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Hino-enma is the third boss of Nioh 1, and she's a major wall for many players. She's got a bunch of long range attacks, so making some distance so you can chug a healing potion isn't always a safe option. Several of her attacks inflict paralysis at a point in the game where you may not have figured out how to cure paralysis yet, or have a very big stockpile of anti-paralysis needles.
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Feb 5, 2022 19:43
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search engine posted:strongly disagree. sometimes yeah but you shouldn't want every single experience to follow the same beats. when a pattern becomes this ingrained, doing something different can be really striking. wanting/accepting the same thing over and over is the reason there are a hundred bad super hero movies and tv shows every year forever now Also it just makes sense in terms of PlotFeel that the final thing isn't the necessarily hardest - there's a lot of games where that's exactly what you want, for example a puzzle game or something where the ever-mounting difficulty is the appeal, but in a game that puts more emphasis on its story it can feel really annoying to build up to this amazing "hell yeah let's kill this fucker" moment in the finale and then you just repeat the fight 15 times and are just sorta frustrated and annoyed by the time you see the story conclusion. Especially in something like most JRPGs you're often excited to see and beat the final boss, not to fight them, if that makes sense. Getting to see their cool villain monologue before your party gets hype and the music swells and huge special moves and other spectacle is really hype the first time, and significantly more annoying the seventh. Designers want to make sure the game ends on a cool note and in some cases that's definitely "the most challenging fight ever" and in others its "the fight that looks badass and seemed hard but was actually balanced to be beaten with relative ease if you're paying attention". To be clear I'm not talking about games that only care about story, like visual novels or the like, I mean games where they still want the player to think and engage with its mechanics, just not in a way that involves a ton of repeating challenges. To actually answer the OP's question though, Oakleyman from Monster Rancher 2. This E-rank fight isn't actually hard if you know how a lot of the game's mechanics work (in particular how guts correction works) but for basically anyone playing the game blind or at a very casual level he's a roadblock and runs a very real risk of injuring or even killing your monsters. A poorly-timed Straight against a low HP monster will probably kick you right out of the tournament and also give you a very warped perspective on how strong Gaboo are!
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Feb 5, 2022 19:47
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THIS MOTHERFUCKER easily wins the thread. Bane of my loving childhood ignore the terrible youtuber but I'm glad that others had the same issues with this boss that 6 year old walrus did one time I took it to my cousin's and she beat it for me - the second level was like a weird dream. i never saw it again. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdJmf89yQaI&t=94s
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Feb 5, 2022 20:00
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The Walrus posted:THIS MOTHERFUCKER easily wins the thread. Bane of my loving childhood The antlion on Sonic 2 for GameGear, for anyone wanting to save a click. The small screen made it nigh impossible to predict and dodge the projectile paths.
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Feb 5, 2022 20:04
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Watching the video as an adult I think you're expected to listen to the bounces before it shows up on screen to get an idea of the pattern it will be.
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Feb 5, 2022 20:08
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The Forsaken Fortress in Wind Waker isn't necessarily hard, but it's stealth mechanics in a game engine that doesn't exactly support them and it makes me not want to replay Wind Waker since it's the first part of the game. The Triforce dredging and money grinding heading into the late/end game I can handle, but it's boring!!
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Feb 5, 2022 23:20
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Sudden Javelin posted:
I think the sequel Yakuza Kiwami (yes I know it's a remake of the first Yakuza but has lots of ties to 0) does this even worse with Shimano. You're main character is barely out of prison and weak as a kitten and here you are fighting a Mac truck of a clan leader. I only managed to beat him by cheesing all the weapons I had picked up during the brief periods I had to poke around town during story beats.
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Feb 5, 2022 23:42
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muscles like this! posted:Yeah, like the Matador from Nocturne. You better have figured out that you need to have the correct element types available or you're completely hosed. Matador is a funny case because in the original release, he didn't exist. It's more of a case where Atlus hosed up the difficulty curve by plopping a bonus boss into the early game and made it a mandatory fight.
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Feb 5, 2022 23:47
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Bug Squash posted:Easy answer: The Capra Demon from Dark Souls. The third boss in the game, when most new players are still struggling to start their build, comes this rear end in a top hat. The Demon itself isn't particularly bullshit, it's the encounter design. drat, that arena IS tiny.
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Feb 6, 2022 00:18
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I'd argue 90% of action hack and slash titles are like this, the beginning is always the worst of the worst, ESPECIALLY in the Ninja Gaiden games from the 2000s. And talking of which, from the same devs, Nioh 1 and 2 are, by far, the worst examples of early bosses being so much worst than the rest of the game. Nioh 1 had the lightning tiger boss (Nue) which was infinitely more faster and stronger than you at this point of the game. Nioh 2 it was the goddamn snake boss which you don't have the best kit to properly parry it like the game intends you to while it also spawns enemies for you to deal with. Of course, in both cases, once you can actually make a set by the time of the first playthrough, the NG+ variants (path of demon etc) are much, MUCH easier to deal with. I love both games but those first hurdles are SO annoying. The Walrus posted:THIS MOTHERFUCKER easily wins the thread. Bane of my loving childhood Jesus christ I had COMPLETELY forgotten about this, I remember HATING that game due to this boss, it felt impossible!
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Feb 6, 2022 00:46
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The hardest first boss is Pinwheel, if you go straight to the catacombs like youre obviously supposed to. I mean, the skeletons on the way are pretty tough, but this game is supposed to be hard, right???
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Feb 6, 2022 02:33
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I'm not sure if the midpoint counts as 'early' but has everyone forgotten Weigraf from Final Fantasy Tactics? Throwing your main character into a one on one fight when you've been running team battles up to that point, against a very powerful knight, and locking you into that story battle and not letting you leave to grind if you saved after the previous two battles.
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Feb 6, 2022 02:56
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sudonim posted:I think the sequel Yakuza Kiwami (yes I know it's a remake of the first Yakuza but has lots of ties to 0) does this even worse with Shimano. You're main character is barely out of prison and weak as a kitten and here you are fighting a Mac truck of a clan leader. I only managed to beat him by cheesing all the weapons I had picked up during the brief periods I had to poke around town during story beats. I am still very hooked on Yakuza 0 and have the dumb idea to try and 100% it but we'll see if that holds up after copious amounts of mahjong I have lurked the Yakuza thread and heard Shimano has Mr. Shakedown's moveset from 0 essentially? If so it's like a "gently caress newbies" boss really, as if you've played lots of 0 you know how to deal with him but throwing the Shakedown moveset at a complete newbie is hella rough
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Feb 6, 2022 03:31
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Perestroika posted:Not exactly a boss in the traditional sense, but the Parking Garage in Driver. It's the very first mission and intended as a sort of tutorial. You're supposed to perform a list of various driving maneuvers inside a small garage both to show your future employer you've got what it takes. The trouble is, it's a fairly long list of poorly explained maneuvers, it's a small and cramped garage, and you get a time limit of one single minute to do them all. And that is as the very first mission of the game, before you've had any opportunity to get familiar with how it plays or how the cars handle. You are not wrong. I loved Driver as a game, but the fact that you have to beat that tutorial to get the play the open world part is insane. It took me HOURS to get past it, and once I did I put a save just past it on another memory card in case I wanted to start a new game, because I didn't want to do it again. The one thing you forgot is not only do you have a time limit that is very tight, you also have a fragile car. So you have to do the entire set of tricks in this tiny, column-filled garage without running out of time OR taking too much damage. I can still hear both of the failure voice lines in my head to this day. "Yeah, maybe I'll give you a call next time I need a ride to the grocery store." if you ran out of time, and a Tommy Chong-inspired guy saying "You wrecked the car, man!" if you took too much damage.
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Feb 6, 2022 21:26
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The amazing thing about Driver's tutorial is that some of the techniques you have to perform which have zero explanation on how to do them literally never get used in the main game. In fact the main game only becomes as frustratingly hard again in the final New York levels.
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Feb 6, 2022 21:39
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Zaodai posted:You are not wrong. I loved Driver as a game, but the fact that you have to beat that tutorial to get the play the open world part is insane. It took me HOURS to get past it, and once I did I put a save just past it on another memory card in case I wanted to start a new game, because I didn't want to do it again. The only level harder than the tutorial was the final one, but that was balls hard. Oh, and pretty much none of the techniques they made you do in the tutorial get used in game. Edit: everyone simultaneously having the same rage inducing flashbacks in the thread
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Feb 6, 2022 21:41
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Oh drat, I forgot about Driver. Yeah, I think that's probably the winner for most assholish intro moment of any game that I can think of. The funny thing is, the demo version I played beforehand was just a little chunk of gameplay and it worked perfectly fine without all that. I was very surprised when I got the actual game. Captain Hygiene fucked around with this message at 22:03 on Feb 6, 2022 |
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Feb 6, 2022 22:00
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Bug Squash posted:Edit: everyone simultaneously having the same rage inducing flashbacks in the thread Stuntman on the PS2 is my goto game for rage inducing flashbacks. Same developers as Driver too. But the entire game is bullshit so it doesn't count in the scope of this thread.
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Feb 7, 2022 00:19
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Frankston posted:Iudex Gundyr in Dark Souls 3 was a pretty rough intro. Father Gascoigne is a very hard "do you understand how to play the game yet?" check that you can run into inside of 15 minutes and locks the rest of the game. Originally they were going to have another route that you could use to advance and Gascoigne is even a co op companion for that other boss, but they couldn't make that route work right so the door behind that boss is just closed, never to open, and Gascoigne is the only option. Once you can beat him, you have basically got the download on how the game works and most of the bosses after are going to be matter of course rather than insurmountable.
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Feb 7, 2022 00:48
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Dr Christmas posted:Sekiro takes a while to click, so you may have trouble with early bosses, have less trouble with later, harder bosses, and then you’re able to go back and stomp the early bosses while the hard ones remain hard. Still, there always seems to be a middle boss that gives you trouble, and it’s different for everyone. loving Lady Butterfly for me, man
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Feb 7, 2022 00:58
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Sudden Javelin posted:I am still very hooked on Yakuza 0 and have the dumb idea to try and 100% it but we'll see if that holds up after copious amounts of mahjong it's a combination of the moveset, and the fact that IIRC it's the 1st boss you encounter that can regen his health until you hit him with a "Kiwami" heat action. Problem is, it's hella early in the game, you have access to very limited XP at that point, and if you didn't spend your upgrade points getting a Kiwami move then you have nothing to stop his health regeneration, which can make the fight take forever. You could just use a regular heat move, but again, it's super early in the game so there's basically no guarantee you'd even have access to a heat move that can stop him
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Feb 7, 2022 01:09
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marshmallow creep posted:Father Gascoigne is a very hard "do you understand how to play the game yet?" check that you can run into inside of 15 minutes and locks the rest of the game. Father Gascoigne has the advantage of being awesome so, at least for me, it was a fight I didn't mind having to redo to learn. As for Sekiro the guy who tripped me up early on was the ninja at the bottom of the cave thing (and his brother up in the pagoda where you get the raven feather in the flashback). His moveset wasn't that bad but his tiny underground room made the camera lose its loving mind at random and he did a ton of damage for the point of the game you run into him. For actual boss, I didn't really have one piss me off until you fight your dad.
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Feb 7, 2022 07:20
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Trustworthy posted:Thanks for the nightmarish flashback to my solo bard playthrough I mean... that's setting yourself up for failure right there.
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Feb 8, 2022 13:11
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Thoom posted:Hino-enma is the third boss of Nioh 1, and she's a major wall for many players. She's got a bunch of long range attacks, so making some distance so you can chug a healing potion isn't always a safe option. Several of her attacks inflict paralysis at a point in the game where you may not have figured out how to cure paralysis yet, or have a very big stockpile of anti-paralysis needles. That's the stun kunai lady right ? I didn't find her *too* hard but that's probably because I'd already watched an LP up to this part. Ice lady however can go gently caress herself right in half. As can the big blob with the death ray - not that his pattern is super difficult otherwise, but that one move comes with very little warning and you're dead even if just grazes you, no matter if you've been doing the fight perfect until that point.
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Feb 8, 2022 13:18
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C-Euro posted:Not quite a boss fight, but the very first Village sequence in Resident Evil 4 is surprisingly brutal for how early it is. It's your first combat encounter with more than a couple of enemies, you haven't had a chance to upgrade your weapons at all, and you're not going to know the best places to make a stand your first time playing the game. It does a great job of setting the tone for the rest of the game but I don't think there's anything as difficult on a first-time playthrough until you get to the Castle. The siege with Spanish Dude also kicked my rear end a few times. Not that it's very difficult, but it's hectic enough that you end up wasting a lot of resources if you're not careful, which means you're at a disadvantage for the next few areas.
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Feb 8, 2022 13:21
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The village fight I found a lot harder coming back to RE4 since I actually tried to fight the villagers and chainsaw guy. The first time around it was just a mad scramble, jumping through windows and hitting targets of opportunity before hiding in the bell tower until they get called away. Technically it's incredibly easy, but I felt on the verge of defeat the whole time. Absolute masterpiece design, probably the best set piece in games history.
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Feb 8, 2022 14:59
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Arnika Road in Wizardry 8. The game drops you right into a dungeon - actually at a perfectly tuned difficulty. After the first dungeon in the game there's one path to the first town. It's extremely hard, there are tons of long fights - and your party hasn't had a chance to gear up or rest after defeating the dungeon. Plus there's a chance you'll run into cultists who will chain cast humongous elementals and bombard you with fireballs if you try to run away. The game is 80 hours long and there's nothing close to that hard again. Great game though.
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Feb 8, 2022 15:42
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That loving imp in the first dungeon in daggerfall if you didn't pick a spellcaster or get the ebony dagger.
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Feb 8, 2022 17:27
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Zenithe posted:Spikey Tiger from Secret of Mana. Hardest boss hands down and it's I think number 3. came here to post this. fuckin' tiger bastard.
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Feb 8, 2022 17:55
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marshmallow creep posted:Father Gascoigne is a very hard "do you understand how to play the game yet?" check that you can run into inside of 15 minutes and locks the rest of the game. Yea I was coming in to actually bring up the Father in Bloodborne. He's a legitimately awesome and well done boss fight and is there to ensure that you have the fundamentals down to beat the rest of the game. He's not the hardest boss fight in the game but he can be a brick wall if you're still getting the hang of dodging and parrying. Really it's a brilliant boss fight and extremely well done but can be a major hurdle to the rest of the game considering he's not optional. The Youtuber Zullie The Witch does a fantastic breakdown of why this boss is so well done but also why it's such a hurdle for so many players. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGvTw6nepx0
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Feb 8, 2022 18:48
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I fought Madam Butterfly as effectively my first Sekiro boss after having taken a long break from Souls-like games and boy was that a crash course in getting my poo poo together but it felt so, so good to beat her after those run backs in a way video games almost never do for me and Souls-likes had long ago become somewhat blaise due to accumulated skill. And then that Seventh Spear Ashina motherfucker nearly made me quit the game forever. Glad I didn’t but hooooo boy gently caress that guy. Once I had him down I’m not even sure why I had so much trouble with him but I sure did.
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Feb 8, 2022 19:06
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Orv posted:I fought Madam Butterfly as effectively my first Sekiro boss after having taken a long break from Souls-like games and boy was that a crash course in getting my poo poo together but it felt so, so good to beat her after those run backs in a way video games almost never do for me and Souls-likes had long ago become somewhat blaise due to accumulated skill. Seven Spear is there to make sure mikiri counter timing is burned into your soul. When I got tired of fighting ninja in the well, I'd go take runs at him, and vice versa. I really found the main part of fighting him hard was that unless you wanted to clear the entire courtyard, you had to approach him from the stair side which meant you were fighting him on a big incline so you didn't have a clear vision of is reach sometimes.
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Feb 8, 2022 21:34
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I thought that was the point of the guy at the Hirata Estate, who truly does just die when you mikiri him. By comparison the one near the reservoir is just the hardest enemy period and in a completely rear end in a top hat location.
No Wave fucked around with this message at 21:52 on Feb 8, 2022 |
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Feb 8, 2022 21:47
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Bug Squash posted:Easy answer: The Capra Demon from Dark Souls. The third boss in the game, when most new players are still struggling to start their build, comes this rear end in a top hat. The Demon itself isn't particularly bullshit, it's the encounter design. Came in to say this. I use to think Gargoyles was as hard but I never had issues with Gargoyles in any future runs but Capra still fucks me up if I make a mistake.
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Feb 8, 2022 22:08
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gattuso in tales of vesperia is a pretty big pain in the rear end. he's fast, strong, tends to knock down characters with his rushes, has a bunch of smaller wolves running around, and has a somewhat annoying secret mission during his battle. the way vespy drip feeds you game mechanics means your only means of attack are probably the base 3-hit combo and a couple of artes. hell of a fight for some random forest boss
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Feb 8, 2022 22:09
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Zaodai posted:Seven Spear is there to make sure mikiri counter timing is burned into your soul. When I got tired of fighting ninja in the well, I'd go take runs at him, and vice versa. I really found the main part of fighting him hard was that unless you wanted to clear the entire courtyard, you had to approach him from the stair side which meant you were fighting him on a big incline so you didn't have a clear vision of is reach sometimes. Fighting him on the steps is definitely part of why I had such trouble with it.
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Feb 9, 2022 05:15
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Mr. Fortitude posted:Stuntman on the PS2 is my goto game for rage inducing flashbacks. Same developers as Driver too. But the entire game is bullshit so it doesn't count in the scope of this thread. The true rage came from those long rear end load times.
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Feb 10, 2022 16:54
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The big 'Goliath' robot at the end of the NieR Automata tutorial. In its defence, it's trying to teach the player a few things. You can keep bashing your head against it and "get good". Or you can open up the menu and re-equip things or lower the difficulty. You also have to redo the entire tutorial if you die, as you unlock saving right after. This is cruel at first, it sets up that you have to commit to the game and respect it for it to respect your time. You can't just play it on idiot mode - you need to think a little bit, look at menus, or get over preconceived ideas about how you approach playing like difficulty. For the B playthrough, the player has to be willing to essentially replay the entire game up to that point from to get the best that the story has to tell. It's a really tough sell and the tutorial weeds out a lot of the players that won't put up with that. On the other hand, it's a spike in difficulty that you don't really see again until route E credits roll. The game's fans are very vocal but I remember reading people bouncing off the game entirely for this fight and I kind of get it.
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Feb 10, 2022 17:10
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Bug Squash posted:Easy answer: The Capra Demon from Dark Souls. The third boss in the game, when most new players are still struggling to start their build, comes this rear end in a top hat. The Demon itself isn't particularly bullshit, it's the encounter design. I've never played a soulsborne, and never actually owned a console since 1991 (did have GB/GB Color), so I feel like I've missed out on a whole niche of gaming. My (grown) son raves about Elden Ring on his Xbox. How would a PC-only old fart go about getting an introduction to the type? According to him, some games I've beaten are souls-likes (Jedi Fallen Order comes to mind by the action combat and difficulty), but I really like story as well. Would I just need to break down and buy a console for Demon's Souls or Bloodborne or whatever? I have the three DS games themselves on my Steam wishlist already, if that matters. Fake edit: Poisoning a boss with piles of poo poo as something "acceptable" to progress sounds fantastic! Real edit: Not particularly a "boss fight," but the first few hours of Elex would have made me stop completely if I hadn't seen a "Before You Buy" explaining how it opens up to a much more playable (and fun!) progression once you gain those first few items/combat mechanics/etc. I probably would have quit at my candy-rear end-can't-beat-two-enemies stage. Nothing else in the game is that frustrating, and I'm getting Elex II next unless Dark Souls goes on sale first! DerekSmartymans fucked around with this message at 20:01 on Apr 3, 2022 |
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Apr 3, 2022 19:39
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spyro 2 is a game that can be easily enjoyed and played by elementary schoolers. the boss Gulp is not, unless you're talking about the kids who grew up with the NES by the time i finally got past this guy, who shows up in the middle of the game, my heart was racing like i'd just fought something from the bloodborne dlc. his attack tracking is nuts and he's one of those "dodge for a while and then hit him once when he's vulnerable" types, except his attack patterns are so lengthy that beating him takes 10-15 minutes even if you don't slip up once
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Apr 3, 2022 19:45
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