Biggest Difficulty Spike You Have Ever Experienced

[Soxafloppin]

Not the same game but I played them back to back in the HD Collection

Jak and Daxter: TPL into Jak II, I know theres a big shake up in Style and Tone but the kicks the difficulty up a notch or 12 too.

I found myself afraid to turn into Dark Jak incase i REALLY needed it in the next segment..which actually meant I never really turned into Dark Jak.

 

[Sonicron]

That final boss in Heavenly Sword. The fact that I can still vividly remember every second of pure rage indicates I've been well and truly traumatized by that unreasonably difficult battle.
Fucking early-gen titles, throwing in silly control gimmicks... basing survival on a vague sixaxis wave that deflects high-damage hadouken attacks? How did anyone think this would be a good idea??!

 

[Evonisia]

I was going through typical WoW raid progression on LFR, having a grand ol' time as a tank, and then I started Siege of Orgrimmar. It... wasn't too easy, even on LFR. General Nazgrim took me several tries and a rage-quit. Nazgrim was bad, but Garrosh was a serious pain in the ass. It was only after being seriously "in the zone" that this rag-tag LFR group finally downed him. It was only LFR, but it felt SO damn good!

Were you tanking the boss (Nazgrim) or are you the kind that runs out to the adds 'cause the dps are stupid? If the latter then I feel sorry for you. Playing as a healer is annoying and playing as an RDPS who can actually hit things makes me feel stereotyped with the blind spot members.

OT: Oblivion's up there. When I got the 360 version I decided to roll a melee class for the first time (never really got into it on PC, felt boring). From a certain point onwards (I'd say about Level 18) the game becomes impossible. All the mobs get far too much health and unless you've rolled in magic and healing (which cripples your melee style) to keep you through the battles you're doomed. Your weapon doesn't do enough damage. It's almost as bad for archers seeing as their ammo is literally tickling the creature to death.

 

[THEMILKMAN]

Every Dr. Wily stage in the Megaman classic series. Don't get me wrong, it's not as though Megaman classic games are at all easy before the last levels but they really bring it home once you've beaten the robot masters.

 

[CriticalMiss]

Psychonauts's Meat Circus is a good one.

Hope you got a hang of that platforming, cause the safety net's on fire, the water is rising, and you can't swim.

Bloody Meat Circus, it was the only thing about Psychonauts that I disliked. Horrible, timed platforming AND an unforgiving escort mission. I was glad to get past it.

But for me the biggest difficulty spike was in Guitar Hero 3 when you get to the last two sets of songs on Hard difficulty. Everything early on is fairly easy to get a decent ranking but when the metal shows up it doesn't mind kicking you in the teeth and saying 'fuck you' if you aren't good at the game.

 

[Excelsior789]

This is probably just me but the last game I played where a difficulty spike stopped me dead in my tracks was the final boss fight of Metal Gear Rising: Revengence. You really have to have a near-perfect grip on how your character moves and what they can do to beat him.

That said, I didn't dislike the fight. I was plenty frustrated with it but I never stopped wanting to go back and try again.

Obligatory: NANOMACHINES SON!

 

[lacktheknack]

Psychonauts's Meat Circus is a good one.

Hope you got a hang of that platforming, cause the safety net's on fire, the water is rising, and you can't swim.

I thought that section's difficulty was exactly right. D:

It was certainly better than trying to navigate the asylum!

OT: When you open Dwarf Fortress, it's fine. Then you hit the "Start" button and the difficulty rises so fast it overhangs.

 

[Amethyst Wind]

Moving from disc 1 to disc 2 of The Last Remnant.

Suddenly every boss battle is kicking your arse for the rest of the game.

Ironically the very last battle is just long, not hard.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

The one that comes to mind is that Dark Elf guy from Final Fantasy IV. I still have yet to beat that guy. The last time I fought him it he obliterated most of my party and it came down to just Tellah and he had just enough MP left for his best attack spell so I cast it thinking "If this doesn't finish him then I'm done for." What does the bastard do after that? He pulls a Dragon Ball Z and goes "Ha ha ha, now witness my true power!" (or something to that effect) and transforms into this serpent dragon-thing. FUCK!

 

[CannibalCorpses]

Guitar hero 3...the last set...argghhhh my fingers!

 

[hermes]

The last boss in the EU version of Zone of Enders 2, the NA version was apparently too easy so they buffed it. A lot. After trying and getting nowhere, and just wanting to see the ending I used Action Replay to activate an invincibility cheat. Except it wasn't true invincibility, it just reduced damage by a factor of 1000. And it still took 2 goes.

I came here to name Zone of Enders 2... And now you tell me that it was the easy version all along?

Yes, the final boss of that game was extremely difficult, even compared to everything before him. Having more range than me, and guided missiles that took huge chunks of my health was not on the fair side. It is also my most hated spike. Experiencing an spike near the beginning of a game is one thing (I just start over in a lower difficulty), but experiencing a wall so near the end... Needless to say, to this day I don't know how ZOE2 ends.

 

[Kukakkau]

The Lost World: Jurassic Park had a pretty fast difficulty curve along with some finicky controls for a platformer

You start the game as a Compy (those tiny green dinosaurs) and the levels go like this:

- Fighting tiny lizards (hit around 10% hp), easy platforming
- Fighting small raptors (hit around 25% hp), spikey plant jumps
- Fighting constant spawns while doing harder platforming with fall damage, hard to work out where to go and flying enemies to chase you too
- Running through the legs of giant Brontosaurus like dinos that you need to duck so their step passes over you, with spike jumps and rocks being kicked at you all the time which will make you stand up
- Running from large carnivores with jumps that if you fail once it will catch up and kill you

Now considering the initial enemies take around 3 bites and still hit you hard you can imagine how much tougher it gets when the enemies get bigger and bigger. When I was a kid getting past the 3rd level was an achievement... and there's about 15+ levels as the tiny dino before you get to use any of the cool dinos/hunters... which have even harder levels.

Only way I ever got to play the amazingly fun raptor was to use level select cheats

This is pretty much my experience from playing it in the past (these clips only get up to level 6 it seems):

 

[Mikejames]

Psychonauts's Meat Circus is a good one.

Hope you got a hang of that platforming, cause the safety net's on fire, the water is rising, and you can't swim.

I thought that section's difficulty was exactly right. D:

It was certainly better than trying to navigate the asylum!

I actually quite enjoy the level in subsequent playthroughs, once I figured out how you're supposed to incorporate all of your powers to keep clawing your way up. (Shield on knife-throwers, levitation on flaming wall, etc.)

But the escort quest and rail slide section could be pretty merciless compared to the rest of the game.

 

[Brownie80]

Driver 2 had atleast one nasty difficulty spike in every city in undercover mode, but one was notoriously crazy:

Spoiler

Chase the gunman

Timer that changed time everytime you restarted the the mission (ranging from 1:45 to 2:45) enemy vehicle had solid granit car so it could ram through everything, ramming into it knocks you back and to make matters worse: lots of lag if you managed to reach the canyon parts of the chase. It's still the toughest mission I've ever completed in my book and never going to do it again.

I thought you were going to talk about the tutorial from Driver 1. However, it wasn't really a spike, more like starting the game on Mt. Everest and falling down to the second level which was pillows and cake.

 

[Vegosiux]

Psychonauts's Meat Circus is a good one.

Not to say anything about the constant obnoxious distructions of "OH NOOOO COME HERE MISTER BUNNY!"

Next mention on this list: Terranigma and Bloody Marry. Just...Bloody Mary. Yes, incidentally she's about the only boss not immune to magic, but that on the other hand just felt like cheesing it.

Well, if we talk WoW, there was M'uru of course, but that was just Blizzard going "Oh fine, have a boss you'll wipe on if you healer as much as sneezes."

And in Dragon Age: Origins...that bloody ogre on top of the tower.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

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Ah jeez, I was hoping the half troll face after that would show people I was kidding/taunting guppy apparently didn't do its job...

I appreciate the calm explanations, but believe me, I know quite well how the RNG system works and I don't have a problem with it, I was just poking at guppy because back when the game first came out he would post pages upon pages in threads telling people about the RNG system and how it isn't "bullshit". It was all in good fun, promise

As frustrating as it can get at key moments, I understand it and just simply savescum a bit earlier in the match >

 

[Dominic Crossman]

If we're on about spikes within a single playthrough (single difficulty), I have to go with dj shadows playlist in dj hero 2, able to 5* everything upto that point, albeit with trouble sometimes. That playlist just destroyed that run.
However if you include separate playthroughs (multipule difficulties) then I have go with Fire Emblem: Awakening going from Hard to Lunatic difficulty, they are not even comparable. It took me longer to get past chapter 4 on Lunatic then the whole game takes on Hard.

 

[Yopaz]

Tales of Vesperia, Gattuso boss (basically a gaint wolf). He is one of the first few bosses (about...5 hours into the game?), and he is largely considered to be the most difficult boss in the game. I would put him on line with some of the optional bosses that are typical in RPGs.

Im pretty sure he is the third boss in the game in fact. He can two shot party members, and spawns pretty difficult mobs.

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)

First playthrough I went through the game on hard since this wasn't my first Tales game, I knew the combat, I had beaten a lot of the harder bosses on the most difficult settings in previous games. Except for this boss. I tried beating him on hard. Nope. I tried beating him on normal. NOPE. I tried beating him on easy and I got it with a little difficulty. Damn that thing!

OT: To add something for myself I would say the first boss of Resonance of Fate. Now that game has a very weird difficulty curve altogether. You can breeze through a boss battle using two turns (yeah, your 3 characters may not be needed to beat a boss) then you get killed against normal enemies the next moment.

However this first boss took me a long time to beat. I died, retired, died, retried, checked guides, walkthroughs, video walktrhoughs and then finally just went all out, using all my molotov cocktails, spraying him with the machine gun, using tri attack, blowing up his fuel supply while he was standing close enough to be caught in the blast. Yeah, it took a lot out of me to win this fight and up until this part it had been fairly... OK I guess, not easy, but manageable as long as you treated every enemy as a possible source of certain death.

 

[Adeptus Aspartem]

Guitar Hero is probably one of the contenders.

Going from: "Hey look, i do funny stuff with a plastic guitar" to "WHAT IN EARTH IS THIS HOW CAN I PRESS ALL THESE BUTTONS" in between 2 songs.
Seriously, when i first saw "Through fire & flames" i thought: That gotta be a joke, right?

Edit: The Bloat and Mask of Infamy from "The binding of Isaac". Compared to all the other bosses those 2 are just way more difficult and MoI is mainly just the biggest pain in the ass in the whole game.
Don't get me started on Champion Bloat <.<