Favorite Difficulty Spikes

[curds]

Capra Demon and Ornstein & Smough in Dark Souls.

The fight with the Professor and the bug-things in The Witcher.

The dungeon below Curst in Planescape: Torment.

Yxunomei in Icewind Dale.

Bitterblack Isle in Dragon's Dogma.

The guy who turns into a dragon in BG2.

Black Mountain Clan in Arcanum.

South-west cave in Knights of the Chalice. Holy fuck, the first fight with the spiders there.

 

[Nutria]

Black Mountain Clan in Arcanum.

This one is especially infuriating because the enemies aren't even that tough. It's just that they're immune to a wide range of attacks. This something I always hate in RPG combat encounter design, where they give me a bunch of different ways to build my characters but then rip the carpet out from under me when it turns out that on some quest everything I chose is useless. At least give some goddamn foreshadowing so I can prepare ahead of time.

 

[agentorange]

Cragscleft Prison in Thief 1.

 

[jackofshadows]

Duriel, duh.

The bear fight in PoE was also some nice welcoming kick in the balls on the highest level.

This one is especially infuriating because the enemies aren't even that tough. It's just that they're immune to a wide range of attacks.

What you mean? Ore golems vs harm?

 

[Nutria]

Those damn ore golems. They beat magic too? I went in there with guns and high-tech swords and everything either didn't work or got worn out quickly. Last time I went through there I had to use molotov cocktails or something in a way that felt almost like cheating.

 

[jackofshadows]

Nah, guns are working fine vs them. Most of magic as well. Not to mention melee weapons, it just worns out, yeah which means you either have to use repair skill or just bring some back up gear. Overall, no, I'd say they're just tough and are indeed a big difficulty spike. Molotovs/fireflashes are the best way to beat them as far as I know, or just use the damned OP dog. I liked to play solo stealthy guys who might just walk past them, works too.

 

[Silverfish]

IIRC the worst part is the sniper in the tower. I went with assault rifles the first time and pistols the second, and that was the first real challenge I ran into. It wasn't impossible to beat but it was a hell of a shock to go from trivially easy to suddenly having to repeat the same fight 10 times until I get lucky.

That was a nightmare my first time through. The second, I saw that you could access the tower across from the sniper's hidey hole which, almost too conveniently, had it's own sniper rifle.

I'll nominate the early sidequests in Dragon's Dogma. After taking on a group of bandits who were hitting harder and were almost as tanky as bosses from the initial story missions, I decided to let the girl from the starting village remain missing.

 

[Bendu]

The Rebel flagship in FTL, a level 5 dungeon in Darkest Dungeon and Genichiro in Sekiro.

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

Thinking about it, I think the Mantis Lords fight from Hollow Knight might be my favorite. You actually don't need to do it until quite far into the midgame, but the player is unlikely to realize that on a first playthrough. It's a really good example of a skill-check difficulty spike; if you're unable to beat that encounter you are going to have a really rough time going forward, so you might as well put in the work and learn the skills required by it.

 

[DraQ]

• Ginso Tree, Mount Horu, Willow's End- Ori series.
• Vesta Overkill, Jovian Lunar Tour - Children of a Dead Earth.

The Beast at the end of act one in The Witcher caught a lot of people by surprise. Took me a few attempts the first time. Game is a breeze up to that point, and for the rest of the game after it.

Koschey and Azar Javed (near the end when wielding those two hilarious maces) can be rough-ish too, to be fair.

I guess Nessie/Bayjinn in Wiz8 also count.

 

[ChaDargo]

If you know then you know.

You talking about this? Because this certainly looks hard as fuck. Still need to get around to HLM2

 

[Blutwurstritter]

The Underdark in BG2 can be a spike if you go underleveled/equipped, as I did on my first time. I immediately set of as soon as I had enough money for the trip to Brynnlaw. I also had no clue how to cheese encounters so the Beholder and Mind flayer lairs where a no-go. The whole ordeal is of course trivial if you finish all side content before you leave so the spike is quite avoidable. But it was a nice challenge during my first playthrough.

 

[Carrion]

This one is especially infuriating because the enemies aren't even that tough. It's just that they're immune to a wide range of attacks. This something I always hate in RPG combat encounter design, where they give me a bunch of different ways to build my characters but then rip the carpet out from under me when it turns out that on some quest everything I chose is useless. At least give some goddamn foreshadowing so I can prepare ahead of time.

I played a techie and briefly hit a wall too, but the whole ordeal made me invest into Throwing as a secondary skill, which took my character development into a nice, unexpected direction. I liked that.

 

[Corbin Dallas Multipass]

The one time in Alpha Protocol near the end when suddenly your build actually matters and you realize you wasted 20 hours of your life because you didn't pick the right weapon in the beginning.

What part was this? I've only ever played AP as a melee build and never had any major problems.

IIRC the worst part is the sniper in the tower. I went with assault rifles the first time and pistols the second, and that was the first real challenge I ran into. It wasn't impossible to beat but it was a hell of a shock to go from trivially easy to suddenly having to repeat the same fight 10 times until I get lucky.

The demolitions guy in the tower (He's not a sniper) is a huge pain in the ass, until you realize that you can use an EMP to open the door to the other tower, which has a sniper rifle in it that will kill him in 1-2 shots.

Then, the fight against chaingun dude is almost the same thing, just a long ass endurance contest, but at least he's not throwing grenades at you I guess.

The bossfights were all difficulty spikes the first time around.
And it was so satisfying to beat them. It was personal to Mike when they betrayed him. It was personal to me after I had to redo the boss fights 500 times.

 

[Nathaniel3W]

Capra Demon

Favorite difficulty spikes? That's one of the few times in the game where I can say "Well that was stupid and unfair." You walk through the gate, and INSTANTLY get murdered by the Capra Demon and its two dogs. Walk through the door a few more times, thinking "Maybe if I hold up my shield, maybe if I try running to the side, maybe if I run straight in and dodge..." The fight is trial and error where you might last 3 seconds and then respawn at the last campfire, hike back to the fog gate, and try again.

The Rebel flagship in FTL

I tried playing with all the extra content one time. I thought I was doing really well. I got to the flagship and then it hits me with a thing that disables my shield, then hits me with a thing that does a million damage to my hull, and then it's all over. I only played original vanilla FTL after that.

And man, that freaking Darkest Dungeon in Darkest Dungeon. I quit playing the game because at that point I wasn't enjoying it anymore. It's just taking all these heroes you've invested in, and throwing them in the meat grinder, hoping RNGesus will keep one of them alive throughout the dungeon and boss fight. But usually they just end up dead or insane.

 

[curds]

curds said: ↑
Capra Demon
Favorite difficulty spikes? That's one of the few times in the game where I can say "Well that was stupid and unfair." You walk through the gate, and INSTANTLY, get murdered by the Capra Demon and its two dogs. Walk through the door a few more times, thinking "Maybe if I hold up my shield, maybe if I try running to the side, maybe if I run straight in and dodge..." The fight is trial and error where you might last 3 seconds and then respawn at the last campfire, hike back to the fog gate, and try again.

I disagree. I feels like trial and error/luck at first but there are definite tactics you can use. For example, my go-to is equip some high-poise armour and cast magic shield and then you can just block the cunts. But yeah definitely seems unfair (and arguably is) until you figure it out. As for the long hike from the bonfire, well, many boss fights of the game have that. I personally prefer it to having a bonfire right next to the fog gate. To me, Dark Souls is a game of willpower rather than skill, if you know what I mean, and the long hikes from the bonfire add to that.

I don't think your opinion is invalid though, I feel like everyone has a moment they consider to be stupid and unfair in Dark Souls, and it's a different moment for everyone. I like the Capra because of the "ohfuckfuckfuck" feeling that seems to be why you dislike it. All the bosses until that point have pretty obvious strategies to use against them and I feel that Capra is the first one where you have to start using everything in your arsenal and experimenting with spells to succeed.

TLDR:

Maybe if I hold up my shield

This works fine if you buy a spell from the guy conveniently found right before capra.

 

[JDR13]

Gothic 2 + NotR - The entire first half of the game.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

The first kobold encounter in Pool of Radiance when you are at level 1.

 

[BLOBERT]

Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance - That one boss that requires you to parry, even though nothing in the game so far required you to parry, and it was faster and easier to get to this point of the game ignoring the parry mechanic.

Spoiler

And by "favorite" I mean "drop the game for 2 weeks and come back to it later, having to go backwards a bit to practice parrying on regular enemies for an hour"

BRO IS THAT THE WEIRD WEATHER GUY

LOLLOLLOL I BEAT HIM BUT THAT GAME STRESSES ME THE FUCK OUT

 

[BLOBERT]

Black Mountain Clan in Arcanum.

This one is especially infuriating because the enemies aren't even that tough. It's just that they're immune to a wide range of attacks. This something I always hate in RPG combat encounter design, where they give me a bunch of different ways to build my characters but then rip the carpet out from under me when it turns out that on some quest everything I chose is useless. At least give some goddamn foreshadowing so I can prepare ahead of time.

BRO TRU ON THAT

 

[Hag]

This :

"How the hell I am even supposed to tackle this shit".
Even after I beat it it stayed challenging, took me dozen of tries to find a efficient way up.

 

[Ulfhednar]

Crossing a bridge in the first Dragon Warrior game.

 

[Poseidon00]

Fighting the High Mages in Forbidden Memories. By that point you are certainly underprepared, and only by perfect luck and playing a perfect game can you hope to beat them all unless you are either modding or doing some frame perfect manipulation.

 

[Bigg Boss]

This :

"How the hell I am even supposed to tackle this shit".
Even after I beat it it stayed challenging, took me dozen of tries to find a efficient way up.

Prosper needs to implement this in his game then maybe you guys would play it.

 

[Spukrian]

The Mercenaries with Raildrivers in Red Faction. On Hard difficulty they one shot you... and they'll shoot you through a wall before you even know they're there.