The Unknown
It's gone now.
If a tree falls in the forest and nobody remembers it, who else will you have ice cream with?
Sonic Heroes has the following examples:
- That One Level:
- In general, Team Chaotix's extra missions are incredibly tricky. Most of their levels' scavenger hunt mechanic requires them to thoroughly scour the level in order to get absolutely all of the things you're looking for; if you miss even one, it's back to the start for you, and you'll now have to try and remember where you've already been and look for out-of-the-way alternate paths that you missed the first time around. The ones that don't involve finding things aren't much better, since they'll either have a tight time limit that forces you to speedrun the level, make you go through without alerting a single enemy, or both.
- 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 have a lot of trouble with that. You could also use Flight Formation for the platforming, but again, Flight Formation isn't exactly the most polished part of the game.
- BINGO Highway is already a tricky level for similar reasons to Rail Canyon, but with pinball tables instead of grind rails, especially the latter part of the level that is very generous with Bottomless Pits that can be difficult to avoid with the pinball controls and can send you back quite a long way if you die. The hardest version has to be Team Chaotix's second mission. 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! Mission 2 with Team Sonic is no cakewalk either if you're trying to get an A Rank due to the very tight time limit of six minutes combined with the tricky level design.
- 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. Mission 2 with Team Sonic is just plain hard due to a combo of a tight time limit and having to kill enough enemies to get 40,000 points along the way. It also makes Team Chaotix's extra mission that much more frustrating, as you have to break every single storage capsule on the stage... including a handful of them scattered on the trolley ride, which you have to drive through while avoiding everything else.
- Even worse is Team Dark's second mission in Rail Canyon to destroy 100 enemies in 10 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.
- Team Chaotix's second mission in Rail Canyon is just as frustrating if not more so because of the very tight time limit of six minutes. If you don't know the level inside and out and use every shortcut available, you're in for a world of pain.
- Most of Lost Jungle is a bit tough, but otherwise manageable; up until the last segment that both Teams Sonic and Dark 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.
- Mystic Mansion. Take a level even longer than this 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. Bonus points for Team Sonic's final room, where you have to cross all three gaps with the different mechanics. While the Goal Ring at the end is a 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 of Mystic Mansion in particular is one of the most reviled levels in the game and is probably the longest level in the entire game—it can take as long as a half hour to complete unless you know exactly what you're doing. It has you putting out torches throughout the mansion. What makes it so hard? THE SPIDER WEB. 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.
- Team Chaotix's Mystic Mansion missions can avoid this. As long as you don't die once, you can brute force both A ranks simply by killing every enemy you come across.
- The second trolley ride in Team Sonic and Team Dark's versions of Mystic Mansion can cause quite a bit of controller tossing. The segment has you piloting a trolley down a spiraling rail rigged with laser tripwires that you have to jump over, but the layout of the rail and the awkward camera angle mean that you only have a split second to react to each one. Unless you have godlike twitch reflexes, this portion will kill you. A lot.
- Final Fortress, for its multitude of mandatory enemy gauntlets involving the strongest enemies in the game. The rail sections with the lasers have also been known to induce ire, especially when the action escalates the closer the player gets to the end of the stage.
That's 7 levels out of the game's 14, so I bet some of those don't qualify for this trope. The first example is an obvious cut, since it doesn't list an actual level. Will also cut Power Plant and Lost Jungle (since the entries themselves state the levels are pretty manageable); as well as Bingo Highway, Bullet Station and Rail Canyon (which mostly describe optional sidequests). This leaves only Mystic Mansion and Final Fortress, which I believe are indeed agreed to be unreasonably difficult by the game's standards. Any objections?
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Seems reasonable. The second group of levels can probably be moved to That One Sidequest if they aren't there already.
The Unknown
Yeah, the Chaotix version of Mystic Mansion is supremely awful and can definitely stay. The torch hunt is aggravating compared to the other gimmick levels due to how many you need to find and how little margin of error there is.
I can take or leave Final Fortress. Its only problem is being long.
Edited by Karxrida on Feb 18th 2023 at 1:05:44 AM
If a tree falls in the forest and nobody remembers it, who else will you have ice cream with?
"Can you see what I see?"
YMMV.Super Mario Galaxy 2 has some That One Boss entries regarding bosses that are recycled from the first game. The only difference from their appearances in the first game is the added challenge of them being included as part of a boss rush with a time limit. Given that the bosses in question also have entries on YMMV.Super Mario Galaxy, are the second ones necessary?
Ever wanted to see the most inexplicably horrifying intro to a game ever?
I'd say no. Those bosses aren't even mandatory to fight, since they only show up in the post-game area.
The Unknown
YMMV.Fire Emblem Engage has a really long list of levels. I think there's a bit too much here considering the game is a Sequel Difficulty Spike with a challenge expectation that's fair bit higher than Three Houses. Plus I died at a bunch of points outside of these.
- That One Level:
- To some, Chapter 11. You lose the Emblems (unless you have the DLC Emblem Bracelets which remain with you throughout the game) and have to deal with the Corrupted using them against you, the Emblems being switched around on the enemies throughout the battle: Celica closing in and hitting you from a far range, Micaiah freezing you from a distance, Leif lessening the damage on whoever has him as well as equipping whichever weapon your units would have a disadvantage against so you can’t Break them, Roy making sure you can’t one-round an enemy, Marth dealing an extra hit and Sigurd ensuring an enemy will catch up to you. All of that and you also lose the ability to rewind time, preventing you from undoing the loss of a unit on Classic and forcing you to restart if Alear is defeated. Avoiding losing units can be difficult on Classic, especially if the Corrupted with Emblem Micaiah uses a Freeze staff on one of your units in the rear, enabling the Corrupted to catch up while they’re a sitting duck. There’s also the fact that you’re stuck with the same units you used in the last battle, which can be quite problematic if you don’t have a suitable team for this Chapter. You do get the Draconic Time Crystal back, as well as Emblem Lyn and Emblem Lucina after Ivy's Heel–Face Turn, but they won't allow you to rewind past the turn where you get them, on top of her and her retainers appearing at the last leg of the stage when you’ve likely dealt with much of the Corrupted already. To make matters worse, the Four Hounds then start closing in on you, only giving you a few turns to escape. And lastly, the enemy is wise to place Roy and Leif on the two Corrupted blocking the Escape panel to ensure you won’t get away too easily.
- Chapter 13 is only the game's second Fog of War map and is a huge step up from the first. It's a very big area with fliers harrying you from the northeast lake (dousing its torches on the way), cluttered debris to break through to reach villages quickly, and cleverly hidden Snipers and Mages that can easily kill units if you don't properly scout for them. You also face two multi-health bar bosses at the same time, and both will rush you down once you get in range of either. It doesn't help that you're introduced to Emblem Ike here, who teaches you that you can use him to break obstacles, causing some players to waste their first Engage to do so due to thinking it's necessary for Demolish to work (it's a Sync Skill, meaning it's active even when not Engaged).
- Chapter 17. Six bosses, all with Emblems. It's not uncommon for players to think This Is Gonna Suck as soon as they get to the preparations screen.
- Chapter 19. Much of the map is covered in miasma, which subtracts a whopping 20 from your units' Defense and Resistance if they stand in it and grants that same bonus to any enemies who stand in it. You can clear out the miasma with the cannons, but their range is limited, so you'll inevitably have to lure out Marni and Mauvier while hoping they don't bring too many of their allies along. This doesn't get any better during skirmishes on the same map as you start smack dab in the middle of the most miasma-dense portion of the map meaning high avoid units and units with on-map effects like Ike's Great Aether or Roy's Blazing Lion are outright required. Skirmishes, especially on higher difficulties, are immensely enemy-dense too, meaning you will have to gamble putting one of your own units on a miasma square or target an enemy being buffed by one.
- Chapter 24. The map is divided into three paths, running west to east, with the boss in the middle of the east one. The boss can trigger avalanches, knocking units in the lanes backwards, and while that would seem like a mere annoyance, you only have 15 or 20 turns to defeat the boss. It definitely doesn't help that there are many reinforcements, and at the end of each lane, there's a ballista manned by a Corrupted.
- Leif's paralogue, in true fashion like the map its inspired by (minus a Saias and Reinhardt stand-in), is downright nasty to get through without any casualties. The enemies aren't especially difficult, but the map is covered with ballistae to carpet nearly every tile on the way through the bridge and low defense units going down to a cheap shot is a very real risk. There's no way across other than either using the bridge or throwing a flying unit through a nearly a suicidal charge to cross the river and almost get shot down immediately. They'll also pick off any mages and healers that you might use for the armored knights. This is all in time with a thief at the bottom of the map from where you start who will attempt to cross the bridge and escape, if you're not willing to rush in. A small saving grace is that the ballistae are map objects instead of actual units, and of the three ballistae closest to your starting position, only one of them is manned by a Sniper, so as long as you kill any enemy Snipers near ballistae, they are no longer a threat to your team. As for the boss, Leif himself still possesses his Engage attack that can easily destroy any weakened unit that fights him or put a healthy unit in range of dying to more ballista fire and like in Thracia, the first bridge will get destroyed once most of your army has crossed it.
- Eirika's Paralogue's main gimmick is large groups of Heroes who will gang up and wear even your tankiest units down with Chain Attacks, and thinning their numbers is harder than it looks since they're deceptively durable. There's also plenty of mages spread around to zone out armored units, a lot of Freeze staves in Eirika's group, flier reinforcements from the sides, time pressure in the form of two Thieves, and two Wyrms you have to deal with at the very start. Speaking of deceptively durable, Eirika herself is tough to take down as she has 3 health bars, balanced defensive stats, and the Blue Skies skill lowering damage taken. Her Twin Strike is also a serious threat.
- Alear's Paralogue seems like a standard "defeat the boss before he escapes" map, and a relatively easy one at that. However, once the boss dies, a wave of reinforcements immediately appears, which can be a nasty surprise to first-time players, especially if they neglected to kill the other starting enemies and/or defeated the boss near the end of the Player Phase. To make matters worse, you must complete this map if you want the Pact Ring so Alear can have a paired ending.
While evaluating these "objectively" can be a tad awkward due to the varying difficulty modes the game has, I feel like I can make some judgments based on my time in Hard Casual (read: basically medium difficulty).
My thoughts:
- Chapter 11 is an easy keep. You're undergeared due to story reasons (so no Emblems or Time Crystal) and constantly getting mobbed by Emblems that can spam their skills due to them being re-equipped upon enemy death. It's very easy to get overwhelmed before Ivy shows up to save you.
- I found Chapter 13 to not be that bad even considering it's a Fog of War level. I don't believe there are any reinforcements, the map is kind of chokeholdy so you can turtle, and the fog is mostly over water you don't want to be in anyway. I'd pull it.
- Chapter 17 is another easy keep. Zephia with Emblem Sigurd alone is a massive threat, and you have 5 other bosses on top of that wandering the map.
- Chapter 19 is more annoying than anything tbh. Dealing with the miasma is slow but very manageable, and the existence of chokepoints helps keep enemies at bay with smart Corrin usage. Skirmishes on the map are major ass due to different starting placement, but those are optional.
- Chapter 24... maybe? The turn timer complicates things a lot because there's legendary weapon loot you'll want, but it wasn't that bad to me. Felt like it was within the game's intended difficulty curve.
- I am not sure how to quantify the Emblem Paralogues because they can get way easier if you wait to tackle them, especially for Leif since iirc he's kind of seen as the worst Emblem and not a priority to max out. I personally found his map more scary on paper than practice because the bridges make for a nice chokepoint after you get past the first set of ballistae. A flier with Lyn can probably force Leif to charge you ASAP, too.
- Eirika's Paralogue was also very manageable since I waited on it, plus if you have Corrin's Pair Up you negate the big issue with Chain Attack spam. Nothing really special about it.
- Alear's Paralogue is more of a noob trap imo. Once you learn that reinforcements spawn after you kill the boss you can restart to adjust accordingly.
Edited by Karxrida on Feb 22nd 2023 at 3:32:57 AM
If a tree falls in the forest and nobody remembers it, who else will you have ice cream with?
low-poly Shinri
Found these badboys at The Legend of Heroes: Kuro no Kiseki
- Scrappy Level: Present in both Kuro I and Kuro II.
- For Kuro I, it's either Oracion City or the second part of the final chapter at Edith. Both for just taking way too long and that it creates unnecessary Padding. The lag also doesn't help for the latter.
- Kuro II has the entirety of Act 3 taking place also at Edith City. Even Kuro II's defenders will note that Act 3 took way too long for a Fetch Quest by gathering all of the stolen Oct-Genesis thanks to Swin's actions back at Intermission. The fact that the final route takes place right back at the starting node of Act 3 made it seem like none of the events of Act 3 truly mattered.
Not only is this under a different name (its's supposed to be That One Level rather than Scrappy Level), it feels like complaining to me. Any thoughts?
She/Her | Currently cleaning N/A
Unofficial co-Wiki Curator for Magnificent Bastard
That was the former name of That One Level. Regardless, how exactly hard is it compared to the rest of the games?
Berserk Button: misusing Nightmare Fuel
"The most tedious/boring level in the game" is misuse, the trope is supposed to be about difficulty. If the example doesn't mention that it's hard, it can be cut.
Edited by Zuxtron on Feb 27th 2023 at 11:27:57 AM
low-poly Shinri
That's quite a hard question since Kuro has yet to be localized (and Nihon Falcom games sort of have a reputation for being victims of Late Export for You due to their text heavy nature) and I haven't seen much discussion of it.
If that's so, then I'll delete them and cite this thread. (EDIT: DONE!)
Edited by Ayumi-chan on Feb 28th 2023 at 12:35:59 AM
She/Her | Currently cleaning N/A
So I've been meaning to bring this up for awhile on Elden Ring, but I don't think Radagon (or Elden Beast but he got moved to Goddamned Boss anyways which I think is far more fitting) should be eligible for That One Boss. Most discussions on him do consider him somewhat hard but a perfect test to end the game on other than Elden Beast existing. To me he seems to fall short of being overtly hard by final boss standards.
Edit: Want to also add I see most people consider it an extremely fair fight too as his attacks are highly telegraphed and can be dodged quite reasonably.
Edited by mr_allen on Mar 17th 2023 at 2:20:48 PM
Mega Man 3 has some examples with Natter and bad indentation, but I'm not really sure how to fix them:
- A few of the Doc Robot battles. Namely, Doc Quick Man; while Quick Man was a Fragile Speedster in Mega Man 2, the Doc Robot using his program data is a Lightning Bruiser, able to not only deal a lot of Collision Damage, but his larger size makes him much harder to avoid. This is also an issue with the Doc Robot mimicking Flash Man; due to the fact that you fight him on stairs, he's very difficult to jump over as a result.
- It doesn't help that Doc Quick's AI pattern has actually changed from the original Quick Man's; instead of a three-jump pattern that happened to bug against the outer walls (which could sometimes keep Quick Man from throwing boomerangs), Doc Quick jumps a deliberately random number of times and is more guaranteed to throw boomerangs.
- There's also the larger, harder-hitting Doc Wood Man (whose size also makes his Leaf Shield bigger), and Doc Air Man which throws tornadoes in unavoidable patterns on occasion (that said, the slide still makes him much easier than he was in 2).
- Additionally, most Doc Robots lack a weapon that can four- or even two-shot bosses like in the original game
. The 3 damage chart for the Doc Robots fairly closely resembles the Japanese version of the game, however.
- Additionally, most Doc Robots lack a weapon that can four- or even two-shot bosses like in the original game
- A few of the Doc Robot battles. Namely, Doc Quick Man; while Quick Man was a Fragile Speedster in Mega Man 2, the Doc Robot using his program data is a Lightning Bruiser, able to not only deal a lot of Collision Damage, but his larger size makes him much harder to avoid. This is also an issue with the Doc Robot mimicking Flash Man; due to the fact that you fight him on stairs, he's very difficult to jump over as a result.
Doc Quick is infamously difficult, so he is a definite keep. I'm tempted to cut everything else, since the problems with the other bosses (large size, lack of weaknesses) are all shared among them, so the difficulty of their fights doesn't stand out compared to each other. Thoughts?
Edit: ![[down]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_down.png "[down]"){kind=icon}
Done ![[tup]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/thumbs_up_emote.png "[thumb up]"){kind=small}
Edited by TantaMonty on Apr 11th 2023 at 9:19:20 AM
Industrious Incisors
The Leaf Shield and Tornados can maybe be moved to That One Attack. As for Doc Quick Man, maybe find a way to merge the two paragraphs.
Is it okay for the pages to scale up in length for a game with a lot of levels? As an example, The Battle Cats's page has a lot of entries, but it's also a game which has a huge amount of levels — Stories of Legend alone has about 330 levels, of which 21 are listed on the page.
Bye
I would say it's fine. IIRC, we took the numbers of levels in account for some cuts in the past.
low-poly Shinri
I recently deleted this entry on YMMV.Time And Eternity
- That One Level: The Wind Plains in Chapter 2, it's the largest area in the game, has no plot significance aside from, "We need to cross through here to make it back home," and is full of practically nothing but robotic Demonic Spiders.
Aside from the complainy undertone, does this seem valid to restore?
She/Her | Currently cleaning N/A
She / Her
I think it could work without the detail that it's plot insignificant (that isn't part of the trope).
"Can you see what I see?"
YMMV.Pac Man has a That One Boss entry for the final boss of Pac-Man Arrangement (1996). Thing is, that's also the only boss in that game. Does that disqualify it?
Ever wanted to see the most inexplicably horrifying intro to a game ever?
The Unknown
Not necessarily if the fight does suck.
If a tree falls in the forest and nobody remembers it, who else will you have ice cream with?
"Can you see what I see?"
It is a very challenging fight, but it's also the game's final stage, so it's to be expected.
Ever wanted to see the most inexplicably horrifying intro to a game ever?
Lucas the Dreamer
I think it can qualify if it’s a huge enough Difficulty Spike.
Why waste time when you can see the last sunset last?
"Can you see what I see?"
The later stages in general are pretty hard. I don't know if I would say the boss fight is that hard compared to the stages leading up to it, even if it is probably the hardest stage in the game. It's also hard to judge since the version I played basically has unlimited continues.
Ever wanted to see the most inexplicably horrifying intro to a game ever?
Unofficial co-Wiki Curator for Magnificent Bastard
Just noticed this was added to ThatOneBoss.Fate Grand Order:
- The final boss of the Arcade crossover event, Beast VI/S Rebloomed, focuses on overwhelming the player as hard as possible. First off, its unique Beast class give it full advantage against everything except Draco and the NPC support Tiamat; and we mean everything, including Shielder! Aside from that, their attacks hit everyone on the field, and they also come with seven unremovable passive buffs: Sure hit to ignore evasion, a chance-based Evasion for themselves, a Defense up AND a damage cut, a 5000 HP heal every turn, and buff removal on their normal attacks along with a burn as well. They also have a skill which applies seven debuffs on your party which last seven turns, one of which is buff success rate down; and it will use this skill immediately once the battle starts. Breaking its first bar gives it a buff which debuffs both the attack and defense of whoever attacks it, while breaking its second bar grants it a permanent attack buff, chance based invulnerability and a fully charged NP gauge. The most players can do against it is either try and keep the NPC Draco/Tiamat alive or bring a Draco of their own, as aside from those two cases, there really isn't much you can do against it.
...Not gonna lie, this wasn't that hard compared to other bosses, especially Cernunnos and others. I've already removed it, but feel free to discuss whether it's worth a mention or not.
MB Pending | MB Drafts | MB Dates
Oh, yeah, Castlevania 2....no issues chopping that one