History ThatOneLevel / HackAndSlash

* The final boss fight strips you of all the weapons you have spent the rest of the game learning and upgrading, and gives you a new one with a different set of moves. And the boss isn't a pushover, either.

** Earlier in the game we have the 'Trial of the Warrior' which should translate to a fun amount of fighting against enemies. However...it becomes less fun when they can hit you through their own allies (which they aren't supposed to be able to do) and then the little...DemonicSpiders that move real quickly appear and make it virtually impossible to kill them. On top of the sand warriors and everything, it all accounts to one HUGE Scrappy Level.
** Level 8 was a bit of a bum note as well. Dark, cramped areas, occasioanlly dodgy camera, and the floor can hurt you in places. Manageable on the easier levels, but when the game ramps it up, it just gets absurd. Plaing it through on Heaven or Hell and you'll need every bit of luck you can muster to get through without wanting to kill someone.

* ''SengokuBasara: Samurai Heroes'' has Incident at Honno-ji. Apart from being [[GuideDangIt a pain in the arse to even find]] the level is swarming with a wide variety of enemies, is large and time-consuming to navigate, and puts a strict time limit on capturing bases - and failing to do so allows ThatOneBoss at the end of the level to resurrect another time, further putting your survival chances in the toilet. There is a trick to it: [[spoiler:Nobunaga always activates the Mortal Coils in the same order. Take the southernmost base, then both northern ones, then use Hero Time to get to the south-western one. That base contains a slingshot to the north-western one, which then has a slingshot to the eastern base, completing the sequence.]] That said, even taking optimal routes, you have to move pretty quickly while defeating every officer you pass to make it work. The character the game forces you to use the first time? Oichi, who has the movement speed of a duck in molasses (though in all fairness, she isn't the worst choice to tackle this stage with. Imagine being forced to use ''Kanbe''...)

* Chapter 8: The Mine Sweepers in ''VideoGame/{{Magicka}}''. It's very long, and Zerg Rushes you constantly with loads of annoying enemies (including Archers who can set you on fire from a range and Captains who can freeze you and block your attacks). Most of the second half has you navigating narrow pathways over bottomless pits, including one moving platform, in the dark. And it has a hard (and long) boss at the end, too.
** Chapter 11: Raiders Of The Lost Ruins, though, puts all the other hard levels in the game to shame. It's a ''massive'' MarathonLevel, complete with CheckpointStarvation. You start off fighting Snow Trolls, who jump out of nowhere, are very fast, and can kill you instantly, and it only gets worse from there. You have to fight loads and loads of Dwarves, who are very tough, always attack in big groups, and are usually backed by their Priests, the strongest enemy wizards in the game. And that's not even mentioning the [[BossInMookClothing Watchers]]. The last section is a cave flooded with lava, requiring you to fight loads of enemies in very confined spaces with certain death on every side, including ones who can set you on fire. However, if you use Invisibility you can theoretically skip most of the fighting, but it's still tricky to sneak past everyone, and there are some sections you are forced to fight through. And if you didn't know it was there, you can very easily miss picking up Invisibility altogether.

* Chapter 2: Attack Of The Goblins in ''VideoGame/{{Magicka}}''. It's only the ''second'' level, but due to a massive DifficultySpike from the pathetically easy and short Chapter 1, it'll kick the ass of most new players. Prior to this point you've only fought a handful of enemies at any one time, but here you're constantly getting {{Zerg Rush}}ed by Goblins right from the start. This is also the level that introduces [[DemonicSpiders Bombers]] and enemy spellcasters, is quite long, and ends in a PuzzleBoss that can be very finicky in multiplayer.
** Chapter 5: Havindr Strikes Back could be this as well. Mainly because enemies that you've only fought briefly before are here en masse, all with special abilities such as armour, explosive ranged attacks, and magic. There's one section where you have to fight enemies on ice, with most of your attacks melting the ice and allowing you to drown. It only gets really difficult, though, when you reach Khan's Fortress, which forces you to fight constant waves of tough enemies in tight spaces while looking for levers that are extremely easy to miss. God help you if you fall into the trenches, you'll have to fight constantly spawning streams of every enemy in the level while making the long trek back to one of the handful of places where you can get back up.
** Chapter 6: Return Of The Wizard. You're at World's End, surrounded on all sides by a bottomless abyss. That would be nasty enough, but you also have to fight Daemons. They're fast, hard to kill, have devastating attacks, and phase in and out of the Corporeal realm, which basically means that you have to be right next to them if you want to hurt them. They always attack in groups and split into three of the smaller type of Daemons when they die, so before you know it you'll be being swarmed with [[GoddamnBats Daemonlings]]. The level also has very few Checkpoints, is very glitchy, and ends in the hardest boss in the game. Overall, though, this one is definitely hard in a fun way.
** Chapter 8: The Mine Sweepers is a different story, though. It's very long, and Zerg Rushes you constantly with loads of annoying enemies (including Archers who can set you on fire from a range and Captains who can freeze you and block your attacks). Most of the second half has you navigating narrow pathways over bottomless pits, including one moving platform, in the dark. And it has a hard (and long) boss at the end, too.
** Chapter 10: A Grim Tango. For one thing, the entire level is set on a dark plain that looks the same no matter where you go, making it hard to navigate. It's also crawling with Elementals, who are very fast, very strong, and only vulnerable to the opposite Element to the one they [[ElementalEmbodiment embody]]. It's quite easy to wake up more than one at once, who will almost always have different Elements, so you can't kill them all at once, especially if the Element that damages one heals another. Then there's The City Of The Dead, where you have to struggle through an army of [[GoddamnBats Darksouls]] that just drags on for too long. The boss is also hard, but fun.
** Chapter 11: Raiders Of The Lost Ruins, though, puts all the rest to shame. It's a ''massive'' MarathonLevel, complete with CheckpointStarvation. You start off fighting Snow Trolls, who jump out of nowhere, are very fast, and can kill you instantly, and it only gets worse from there. You have to fight loads and loads of Dwarves, who are very tough, always attack in big groups, and are usually backed by their Priests, the strongest enemy wizards in the game. And that's not even mentioning the [[BossInMookClothing Watchers]]. The last section is a cave flooded with lava, requiring you to fight loads of enemies in very confined spaces with certain death on every side, including ones who can set you on fire. However, if you use Invisibility you can theoretically skip most of the fighting, but it's still tricky to sneak past everyone, and there are some sections you are forced to fight through. And if you didn't know it was there, you can very easily miss picking up Invisibility altogether.

* The Desert Lands levels in ''{{Gauntlet}} Dark Legacy''. The enemies are so tough and numerous that you can lose hundreds, if not thousands, of your hard-earned HitPoints.

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* Most of ''DeadRising'', especially the mall gardens if you haven't killed the convicts driving around and / or are escorting an NPC who can't walk unaided.
** Convicts that ''constantly bloody respawn.'' You'd think cutting someone to death with a katana would prevent that sort of thing.
*** At least they drop their minigun each time, which is very useful for speed runs. "Oh, you got a pretty nice shotgun Cletus? Well, SAY HELLO TO MY LITTLE FRIEND!"

** Chapter 11: Raiders Of The Lost Ruins, though, puts all the rest to shame. It's a ''massive'' MarathonLevel, complete with CheckpointStarvation. You start off fighting Snow Trolls, who jump out of nowhere, are very fast, and can kill you instantly, and it only gets worse from there. You have to fight loads and loads of Dwarves, who are very tough, always attack in big groups, and are usually backed by their Priests, the strongest enemy wizards in the game. And that's not even mentioning the [[BossInMookClothing Watchers]]. The last section is a cave flooded with lava, requiring you to fight loads of enemies in very confined spaces with certain death on every side, including ones who can set you on fire. However, if you use Invisibility you can theoretically skip most of the fighting, but it's still tricky to sneak past everyone, and there are some sections where you are forced to fight through. And if you didn't know it was there, you can very easily miss picking up Invisibility altogether.

** Chapter 10: A Grim Tango. For one thing, the entire level is set on a dark, plain that looks the same no matter where you go, making it hard to navigate. It's also crawling with Elementals, who are very fast, very strong, and only vulnerable to the opposite Element to the one they [[ElementalEmbodiment embody]]. It's quite easy to wake up more than one at once, who will almost always have different Elements, so you can't kill them all at once, especially if the Element that damages one heals another. Then there's The City Of The Dead, where you have to struggle through an army of [[GoddamnBats Darksouls]] that just drags on for too long. The boss is also hard, but fun.

** Chapter 5: Havindr Strikes Back could be this as well. Mainly because enemies that you've only fought briefly before are here en masse, all with special abilities such as armour, explosive ranged attacks, and magic. There's one section where you have to fight enemies on ice, with most of your attacks melting the ice and allowing you to drown. It only gets really difficult, though, when you reach Khan's Fortress, which forces you to fight constant waves of tough enemies in tight spaces while looking for levers that are extremely easy to miss. God help you if you fall into the trenches, you'll have to fight constantly spawning streams of every enemy in the game while making the long trek back to one of the handful of places where you can get back up.

* Hades from the first ''VideoGame/GodOfWar'' is a rare ScrappyLevel that's ''actually'' [[BonusLevelOfHell Hell]].

* "Dynasty Warriors 6," Chang Ban, Wei Scenario. Trying to get to Liu Bei is hard enough IF you kill the peasants, but you have to avoid them if you want to complete one of the targets. You also have to kill Zhang Fei, who gets a power charge that makes him comparable to Lu Bu. And if you DO kill the peasants, and you kill more than one, KOEI's poster boy Zhao Yun comes chasing after you. If you don't kill them, he comes after you anyway. And this is all while having to deal with the time limit which extends to the moment Liu Bei gets to the boats, which is pretty damn quickly.

* ''Dynasty Warriors 4'' was the scrappy game of the series, due to enemy generals receiving power ups after standing back up from being knocked down. This included everything from attack or defense ups (merely a hassle, except against Lu Bu or on the highest difficulty) to full life plus musou refills. ''Dynasty Warriors 4 XL'' removed this, but was scrappy in its own way, such as Lu Bu's ultimate weapon, which required you to get 2000 kills on his stage at the hardest difficulty, which pits you against the Peach Garden Oath Brothers at the end.
** It was ''2'' that had some generals gaining powerups. The battles were still winnable, but this ''really'' dragged some of them out, particularly when Liu Bei or Cao Cao was the commander. He could literally be the last man standing, with hostile forces ''swarming'' around him, and it'd still take 6 minutes to finish him off. No surprise Koei dropped this like a bad habit. As for XL, well, ''everyone'' (okay, maybe not so much Sun Ce) has a mountain to climb. That's the point.
** For a level, pretty much any time the player is at Hu Lao Gate on the Coalition side and forgets that [[MemeticMutation pursuing Lu Bu]] is ''optional''. (''Dynasty Warriors 6'' lampshades this briefly when Yuan Shao, responsible for the infamous meme in ''DW 3'', simply says that if no one can stand against Lu Bu, "Then forget about him!")

** You can send the innocents to their deaths provided the chieftains does not die, taking out Zhang Fei and Zhao Yun can be done by getting a friend with higher stats and nicer weapons...But indeed Chang Ban is just one scrappy level for either side. Whereas the Wei has to complete their objectives before Liu Bei goes to the docks, the Shu has to deal with the fact that NO chieftains are allowed to die.

* The Cavern from {{GodOfWar}}III. You're on a moving platform in the form of a giant box held up by a chain. The basic minions attacking aren't difficult, but then [[DemonicSpiders two minotaur]] appear, determined to break the chain, which is followed by another mook rush. Followed by two more with archers sniping at you. More mooks follow, and then SEVERAL more attack. And if you fail at any point, you have to start over.

* ''SengokuBasara: Samurai Heroes'' has Incident at Honno-ji. Apart from being [[GuideDangIt a pain in the arse to even find]] the level is swarming with a wide variety of enemies, is large and time-consuming to navigate, and puts a strict time limit on capturing bases - and failing to do so allows ThatOneBoss at the end of the level to resurrect another time, further putting your survival chances in the toilet. There is a trick to it: [[spoiler:Nobunaga always activates the Mortal Coils in the same order. Take the southernmost base, then both northern ones, then use Hero Time to get to the south-western one. That base contains a slingshot to the north-western one, which then has a slingshot to the eastern base, completing the sequence.]] That said, even taking optimal routes, you have to move pretty quickly while defeating every officer you pass to make it work. The character the game forces you to use the first time? Oichi, who has the movement speed of a duck in molasses.

* ''{{Bayonetta}}''. You've played through Normal mode, had a blast, [[spoiler:[[DidYouJustPunchOutCthulhu punched God]] [[MegatonPunch into the sun]]]], and you've unlocked Hard Mode. Shouldn't be too bad, right? Unfortunately, in Hard Mode, ''Level 1'' is that one level. Halfway through the level, you're on the wings of a plane, in [[BulletTime Witch Time]], and because it's the tutorial level, this is the part where you learn about [[LimitBreak torture attacks]]. You must execute 3 to pass this point. They don't redo the tutorial itelf, but you still gotta do the torture attacks... against [[DemonicSpiders Gracious and Glorious]]. To do a torture attack, you spend 8 units of magic. You get one unit for every few hits you land on an enemy, and lose '''''4''''' if you get hit. On normal, this wasn't so bad, because the enemies were pathetic. On hard, it's hell, because Gracious and/or Glorious just love to interrupt your combos, and are as aggressive as sharks in a feeding frenzy. The rest of the game isn't anywhere near this bad, and it's humiliating to get your ass handed to you sixteen dozen times ''on the tutorial level''.

* Act 3 of DiabloII. You have to slog through a jungle with switchbacks and dead ends populated by a) native pygmy men who either swarm and stab you or shoot you from afar with blowguns, which are led by shaman with the ability to revive the pygmys; b) enormous mosquitoes that drain your stamina and poison you; c) literal DemonicSpiders that are larger than you. This is on top of an act-long fetch quest which forces you to fully explore the jungle [[AbsurdlySpaciousSewer and the sewers]] of a nearby city looking for the unusually well-preserved remains (eye, brain, heart) of an old wizard.