to make up for a lack of gear, the [[{{Mons}} familiars]] absolutely need gear to deal with anything they don't innately resist. Worse yet, familiars can't be revived in battle, meaning the main characters could be forced to fend for themselves against the bosses in the worst case scenario. And if the player wants to get the Brave Clear rewards, they'll have to beat the bosses at a low level, requiring them to be very selective when allocating skills, which can be difficult on a blind playthrough.
99	* ''VideoGame/OdinSphere''. The game pretty much flat-out gives you infinite lives straight off the bat, and take our word when we say you'll ''need'' them. Almost every boss -- and a fair few {{sub boss}}es -- are ThatOneBoss, and most four- and five-star levels are full of swarms of GoddamnedBats. It is made exponentially more difficult by the sheer loving detail put into the animation - which means you'll spend a good three seconds doing ''anything'', from simple attacks to eating health items. Meanwhile you ''will'' be swarmed by enemies. Your character is knocked back by enemy attacks. Enemy characters are not, and will continue to attack ''through'' your attacks. Several levels also require a potion to prevent an ''automatic'' ongoing status ailment. The often stuttery frame rate will also prevent your actions from registering on a regular basis. Hello, FakeDifficulty.
100	* ''VideoGame/PhantasyStarI'' is a very difficult game, even by the standards of early [=JRPGs=]. The early game requires a fair bit of LevelGrinding, some bosses require specific items to circumvent their OneHitKill attacks (and they are found in very out-of-the-way areas), and the FauxFirstPerson3D dungeons can be very easy to get lost in. The game's manual suggests players draw up their own maps for dungeons, advice which you will want to take if you wish to make any progress. Later re-releases of the game added options to alleviate the difficulty: the [=PS2=] enhanced remake has an item that can temporarily draw up maps, and the Nintendo Switch port of the original game has an automap feature. For a mercy, the game allows you to save anywhere, even in dungeons.
101	* ''VideoGame/PhantasyStarII'' is unusually difficult for an EasternRPG. Many of the RandomEncounters are strong enough to threaten a TotalPartyKill. For example, in the first dungeon, most enemies are fairly weak, but once in a while, you'll encounter an enemy named "Blaster" whose attacks hit your entire party for substantial damage. If you haven't done some serious LevelGrinding, you'll probably lose the battle. Additionally, despite abandoning the FauxFirstPerson3D perspective used in ''VideoGame/PhantasyStarI'', you ''will'' get lost in the game's dungeons, because the mazes are just that complicated. [[http://www.phantasy-star.net/psii/maps/mapsgreendam.html You can see for yourself how confusing they get!]]. Fortunately, Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection added the ability to save anywhere.[[note]]This ability existed in the original, but only once you got Shir in your party and had her steal the Visiphone, itself a bit of a GuideDangIt.[[/note]]
102	* The story mode of ''VideoGame/PokemonColosseum'' is probably the most difficult in the "main" series. Because of the game's focus on "Shadow Pokemon" and snagging Pokemon from trainers, there is an abysmally low pool of {{Mons}} to choose from -- less than fifty, in fact. The fact that you have to steal Pokemon from trainers means that while trying to catch Pokemon, the trainers will be assaulting you with their own. Bosses have '''[[OlympusMons Legendary Pokemon]]''' at their disposal, and unlike the main series utilize actual strategies beyond PoorPredictableRock. The sequel, ''[=XD=]'', dialed back the difficulty significantly, although [[spoiler:it still does have you catch seven high-level Pokemon, mostly Legendaries, in a row without saving]].
103	** Absurd difficulty can be found in the ''VideoGame/PokemonMysteryDungeon'' series, although these are mentioned under "Roguelikes."
104	* ''VideoGame/PokemonStadium'' 1 and 2 is the crowning example for the ''Pokemon'' series, with round 2 in particular being infamously difficult. The stadium cups have some diabolical strategies, and Gym Leader Castle has eight gyms that specialize in their gym type, with some incredible team synergy, and underlings that generally use Pokemon that counteract's the gyms weakness. But its their AI that makes them truly Nintendo Hard, as they will switch when at a disadvantage, and often have good selections to whatever you choose. No other Pokemon game (or even game mods of Pokemon) come anywhere near the difficulty set by the ''Stadium'' series, making this a standout example.
105	** This deserves more elaboration. In the first game, enemies were using strategies or moves that abused the short sights of the Gen I version of the game. Wrap and Fire Spin can and will trap your monsters for the entirety of their LP bar. Toxic and Leech Seed sapped health away in large chunks while you mysteriously missed with Psychic. This is when you're not dealing with obnoxious strategies such as a trainer in the prime cup who decided to load up really fast pokemon with one-hit kill moves that hit really hard. Gen II was obnoxious for a different reason. The movesets on average were fair and balanced...until round 2 came along and you were wondering how did Raikou learn Thunderbolt (Crystal's move tutor, which Stadium 2's early purchasers didn't get to just then). Gen II also had one of the worst (if not THE worst) TM pool in the game, and so required lots and lots of breeding for Olympus monsters just to be able to stand a chance against the A.I.s perfect bred, perfect IV/EV stat distributed monster teams.
106	* ''Pokemon Inclement Emerald'', a ''Videogame/PokemonEmerald'' ROM hack made by Buffel Salt, gives all gym leaders six pokemon with good enough coverage that no one pokemon has a chance of sweeping the team. And all trainers and wild pokemon scale with your level, making it impossible to simple overlevel and overpower them. Finally, starting from the 5th gym onwards, all gym leaders and major characters use Mega Evolution. In fact, ''every'' trainer in Victory Road uses Mega Evolution. On higher difficulties, every single trainer in the game has EV trained pokemon and on challenge mode, you can't use items during battle.
107	* In any ''Pokémon'' game where you can catch the lil' guys, doing a [[Webcomic/NuzlockeComics Nuzlocke run]] is partly meant to invoke this in what are otherwise fairly tame games. Under namely the KO = permadeath rule, many parts that were once annoying are now intense. [[VideoGameRandomizer Randomizer]] or not, hope you know which species can learn [[TakingYouWithMe Destiny Bond]], and that doesn't just mean Wobbuffet (who itself has moves and an ability that make it a Nuzlocker's worst nightmare). Better make sure you're ready before going into a series of multiple Trainer battles back-to-back without a break to heal freely from your bag. And of course, sometimes, even with a Dupes Clause to let you ignore previously-caught species for the first encounter = only valid catch chance rule, you [[LuckBasedMission might]] find yourself softlocked when you don't have anyone who can learn the [[AbilityRequiredToProceed right HM you need to continue]] and you don't give yourself any leeway in those cases. Finally, let's not forget the fact that you may not actually get anyone decent, and thus have to work extra hard to stay alive. And this is all not even considering any of the ''many'' extra rules some players have, or if you're playing on an especially hard hack. How does the average player get through such a challenge? Follow the creed: "Never Give Up, Never Forget, '''Grind Like Hell'''".
108	* ''VideoGame/PrayerOfTheFaithless'': Due to the game being in a post-apocalyptic setting, it's intentionally designed so that standard JRPG facilities like inns and shops are few and far between. Even normal encounters require the player to play carefully and efficiently in order to minimize damage and preserve resources, especially when they spam Miasma Charge to buff themselves up and enable their best skills. Sellable items aren't guaranteed to drop, which can make the resource management aspect of the game harder if the player is unlucky.
109	* In ''VideoGame/ResonanceOfFate'', battles can be absolutely brutal because leveling up actually increases the amount of Hero Gauge points lost when taking Scratch Damage (it goes up every 1000 HP). The Hero Gauge is basically what keeps your party alive: you can use it for super attacks or refilling HP, but if it empties, your party becomes basically useless. Considering that the Hero Gauge increases are limited by the story, and people usually think that leveling up HP in [=RPG=]s is a good thing, the pacing is a recipe for disaster. Not to mention that the customization for weapons (the real way to get stronger) is also limited by the story. Oh, and the whole party goes down if one character dies. Oh, and retrying after a Game Over costs an increasing amount of in-game currency. And this is just Normal Mode -- the game has seven harder difficulties to tackle afterwards!
110	* ''VideoGame/{{Robopon}}'' is published by Creator/{{Atlus}}. Enemies can be surprisingly strong in dungeons and the bosses can be obscenely difficult if you don't come prepared.
111	* ''VideoGame/RogueGalaxy'' is an absurdly difficult game, because enemies dish out damage like crazy and ''none of your party members can learn healing spells.'' You have to rely on items to heal and using items takes stamina, which is subtracted from the same bar you need to attack, use skills, and move about the battlefield. If your stamina gauges run out, you have to wait for it to fill up in real time while enemies thrash you. Some monsters require specific weapons to kill, too. Oh, and this is a Creator/Level5 game, so expect lots of Mimics -- and in this game, Mimics automatically start you out with an ''empty stamina gauge'' and can spam a wide area of effect attack, wrecking your party before any of you can even move.
112	* ''VideoGame/RuinaFairyTaleOfTheForgottenRuins'': Random enemies are limited per day and don't drop a lot of EXP or gold, forcing the player to be very careful with their resources. This, combined with the TrialAndErrorGameplay, can make it difficult to maintain an advantage over enemies, especially if the player is trying to get the SP bonus for clearing dungeons quickly or is trying to reach TTEXP thresholds.
113	* ''VideoGame/SacredEarthSeries'': Since playable characters have their own elemental weaknesses, it's easy for the enemies to KO them easily if they hit with the correct element. This requires the player to efficiently use EX Recover, buff skills, and Focus to keep themselves alive. While ''VideoGame/SacredEarthPromise'' and ''Sacred Earth - New Theory'' have difficulty settings, even the easiest setting will punish reckless gameplay, especially due to the lack of items.
114	* ''Videogame/SeraphicBlue'' has almost every enemy be a DemonicSpider capable of outspeeding parties that aren't overspecialized in speed. And later bosses don't shy away from very cheap party wiping attacks, to the point where the the main character is given a party auto-life spell just to ensure the FinalBoss is remotely fair.
115	* ''VideoGame/SekiroShadowsDieTwice'' continues the tradition of punishingly hard Creator/FromSoftware [=RPGs=], with some of the most difficult bosses the studio has created yet. It varies the formula from the ''Souls'' series, doing away with the shield and nerfing the dodging mechanics, forcing you to master an aggressive combat style incorporating rapid, precisely-timed deflections and counterattacks. It punishes you for fighting too defensively, as every blow you block (rather than deflect) fills up a Posture bar that will leave you staggered and defenseless for several seconds when full. Enemies are aggressive and smart, and love to take cheap shots while you heal or use items.
116	* NintendoHard is the default difficulty for any ''Franchise/ShinMegamiTensei'' game. Rampant abuse of OneHitKill spells in games where [[WeCannotGoOnWithoutYou you only need to lose your main character to game over]], a spell naming system that practically requires the player to learn a second language to know what everything does (fortunately, the naming's fairly consistent, so once you learn the language in one game you won't have as much trouble in other games), and the frequent use of a "characters get extra turns for exploiting weakness" mechanic which can frequently lead to the player either mopping the floor with a tough encounter or the easiest encounter annihilating an entire party before they even get a chance to move. Later games tone down some of the FakeDifficulty elements and add some quality-of-life features, and even add easy difficulty levels, but on default and above expect to still get wrecked by ThatOneBoss and DemonicSpiders if you don't plan well or have a good party composition.
117	** The original ''VideoGame/MegamiTensei'' deserves special mention for having its only HP-restoring items, Jewels, unavailable at item shops and only found by defeating a specific type of enemy (although luckily Jewels restore all of a character's HP's). Also there are demons who have a special attack that permanently reduces one of your protagonist's experience levels.
118	* ''VideoGame/StarStealingPrince'' has bosses that can easily defeat players that neglect buffs, debuffs, and resistances from equipment. Worse yet, most of them will know to change their tactics if they're suffering from certain status effects, as shown by how they use fewer physical attacks when blinded.
119	* ''VideoGame/SweetHome1989'', being the [[TropeMaker granddaddy of]] SurvivalHorror, is among the more grueling [=JRPGs=] of the late [=1980s=]. To do well, players must take notes, remember where things are, manage their inventory, and carefully ration healing tonics (of which there are only twenty-one in the game, ''total!''). Adding to the challenge is {{Permadeath}}: the tonics are the only way to recover HP, and if one of your characters die, they ''stay dead''. Since each character has a unique item that is instrumental to solving puzzles and progressing through the game, the loss of a party member will make proceeding all the more difficult.
120	* ''VideoGame/UltimaVIII: Pagan'' was infamous for its insanely frustrating jumping puzzles, which were likened to Super Mario from hell. Despite being an RPG, the developers decided to add "arcade" elements like running and jumping puzzles. The shoddy interface, poor physics, and the ridiculous save/load times didn't help one bit. The patched version fixed this by allowing targeted jumping and making the platforms stationary.
121	* ''VideoGame/{{Underrail}}'' (no relation to ''Undertale'' below - though they are both set underground) is a brutal Serbian tactical [=RPG=] in the vein of ''Franchise/{{Fallout}}'' that takes great pleasure in watching you die over and over and over. SaveScumming is ''actively encouraged'' - the game autosaves before you enter a new area and keeps an extra autosave and quicksave on the buffer as well. It is strongly recommended that you consult the [[https://underrail.com/forums/index.php?board=12.0 Underrail Character Builds Forum]] to carefully refine a character concept before you start... or you can just nick somebody else's; riflemen, shotgunners, crossbow rangers, melee fighters, unarmed brawlers, psionics, there's something for everyone. If your build is anything less than top-notch then you will be seeing the game over screen with frustrating regularity.
122	* Most of ''VideoGame/{{Undertale}}'' plays fair. Even the final boss of the Neutral route [[spoiler:(Flowey, who has not only taken over the game itself, but has transformed himself into a huge animutation-style monster through the power of the human [=SOULs=])]] isn't that tough once you have his attack patterns figured out. For Genocide route players, though, it's a different story. Most enemies, and even most bosses, die in one hit, but the two bosses exclusive to this path are incredibly unforgiving: [[spoiler:Undyne the Undying will wipe the floor with you, and Sans's attacks come so quickly and are so unpredictable that even an experienced player is guaranteed to, as he puts it, have a bad time.]]
123	* ''VideoGame/VagrantStory'' has a system called Risk points. The higher the Risk, the more damage you take (and dish out) and the worse your accuracy. At 100+ Risk you'll be missing four out of five times. And the way it raises is with successful combo attacks. This makes ''Vagrant Story'' probably the only video game in history that actually ''punishes you for playing the game well.'' Most of the random enemies encountered are even harder than bosses, because some weapons don't work on them at all due to elemental and weapon attributes. You also have invisible traps AND out-of-the-blue enemies in inescapable dungeons. Not to mention the final boss has a special attack that can kill you even if you have only 3-5 points of Risk Points and it cannot be blocked with magic buffs. And the enemies that can use an instant death spell on you... and you're only controlling one person for the whole game.
124	* [[VideoGame/TheWitcher2AssassinsOfKings The sequel]] to ''VideoGame/TheWitcher'':
125	** Before they patched, within minutes of teaching you the basic controls swarms of enemies gang up on you. Many people could not complete the first quest.
126	** On highest difficulty, death is final. If Geralt dies the game automatically deletes all your save files, meaning you have to start over.
127	* Many of the early ''VideoGame/{{Wizardry}}'' games are known for their ruthless difficulty. Many of the puzzles are nearly intractable without a guide, in battles you are often hugely outnumbered and can be (very) easily [[OneHitKill incapacitated]] in a single turn. The worst offender is probably ''Wizardry IV'', in which leveling was literally impossible (you had to complete the dungeon level to increase your abilities), and featured many puzzles of rather maddening difficulty. Even getting out of the first room of the first level requires a degree of off-the-wall intuition. ''Wizardry IV'' is often considered to be one of the most difficult [=CRPGs=] ever made.
128	** This game was ''difficult by design''. ''Wizardry IV'' (in which you play the original ''Wizardry'''s BigBad) was unashamedly touted right on the box as "For Expert Players Only". Not only was it Nintendo Hard, but it also featured elements of TrialAndErrorGameplay.
129	** Both a Touhou fangame and tribute to Wizardry-style [=CRPGs=], ''VideoGame/TouhouLabyrinth'' may not have permadeath, but it does feature absolutely unforgiving enemies. It's common for bosses to tear you apart the first few times you attempt to fight them, and on later levels of the labyrinth, even normal enemies will be absolutely hellish to fight. As if that's not bad enough, the game's superbosses will rip you to shreds unless you're prepared to level grind like crazy.
130	* ''VideoGame/TheWorldEndsWithYou'', while manageable for most of the story, gets unusually difficult at the end. You fight several bosses in succession after you're last able to save, the last one possessing absurd HP totals, and one death sends you back to the checkpoint.

Context NintendoHard / RolePlayingGames