That One Level / Turn-Based Strategy

You've got all the time in the world, and you've got the right units...but you've also got to deal with these levels before you can proceed.

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Example subpages

• Fire Emblem
• Fire Emblem Heroes
• Nintendo Wars
• Super Robot Wars

Other examples

Disgaea

• Disgaea: Hour of Darkness has several levels loaded with Geo Symbols, crystals that can cause various effects on the battlefield, but are mostly used to multiply the enemies' stats or remove part of your HP every turn. More often than not you're forced to sacrifice one or more characters in order to fight the enemies on equal footing. Examples:
  • Absolute Zero: Attack is halved and Defense is raised by 50%, making it hard to deal direct damage. The area is covered by the Ally Damage 20% effect, so every turn all your characters will lose 20% of their max HP. The enemies here specializes in poisoning, thus making it unnecessary to do direct damage to you. The Geo Symbols starts quite far from your characters.
  • Theatre of Death: All enemies have a 300% boost in their stats. In order to reach the Geo Symbol (wich is conveniently placed in the opposite corner of the arena), you'll need to do a chain throw to make one of your characters able to get rid of the symbol. The characters used for the chain throw will eat some serious damage and propably end their turn poisoned, asleep or paralyzed due to the enemies. There's a similar situation in the Hero's Tomb area, but it's just bigger, the boost is of 600% and to deal with the crystals you'll end up surrounded by enemies (and the boss), while your throwers WILL die before the second turn).
  • Main Corridor 3: Absurdly sturdy and strong enemies (three of them are even using weapons they don't specialize) which have their stats boosted by a whopping 150%. Six of them use tranquilizer guns that deal decent damage and put you to sleep. Requires a bare minimum of three sacrifices before you are actually able to damage them and not get OHKOed by the lighsaber wielding ones. Oh, and after that, there's a boss waiting for you (unless you take too long, so the boss will come and help the other soldiers).
  • The Nightdwellers level. Despite the fact that the intro to the level is one of the funniest scenes in the game, the level itself is terrible unless you're horribly overleveled. The entire stage is covered with a GeoEffect that causes everybody, allies and enemies, to randomly teleport around the stage at the end of each turn, which makes forming any coherent strategy pretty much impossible. It is possible to destroy the symbol that causes the effect, but it has a ton of HP, and you have to rely on luck to get any strong attacker near it. And you can only hope that your healers don't get teleported next to that freaking Red Ranger...
    • This type of map comes back once more in the last chapter. It's not an easy map to begin with, but making every square on the map a Warp tile is just vile.
• While we're on the topic of Disgaea, Disgaea 2 - Dark Hero Days has one particularly infuriating stage near the end of Axel Mode, once again due to Geo Symbol effects... Namely, a field that grows bigger and bigger with each round, meaning it will eventually cover the entire battle field. The effects it has on anyone standing on it? Invincibility. No lifting. GAME OVER. The very instant someone steps on the field, YOU IMMEDIATELY LOSE. Oh, and did we mention that the enemies are programmed to move towards it? Hope you like Level Grinding, 'cause the only way you're getting through this one is by making your entire team strong enough to kill all the enemies on the stage in one or two rounds. If you can't do that, you're basically doomed.
• Disgaea 3 and 4 have the X-Dimension versions of every story map. These maps will have box and Geo Symbols arranged in a way that you must use a certain strategy to beat. They often involve having one or more characters able to move over 10 panels in a turn and a Jump stat above 80, being able to attack enemies from 6 panels away, or clear the map in one turn because a Game Over Geo Symbol will become active in the whole field at Turn 2. Other restrictions might include being unable to use humanoid characters. And on top of that, some maps will have a too convenient Geo Symbol around that is there to induce the player to destroy it in order to make the map easier. Doing so will usually trigger a Geo Chain that will make the entire map a Absolute Area, where nobody can do anything and the player is forced to reset the game. Woe you if you decide to tackle a map of those without saving first. Especially if you've been playing for a while (although the Vita remake of 4 does soften the blow by letting you retry the map).
• Like above, Disgaea 5's Carnage Dimension maps will give you enough hell to make you commit to Level Grinding, but you've got one hell of a slobberknocker as early as Chapter 4 if you think you can just blitz through the game. This fight is a Mêlée à Trois between the Lost, the rebel army, and a berserk Usalia, and you have to destroy the former exclusively to win the day. You'll be fighting swarms of orcs (roided up with Group Strategy), imps (who will pester you from a distance with magic and Stones) and minotaurs (who do huge amounts of physical damage when attacking), all of which are a pain in the ass by themselves, but the most dangerous enemy is Usalia, who can either claw you for a decent amount of damage or, in Revenge Mode, use Berserk Stream to annihilate anyone in a three-by-three zone, and she's just as likely to use it on the Lost as she is to use it on you. The worst part: you are only allowed to kill Lost soldiers on the map. If Usalia dies (yes, this includes counterattacks and Heroic Backbreaker, so overleveling isn't as viable as you'd want), you skip the entire rest of the fight and go straight to the bad ending, do not pass go, do not collect Bonus Rewards. The Lost are not afraid to gang up on Usalia, meaning that you have to heal her as she's trying to melt your face off.

Final Fantasy Tactics

• Final Fantasy Tactics has a number of them.
  • The infamous Dorter Slums area, the fourth storyline battle in the game. At this point, you've got some level 3 characters (if you're lucky), and very few abilities, not to mention two computer-controlled guest characters who strain believability with their inepititude. The foe is three archers (one of which is mercifully unarmed), two black mages, and a comparatively-high-HP knight. What makes this battle particularly annoying is that two archers have a massive height advantage. They start off on top of a tall building while you're on the ground. They can start shooting at you on the first turn and rack up some high damage with their shots while you can't do anything to hit them; they're way out of the range of any attacks due to the height they're at, and it takes several turns to get characters up there to attack them. By the time you get up there and kill them, it's likely that they've single-handedly wiped out half your party. And while they're doing this, the Black Mages and Knight are routing your forces on the ground. In other words, they have range, you don't. If you're trying not to lose any of your generic troops, the battle is a lesson in patience and luck (and hours upon hours of Level Grinding).
  • The Golgorand Execution Site. The opponent has eight units to your five, one of whom is a Recurring Boss. Also, the Time Mages will cast Haste on themselves and Slow on your own units. Winning is an exercise in luck and patience.
  • What makes the Gafgarion battles annoying is that most other special units you run into have, as their battle's sole objective, the defeat of that character (e.g. "Defeat Wiegraf!"). Gafgarion is treated as just another unit, so even if you take him down, the battle's still on. At worst, this is a slight Guide Dang It! situation. Gafgarion also never has the maintenance ability, which means you can steal or destroy his weapon. All of Gafgarion's abilities can only be used if he has a sword. If he does not, he does trivial damage with punches and poses no real threat.
  • The Duel Battle between Wiegraf and Ramza at Riovanes. Unless you have a very specific setup with a very specific inventory, this battle sucks. Wiegraf has an attack with an effect range of four squares that cannot miss, and he will always move to the maximum range before attacking, and does lots of damage (three shots in three rounds will kill an equivalent level Ramza if you don't heal). So it comes down to either killing Wiegraf before he kills you, which is hard because he's probably more mobile than you, or fighting a long, drawn-out battle consuming expensive resources. Did I mention that, on average, Wiegraf blocks two out of three attacks, even when the hit percentage is 90%, and frequently counters melee attacks for significant damage? Extremely annoying battle. And Wiegraf has a second form, which is also quite difficult. Fortunately, you get back-up for it. (So does he, but since you can focus-fire him down to win the battle...) The absolute worst part about the duel with Wiegraf is that it's one of a string of battles you cannot interrupt. It's preceded by a Storming the Castle level, and if your only save after the successful storming, you are trapped, with no chance to withdraw, buy new gear, gain more Job Points or EXP, obtain the necessary very-specific-setup-and-inventory, etc.
  • The first fight against Marquis Elmdor and his two assassin girls. On the one hand, all you have to do to end the fight is critically injure one of them. On the other hand, if you've been leveling normally up to that point in the game, they outclass you in every way. The assassins can inflict negative status (KO, charm, confuse) on a character with 100% success if the character isn't protected against them. The Marquis himself is essentially a souped up Samurai, meaning he can use powerful area attacks that require no charge time. Oh, and he can teleport with 100% success. The PSP version makes it even worse because he has Safeguard, meaning you can't steal his great equipment. The worst part? This first fight is an Escort Mission; if the relatively pathetic guest character is KOed, you lose. Naturally, the character will rush right into the enemies.On top of all of this, if you don't have ninjas on the field, the bosses will always go first and you have a very high chance of not even getting a turn before the guest character is dead and the battle failed. And, like the above fight against Wiegraf, this is also one of a string of battles that you can't interrupt (in fact, it's the battle right after Wiegraf).
  • While easier than the first encounter with Elmdor and his assassins, the second encounter inside Limberry Castle is no walk in the park, either. Your goal is to defeat Elmdor in this battle - kill the assassins, and they'll come back as Ultimus Demons. However, Elmdor not only has a great equipment set (the Genji equipment, no less), but he's packing the Blade Grasp reaction ability— meaning any physical attack, front, side, or back, will have its hit-rate drop to about 30%. If you neglected to bring a mage to the battle, it's going to be a very long affair unless you get very lucky.
    • There are two abilities that are permanently missable if you do not do specific things during this fight. One of them, Ultima, can only be learned by Ramza, if he is a Squire, and it is cast on him by one of the assassins and he survives. Technically, it is possible to get it the first time the assassins, but the odds of the assassins casting Ultima at all (let alone ignoring Rafa and attacking Ramza) are basically non-existent, so you need to get it this fight. Even though the odds are much, much higher, it can still easily take numerous rounds for either to decide to cast Ultima, let alone use it on Ramza.
    • You can also learn Ultima in the fight that immediately precedes this one. What's really obnoxious (at least in the original Playstation version, since you can't do it at all in the rerelease) is stealing Elmdor's Genji equipment. With the most favorable setup, you're looking at a 5-10% chance per turn for each of the five pieces of equipment. Even with Ramza spamming yell (which increases speed) to the point that your thief gets several turns for every one of Elmdor's, this can still take well over an hour.
• "An Earnest Two Five Timer Date" in Final Fantasy Tactics A2.
  • Side mission "Time to Act" in Final Fantasy Tactics A2. You are in charge of protecting 5 moogles (Black Mage, Moogle Knight, Fusilier, Tinker, and Thief) and you're only allowed to send out ONE person from your clan to support them. What makes this extremely aggravating for most players is some of the moogles can be downright stupid and suicidal. The Tinker will constantly spam Red Spring if no one on your side has Haste or he will use Green Gear to try and cause Poison to the enemy. Tinker abilities can hit either friend or foe, which makes this a Luck-Based Mission. The moogle Thief may spend more time trying to steal than actually fighting. If one of the moogles gets knocked out, you lose.
  • This is on top of the way that the AI chooses the target to attack. Does the enemy on the entirely other side of the map suddenly have less hit points than your current target? Better start wandering over there!
  • "Bonga Bugle - Blackfrost." You have to survey people and find out what the most popular resolution was. Problem here is that some people either give more than one or give one that could have more than one meaning. Of course you have to restart the mission all over again if you get the answer wrong. However, doing this mission multiple times changes the top resolution, so not even Save Scumming will work here! While the Head Editor does give a slight hint at what the answer will be, everything is vague here. What also makes this annoying is that there are TONS of NPCs on the field to talk to, including a few on the rooftops for some odd reason so unless you have a high move or jump stat, have Fairy Shoes or Galmia Shoes, or have a Gria unit, you might not be able to reach the highest NPCs. And you can't forget talking to people behind their doors either. Since all the units on the field are considered guests, you'll waste time watching them do nothing.

Other

• Tactics Ogre: Any level that involves keeping an NPC alive becomes a total lesson in frustration. The AI has zero impulses to do anything that would keep them alive longer, often running headlong into crowds of enemies. And since they are often on the other side of the map from where you start, frequently they can die before you even get near them. The best thing you can generally do is equip Canapus with an item launcher and literally nothing else (so he is light enough to get multiple turns faster), then have him fly over as fast as possible and play healer until the rest of the party can arrive.
  • A sub-example of the above would be the law path version of the Act 1 final battle if you have any desire to recruit Ravness. Like the aforementioned missions, you must keep her alive until the end of the battle, but the twist is instead of attacking the enemy, she is attacking YOU. And it's early enough in the game that you won't have access to the more powerful C Cs to keep her in place if it is your first run of the game.
• Chapter 2-1 of Vandal Hearts is an early gimmick battle, and boy is it a doozy. There are a number of immobile, evil statues placed strategically around the map. These statues have possessed the villagers, turning them into insane, bloodthirsty killers. Your objective is to destroy all of the statues while keeping at least one villager alive. Sounds simple enough. The problem? Your party automatically counter-attack every single time without fail, and each of the villagers will go down in one hit, even from your weakest party member. It's a hair-pulling extravaganza.
  • The above battle is difficult, but with a strategy based around luring the zombie villagers and using the conveniently placed blocks on the map it is actually rather easy to finish the level without killing any of the villagers (you lose money if you do) and getting all the chests/secret treasures. A better example is 2-6 where you have to kill all the enemies on the map in 3 turns. Not only do you have to travel the length of the entire map to do so, but if any of the enemies manage to leave the screen before these three turns are up, you also lose. Oh, and the enemies are all Monk class so they have no specific weakness to any weapon or magic & can inflict poison just by attacking you. Have fun.
• Chapter 7 in Valkyria Chronicles is one of these combined with That One Boss and a heaping portion of Guide Dang It!. You have to fight a gigantic tank about ten times the size of your own. It's armed with five machine gun turrets that can cut your infantry to shreds instantly, and two gigantic cannons that can slice off more than half your tank's HP in one go. First, you have to destroy all of its machine gun turrets so you can approach the monstrosity with your anti-tank troopers. Then, you have to shoot at the bottom of a bunch of conveniently-placed ruin walls so that they fall over, blocking the path of the tank. It will then shoot at the wall with its main cannon, which causes three radiators to pop up. These radiators are only around for one turn, and take about four Lance shots or one grenade to destroy— assuming you don't miss, which you often will— and you can only destroy one of them per turn. After you destroy two of the radiators, an invincible Valkyria warrior arrives along with other reinforcements. If you're lucky, she'll be so far away that her AI refuses to do anything unless you move someone closer to her. If not, she can instantly kill any character that isn't your tank, often knocking out three or four footsoldiers in a single turn. If you manage to destroy the final radiator, you then have to attack and destroy the tank itself now that it's finally vulnerable, while scrambling to rescue the soldiers that got killed off by the Valkyria. Does this sound bad enough yet? There's also a strict turn limit.
  • The second half of Naggiar. You start with a basic goal of "capture enemy base", with relatively light enemy presence (one Tank Destroyer and some bunkers) and Valkyria Alicia systematically destroying the enemy installations. Then when you capture the base, you find yourself caught between a pair of Dromedarius, massive tanks that take effectively no damage when not shot in their weak points, fire area-denying incendiary rounds, and are backed up by a neverending stream of enemy footsoldiers (including a bunch of Elite Snipers). And Alicia gets taken off of the map in a cutscene. Your goal now is to destroy the tanks. You can have a very bloody fight against them as you struggle to keep your troops in one piece, or you can cheat and use your foreknowledge to position tanks and lancers behind the enemy tanks' spawn points before capturing the camp, then completely ignore all the other units and finish off the tanks quickly. (No one ever said war had to be fair.)
• All of Chapter 15 in Valkyria Chronicles 4:
  • The first battle is an extended exercise in From Bad to Worse. First, you start off in the middle of a pincer attack with bosses on each side. The only way to survive is to completely abandon your initial camp, something the game has conditioned the player never to do, and isn't suggested until you've already taken a beating. Then the two bosses team up, so the heavily-armored tank is now receiving covering fire from the Valkyria, who can slaughter any unit she can draw a bead on. Then it turns out that the Valkyria's power upgrades the tank's main gun into an armor-piercing laser. Hitting the tank safely at all is an ordeal, let alone getting an angle on its dorsal-mounted radiator for more than Scratch Damage. Luckily, this battle can be cheesed, since there's nothing between the tank and your starting position that can stop you demolishing it on turn one, before the Valkyria is in position, and this ends the mission immediately.
  • Then there's the second battle, taking down the Valkyria herself. She's in the middle of a Superpower Meltdown, and you're the one that suffers for it: units don't regenerate HP passively, lose HP over time for being too close to her, and her attacks now ignore armor so they can destroy vehicles just as easily as infantry. She also has effectively global range on her attacks if another enemy can spot for her, and she herself can sight your home base (which you have to hold this time), meaning you're constantly under siege. Additionally, damaging her is a two-step process, requiring a small target to be destroyed just to render her vulnerable - and her protection restores itself immediately at the end of your turn, leaving her free to murder your strike force. And this isn't even getting into the conventional units flooding down both sides of the map that make even getting within range an ordeal.
• X-COM
  • Any mission that has chryssalids. A zombie apocalypse with ambushing giant insects that moves 3x faster than you do. Fun times.
    • XCOM: Enemy Unknown's expansion Enemy Within has one specific Council mission regarding this: Site Recon. You're assigned to investigate a fishing village that's gone silent, and find Chryssalids, Chryssalid zombies, fish hosting Chryssalids, and a dead whale that's apparently one big Chryssalid hive. Once you find that last one, Central decides the best way to deal with it is with Death from Above, and you have to activate the transponder before running to the landing zone. And you have to make it there in eight turns, while being chased by an increasing number of Chryssalids. It's really not that terrible if you have the right strategy, but the problem is that in your first playthrough you're guaranteed to get it very early on, when all you have is crappy armor, ballistic weapons, weak grenades and low-ranked soldiers barely able to pick their own noses, let alone kill bands of ultra-fast bugs with innate defense and venomous claws that normally hit as hard as a Plasma Rifle shot.
      
      It's worse in XCOM: Long War, as Chryssalids come in packs of three to four, with the pack leaders using Lightning Reflexes to dodge Overwatch fire and trick your soldiers into wasting their Overwatch shots, giving the rest of the pack an opportunity to close in.
    • The first Terror Site mission is a huge pain. As it comes at the end of the first month, you won't have time to develop almost anything to help your units out in the field, so the Chryssalids that are guaranteed to appear have free rein to slaughter scores of civilians and create a small army of themselves, while you don't have the firepower or the aim to get rid of them quickly.
  • Again in Enemy Within, the Council mission "Portent". It works as a Target Extraction mission, comes within the first two months so you're likely to have Sergeants at best in your roster, and the terrain works far more in the Thin Men's favor than it does yours. You can beat it with four rookies, but it takes a VERY rigid strategy.
  • Enemy Within also adds a mission where the Aliens attack XCOM's base. This wouldn't be too bad, except for the quality of life feature that is the "make items available," button. This button will change all soldiers not on the current mission to the default loadout, making it easy to field squads with top tier equipment while only buying five or six sets of armor and weapons. The catch is, when XCOM is attacked, your soldiers will spawn in the mission with whatever loadout they had equipped. Meaning that any weapons and equipment that were either equipped to wounded soldiers or not equipped to anyone (such as laser weapons when you've moved on to plasma) aren't used at all, and the majority of your team has only their basic weapons and armor. This can, mercifully, be fixed with some Save Scumming and manual loadout reassignment since the mission always happens at the same time.
  • From XCOM 2, we have Avenger Defense missions which can potentially trigger as a result of the "XCOM Hunt" Dark Event. In this mission, the Avenger, your flying base, gets grounded, forcing you to go on the defensive. Your primary objective is to destroy a device that is keeping the Avenger grounded, which is on the other side of the map, requiring a long trek while being attacked by never-ending waves of ADVENT troopers and other alien nasties. The other is to Hold the Line against enemies trying to reach the Avenger: if even one of them gets into the Avenger, it's an instant game over. The silver lining here is that even injured soldiers, who normally are forced to sit out missions until they recover, can participate, bolstering your side. You can also set defense turrets to keep enemies at bay. Regardless, after having to deal with this mission even once, most players make a point of preventing the "XCOM Hunt" Dark Event from activating just to spare themselves from this grueling mission.
  • Most missions in X-COM: Terror from the Deep, including cargo ship terror missions – bad AI means they can run into thousands of turns while you try to hunt down that one last alien hiding in a closet –, alien colony assaults – same problem, except also with "Tentaculats" (a.k.a. rebranded Chryssalids) galore – , and Artefact Sites – same as colony assaults, except they pop up randomly and you have to do them immediately or take such a huge penalty to your score that it can sink your game.
• There are two types of level in UFO Aftermath that will give you a bad case of twitching: anything involving the Deathbellows (AKA the Squad-Killing Abomination From Hell), and most things involving bases, especially in the later stages when the aliens are breaking out the big guns. Having your entire squad wiped out by the balloon fish behind that door you carelessly opened? Hurts. Having them wiped out by an alien rocket launcher with a blast radius larger than some European countries? Hurts even more.
• In Heroes of Might and Magic, the fifth through seventh missions of the campaign pit you against the three lords you didn't pick. Castle Alamar, which is the last of the three for those who didn't pick the Warlock Leader, is significantly more difficult than the others, since there's a large maze separating you from him. While it's easy to find the way to the goal, the path is lined with Gargoyles, making getting there a tedious process. Castle Alamar itself is protected by dozens of Dragons (the best units in the game), as well as the other Warlock units except for Centaurs. Compared to this, the last mission is easy.
• The final mission in Roland's Campaign in Heroes of Might and Magic II is an absolute MONSTER. First off, normally, campaign missions will give you a choice of one of three bonuses to assist you in the scenario. Just to show how you are getting NO help in this scenario, the choice between three bonuses is actually a choice between getting one of three artifacts that will hinder your army instead. Next, the developers put an enemy hero right next to one of your starting castles, but just out of sight. If this is your first time playing this mission, it WILL catch you offguard and essentially force your first of many restarts. But the most difficult part by far is the magnitude of the armies you will face in this mission. Your opponents have no less than TWELVE towns, (technically thirteen, but one of them simply exists to amass troops for the epic final battle, which compared to the rest of the mission is a cakewalk.) backed up by more than enough resources to fund every single one of them. By comparison, you have 3 towns. Yeah...A playthrough on Youtube took roughly EIGHT HOURS to beat this mission. And that's a single attempt. Account for failed attempts and we're easily talking FIFTY HOURS of gameplay on This. Single. Mission. And as if that isn't enough, the fact that The AI is a HUGE cheating bastard in this game means that you can't just abuse the AI. You'll have to fight tooth and nail for every single castle on the map, and sometimes even that won't be enough. It is impossible to describe the pain, time and amount of attempts it will take to finally put this monster of a mission down. The only redeeming factor is that this IS the final mission, so an epic battle is what you would expect. And boy, does it deliver.
• Heroes of Might and Magic III
  • Steadwick's Fall, the last mission of the first Evil campaign, is a significant Difficulty Spike over the previous missions. You have only three months to capture Steadwick, Enroth's capital, and it's guarded by General Kendal, a campaign-exclusive hero with a large army. The city is surrounded by garrisons and extra cities, so you'll be hard-pressed to break through all of them before the deadine.
  • Tunnels and Troglodytes, the last mission of the second Good campaign. It's a large map, so it can be difficult to take and hold all the enemy cities. To make matters worse, the enemy starts with five Dungeon cities, while you start with a Castle, a Rampart and a Tower, making it difficult to field a large army of a single type.
• In Heroes of Might and Magic V, the third chapter of the Inferno campaign requires you to defeat an enemy who starts with three Sylvan castles (a faction type that's unbelievably imbalanced), and all you're given is one Inferno settlement that can't access its best units (the only redeeming quality of their entire army). You are required to make a run and grasp the first enemy castle ASAP, but even after you succeed at that, the enemies' attacks will start raining on you, having multiple dragons and ents, units that you can't even match before you can upgrade the castle you conquered into its full power (because the only one that didn't have a dragon portal to start with was the outermost one). In addition, the enemy has a ridiculously powerful hero who will keep respawning in their biggest castle every time you defeat him, something that by the normal mechanics of the game wouldn't even be possible (if your hero is beaten, you lose the game).
  • Though there is an out-of-the-box tactic for this mission that exploits Sequence Breaking: instead of capturing the lighty-defended southern Sylvan town as the game expects, capture the better-defended northwestern town first and build it up. This will avoid triggering the script that sends overwhelming armies against you.
  • And if you think that's bad, try the second mission of the Dungeon Campaign with one (handicapped) town against six and a lot of enemy heroes on higher levels than yours. Better find that Tear of Asha fast. Oh, and the next mission starts with zero to eight, but you start with two decent heroes and enough troops to easily capture two quickly.
• Not so much a level (because it doesn't have levels) as a stage, but the Independence War in Colonization. You have to pass it to beat the game, but it's so hard and just downright unfair (Where did the 18th-century English navy get teleportation technology!?) that many players just avoid it entirely (which makes the game unbeatable). Since it's a sandbox game, this isn't too bad, but as time goes on the game makes it harder and harder to play without fighting the Independence War, so eventually you have to either attempt it (and the longer you put it off, the harder it gets) or just quit.
  • Also in the follow-up Civilization IV: Colonization. The problem is that at a fixed point in the game, the King of England will begin amassing an invading army, and the larger and more successful your economy, the larger that inevitable invading force will be. The counterintuitive secret to winning is to deliberately cripple your economy and trick the computer into sending a smaller invading force that you actually have a decent chance of beating. Which is stupid because the whole pre-invasion half of the game is essentially an economic and nation building sim.
• Age of Wonders features a very difficult campaign in general, but the third dwarf mission, The Hall of Heroes really takes the cake. You start with a decent-size town and few resources, with your objective being to find the titular location. The briefing conveniently forgets to mention that you will come under attack almost immediately from the north and east by Frostlings, while the Dark Elves attack simultaneously from underground. The teleporter to get to the Hall is hidden underground, past heavy fortifications, and is personally guarded by two Karaghs. Resources are few, the AI will seem to be everywhere, and it will take many tries before you either get lucky or figure out one of the few strategies that has a decent chance of working.
• Trying to get the Dauphin to the cathedral in Reims is one of the hugest headaches in Jeanne d'Arc. For one its an escort mission, that's bad enough. But also the Dauphin will always die in a single hit - even if its from a cheap shot from an Archer that spawned out of nowhere behind your party just to ruin your day. Oh, and there's a time limit— take more than twenty turns or more and it's GAME OVER.
• Bleach: The 3rd Phantom has the Bonus Dungeon Urahara Tower. It's somewhat easy, until you get to the sixth floor. This is the first stage where you can unlock a completely new character (Gin), but it's almost prohibitively hard to do so. You have to kill him AND Izuru in five turns to unlock him, but there's a Menos Grande blocking the one path to them, so unless you can kill it within two turns, you're screwed. To make matters worse, the second turn is when the two of them start to run away, powering up all the while. You have to use Bankai if you have any hope of catching up to, let alone killing them. And god help you if it runs out before you're finished with them.
  • Guess what? It gets worse. Floor thirteen has you fighting Hitsugaya, Rangiku and about 10 other strong Hollows, on a map where there is so much distance between you and them that it's next to impossible to clear in 5 turns. You're fucked if Hitsugaya goes Bankai, crosses the field, and then uses Sennen Hyourou ^note  (It deals damage, lowers accuracy AND evasion, and prevents you from moving or attacking.) on your best characters. Have fun trying to kill people when your attacks only have a 50% chance of doing anything!
    • Floor 18 is also painful. The map is pretty large and there are four unique characters, of which two have Absolute Defense, meaning that your attacks will, more often than not, do only single-digit damage. At least there's nobody to recruit.
  • In the main game, "Homeward Bound". You start out with just three characters, all of which are rather weak. You have to not only protect Tatsuki, who is incapable of combat, from Ulquiorra and Yammy, you also have to defeat the two of them (at least on paper you do; but the battle ends anyway after defeating only one). And they're both nigh-impossible to beat. Matters are made easier when Ichigo arrives on the map a few turns in, and more so when Kisuke and Yoruichi also show up a turn after him, but those first few turns comprise one of the hardest sections of the entire game.
• Front Mission 5 has a stage roughly in the middle of the game, where the objective is to defend four units at the center of the map, and the enemies keep coming in quite an amount of waves. To top it all off, it also has a two-phase boss fight thrown in at the same time, and the enemies that come as reinforcements have jetpacks, so they can instantly get to the structure you're at. Yes, you do need to destroy them. All of them. Fortunately, you are given a support unit and four base cannons for extra defense, though the cannons are rather fragile and have very limited ammo. And you only get a game over if all four units at the center are destroyed.
• One mission in Day 4 of Devil Survivor starts out simple enough: Fend off a crazed lynch mob. But then, halfway through the level both you and the mob are attacked by a recently Face Heel Turned Keisuke, and the mission changes from defeating the mob to defending the mob. Depending on how much damage you were inflicting on the enemies beforehand, this can be literally Unwinnable.
  • Really, any mission that either requires you to keep the enemies from escaping the map or to protect NPC civilians is this. In the former, the demons will, 100% of the time, completely ignore you and make a beeline for the exit, fully exploiting any racial skill they have in ways that shouldn't be possible. For the later, with very few exceptions (mainly Mari and Gin), the NPCs you need to protect are pitifully weak and can easily die from a single attack. And yes, the demons will completely ignore you and make a beeline for the civilians, even if they're already within striking range of one of your teammates.
• Paranoia levels in Majin Tensei II: Spiral Nemesis, especially Gee. In Gee, you have to advance one human character to a certain point on the map. However the Paranoia maps have this nasty feature in which movement range is sharply reduced for all land units. It's even worse because of 2 other features. The map of Gee itself is covered in mountainous and sand panels which reduce your movement range to a pitiful 1-2 squares, and there are Pendragons stationed on the far left and right side of the map, they have an absurd attack range that is on par with Polaris. There is only one saving grace you have and that there are 4 health regeneration panels close to each other, but they are inside the mountain panel cluster and near the side you start at.
• Project × Zone has Chapter 16, "Detestable Golden Sunny Demon". Everything starts out easy, you get Jin and Xiaoyu in this stage, and half of your characters with you, which Kite and Black Rose need to survive. That's actually the easy part. The hard part is when your other half of the party arrives, four golden goblins arrive which the main objective becomes "kill all four of them before they reach the gate". The actual problem? They're way farther than at the starting point of your second party and act faster than your fastest pairs. At this point, if you haven't been using skills, this part will murder you over and over again.
  • Chapter 29, "An Unbeatable Love". You get your entire army... against a small country's worth of Feydooms. Better yet, you're up against three Skeiths, two "clone" Skeiths and Skeith Zero, and the clones are only slightly weaker. Oh, and on Turn 3, Vile joins the fun with a wave of Mega Man X enemies... and thanks to Iris showing up, Zero has a Heroic BSoD on the far end of the battlefield, and you have five turns to either reach him or kill Vile (twice, thanks to his Ride Armor) or you lose. And once you do talk to X and Zero? You still have to kill everyone on the map. Do you have Multi-Attacks yet? Because if you don't, you're getting nowhere fast.
  • Chapter 39, "The Devil Never Cries", a.k.a. "Let's Make You Burn Through Your Items!". You start out with half your army, flanked on either side by Astaroths and their minions, and the goal is to kill all enemies without Dante and Demitri buying it. Simple. But then once you kill them, Riemslenne and Selvaria arrive, both bringing their own forces, and you have to kill them. And when you defeat them... Jedah and Lord Raptor arrives, hauling along their own armies, and suddenly you have eight turns to kill Jedah before it's Game Over. Oh, and Lord Raptor's forces start directly on top of you. This is an incredibly tedious level at best, and an exercise in sending you to the final levels without any resources at worst.
  • Despite the sequel being easier, there are several frustrating levels such as Chapter 11, "Boulevards of Belligerence", which involves defusing bombs aboard a cruise ship. One of them is guarded by Axel's robotic doppelganger, Break, and halfway in the chapter, Nemesis along with several Tyrants as well as B.B. Hood arrive. You have to take out Break in order to defuse one of the bombs, and Nemesis's health will keep on regenerating unless you defeat him.
  • Chapter 16, "Thicker Than Water", has the return of the Stehoneys: once again, they must be defeated before the reach the goal or it's a Game Over. Mooks will be guarding them and there's also a Abaddon that needs to be destroyed before it escapes. Once the map is cleared of most enemies, players must fight off the Nemesis and Ustanak, with the former having Regenerating Health.
  • Chapter 22 of the second game, "The Demons Within", features a Brainwashed and Crazy Estelle, who players must prevent from reaching M. Bison. During the chapter, Sylphie will appear and summon Vile and other Mooks; at the same time, Estelle cannot be knocked out of play by any other character in the party except Yuri Lowell and Flynn or they get an instant Game Over. To top it off, Zagi enters the picture later, and the Nemesis returns again and is just as hard as it was in the previous chapters.
  • Chapter 24 for Brave New World, "Beautiful, Dangerous Wood Sprites": the good news is it's no longer an Escort Mission trying to defend statues from being destroyed like in the first game. The bad news? The likes of Sheath, who spams an Area of Effect attack, Aya-me, V-Dural and the V-Dural statues, Juri, Unknown, and T-elos, including a ton of Mooks to deal with. Meanwhile, a Treasure Mimic must be taken down within five turns or else it escapes.
  • Chapter 26 in the sequel, appropriately titled "The Terror of Death Approaches", makes every other stage look tame by comparison: because the Dragonturtle breaks down, players must split the party up to defend the Dragonturtle. It starts out easy at first, until the chapter ups the ante by sending in Pyron and Lord Raptor, Skeith and Azure Kite, Nelo Angelo and waves of Mooks with barriers. So long as one of them touches the Dragonturtle, be it a boss or Mook, instant Game Over. Have fun buying enough Cross Point-increasing and health items because enemy attacks and their health will absolutely tear apart the party. It's almost no wonder why Brave New World makes it a point to grant Kite and Haseo their Area of Effect attack in this chapter. Perhaps the biggest problem with this are the flying enemies in the map, who can easily get out of range from Pair Units' attacks. Here's hoping players remembered to deploy Ichiro for his +1 movement skill if they want to get anywhere near enemies.
  • The final level, "Arisu in Chainland", is brutal in so many ways. First off, there is the arena itself. It's covered in a red fluid that damages characters when walked over. Sure, it's just Scratch Damage, but it WILL add up in the long run because there is just so much of it. Also, the places where the playable characters spawn are bombs which will explode if even a single enemy steps on it, leading to an instant game over. So of course the game feels the need to shove Metal Face, Sigma, Ranmaru, Kamuz and Pyron right in front of them and have them dash at it the moment they get the opportunity to. Then there is the final boss itself. It hits like a truck, can attack almost the entire map, and is completely invulnerable to any damage unless Saya, who is at the very edge of the level, is killed. But to hurt Saya herself, first you need to kill Sheath, Dokugozu and Dokumezu. Do all of that and when you try to take out the Big Bad you will find out it has a whopping 400000 HP AND the ability to summon enemies almost every turn! By this point you will almost be begging for the game to give you a break and just be over.
• Jagged Alliance 2 normally doesn't throw this at you, but in the v1.13 mod there is the dreaded Drassen Counterattack. Very early in the game you can take control of the small town of Drassen. Its a useful early-game town as it possesses one of the only airfields in the game and is used to ferry in weapons and supplies. It also serves as a base for your helicopter pilot as well as your first mine. Plus in 1.13 it also has a police outpost (useful as a headquarters/intelligence station) as well as a field hospital to speed up the healing of your wounded mercs. Great place to start off right? Yeah, sure. But the AI in 1.13 is scripted to send "massive counterattacks" which include upwards of over a hundred enemy soldiers at once (in a game where early on you might have one or two squads of lightly-equipped and likely-wounded mercs). Some of these gigantic waves of enemy troops will include black-armored elite special-ops troopers with fully-kitted assault weapons and grenades. the majority will just be regular soldiers who will still be pretty well armed and massively outnumber your mercs and trained militia unless you've been really, really careful and spent some time prepping before fully liberating the city.
• Genjuu Ryodan:
  • Map 8. This is the first map where the opponent has pre-captured mana crystals, range 3 attacking rangers and mana generator units, in addition of cliff terrain that only air units can cross. The mana crystals are placed across waters where it shall slow down mana crystal capture the first time the player can access it. Worse yet, the AI are smart enough to send units to step onto the summoning circles which prevents units from being summoned. There is absolutely no room for mistakes in this map.
  • Map 11. The enemy is at the top of a cliff, the AI always spam mana generator units to gain a quick mana pool lead and the units sent down to the player are mostly priestesses or genies which deal lots of damage to any units that the player can summon the first time the player can access it, which prevents the player from getting near to the enemy's area without having units severely damaged.
  • Map 20. The enemy starts the map with three land dragons which charges towards the player's castle and turning most of the fields into lava, which only only grants the land dragons terrain bonus, but also renders all land and sea units (except the land dragon) taking 2 damage each turn! This map is unwinnable without the phoenix unit and even with it the map is still very hard.
• Mission 3 of Faselei! is a brutal endurance run against two waves of enemies (at a point in the game where you can't carry much spare ammo, and thus are likely to be close to running out before the end,) followed by a Hopeless Boss Fight against the enemy commander, who's likely to wipe out your teammate and leave you half-dead before taking off and bringing in a a heavy-duty tank with a metric ton of HP to finish you off. Equipping the Backup chip to call in emergency repair and ammo replenishment is an absolute must.
  • The endgame is particularly brutal. First is Mission 12, with 5 waves of enemies (including a massive boss battle) and no Backup chip support whatsoever. Better be careful with your ammo. Fortunately you can skip the first 2 waves by just running past them and heading straight into the enemy base. And after that the game goes straight into Mission 13 and the Final Boss, with no chance to buy new equipment or save (and still no Backup chip support, though you at least get to change your loadout and add more inventory items into your backpack.)
• One level in Ancient Empires II requires you to move to the end of the level while killing every enemy on the map. You don't have a castle, so you can't produce more units except by raising Skeletons. There are several, increasingly powerful groups of enemies that appear from nowhere as you move along the path. If you try to take a shortcut, you'll just cause multiple groups to spawn at once. To have any hope of succeeding, you need to protect the units you start with, send in Skeletons as cannon fodder, and raise every possible grave as a new Skeleton.
• Drone Tactics gives us Chapter 21: Iron Wasteland. Iron terrain (and Rock, its equivalent) inhibits the movement of every non-flying unit in the game, and as one might expect, Iron Wasteland is covered in it. No easy paths through the Iron exist, and you'll be going all over the stage to pick up the Capsules scattered in the far corners of the map. The objective is to defeat all enemies, and said enemies are arranged in dangerous formations that prevent your flying units from moving forward quickly. You have one allied computer-controlled Moth, Elisha's Kris-T, who is strong, bulky, and has powerful gear (that all disappears when Elisha joins you), but will mostly mill about in the area she started out at and not do much, other than draw fire from a few Stag Beetles and try to counterattack them with her mediocre Melee weapon. It's not helping her case that the whole battle could have been skipped entirely had Elisha not thrown a temper tantrum. While not nearly as difficult as the Bonus chapter and later Badlands stages, Iron Wasteland is both hard and hair-pullingly slow.

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