Biggest Difficulty Spike You Have Ever Experienced

[Chungus]

The transition from White Knight Chronicles to WKC2. The first game was pretty easy, with some more challanging segments here and there. Come the second game, and I needed to whip out the Knights to take down the elite mooks without wasting tons of healing items. Hell, near the end of the game, I sometimes needed them against even normal mooks. Don't get me started on the bosses.
...
Actually, I will get started on the bosses. Speciffically, Brimflamme and the Black Knight. Dear Lord, was that a major pain in the ass. Brimflamme alone was enough trouble to deal with, with it hitting like a truck and soaking up damage like a tank. Then the other guy shows up, and things went tits up, fast.

Another thing I can think of is the Guardian of Time stage from Serious Sam: BFE. Near the end of the level. Fucking Kleers and Khumms... >_> That entire level was hard as crap, but that paticular moment took the cake. I played on normal mode, and still died again and again until eventually I just opted to use cheats.

 

[Alcamonic]

Shining Force related snip

I'm surprised about hearing someone else who played that game. And I do agree, that guy was easily a jump up in difficulty, his henchmen as well.

OT: Does Inferno mode in Diablo 3 Act 2 count? of course, it was largely bullshit with things being hard for hard sake, but still. That gap from Act 1, dear lord!

 

[Elfgore]

Company Heroes has some really bad difficulty spikes like you said. It's even worse in the expansions. One second you're casually defending an area from enemies, next your losing tanks by the dozen because of a barricade of anti-tank guns.

The Witcher 2 really picked up the difficulty at the second town. The harpies kicked my ass in two seconds. Had to download the combat rebalance mod just to beat the game.

 

[Trucken]

Jagged Alliance 2 goes from an enjoyable, tactically juicy romp to a white knuckle march of horror that even aggressive save scumming can be hard pressed to overcome. It makes complaints about the new, forgiving XCOM games seem quaint and bemusing.

As much as I love Jagged Alliance 2 (and it's a lot, it's my favorite game ever) I'll be the first to admit that it's hard as fuck. I've never beaten it on anything other than Novice as it only takes a few hours for the game to become your worst goddamn nightmare. I mean, Drassen and Chitzena falls easily, Cambria can be kinda difficult (the old university can be a nightmare with all the explosives lying around). But after that, Grumm? Alma? SAM sites 2 & 3? Save scumming like a mother.

 

[bpm195]

Dance Dance Revolution has the most ridiculous jump in difficulty when you switch from any home version to the same game's arcade version. After playing the home version for a while I was able to beat 8 footers, but when I went to the arcade I had to drop to 5-6.

 

[vid87]

Any battle with those twins though was terrible. I think the developers knew how OP they were and intentionally made the win condition just getting one of them to critical health - actually defeating everyone would have been a nightmare.

They're total cheaters to boot. Check out how they can equip headbands as accessories.
One of them can even dual wield katanas; which isn't possible for player units.

And their insta-kill, don't forget about the insta-kill.

 

[cahtush]

Cerberus from Devil May Cry 3....and actually from Kingdom Hearts 1 as well. In both of those cases he is the second boss (possibly third depending on what path you take in KH)

Came here to post Cerberus, too. Well, the Kingdom Hearts one, at least.

I just replayed Kingdom Hearts recently for the first time in years (thanks to the 1.5 Remix), and God damn, I had forgotten how much of a pain in the ass Cerberus was.

I mean, at that point in the game, you don't have High Jump yet, so just REACHING him to do damage is a chore. Your choices in healing are extremely limited (unless you skipped this level and went to Deep Jungle first to get the Cure spell). Magic doesn't do jack to him, and you can barely cast any that early in the game. He's got several long-range magic attacks, and his physical attacks hit like a truck. Speaking of, you can really only hit him when he starts attacking physically, and because of that, it's EXTREMELY risky to go in for any decent combo.

Forget Sephiroth. Forget Kurt Zisa. Forget Unknown. CERBERUS gave me more trouble than any other boss in the game.

This for me too.
Just started playing it again recently, the first time i played it many many years ago i never realized that you weren't supposed to fight the heartless at the tutorial island. As it turned out 8 year old me was really bad at video games.

But anyways, that cerberus fight is like hitting a brick wall. Ended up cheesing it by letting Goofy and Donald slowly chip away at it while i ran around avoiding its ranged attacks.
I'm not sure how anyone is able to beat it without ludicrous grinding.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

Cerberus from Devil May Cry 3....and actually from Kingdom Hearts 1 as well. In both of those cases he is the second boss (possibly third depending on what path you take in KH)

Came here to post Cerberus, too. Well, the Kingdom Hearts one, at least.

I just replayed Kingdom Hearts recently for the first time in years (thanks to the 1.5 Remix), and God damn, I had forgotten how much of a pain in the ass Cerberus was.

I mean, at that point in the game, you don't have High Jump yet, so just REACHING him to do damage is a chore. Your choices in healing are extremely limited (unless you skipped this level and went to Deep Jungle first to get the Cure spell). Magic doesn't do jack to him, and you can barely cast any that early in the game. He's got several long-range magic attacks, and his physical attacks hit like a truck. Speaking of, you can really only hit him when he starts attacking physically, and because of that, it's EXTREMELY risky to go in for any decent combo.

Forget Sephiroth. Forget Kurt Zisa. Forget Unknown. CERBERUS gave me more trouble than any other boss in the game.

This for me too.
Just started playing it again recently, the first time i played it many many years ago i never realized that you weren't supposed to fight the heartless at the tutorial island. As it turned out 8 year old me was really bad at video games.

But anyways, that cerberus fight is like hitting a brick wall. Ended up cheesing it by letting Goofy and Donald slowly chip away at it while i ran around avoiding its ranged attacks.
I'm not sure how anyone is able to beat it without ludicrous grinding.

It's been a year and a half or so, but I think I remember jumping on his leg/backside and smashing the fuck out of one of the heads with a couple combos, then running away like hell inbetween hits. Didn't work perfectly and occasionally when they would do the "chomp chomp really fucking fast and do massive amount of damage" my body would get caught in it when I was trying to hit, but I think I made it through in one fight and not having to restart. To be honest leon and yuffie were more of a pain in my ass at the time

 

[BloatedGuppy]

As much as I love Jagged Alliance 2 (and it's a lot, it's my favorite game ever) I'll be the first to admit that it's hard as fuck. I've never beaten it on anything other than Novice as it only takes a few hours for the game to become your worst goddamn nightmare. I mean, Drassen and Chitzena falls easily, Cambria can be kinda difficult (the old university can be a nightmare with all the explosives lying around). But after that, Grumm? Alma? SAM sites 2 & 3? Save scumming like a mother.

I assume you've played with the 1.13 "mod" installed? The Drassen counterattack really needs to be seen to be believed.

 

[Requia]

Getting to the galactic core in Space Pirates and Zombies. You just barely get the hang of things and suddenly the enemies get multiple huge near invulnerable ships with better weapons than you have access too.

 

[Garrett Horvath]

Dark Souls has just this second pissed me off with a difficulty spike, causing me to quit the game and check out The Escapist. I got to Blighttown, and was happily plodding along killing weird looking mosquitoes and giant guys with clubs, when suddenly I notice I'm being shot at by a bunch of zombies with blowdarts, and despite blocking the darts I've been poisoned.

"No worries!" I think, "The game just gave me a giant stockpile of poison curing moss a couple of areas ago."

"Nope!" Interrupts Dark Souls "This isn't poison, this is toxin, which is obviously completely different."

Me: "..."

Dark Souls: "By the way, you're dead."

Me: "..."

Haha I hate these dudes, they are completely unfair to new players who don't know where they are. Once you realize their darts can be blocked with a shield and that they DON"T respawn once you finally kill them, they become a lot easier.

 

[Ihateregistering1]

Path of Exile. I made it through the first two acts with pretty much no problems, but holy cow do they turn up the difficulty when you hit act 3. Suddenly the enemies hit much harder, there are way more unique enemies, and the bosses are freakin' killers.

It's also kind of unfair, because the bosses do a ludicrous amount of elemental damage. I'm still stuck on General Gravicius because I only have 25% fire resistance and he basically kills you in two hits if you don't have at least 50%.

 

[Ultress]

Metroid Prime 1 was not a particularity hard game but the first trek into the Phazon mines is a right pain. A long endurance run with hard hitting enemies that all have a specific weakness.It just really comes out of no where and will kick your ass if your not expecting it.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

Path of Exile. I made it through the first two acts with pretty much no problems, but holy cow do they turn up the difficulty when you hit act 3. Suddenly the enemies hit much harder, there are way more unique enemies, and the bosses are freakin' killers.

It's also kind of unfair, because the bosses do a ludicrous amount of elemental damage. I'm still stuck on General Gravicius because I only have 25% fire resistance and he basically kills you in two hits if you don't have at least 50%.

yeah the final boss in PoE makes Diablo look like a fucking child in comparison, I figured he wouldn't be anything to sneeze at but DEAR GOD, dying 30 times in the same battle is a pain in the ass when I steamrolled most of the acts.

 

[sovietmisaki]

Jak 2: That one mission where you had to run a gauntlet of Krimson Guard troopers. In the water slums of Haven City. My younger sister and I, failed like a few dozen times before we finally succeeded.

Company of Heroes: Before I learned of a certain sneaky strategy of cleverly using paratroopers, Mission 13: Mortain Counterattack was a battle that completely stumped me to no end, especially due to those damn 88mm guns tearing apart my armor like there was no tomorrow.

Dawn of War: Dark Crusade: fighting most of the other armies wasn't exactly too painful, although that changed when I had to defend against an invasion of Eldar forces encroaching on one of my larger territories (I was playing as the Space Marine faction this time around). where this most other armies, I would've easily wiped the floor with them, since I could actually see them most of the time. Not so in the case of my fight against the Eldar in this particular battle. Their invisibility nearly rendered my forces useless, and I was fending off 3 AI controlled opponents, until I scraped together a victory after spending about 3 hours of rooting them out, one by one.

 

[Isra]

Final Fantasy XI: Absolute Virtue & Pandemonium Warden. Because it's the best Square Enix could do without being able to shoot a flare up your arse and pour fire ants down your throat while Richard Simmons gives you a lap dance to Cher music.

 

[Blitsie]

The final fucking boss of fucking Metal Gear fucking RISING! Everything in that game had a good scale of difficulty, until THIS bastard suddenly hits you like a freight train at 100MPH, and just... ARGH! Didn't help I had no healing items by the time I got to him. That one chapter along took me 45 minutes, said the game when I finally won. Jesus >.>

That FREAKING piece of debris he sometimes decides to throw at you is the worst, always either timed it wrong so the thing actually clips through me for the last slice (killing me) or I end up being so in the fight I rush it, missing (and getting killed).

The DLC is actually a fantastic example of difficulty spike out of nowhere as well, if you play the main game on normal you'll have a relatively challenging time, apart from Armstrong nothing will result in you grinding your teeth. But when you jump into the DLC afterwards, especially Jetstream Sam, the game pins you against the wall out of nowhere and beats the absolute living crap out of you. I got completely owned by regular mooks in the first ten minutes like it was nothing.