The most difficult RPGs according to GameFAQs users

[Grampy_Bone]

Trial and error does not mean hard.

This is a bad argument.

Difficulty is difficulty. Quibbling over why a game is hard is just academic.

Normally I would agree, but in the case of Age of Decadence the question is: how often do you die and how often is it because of encounters you are not supposed to win? Contrast with other games where you can die 100 times, but you are expected to beat them. In Age of Decadence, if you die 100 times, you are probably not expected to beat that particular encounter/scenario. Wizardry IV is hard. It is hard because you are expected to get to the end of that nightmare. In Age of Decadence, the multiple paths make people believe any path is valid for any given build, but this isn't true, and I admit this is very difficult for a lot of people, including myself, to come to grips with.

Like with the JRPG discussion thread, it's worth mentioning that the difficulty of these games is judged by the people who have played these games. The people who rated Deadfire's difficulty are probably people who are used to this kind of game. The game also has different difficulty levels, so we don't know based on what difficulty level they are rating the game.

My issue is when people try to classify forms of difficulty as being "fake" or "not counting" for whatever reason (and this always seems to be to take the piss out of Souls games), like the above example that a game isn't hard if you can use trial and error to pass it. This somehow ignores the idea that most games are hard until you figure out how to play them correctly, whether that includes hand-eye coordination, complex strategies, or rote memorization. When people talk about difficulty, they are usually referring to how punishing this learning process is.

AoD and Wizardry 4 are hard in different ways, but that doesn't make one actually "fake," they just require learning different sets of skills in different ways. If learning how to play AoD right requires reading a guide or forum, I would call that bad design, not "fake difficulty."

 

[The Last Blackguard]

I haven't played all the games on that list, but the placement of Shadowrun struck me as odd. I guess people who played them in release order thought of them as easier as they went on, but even then, Hong Kong struck me as the hardest.

 

[Sigourn]

My issue is when people try to classify forms of difficulty as being "fake" or "not counting" for whatever reason (and this always seems to be to take the piss out of Souls games), like the above example that a game isn't hard if you can use trial and error to pass it. This somehow ignores the idea that most games are hard until you figure out how to play them correctly, whether that includes hand-eye coordination, complex strategies, or rote memorization. When people talk about difficulty, they are usually referring to how punishing this learning process is.

True. I'm not going to go into detail as to why I think Dark Souls is an example of "good hard difficulty" compared to Ninja Gaiden's "awful hard difficulty". Though both tests the skills of the player, the latter is full of cheap shots at the player. I haven't played Wizardry IV but I would wager something similar could be said about it.

 

[Darth Canoli]

The people who rated Deadfire's difficulty are probably people who are used to this kind of game. The game also has different difficulty levels, so we don't know based on what difficulty level they are rating the game.

If the battle system is terrible like in Deadfire which is barely playable in RTwP with a lot of AoE spells hurting your companions, the game will be played in easy/normal mode because people playing cRPG for its challenging battle system are going to pass and play something else and the retards playing it to chase the giant god like they chase pokemons in the streets of their favorite cities just want to catch it and see the crappy ending.

Thus, the game is considered easy, playing a game with a terrible combat design in the hardest difficulty is a madness better saved for RTS fans.

If the battle system is great (UFO, Wizardry 8, ... ) players are more likely to play it in the hardest difficulties, the game will be considered more difficult, of course, there's more to it but that's to be taken into account.

To make an accurate list, you would have to get 10 seasoned players to play all these games, take notes with some specific criteria and rate them all.

 

[Elex]

Planescape: Torment 4.47 3.18

reading comprehension is fucking hard apparently.

 

[Reinhardt]

Arena or Wizardry 6 are hard in the beginning but I'm not sure if I ever played a consistently hard RPG. Perhaps AoD but trial and error doesn't necessarily mean "hard"

Trial and error does not mean hard.

It means "i am a retard and have no life and i am going to keep wasting my time not having fun just so i can finish a game that most sane people dropped hundrends of hours ago so i can boast about it on the internet to complete strangers who couldn't give a fuck if i live or die, so i can feel i accomplished something in my pathetic life".

AKA Deadfire.

 

[Deleted Member 16721]

reading comprehension is fucking hard apparently.

To be fair some of the quests were hard to figure out without a lot of clues. You had to be on your toes for many of them that involved a real player playing the game. So it's more than the reading IMO.

 

[The_Mask]

It means "I am a retard and have no life and I am going to keep wasting my time not having fun just so I can finish a game that most sane people dropped hundrends of hours ago so I can boast about it on the internet to complete strangers who couldn't give a fuck if I live or die, so I can feel I accomplished something in my pathetic life".

AKA Dark Souls.

... also, insufferably smug.

dark souls only requires "trial and error" if you're incredibly unobservant

Reading item descriptions, looking at the world around you and paying attention to patterns is too much for some people.

1) I never make bad arguments, because i am a genius and whatever I say is 100% correct.

You can't even spell I right.

 

[Mortmal]

Where's Deathlord?

Nobody remember c64 era games, and the glorious 8 bit machines. It's almost guaranteed hardest games are all from that era.

 

[Safav Hamon]

It was easy at release, but in its current state it's harder than Kingmaker. They retuned every mob, added challenge modes, and late-game content like mega-bosses.

Try playing Kingmaker on Unfair+ and get back to me on that.

Try fighting The Crystal Empress on PoTD with every challenge mode activiated

 

[Safav Hamon]

I like Kingmaker, but I'm not impressed with people that beat it on higher difficulties because I know they were forced to savescum.

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[Roguey]

why someone speaking such truths would receive shitposter tag?

Too many polls.

 

[Siveon]

Are those Buck Rogers games really that hard? Never played them but none of the gold-box games were ever really difficult.

I'm almost sure most of those votes just came from people who didn't understand how to play the game. Or maybe those that played them as kids and remember them being hard (for not knowing how to play the game).

 

[Beastro]

Buck Rogers: Countdown to Doomsday is not hard at all. It is also quite short, there are maybe 2 or 3 tough fights in the entire game and if i remember correctly they are all optional. The plot is easy to follow, the combat system is not very complex. I really don't see what's so hard maybe except that one very memorable mission when you have to hurry

I bloody well got 2/3 of the way through winging it as a kid before it had to go back to the rental shop. Was my first RPG to dick around with, too.

IIRC, about the hardest thing in the game is getting stuck on Mars without the proper equipment to defeat the Sand Squids with that you run into. If you don't have needle guns or monoswords they're untouchable, you can't flee combat in the game too, at least in the Genesis version, and once down on the surface you're locked out of accessing a store from which to buy those weapons.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

*checks list*

Hmm. Notable absences there... but that's to be expected when the list is confined to the PC.

Let's expand it. Let's see what happens if we throw in the Amiga:

1 Tales of the Unknown, Volume I: The Bard's Tale 3.92 4.20
2 Windwalker 4.00 4.17
3 The Bard's Tale II: The Destiny Knight 3.67 4.13
4 Ishar 3: The Seven Gates of Infinity 3.88 4.00
5 Moonstone 4.29 3.85
6 Eye of the Beholder 3.63 3.80
7 Starflight 4.39 3.80
8 Autoduel 3.56 3.71
9 Ishar: Legend of the Fortress 3.56 3.71
10 Dungeon Master 3.64 3.67
11 Ishar 2: Messengers of Doom 3.50 3.63
12 Champions Of Krynn 4.25 3.60
13 Spacewrecked: 14 Billion Light Years From Earth 4.00 3.57
14 Amberstar 3.56 3.40
15 Ambermoon 3.94 3.20
16 Black Crypt 4.00 3.14
17 Crystals of Arborea 2.88 2.80

Note that this is the entire list. (The PC list has 1520 entries. Roguey really went cherry-picking.)

And there are some notable differences. A couple of comparisons to the PC list entries:

The Bard's Tale: Tales of the Unknown, Volume I 4.09 3.86
The Bard's Tale II: The Destiny Knight 3.80 3.73
Ishar: Legend of the Fortress 3.46 3.85
Dungeon Master 3.92 3.88

And since I still couldn't find it, I looked it up specifically:

Dungeon Master: Chaos Strikes Back 5.00 (2 votes) Not Rated

Not Rated

So yeah.

 

[Beastro]

https://rpgcodex.net/forums/index.p...ge-how-the-hell-was-this-ever-popular.106556/

Right, not to be brought up in polite company.

If you must, please refer to it as Dung Siege..thanks.

Much of the criticism ignores some of the worst parts. Like how for many the game cannot end. You defeat the end boss and nothing happens leaving you to quit the game and give up without a resolution.

Only other game I've seen that happen with with was Ikari Warriors the one time my bro and cousin managed to get to finish the end battle only for the door to enter to not trigger.

 

[Sigourn]

Unkillable Cat GameFaqs is cool but with old computer games it is near impossible to get proper scores. e.g. The Bard's Tale II: The Destiny Knight was rated by EIGHT people. If you throw in an obscure but fan translated JRPG from the Super Famicom, like Energy Breaker, you get twice the amount of ratings.

With only 8 votes it's hard to get a decent measure of these games' difficulties.

 

[Beastro]

Arena or Wizardry 6 are hard in the beginning but I'm not sure if I ever played a consistently hard RPG. Perhaps AoD but trial and error doesn't necessarily mean "hard"

Trial and error does not mean hard.

It means "i am a retard and have no life and i am going to keep wasting my time not having fun just so i can finish a game that most sane people dropped hundrends of hours ago so i can boast about it on the internet to complete strangers who couldn't give a fuck if i live or die, so i can feel i accomplished something in my pathetic life".

AKA Dark Souls.

It does if it if a game requires a degree of attempting in order to get a feel for it, which I'd like to think all video games fundamentally do. I don't know how many here remember playing games when they were younger and how much it involved dicking around before putting pieces of skill together to attempt "real" play throughs.

Going back to Buck Rogers, I effectively replayed that game several times before I made that first real attempt. Quickly realizing how the game locks you into areas once you go to them, I restarted and saved after I got the rocket ship (when the game opens up into a good degree of free form) then went off to each area to see what they were like, learning more of the games mechanics as things went on until I restarted fully to build a better team and then went off trying to attempt each area until in the order I felt they were to be done.

Same goes even more for a game like Star Flight that is built on learn as you go with a time limit. You mess around restarting until you get enough of an idea of the objectives in the game and the order in which to do them before making a serious attempt that maximizes efficiency with everything you've learned in order to save as many solar systems for going supernova that you can.

I haven't played any of the Soul's games, but I know enough of them to know that as much as there are rote patterns to fights, there's still a degree of skill you can acquire that allows you to better fight later encounters than you otherwise would should have been dumped fighting them fight. Compare that to "games" like Space Ace and Dragon's Lair that are even worse than the worst JRPG in being an interactive movie that are nothing more than rote memorization with a movie there to con you into being milked of your quarters to see more of.

 

[Darth Canoli]

why someone speaking such truths would receive shitposter tag?

Dude, just read Safav Hamon 's other 1439 posts, you're in for a treat ...

 

[MicoSelva]

Taking a quick look at the list, not bad. Although, Baldur's Gate 1 is much easier than BG2, IMO.

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[Theldaran]

Taking a quick look at the list, not bad. Although, Baldur's Gate 1 is much easier than BG2, IMO.

Lower level means you're probably going to reload more.

You can safely cruise through BG2 and pile up levels, even with no party members dying. Having hundreds of HP on warriors and strong magical defences on casters does help a lot. Also, if you know the game, you can use the hard counters.

 

[Darth Canoli]

Lower level means you're probably going to reload more.

You can safely cruise through BG2 and pile up levels, even with no party members dying. Having hundreds of HP on warriors and strong magical defences on casters does help a lot. Also, if you know the game, you can use the hard counters.

Who summoned the BG nerd ...

Well, now he's here, let's call Safav Hamon and organize a fight between those two.

So guys, which one is the worst isometric piece of shit, Deadfire or the BGs ?

Ready ?

Fight !

 

[PorkBarrellGuy]

Fallout: New Vegas - Dead Money 3.59 3.44

Seems a little high (?), as while Dead Money wasn't a pushover most of the reloads in my experience came from the first run through and not knowing certain things' locations (FUCKING SPEAKERS).

Fallout 2 4.34 3.42

Fallout 2 was easier than that, IMO. As long as you weren't running an evil/stupid/evilstupid game, anyway. Those would justify the score somewhat.

Fallout 4.14 3.40

Again, seems a little high.

Fallout: New Vegas - Lonesome Road 3.89 3.17

Seems too low. LR is full of absolutely bullshit encounters with goddamn tough enemies.

Fallout: New Vegas - Old World Blues 4.07 3.12

Slightly too low simply because the sponginess and proliferation of fucking roboscorpions alone makes OWB a bit of a pain.

Fallout: New Vegas 4.24 3.04

About right, if you ignore certain areas like the Legendary Deathclaw cave.

Fallout: New Vegas - Honest Hearts 3.72 2.76

About right, maybe even a little high. HH was comfy but not particularly challenging. Then again, it's a lower level DLC. (if you're actually Clvl 15 like it recommends when you go there you will likely annihilate most everything Zion throws at you save for perhaps She)