No, the other one.
#2: Jul 2nd 2017 at 12:44:57 PM
I've deleted a few that basically included every single boss and/or level except one or two. I'm of the opinion that there should never be more than a couple.
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#3: Jul 2nd 2017 at 1:00:43 PM
Yeah, I agree. I think there should be at least two or three bosses/levels for each page. Any more than that, and it just borders on Nintendo Hard.
edited 2nd Jul '17 1:01:44 PM by DivineFlame100
#4: Jul 3rd 2017 at 9:26:17 AM
If I read this thread correctly, that would mean all of the subpages for these tropes break the criteria for these tropes to apply, because I notice most of them list multiple examples for one game. Case in point, Dark Souls. Kind of an extreme though.
I think we should start by cleaning all of the various subpages.
No, the other one.
#5: Jul 3rd 2017 at 12:11:22 PM
Dark Souls is one of those game series that are probably not troped according to their own difficulty, but in comparison to other, easier games. Which is misuse.
edited 3rd Jul '17 12:11:29 PM by AnotherDuck
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#6: Jul 6th 2017 at 8:12:15 AM
Here's what I submit from Sonic the Hedgehog:
Sonic The Hedgehog 1
- The Marble Zone can be hard to some players. Not only is it full of traps and tough obstacles, but it comes right after Green Hill Zone, which is much faster paced compared to this one. It's not "difficult" so much as "annoying"... wait, no, between the tricky-to-time pounding things, the lava chase, the surprise flames during the lava block rides, and the fragglemuffin' Caterkillers, it actually is kind of hard. Still not as bad as Labyrinth or Scrap Brain Zone, but it is earlier in the game.
- As pictured above, the Labyrinth Zone earned infamy for its steep Difficulty Spike, a strict Oxygen Meter (that after twenty seconds of not swallowing an air bubble, Sonic drowns; but not before the player has to endure the dreaded countdown music) and for having traps that Sonic hasn't seen yet. The maze-like designs in both Acts 2 and 3 certainly seals this level's fate for this trope. Despite there's no "real" boss battle in the Labyrinth Zone, there are traps strewn about, wasting Sonic's time as he deals with rising water and not a ring in sight. It could've been worse — the original level order was to have Labyrinth Zone right after Green Hill. Even Sonic Team thought that was too harsh!
- Scrap Brain Zone Act 3 (if you don't use the shortcut, anyway), especially if the player falls into the deepest part of the act. There the air bubbles are so far and few in between that the countdown music is practically GUARANTEED to start haunting you, and if that weren't enough, the air bubbles actually take much LONGER to spawn than the ones found in Labyrinth Zone.
Sonic The Hedgehog 2
- Metropolis Zone, not only because the stages are massive. To make it worse, every other Zone in the game has 2 acts, but Metropolis Zone has three to make the suffering longernote . It also features 3 dangerous Badniks that can attack the player very easily when not paying attention. The boss fight is very long and difficult, too.
- Mystic Cave Zone and the notorious spike pit
. Instead of being bottomless, an unnecessary row of spikes means that if you're Super Sonic, you have to wait until you run out of rings to die. It doesn't help that this level has several dangerous Badniks of this.
- This seems to have been noticed: in the official IOS remake, two changes were made to it: in the main game, the spikes are gone and you warp to Hidden Palace Zone instead of die. In time attack mode you'll still die, but the spikes are removed so it is just a simple bottomless pit.
- Chemical Plant Act 2 and the damned bottomless pits, crushy things, and Mega Mack. Made worse in that it's only the second zone in the game. Arguably more of a Difficulty Spike than a true That One Level, but easily the hardest part of the first half of the game. Sonic Team themselves had trouble beating this part of the level.
- Luckily, there's a shortcut path that completely bypasses the entire frustrating part of the level and drops you right off at the boss with an Invincibility to boot.
- The interesting thing about this level is it really depends which way you go through it. If you take the higher route, it can be formidable but definitely manageable. If you take the lower route however....yeah good luck with that.
- Oil Ocean Zone was no joke either, since the whole level is over, well, an ocean. If you fall off the platforms, you have to try to swim to safety, and you're kind of screwed. There are also tons of enemies that shoot projectiles at you, crumbling ledges, slides covered in oil, and fans that blow you this direction or that. On top of that, the boss fight is pretty hard.
- Wing Fortress Zone, because the whole level is in the air, meaning if you fall down, you die. The stage is also quite lengthy, there are many traps and there is tricky platforming which can get very unforgiving.
- Death Egg Zone is also infamous for being the shortest level, but consisting of two boss fights where you're a One-Hit-Point Wonder.
- Special Stage 6 is flooded with bombs and difficult-to-follow ring trails, all topped with a stupidly strict ring requirement. You're going to see "NOT ENOUGH RINGS" a lot here.
Sonic The Hedgehog CD
- Metallic Madness, the final zone, where you are very much in danger of time running out due to its multitude of one-way doors, timed (or simply time-consuming) set pieces, and hitting Sonic with a shrink ray which only really makes him harder to control.
- Special mention goes to the Past version of Zone 2, which is Unwinnable by Mistake. A spring intended to launch the player up to a platform is placed too low for it to be useful; as the platform which leads to the goal for that variant of the act, the player can't complete the Past version of the Zone. How much of an impact it is to the player's performance depends on how much time the player has left on the clock (as mentioned, it's easy to run out of time) and how many "Future" goalposts the player can locate and use, so they can use it to warp back to the Present in order to complete the level (if there aren't any left...you're screwed). This only exists in the original game, however; the PC port (which is included in Sonic Gems Collection) and the 2011 remake thankfully address this by moving the spring high enough for the player to access the platform.
- And don't forget Zone 3, where it is harder to actually get to the final boss than to beat it. Seriously. The Psyco-Egg itself is a pushover, but to get to it, you have to make your way across one of the few bottomless pits in the game, which more or less comes down to a leap of faith.
- Wacky Workbench features a flickering checkered floor that bounces Sonic upwards at very high power, and the upper parts of the stage are covered in booby-trapped background graphics that surprises first-time players and frustrates veteran players. There are also those slowly snaking block platforms, air vents under most major jumps, and elevators that spin you and make you jump off oddly. Additionally, when you get thrown to the top of the stage, you have to work your way down, slowly, through the killer background, to the bottom of suspended pillars JUST NEAR the bouncy floor. At least the crushers don't actually kill you.
Sonic 3 And Knuckles
- Carnival Night Zone Act 2 when playing as Sonic; this Act is great fun up until you get stuck between two red and white barrels... and you will. (On the GameFAQs message board, it's known as the Barrel of Doom.) It's actually quite easy to get past them if you know how, but the game gives you absolutely no indication on how to, causing many players to get completely stuck. One of the few Guide Dang It! moments in the Sonic series. This led to the rise of a video game urban legend — back around the time of the game's release, when you called Sega's help line (Remember those?), the line's automated greeting was supposedly along the lines of "Welcome to the Sega help line! To get past the red and white swirly things in Carnival Night Act 2...."
- Another thing about Carnival Night Zone Act 2 is that the level is designed to waste time; with all the bumpers and the sheer length of the level, odds are when you reach the boss, you'll only have 3 minutes or so left on the clock. And of course this boss is one who uses a strategy where you can only get a hit on him once every 30 seconds or so. So unless you can somehow get a lot of hits on him at once (which is only possible if you've learned the timing on Sonic's insta-shield attack, or you're willing to bleed rings in order to get those extra hits in while you have Mercy Invincibility, or if you managed to hold on to a lightning shield — which is tricky with all the water in the level), then odds are you'll time out before finishing the fight.
- The beginning of Hydrocity Zone Act 2 — while most of the act is fast and easy, the first few sections have you outrunning an Advancing Wall of Doom that terrified many players in their youth.
- Marble Garden Zone features very steep hills, out-of-control tops, spikes everywhere, hideously placed spiked maces and crushing spiked pillars, and enemies that like to pop out of nowhere. And both the sub- and main-bosses of the zone like to collapse the level on you, midway through each act.
- Sandopolis Zone as well, especially the second act, with the annoying ghosts and rising sand/timed switch door puzzles. Like Carnival Night Zone Act 2, both acts are exceptionally long, even by the standards of both games.
- Act 2's even worse as Knuckles. First off, as Sonic or Tails, the ghosts don't come into play until about a quarter of the way through the level. As Knuckles, they're in it from the very start... And the level starts out in the dark, which means you've only got a few short seconds before they're pouncing on you. Second, Knuckles gets to deal with a particularly fun puzzle that Sonic and Tails don't, involving raising and lowering the floor in conjunction with the aforementioned timed doors. It will take a novice player many an attempt to get past this insidious showstopper, by which point time's probably about to run out.
- Lava Reef Zone to many players, with Everything Trying to Kill You. The Toximister badniks are a pain in the butt, because they release a mist that if get in contact with it will slowly drain your rings, and if your run out of rings you lose a life. The Act 2 boss is also a major Difficulty Spike compared to the other bosses in this game, with the pre-boss auto-scrolling section where you have to jump on different collapsing platforms — one mistake and you fall into a Bottomless Pit.!It dosen't help that this comes after the already hard Sandopolis.
Sonic The Hedgehog 4
- Episode I:
- Act 3 of Mad Gear Zone, with an Advancing Wall of Doom to end all Advancing Walls Of Doom.
- Mad Gear Zone in general, for the same reason as Metropolis Zone above.
- E.G.G. Station Zone. A Boss Rush level filled with the previous game's bosses, all in the "pinch mode" when you engage them. They lead up to the game's final boss, who is not only ridiculously hard to beat, but when almost defeated has the gall to pull a Last Ditch Move that will kill you if you don't attack him at just the right moment first. The best part of it all is that one of the game's trophies/achievements takes the difficulty of this stage Up To Eleven by having you beat the entire stage without getting hit.
- Episode II has Oil Desert Act 1, mainly because of the section where you must fly over a huge Bottomless Pit near the end of the stage.
Sonic Adventure
- Any of Big's levels. Being required to complete tedious fishing levels in order to get to the final boss in what's otherwise a platformer game that's supposed to emphasize speed? Seriously? They're not hard once you get used to the system, but they feel completely out of place in the game, a very Unexpected Gameplay Change.
- Have fun catching Froggy if you don't realize you have to set the lure, which tends to happen automatically with the actual fish.
- The A-rank emblems, which require you to catch a fish weighing at least 2000 grams before catching Froggy, are just painful. Not only are these fish extremely difficult to catch, they're even more difficult to find in the first place!
- This gets even worse when you realize that the regular species of giant fish can fall between 1600 and 2400 grams and all are just as hard to catch as they are to find. It's all too common to struggle to catch a giant fish, only to find out it's only 1900-1950 grams and have to look for a new fish to try to catch.
- If you're playing as Sonic, Sky Deck. Wouldn't be so bad, but the camera just wacks out, and the controls sometimes glitch up on automated sections. Easily the most glitchy level.
- Knuckles' Sky Deck is even worse, mainly for his second mission where you have to find the emerald pieces without touching the hint balls. This wouldn't be a problem if it wasn't for the fact that to open certain doors where emerald pieces might be, you have to use the central lever, which is extremely near a hint ball and the hitbox for the lever is extremely finicky, meaning that it's very likely for you to accidentally jump into the nearby hint ball and start the mission all over again.
- Attempting to complete some of the A-Rank missions as Sonic or Knuckles can be downright nightmarish. As an example, the very first level of Sonic's, Emerald Coast, is straightforward for the C and B-Rank missions. Getting through it in the two-minute time limit for the A-Rank, however, is difficult. And some levels just get worse, like the aforementioned Sky Deck and Lost World. You'll need to spam the spin-dash and memorize the level layouts to stand a chance.
- Actually, Knuckles is easy if you're willing to sacrifice a life. Get the emerald pieces like you normally would until you're about to get the third one, restart, and get to those same spots as quickly as possible. The game doesn't give the pieces new spots, and thus makes it really easy to reach them within a minute (or 2 minutes on the last one).
Sonic Adventure 2
- While the emerald hunting levels in Sonic Adventure 2 are unpopular with many, Mad Space, an extremely large level with uncooperative hints and Selective Gravity, deserves a special mention. Trying to get an A-Rank on it is pain incarnate. There's a reason it took Nintendo to finally get gravity mechanics right in a platformer, and even then it was one console generation later.
- Hard mode is especially bad; the emeralds may be in the same locations each time, but the process of getting them is the worst. The first one is beneath a planet with no gravity below it, and the third is beneath the planet with the worst gravity problems, but the second one is the worst. You have to Screw Kick up to an out-of-reach emerald shard, with the space beneath it located between two spinning traps and a meteor that can't be busted for whatever reason. And on a keyboard, that is especially annoying.
- Security Hall (another emerald hunting level) isn't too bad once you know it well, but until you do, its very steep time limit is likely to drive you insane.
- The level is actually about the right size to make the time limit a challenge but not unfair. What really tips the scales against you, however, is that the level introduces Chaos Emeralds located behind locked safes. The only way to unlock them is to become acquainted with a fairly complicated switch system.
- Mission Street is a decent level that most players probably won't have much issue with... unless you're playing the 100-Ring bonus mission. The stage just barely has enough Rings to qualify at 103, meaning you have to grab every single Ring you see and not get hit once. This is difficult because the stage has a lot of enemies, hazards, and booby-traps, as well as a Vulkan Fighter if you're too slow.
- Aquatic Mine, provided you don't grab the Air Necklace.
- Did we mention the air necklace is past a spot where you're guaranteed to almost drown? Have fun.
- Death Chamber's not too bad in the main game, although the third and fifth missions are tough thanks to that Goddamn underwater door. Knuckles' portion of Cannon's Core, though...
- Crazy Gadget. Oh dear heavens Crazy Gadget. It's bad enough that the first three-fourths are jammed with Gravity Screw, Bottomless Pits, and Artificial Chaos, but the real kicker is the final segment. It takes place in space, so the whole place acts like a Bottomless Pit, the camera is at uncomfortable angles, and there are no directions on where to go when you flip the gravity-switches, so you might as well be flipping a switch or attacking an enemy on another wall only to fall to your death. Did we mention the segment also has Artificial Chaos?
- There's a reason why Eternal Engine has its own trope, and that's mainly due to the fact that this level is long, difficult, and extremely frustrating, especially when you're trying to get the A-Rank emblems. And then there's its hard mode, which is a whole different story altogether.
- At least part of the frustration lies in Tails' mech having a health meter, in a series with a gameplay staple of collecting at least one ring to avoid being a One-Hit-Point Wonder. And unlike Eggman's mech, you don't even get an armor upgrade for it. On the plus side, most of the time you can get away with just shooting at everything in sight.
- The levels Final Rush and Final Chase of Sonic Adventure 2 are some of the most irritating levels ever made:
- You play Final Rush as Sonic, and you start out having to grind and jump between floating surfaces. The kicker: it's almost always over a bottomless pit, there is always Camera Screw at the worst possible moment, some of the surfaces will let you go RIGHT THROUGH THEM, and gravity can change its mind several times a second!
- It gets even worse in the fourth mission (time limit). The level is set up in such a way that it actively encourages you to try taking faster routes. However, these routes frequently invoke the camera screw and can really make gravity pull SIDEWAYS! Even worse, it's a long level with tons of bottomless pits, so one slip-up and you die and have to restart from the beginning.
- You play Final Chase as Shadow, and you start out grinding before coming to a platform. The bulk of the mission is about going between spinning gravity drums and platforms. Again, bottomless pits abound, and the most common enemies on the level are Demonic Spiders (the Artificial Chaos robots).
- The level itself isn't too hard on the first mission (reach the goal). However, when you do it with a time limit, all the problems from Final Rush come into play except for the multiple pathways. There are still the issues with falling to your death, Camera Screw, capricious gravity, and the Demonic Spiders. Not to mention the sheer length of the level and the fact that dying means you have to redo the whole damn thing.
- These levels themselves in some ways though mildly avert this trope. They are partially only as hard as you make them, so if you are cautious and go by the default and easiest path, they aren't too hard. However, God help you if you should attempt to use an alternate route.
- Let's not forget the "Hard Mode" versions of Route 101 and Crazy Gadget.
- The hard mode version of Route 101 is so difficult you cannot beat it with anything less than an A-Rank. You will always beat it with 1 or 2 seconds to spare if you are really really good. If you are not really really good? "Oh no! I lost him!"
- The hard mode version of Crazy Gadget (an already hard level to begin with (see above)) takes Camera Screw and Interface Screw to a whole new level. Not only do you get the picture inverted and the controls messed up, the hard mode version forces you to make some near-impossible homing attack jumps over bottomless pits and forces you to bounce up to rails you grind while everything is wonky. Did we forget to mention the dramatic increase in the Artificial Chaos population? In normal mode, you only encountered three of the exploding variety of Artificial Chaos. In hard mode, they are everywhere. Add it all together and you get one of the hardest missions in the game.
- Meteor Herd: A large and sometimes confusing stage that wouldn't be quite so bad if it weren't for one factor: Meteorites striking all over the damn place, and sooner or later, one of them will be headed your way, and you probably won't see it until right before it hits you. Even the soundtrack tries to warn you about it. "Don't let it hit you, move!" indeed.
- Interestingly enough, the hardest mission for this level is the second one where you have to gather 100 rings. It's all too common to make it to about 80-90 rings and then get slammed by a random meteor right before you were about to finish the level.
Sonic Heroes
- Power Plant is normally easy unless you are playing as either Team Sonic or Team Dark. There is a section involving rising "energy" that you have to escape. Because this section involves extensive use of the Homing Attack, which is particularly wonky in this game, plenty of players had a lot of trouble with that.
- Similarly, most of Lost Jungle is a bit tough, but otherwise manageable; up until the last segment that both teams have to face. The player has to swing across several vines to get to the goal over bottomless pits, while avoiding a huge alligator that suddenly emerges and chases the team throughout the segment. Which sounds bad enough in itself, but the player has to wait for the vines when swinging to reach the peak of the swing before they can jump safely to the next vine; while also having to deal with the camera being positioned in front of the characters during this segment rather than behind the back (think the famous giant GUN Truck chase scene from City Escape from Adventure 2). This results in the vines making the player's timing extremely critical during jumps, while the player having to make out the vine reaching the peak of the swing amidst the incoming giant crocodile rampage in the background.
- The trolley ride in Bullet Station. This entails controlling a trolley car through a Death Course with lasers and spiked balls everywhere. If you get hit once, your speed is drastically decreased and you lose the ability to control it. Twice and you lose the ability to steer, leaving the trolley to travel on a fixed path. Get hit a third time, and you die.
- Team Chaotix's second mission on Bingo Highway. Thought collecting ten casino chips was difficult when you are a pinball on a board riddled with instant death holes? Good, now collect all twenty of them!
- Even worse is Team Dark's second mission on Rail Canyon to destroy 100 enemies in less than twelve minutes. This sounds easy until you realize that the level lives up to its name quite well, and about eight or more minutes will be spent grinding down rails with very few enemies to defeat, which means you have to hurry if you want to find 100 enemies in time, to the point where you will probably have to make it to the goal ring, which will send you back to the beginning of the level so that the enemies will respawn. It's like running a level twice in 12 minutes and destroying all of the enemies in your path at the same time.
- Mystic Mansion. Take a level even longer than the game's standards, add hundreds of Bottomless Pits out of nowhere, the terribly programmed karts, Mooks up the ass, and the freaking camera trying to stop you too, and you have a level that many young players never made it past. While the Goal Ring at the end was a Godsend in this hellish place, it is negated due to the fact that this level comes just before Robot Storm (luckily, Egg Fleet awaits just after this horrific place).
- The Team Chaotix version has you putting out torches throughout the mansion. What makes it so hard? THAT GODDAMN SPIDER WEB. Okay... you grind across the web, and Trial-and-Error Gameplay is in full effect; you have no idea if the path you grind down leads to torches or a Bottomless Pit. And if you're doing the second mission, the torches you need to put out are in the middle of the web and you need to jump off with good timing to avoid getting burned or falling out. Also, if you miss a single torch in either mission, you go all the way back to the beginning of the level. It certainly doesn't help that most levels in Heroes are much longer than Sonic standards.
- Final Fortress: Let's see: Loads of platforms that fall out from under you if you linger on them for too long, fights with hordes of tough enemies on small platforms over bottomless pits, and last but not least, the laser dodging section at the end, which forces you to rail jump (another one of this game's less-than-refined mechanics) and comes with nice dose of Camera Screw, preventing you from seeing which rail is going to be hit by the laser, if you're lucky enough to land on a rail at all.
- Any level becomes this if you're trying to access the Special Stages, which turn the playthrough into a No-Damage Run. Special Stages are tied to golden keys, which the player needs to have when they get to the goal ring. There is only one key in each level (placed within a breakable safe, which are positioned away from the main paths within the levels), and if the player is hit just once, the key disappears, unable to be retrieved again.
Shadow The Hedgehog
- The missions where you have to destroy a vehicle before it gets away is outrageous, particularly the Dark mission of Air Fleet and the Hero mission of Iron Jungle. Every single shot counts, some vehicles can retaliate, and God forbid you die; you reset to the last checkpoint touched, but the target vehicle doesn't, meaning that by the time you respawn, the vehicle will be so far ahead and so close to escape you may as well restart.
- These missions can be made easier, however, if you wait till you beat all the endings and get the Shadow Rifle. Once you get to a spot where you can fill up your Hero or Dark Gauges (which is easy on Air Fleet) and gain unlimited ammo, you can use the rifle to take down the vehicles in no time and get an easy A.
- You don't even have to fill up your Hero Gauge on Lethal Highway; the vehicle there can be destroyed with only around fifteen shots from the Shadow Rifle.
- These missions can be made easier, however, if you wait till you beat all the endings and get the Shadow Rifle. Once you get to a spot where you can fill up your Hero or Dark Gauges (which is easy on Air Fleet) and gain unlimited ammo, you can use the rifle to take down the vehicles in no time and get an easy A.
- Central City is the only level in the game to not have a goal ring; instead, both missions involve you detonating/disposing of bombs. Thing is, the level design is confusing, with the Dark and Hero paths overlapping and criss-crossing, and it is easy to find yourself going around in circles and unable to find where the next bombs are. That wouldn't be so bad except both missions are timed. Eight minutes doesn't seem so generous when you don't know what the right way through the level is!
- Mad Matrix, especially the Dark mission. It's painfully easy to get lost in the mazelike circuit that connects the towers; on the Dark mission, you have to spend pretty much the entire level in that circuit, as it involves detonating bombs that are in the circuit. And there are no less than 30 bombs to set off, and you pretty much need to go through every last inch of the circuit as the bombs are distributed pretty evenly.
- The only good thing about Mad Matrix is if you do the Dark Mission, you're guaranteed an A as long as you don't kill too many Aliens, no matter how much time you take. Be ready to spend up to an hour doing it, though.
- The Dark mission is made a bit easier once you know exactly how the bombs are distributed — 5 on the blue circuits and 8 each on the red, green, and yellow circuits, with the last one lying on an intersection between the green and yellow circuits.
- The two ARK stages, The Doom and Lost Impact, are incredibly frustrating. They have two things in common; they are Marathon Levels, and it's easy to get lost and go in circles due to the ARK's layout.
- The Doom has you either killing soldiers or saving researchers. Regardless of which mission you pick, the soldiers are very aggressive and will rush at you at the drop of a hat. In the Dark mission, you have to take down every last one, and in the Hero mission, you'll lose points if you kill them. On the mission with the researchers, there's a glitch that can make it Unwinnable by Mistake note if you don't have the Heal Cannon. Incidentally, this is the only level where that weapon is actually useful. While the maze-like nature of the ARK is mitigated slightly by a map, it's hard to read and you'll just end up wasting time looking at it. Interestingly, The Doom is virtually unchanged for Expert Mode; perhaps the developers realized how difficult this stage was and that making it harder would have been overkill.
- Lost Impact is somehow even longer than The Doom, and has no maps at all. The Hero mission has you exterminating all of the Artificial Chaos, and you have to scour the whole stage to get every last one; there's nothing worse than spending 20+ minutes on the stage only to realize at the end that you missed one. Additionally, there's a lot of them on the paths of the GUN Rails, which can't slow down or stop while Shadow is manning the gun, and some might hide in shadows. The one upshot to all this is that the soldiers here actually don't attack Shadow and sometimes assist in taking down the Chaos. This level has been perfectly described by Lewis from BrainScratch Commentaries: "Imagine three dimensional except badly designed Super Metroid where you can't miss a single Missile Tank and you have this level, only the Missile Tank shoots back." Oh, and if you take the Normal mission to avoid all of this, your next stage is Cosmic Fall. Have fun.
- Space Gadget. This level has gravity-changing fields that you fly into which affect the controls in...weird ways. Sometimes it seems like the game can't differentiate between two different gravity directions, and so you'll end up doing things like light-dashing backwards even if you're facing forwards. If you're doing the Hero mission, you're put on the clock and you have just five minutes to clear it.
- The Dark mission, on the other hand...hoo boy. You had better be used to those gravity fields because there are a lot more on this path and you need to go around destroying the ARK defense units. The first few are easy enough to destroy, but the later ones are behind barriers which require you to either waste all your ammo destroying them or get around them via platforming and/or Gravity Screw for a better but still not optimal angle. In addition, there's some particularly awkward platforming that involves having to jump to sideways doors with no solid ground underneath them.
- Black Comet. It's pretty long, the GUN mechs and Black Arms alike are very aggressive, and a lot of time is spent on the Air Saucer over some substance that cannot be touched. The Saucer has rather slippery controls and you can only shoot forward on it. And God help you should you lose the saucer, in which case death is pretty much the only option. And on the Dark mission you have to kill every last GUN mech.
- Cosmic Fall. It's timed and there's lots of falling platforms as well as tricky sections that require you to Homing Attack off chains of enemies to small platforms; to add insult to injury, this will tank your score if you're going for the Dark mission. There's also a handful of Artificial Chaos throughout the level, more so on the Hero mission. Speaking of which, the Hero mission (which is basically the same as the Dark one but longer) also has a long section that requires use of a walker bot, which hampers your movement speed. Through all of this, you have Vector and his Muppet-esque voice constantly telling you to hurry up.
Sonic The Hedgehog (2006)
- Radical Train. Here's pokecapn's epic struggle upon it, which lasted an hour of absolute mach speeding, switch-busting, rail-hating, train-raping, loading-masturbating anguish.
- In case you don't want to spend an hour seeing why Radical Train sucks, here's the explanation; Radical Train is the perfect representation of all the terrors of Sonic 06 (except, mercifully enough, Sonic 06's horrid level length problems) in a single level. The camera fucks with you constantly in the platforming segments where you need to bound jump up to higher platforms. Your controls will rebel against you at the worst times when trying to jump to springs. The level is poorly designed to where, if you enter the loopty loop after the first train bomb too far to the right, you will overshoot past the loop and be launched to your demise. The level is unforgiving and unfair as well, because you cannot reasonably be expected to find the last two switches in time on your first go. If you can't be expected to succeed, even with high levels of skill, at your first try at a level, the level is poorly made. Oh, but that's all ignoring the elephant in the room. The Mach Speed section is true and utter hell. The worst in the game, in fact, because it makes ample use of the two worst mechanics regarding mach speed; turning and jumping. At least Crisis City, hell that it is, was straight; in Radical Train, you will fling yourself off the side all the goddamn time because you pressed just a little too far to the left or right, you will be sent careening into train platforms because you ever-so-slightly misjudged your jump, you will miss boosters you need to hit because you're moving too fast to account for them, and you will be cursing everything you know and love because the entire section is unforgiving. Make one mistake, and you are very likely dead. And even after the platform hell that is the first half of the Mach Speed section, you'll still want to be cautious as hell; the train's explosions are almost impossible to dodge, so you better get every fucking ring you can in between each blast, and you better hit the boosters at the end, which you have barely any time to see, by the way, or hope you glitch out and run around the train like the LP link above shows, or you'll need to start the Mach Speed section all over again. It might not be as bad as End of the World, but if you needed a level to define Sonic 06 in a nutshell, this is it.
- And even Radical Train pales in comparison with End of the World: combine mysterious sucking instant-death spheres with brutal platforming, and you have a recipe for pain. Some of the combinations of characters and stages for End of the World are ridiculous. Tails in Crisis City? Silver in a quicksand-heavy portion of Dusty Desert? The former also has the instant-death spheres hanging over a pit that you have to fly over. And they're the vacuum variety. Argh! It's also a really good thing you can glide over most of the stage in both Knuckles' and Rouge's sections, as they're nigh unplayable if you try to beat them "legit". And then in Shadow's section (the very last one, making it immensely irritating to S rank), the orbs can appear literally in the middle of the thin paths you're on and require some well-timed and well-aimed jumps.
- Aquatic Base. It's not as difficult as Radical Train...for the most part. Then you get to the metallic sphere hanging over a Bottomless Pit; you jump on the sphere and (attempt to) ride it to the other side of the room. It takes longer than it should to get it to start or stop moving, and if the sphere takes even one hit, it pops and you fall to your death. The ending portion of the stage also bathes everything in a red glow, making it impossible to see some of the enemies.
- Speaking of Silver and Dusty Desert, his actual portion of that level has some puzzles that involve knocking balls into holes in order to open a door. The problem with that, especially on the second note , is that you can only move it with your normal attack (which has next to no range), you only get so many attacks, and sometimes the amount of attacks you have left will decrease FOR NO REASON AT ALL! And the second puzzle involves sending the ball down a very long corridor and it is very much a race against time; you have to get the ball in the correct hole before it blows up and before you blow up in rage!
- Sonic's Crisis City is a fucking nightmare, especially in the Mach Speed segment, in which the game can randomly glitch out, pushing you to the right for no reason, and where it's all but impossible to avoid taking hits because there's so much debris on screen.
- Shadow's version of Crisis City has an infamous section where you're supposed to homing attack multiple enemies in a chain, only you'll fail and fall into a bottomless pit until you know to hover slightly higher and skip that enemy to hit the next one. The Chaos Snap can skip this, but is prone to just glitching you into the pit at the other side, for some reason. Luckily, other than that it's mostly a Marathon Level and not a particularly difficult one, but that one section is a tricky bitch.
- The snowboarding segment of White Acropolis is also horrible, and in the part with the giant snowball, you can get stuck on a wall and can't get out.
- Shadow's version of Kingdom Valley deserves a mention for being a hell of a wake-up call for a second stage in his storyline. First, you play as Rouge where you find three keys to open up the next pathway, only you're without a radar and without hints. And then, there's Shadow's hovercraft section where you have to avoid the collapsing pillars that are instakill on impact; the kicker? The camera doesn't change to let you know where each pillar will fall, leaving you to get blindsided.
- Silver's Kingdom Valley isn't any better. It goes on for an eternity, and generally has loads of enemy fighting segments, only half of them are the yellow robots that shoot away dropped rings, making you easy pickings for other enemies. The very end pits you against several of these and the blue robots who aren't much better as well. The only reprieve you get is that you get to play as Sonic for a short time.
Sonic Unleashed
- Eggmanland, ESPECIALLY the 360/PS3 version, where you're forced through 45+ minutes of non-stop Nintendo Hard suffering. The stage seems like a normal (if incredibly difficult and requiring pitch-perfect timing) daytime Sonic level at first, but then you hit the first hourglass and switch to Werehog form — and that's when it hits you that you're going to be switching between Sonic's two forms a lot during this level, and given that Werehog levels on average take about 15 minutes, you can tell this is going to take ages before you finally hit the goal ring. Indeed, given the number of times you switch between Sonic's forms in the final level, it's really something like five or six levels in one. Even subsequent runs, after you've learned the stage, can take upwards of 20 or 30 minutes. To add insult to injury, the very last challenge (after some insane platforming, difficult combat sections, and instant death QTEs which are hard) in the gauntlet from hell is a Werehog brawl against two Dark Titans. Eggman really didn't want you getting through this one.
- The Wii/PS2 version can also be a pain in the arse — instead of one Marathon Level, it's split into one Sonic stage (and subsequent missions) and five Werehog stages. The latter can actually be somewhat enjoyable, but the day stage is flat-out ridiculous at times.
- It's just one bottomless pit after another in Adabat's Werehog levels. The last act in the Wii version (Heavenly Ruins) can be brutal, particularly the battle at the endnote . It's quite easy to fall off, and lord help you if you want to climb up and collect the secret item while all of the Dark Frights are dogging you.
- Then there's the daytime level of Holoska in the X360/PS3 version, specifically the parts where you have to run on water, but you have to make sure to hit almost every single dash panel to not end up drowning.
- Jungle Joyride Act 1 in the HD version. It's one of the longest stages in the game, and as it's the last stage before Eggmanland, it doesn't let up on the difficulty. It's filled to the brim with Bottomless Pits, precarious platforms, crushing ceilings, collapsing pillars, quick-time events, and running-on-water segments that give the ones in Cool Edge and Dragon Road a run for their money. The level is also frequently marred by severe framerate drops, especially during the chase sequences.
- The Tornado Defense acts, due to the unintuitive controls, enemies swarming on all sides, and the time limits for the Egg Cauldron battles.
- These stages are easier if you resort to Pause Scumming since the QTE prompts aren't hidden when you pause. If you pause the moment the prompt shows up, that gives you more time to see it and nail hitting the correct buttons when you unpause. The Egg Cauldron fights can still be tricky due to the amount of stuff being thrown at you, but it makes them more manageable.
Sonic Colors
- The DS version brings us Asteroid Coaster. It is the last of the 6 main levels, and by far the cheapest. There is this green goo everywhere which acts like a bottomless pit even if you're nowhere near a bottomless pit. The Violet Wisp is good to use but if you run out of it (it hovers and sucks stuff in) you'll just fall in the goo. Often you also get chased by giant dinosaur heads, which instantly kill you if they touch you. Worst part is, sometimes these sections have the "press R to slide under the barrier", which you would never get first time, same with a point where you have to jump up or get owned. And then there's the falling rocks which hurt you and impede your progress, unless you're boosting. And sometimes you'll have to use the slide then as well repeatedly, which runs the risk of you getting hurt. Also there's a few actual bottomless pits which appear at the worst times.
- The Wii version of the level can be a pain in the arse too, thanks to our good friend, the Gravity Screw.
- Act 3 of Planet Wisp in the Wii version can be annoying towards the end. It's incredibly easy to either miss the small platforms, or have the Cube power run out while you standing on the solid blue boxes, leading to you plummeting into the toxic waste to your death. It's actually a really short level, but having to do this part over and over again (as well as several of the Red Rings being all over that particular area) can ruin your score, because the timer doesn't reset to what it was at the checkpoint when you die.
- Terminal Velocity Act 1 in the Wii version. The level involves dodging all of those robots that have chased you throughout past levels. The primary problem is there are no checkpoints and the hardest part near the end has you dodging the fists or lasers of one robot while a bunch of other robots obstruct your path.
Sonic Generations
- A few irritating missions, but for the main levels, Crisis City Act 2 (the Modern Sonic act) is particularly tricky first time due to bottomless pits and a lot of lava, as well as enemies being sometimes difficult to hit. It culminates in a section where there's geysers all over the roads and a tornado throwing cars and rocks at Sonic. Act 1 (the Classic act) can also be rough due to the tornado that eats you up if you're within it at the wrong time, and having to jump on irregular platforms including cars and parts of buildings while a strong gust blows you back.
- Planet Wisp is also challenging, but that's more a case of being a Marathon Level than actually being ridiculously hard. Act 1 does have its issues, though, mostly because it's 90% reliant upon the Spike Wisp from Sonic Colors, only it handles a lot worse than it originally did in that game.
- There's a side mission where you have to Homing Attack a music note back and forth with Vector... it's much harder than it sounds, especially when the note speeds up and flies to the back of the arena while you've just touched the ground on the opposite side.
Sonic Lost World
- The game in general can be quite Nintendo Hard in the latter half, with Frozen Factory Zone 2 being a testament to the game's Difficulty Spike starting to rear its ugly head. Are you good at Star Ball Rolling in Super Mario Galaxy? Hope so, because the whole level is like that, even in the boss fight! You are turned into a giant snowball with enormous inertia and the turning speed of a brick. You don't get rings until you touch a checkpoint while having rings stuck on the ball (fortunately, it doesn't matter if the checkpoint has been used or not), so you can get one shotted easily. The whole level also takes place above a bottomless pit on smallish platforms. And there are bomb enemies that, if they explode while in you, send you hurtling into one direction. And there are yeti who bounce you away from them (some are stationary and don't try to hinder you themselves, but big ones will run toward you). And there are chickens who blow gale-force winds. So you are going to fall. A lot. And may God help you if you go after Red Rings - the last one requires you to hit all the snooker balls you come across. You only get one shot and once you go past it, you're immediately flung into a checkpoint, so if you ballsed it up, you have zilch option but to restart the level all over again.
- Frozen Factory Zone 4. The 2D sections aren't too bad and the boss fight is pitifully easy, but the 3D sections are frustrating beyond belief. They consist of long, narrow ice roads chock full of spikes, penguin enemies, and giant stone balls which inexplicably home in on you. Think Mario 64's slide levels, but with ice physics and precise enemy dodging. However, one little detail really pushes this into Fake Difficulty territory: if Sonic is moving fast on the ice (which happens a lot, this being a Sonic game and all), his jump turns into a fancy ice skater spin. This spin jump covers a ridiculously long distance and takes away the player's control of Sonic's movement in the air, so nine times out of ten it will cause Sonic to go flying off the stage and die. And don't even think about deliberately slowing down to avoid this, or the level will take forever and the aforementioned homing stone balls become nearly impossible to dodge.
- Lava Mountain Zone 2 really takes the cake. If you're familiar with minecart levels from the Donkey Kong Country series (which are considered scrappy levels in their own right), then you're all set—that's exactly what this level is, with Sonic spending the entire level grinding on rails. You have to be REALLY precise with the jumps you make; if not, you'll spend a lot of time plummeting into the abyss, or ramming into a cart of explosives that can instantly kill you. If that wasn't enough, you also have moving doors that'll kill you if you aren't fast enough to reach them before they close. And good luck trying to nab the Red Rings, the placement of them within the level can make going for one feel like a suicide run. That power-up that lets you skip to the next checkpoint seems mighty tempting now, doesn't it?
- So you've managed to get past Lava Mountain 2. You're feeling pretty good and psyched to finish up the last couple of levels. Then Lava Mountain 3 comes along and shows you that the suffering isn't over yet. The 3D sections of the level shouldn't be too much of a problem, but the 2D sections can really test your patience. They're vertical shafts that each lead up to a member of the Deadly Six. All of the sections have instant-kill lava rising up beneath, so your platforming skills better be good if you don't your lives to go down the drain. If that wasn't enough, each of the Deadly Six can potentially be That One Boss. Zeena requires precise timing of the Homing Attack if you don't want to hit the spikes on the ceiling, Zor can knock you into the lava, and Zavok's second form is by far the hardest boss in the game. Zavok is the last obstacle in the level, and if you end up losing all your lives to him, you have to start the entire level all over again. Have fun.
- Most of the levels past Desert Ruins in the 3DS version of the game are widely considered to be awful, but Frozen Factory Act 3 is outright incomprehensible. A Marathon Level comprised of tedious puzzle platforming, the player has to deal with pushing around small snowballs to build them into bigger snowballs, all the while dealing with ice physics, giant moving gears, and diving penguin badniks. These snowballs are needed to fill holes or press switches, which are themselves connected to various puzzles or locked objects that are necessary to progress through the level. Which is all bad enough as it is, but then the level introduces the snowman head enemy, upon which the level transforms into a horrifying exercise in frustration. The snowman head follows the player around (it rolls around like the snowballs, which means it too grow in size), and upon contact freezes the player in a block of ice. It can only be attacked and (temporarily) disabled if the player stuns it with the kick homing attack first; and even then, if the player manages to run away from it (disabled or not), it simply respawns itself close to the player. To top it all off, if the player was building up a snowball at that point, the snowball head after freezing the player will then jump repeatedly onto the snowball, in an attempt to destroy it. Unsurprisingly, this level is usually singled out as one of the worst levels in the entire game.
- The 3DS version also has Special Stages (designed similar to those from Sonic Heroes), which are controlled exclusively through the 3DS's gyroscope controls; essentially requiring the players to having to spin around in place with their 3DS in order to move Sonic around. Not helping matters is that the Special Stages are fully 3D stages, which requires very precise movement in order for players to properly navigate them. It didn't take long for them to be widely panned as one of the worst special stages in the series.
Spinoff/Handheld Games
The portable and spinoff Sonic games have their own brand of scrappiness. Case in point:
- Labyrinth Zone in the Master System/Game Gear version of Sonic 1. As if the original wasn't evil enough, Sonic actually feels slower than in the original.
- Scrambled Egg Zone from Sonic 2 (Game Gear and Master System). Unless you know the layout of all the vacuum tubes, it's essentially Trial-and-Error Gameplay at its worst.
- Coming before that is Green Hills Zone Act 3 which, in comparison to the rest of the zone; is a poster example of Platform Hell with hills, springs, and spikes, with the final approach to the boss being completely unforgiving in its timing. And no checkpoints means you have to do this again if the boss kills you.
- Sonic Chaos is generally a very easy game, but it has Electric Egg Zone. Electrified floors, high-speed vacuum pipes that lead to suddenly-dropping platforms, and a mesmerising background that may distract you until it's too late.
- Robotnik Winter Zone from Sonic the Hedgehog: Triple Trouble. Apart from some slippery flooring and nasty speed-traps, the updrafts you need to use to climb up vertical shafts are notoriously unreliable, which often results in plummeting into an icy chasm.
- Tidal Plant Zone is even worse, as it takes place almost entirely underwater, it has a tricky section where you have to navigate a giant bubble up past spikes and enemies, and it's extremely easy to get hit and have to start the section all over. This is notably easier with Tails because he has the Sea Fox, but not by much.
- The final level in Sonic Spinball is utterly horrendous; all the required Emeralds are heavily guarded, there is virtually no safe ground below you, the climb up to the end boss is a nightmare, and the end boss itself is actively trying to (and can easily) knock you back down to the bottom of the stage. Compared to it, the rest of the game is a cakewalk.
- Blue Marine in Sonic Blast. It's entirely underwater with no dry land, air bubbles are spaced far apart, and the tubes can be very confusing to navigate.
- Sonic Advance Trilogy
- Egg Rocket Zone from the first game. A long vertical level with enemies everywhere, blindsiding spikes and bottomless pits asunder, gravity shifts up the wazoo by the third section of it, and a god forsaken tricky portion right before the end of it where you have to bounce off a wall at just the right moment to reach a platform, which can be utter hell for anyone not named Tails. Oh, and top it all off, there are only three checkpoints in the stage... and if you don't reach one in under 5 minutes, YOU DIE.
- Cosmic Angel Zone, technically the second act of Egg Rocket, is not any better. It's definitely more straightforward, just having to head right, but to, uh, compensate, this stage has more annoying enemy placements, more spikes, more bottomless pits, more gravity shenanigans, and at the end, you fight the Egg Snake, which is a deceivingly challenging boss.
- The second game has Sky Canyon in which the game starts to really become a minefield of bottomless pits, especially when playing as Sonic, and if you don't know about R-Button Tricks, you won't be able to beat it. And when you reach the boss, you have to hope it doesn't pull its One-Hit KO.
- The later zones in the third game, particularly Cyber Track and Chaos Angel, can be pretty damn evil with bottomless pits that are as frequent as the above examples and the level design. In fact, 90% of Chaos Angel Act 3 is a moving platform ride across a colossal pit with a lot of enemies, spikes and other things that will knock you off!
- Also, fuck every single one of the special stages through the trilogy. They're either tedious to get to, painful to complete, or sometimes both.
- Sonic Rush Series:
- Altitude Limit. Lots of instant death lasers that act as bottomless pits, long acts, sections where you float upwards on rocket platforms avoiding spikes and enemies, and a section in each act where you have to jump up areas of falling platforms.
- Sonic Rush Adventure has a pretty decent difficulty curve, but anyone striving for 100% Completion will shake their fist remembering the snowboarding mission. That level was awesome on its own, but with limited controls and a complete inability to stop moving it really feels like Fake Difficulty... that and the only way to figure out each checkpoint is by trial and error.
- One of the missions for the Sol Emeralds requires a rematch against the final boss, who is powered up. This is normally not an issue, unless the player chooses to change the boss difficulty setting to 'normal'. The boss becomes a whole lot less forgiving, as all of his attacks are much harder to avoid from the start. He starts using weapon combos in terrifying ways, like raining missiles on you whilst simultaneously attacking with laser cannons. Not to mention that you have to guide his attacks toward the (damaging) turret shields, and the turrets themselves are harder to aim this time around.
- And that's just for missions. The regular game gives you the hell that is Sky Babylon Act 2. There is fire everywhere (you need to be careful as Sonic, though Blaze can just run right through it) and all of the hardest obstacles are immediately before the end of the stage, and dying more or less resets your score. This gets even more difficult when you realize that this stage has an obstacle that kills you instantly, in the form of a zig-zaggy purple line, whether or not you're holding rings, collecting rings, using a shield, or invulnerable. In most places, this would be less important, as it appears over bottomless pits, but at this point they surround incredibly touch sensitive rising platforms, enemies that both move and shoot, and the usual falling platforms. Even getting a good score on this stage is harder, as score and time requirements are harder than the last stage.
- Sonic and the Secret Rings:
- Dinosaur Jungle. It feels so out of place, and the egg mission doesn't help...
- First, take a level which is literally a giant, bottomless pit, then add some visually interesting platforms, lots of grind rails, strong winds, and for good measure, toss some spiked Air Launchers among regular ones, so that the player has to learn where the lethal ones are, lest they want to see Sonic fall to his doom. Finally, add a couple of tricky platforming sections, combine it with a fiddly control scheme, and ta-da!: You have the Levitating Ruin levels from Sonic and the Secret Rings.
- Sonic and the Black Knight:
- The first Dragon's Lair stage. Fall away floors to bottomless pits that are impossible to see coming. Endless swarms of enemies whose sole purpose in life is to block all of your attacks and then knock you into said bottomless pits. Giant armored titans surrounded by those endless swarms of enemies whose sole purpose in life is to knock you into the bottomless pits. Oh, and there's a time limit.
Rom Hacks
- Sonic 2 XL is a Sonic the Hedgehog 2 rom hack that makes the game significantly harder as a whole, but two levels in particular stand out:
- Casino Night has lots of unavoidable rings throughout it (mainly in Act 2), and you won't always be able to find a ? Monitor in time if you go through, so it's very easy to get Sonic fat enough to die by going into one of the pinball launchers.
- The fat gimmick already makes the game harder, but Hill Top Zone will make you tear your hair out trying to beat it. The biggest challenge is that there is a lot of tight jumping involved in the level, and even the first level of Fat Sonic can make it extremely hard or even impossible to clear certain ledges. This can also get you trapped in the lava pits inside the mountains. This level forces you to take your time, and it will punish you if you try and rush through it.
Are final levels allowed to be That One Level?
edited 6th Jul '17 8:12:32 AM by ElloMe
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#7: Jul 6th 2017 at 8:14:50 AM
A lot of those belong on That One Boss and That One Sidequest (anything to do with the special stages is sidequest material).
edited 6th Jul '17 8:15:54 AM by PhiSat
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No, the other one.
#8: Jul 6th 2017 at 3:36:51 PM
I'd say a final level can be That One Level, but that has to be after considering how difficult a final level of that particular game should be. That is, it's not enough that it's the hardest level; it has to be so much harder than any other level that it's not on the same scale. Unless you can complete the penultimate level like a boss, you pretty much have to run into a wall as far as the last level is concerned.
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#9: Jul 7th 2017 at 8:26:11 AM
I figure that TTO/TTB/TTA/that one whatever is more than just "this is hard" or "this is frustrating to get". It has to be the sort that makes you throw your hands up in disgust and go play something else for a while (cf. that fortress level in VideoGame.Jak II Renegade).
I'm generally in favour of cleaning the pages up and leaving a "one per game, if there's a dispute go to the discussion page" on the trope.
edited 7th Jul '17 8:26:37 AM by desdendelle
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#10: Jul 7th 2017 at 8:36:15 AM
Personally I don't think it needs to be limited to one level, imo you can have 2 or 3 but they need to be it for entirely different reasons such as Luck-Based Mission for one and perfect timing based level for another.
Also IMO the last level can only be it if it's something like luck based or resorts to cheating, being the last level is usually meant to be the most difficult in the game so it needs a special 'stupid multiplier' to be it.
No, the other one.
#11: Jul 7th 2017 at 11:41:49 AM
One per game and reason sounds like a good limitation for me. If there are two levels that are listed for the same reason, either one of them is harder than the other (which means one doesn't qualify), or they show that it's not just That One Level, which doesn't sound like an example to me. Likewise for bosses.
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#12: Jul 7th 2017 at 4:51:04 PM
I think enforcing the "literally one only" rule for bosses is a little harsh, as some games can have a large number of boss battles. Having like 3 examples in these cases would still end up with a relatively small sample size. You also have the issue of trying to narrow it down to one when the entire community agrees that a couple bosses are dumb.
To give an example I'm familiar with, Kingdom Hearts II has a very large number of boss battles (don't know the exact number, but 30 story bosses minimum is a safe bet), and of those bosses there are four that are generally considered really hard: Demyx, Xaldin, Roxas (Final Mix version only), and Xigbar. II isn't exactly an easy game, but it's not hard either (outside of Critical Mode) and these guys stand out because they are aggressive, have wide/unpredictable attacks, and are difficult to approach. They give you trouble regardless of the difficulty you play on.
edited 7th Jul '17 4:55:28 PM by Karxrida
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#13: Jul 7th 2017 at 5:40:45 PM
Those are hard for entirely different reasons which would count IMO.
- Demyx is a really REALLY tight Timed Mission boss with random game over states.
- Xigbar has random disorienting camera changes and Flash Step moves that require timing to not die
- Xaldin is way too hard for as early you face him. Too beefy and you have a severe lack of tools.
- Roxas is a Mirror Boss.
edited 7th Jul '17 6:22:09 PM by Memers
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#14: Jul 7th 2017 at 10:07:37 PM
It's worth pointing out that some of the That One Boss should probably be listed as a Wake-Up Call Boss instead; basically if an early boss is hard until a player figures out a routine game mechanic, it probably should be on Wake-Up Call Boss rather than That One Boss. Similarly, some examples of That One Level are probably best moved to Difficulty Spike instead. I'm sure there are other example of tropes that we should consider moving examples to.
Is there any particular order that we want to tackle this, or should we just pick a subpage and start making comments?
edited 7th Jul '17 10:08:10 PM by thok
No, the other one.
#15: Jul 8th 2017 at 12:14:37 AM
Wake-Up Call Boss is when the high increase in difficulty is indicative of what the rest of the game is like, rather than a spike that is out of place from the rest of the game.
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#16: Jul 8th 2017 at 12:29:15 AM
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Wouldn't the bosses that don't fit into Wake-Up Call Boss just go into Difficulty Spike?
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#17: Jul 8th 2017 at 1:36:30 AM
I still think a Wake-Up Call Boss can qualify. Going back to my earlier example, the fight with Demyx marks the exact point where Kingdom Hearts II starts getting hard, but he's also more difficult than a lot of the bosses that succeed him because of his special brand of BS.
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#18: Jul 8th 2017 at 12:52:39 PM
Sorry for my absence in this discussion. I'm currently on vacation right now so I have limited access to internet.
Anyway, there are a couple of ways we could tackle this. One way is that we can simply clean out the pages that have most or every boss\level listed and only limit them to about two or three examples, as well as remove any examples of Final Bosses, Wake Up Call Bosses, and Bonus Bosses since they automatically don't count unless they're overly hard by their standards. Another way is that we can limit the examples to just one per page just as the tropes say, and we can have discussions as to what qualifies to be That One Boss\Level, similar to Complete Monster.
edited 8th Jul '17 12:57:05 PM by DivineFlame100
No, the other one.
#19: Jul 9th 2017 at 12:55:12 AM
I think a Wake-Up Call Boss can qualify, but again, they need to be measured against all bosses in the game. If the bosses start to become much harder at that point, but that boss is still out of proportion for even those, it can qualify.
A Bonus Boss, no. Their purpose is to provide an extra challenge above anything else in the game. They're supposed to be extremely hard.
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#20: Jul 9th 2017 at 2:37:07 AM
Agreed a Wake-Up Call Boss can be this,
An end / post game Bonus Boss that is up at any time can not be this at all, an early game Bonus Boss with a limited window of availability I can see making a case for.
A Final Boss can not in any way be this, it is supposed to be the hardest boss in the game and yada yada. Now if a final boss or level changes the rules just cause the player is getting too strong for the mechanics and or just to make it more difficult and such would be a different but related trope.
edited 9th Jul '17 2:38:40 AM by Memers
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#21: Jul 9th 2017 at 6:42:41 AM
The Wily Capsule in Megaman 7 is a perfectly fine example of a Final Boss that is also That One Boss; he's overly hard both by standards of that game and by standards of what a Megaman original series Final Boss should be.
I think people have misunderstood my comment; I do think some examples of Wake-Up Call Boss should be That One Boss (for example, I agree on the consensus on Demyx, since nothing in the game particular resembles his Time Limit attack). An example of somebody who I think is miscategorized is Aztec Falcon from Megaman Zero, who is hard by standards of a early Megaman boss because he's forcing you to be prepared for the typical difficulty of a Megaman Zero boss.
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#22: Jul 9th 2017 at 7:07:07 AM
Looking at this thread, it seems to me that TTB/TTL first need their pages cleaned up, then a thread set up similarly to Complete Monster, simply because there needs to be proof that something is That One Whatever before it should be included in the page. That way there's zero misuse; if it doesn't pass the thread, it doesn't get to the page.
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Memers
Since: Aug, 2013
#23: Jul 9th 2017 at 7:09:33 AM
Comparing Final Boss to Final Boss is a whole other trope. That would be comparable to Sequel Difficulty Escalation, which I think exists under some name, although overall MM 7 was midtier in difficulty for the mega mans IIRC.
The final boss is hard/hardest, that's the point. If Final Boss was to be included then almost every one would be on there. An easy final boss would be a trope, related to or a subtrope of Anti-Climax Boss.
edited 9th Jul '17 7:15:11 AM by Memers
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#24: Jul 9th 2017 at 8:02:44 AM
The point of a Final Boss is to give a coda to the game, not necessarily to be the hardest boss. I agree that there are plenty of examples of games where the Final Boss is the hardest boss, but not That One Boss since its difficulty fits naturally into the difficulty curve of the game. But it's not unreasonable for there to be situations where the Final Boss completely shatters the difficulty curve to the point where it becomes That One Boss.
Memers
Since: Aug, 2013
#25: Jul 9th 2017 at 8:31:54 AM
I would disagree, outside of a Bonus Boss, the final one is generally the hardest and is very much implied to be in the trope itself, Anti-Climax Boss is the exception not the norm.
It doesn't really matter how much harder or not, it's the final challenge in the game and it's doing it's job if it is the hardest.
That One Boss is not doing its job unless it's a Gameplay and Story Integration like Lu Bu or something. In balance patches or sequels these get nerfed.
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I've noticed that on those particular trope pages, they say that only one boss or level can really be considered That One Boss and That One Level, hence the emphasis on "That One" in the title. However, when I go into various video game YMMV pages, I find multiple examples of two or more bosses and levels listed, which goes against their trope's qualifications. Should there be a discussion to clean up most of these examples and limit them to just one example for each page? Just as the tropes say? Or should the trope pages themselves be given an overhaul to allow multiple examples? Let me know what you think. Similarly, this can apply to That One Attack, That One Achievement, and That One Sidequest.
If there's already an existing conversation for this, please feel free to delete this thread.
edited 2nd Jul '17 12:23:08 PM by DivineFlame100