-> '''Rhythm League Notes'''\\
That... could have been better.\\
'''[[HaveANiceDeath Try Again]]'''
--> --'''VideoGame/RhythmHeaven Fever''', when failing a Remix

Just when you thought it was safe to rock out, [[ThatOneLevel these tracks]] come along and can ruin your groove like no other.
----
[[foldercontrol]]

[[folder: Video Game/Guitar Hero ]]

* "[[Music/{{Slayer}} Raining Blood]]" in ''VideoGame/GuitarHero III'' represents a sudden difficulty spike in the very final set, making it a [[ScrappyLevel Scrappy song]] for more than a few players, irrespective of whether one likes the actual music or not. The most notorious section, labeled "Mosh 1" in training mode, consists of a pattern of rapidly descending notes with a few chords sprinkled in, which will rapidly drain your health if you slip up. The rest of the song isn't cakewalk either, with a mix of fast strumming and tricky chord patterns, leading to a guitar solo whose chart occasionally looks like someone randomly spraying notes all over your screen.
* Music/{{Metallica}}'s "One" has a solo which opens with an ''extremely'' fast barrage of ascending triplets, likely to make you fail in a second if you make a single mistake. Making it worse, this segment is [[EpicRocking nearly 6 minutes into the song]], which you have to play all over again if you fail.
* "[[Music/{{Dragonforce}} Through the Fire and Flames]]" is easily regarded as the hardest song in ''III''. At least that song is [[BrutalBonusLevel OPTIONAL]]. It's almost impossible to get past the ''opening'' without mastering two-handed tapping (a skill that isn't taught in the tutorial and is rarely needed outside of this song), and the rest of the song just gets harder from there.
* Also from ''III'' is a rock remaster of "The Devil Went Down to Georgia", and it serves as the FinalBoss song. If it's not "Through the Fire and Flames" being regarded as the hardest song in ''III'', it's this song.
* "[[Music/{{Slipknot}} Before I Forget]]" is considered one of the most annoying due to a large amount of FakeDifficulty that doesn't properly represent how the song is actually played on a real guitar. The chorus is a mess of three-note chords that probably shouldn't have been charted like that, but the highlight is the bridge, which is a long series of green + yellow, red + blue, and yellow + orange chords that can quickly cause severe hand cramps[[note]]If you want to experience how hard this is, lay your hand flat against a surface, tap the surface with your index and ring finger at the same time, then tap with your middle and pinky finger. Then keep alternating between index+ring and middle+pinky taps at a steady rate of 4 per second and see how long it takes for you to mess up.[[/note]]. Notably, the song is also in ''Rock Band 3'' where the chart is vastly different, using single notes and two-note chords for the chorus, and single notes in the bridge, making it much less physically painful to play.
* ''Guitar Hero 2'' had similar songs, like "Freya," which was a repetitive hand-cramping chordfest, or "Psychobilly Freakout," which was very quick and random and could confuse the heck out of inexperienced players (or even veteran ones). And let's not even talk about "[[Music/{{Megadeth}} Hangar 18]]"...
* ''Guitar Hero 2'' had "Institutionalized" by Music/SuicidalTendencies on Expert. This song was a nightmare simply because there are vicious guitar solos over the verses, all of which change in speed while you're playing them. The song itself actually does not have a normal speed that it settles on, the song widely fluctuates whenever it feels like it and it does it to a more insane and unpredictable degree than even "Psychobilly Freakout."
%%* You'll notice the original ''Guitar Hero'' has no mention yet. It's because people are still trying to forget "[[Music/QueensOfTheStoneAge No One Knows]]" and "[[Music/{{Pantera}} Cowboys From Hell]]".
%%*** And "[[Music/{{Megadeth}} Symphony of Destruction]]". Yeah, thank you for tossing us our first solo with an impossibly bad HO/PO system, Harmonix. THANK YOU!
* "No One Knows" has an odd triplet rhythm combined with some very awkward chords, just before a solo. Usually not a problem with the assistance of star power, but due to it happening two or three times, it took constant repetition.
* Have fun trying to beat "Hot For Teacher" on drums in ''Guitar Hero World Tour.''
* "[[Music/{{JoeSatriani}} Satch Boogie]]" is the final song ''World Tour'', and for a good reason. The song is loaded with crazy guitar solos that zig-zag all over the place, including a very fast set of trills that require good tapping skills to hit.
* ''Guitar Hero Metallica'' has lots of difficult stuff here and there, but nothing in that game stands out as much as Slayer's "War Ensemble" on drums. That song throws EVERYTHING at you: fast bass hits that may or may not require double bass to keep up with even on normal Expert, relentless tiring beats, and to top it all off, lots of crazy fills that will require double sticking to master. One of THE hardest on-disc [=FCs=] in ANY Guitar Hero or Rock Band game ever. As of this time, it only has four documented [=FCs=] that I am aware of (five if you count that one of the people who FC'd it FC'd it a second time, which I have to mention because of its insane difficulty). And don't even get me STARTED on Expert+.
* "Dyer's Eve" on bass also deserves special mention. While this song does give the guitarist short breaks in the verses, the bass line never lets up from its insanely fast pace, and the verses all have different rhythms with an abundance of open notes, constantly switching things up and keeping you on your toes. This song is a true testament to Jason Newsted's wasted talent on the "...And Justice For All" album, and your strumming arm will hurt at the end of it all if you manage to survive.
* At least these songs, if you're required to do them, are at or near the end of the songlist. Not so Rocks The 80's with [[WebAnimation/HomestarRunner Because It's Midnite]], which is the encore song of the ''second'' venue. Actually, it's pretty manageable...on Hard. On Expert, however, the solo has over a hundred notes crammed into the middle section, meaning that unless you have ''extremely'' fast fingers, you're going to see the meter plunge in a hurry. Worse, it's so long that even a full star power meter (which I most definitely recommend) might not be enough to save you. If you can get past this monstrosity, I guarantee that nothing in the next TWO venues will come close to threatening you.
* ''Warriors of Rock'' has "Sudden Death", a song that was intentionally created to be as difficult as possible. Basically, Activision approached Megadeth and told them "We want you to make a song for our new Guitar Hero game, and we want it to be as fast and complex as you can make it."
* Speaking of Music/{{Megadeth}} and ''Warriors of Rock'', "This Day We Fight!" is also ridiculous on guitar with insane solos all over the place and a main riff that will cause all but the best players to fail on their first try.
* "[[Music/DragonForce Fury of the Storm]]": Think of it as "Through the Fire and Flames", but even more insane. If you can beat this song, then you can surely beat anything else in the entire series.
* "[[Music/ChildrenOfBodom If You Want Peace... Prepare for War]]" isn't too bad on guitar. That is, if you survive the insanely fast HO/PO runs that are thrown at you during the first 20 seconds of the song.
* "Speeding" also has a ridiculously fast intro. At least in the intro to this song, the notes can be tapped.
* "Black Widow of [=LaPorte=]" can easily be summed up as seven and a half minutes of nonstop shredding. It's so hard that you even get an achievement for beating the song on expert, which is appropriately called "Hand Mutilator".
* Of course, for those of us who've played On Tour for the DS, there was "[[Music/OzzyOsbourne I Don't Wanna Stop]]". If you thought a normal Ozzy chart was a good challenge, it's a nightmare with only 4 buttons & touch controls. This combined with a solo that is so long & hectic that not even Star Power will save you makes for quite the intro to the final venue.
* "[[Music/AmonAmarth Twilight of the Thunder God]]"[[labelnote:*]]This song was DownloadableContent for ''Guitar Hero 5'', but all the DLC for this game, along with ''World Tour'' and ''Warriors of Rock'', are no longer available due to the DLC service being shut down[[/labelnote]] on Expert+ drums is nearly filled to the brim with bass notes that go so fast that you '''will''' need two bass pedals to even stand a chance. And Thor help you if you even try to FC this chart.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Video Game/Rock Band ]]

* "[[Music/{{ACDC}} Let There Be Rock]]" in ''VideoGame/RockBand 2'':
** On guitar, the solo requires you to strum extremely fast for extended periods of time, which can actually cause strong physical pain and require you to pause several times. The live version on the AC/DC Track Pack is not only longer and faster, but also throws trills as fast as Satch Boogie mentioned above at the beginning of the final guitar solo.
** On drums, the song has a simple drum beat that's boring, but easy enough. The live version from the AC/DC Track Pack, however, is much faster on top of the song being longer, meaning that not only is it boring, it'll kill your arm.
* "Green Grass And High Tides" by the Outlaws, from the first ''Rock Band''. Oh, a 10 minute long songs. Only it doesn't even get hard until the second solo where it gets ridiculous. Notably, due to the game's strum limit hampering inputs, it wasn't FC'd on RB1 until ''2022'', and even then it had to be done a PAL console.
* "[[Music/RedHotChiliPeppers Give It Away]]" is a somewhat lengthy song that contains no pitches until the very end, making it easy to be caught off guard and blow your 100% on the final phrase.
* "Caprici di Diablo" on Expert Guitar is a nightmare for even veteran RB players. Good luck trying to pass it on your first several dozen runs let alone shooting for higher than 3 Stars.
* "Yellow Submarine" Expert Bass in ''Music/TheBeatles: VideoGame/RockBand'' is far more difficult than it should be, especially when trying to full-combo or five-star it. There aren't many notes, leaving almost zero margin for error, and in order to get a halfway-decent score you more or less have to whammy every single overdrive note which could take away from your concentration from reading the note chart.
* When it comes to Drums in ''The Beatles Rock Band'', there is no beating the unholy duo of "I Wanna Be Your Man" and "What Goes On." The two songs have some of the fastest right-hand work in the entire series. How fast? Well, it's almost impossible to get all the way though "I Wanna Be Your Man" without needing a break. The song is 2 MINUTES LONG.
* "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnZ4DUWCnew We Are the Nightmare]]" is a challenging song overall, but it's widely regarded as having the most challenging drum work in Rock Band Network.
* "[[Music/DyingFetus Your Treachery Will Die With You]]" is known as one of the hardest drum [=FCs=] in the entire series, let alone in RBN. 95% of the song, while very difficult, isn't ridiculous - if you're good at blasting, double bass, and double-stroke fills, it's very manageable. There isn't anything unreasonable from a technical standpoint, it's just goddamn fast and will tire you out. The end is why it's such a bitch; the final 10 or so seconds of the song features gravity blasts. These aren't particularly hard on real drums with a bit of practice, but on a plastic Rock Band kit with no real rim that would allow you to do them properly coupled with a need for precision (which is tricky with gravity blasts even on real drums), the song is virtually impossible to completely nail and the amount of [=FCs=] can be measured in the low single digits.
* ''Rock Band 3'' gives us [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qwikXDZ8mQ "Antibodies"]] on guitar. Just watch the beginning, and know that it's gonna stay that way for the whole first half of the song. Then skip to 2:43, and watch all your worst nightmares come true. Oh yeah, two things to keep in mind: (1) The Rock Band guitar SUCKS at strum-fests like this, and (2) ''This is tier '''TWO!!!''''' (We'll never know why...)
** There's also the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UShrJq6xVGA keyboard chart]], which Harmonix actually had the good sense to rate a six... but it's only a bitch for the first half. Well, unless you're playing with a guitar controller.
** The tier-six bass part is just as frustrating, with the last minute-plus filled with hand-cramping arpeggios.
* "[[Music/{{Yes}} Roundabout]]" on normal or pro keys--it's considered the hardest non-RBN song on keys to date. If the fills don't get you, the long, grueling, arpeggio-laden interlude will. And two-handing it is not at all guaranteed to help.
* "Dreamchaser" is commonly cited as one of the single hardest RBN songs on Keys, all because of the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sj-h1SferFU second solo]]. For the average player, a full bar of Overdrive is required to pass it, and even that's not guaranteed. The guitar chart is no slouch either, with three brutal solos.
* Rock Band 4 presents the new king of scrappy songs. Take "Visions" from RB2, get rid of the slow section in the middle and make the whole thing twice as long, and you've got ''"Dream Genie"''. At least the guitar gets a break with solos that are just sustains... but the drums, on the other hand...
* "Dead Black (Heart of Ice)" is slow and easy for the first two minutes until, out of nowhere, it throws fast blasts at you which can drain your health bar instantly if you're not prepared. It's even worse about four minutes in, when you go from dead silence directly into a long blast section ''at a new tempo''... and if you ever lose the beat, it's back to four minutes of boringness to try again.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Video Game/beatmania and Video Game/Dance Dance Revolution ]]

* "Holic" from ''VideoGame/{{beatmania}} IIDX'' and ''VideoGame/DanceDanceRevolution''. The song (for the most part) does not follow the standard 4/4 time signature of most music, which trips up many first-timers, and in ''beatmania IIDX'', its Another chart has one of the series' first examples of DifficultySpike--at the very end of the song, you're greeted with a clusterfuck of 250 or so notes, which are enough to make you fail easily. This has resulted in many players [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HY1FCqU5VVg getting as high as an AAA on the song...but having 2-10% less life than needed for a clear]].
* Also, many of the later boss charts in the DDR series are particularly scrappy. The [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TY3iOBe1-Qg American [=PS2=] Challenge chart for "Horatio"]] is pretty much known for being an example in bad charting. The Shock Arrows used throughout the song, when hit, not only break your combo, but also lower your life AND make the arrows temporarily invisible for a split second. This was simplified in both the arcade and the Japanese versions of the game, fortunately.
* Would you believe that an ''easy'' song can also qualify as scrappy? In the [=PS2=] port of ''beatmania IIDX 3rd Style'', there are any number of songs whose timing is off, many of which are easier songs. The result: easy clears, but horribly low scores. The most infamous example of such a song is "Gambol," which came to (in)fame when it was revived on ''9th Style''...but didn't have its timing fixed. Konami acknowledged this and gave its Normal chart fixed timing in ''IIDX 12'', but left the Hyper chart as is. Finally, in the [=PS2=] port of ''IIDX 11'', Konami decided to take Gambol's bad timing a step further: it gets a new, Another chart (unlocked from Expert Mode) with the exact same notes as its Normal and Hyper charts...but the timing is rigged such that you can only get Just Greats, the extremely rare Great, and Bads, with anything more than 1 frame outside of the timing window for a Just Great resulting in a Bad. For additional fun, play this chart with the Hard modifier, which swaps out the Groove Gauge for a more traditional LifeMeter in which running out of life will instantly eject you from the song.
** As of ''IIDX 15'' for the [=PS2=] and ''IIDX 16'' in the arcade, cheat codes allow you to apply Gambol Hyper/Another timing to ''every song in the game''
* The song "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGqcRJ-Uw1I gigadelic]]" is another major offender in the end-of-song DifficultySpike department. It's particularly annoying because Konami LOVES to use it as the last song in the [[KyuAndDanRanks 8th Dan]] course, meaning you're likely to fail in the last 5 seconds of an 8-minute course.
** Speaking of difficulty spikes, there's Healing-D-Vision that throws a massive 8th note stream at you at 360 BPM.
* Pluto. Just... friggin [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtWqfWxQMmY Pluto]]. Count how many times the arrows randomly stop and start without warning. In fact, somebody at Konami decided that they loved this song so much that they thought it would be a good idea to carry it over to [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJQlBSOgLX4 IIDX]] as well, where BPM antics like these are far harder for the player to deal with. This song is a Scrappy Level incarnate.
** Just wait til you try Pluto The First. Random tempo changes and stops up the wazoo that make the original Pluto look like a cute little puppy. And while Hottest Party 3 was lucky to miss out on the [[ScrappyMechanic Shock Arrows]], the Boss Song stage makes the arrows REAL hard at the 440 BPM sections to see if you have them set to "Rainbow" or "Note". Hell, it's so bright, they're hard to see at all, no matter your arrow color. Shame the stage is so [[AwesomeYetImpractical beautiful by itself]].
** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrAORhHq6nM Fascination MAXX]] is another major offender in IIDX's BPM antics department.
* [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9eL3PrVgKU MAX 300]] is That One Level in ''IIDX'' for the [[FakeDifficulty wrong reasons]]. It starts off at 50 BPM for no real reason before shooting up to its actual BPM of 300. This causes problems for players who use the "Green Number" (a number showing how long notes are visible for, influenced by the Hi-Speed and Sudden+ settings) feature since the Green Number is based on the song's ''starting'' BPM. So players have to mess with their Hi-Speed and Sudden settings at the beginning just for this song. Fascination MAXX also has this problem, but at least that song actually starts at 100 BPM.
* Overcrush: it's your typical BossRush, except it's condensed into one song. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPShbS5f19A Let this video speak for itself.]]
* In DDR Universe 1, some of the missions qualify as this. One such example is the Vanity Angel mission. Triple speed, boosted arrows, a low health bar that doesn't recover, and a mission that requires you to break a combo if you're about to hit the same note twice. The game itself is infamous for its bad timing, so have fun. That isn't the only bad mission, though; the Brightness Darkness mission is also insanely hard; [[DamnYouMuscleMemory Shuffled arrows]], the arrows scroll from top to bottom (as opposed to bottom to top), you can't see the bar that you have to hit the arrows with, and the chart's timing is off by a half a beat. That last alteration is a LOT harder to get used to than it sounds. The mission? Full combo on the last third of the song. The chart is a 9 out of 10 difficulty wise, and for good reason too. Enjoy.
* Some of the shit Universe 3's Quest Mode puts you through. The 3rd challenge on Pictor Street is Concertino In Blue on Oni, with the arrows sped up 2-and-a-half times and shuffled arrows. Your job is to get 4/5 of the chart perfect. Thank GOD it's only 6 measures. Club Tucana has you getting all Marvelouses on the last two measures of Absolute, slowdown included, with the Dark modifier. And then there's the Club Pyxis challenge. Kimochi Expert. Full combo, get NG for freezes, and you can't hit 8th notes or the same note twice. That doesn't sound hard, but here's the catch; '''A modifier is in place so that you can't tell the timing of the notes apart.''' Oof.
* DDR [=X2's=] Dice Master mode is chock-full of missions that require you to be an expert at the game, but the last area is full of Scrappies. Jenny's mission is genuinely impossible, and Ruby's is almost as bad. Julio's mission requires you to do Pluto The First ''with a speed mod'', and let me tell you about the final mission. Roppongi Evolved. '''SEVEN. TIMES. IN. A. ROW.''' That is all.
** That mission in Yuni's area that requires an MFC on Love Is Orange, or Louis' last (solo) mission that requires you to clear Sacred Oath with a fucked-up arrow placement ''with Boost turned on'' that only gives you a few chances to miss. For that matter, any mission whose requirement is "Get X Marvelous" and involves playing on Basic difficulty or lower is going to be impossible unless you're a robot, because of how few steps you're allowed to get less than Marvelous on.
* DDR Universe 2's Challenge Mode has several Scrappies, exhibit A being Catastrophic 4. Synergy, Expert difficulty, on Hidden. You start with low health. In addition, start with anything that isn't perfect and you fail instantly, which segues into its first requirement; your Perfect total must ALWAYS be higher than your total of Great, Good and Almost combined. To add insult to injury, your second objective requires you to have 60 Perfects, 60 Greats, AND 60 Goods. The only requirement that isn't borderline impossible is to end with low health.
** Apocalyptic 5. That is all. Eternus on Expert. With a few poison arrows (that you're not allowed to hit). Can't get a combo greater than 10 or step on the same direction twice. The kicker? Whilst dodging all this, ''you have to step 80% of the song perfectly.'' But wait, there's more! '''''IT'S NOT RUNNING THE RIGHT CHART!''''' It's running the Expert chart for Dead End instead, which is an even harder and faster song!
* DDR SuperNOVA's "Boss Rush episode IV" on [=PS2=]. As if ten-footers weren't bad enough on their own (''especially'' the ones in Supernova), try doing SIX OF THEM in a row! To make matters worse, the really hard ones are right at the end, when you're exhausted... AND your health bar becomes MUCH more sensitive to misses! For anyone insane enough to try this, here's what you're up against:
** 1. MAX 300 (Super-Max-Me Mix) -- Expert. While not as bad as some other ten-footers, the fact that it's the ''opener'' is basically a final warning that there is no way in hell you will make it through this course alive. It's also draining, exactly how you want to start ten minutes of ten-footers.
** 2. Chaos -- Expert. Again, not too bad... assuming you've memorized all forty-two times when the song stops and starts again. Nowhere near as physically hard as other tens or even some nines so it's a stamina break after Super-Max-Me Mix, but if you go in blind you'll fail.
** 3. Fascination MAXX -- Expert. Here's where the course really kicks in gear. FAXX has everything: 400 BPM streams (short and simple ones but still, and you have to turn a couple times at the end), 200 BPM gallops and stepjumps, reading slow, and if you're playing with the Note or Rainbow skins all the notes at the end are the same color.
** 4. Xepher -- Challenge. Much easier than FAXX or even Super-Max-Me Mix but the gallops are draining and you just played FAXX.
** 5. Healing-D-Vision -- Challenge. You just KNEW this one was coming. The start's not that bad for a 10, though it's not quantized properly (12ths in the music, 16ths in the chart). But then all hell breaks loose in the last third when you launch into 360 BPM and are faced with relentless 8th note runs. And about that last run... hoo boy. Eight insanely fast crossovers, requiring you to turn your body a full 180 degrees THREE TIMES A SECOND without falling on your face, and because the lifebar is much crueler than Game Mode's by now you don't have any wiggle room. This is rated an 18 on the current scale, 3 levels higher than Super-Max-Me Mix and roughly a 12 out of 10 on this scale, and because this song puts all its difficulty in a short section the hard lifebar is worse here than it would be on most 18's.
** 6. Fascination (eternal love mix) -- Challenge. The final song's relatively tame 200 BPM (really 400 BPM quarter notes, most of the song's like that) intro will feel like a chore, but since HDV just did a hell of a number on your health meter, you'll NEED to hit every step to avoid failure. After the Chaos-esque middle section, it's all downhill, because you'll be faced with 200 BPM gallops and stepjumps EVERYWHERE. In the final stretch you'll be rapidly alternating between jumping three times in a row and complicated 8th-note patterns at 400 BPM. As you hear the end of the song starting, you get more and more anxious and afraid to screw up as you push yourself through those brutal jumps and onto that final freeze-jump, and... you forgot that there's a stop at the very end, so you get an NG and lose your last ounce of health.
** Oh yeah, and if you somehow manage to make it through all of that, try it on Challenge mode, which means you can't miss more than three steps per song... or the arcade version, which gives you a slightly easier song list (the first song is only a nine-footer, albeit a high-end nine), but the three-miss requirement goes for the WHOLE COURSE, not each individual song.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Video Game/Rhythm Heaven ]]

* The fireworks stage of ''Rhythm Tengoku'' is unpopular with fans of the game for many reasons: the music isn't that great, there are no quirky characters or strange scenes, and the timing is rather difficult.
* The [[UsefulNotes/JapaneseHolidays Bon Odori]] stage is equally unpopular with many of those playing the game on an emulator. In fact, the Bon Odori gets worse with its revisit, the Bon Dance. The clap patterns are much more complex and the beat is generally faster.
* The DS sequel's Scrappy seems to be Fillbots, which requires precise timing and, in the second version, lasts for nearly ''three minutes.''
* Rhythm Rally is the same ordeal. The first is just generally hard, but the revisit, Rhythm Rally 2, is faster, has a new queue that's basically one fast swing after another, and a Camera Screw.
* Moai Doo Wop 2. Along with the screwy detection, you have barely any patterns. In rhythm games, you kinda need patterns.
* The Dazzles also has its share of hate, mostly because it requires very precise timing to get a "Superb", as in getting everything isn't enough, you also need to be precise.
* Rockers 1 & 2: In a game defined by memorizing and following regimented patterns, this one is so freeform it will trip you up. And the second game adds in a ScrappyMechanic in which you have to use the R button in addition having harder patterns.
** Even worse are the Guitar Lessons, which are just Rockers performing to other Rhythm Heaven songs. These songs require fast flick-hold combos that don't follow the same notes as the original games, plus the more insulting fact that Guitar Lessons (and its spin-off, Battle Of The Bands) take up about a third of the unlockable content, meaning if you don't like Rockers, [[DisappointingLastLevel there's not much motivation to get all the Medals.]]
* Lockstep is incredibly tricky because it constantly switches between the on-beat and off-beat. As it goes on, it becomes much harder to determine timing visually. For those with poor sense of the beat, this can be a brick wall.
* In ''Fever'', both Love Rap games will trip up many a player with its extremely odd timings, such that trying to play it by ear frequently yields ''worse'' results than trying to figure out some kind of visual cue.
* "Monkey Watch" in Fever is a a stopping point for anyone new. Not only is there a TON of inputs, but you're constantly losing the beat because of the offbeat pink-monkey patterns. Of note is that this is the 9th stage in the game out of 50, so if you can't overcome this, most of the game will be locked off from you. ''Megamix'' seems to have acknowledged its out-of-place difficulty, as "Monkey Watch" is the very last ''Rhythm Heaven Fever'' stage.
* "Tap Troupe" has a very weird triplet pattern and brutal beat changes which will prove a major hazard to any new players.
* "Shrimp Shuffle"'s tight timing and nasty pauses in the rhythm (1, 2, 3! 3, 2.....1!) can prove irritating, especially since the game counts it out for you. And the 2 offbeat patterns in the game trip up even veterans of the series.
* Catch Of The Day. Timing never got so precise. [[InterfaceScrew Interface Screw]] was never so frequent.
* Working Dough is not only repetitive and with precise timing, but it is LONG. Despite being just a simple follow-the-leader game, its length, timing, and speedy patterns make most people hate it.
** And don't forget its sequel, which trades off the fast patterns for unforgiving offbeat patterns and music that constantly quiets and sometimes even disappears. Did we mention that [[ThisIsGonnaSuck both Working Doughs came back in Megamix?]]
* Drummer Duel is hated by most. It's blazing fast, has a miniscule margin of error, and it is VERY hard to get a superb on.
* "Love Lizards" tends to get a lot of flack not only because it's one of the most repetitive and monotonous games in the series, but the touch detection is extremely wonky, meaning it either won't register your slide at all, or it'll register a minute movement at the end of your last slide as another slide. Thankfully, outside of its own tier's Remix and [[FinalExamBoss Remix 10]], it doesn't show up anywhere else in the game.
* ''Rhythm Heaven Megamix'' introduces a Challenge Mode, in which you must complete a set of stages with additional conditions on top. Some of the most complained-about are:
** "Copycats"[[note]]Appropriately labeled "Super Hard!", even among the other Paprika challenges[[/note]] has you play Rhythm Tweezers, First Contact, and Working Dough, along with their sequels, without missing at all (you get 1 miss on Working Dough). You'll have tempo up to deal with too. All these games have a lot of inputs, particularly Working Dough, so this one can be a pain to complete.
** "Round-Object Fan Club": One of the conditions is to clear Flipper-Flop 2 with 3 or fewer missed inputs. There are 230 inputs in Flipper-Flop 2, and it is one of the most demanding stages with timing. It's also sped up. It's not as grueling as "Lockstep Lockdown," but it is located much earlier in the challenge list.
** "Extreme Sports"[[note]]Appropriately labeled "Super Hard!"[[/note]]: Despite its location at roughly the middle of the game's set of challenges, this is one of the hardest challenges in the entire game. Playing Air Rally at double speed is insane enough, but there's Exhibition Match at the end. It's set under Monster conditions, meaning the stage [[InterfaceScrew slowly shrinks]] until it's small enough for the monster to eat (which is an automatic failure), but getting perfect timing on an input increases the size of the screen. Exhibition Match has the second fewest inputs of any stage in the game[[note]]at twelve, after this game's version of The Clappy Trio, which has one fewer input[[/note]], and so you have the fewest chances to prevent the monster from eating the stage. "Extreme Sports" is also seven stages long[[note]]Spaceball, Rhythm Rally, Hole in One, Air Rally, Fruit Basket 2, Figure Fighter 2, and Exhibition Match, all of them at double speed[[/note]], so it's a huge uphill climb just to get to Exhibition Match.
** "Lockstep Lockdown"[[note]]Appropriately labeled "Super Hard!", and known as "Lockstep ''Hell''" in the Japanese version, fittingly enough[[/note]]: See the description for Lockstep above? Try playing it four times in a row, and you only get to miss a beat 3 times total before you're eliminated. Also, each iteration of Lockstep is sped up more than the previous one.
** "Rhythm Safari": At seven stages long[[note]]Bunny Hop, Rat Race, [=LumBEARjack=] 2, Blue Birds, Flock Step, Kitties!, and Fan Club 2[[/note]], this is one of the longer challenges. But what elevates this one to That One Stage status is that it is entirely at double speed and contains stages that are already incredibly up-tempo and have short cues at normal speed, rendering some of them, like Bunny Hop and Rat Race, near-unplayable.
** "Hello, Ladies...": At eight stages in a row[[note]]Fan Club, The Dazzles, Cheer Readers, Pajama Party, Exhibition Match, Hole in One 2, Jungle Gymnast, and Ringside[[/note]], all of them at double speed, it requires incredible consistency and accuracy to clear in spite of being the longest challenge in the entire game. They also have stricter requirements than normal for their types of goals, such as fewer allowed missed inputs or a higher minimum score in order to pass.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: ''Video Game/Beat Saber'' ]]

* "Balearic Pumping" on Expert is notoriously difficult on the PC version.
* As of the Monstercat update, "Overkill - RIOT" on Expert+ is far and away the most difficult song in the pack.
* From the campaign mode, mission 17b is a rather difficult one. The mission is to play "$100 Bills" on Expert and One Saber mode. The complex note clusters needing to be done with one hand is hard enough, but you only get four misses, any more and you lose the level. Without proper practice, it's very easy to fail the mission before the beat drops.
* Mission 29 is also a pretty insidious showstopper for most players. It requires getting a score of at least 400,000 on Rum 'n' Bass Expert while getting no more than five bad cuts. The margin of error for getting said score is ''ridiculously'' tight as it is, but the last part of the song throws in a ''ton'' of tightly grouped notes that, unless you've mastered rapid-fire cutting with one hand, will almost certainly fail you out on the bad cuts criteria. The "No Fail" mode being active during this mission is practically a slap in the face, because unless you get a Full Combo or damn close to it, you're not passing this mission, period.
* The Music/{{Camellia}} songs. All high-speed songs, and all with no fewer than five notes per second on the hardest difficulties. The general rule of thumb with these songs is that each chart should be treated as a level of difficulty higher than usual, which means mastering Expert+ is going to prove quite the ordeal for even the most seasoned players.
** One of the worst offenders is "GHOST", which is, by a very wide margin, the toughest official track in the entire game; this nearly [[MarathonLevel six-minute]] monstrosity clocks in at well over 200 beats per minute and, as such, requires near superhuman arm speed to come even close to surviving at any difficulty above Hard. Those who can best it on Expert+ without any difficulty-reducing modifiers are few and far between and taking it on with difficulty-''increasing'' modifiers is an exercise in utter insanity.
** With the release of the fifth OST album, "Boss-Level-Chan" is right up there with "GHOST". While it's not the six-minute monster that the former is, it is, by far, the '''fastest''' level in the game with a BPM of over 300! The Expert+ routine clocks in at almost nine notes per second, and the introduction of the chain notes only serves to make it more difficult.
* "[=FitBeat=]" certainly qualifies. To clarify, the chart itself isn't terribly complex. What makes this song so brutal is the fact that it's specifically designed to tire you out quickly, making your biggest obstacle on this track your own physical limits. On higher difficulties, you'll simply find yourself dropping from exhaustion long before you reach the end of the song unless you have a decent level of physical endurance.
* The "Angel Voices" Expert+ routine. It's not particularly difficult at only 4.5 notes per second (although it is the other [[MarathonLevel six-minute]] track), it's just mapped horribly to the point that passing it is such a challenge most players will not play it again.
* The addition of the ''Electronic Mixtape'' music pack adds Darude's "Sandstorm" to the list. At just shy of 7 notes per second on Expert+, and over 6 on Expert, it's been hailed as an honorary Camellia song by the fanbase. The light map provides an additional challenge as one of the most rapidly flashing light shows of any routine, to the point anyone would be well advised to take into account Beat Games' epilepsy warning and disable the flashing.
* The Rock Mixtape pack include Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Free Bird", a [[MarathonLevel nine minute]] {{Epic Rock|ing}} number. With just under 3,000 notes and an average of 5.5 notes per second on Expert+, players who are not familiar with the number may be surprised at how calm it is... that is, until they reach the halfway point of the song four minutes in, and the beat picks up. While the first half of the song isn't particularly challenging, players will be tired by this point and the second half of the song is nothing but long chains of notes that easily surpass the 5.5 nps average and get into Camelia territory. Just one of these note strings is enough to ruin a combo or even fail the song. Even on Normal, the guitar solo features arc notes that require unnatural wrist angles.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Other ]]

* ''VideoGame/SpaceChannel5 Part 2''. Report 4. In the Core, besides the game's usual cruel timing, you're subjected to a 'let's play in reverse' mini 'if you get this wrong you're dead meat'. That, and, if you played averagely on the other sections of the report, you have only four lives. Let's not even mention the 'Escape' part, which has odd beats and the robot-shooting is pure hell.
** The game treats you to ANOTHER one of these in Extra Report 6. The report itself is hard enough normally, but now? You only get TWO, count em' TWO lives for the part before the finale. This makes Purge the Great hellish now, especially when he throws you off with ".....down!" The game was kind enough to give you three lives for the finale.
* ''VideoGame/EliteBeatAgents'', another rhythm game, requires you to tap on-screen symbols in time to the beat. Except on Canned Heat, where this is nigh-impossible due to the fact that the song as a swing feel and the notes are only displayed when you almost have to tap the note. It's impossible on harder difficulty settings without memorizing the patterns.
** There's also [[Music/DavidBowie Let's Dance,]] which doesn't have an unintuitive beatmap or punishing timing. What it ''does'' have (on hard mode) is the first life bar that drops so quickly that you can hit every beat and still fail the level if your timing isn't spot-on. And pairs it with some very long pauses in the action where the bar ''will' drop because there are no beats to hit and restore it.
** [[Music/TheRollingStonesBand Jumping Jack Flash]], which is bad enough as it is, but in the harder difficulties you practically have to get every beat perfect, just to keep the [[GoshDangItToHeck darn]] meter in the 'Yes' zone.
*** The tougher difficulties are also fond of switching between [[ScrappyMechanic Spinners]] and the regular beat markers ''very rapidly'', and repeating this trick several times.
* The second [[VideoGame/OsuTatakaeOuendan Ouendan]] game has the 12th stage, "Believe", which is pretty much impossible on higher difficulties unless you get almost only perfects, since it's a rather slow song where the meter drops quickly. People have put up videos of themselves S-ranking the song ''and failing every cutscene''.
** It only gets worse from there.... "Zoku", the game's 13th stage, is decently hard on normal, with the notes feeling very offbeat, so you can imagine what the hard and insane versions are like. Lots of quick double taps which are hard to do consistently, insane reverse sliders, and notes placed on awkward spots on the screen. Good luck trying to do a no-miss run, let alone S-ranking it.
** The original OTO gave us "Koi no Dance Site", which on higher difficulties puts markers all over the place and gives you very little time to keep up with them.
** "Neraiuchi" gets flak for having a ''lot'' of [[ScrappyMechanic spinners]], and occasionally throws in beat sequences right after a long one.
** "Shanghai Honey" can also trip people up, due to strings of quick notes coupled with the quickly depleting life bar ensuring that making even just a few misses (or even mere [=100s=]) will be bad. It's even worse on Graceful Cheer (the hardest difficulty) as unlike the other songs where the beatmap is the same as hard but angled differently, it has rogue notes and a very different ending sequence which can trip those who were expecting something similar to the previous difficulty.
** The final stages of either Ouendan game combine long complex sequences of beats with a rapidly draining lifebar. "Ready Steady Go" from the first game is infamous for its third segment that has three spinners followed by rapid tapping sequences after you've tired out. "Sekai wa Sore wo Ai to Yobundaze" from the second game trips players up in its final segment, tossing in double-beats during the final chorus. Miss a few beats and chances are the damage is too much to recover from.
* If you thought any of the above stages was hard, try some of the beatmaps in the freeware PC game based on the series, ''VideoGame/{{osu}}!''. You've got some of the Insane/Expert beatmaps that users have made. To play in an advanced level, the time you take to move the cursor from one corner of the screen to the other shouldn't be more than about 200 milliseconds, and you should have total control of it to play on the beat. Also, some maps require aiming complex patterns rather quickly (for example, a 5-point star that covers the whole screen, with each circle about 125ms apart from each other; and then doing the same star but backwards and at an angle) . Also, maps where you have to press about 800 circles per minute are rather common, with some maps with 20-second parts that require pressing about 18.67 times per second. Needless to say, the only people who even have a chance of beating these types of levels are those with special (and usually extremely pricy) equipment, which is exactly why ''osu!'' is not for everyone.
* Guitar Hero emulator Clone Hero has pretty much made anyone capable of making this kind of level, but the one most infamous is [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVnWsRHJRf4& Soulless 4]]. How hard is it? It was released in 2015 and it was only Full Comboed for the first time in January 2019!
* Many mission in ''VideoGame/{{DJMAX}} Portable Black Square'', starting at the Rocker Rocker club in Area 5. Missions include getting a lot of points on a song while trying to chain together upwards of 7 or 8 [[LimitBreak Fever]]s and high accuracy on very hard songs.
** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMwR0DQ3m-w "Area 7"]] in ''DJMAX Technika'' has many repeat notes that follow a rhythm that is very awkward and irregular unless you are familiar with the song.
** "Color" in ''Technika'', on all difficulties. On [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgqJ1E3mpVE Popular]] and [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=feMt3SbNlQM Technical]], the chart is rated a 5. That rating is a '''[[BlatantLies lie.]]''' Halfway through the song on all difficulties, you start facing annoying fast repeat notes reminiscent of "jackhammer" notes from ''VideoGame/BeatmaniaIIDX'', and on Technical, there's another set near the end, which can easily cause you to have a last-second GameOver.
* Sticking with DJMAX creator's tradition of making players suffer, ''Superbeat:Xonic'' offers the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VsVNFHDazlA 6 Eleven]] mission, which requires you to beat five of the hardest songs in the game, all while gaining at least 95% overall judgement (which means that not only you have to hit your notes, but also nail them perfectly).
* ''VideoGame/ParappaTheRapper'':
** Stage 4, the cooking show stage starring Cheap Cheap Chicken, is a notably harsh DifficultySpike after the [[BreatherLevel slow, easy-going reggae rhythm of Stage 3]]. The input patterns often require the player to jump from the face buttons to the shoulder buttons at a moment's notice (often in rapid succession, naturally), and the margin for error is extremely thin in a song that is already pretty long. To make matters worse, this level has a glitch in the [=PS4=] remaster where trying to press the buttons to the music as intended will almost always result in failure, so they must be pressed either earlier or later instead, [[SNKBoss completely defying the game's rules]].
** Stage 5 is generally agreed to be the most difficult in the game, where Parappa, his [[PottyEmergency intestines nearly ready to burst]], has to out-rap all four of his previous teachers to get ahead of them in a line to the bathroom before [[PottyFailure disaster strikes]]. This essentially makes the level into a BossRush, as their input patterns are directly inspired by their stages of origin. The second half of the stage deserves special mention, as it's the first time in the game where a line can have two rows, making them twice as long and the requirement for successfully pulling them off twice as strict. Additionally, the second half is also home to both Prince Fleaswallow and Cheap Cheap Chicken's verses, the former having rapid-fire single inputs and the latter having an extremely specific rhythm. The [[InterfaceScrew distracting]] and [[EpilepticFlashingLights potentially dangerous]] lightning strikes that occasionally happen while at the "Awful" ranking don't help matters. Stage 5 has caused many players to give up hope on ever reaching the GrandFinale that is Stage 6.
** The [[GaidenGame spinoff]], ''VideoGame/UmJammerLammy'', also has a notoriously disliked level as its sixth and, again, penultimate level, where Lammy is sent to Hell and must perform on-stage in a concert to come back to life (in the Japanese and European versions, at least; in the American version, [[{{Bowdlerisation}} she gets caught on a door and is slingshotted to an island instead]]). This song features some ''extremely'' long and cruel button patterns, where it's not uncommon that you'll have to both press all six possible buttons and alternate back and forth between the face/shoulder buttons in a single line. If that's not intimidating enough, the rhythm for Yoko's lyrics is very specific and finicky, only worsened by the rapid tempo - and like many other stages, you'll suddenly have to jump in mid-line during the home stretch. Not even Easy mode can save you, as beating this stage on Easy [[NoFinalBossForYou will cut you off from moving on to the seventh and final stage]].[[note]]Parappa's version is just as difficult, if not moreso, but since it's only unlocked after beating the game once, it falls into the category of a BrutalBonusLevel.[[/note]]
* In ''VideoGame/{{Frequency|Harmonix}}'', Tony Trippi's Motomatic, Orbital's Weekend Ravers Mix, anything made by Komputer Kontroller or Symbion Project, and finally the last song, Robotkid vs. Intersekt with a punishing synth track that only masters could attempt.
* Many a ClusterFBomb resulted from the desert level in ''VideoGame/{{Patapon}}''. To get through, players must work up to [[SuperMode Fever]] and summon a rain miracle to cool the sand in front of you; if you don't, your army melts to oblivion in a matter of seconds. The kicker is that, until the sequel came along, there was no timer on your miracles, so the best hope of getting through without a sudden lava geyser eradicating your troops was to just redo the juju every time you hit Fever, which took forever. And good luck if you mess up the beat.
** And one reason [[TheScrappy Meden isn't too popular]] is that she gets [[DamselInDistress kidnapped]] in each game...and to save her, you have to chase her carriage across the aforementioned deserts.
* The Sanbone Trio level on Master mode in ''VideoGame/GitarooMan''. Sweet Jesus. You start the level with very low health, are forced to watch a rather lengthy scene, and are given a very complex guard phase before you can start hurting them. Additionally, the game randomly gives you a different version of some parts of the song every time you play it, and [[LuckBasedMission one of the versions of said guard phase is much more difficult than the other.]]
** The first encounter with BEN-K is infamous among fans of the game for consisting entirely of a guard phase, being extremely fast, and [[DifficultySpike only being the FOURTH stage in the game]] (and of course, it's even harder in Master mode). Thankfully, the two levels that follow are ''very much''-welcomed {{Breather Level}}s.
* "Bee" in ''VideoGame/PumpItUp''. They managed to condense every awkward, painful pattern they could think of into a minute thirty.
* ''VideoGame/HatsuneMikuProjectDiva'' has the near impossible "The Dissapearance of Hatsune Miku." The second game took it to a whole new level with "The Passion of Hatsune Miku".
** Extend makes Passion even more hell. Instead of simple four note spams when Miku starts [[MotorMouth singing at impossible speeds]], ''the spam lasts the entire time she's doing it''. And yes, [[FromBadToWorse there are note changes during the spam.]] And yes, [[FromBadToWorse it does get faster when she starts singing faster.]] Look at [[https://youtu.be/C17ip_jOfgE this.]] Just ''look''.
** [[SarcasmMode Even better]], Project Diva X has a medley of 5 of the hardest songs in the series; only one of them is not a full 10/10 difficulty on its own, and it's a 9.5/10. Oh, and both of the above songs are included. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68W50lGaJms "Virtuoso"]] medley, indeed.
** Sadistic Music Factory in ''f'' and Future Tone is the very defenition of the word sadistic. ''[[https://youtu.be/UVXignIVFws f]]'' starts out fairly easy, but it [[DifficultySpike gets hard when you reach the second technical zone, where you press the buttons in a circle around the controller.]] If you aren't fast enough, chances are, you're going to mess up. [[FromBadToWorse the chance time makes it even harder by adding more spams]], and by the last roughly ten seconds, it's following her singing almost exactly. [[https://youtu.be/biso2Sa69zE Future Tone]] took things further by throwing everything but the kitchen sink at you right from the get-go. Right away, you're getting hit with two button spams, spams that change to a different button halfway through, and sections where you have to alternate between spamming and double notes. One section even has ''triple notes.'' Near the end of the song, you have to do a double note spam, as in you alternate between hitting square and triangle then x and circle. Not to mention that, prior to that, the song slows down to an odd speed about halfway through, so if you haven't messed up by then, you're most likely going to now. The song's final spam is a x + circle-square double that changes x to triangle halfway through. Thank ''God'' the song doesn't have an ExEx chart.
* ''[[VideoGame/JustDance Just Dance 4]]'' has unlockable extreme versions of various songs. One of these, an extreme version of the One direction hit, "You Don't Know You're Beautiful" is particularly cruel, even if you like the song. It requires rapid move transitions the pictograms don't make readily apparent, as well as a great deal of technical skill. it also likes to pop up in the otherwise simple Just Sweat mode.
* ''[[VideoGame/BitTrip BIT.TRIP RUNNER]]'''s 1-11 Odyssey, the final level before the first zone's boss, is notorious for being significantly more difficult and frustrating than the majority of the entire second zone, due to it being literally the longest level in the game (and by a fairly large margin). Simply completing the level earns a Steam Achievement. Check [[http://steamcommunity.com/stats/BitTripRunner/achievements/ the stats page]] for the game and note how few people ''have'' that achievement.
** While on the subject, 3-11 Rusty Warren is the stuff of nightmares. Two gauntlets (small hallways with alternating duck/jump antics and two dozen bouncing squares), and at least three stairs that one must duck as they go down. Unlike the sequel, there's no midpoint restart, and the very end [[spoiler:throws some red blocks that you DON'T jump for]].
* The US version of ''VideoGame/DonkeyKonga 2'' has "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUYu5vvGFK0 Pieces]]" by Hoobastank, which featured a huge departure in handling claps. It gained infamy in ''Website/DKVine''[='=]s "The Slush Fun'd" due to Slush getting stuck on the song for nine months (during which he slowly lost his drive to actually play the game) until finally moving on to completing the rest of the songs before returning to "Pieces". The European and Japanese versions include the classical "William Tell Overture", with the first half of the song with constant relentless triple drum rolls that eventually slows down for the last hundred notes.
** The European version has one song harder: "Mansize Rooster" has the highest note count for any song in the Donkey Konga series at just over 450 notes, and after a slow intro it starts to get insane, with 5 drum barrages at a faster speed than the William Tell triple rolls. It stays the same for the rest of the song, but the second chorus contains a 13-note yellow note drum roll (and if you're using a controller, expect to lose your combo if you're using the joystick) before finally slowing down for the outro. Passing this song on Gorilla difficulty is considered one of the biggest achievements in the game.
* In ''VideoGame/{{Cytus}}'', the condition to clear a song is fairly lenient--get 700,000 points out of 1 million, and there's no LifeMeter--but some songs still stand out because it's hard to get good scores on them:
** The "L" series by ICE in Chapter VII:
*** "L" and both parts of "L2" are the only three songs in the game to be rated level 9, the highest difficulty rating in the game, on ''Easy''.
*** "L" features 16th-note "roll" sectons and large numbers of drag notes that can be compared to [[{{Pun}} ice]] skating with your fingers.
*** "L2: Act 1" on Hard combines fast piano sections with an extremely slow scroll speed.
*** "L2: Act 2" on Easy in particular is the only Easy chart with over 1,000 notes, although to be fair, the song is 3 minutes long.
** "Freedom Dive" has the fastest scroll speed in the game, at 222.22 BPM, and features the infamous "diamond" formation that requires hitting drag notes and tap notes at once.
*** Then there's its hidden charts, called "Freedom D↓ve"--yes, with a down arrow. Its Hard chart has ''2,000 notes'' over a mere 2 minutes and 26 seconds. General consensus of the Hard chart is [[ItsHardSoItSucks "Rayark, what the HELL is wrong with you?!"]]
** "Vanessa" from Cytus Alive isn't necessarily difficult by level 9 standards, but it is the [[MarathonLevel longest]] song in the entire game outside of Chapter L at ''seven minutes''.
** Chapter L may as well be called That One ''Chapter''. Every song is at least 4 minutes and 30 seconds long, and is rated 9 on ''both difficulties.'' The Easy charts are typical of level 9 standards, but the Hard charts just outright go beyond anything else seen in the entire game and to make matters worse, use very slow scanline speeds making them hard to read. And unlike the other DLC chapters, which are 4.99 USD, this costs ''9.99 USD''. Only truly dedicated ''Cytus'' players need apply.
* ''VideoGame/GrooveCoaster'':
** [[VideoGame/{{Darius}} "Good bye my earth"]] is rated an 8 on the iOS version and while it's not particularly note-dense, the chart scrolls very fast and due to the [[EventObscuringCamera odd camera angles]], many of the notes are only visible for brief moments, often for even less time than needed to be able to react. The charts practically require TrialAndErrorGameplay.
** "Spring to mind". While it's not remarkably difficult to clear on any level, it stands out for those trying to aim for a Full Chain, which requires hitting every note in the chart, ''including the hidden Ad-Lib notes.'' You could "cheat" and use the Visible item, but if you're trying to Full Chain the "honest" way, most of the Ad-Libs [[GuideDangIt seem to have no audio cues in the music whatsoever, forcing you to tap everywhere to find Ad-Libs you haven't uncovered yet]].
** The Hard chart for "Thrash Beat" is ''very'' visually dense and demands intimate familiarity with the track to clear, let alone score well on.
* As a general rule, any sufficiently long song is this. Did you fail, or screw up a full combo or perfect score attempt at the 9'50" mark on a 10-minute song? Time to start ''the entire 10-minute song all over again!'' It's one reason why many rhythm games, particularly those by Eastern developers, prefer to use songs around the 2-minute mark, so that there's just enough time for song and chart substance but not so much time that every repetition of the song is like doing chores.[[note]]The other reason songs are around 2-minutes is to fit the 3-stage format of many arcade rhythm games; having to wait for someone to play three songs each as long as [[Music/DragonForce "Through the Fire and Flames"]] or [[VideoGame/{{Cytus}} "Vanessa"]] is not fun and means less profit per unit of time for the arcade.[[/note]]
* ''VideoGame/CrossBeats'' and ''crossbeats REV.'':
** "Satellite System ft. Diana Chiaki" in ''crossbeats REV.'' is infamous for its extremely awkward rhythms, and its Master chart served as the final stage of the Class V course in Challenge Mode until ''crossbeats REV. SUNRISE'' got new Challenge Mode courses. Most players generally give up trying to learn the song naturally and just study videos of players clearing it instead.
** The Master chart of "EMERALD♡KISS" is rated an 85, making it one of hardest songs on the default songlist. It doesn't look too bad at first, [[DifficultySpike and then]] [[https://youtu.be/OAZ5D6AP3Hs?t=1m6s it starts throwing out polyphonic patterns]] that will surely drain out the meters of many players who haven't mastered them yet.
** "DAZZLING♡SEASON"'s charts often reuse guidelines to trip up players with repeat notes, forcing one to [[TrialAndErrorgameplay learn the charts by heart]].
** Almost any song with dramatic changes in tempo, due to scroll speed being dependent on BPM * speed multiplier. "Amateras" and "Power" have slowdowns partway through, while [[VideoGame/GrooveCoaster "QLWA"]] and [[VisualNovel/PhoenixWrightAceAttorneyDualDestinies "Pursuit ~ Last Promotion Version (crossbeats REV. Arrange)"]] speed up near the end. Granted, you can change scroll speed in mid-song, but you have to consciously tap the speed indicator and adjust the slider in the middle of the chart.
** ''VideoGame/GrooveCoaster'' collaboration event song "LINK LINK FEVER!!!" isn't particularly standout in terms of charts, but the main problem for [[MostGamersAreMale a certain large gaming demographic]] is that at 200 combo[[note]]For songs without unique music videos, the background changes at 100 combo and again at 200 combo, and the background resets when combo is broken above either threshold.[[/note]], players are treated to a FanService illustration of ''GC'' mascot Linka and can potentially [[DistractedByTheSexy break their combos as a result]].
* ''VideoGame/{{Arcaea}}'':
** Level 8:
*** "Anokumene" on Future difficulty was originally rated an 8, and many players disagreed with it due to having some surprisingly fast patterns for a level 8 chart. The 1.5 update thankfully changed the difficulty to a 9.
*** "memoryfactory.lzh" is a slow track at 100 BPM and is one of a handful of tracks to limit the maximum scroll speed, making it very difficult to time hits. Many joke that it's even harder than [[FinalBoss "Grievous Lady"]].
*** Following "memoryfactory.lzh" from the same composer, "dropdead" chimes in at '''50'''BPM. Past reduces your scroll speed to 10% of your setting, but it only has 44 notes (that's an average density of about one note every ''two seconds'') so it's no big deal. Present is level 9 but at least it has no effect on your speed setting. Future is level 8, so players may walk in expecting an easier chart than Present...only to find that their speed is cut to 25% except during parts where the scroll skyrockets beyond 100%, so the chart is either a slow, unreadable mess or a nightmare of reaction times and nothing in betweem.
** Level 9:
*** [="SOUNDWiTCH"=] has hard patterns and also very difficult to time, making it hard to score well.
*** "Red and Blue" on Future. The "LEFT=BLUE RED=RIGHT"[[note]]replace RED with YELLOW if ColorblindMode is on[[/note]] phrase in the chart credit is there for a very good reason: there are many segments where Arcs will start on the oppposite side as expected. You may, for example, [[DamnYouMuscleMemory reflexively]] hit a blue Arc that's on the right side with your right hand but now you can't hit that pink Arc that's even further on the right.
*** "Modelista" on Future routinely throws vertical chords and other fast patterns that combine floor and Sky notes, as well as several sections with jackhammers that can easily drain your Recollection Rate, and a speed-up section that can catch unwary players off-guard. Many regard it as one of the hardest level 9 songs in the game, rivaling even ''level 9+'' charts. The developers seem to agree, as it is one of four charts to have a "chart constant" (a hidden chart-specific value that determines Step gain and how playing the chart will affect your Potential) of 10.0, the highest for any level 9 chart, and the 10.0-10.9 range is typically reserved for level 9+ charts.
*** "Yosakura Fubuki" on Future has a lot of fast spiral and diagonal arch patterns that require you to be alert at all times. At the end is a bunch of diagonal Arcs to the left that require you to alternate hands, easily sending a slow player below 70% Recollection Rate at the last second.
* The ''[=SuperStar=]'' series
** ''[=SuperStar=] SMTOWN'' has "Kick" by f(x), which not only has the most notes out of any normal song in the game at 990, but also is one of the longer songs at almost two minutes. in addition, all of the hidden stages are pretty hard, but "Around" by Hitchhiker X Taeyong is notorious for its difficulty.
** ''[=SuperStar=] BTS'' has the Cyphers, all of which are fairly difficult, but "BTS Cypher 4 [SUGA]" takes the cake. Two minutes long and with triplets for days, the song was written off by some players as being so hard it wasn't enjoyable to play. The developers themselves even gifted all of the players 39 headphones two days after the song's release in the game with the message "We know! 'BTS Cypher 4 [SUGA]' is hard as hell! It's crazy! We see SOOOOOOOOOOO many users feel terrible pain to clear this song!"
* ''RAVON'' doesn't have difficulty ratings for its charts, but nonetheless some charts still catch players off-guard. "We Alive" on Core difficulty, for example, has an average note density (the closest to a difficulty rating in the game) of only 3.30 notes/second, which is less than many other high-end charts, but it throws off many players with its tricky note rhythms.
* ''VideoGame/BangDreamGirlsBandParty'':
** "[[Manga/AttackOnTitan Guren no Yumiya]]" is commonly considered one of the most difficult songs under "Hard" difficulty, with quick slide notes paired with non-slide notes, note-flick pairs, and a punishing pace (to the point where some consider a few Expert songs to be easier than Guren no Yumiya on hard).
** "[[Manga/KOn Don't say lazy]]" has a breakneck pace and a nearly nonstop barrage of slider notes ending in slider-flick pairs that can drain your life ''very'' quickly if you can't figure out the rhythm, even on Hard. It's considered more manageable than ''Guren no Yumiya'' because its pattern is relatively predictable, though.
** "[[Manga/BloodBlockadeBattlefront Sugar Song & Bitter Step]]" has a gigantic difficulty spike between Hard and Expert, to the point where it is avoided in Multi-Lives during events because players are forced to lower the difficulty just to consistently finish the song.
** "Worldwide Treasure"'s first half, which consists of Kokoro rapping over disc scratches, can be a nightmare to any player who has difficulty with slides, as it has a barrage of slides at strange angles followed by very short and fast slides interspersed with flick notes. If you can get through that, though, the more conventional second half of the song is much more straightforward.
** "[[Music/{{Vocaloid}} Roku chounen to Ichiya Monogatari]]" is the first song in the game to [[HarderThanHard have a rating of 29]] on Expert, and for good reason; the song starts off relatively intense before throwing an intense barrage of notes for the chorus and ending with a truly absurd storm of sliders and flick-slider pairs.
** "[[Music/{{Vocaloid}} Happy Synthesizer]]" on Expert might not have any sliders, but what it has is '''OVER 900''' notes on Expert, a fast pace, and it goes on for so long that it's literally a strain on the thumbs. [[MarathonLevel What it lacks in tricks it makes up for by wearing you out]].
** "Ringing Bloom" is rated a 23 in Hard and 28 in Expert for good reason. It has everything difficult in a fast-paced song: constant stream of notes, tricky slide notes, short slides into flicks, and the combination will probably wear out your thumbs, too.
** "Setsuna Trip"'s newest Level 29 special chart is a whole new level. The chart has the highest note count for any regular non-full song, at 1087 notes. Like Roku Chounen, it is extremely hard plus the addition of new note types contributed much to the difficulty spike.
** ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9slffp7R170 Miiro]]'' on Expert is a non-stop barrage of notes, sometimes accompanying random flick notes here and there, where it makes you feel like you're having a sprinting race with your thumbs/fingers. The kicker is its difficulty rating is 26, but it feels way more like a 27.
** "HELL! or HELL?" finally made its appearance in Girls Band Party, with its Special map being the game's first 30* level. Combining insanely fast taps with a maze of curved slides and directional flicks, you'll certainly have to choose between hell or hell as its 1,196 notes come at you at lightning-speed, not letting up for a second. Forget getting a Full Combo; just *clearing* this song is a massive challenge.
* ''VideoGame/FridayNightFunkin'':
** [[WebAnimation/SpookyMonth Skid and Pump]], the first of Week 2's two opponents, are tough to beat despite having only two songs, thanks to their [[SomeDexterityRequired unique style]] when compared to the previous opponent, Daddy Dearest.
*** "Spookeez" was infamous for its massive difficulty spike after "Dad Battle", being difficult even on Normal mode. The song ended up being made easier on Normal difficulty in version 0.2.5.
*** "South" is hard only on Easy and Normal modes, as it's less note-dense on Hard. It isn't that long, but the notes often have ridiculous patterns and are so tightly packed together, it will be more likely than not to mess up at trying to press the buttons correctly.
** "[[FunWithAcronyms MILF]]", the third and final song of Week 4. It's basically "Dad Battle", but faster, more aggressive, and more note-heavy. The notes are much more varied too, with having to flip between fast-paced hold notes followed by storms of regular notes. You'll also be harmonizing with the opponent, Mommy Mearest, almost constantly, meaning there's hardly a moment to catch your breath. It's also the first playable song in the game to go on for ''[[MarathonBoss two minutes]]''. And we haven't even mentioned [[ThatOneAttack the beatdrop]] yet!
** "Roses", the second song of Week 6. One would thing the song is not so fast, with the beginning verses being easy, but it only gets harder from here. Each verse is becoming more note-dense than the last, to the point that getting all the notes right in the seventh and eight verses is near-impossible unless you've learned to play with both hands. And the very final verse is a repeat of the eight and hardest one.
** There is a good reason why WordOfGod called Week 7 [[ThatOneAttack the beatdrop in "MILF"]] but for three songs straight. However, "Guns" is easily the hardest song in the entire week, given that it gives zero mercy when compared to "Ugh" and "Stress". [[WebAnimation/{{Tankmen}} Tankman]] spits his bars like he was crazy on almost every single verse, and the song is one of the fastest in the entire game. The song's second half welcomes you with some of the longest verses in the entire game, and you might be hit with one or two notes [[KaizoTrap during Tankman's part]]. It's also [[MarathonBoss the single longest non-Monster song]] in the entire game, being two minutes and twenty seconds long. And to top it all off, when played on Hard, it has ''over 400 notes''.
** And then once you get to mods people have made… hoo boy, that’s where the difficulty REALLY comes in.
*** VideoGame/VsWhitty: "Ballistic", Whitty's final song where he goes OneWingedAngel, was for the longest time called the hardest song to come out of a Friday Night Funkin' mod and for a good reason, relying on pressing a ludicrous amount of key mashing segments and high scroll speed to beat it, unless you've had experience with extremely hard and quick songs, something rare for the much casual fanbase that the game has compared to other rhythm games, not even playing on Easy will save you here. For the updated re-release "Ballistic" has gotten much more manageable in the starting segment, however by properly syncing to the vocals, the beatdrop that lasts for four verses has turned into both the "Roses" and the "M.I.L.F." beatdrop on steroids. Better have nimble fingers.
*** VideoGame/VsHexMod: [[SurpriseDifficulty Surprisingly for a chill mod]], "Detected". For starters, it is a modchart of the InterfaceScrew variety, made by the same charter for ''VideoGame/InTheGalaxy'', which includes — but not limited to — waving the judgement arrows around, moving it across the screen, changing the speed of arrows constantly and at one point, making the arrows disappear when it gets close to the judgement arrows, and so on and so forth to deliberately screw with the player perception. Oh, and you can only heal when you hit a "Sick!" rating. ''Have fun.''
*** VideoGame/QTMod: [[BrutalBonusLevel Termination]], which was created as a NintendoHard [[JokeLevel joke song]]. [[MarathonLevel It's just over five minutes long, which is nearly double the length of most songs in both the main game and mods similar to this one.]] There are lots of double notes in the chart, something that isn't found in many mods at the time. It's also filled with InterfaceScrew, with your buttons being swapped around and fog emerging from your screen. [[SarcasmMode And the best part?]] There are a lot of OneHitKill sawblades that you have to avoid, and the only way to do that is by paying close attention to the music. The sawblades alone make the aforementioned InterfaceScrew and charting patterns look like ''inconveniences.'' While the 2.0 version changed the mechanics of the sawblades, they might be ''worse'' than the original. While they aren't OneHitKill anymore, they do take a lot of your health and also decrease your max HP. Not only that, it has been recharted to have more double notes ''and'' have damage notes, so you might get a lot of DamnYouMuscleMemory moments.
*** VideoGame/VsRonTheResurrection: The original ''Bloodshed'' can be accurately described as NintendoHard, with rapid scrolling speed and lots of notes. Even though it later received a massive {{Nerf}}, a modchart with lots of InterfaceScrew was added in to make up for that.
*** VideoGame/DokiDokiTakeover:
*** The third song in the Monika week, ''Your Demise'' can easily trip up unsuspecting players. It introduces the Markov notes that will [[OneHitKill instantly kill you]] no matter how well you've been doing before, and they are EVERYWHERE in the fast 2+ minute-long Plus version. Even worse for completionists is that in order to unlock Boyfriend's Blue Skies costumes, finishing ''this'' song with 90% accuracy is required to do so.
*** Despite its silly premise, the Side Story ''Catfight'' can be an ''extremely'' rough time. Regardless of who you side with the song is extremely fast and note-heavy, and it only amps up more and more the further you go in the song.
*** ''VideoGame/FridayNightFunkinLullaby'':
*** In spite of merely being the first song in the Lost Silver week, "Frostbite" is a major challenge. While the song has a surprisingly slow and calm chart, the three mechanics the song offers are nightmarish to get through. For starters, throughout the entire song, a cold meter is gradually filling up, which causes an instant game over if it reaches the top. This can be decreased by Typhlosion using Ember, however, Typhlosion can only be used 10 times, as it’ll die by the tenth. The player’s health is drained regardless of whether or not Red is singing, and can even cause a game over merely via it. Said health drain is primarily powered by the cold meter, with the strength being determined by how high the cold meter is. And to top all of this off, in the second part of the song, Freakachu will occasionally use Pain Split, dealing a considerable amount of health when used.
*** Even with the huge amount of new songs in V2, "Monochrome" has continued to stick out as an absolute nightmare to get through. The chart itself isn't too bad to handle on its own, but the amount of gimmicks up Gold's sleeve can easily get overwhelming. As explained above, the main attraction is the Unown messages - randomized phrases typed out in the rough-to-understand Unown language that the player has very little time to decipher before suffering an instant blueball. Additionally, Celebi's Perish Song will only add to the stress of beating the chart itself, cutting your maximum HP in half by the time it gives the last song, and Gold's several {{jump scare}}s covering the screen will likely lead to a good few misses. It gets even worse during the second half; a good number of new, long-as-hell messages will begin to show up (one just a few seconds before Boyfriend starts singing, near-guaranteeing some extra misses), Gold starts jump-scaring way more frequently and on harder sections, and the whole thing has to be done with Perish Song having already maxed out. There's a very good chance this song will end up being the last hurdle the player has to get through before unlocking "Purin".
*** ''VideoGame/VsSonicExe'':
*** "Triple Trouble" is a tremendous endurance test, [[MarathonLevel going on for 8 whole minutes]] and not giving a second of pause (something that longer songs from other ''Friday Night Funkin''' mods like [[VideoGame/VsDaveAndBambi "Splitathon"]] and [[VideoGame/LiterallyEveryFnfModEver "Little Man 2"]] often do). Adding onto this is a number of mechanics that can cause rapid, fatal LifeDrain and just enough InterfaceScrew to trip up the player, as well as an increase in tempo once Soul Robotnik arrives, all of which combine to make the song a deadly gauntlet worthy of .exe's full power.
*** Exclusively in the 2.0 update, "Black Sun" has a health drain mechanic which increases in pace if the player misses notes, and getting combos only ''slightly'' reduces the health drain, ''and since there is no way to regain health that has been lost, every mistake counts, and they can cost the player DEARLY if they end up botching a segment and cannot recover quickly enough.''
*** According to Revie, she had stated in a Newgrounds Q&A that if 2.5 came out, "God Speed" would have had a ''more intense version'' of Black Sun's health drain mechanic, ''and in comparison to the former song, God Speed would have been a longer and more difficult track, clocking in at over four minutes compared to Black Sun's over two and a half minute runtime.'' ''Yikes...''
*** In the 2.5/Cancelled Update, Starved's song "Fight or Flight" is an erratic song with dense note placements and frequent changes in tempo and speed to throw you off, but its true difficulty is in its unique "Fear" mechanic. On the side of the screen, there's a bar, every time Starved performs a note, it builds a bit -- after the Fear bar reaches certain threshold, the healthbar will drain. The drain only gets quicker and quicker the higher it goes over the threshold, until it becomes impossible to reverse the drain and you are eventually reduced to a OneHitPointWonder where even a ''single'' miss will cost you the game, and if fills up completely, then it's an instant GameOver regardless. Misses cause it to increase by a bit, and while hitting notes decreases it, [[MyRulesAreNotYourRules it's not by the same amount as Starved's notes increase it]], meaning Starved always undoes your work by his immediate next turn; and Starved's long turns by the midpoint of the song will guarantee periods of rapid, unstoppable Fear growth that cannot be reversed. FC Videos have shown even if played perfectly, becoming a OneHitPointWonder is ''completely unavoidable'' for the last 30 or so seconds of the song, and left with only a ''small quarter'' of Fear away from an instant GameOver by the end. This all together makes "Fight or Flight" a ''punishing'' song that leaves ''very'' little room for error, as it's very possible to botch a segment and be left in a state of ControllableHelplessness as you watch the Fear bar slowly reach the top, with absolutely nothing you can do about it besides accepting your fate. Whether this is by design, or a byproduct of the mod's cancellation is up for debate.
*** VideoGame/VsFlippy: "Flippin Out" is basically the original "[[VideoGame/VSWhitty Ballistic]]", but [[ExaggeratedTrope it's so overexaggerated that saying it's overexaggerated would be an understatement]]. The notes scroll through so fast, that [[NintendoHard even the most experienced players can't beat the song perfectly without using a bot]]. Even after Version 2.1 recharted the song and slowed down the arrows, it's still difficult to have a perfect combo.
*** ''VideoGame/TheTrickyMod'':
*** Tricky's third and final song "Hellclown". The newly-introduced fire arrows can easily end your run, not helped by the speed of the arrows that may cause you to accidentally press them [[DamnYouMuscleMemory out of instinct]].
*** The bonus song "Expurgation". [[spoiler:The notes come out much faster than they did in the previous songs, the fire arrows from "Hellclown" are replaced with Auditor-themed arrows that will INSTANTLY KO you if you press them, and Tricky's minions will mess with you by either blocking the arrows with stop-signs or moving your health-bar back by force. This song's difficulty is "Unfair" for damn good reasons.]]
*** ''VideoGame/VsRetrospecter'': Fully intentional example with "Ectospasm", from the note speed to the abundance of poison notes to the notes going invisible unless you hit the crystal notes. As if that wasn't bad enough, playing "Apocalypse" difficulty will make the song '''[[ExaggeratedTrope even faster]]'''! [=RetroSpecter=] himself even stated that the reason the song is called "Ectospasm" is because you ''will'' have a spasm while playing the song!
*** VideoGame/VsDaveAndBambi:
*** Out of all of the non-bonus songs featured in the mod, "Interdimensional" has easily taken the cake as the most infamous for its difficulty. This is primarily thanks to a mechanic introduced in "Polygonized"; 3D notes that the player has to hold the Spacebar to be able to hit. It's tough enough on its own to play a chart while one finger is preoccupied holding the key, but the song itself is also very fast-paced, and the inability to hit regular notes while holding Space makes it almost guaranteed that the player will miss several notes.
*** "Unfairness", appropriate to its role as an anti-cheat maneuver, is a ridiculously difficult punishment to attempt to beat. Not only is the song even more spam-happy than its already-tough predecessor "Cheating", but it also coats itself in a thick layer of deadly mechanics, from [[InterfaceScrew the notes spinning in a circle around the center of the screen to every arrow having a different scroll speed]] to automatically disabling ghost tapping (meaning the player will take damage for pressing an incorrect note). The fact that [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vicmsm4YTlM people have managed to even beat it]] is frankly a miracle.
*** Thought "Unfairness" was hard? "Exploitation" takes it a step even further; while Boyfriend's side isn't quite as spam-happy as previous Expunged songs, it's still a very difficult chart on its own merits, and the InterfaceScrew is cranked up even further then ever before. With notes flying to and from every end of the screen, the same lack of ghost tapping, and [[spoiler:the window itself being shrunken down and moved around halfway in]], Expunged has every right to say you won't survive.
*** VideoGame/ArrowFunk: "Loaded" stands out as the hardest of the mod’s songs due to its dense charting and heavy use of bullet notes throughout, giving the player no break and heavy punishment for missing: in particular, a segment towards the end consists of two complicated bullet patterns back-to-back, which can easily kill. Even "-Debug", a song with intentionally ridiculous charting in reference to "Test", is easier to beat.
*** VideoGame/FunkinMix: In addition to this Monster being far more terrifying than canon, he's also much, much harder. "Sickly Sour" is an almost constant, fast onslaught of notes, and the level's massive health drain means the player is always going to be right at death's door when Boyfriend's turn rolls around; combine this with frequent duets between Monster and Boyfriend, multiple points where the player's chart is suddenly barraged with arrows, and a whooping 3 minute song when the mod's OST usually caps at around a minute, and the demons aren't the only thing from Hell.
*** VideoGame/FridayNightFunkinHD:
*** This version of "M.I.L.F." manages to be this '''even moreso''' than the original, thanks to the streetlights introduced in "High" (which force you to press space when you hear a whistle blow) returning and the lightning bolt notes Mommy Mearest zaps at Boyfriend. Unlike Pico's bullets, [[OneHitKill miss even]] ''[[OneHitKill one]]'' [[OneHitKill lightning note, and it's back to the beginning of the song for you]]. Same goes for [[spoiler: [[KaizoTrap the final streetlight at the very end]].]]
*** Surprisingly enough, "Winter Horrorland" of all songs can be this. While it was a very easy song in the original that relied more on [[SurprisinglyCreepyMoment shock value]] than difficulty, here Monster is constantly draining Boyfriend's health throughout the song, and said draining starts as soon as the song starts. As a result, Monster basically has the advantage over Boyfriend for almost the entirety of the song, and the player is given little to no room for error when it comes to hitting the notes.
*** VideoGame/DaveAndBambiGoldenAppleEdition: "Applecore" is the fourth-longest song in the mod at a whopping ''5 minutes'', and all three parts of it can give a fair bit of difficulty themselves. Bandu, while mostly rather simple to handle, goes significantly faster near the end of his section, and Bambi brings with him a faster tempo, irritating InterfaceScrew, and a much more frenetic singing pace. This is absolutely nothing compared to the second half, however; Expunged comes in with a HostileShowTakeover, and with him comes everything that makes [[VideoGame/VsDaveAndBambi "Unfairness"]] so hellish - boosting the InterfaceScrew to an absurd degree, removing ghost tapping, and spamming notes at a speed no human being could even think about perfecting. Don't forget, too, that losing to this part means going all the way back to the beginning of this MarathonLevel.
*** VideoGame/VsImpostor: Defeat, the bonus song in V3 and the sole song in Week 4 outside of Finale. The only strum line visible is your own, meaning you can only guess which notes Black is gonna hit. The REAL kicker, however, is that you have to play this song PERFECTLY in order to beat it. Miss even ONE note, and it's an instant game over. This was nerfed in V4, which now allows you to choose how many combo breaks it will take for Black to kill you, up to six, and the instant kill is absent entirely in their last song, going back to a proper health bar.
*** VideoGame/MartianMixtape:
*** "Exclusion Zone", the last song of Week 4. After the conspiracy theorist sips his coffee, the song speeds up significantly and the arrow density also increases a lot. Given most of the other songs in the mod are slower and have few if any note dense sections, it's a very heavily whiplash.
*** The 3.0 update revamped Week 2 and introduces "Crack", the third song of the week. "Confidential" and "Aegis" were slow and had fewer notes to offset the agents' gimmicks, but "Crack" is faster-paced and has more note dense sections. Compared to the other agents' gimmicks, which weren't too different from the normal gameplay, Agent Cuddles messes with your interface, whether it be covering your screen with static to obscure the arrows, moving the entire HUD to a different point on the screen, arrows and all, or lowering your volume so you can't hear the song at all. When he decides to mess with the interface is also completely random. The song after, "Enforcement", is a cakewalk in comparison.
*** VideoGame/CosmoCalamityVsYukichi: If "[[VideoGame/VsFlippy Flippin Out]]" takes the original "[[VideoGame/VSWhitty Ballistic]]" up to eleven, "Service-Unavailable" takes "Flippin Out", turns up the difficulty knob till it breaks off, [[BeyondTheImpossible than screws it even further up with a screwdriver for good measure.]] Notes coming at you at breakneck pace, being so close together that you need to hit them one frame after another, jacks that consist of hitting notes one after another, following up jacks with other jacks, [[MarathonLevel and the song being almost 5 minutes long...]] Good luck clearing this one on your first attempt.
*** VideoGame/TheBlueballsIncident:
*** "Technophobia", the player's rematch against Smiler, was created to be very hard on purpose in response to complaints that the original mod was too easy, and god damn does it deliver. The song is the second-fastest in the mod at 180 BPM (beaten only by the OptionalBoss "Your Mom") and has much more frenetic charting compared to most others, as well as two incredibly long solos. Additionally, Smiler dishes out very powerful DamageOverTime on top of the mass amount of damaging static notes scattered throughout the chart, meaning you'll likely spend most of the song with very little health. It was even worse before the 2.0.1 patch, too, as the static notes had much larger hitboxes.
*** There is a good reason the player doesn't need to beat "[[FinalBoss Athazagoraphobia]]" to continue the story. Its charting can get very quick at times and features a recurring segment requiring the player to hold one note while simultaneously hitting many others, as well as nearly-invisible notes that you have to hit and a mountain of SensoryAbuse and [[AntiRegeneration the loss of your ability to heal]] near the ending, but what really sets it apart is its numerous [[UnexpectedGameplayChange new mechanics involving a sudden cursor]] ([[GuideDangIt none of which the player is told how to handle, by the way]]). He can, in order of appearance:
*** Turn into a Boyfriend silhouette with a Trollface that teleports between the four corners of the screen, requiring the player hover the cursor over them lest they lose health.
*** Become a giant spitting out projectiles that must be blocked with the cursor. This isn't very difficult on its own, but the song often cuts between it and the previous form, diverting the player's attention often, and the projectiles don't disappear when his form changes.
*** Summon several fast-spawning eyes in the background that the player needs to swipe the cursor over before too many of them appear.
*** VideoGame/FridayNightFankan: The {{Superboss}}, Cancer Lord, comes packing an incredibly difficult song called "Infinigger". The song is blazing fast at a whopping 200 BPM and shares a note density similar to [[VideoGame/VsWhitty Ballistic]]. On top of that, it also features Ebola arrows that apply a stacking DamageOverTime effect if you hit them, and right before the hardest part of the song, [[InterfaceScrew your controls are flipped]] to screw with your muscle memory.
*** VideoGame/FridayNightDustin: While the mod itself is considered pretty hard, many players complain about "Anthropophobia" for the absurdity of the chart plus the oversaturation of game mechanics, to the point that some say that FC is almost impossible and others think it's downright unplayable.
*** VideoGame/FridayNightFunkinMariosMadness:
*** Of all the new songs introduced in [=V2=], "No Party" is by far the hardest. In spite of a relatively standard chart, the mechanic in the song is easily the hardest of the mod. During the song, the player will need to trace words within a certain time, or else they’ll die. Sounds fine, right? Wrong. Not only will there very often be notes coming up when you’re tracing, which’ll guarantee a few misses, and not only are you forced to trade with your cursor, which can often slip up or not press down properly, but even getting 50% or higher will result in DJ Hallyboo lowering your health by a significant amount. Combine that with the lack of notes on the opponent’s side, making it harder to predict the notes, and the unique screen size potentially being disorienting, and you get a torturous song that, as the name implies, is no party.
** (* Additionally, V2 introduces "MARIO SING AND GAME RYTHM 9". Despite being one of the first songs in the mod, being the final level of the first world, its mechanic is among one of the hardest. Similar to an actual Sonic game like the original bootleg was built on, you have to collect rings in order to survive, and the player gets a game over if they miss without a ring on hand. However, missing causes '''ALL''' of your rings to spill out, and the song is fairly note-dense. Those two factors mean that you have to play near flawlessly or [[MercyMode rely on Luigi]] just to get through it. The 2.0.1 update fortunately made the song more merciful, where now missing a note only causes you to lose half your rings instead of all of them.
*** Abandoned can easily reach into this territory depending on your frame rate. The charting isn’t as bad as some of the other songs, but its mechanic more than makes up for it. The area the song takes place in slowly floods as the song goes on, which results in health drain that gets more severe the higher the water level is, and can be decreased by hitting diamond notes. At lower frame rates, this is fairly manageable as the water doesn’t rise too fast. But at higher frame rate, the water rises at incredibly high speeds. You can hit all the diamonds in the song, and still end up dying because the water recovers its height prior to the diamond about as fast as it took to hit the note.
*** VideoGame/FridayNightSandboxin: ''Spyware'', the final song of the week, has a whopping ''300 BPM'' and utilizes it well, with tons of absurdly fast inputs and only a handful of easier parts in between. What really makes this song fit the trope, however, is its scroll speed; its absolute minimum is a whopping 3.4 (for scale, [[VideoGame/VSWhitty Ballistic]] has a scroll speed of 3 in Hard mode), and [[HarderThanHard Pain difficulty]] puts it at a downright unholy 10, tying it with the below mentioned "Evacuate" (at least at Troll difficulty) for the fastest scroll speed in modding history.
*** VideoGame/TheFridayNightIncident: Until an update removed the LifeDrain and [[OneHitPointWonder single-miss instakill]] mechanics, "Evacuate" was incredibly tough, so much so that few managed to beat it without the help of [[GameplayAutomation Botplay]]. The song itself is tough enough with its high BPM and scroll speed, though its note density is thankfully rather average in comparison. Where things become insane, though, are the song's gimmicks. Axe notes are littered throughout the chart, which [[OneHitKill instantly kill the player]] if they're hit and may give players of VideoGame/TheTrickyMod flashbacks. Trollge also gives a constant DamageOverTime effect, ensuring that the player is constantly close to defeat...not that this matters all that much, as similarly to the above-mentioned [[VideoGame/VsImpostor "Defeat"]], ''[[OneHitPointWonder missing a single note causes an instant death]]''.
*** As if that all wasn't bad enough, playing it in [[HarderThanHard "Troll"]] [[UnwinnableJokeGame difficulty]] turns it into a challenge so absurdly hard, the chart itself is unfinished because [[UnwinnableByDesign the devs don't expect it to be possible]]. The scroll speed is set to a whopping ''10'' (the same as the above mentioned VideoGame/FridayNightSandboxin's "Spyware") in a game where anything above 4 is considered absurd, meaning that you would need inhuman reflexes or pure memory to notice the notes coming. Additionally, the chart is changed to be ridiculously bloated with [[ThatOneAttack double and triple notes, hold notes combined with other notes]], and tons of notes that don't follow the vocals - and that's not even getting into the axe notes. Even if you were to somehow complete the song, it still remains impossible thanks to an incomplete chart preventing Boyfriend from counteracting the DamageOverTime. Unfortunately, this led some players to criticize the song's overcharting and unfinished nature, but fortunately the devs are aware of this and [[AuthorsSavingThrow intend to release an update that fixes Evacuate's charting]].
*** VideoGame/FridayNightMonsterOfMonsters:
*** "First Instance" shows itself to be way harder than anything else the mod can throw at you once you reach the instrumental second half. The gameplay suddenly becomes much closer to a typical rhythm game chart, meaning an immense amount of notes, including tons of doubles and triples, flying at you insanely fast with just about zero breathing room for a very long period of time. Good luck getting the full combo on this one.
*** "[=Hav0x=]", "[=Qu4rterb4ck=]" and "Suitmation Trials" may just be the instrumentals of "Out of Place", "Deus Ex Machina" and "First Instance" respectively, but they more than make up for the lack of opponent by bringing in complex charting the player has to fight through, including double and triple note sets. Add to that the HP system from the game's Story Mode songs and you've got quite the challenging group of songs to really test your reflexes.
*** VideoGame/FunkinPhysics:
*** "The Incident" is insanely fast, just as spammy as it sounds, and features tons of InterfaceScrew courtesy of the screen's constant swaying, arrows facing the wrong directions, and Trollge's side disappearing entirely.
*** "Absurde" is this intentionally, being just as absurd as its name suggests to the level that [[UnwinnableJokeGame it wasn't even meant to be beaten.]] From the incredible note spam, tremendous scroll speed, and 10-note layout to the OneHitKill axe notes, [[InterfaceScrew screen-obscuring oil notes]], and constant screen swaying, don't get the idea that you'll be beating it anytime soon.
*** VideoGame/MarioFNFPort: Apparitionous has an incredibly note-dense chart, as well as a mechanic where it’s impossible to regain health, with just 5 misses meaning death.
*** VideoGame/VsFlippyFlippedOut: At three and a half minutes long with a BPM of 280, "Overkill", the third song of the dev build, is one of the longest and fastest songs in FNF mod history. The fast scrolling speed doesn't help either, as with the amount of notes being thrown at you from Fliqpy. The song abruptly ends at around the two minute mark, making the player think it's all over... until the song picks up again a few seconds later, throwing many players off their game.
*** VideoGame/IndieCross:
*** "Nightmare Run", the end of the Ink Demon's week on hard difficulty, has garnered notoriety for being rather unforgiving. While the combat mechanics of "Last Reel" being absent would theoretically make this song easier, it is many ways ''much'' more difficult. From the previous songs there's the ink and shadow notes: the former [[InterfaceScrew obscuring the screen and charting]] and possibly results in a game over from too many hit; the latter being a OneHitKill that, while mostly reserved for the less note dense sections, can still be a pain to avoid when transitioning verses. Most infamous are [[DarknessEqualsDeath the shrouded in darkness segments]] where the notes are changed into mostly black with colored outlines that make it hard to discern what your suppose to press amidst the frantic charting, making it inevitable that an ink or shadow note will be pressed. Chances are, you'll likely either RageQuit or just turn off the gimmicks when reaching this song. A later patch would alter the appearance of the darkness notes to provide better visual clarity amidst the frantic charting.
*** Nightmare Sans' song, "Bad Time". MeaningfulName is an understatement for the song's name, as you very likely '''will''' have a bad time trying to beat it. The song is very fast, it features the blue and orange bone notes in spades, and this time around the dodge mechanic is ''randomized'', in that it can either be orange, meaning that you need to press Space to dodge like the attack you normally would, or blue, meaning you must '''not''' press Space in order to dodge the attack. And unlike "Nightmare Run", the mechanics of "Bad Time" '''cannot''' be disabled, meaning you have to play the song as intended if you want to beat it, but chances are that you might end up activating Botplay just to get to the end.
*** VideoGame/VsSonicExeRerun: "Top Loader" is pretty fast-paced and has some very complex charting between all of its versions, including those originally meant for FNF: Parallax. Not to mention that the song goes on for about 5 to 7 minutes, making it a MarathonLevel that really tests your skills.
*** VideoGame/CyberSensation: "Last Hope". [[spoiler:After the cutscene following "Wear a Mask", a fake error message reading "COME AGAIN WHEN YOU'RE READY" is thrown at you before the game closes. Take that at face value, because you have no idea what you're going to be in for when you boot the game back up.]] While not too long at over three minutes, the many ways that Taeyai can cause InterfaceScrew (notably with her and Boyfriend's strumlines) could probably make it just as annoying all the jacks seen in ''[[VideoGame/CosmoCalamityVsYukichi Cosmic Calamity]]'''s "Service Unavailable", if not giving it a run for its money. On top of this, you outright ''[[PlotTunnel can't]]'' play any other stage until it's cleared because, regardless of how you exit the game, it still starts up Last Hope.
*** VideoGame/FridayNightFunkinOnlineVs:
*** "Accelerant" on Fucked difficulty is an absolute ''nightmare'' compared to the other Challenges. The song itself is already fast enough on its own, but Fucked difficulty turns the already-bothersome health-draining bullet notes into [[OneHitKill One-Hit Kills]] that appear very frequently throughout the chart. Tricky's fire notes similarly turn into halo notes that get spammed throughout his part even more than the bullet notes, and when his section starts, a lever appears on the health bar that causes it to constantly drain. All of this combined can easily lead to a fatal screw-up at any moment.
*** While a far cry from "Accelerant", "Challeng-Edd" on the Fucked difficulty can still be quite difficult when [[spoiler:Tord]] makes his entrance, with his {{One Hit Kill}} rockets, large amount of notes, and powerful health drain to the point where he brings your HP down to one pretty much every verse. Further frustrating is that due to the way the game works, losing to him means replaying Edd's section just for another chance at [[spoiler:Tord's]] part.
* The ''VideoGame/{{EZ2|DJ}}ON'' series has the song "Sudden Death", which has stricter-than-usual timing windows and an even stricter lifebar, meaning that too many non-KOOL hits (and [=KOOLs=] are already hard enough to hit on this specific song) will result in a GameOver. Its nastiest incarnation is on ''[=EZ2ON=] REBOOT : R'', where its Super Hard charts reduce the timing window for a KOOL to ''two milliseconds'' (normally 23 milliseconds for Standard mode and 39 for Basic) and non-KOOL hits will take away ''99%'' of your lifebar. To date, nobody on ''REBOOT : R'' has even managed to ''complete'' this song on Hard or Super Hard. The developers later admitted that they made these two difficulties [[UnwinnableJokeGame humanly impossible on purpose]] so that anyone who ''does'' manage to register a clear is marked as a cheater.
* ''Beatstar'' is a rhythm game for mobile phones, similar to ''Tap Tap Revenge''. Songs are sorted by difficulty: Normal, Hard, and Extreme.
** In August 2022, during season 8, the game had an artist takeover by Music/{{Eminem}}, promoting his ''Curtain Call 2'' GreatestHitsAlbum. The hardest song in the event is "Godzilla", featuring Music/JuiceWRLD. The song starts pretty easy until the final stage, when Eminem does a MotorMouth rap solo.
** In December 2022, during Season 13, the game added Deluxe Editions, which are basically harder versions of song tracks.
** Season 16 added Beatstar's hardest song to date: "Duality" by Music/{{Slipknot}}. The song has fast beats, swiped notes and sustained notes throughout the entire song. The deluxe edition adds even more difficult sections, with no breaks at all.
** Season 22 introduced the deluxe edition of "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdTdCVqKA20 Hallowed Be Thy Name]]" by Music/IronMaiden. The song starts fairly easy, but in the final stage (the guitar solo) it becomes nearly impossible for players who use their thumbs.
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