Line #56 ThatOneLevel/HackAndSlash


1	Hacking and slashing your way through thousand of soft mooks is [[CatharsisFactor fun]]! But sometimes, [[ThatOneLevel the game just doesn't want to cooperate]]...
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3	[[AC:''VideoGame/DevilMayCry'']]
4	* ''VideoGame/DevilMayCry3DantesAwakening'':
5	** Mission 19. There's this bit where these DemonicSpiders known as Abysses appear and you have to kill them off before the huge hourglass in the background runs down. If you don't, the Abysses reappear but your damage taken and items used stay as they were right before the hourglass had reset. Then it caps off with [[spoiler:the horrible blob Arkham]], who is most certainly ThatOneBoss. The BossRush levels in ''3'' and ''4'' also fit to some extent.
6	** You would expect the 'Trial of the Warrior' to translate to a fun amount of fighting against enemies. However, it becomes less fun when they activate their [[SuperMode Devil Triggers]] (which they normally cannot do outside of the highest difficulty level). Not only that, but among the enemies spawned during the trial are [[DemonicSpiders Lusts]] and [[TeleportSpam Sloths]], two very mobile enemy types that have a penchant for surprise gap-closing attacks.
7	** Mission 8. Dark, cramped areas, occasionally dodgy camera, and the floor can hurt you in places. Manageable on the easier levels, but when the game ramps it up, it just gets absurd. Playing it through on Heaven or Hell and you'll need every bit of luck you can muster to get through without wanting to kill someone.
8	* ''VideoGame/DevilMayCry4'''s Mission 10 is almost unanimously the ''worst'' mission in the entire game. There are more than enough {{death trap}}s and EliteMooks to wipe out your life bars, and the boss at the end ([[spoiler:Dante himself]]) is unanimously also [[ThatOneBoss the most difficult boss in the entire game]].
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11	[[AC:''VideoGame/DynastyWarriors'']]
12	* Pretty much any time the player is at Hu Lao Gate on the Coalition side and forgets that [[MemeticMutation pursuing Lu Bu]] is ''optional''. (''Dynasty Warriors 6'' lampshades this briefly when Yuan Shao, responsible for the infamous meme in ''DW 3'', simply says that if no one can stand against Lu Bu, "Then forget about him!")
13	** Oh, and as for 4, two words: Nanman Campaign. First off, you're up against a massive, highly motivated force. With elephants, which your forces have trouble with. Likewise, armor troops. Plus after a few seconds, your side ''constantly'' loses morale due to the harsh climate. And every time you beat Meng Huo outside of his headquarters, he returns more powerful than before. Plus the enemy gates continually regenerate, meaning that they have effectively unlimited forces. It's so bad, ''any'' strategy other than "go right to enemy HQ and take out the commander quickly" is practically suicide. An archetypical case of a company legitimately wanting to create a challenging level and [[SerialEscalation Not. Knowing. When. To. Friggin'. Quit.]]
14	*** It gets worse: There's two different versions of this level - Wu's version actually nerfs Meng Huo (he won't respawn that many times), Shu's version is where you actually get to unlock Meng Huo and Zhu Rong. How do you unlock them? Zhu Rong is simply unlocked by defeating her in a duel (as Shu, after dueling Meng Huo). Meng Huo, on the other hand, requires you to defeat him all 7 times, one of which MUST be done by duel. The ONLY way you're pulling this off is to break the 1000-KO barrier to max out your force's morale while taking out enemy officers so that your commander (and the bodyguards you hopefully didn't forget to have wait at YOUR HQ) aren't taken out.
15	*** There's an easy way out for this one, however: Equip a horse, then make a mad dash to Meng Huo's base. He'll respawn there and if you beat him there, he'll be beaten for good, finishing the level. Of course, that means you miss out the bonus stuffs as listed above.
16	** The Two Qiaos also qualifies. The situation: You're either Sun Ce or Zhou Yu, and you have to find both the other and the eponymous Qiaos, all of whom are scattered across the battlefield. You're up against lots and lots (and lots and ''lots'' and LOTS) of enemy soldiers who pop up in massive ambushes all over the place and have no troops or bodyguards of your own. And if ''anyone'' goes down, YOU FAIL THE LEVEL. (This stage, incidentally, is the only way to unlock the Qiaos.)
17	* ''Dynasty Warriors 5'' has the Battle of Mt. Ding Jun on the Shu side. Not that the battle is hard by itself, but about ten minutes in, a painfully obvious but impossible to prevent sabotage occurs and Wei starts bearing down on both the commander Ma Su and the main camp, which are suddenly a long, roundabout way away from each other. Ma Su is a generic officer easily overwhelmed by the 3+ named officers bearing down on him; if he dies, you lose. The main camp is protected only by a handful of officers who are outmatched by the attack force; if both checkpoints inside the base are taken, you lose. The game has the courtesy to tell you what's going on, but unless you pick one issue, deal with it quickly and completely then hustle to the other, you'll lose before reinforcements arrive. This is one of the few maps where even advanced players can lose by mission failure if they drop the ball at all.
18	* ''Dynasty Warriors 6'': Chang Ban, Wei Scenario. Trying to get to Liu Bei is hard enough IF you kill the peasants, but you have to avoid them if you want to complete one of the targets. You also have to kill Zhang Fei, who gets a power charge that makes him comparable to Lu Bu. And if you DO kill the peasants, and you kill more than one, KOEI's poster boy Zhao Yun comes chasing after you. If you don't kill them, he comes after you anyway. And this is all while having to deal with the time limit which extends to the moment Liu Bei gets to the boats, which is pretty damn quickly. Hell, if you kill all the chieftains as well, Liu Bei will stop and go after Cao Cao...and rip him apart in SECONDS.
19	** You can send the innocents to their deaths provided the chieftains does not die, taking out Zhang Fei and Zhao Yun can be done by getting a friend with higher stats and nicer weapons...But indeed Chang Ban is just one nasty level for either side. Whereas the Wei has to complete their objectives before Liu Bei goes to the docks, the Shu has to deal with the fact that NO chieftains are allowed to die.
20	* ''Dynasty Warriors 6: Empires'' has a whole bunch of EscortMission levels, the worst of which are probably the "Deliver Supplies" missions. Two groups of fragile villagers on opposite sides of the field, who can't wait long enough for you to escort them one at a time, who insist on charging into every possible base (aka enemy respawn point), forcing you to run like hell back and forth to keep them from getting killed. If either group dies, you fail the level. And just because it wasn't annoying enough, the villagers are frequently attacked by tigers and wolves, which are like the Dynasty Warriors version of GoddamnedBats. RAAAAARGHHH!!!! The only good thing these missions have going for them is that they're mostly optional.
21	** The peasant ones are the tough ones? Just get a horse (buy one and equip at start or press Select ingame) and you'll find them easy. Now the ones with ''Lady Cai Wenji'' are tough, moreso since she refuses to attack in self-defense (unlike the similar escort missions where you are escorting either a named officer OR a custom character, who ''do'' attack enemies).
22	*** Escorting those goddamn villagers was a nightmare (even with Red Hare).
23	* ''VideoGame/DynastyWarriorsGundam 3'' had a final stage that was a complete massacre for most players. You start with only one other character on your side, who will probably not last more than five minutes. You have to capture multiple fields within a very limited amount of time, since the enemy missile bases (the areas that launch nukes at your side, which will completely turn one of your ally zones into an enemy zone when they touch down) will make short work on your HQ. (Which will take away your ability to respawn, even if you recapture it.) Meanwhile, you have to defend your zones from the constant attack from enemy Ace Pilots, who have outrageously high stats and ungodly health. The chance of you surviving a single hit is very small, but that doesn't matter, since the A.I. will usually propel you into a 4 to 12 hit combo. The enemy team has four of these Aces on its side, who work together quite nicely to corner you. Taking down one of these Aces takes a couple of minutes when they are together, and by the time you've started working down another one, the first Ace has already respawned. To complicate things even more, the enemy starts off with a 'Mobile Suit Factory', a field that slowly recovers that team's 'battle gauge', the meter that depletes upon an Ace's respawn. The A.I. is so powerful that whatever part of that gauge was lost from shooting down that single enemy is already recovered by the time you managed to defeat another, so you'll be harassed by these officers the ENTIRE MISSION. If you managed to overcome the complete unfairness, you're rewarded with a battle at their HQ against three heavily powered opponents. Two enemy Ace Pilots come out in the Musha and Musha Mk. II Gundams, extremely powerful mobile suits, and are led by the Knight Gundam, easily the most overpowered Gundam in the entire game. You must defeat all three of them to complete the mission. Is now a bad time to remind you that you cannot absolutely take a single hit? Knight Gundam seems to know this and will spam his SP attack every other minute.
24	** Save Scumming is the only way you will beat this stage without breaking a controller.
25	** Interestingly enough, there's something about this stage that isn't present in ANY other stage at all. Your ally mooks are actually useful, and will utterly destroy a single enemy Ace Pilot if they attempt to capture your zone by themselves. That's right, your generic grunts, who couldn't defend your zones for ANYTHING in the past 100 gameplay hours, are now suddenly strong enough that they can defend the zone AND take down the very same pilot that can kill you in one or two hits. A Crowning Moment of Awesome if you think about it long enough.
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27	[[AC:Other ''Warriors''-style Games]]
28	* ''VideoGame/HyruleWarriors'', the spin-off based on ''Franchise/TheLegendOfZelda'' universe, has its examples on [[ThatOneLevel/TheLegendOfZelda this]] page.
29	* ''VideoGame/FireEmblemWarriorsThreeHopes'' has a nasty Paralogue on the Azure Gleam route if you met certain conditions. You're given Shez, Catherine, Shamir, and [[spoiler: Jeralt]], with green-team Alois and Gustave, and the goal is to prevent several waves of Those Who Slither In The Dark from escaping, and you lose if even one enemy reaches its designated area. The level starts with some locked gates in strongholds separating your team into two, with Catherine and Shamir on the south, and enemy Wyvern Lords with a Flight Route shortcut to their escape point. The last wave has more escaping enemies than you have characters, heading to four distinct places, meaning this is perhaps the only level in either ''Fire Emblem Warriors'' game where not pairing your units together is practically mandatory.
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31	[[AC:''VideoGame/GodOfWar'']]
32	* [[VideoGame/GodOfWarI The original game]]:
33	** Hades is a rare ThatOneLevel that's ''actually'' [[BonusLevelOfHell Hell]].[[note]]The extras disc for ''God of War II'' reveal that the Hades level was the only one that wasn't play-tested, hence the difficulty.[[/note]]
34	** Some people find every obstacle course and puzzle sequence in that game to be like this. They worked fine and all, but they were damn hard/annoying. Especially outrunning those spike walls, and dragging that cage up the mountain.
35	** When you had to move a box along a floor in a certain time limit, or else spikes would come out of the floor and instantly kill you. Even some players declare this level even harder than the above Hades sections.[[note]]This was lampshaded in the Collection edition with the achievement: "Kickboxer"[[/note]]
36	** One major Scrappy combat section: a confrontation with three Cyclopses early in the Athens Town Square map. On easier difficulties it's merely annoying, but on Hard and Very Hard, it becomes ridiculously frustrating and unfair, unlike the rest of the game which is hard but fair.
37	** The "final" final boss fight is a nightmare. You are stripped of your weapons and magic and given a thoroughly useless one which appends unnecessary flourishes to everything, whilst fighting a boss who hits fast and hits hard.
38	* ''VideoGame/GodOfWarII'':
39	** The part where you have to protect the Translator. It basically involves [[EscortMission carrying around]] the ultimate SquishyWizard on your back and trying to protect him from the game's most frustrating DemonicSpiders, the Satyrs and the Minotaur Priests, enemies you would be lucky enough to survive against yourself! It's only moderately difficult on some of the more human difficulty levels, but on Titan, it can be seemingly impossible. If you haven't upgraded ''just right'' up until this point (usually by [[LevelGrinding exploiting infinite respawn and / or magic areas for experience orbs]]), you could be stuck in an {{Unwinnable}} situation. To add insult to injury, ''you can totally see the final boss lair from the balcony!!!'' At least when / if you ever get past this part, you immediately get to [[VideoGameCrueltyPotential smash the fragile little bastard's face into a book]] to [[CatharsisFactor vent your frustrations]].
40	** On [[HarderThanHard Titan Mode]], every part of the game that's merely tedious turns into That One Level/Boss. One notable example is at the end of the first Pegasus segment, ''right after the prologue''. The Dark Rider portion, specifically: he traps you in a draft and shoots bursts of dark magic at you that you have to dodge, the last of which is unavoidable and ends up railroading Kratos into the next section of the game. The problem is that now, each hit takes off over half of your life bar, so you ''have'' to avoid everything up to this point or you're dead. The only problem is figuring out how to dodge [[ThatOneAttack THAT DAMN PENULTIMATE DARK BURST!]] Even when you go on the opposite side of the draft from where it'd logically hit you, you still get damaged by it!
41	** By itself, one of the late-game sections is tedious. You're basically grabbing the chains in a pillar and pulling them to make the elevator move down, but a ways down, the ceilings sprouts spikes and starts coming down, so it turns into a race to get to the bottom and open the door before you're impaled and crushed. Problem is, [[DemBones the skeletons]] [[ItsQuietTooQuiet you saw just lying on the ground since you entered]] start coming to life and attacking you. Not only do you have to keep them off of you while you move the elevator (which is easy enough with a cast of [[ShockAndAwe Cronos' Rage]]), but the skeletons will occasionally grab hold of the gears actually moving the elevator and stop them entirely, so you have to stop and kill them anyway. The whole thing is more tense than anything.
42	** The gauntlet of enemies preceding Clotho's Chamber in the end game? Little-to-no health/magic recovery from beginning to end, and you have to face several rounds of almost every enemy you've ever seen in the game, from [[DemonicSpiders Satyrs]] to [[LightningBruiser Cyclopes]]. Hope you mastered using The Golden Fleece, or you're not walking out of this with minimal damage.
43	* The Cavern from ''VideoGame/GodOfWarIII''. You're on a moving platform in the form of a giant box held up by a chain. The basic minions attacking aren't difficult, but then [[DemonicSpiders two minotaur]] appear, determined to break the chain, which is followed by another mook rush. Followed by two more with archers sniping at you. More mooks follow, and then SEVERAL more attack. And if you fail at any point, you have to start over.
44	* The Trials of Archimedes from ''VideoGame/GodOfWarAscension'' is another contender. Basically you must endure three waves, each with powerful enemies consisting of [[DemonicSpider lightning sirens, gorgons]], [[GoddamnBats harpies]] and other powerful enemies. The real kicker is that there is little to no health powerups and if you die, you have to start from the first wave all over again. It becomes so bad that a patch is later released so that you regain health and magic for each waves cleared.
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46	[[AC:Other]]
47	* ''VideoGame/ChampionsOfNorrath'': has ''several.'' The Plane Of Nightmares is a big one, if for no other reason than that it is filled to the brim with GodDamnBats and DemonicSpiders. Oh, and ''[[CheckPointStarvation they forgot to put in save points.]]''
48	** The Crypt of Decay is a combination of UnexpectedGameplayChange, TheMaze, and BrutalBonusLevel. Navigating is a pain, you have to trip levers to open doors ''then get to those doors before they close.'' Other than the occasional [[GodDamnBats spider enemy]] and the [[DemonicSpiders Minotaur/Archer combo]], nothing is trying to kill you and you just wander...And wander... And wander...
49	* The Desert Lands levels in ''{{VideoGame/Gauntlet}} Dark Legacy''. The enemies are so tough and numerous that you can lose hundreds, if not thousands, of your hard-earned HitPoints.
50	** The Ice levels are all ThatOneLevel - they are all very long, the enemies spawn quickly and do NOT give good experience, there are traps that are hard to avoid which can be a real drain on your health, and getting all the necessary extras requires a lot of steps.
51	* In ''VideoGame/{{Drakengard}}'', we have Leonard's Regret, specifically the verse "Gleamings". Aside from the waves of those ever-annoying bulb-armor knights, the end of the stage sees you fighting a dozen heavy cavalry. They have an attack that causes them to charge at you and send you flying if it hits. Since there are so many of them, several are ''guaranteed'' to charge at once, and MercyInvincibility doesn't kick in until you recover, so prepare to be ping-ponged between several of them. Oh, and they ''love'' doing this while you're busy attacking one cavalryman and they're offscreen. And there are ''two more waves'' after the first. Best to call out Leonard for the last one...
52	** In truth, all of the pact-partner side chapters are like this. "Arioch's Madness", due to miserable flight controls, is worse yet.
53	* ''VideoGame/{{Bayonetta}}''. You've played through Normal mode, had a blast, [[spoiler:[[DidYouJustPunchOutCthulhu punched God]] [[MegatonPunch into the sun]]]], and you've unlocked Hard Mode. Shouldn't be too bad, right? Unfortunately, in Hard Mode, the ''very first level'' is that one level. Halfway through the level, you're on the wings of a plane, in [[BulletTime Witch Time]], and because it's the tutorial level, this is the part where you learn about [[LimitBreak torture attacks]]. You must execute three of them to pass this point, and [[TimedMission you have to do it within the time limit before the plane you and Jeanne are on crashes and you die]]. They don't redo the tutorial itself, but you still gotta do the torture attacks...against '''[[DemonicSpiders Gracious and Glorious]]'''. To do a torture attack, you spend 8 units of magic. You get one unit for every few hits you land on an enemy, and lose '''''4''''' if you get hit. On normal, this wasn't so bad, because the enemies were pathetic. On hard, it's hell, because Gracious and/or Glorious just love to interrupt your combos, and are as aggressive as sharks in a feeding frenzy. The rest of the game isn't anywhere near this bad, and it's humiliating to get your ass handed to you sixteen dozen times ''on the tutorial level''.
54	** Chapter 5 is a brick wall for a lot of new players. Not only is it the second longest level in the game, with no fewer than ''fourteen verses'' (eleven if you don't do the Alfheims), it introduces a whole host of aggravating angels -- Grace and Glory (similar in many ways to Gracious and Glorious from the previous example, the main difference being that you can Witch Time off these guys), the Fearlesses (the even worse version of the Fairnesses from Chapter 3), the Harmonies (raylike angels that you have to fight for the first time right AFTER a Grace and Glory fight), and the Inspired (big-ass snake angels that like to move fast, shoot fireballs and whip you with their tails). It also has several platforming segments that either do damage to you if you fuck up or kill you outright in the later ones, and to top it all off, the end fight is another big showdown with [[ThatOneBoss Jeanne]]. Good luck getting through it all on one lifebar, especially if you're new to the game and [[EarlyGameHell don't have everything yet]].
55	* ''VideoGame/Bayonetta3'': Although Chapter 10 is mostly rather short and tame (aside from the boss fight at the end, which can admittedly be a little challenging), verse 1 has become infamous amongst fans. Although there are only a few enemies, you can only damage them via Witch Time. The problem is, that you’re playing as Viola, and activating Witch Time with her requires a perfect parry especially since, even if you do activate Witch Time, a lot of the time, they barely give you enough time to even do any damage at all. You’re on a time limit, and it can take forever to kill enemies like this, and you can only get hit five times before you fail.
56	* Act 3 of ''VideoGame/DiabloII''. You have to slog through a jungle with switchbacks and dead ends populated by a) little pygmy demons who either swarm and stab you or shoot you from afar with blowguns, which are led by shaman with the ability to revive the pygmys; b) enormous mosquitoes that drain your stamina and poison you; c) giant bramble-men that can take most of your best and hit hard. This is on top of an act-long fetch quest which forces you to fully explore the jungle [[AbsurdlySpaciousSewer and the sewers]] of a nearby city looking for the unusually well-preserved remains (eye, brain, heart) of a Zakarum high priest.
57	** The Maggot Lair from Act II is hated by many players with good reason. Most of the dungeon consists of very narrow and winding passageways, making setting traps or using minions problematic at best and making it quite easy to get lost without the automap, and the most common enemies aside from the maggots themselves are the beetles, which have Lightning Enchanted as a primary feature (meaning that they shoot out lightning every time they get hit) -- and given the very tight quarters, you have no choice but to eat lightning damage, especially if you're a melee character. There are ''four levels'' to this thing, and worst of all, going through this hell is required to get the Staff of Kings, one of the three items necessary to reassemble the Horadric Staff.
58	* ''VideoGame/SengokuBasara: Samurai Heroes'' has Incident at Honno-ji. Apart from being [[GuideDangIt a pain in the arse to even find]] the level is swarming with a wide variety of enemies, is large and time-consuming to navigate, and puts a strict time limit on capturing bases - and failing to do so allows ThatOneBoss at the end of the level to resurrect another time, further putting your survival chances in the toilet. There is a trick to it: [[spoiler:Nobunaga always activates the Mortal Coils in the same order. Take the southernmost base, then both northern ones, then use Hero Time to get to the south-western one. That base contains a slingshot to the north-western one, which then has a slingshot to the eastern base, completing the sequence.]] That said, even taking optimal routes, you have to move pretty quickly while defeating every officer you pass to make it work. The character the game forces you to use the first time? Oichi, who has the movement speed of a duck in molasses (though in all fairness, she isn't the worst choice to tackle this stage with. Imagine being forced to use ''Kanbe''...)
59	* ''VideoGame/FistOfTheNorthStarKensRage'': the final chapter of Legend mode the first time through is an absolute nightmare. First of all, the game makes it very easy to collect mission stars - keep in mind collecting these gives all enemies (bosses included) an attack boost, and the only way to avoid getting enough stars for the first buff is to [[ViolationOfCommonSense counter-intuitively]] run right past a bunch of {{Mooks}} the game lights up for you. Once you get up to the gate before the final boss (the level's one courtesy is that it's short and simple in layout), you have a gauntlet of dodging falling pillars, then it takes SuspiciousVideoGameGenerosity to a new level by putting a two-wave ambush in the room with the stage's last pickups. The second wave of this has ''four'' minibosses at once, and if you're forced to grab the water (or worse, food) during this fight, you can end up heading into to FinalBoss with no spirit and a severely drained health bar. And said boss? Raoh, a MarathonBoss with no checkpoints, no recovery items present (a nasty shock, since every previous boss had a few crates lying around), and capable of offing you in two or three hits with the only checkpoint being at the very start of the battle.
60	* Chapter 8: The Mine Sweepers in ''VideoGame/{{Magicka}}''. It's very long, and Zerg Rushes you constantly with loads of annoying enemies (including Archers who can set you on fire from a range and Captains who can freeze you and block your attacks). Most of the second half has you navigating narrow pathways over bottomless pits, including one moving platform, in the dark. And it has a hard (and long) boss at the end.
61	** Chapter 11: Raiders Of The Lost Ruins puts all the other hard levels in the game to shame. It's a ''massive'' MarathonLevel, complete with CheckpointStarvation. You start off fighting Snow Trolls, who jump out of nowhere, are very fast, and can kill you instantly, and it only gets worse from there. You have to fight loads and loads of Dwarves, who are very tough, always attack in big groups, and are usually backed by their Priests, the strongest enemy wizards in the game. And that's not even mentioning the [[BossInMookClothing Watchers]]. The last section is a cave flooded with lava, requiring you to fight loads of enemies in very confined spaces with certain death on every side, including ones who can set you on fire. However, if you use Invisibility you can theoretically skip most of the fighting, but it's still tricky to sneak past everyone, and there are some sections you are forced to fight through. And if you didn't know it was there, you can very easily miss picking up Invisibility altogether.
62	** ''The Stars Are Left'' DLC is meant as a challenge for experienced players, but most of it isn't TOO too hard...until you reach Chapter 3: [[spoiler:The Nightmare Corpse-City Of R'Lyeh]]. The main reason is that the game abruptly switches from straight up action to facing you with puzzles. Of the four puzzles in the Chapter, one requires you to run at top speed through a corridor while being chased by an endlessly spawning horde of tough enemies before reaching an area where an enemy that can kill you in one hit appears with no warning, forcing you to react the right way within split second, one borders on a MoonLogicPuzzle that requires you to do a very specific action that's never hinted at, one is a more reasonable but quite tricky puzzle, and one requires you to run across invisible bridges while being harried by very powerful enemies. And once you solve two of the four, you have to fight a boss to continue. And your reward for beating that? ''The hardest boss in Magicka, BAR NONE''.

Context ThatOneLevel / HackAndSlash