While most people try to play video games to sit back and relax for a few hours, many others are actually seeking a good challenge that will test their skills as much as possible. Needless to say, that desire for difficulty is not born out of nowhere, as there are actually many titles out there (both old and new) that are so exceptionally hard that they have changed how gamers approach everything else.
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With plenty of RPGs under its belt, it’s no surprise Square Enix has made many highly challenging titles, even in default difficulty.
At the end of the day, that’s the beauty of challenging video games, because they can actually help someone hone in on their gaming skills, regardless of whether their difficulty curves are well-designed or not. Many video games in the long history of this industry have had a huge impact on those who experienced them, but the following eight are the most notorious examples of this particular phenomenon so far.
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Battletoads
A Ruthless NES Classic
Back in the earlier console generations, many titles needed to be hard, or otherwise players would have completed them in just a few hours, as the technical limitations of the time didn’t allow developers to make long games. The NES was the home of many challenging exclusives, with Battletoads being the most infamous one in its entire catalog.
At first glance, Battletoads seems like a run-of-the-mill beat ’em up, but the moment the players reach stage 2, it immediately becomes evident that it’s actually a ruthless and unforgiving experience. Each level is filled with enemies that can kill the player character in one hit; most of them have some sort of annoying and unpredictable gimmick, and checkpoints are few and far between. Fortunately, the hardest stage in Battletoads, Turbo Tunnel, is also the third one, so the rest of the game will feel easy to those who can complete it.
Touhou Project Series
It Popularized The “Bullet Hell” Subgenre
Shoot-’em-up video games have been popular for as long as the medium has existed, but a separate subgenre known as “bullet hell” became incredibly popular throughout the late 90s and early 2000s, and its sudden resurgence is commonly attributed to the Touhou Project series.
This series is as long as it is confusing, so choosing just one entry to represent it as a whole is almost impossible. The most important thing to know is that every single Touhou game perfectly reflects the title of “bullet hell,” as they all feature enemies that quickly fill the entire screen with thousands of projectiles that only players with the sharpest reflexes can avoid in time. To no one’s surprise, this series helped inspire other beloved classics, like Ikaruga and Undertale.
Kingdom Hearts
The Original PS2 Version Didn’t Even Have An Easy Mode
At first glance, Kingdom Hearts should be a cakewalk. After all, it’s just a colorful action RPG with an ambitious narrative and a collection of levels based on classic Disney movies. However, that exact mindset is precisely why this game took so many gamers by surprise, especially those who played its non-Final Mix version on the PlayStation 2.
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The original Kingdom Hearts on PS2 only had two difficulty settings: Normal and Expert, meaning that there was no easy mode. Those who were intrigued by its unique premise were forced to play a particularly challenging campaign full of powerful enemies and punishing boss fights, all of which were made even worse by the fact that there was no option to skip cutscenes after losing a particularly tough segment. Fortunately, subsequent Kingdom Hearts ports added a Beginner Mode and the option to skip cutscenes, but those who completed it on its original hardware were never the same after.
Devil May Cry 3: Dante’s Awakening
The North American Version Was Way Harder Than The Japanese One
Hack-and-slash games were already very popular when Devil May Cry 3: Dante’s Awakening came out (as a matter of fact, the original Devil May Cry had basically popularized the genre a few years prior), but this game is still so infamous for its difficulty that it’s often said that it taught an entire generation of gamers how to perfect their ability to pull off stylish combos against powerful opponents.
Of course, Devil May Cry 3 boasts complex mechanics, a large variety of melee and ranged weapons, and a collection of challenging enemies and bosses, but the main reason this game felt so hard (especially for Western gamers) is because of weird changes made to its difficulty settings when it was localized. Everything was basically moved up by one in the North American release, meaning that the Easy Mode was the Normal Mode in the Japanese one; the Normal Mode was the Hard Mode in Japan, and so on and so forth. The game’s Special Edition eventually turned things back to normal, but those who had played the original release had already improved their hack-and-slash skills at that point.
Super Meat Boy
A Perfect Example Of How Difficult Indie Games Can Be
The dawn of the internet of the mid-2000s led to a sudden rise of flash games and indie games, as independent developers enjoyed making excruciatingly hard experiences (most of which were inspired by NES exclusives from their childhoods) that only the most patient and skilled gamers could overcome. In a sea of infamous indie titles like Cave Story or I Wanna Be the Guy, Edmund McMillen’s Super Meat Boy was the most noteworthy one.
In this 2D platformer, players need to be quick if they want to avoid every single obstacle, which is obviously easier said than done, especially in some of the later levels. Super Meat Boy is a game of constant trial and error that will eventually enhance the reflexes of anyone who’s brave enough to complete it, whether they want to or not. Needless to say, this bizarre platformer was incredibly influential, and it inspired other famous indie darlings from recent years, like Ori and the Blind Forest or Celeste.
Dark Souls
One Of The “Founding Fathers” Of the Soulslike Genre
Demon’s Souls, a PS3 exclusive that was infamous for its crushing difficulty. However, not many people played this game, and it still needed some polish in a few areas, which is why the studio perfected the formula when it made Dark Souls just a few years later. While it obviously didn’t create the Soulslike genre, everyone can agree that this is the game that single-handedly popularized it.
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During the late 2000s and early 2010s, AAA games were often criticized for being too easy, so Dark Souls came out at the perfect time. Players couldn’t just mow through hordes of enemies, as each one of them was a major threat that had to be properly assessed before players could use their limited number of dodges and attacks to defeat them. On top of that, the bosses were particularly challenging, and all of them required multiple tries to defeat, which is why doing so felt incredibly satisfying. Dark Souls has redefined the action RPG genre, and if FromSoftware had never taken a risk with it, many other popular games wouldn’t even exist today.
Bloodborne
Took The Soulslike Genre Into A Whole New Direction
The massive popularity of Dark Souls inspired FromSoftware to make even more Soulslike titles, many of which were direct sequels. However, in 2015, the studio teamed up with Sony once again to release Bloodborne for the PlayStation 4, and it’s now considered one of the absolute best games in the entire genre. At first, it seems like yet another conventional Soulslike, but players quickly learn that the moment-to-moment gameplay is way different from what is expected.
Bloodborne’s combat is fast-paced and puts a bigger focus on shooting and parrying as opposed to the dodge-roll-heavy formula of the Dark Souls games. Soulslike fans were forced to unlearn everything they knew if they wanted to master this innovative combat system and take down the game’s horrifying and ruthless bosses. Bloodborne marked a major turning point for both FromSoftware and the genre the studio helped create, not to mention that it influenced the development of other modern classics, like Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice and Lies of P.
Cuphead
Anybody Who Played It For The Animation Was Shocked By Its Unpredictable Boss Fights
Cuphead
9/10
- Released
-
September 29, 2017
When Studio MDHR revealed and began promoting Cuphead, audiences were hypnotized by its handmade 2D animation that was reminiscent of classic rubber hose cartoons. So, when it eventually came out, many people wanted to try it in order to experience what was basically a playable cartoon, but most of them were immediately scared away by its crushing difficulty.
Cuphead is a run-and-gun game with a big focus on bosses, and they all have unpredictable attack patterns that make brilliant use of the game’s mind-blowing animation. While most people who tried this game for its art style eventually dropped it, those who powered through it were able to defeat some of the hardest (but most satisfying) boss fights in the history of gaming. After completing Cuphead (and its DLC), every other run-and-gun game feels ridiculously easy by comparison.
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