I’ve started to hate the term “Hardest”.
Give me two months in Unity, and I can make a game that’s “harder” than every game on any one of these lists. It would also be unplayable trash, that would prompt hundreds of “How the fuck are you supposed to XXX” responses due to obscurity. Part of what makes those listed games enjoyable is having a decent difficulty curve, compelling progression of skill demonstration, and a good feeling of reward. They’re getting difficulty right.
Impossiblest? Difficulter? Most hard?
Sorry about the PTSD, but…
I watch a streamer who mastered speed running dozens of NES games. He says Battletoads was the hardest game to learn. Just getting through the game, not even pushing for a fast time, was extremely challenging. Much harder than TMNT 1 or Ninja Gaiden.
Yeah, for all the difficulty I had with the dam on NES TMNT as a kid, I saw a streamer do it last year I think (I believe on first attempt?) not realizing it was supposed to be difficult. Blew my mind.
I have never met anyone that could beat this level. It’s like it was made to sell the Game Genie.
You have to memorize the level and jump a bit before that one tricky one comes on screen.
Child me could beat it after hours of repeated attempts and running out of continues.
Adult me went back after a decade. The muscle memory was still there and I beat it on the first try. I probably got about an 80% success rate on first attempts now. But level 4 and beyond I’m terrible.
My brother and I played the game so much we were able to beat that stage co-op. It gets much worse later. I learned not that long ago that the reason we were never able to beat it co-op is there’s a bug that prevents the 11th stage from being beatable with two players.
I only got it by state save scumming in zsnes, and even then it was tough not to save yourself into a corner.
Aww yeah. I’m gonna call Gold and Silver Pawn and see if they have this classic in stock.
Fun fact: that’s one of the easiest levels in the game. It barely cracks the top 10 hardest levels in a game with 12 levels, and only because the first 2 are trivial to lull you into a false sense of security.
I need to find an emulated version of this. Mine was faulty and always glitches as soon as you finished this stage so I never got to see neyond it for more than a few seconds. I’ve always wondered what was there!
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Did we already forget about Battletoads?
I beat Battletoads a ton when I was a kid, we never beat the Turtles game.
I beat both back in the day. I definitely feel like battletoads was the more difficult of the two.
Battletoads has nothing on Ghosts 'n Goblins! I can at least play Battletoads until the stupid vehicle jumping section. I don’t think I’ve ever even made it more than like 3 checkpoints into Ghosts 'n Goblins
Battle toads was truly the hardest game
Some of us remember!!! Damn you, first level!!!
Battletoads would like a word
Some of those old games from the NES or even into the SNES era were just outright impossible. IIRC there was a Dennis The Menace game didn’t have the final boss ready for the publishing deadline so they just put an impossible jump just before it so players couldn’t get that far.
Some of you have never Wanna be the Guy and it shows.
I remember wanting to play IWBtG so badly in its heyday but not being able to figure out how to on a mac. I finally watched a playthrough recently and… turns out I dodged a bullet of frustration.
Did you really dodge a bullet though? Or did the bullet stop midair and changed direction to move toward what was up until now the most logical location to dodge to?
Elden Ring isn’t even the hardest Soulslike
In fact it’s probably the easiest, in the base game anyway, just due to the huge number of build options. Although DeS had some pretty broken builds.
Youre right, but its the most recent and the one that gets the most exposure. This is us getting old and classics being forgotten
Dark Souls 3 was only 8 years ago
Which is probably about half the life of some users commenting here
Half Life was only 26 years ago
Lion King on SEGA Genesis?
Takeshi’s Challenge?
Dragon’s Lair?
Ninja Gaiden?
Marble Madness?
Battletoads?
Fuckin battletoads. WAY harder than turtles.
Elden Ring isn’t even the most difficult soulsborne game, by a longshot
This was certainly the hardest part of the game due to the controls, but it still pales in comparison to actually difficult games of the era that were designed to take quarters first, provide gameplay later
Oh yeah, for sure. Ghosts’n Goblins comes to mind.
Idk if I’m finally getting old or the real nerds are hiding. Nobody in here knows about Nethack? At least someone said Dwarf Fortress.
One time I died on turn zero failing to mount my horse and hitting my head on the stone stairs.
Yasd material right there.
Dang. I can’t tag you “slime mold” because that’s apparently a paid feature on my app. jdawson, is this what finally makes me switch apps?
Money that app person!
Hello from Voyager! It looks like it doesn’t support tagging either. The voyage continues.
Hello from Enterprise.
Pay yo devs!
Jerboa doesn’t do it either, or else I just can’t figure out how.
NetHack makes most mortals cry. My bones files taunt me.
I played Nethack. I was overwhelmed by my anxiety and depression. I realised I was not good at video games. So I quit playing Nethack and swore to get good at video games before returning. Been, what, at least 15 years? I’ve gotten better I guess. Should I return? Soon, maybe.
(Seriously, though, roguelikes are still a genre I struggle with, so I do need practice!)
Have you tried pixel dungeon? It’s kinda the same thing but dramatically easier and I’ve still never ascended. 🤣
Kinda the thing about it though is that what makes Nethack so good is how the devs thought of everything.
Imagine souls games giving you only three lives before sending you back to the very beginning of the game.
IMHO Elden Ring isn’t the most difficult fromsoft game.
That honor goes to Sekiro.
Elden Ring may in fact be the easiest From game tbh.
You might be inclined to say that if you don’t really know much of the games From has made.
The Adventures of Cookie and Cream on PS2 was a very easy game by comparison.
Lol, okay fair, but I think it’s pretty common to be referring to the “soulslike” genre when you say a From game.
Honestly, if you go back and play the older souls games after Elden Ring, you’ll see that they’re a lot easier than Elden Ring, unless you summon Mimic Tear for every boss fight, I guess. But on a “player vs boss” scale, the fights in the older games are much easier than some of the later ones in Elden Ring (especially if you factor in the DLC).
The thing that makes Elden Ring much easier is the fact that there is always somewhere else the player can make progress. In Dark Souls, you follow a more or less linear path and if you felt underleveled you had to grind enemies because you could not make any further progress until you pass where you got stuck. In Elden Ring, you can go to a different area completely and make a bit more progress there. From Limgrave, the player can choose to go to Stormveil, skip Stormveil and go to Liurnia Lake, go to Southern Limgrave, or go to Caelid if they’re a psycopath. This is in addition to all the helpers From has given players. Strong magic (compared to Souls games), Summons that are available to the player literally anywhere on top of the same Gold Message Summons from the Souls games, two moves that give players i-frames, etc.
Sure, if you play it like its a Souls game then it might seem hard, but if you play it as the action adventure RPG it is designed to be, the game is significantly easier than Souls games.
I get what you’re saying, but I feel like you’re way underselling how hard the Elden Ring bosses are compared to the Dark Souls bosses (the actual bosses, not the re-used late-game enemies with bigger health pool in random dungeons). I don’t think there’s a single Dark Souls boss that comes anywhere close to any of the bosses from Morgoth and onward (Fire Giant excluded, obviously). Morgoth, Godfrey, Radagon, Malenia, and all the DLC bosses are much harder than anything the Souls series has seen (unless you count broken/janky mechanics like Witch of Izalith’s garbage-tier hitboxes).
I suppose, but the player could very easily overlevel themselves to make the bosses very easy in Elden Ring. Can’t do that without a big, boring, repetitive time investment in Dark Souls, farming the same enemies in the same location.
I have hundreds of hours in all the Souls games. I still say Elden Ring is easiest overall.
Considering they released at least 5 Armored Core games before even their very first souls-like, Demon’s Souls, which was not widely played, I am inclined to disagree.
Armored Core series, but those have always had a way to cheese through the campaign, almost universally.
Might be worth clarifying Demon’s Souls and onward, some of us are old enough to have played Armored Core.
Coming from ER to DS3 I think DS3 is much easier. I didn’t put much thought into my build and it was a breeze. I beat many bosses first try.
Much of the difficulty in ER comes from the often hard to telegraph attacks.
I 100% agree. Sekiro is my favorite of them all.
Elden Ring isn’t difficult, it’s tedious and repetitive. I really didn’t like it
Just came in here to support Sekiro
I think you mean the hardest Fromsoft game you liked. Go Beat the original armored core and get back to me. you could also give last raven a shot.
Nah Sekiro is great. Sometimes I just pull it up and play it a couple of days because it’s so satisfying. I think Sword Saint Isshin is supposed to be the hardest boss, and it definitely takes a lot of runs until you have him memorized. But on NG+ I first-, or second-tried him. I think all Sekiro bosses are pretty chill once you know them.
Consort Radahn however… I don’t know if I have the will to ever struggle through this fight again
That honor goes to Demon’s Souls…
Not sure why you were downvoted. I found Demon Souls was frustrating more than difficult but to each their own.
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the chief irony of this game is turtles are supposed to be good at swimming underwater.
Well. But the way the TMNT’s legs poke out their shells before they get mutated heavily implies they’re actually Teenage Mutant Ninja Tortoises. I think the mistake comes from that their crew was named by a rat who only ever read about ninjutsu. What the fuck does master splinter know about identifying the difference between a turtle and a tortoise?
Ghosts n Goblins say what?
Right? The studio behind it openly admitted that Ghost and Goblins was made to be a quarter eater at arkades… it was built to be unbeatable
“Finally beat it!… wait, what do you mean I have to do it all over again on a harder difficulty with the weakest weapon?!”
This room is an illusion and
is a trap devisut by Satan.
Go ahead dauntlessly !
Make rapid progres !
