Solo-Character Run

Everybody's Dead, Hal.

A variation of the Self-Imposed Challenge restricted to games with multiple controllable characters, like RPGs or strategy games. The player selects one character from the roster and completes the game using only that character, with all the others being restricted to a support role, perpetually dead, constantly blocking, or just ignored.

The difficulty level for this kind of run can vary wildly, depending on the character and the game. For example, RPGs frequently divide the experience gained from fights evenly among the surviving characters, which means that a solo character can gain levels very quickly early on, thereby breezing through the early game. However, later on, exponential requirements for gaining levels mean that the character is not nearly so relatively powerful compared to a full-on party. There are also many cases where enemies can induce deadly status effects on party members (such as zombie, stone, or instant death), which can be easily rectified in normal playthroughs by having other party members heal the afflicted character, but in solo challenges are as good as a Game Over.

For some games, this is not strictly possible because the character is either not in the party or not able to perform a technique required to advance the plot at certain points in the game. For these games, the variation is to use only that character in all situations where the game allows it, and use the bare minimum skills from the other characters when compelled to by the plot.

Not to be confused with Solo Sequence, in which single-character play is temporarily enforced. A character class designed to facilitate this kind of play is a Solo Class.

In order to avoid crowding this page, please do not add more examples that are just "this game has multiple controllable characters, but you can complete it with a single one". Rather, examples should be games where a solo run is either a) a markedly popular challenge among the player-base or b) acknowledged by the developers in some way (achievement, game mechanic to facilitate it, etc.)

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Examples:

Action-Adventure

• This is a fairly popular Self-Imposed Challenge in the Thrill Tower/ScareScraper mode of Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon, where the higher difficulty levels are explicitly designed for groups of players yet the game allows one to try them solo regardless. The two big examples are completing all 25 floors of Expert Mode (which is extremely hard due to the high amount of enemies and their high amounts of health) and attempting to beat much more than that in Endless Mode (some people have somehow managed over a hundred floors).
• Effectively the preferred way to play LJN's The Uncanny X-Men on NES. Your (forced) companion has hopeless AI and a ranged-attack companion will spam their weapon at random. The game becomes significantly easier if you get the companion killed as quickly as possible.

Beat-em Up

• River City Girls: When loading up a save file, there's the option between whether to play with one character, and therefore play the game with only one fighter, or play with a second player and therefore a second fighter.

First-Person Shooter

• This is more or less the preferred method of playing the game Daikatana, as the AI for your companions is buggy at best. The death of either one of them ends the level just the same as though you had died. Typically, the best option is to order them to stay put in some safe corner and go out and kill everything yourself.
• Through the use of console commands, people have tried solo runs in Left 4 Dead by kicking bots from the game and had various levels of success. Valve seemed to have noticed and introduced a mutation for Left 4 Dead 2 called Last Man on Earth, where you play alone against only special infected and can only be knocked down once before true death applies. Other mutations that allow a player to solo are Lone Gunman, The Last Samurai, and all variants of All Alone.
• The End Times: Vermintide is heavily inspired by Left 4 Dead, only with the skaven of Warhammer standing in for the Infected and set in the Warhammer world. Naturally, solo runs as self-imposed challenges were inevitable. They range from "easy unless you slip up and get caught by a special rat" on the appropriately named Easy difficulty to harder than juggling dynamite blindfolded on the appropriately named Cataclysm difficulty.

Flight Action

• In the second and third Rogue Squadron games, you usually have wingmen you can command to fly and fire alongside you, take out specific types of targets, or, with a late-game upgrade, focus on specific targets. Most players going for gold medals just tell their wingmen to leave, as it means less friendlies in the way and friendlies' kills don't count towards the player's kills.

Hack & Slash

• Possible to do in the Empires subset of Dynasty Warriors games, Dynasty Warriors 6 Empires outright rewards you for doing this for one battle on Master or the hard CHAOS difficulty (the Japanese version calls this HELL instead). Needless to say, doing this for one battle on the higher difficulties is hard enough. Doing it for every battle on CHAOS puts you on par with Lu Bu, if only for the fact that your stats are not carried over between consecutive games and you have a high chance of being 1-Hit-KO'd early on.

MMORPGs

• This is the entire point of the Iron Man mode in Runescape. You're completely barred from trading with other players, get no experience for partaking in battles where another player damaged the enemy you were fighting, and you don't get any drops from such a situation either, whether or not that player stays in combat for a while or just gets one hit in. There's also Hardcore Iron Man, where permadeath is applied if you don't have any of the items that grants a free revive (of which there are only two in the game, or none in Old School) or would permanently switch your account to a normal Iron Man in your bank.
  • Then there's Ultimate Iron Man in Old School, which prevents you from banking. You can still use banks to unnote items you get from drops, but you can't note items that you didn't already get that way. While you have unlimited lives and your items stay on the ground (and invisible to other players) for a full hour after a death to stop DDoSers from looting you, the wilderness and instances can wipe you of nearly every item you own.
• In Dungeon Fighter Online this can be pretty common. You can either do solo, or in a party. Most of the time things are much easier in parties, but you can still solo all dungeons. This becomes harder later on, as some monster gimmicks, such as the ability to prevent you moving but not attacking, make it harder, but by no means is it impossible, plus you don't have to share any found loot.
• In World of Warcraft, to get players to revisit some older raids, Blizzard has been tweaking the pre-Mists of Pandaria raids so that they can be soloed, albeit by players who have far outleveled the content, as well as removing the restriction that a player has to be in a group to even enter one.
• Enabling the unsync option in Final Fantasy XIV allows you to tackle instances without a complete party, even letting you go in solo. While most players will use this option to beat old dungeons or trials in a matter of seconds for the catharsis factor, others have tried taking on current or slightly outdated fights solo and succeeded.

Platformers

• Trine 2 has an achievement for completing a level using just a single character of the trio.
• A speedrunner for the 2003 Xbox title SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom by the name of ConkerHax spent an entire day figuring out how to reach the ending using only the main titular character. Considering you'd be missing out on a good chunk of the game and would have to give up some of the special abilities, it was no easy feat. The epic and exhausting saga was fully documented here.
• Skylanders: There have been runs completed by players using only one Skylander, even on Nightmare Mode. However, due to the way the games work, some players will let using multiple versions of the same character slide, since they are still only using one character.
• There have been runs of Super Mario Bros. 2 where the game is beaten with only one of the four playable characters. Peach-only runs in particular seem to be the most popular among speedrunners.

Roguelike

• Death Road to Canada has the cheevo "The Loneliest Road". To get it, you need to complete a run with one character and never recruit anyone.
• FTL: Faster Than Light has the Engi B cruiser, which starts with only one crew member, unlike other ships which begin with 2-4 starting crew. It is possible, though exceptionally difficult, to complete the game with only this crew member. (Should any crew members be recruited due to events, they can be dismissed from the crew screen.)

Role-Playing Games

• The Tales games are popular among elite players for soloing powerful bosses, as a cursory glance in YouTube will tell you. Since the Tales games are action RPGs that emphasize blocking and especially dodging, this isn't as difficult as it sounds due to the action/real-time battle system of the series.
• There is a version for Breath of Fire III, but it can be something of a hassle, as the game automatically revives slain party members after battle; thus you must keep killing them at the start of each fight...
• In Chrono Trigger, it's possible to skip straight to the final boss fight on a New Game Plus with just Crono. However, you can only do this at the very beginning of the game. Doing so or going with Marle before trying out the telepod are the only ways to unlock the Developer's Room ending.
  • It is also possible, though less difficult, to defeat the system defenses in Lucca's Dimensional Vortex solo. Ayla's confusion as she tries to figure it out is particularly amusing.
• Rogue Galaxy allows for a solo character run of sorts, by setting the AI on "keep away", under which circumstances they won't help you fight at all, and won't heal themselves so they can be left dead. Party members auto-revive with 1 HP if Only Mostly Dead at the end of a fight, but they'll die again in short order if not healed, making their momentary livelihood mostly meaningless. Due to the sheer stupidity of the AI, you're probably better off doing this even if you're playing the game the straight way.
• Many of the Exile/Avernum games from Spiderweb Software are arguably easier in some respects with a solo character, as that character gets all the good loot (of which there is a strictly limited supply), all of the experience (a high-level character is much harder for monsters to kill than an equivalently-leveled character), and only a fourth of the available target space. The big problems come in finding inventory for all the loot. Singletons, as they are called in Avernum, are also extremely vulnerable to being wrapped in web by giant spiders. If the spiders continue spinning webs (and they will. They always do), a single character will get no turns at all, getting stuck in a zero-AP loop. Cue either an impossibly long death process or a Ctrl-Alt-Delete.
• This, or simply using a much smaller party than the maximum, is a popular challenge in Baldur's Gate. The sequel is absurdly easy with this method if one has the expansion pack installed, since the solo character gains access to abilities that would normally only be acquired in the expansion and are many, many times more powerful than the standard skillset.
  • Better Infinity Engine games to try this trope with are the Icewind Dale series. Trying it in the sequel is lunacy (doable, mind you, but still lunacy), because the Challenge Rating system ensures that you'll soon end up gaining as much XP solo as you would with a full party, although backup characters at level 1 (lowering the average level) who do no fighting can mitigate this to some degree.
  • This is not, on the other hand, very common among Planescape: Torment players. This is possibly because dying is easy for the lead character, but staying dead is hard; or because after the initial roughness of going it alone, even dying becomes hard; or because so much of the game is character interaction, including with party members, and there are so few mandatory fights that you're missing the point of the game if you try a solo run.
• Both Final Fantasy Legend II and Final Fantasy Legend III revive dead characters after every battle. How do you deal with that? By using codes to petrify most of your team, and any fifth characters to boot! Just be prepared to deal with extreme difficulty, even compared to other solos.^note In II, beating even the weakest monsters is a pain and a half if you're a solo human or mutant, and in III expect to grind 30+ levels for a late boss; for reference, when playing normally you beat the final boss somewhere between level 32 and level 40!
• Final Fantasy:
  • This is very popular in Final Fantasy. A solo Fighter is regarded as easiest. Black Belt is not difficult when massively overleveled, Red Mage has both good offense and defense plus multi-targeting black magic, White Mage has the advantage of the RUSE (Blink) spell, and Black Mage has multi-targeting black magic starting from the third town. By far the hardest, Thief has to grind halfway to the level cap (with poor offense and defense the whole time) before being able to have a CHANCE to defeat the fourth miniboss. The White and Black Mages have spells that allow them to get to the end of the game much more easily, although the White Mage's limited offense and the Black Mage's abysmal max HP may make the final dungeon the most challenging for them out of any character.
  • The Stat Grinding mechanics in Final Fantasy II base stat and skill growth off of how many times a character performs actions in battle. Because you'll have only one party member doing everything, a Solo-Character Run in Final Fantasy II can be a cakewalk compared to playing the game normally. Most notably, Evasion skyrockets if only one member gets targeted by attacks, which can net you maxed-out Evasion when reaching Lv.6 Evasion is typical in a normal playthrough.^note To demonstrate: The Final Boss has an Accuracy of 8-100%; even with 7-99% Evasion, he will hit you at least once. With an Evasion of 16-99%, the Final Boss has a 0.0000000000000001% chance of hitting you with his physical attack. Once.
  • Final Fantasy IV has seen a number of attempts using Cecil (the only possible one, as the party is far more fluid than later Final Fantasy games). The usual strategy is using Bacchus (an item that causes Berserk) to get through boss fights. The Demon Wall is the usual choke point. Other party members can be used for this trope using patch codes of one form or another, and it's still quite possible with them, though mages will have a rough time. This is because, in some versions, bosses that are fought without a magic user in the party (such as Barbariccia and the Dark Imp) are totally immune to spells.
  • Final Fantasy V has a Class and Level System, so it has a multitude of solo runs depending on how many characters (a true solo character run is technically not possible since everyone is left out of the main party at varying points of plot), job classes, and non-main job support abilities are allowed.
  • Final Fantasy VI has a variation, with people only following this as long the required character is around, meaning someone that joins early and rejoins early like the Figaro twins is the "closest" to the feel of the challenge. Umaro is considered to be the only one that can't win it. One specific variation is to use Celes, Edgar, and Setzer (the only three characters forced back into your party in the second half of the game) and have them each do a solo run through the final dungeon, which requires splitting into three parties.
  • This can be done in Final Fantasy VII except when plot-necessary (Cloud is incapacitated for a period, and there are some boss fights that must be fought with specific characters). It's somewhat trivial if you use Cloud, since the Yoshiyuki sword you pick up in Rocket Town powers up if you have dead people in your party. It's balanced out by a couple bosses that have attacks that trap your character and require intervention from your dead party members, netting you an instant game over. The first, Reno can be taken out if you power level early, usually getting Cloud to unlock Meteorain long before you would otherwise get it. The other, Carry Armor, can quickly become That One Boss, since it will often open the battle with Arm Grab, ending the fight before it can even begin. Save Scumming can be considered mandatory for him. That said, the Superboss Ruby Weapon is easiest if you start the battle with one character alive (otherwise it uses Whirlsand to remove all but one character from the battle) and then revive the other two.
  • SCRs are ridiculously easy in Final Fantasy VIII, since it's easier to pull off Limit Breaks when your party is at a disadvantage (this includes having dead characters, among other factors). Lionheart, "Armageddon Fist," Acid, Invincible Moon...it's all good. Another reason is that there is no limit to the number of Guardian Forces you can assign to a single character...thus, it is entirely possible to have a level 10 Squall with 9999 HP that hits for thousands damage about one third into the game.
  • Accomplished with most of the cast from Final Fantasy X, even to the point of a solo Yuna playthrough with no Summons. There is one boss fight exception if you use Yuna for this challenge, unless you are absolutely insane. (You'd have to be pretty insane to play Yuna Only, No Summons, No Sphere Grid, etc. anyways. It's been done, though.) A solo run is made slightly easier in this game by the way the level and skill system works. With enough grinding, any character can learn anything they would need by traveling into the Sphere Grid sections belonging to other party members. The only things that can't be learned by everyone are Overdrives and Yuna's summoning ability. One particular Superboss, Shinryuu, is actually easier to do solo than with a full party. In the same vein as the aforementioned Ruby WEAPON, it cannot use its unblockable party-member-removing attack Eraser if only one character is alive.
  • Thanks to International/HD Remaster, players of Final Fantasy X-2 are able to run most of the game as only one girl from the YRP. The biggest positive about this challenge is that it makes the more Awesome, but Impractical Dresspheres, such as Festivalist and the Special Dresspheres, more viable thanks to their versatility. Many people end up choosing Yuna as their only character, however. This most likely has to do with a certain side quest, should they choose to go for 100% Completion.
  • Compared to the above, solo runs in Final Fantasy XII are insultingly easy. Every character has access to every weapon and ability; the characters are all relatively balanced in terms of stats, so picking one will not give you a huge disadvantage over picking another; the Zodiac Spear is just as easy to get and will break the game all the way to Giruvegan; and once you get the Reverse spell, which converts all damage to hit points (and all healing spells to damage) you are invincible. Combinine this with a low-level run or a No License Board run, however, and suddenly it becomes a real challenge. A low-level run (allowing the use of the License Board) gets a little easier once the player reaches the Stilshrine of Miriam - there is a chest in the temple that can contain the Firefly accessory, which causes a character to gain 0 exp when equipped, while still allowing that character to gain JP. This at least makes it easier to fight without the fear of accidentally levelling characters up.
• This was possible in Grimms Notes, even if the game never encouraged you to do so. Your hero would get more experience by fighting alone, and it was overall possible soloing the whole game with the last released attacker-type characters (at least until the Difficulty Spike kicked hard during the last quarter of the main story, which introduced enemy Heroes who were able to use undodgeable skills).
• Soloing with the main character in Lufia: The Ruins of Lore quickly makes the early game a breeze and allows you to learn the various game-breaking class skills that much quicker. Who needs a party when you can deal random amounts of damage for cheap (Chance Hit), heal yourself fully for free (Sacrifice), skip most normal fights (Tear Gas), and attack all enemies for free (Rapidfire)? In addition, the Ancient Cave bonus dungeon only allows the main character (and a pet monster) in, so you'd be able to get the essential survival skills (including Absorb and Mirror) that much sooner.
• Pokémon games zig-zag how much of a challenge this can be. This is because while there are definitely plenty of Pokémon that make such an attempt difficult, if not impossible (especially if you throw in a "No Evolution" clause), there are also a fair number of others that can actually make a Solo Pokémon Run easier than a normal one; an over-leveled Pokémon with good stats and a sufficiently versatile moveset can overwhelm pretty much anything, as it's easy for most Mons to shrug off type disadvantages when they're thirty levels higher than the opponent, and your starter is definitely a member of this group.^note In fact, it isn't uncommon for younger first-time players to use only their starter in battles throughout most of the game because of this. The idea of training the rest of the team never comes to mind because their awesome pet dragon or otter is handling everything by itself. At best, other mons will participate in battle for one turn so you heal/revive your overpowered mon All you'll need are a few PP-restoring items for the Elite Four and (in earlier generations) an extra Pokémon or two whose only purpose would be to hold mandatory HM moves, if your chosen Pokémon can't learn all the required ones. On the other hand, use a Pokémon that doesn't have a good moveset or base stats (like a first-stage Bug-type), or an odd gimmick (like Ditto or Shedinja), and you will find yourself forced to come up with some interesting strategies to get to the end credits.
  • Pokémon X and Y are seen as the easiest games in the series (outside the Let's Go games) and the Solo Run is no exception thanks to a location called the Battle Chateau. Here, you can easily grind your Pokémon all the way up to Level 100 with little fuss against other Trainers, and become ridiculously rich in the process. Since the level of the trainers there is based solely on how many battles won at that location rather than story progression, you'll quickly be able to comfortably fight and gain experience against teams of Lv. 45 Audino.^note Even better if you're willing to pay for "writs" that increase the levels of your opponents. And better than even that if you make use of O-Powers to multiply experience gains. And this place is located before the second gym, where the Gym Leader maxes out at Level 25. Throw in the easy EV Training system in the game, and you can make nearly any Pokémon you're doing the challenge with, no matter how weak, an absolute powerhouse that will destroy opponents even into the post-game.
  • Generations V and VII onwards make the "challenge" part of the solo character run more difficult across the board. The Generation V games introduced an Anti-Grinding system wherein you receive less experience the higher your Mon is above the enemy's level, the reduction being proportional to the difference, making such a run harder to achieve in those games. Meanwhile, Generation VII onwards not only bring back this system, but have the games as a whole balanced around the use of Exp. Share (you can't even turn it off as of Gen VIII), meaning that there is no more naturally over-leveling your opponents by just sticking with a single Pokémon, leading to encounters with trainers that have multiple Pokémon that are just blatantly on-level with you, if not at higher levels if you haven't been constantly grinding to make up for the change.
• A popular method of establishing exactly how broken the Arcane Warrior class is in Dragon Age: Origins. It's also possible, but more difficult, with a stealth-based Rogue.
  • Similarly, solo players of Dragon Age: Inquisition often favor the Knight-Enchanter class, essentially a successor to the Arcane Warrior from Origins in gameplay. Other popular choices are Champions or Rogues who specialize in archery.
• Extremely common in the Fallout series, especially Fallout. This is mostly because party NPCs in the first game did not level up and were liabilities due to friendly fire and obstructing doors or corridors. In fact, it is actually EASIER to complete the original games without help since "companions" had a notorious tendency of shooting you accidentally, screwing up quest triggers, and dying inexplicably. Dogmeat was especially bad, as it was a challenge to get his limited AI to avoid being fried by door lasers - to the point that the second game reveals he canonically died to one.
• Also easier in Arcanum: Of Steamworks & Magick Obscura, owing to the quicker and higher leveling potential of a solo PC. Even an unarmed build can solo more effectively than a full group that requires weapon maintenance and healing.
• Geneforge is a rare case where this is neither beneficial nor negative, simply a different style of play suited to a different class. (If you're wondering how that could work, it's a Mons game—and the classes that are best with mons are the worst fighters when cornered.)
  • This is only a Self-Imposed Challenge for the Shaper class, and later Lifecrafter and Shock Trooper classes, because Shaping skills are their specialty. Without creating mons, the benefits of Shaping specialization can be focused on healing and defensive buffing, but the build doesn't leave much in the way of direct damage ability.
  • In fact, with the Agent class, along with the Infiltrator and Servile classes in later games, this is actually a BETTER idea, because it means you don't have to share experience with creations that really won't do you any favours. Generally Agents only make creations for large scale battles where they can benefit from meat shields. Not having any creations also means a bigger essence pool, so it becomes much easier to use essence-gobbling spells like Augmentation, Essence Blade, or Aura of Flames.
• The Dungeon Siege series, having a bad rep for essentially playing themselves, become reasonably challenging when this is attempted.
• Try playing any of the Wizardry games with only one character. Goddamn hard - but can be done.
• This is actually fairly popular in Persona 3, Persona 4 and Persona 5 for certain bosses, due to the modular party system. (You can go into Tartarus or the Midnight Channel alone if you like). Persona 3 Portable even has a Tactics Command that orders your party to leave for the duration of the fight. The problem is that unless you set your party on Stand By or have them block every turn, you don't have access to All-Out Attacks, lowering your damage output considerably. Interestingly enough, some bosses are actually -easier- solo, because your ability to change Personae allows you to exploit Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors without having to worry about your party giving the enemy a free turn.
• Ultima VII will allow you to do this if you tell all your party members to "go home". It also means you don't have to keep listening to them whinge about wanting food all the time.
• In Baten Kaitos Origins, creating a deck gives you the option to lock characters out of it, meaning they can't participate in battle. Depending on who you choose to lock out, this can make the game quite a bit harder.
• It is not unusually difficult to play through Shadowrun for the Genesis with no other party members most of the time. None of the story missions are exceedingly difficult to do solo...save the last one. A highly cybered Body stat and awesome armor will keep you alive through everything until the last boss, whose magic pierces armor and has ludicrous amounts of attack dice. He attacks slowly, but he will almost always kill party members in one hit. This is easily cured by other party members using a Medkit, but turns a solo run into an aggravating Luck-Based Mission, even with the best stats and equipment.
• In The 7th Saga, the player has the option of getting one of their competitors to join them. However, this splits the experience between the player and partner. Ultimately, the game is actually much easier alone because of the extra experience points.
• For players of portable Monster Hunter games up to Monster Hunter Portable 3rd who don't have access to local hunting buddies, as well as console players without a good Internet connection and players of Monster Hunter 4 and Monster Hunter Generations who don't have either, doing the multiplayer quests solo is the only option rather than a Self-Imposed Challenge. Of course, there are some who can play with others but solo the quests anyway. Either way, the games will often allow the player to bring two helper characters instead of one to compensate, although competitive players have been known to eschew those helpers anyway as their presence can make enemy monsters less predictable due to the presence of two extra targets that the player cannot directly control. Furthermore, the player can simply take four players' worth of supplies rather than having to share them. However, monsters in multiplayer quests have more HP than their story quest counterparts to account for multiple players, so expect to take longer to kill a particular monster.
• Dungeon Master allows for a party of four adventurers, but the game can be won (and has been won) using only Halk the Barbarian, a character with zero starting mana (one casting of a fairly high-level spell is necessary to win the game), and to top it off, the player forfeited any weapon use besides breaking doors (unavoidable at a certain point or two of the game) and casting the final spells needed for the win (these can be only cast via the Firestaff).
• Possible in Dragon Quest IX (since experience is divided by the number of characters, Metal Slime hunting is extremely rewarding if you can kill them fast enough), though the game throws a Beef Gate boss at you early on to teach you the importance of having extra party members, and the combo system will be horribly punishing on single characters.
• Finishing Cthulhu Saves the World unlocks an extra mode which is like the normal game, except that Arbitrary Headcount Limit is dropped from 4 to 1. Experience gains are increased to compensate.
• Nocturne: Rebirth has the Falling Star formation, which only grants bonuses to a solo party, though it'll only benefit Reviel, who is almost always locked into the party. While it's possible to solo most bosses within Brave Clear level, it's extremely difficult to pull off unless you get lucky with drops early on or are on a New Game Plus run.
• You can play West of Loathing without taking along one of the partner characters you can meet in Boring Springs, as a form of Self-Imposed Challenge.
• Etrian Odyssey has it as one of the most difficult challenges, even more considering that this is a game where Min-Maxing is heavily recommended and a lot of times not enough, the gameplays online who shows it are quite spectacular as this challenge is hard.
• Trails of Cold Steel: If Laura is in the party, then only Laura can attack. The others perform support roles. She's a very strong fighter, so this is possible up to and including Hard difficulty.
• Fear & Hunger, along with it's sequel Fear & Hunger: Termina is balanced towards allowing such a run. Indeed, the Hard/Maso difficulties almost mandate it by preventing you from recruiting any characters, except those created by spells, which aren't controllable in combat.
• Sincere Deceit has the option at the beginning to disable Add-Ons so you have only the Batter as your party member, save for when you have Jericho as a second Guest-Star Party Member during a certain point in the Prison District. Beating the True Boss Rush at the endgame with only the Batter will earn you a special, shinier trophy then the one you would earn with a full party.
• Octopath Traveler: "Lone Traveler" achievement requires you to complete all four chapters of a given character's story with this character only, without recruiting other travelers (although Guiding/Alluring NPCs is allowed). Such runs are referred to as "solopaths" by the fandom.

Survival Games

• Surprisingly, in This War of Mine this choice of playing actually makes the game easier, since you don't have to worry about the rest of your group's health and safety. Since the sole survivor will most likely spend each and every night away from the hideout, you can effectively forgo building defenses or the means of producing additional food back at home. Sure, it makes every sortie much more dangerous, but on the other hand, the aforementioned conditions allow the character to avoid more risky encounters, since on their own, he or she will be able to survive for the necessary time period just scavenging the earlier, safer locations.

Third-Person Shooter

• Alien Swarm requires a console command, (normally requires 2 players minimum) but it is entirely possible to play every level solo. Including ones where you need to stop and protect the tech while he hacks a door or computer.

Turn-Based Strategy

• Extremely common among the Fire Emblem community. The series is well-suited to solos because a powerful character can dominate the battlefield, so if the player can get the character out of his early vulnerable levels intact, it's usually smooth sailing from there on out. The generally accepted rule is that only the selected character can deal damage — other characters are allowed to open chests and doors, rescue, seize, or recruit as the player sees fit. Difficulty level ranges from the relatively easy (Ike solo in Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance) to the mind-bogglingly difficult (Colm solo in Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones).
  • The final bosses of Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War and Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade almost entirely rule out this challenge for those titles because of their high stats and/or weapon properties. Likewise, a Crutch Character solo run in any game (save The Sacred Stones) is unlikely to succeed.
    • There is a tactic that allows Genealogy of the Holy War to be soloable (by sword users, anyway), that utilises the Berserk status and a lot of luck.
    • 11th-Hour Superpower characters are usually considered acceptable workarounds in such cases.
  • Fire Emblem: Thracia 776 is borderline impossible to solo for two reasons: the Fatigue system ^noteYou would need to stockpile a LOT of Stamina Drinks, or else your character would constantly be Fatigued and unable to fight, and enemy staff users ^noteSleep and Berserk staves, as well as the final boss's Stone spell, have infinite range and last until either the map is beaten, or a Restore staff is used. Leif is immune to fatigue, mind you, but his relatively low stats and late promotion ensure that you are going to get a lot of game overs.
  • Of particular note is the Seth Solo in Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones. While most solo-character runs are more difficult in some way or another, this is not the case here. Seth is so ridiculously strong and has amazing growths to the point where soloing the game with him is considered easier than playing it normally. Oh, and he's available from the start. The most common Self-Imposed Challenge is to ban using him.
  • The same applies to Fire Emblem: Awakening, where one of the best strategies (the other being running duo Robin and Morgan, their child) is to run Robin, the self-insert, as the sole fighter and have Chrom partner up with them to keep him safe, since both he and Robin are mandatory deploys. Robin possesses immense growth rates and has access to every class in the game. Female Robin is obviously better due to both an S support with Chrom and access to Galeforce, but this only really matters on Lunatic+ where that extra turn is mandatory.
• The Final Fantasy Tactics series. This also applies to a similar challenge, whereby a player is allowed to use a full party of five characters, but they all have to be the same class. A large part of the difficulty arises as most classes are incapable of healing themselves, and a dead character who is not revived after three turns is dead for good. This has also been combined where only the main character is played and he must remain as a single class.
  • To this day, a five-man party straight class challenge has been completed for all playable classes, including Calculators not using math skill ever. Solo straight class challenge has also been completed for all classes except mime and true calculator, as well as many other game-shark only classes or even monsters.
• Because Disgaea doesn't give Leaked Experience, it can be simpler to power level one of the main characters and stomp the rest of the game rather than try to balance levels across a party of ten characters. This is almost a requirement in the post-game, because leveling and appropriately equipping just one character takes an absurd amount of time, even if you aren't trying for perfection. This restricts the options to using one horribly overleveled character and nine decoys or abusing the base-panel combat mechanics and Enemy Level Up Geo-Effects to create a team of poorly equipped Lv. 9999 monsters.
• This is what a large part of the community says the easiest way to beat the original Front Mission.
• Entirely possible, and in some ways required, in Der Langrisser. The only two characters who will be in your party on every path are Elwin (the main character) and Hein. It's almost preferable to concentrate on building those two and only those two, using the other characters as decoys and/or meat shields barring an Escort Mission.
• One Self-Imposed Challenge in Telepath Tactics is to use only Required Party Members, and let everyone else die. This limits you to the two Strider sisters for everything except two missions (Battle with Gulch and Rescuing Sarn Kamina, where Silithis Predat is a vital character). The main difficulty comes from the fact that the Striders have no ranged attacks and poor defenses against elemental attacks. A solo run with anyone else is virtually impossible, as the Striders receive priority targeting and can't be removed from the field.
• It is possible to do this in Fate/Grand Order. Because the game forces the player to have at least three servants for a fight, they choose a servant they want to do the solo fight with and pair that servant with two other low-level Cannon Fodder servants to take the first few hits for him or her (preferably Leonidas and/or Saint George since they have the Taunt skill which forces the enemy to attack them first). After the two cannon fodders die, only the main servant remains to do the challenge.

Turn-Based Tactics

• You want a really hard one of these? Try the original X-COM, sending only one soldier to each battlescape. Also, an achievement in XCOM: Enemy Unknown requires you to clear a UFO crash site with only one soldier... on Classic or Impossible difficulty. Yeah.

Other Media

• Occasionally crops up in media about video games as well. Accel World references this in a couple of different ways. The Blue King is known as "Legend Slayer" for doing a solo-run against a Legendary-class monster (for reference, entire parties usually have a hard time taking on weaker opponents) and it's something of a rite of passage for characters who reach Level 7 to do one of these against lower ranked monsters in the Unlimited Field.
• The Lord of the Rings: The Living Card Game from Fantasy Flight Games usually requires each player to form a team of three hero characters and base their deck around those three. However, players can choose to use a Contract card called "The Grey Wanderer", which restricts them to only one hero, but also provides a variety of bonuses to help that player get through a game that is otherwise designed for three.

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