What is the most insanely difficult CRPG you've ever played?

[Country_Gravy]

The other game wa some crap SSI game. Bear the start of the game the answer to one quest was white zinfandel. It wanted you to type it in correct but the person who tells you its white zinfandel spelled it wrong. That fucked me for days. I didn't get that it was a spelling error so I tried about everything and then figured I check a dictionary.

WOW. I remember that game. I can't think of what it was called, but the white zinfandel thing brought it back. If you remember the name, let me know.

 

[Higher Game]

ADOM was the hardest I ever beat, with an ultimate ending. With mages, it's always the first 15 levels or so that are hard. Then you become a god. :D

 

[RGE]

"Never beat BT1, even though I cheated, and I was never able to defeat the seven grey mages in the iceworld of BT3."

What hung you up in BT1? I loved that game, though it was so primitive.

I played BT1 on my C64, and I really didn't know what to do. I don't even know if I ever figured out how to enter the basement below the tavern that sells wine.

A friend who knew how to program made me an editor where I was able to set my character to OLD, STONED etc, so no special attacking creature could do much to him. Then I ran around and mapped the dungeons and towers and tried to solve the riddles. But I couldn't figure out "lie with ??? and be forever damned". That is, until years later when a friend played the game on the Amiga and I consulted some kind of guide or something. I remember that we also used my old maps in the last level that was filled with darkness and spinners and teleporters and traps and such.

In BT3, you are almost forced to have a thief and use him to sneak up and backstab during certain encounters. It is a tedious way to play, though.

That doesn't really work on those seven mages because their artillery magic kills the entire party while the thief is sneaking in shadows. Or that's what I remember anyway. Maybe it's easier with an optimized party, which I'm pretty sure I didn't have. After all, I soloed the first world with an elven mage until I found out that a thief would be necessary to complete the game. And then I had to bring in another mage to become a geomancer while the first became a chronomancer. And then I probably brought in a warrior and a monk when those corsiars in the forest world started getting critical hits for instant kills. I was probably supposed to have a huge party to begin with, but I don't really like crowds, so meh. I also couldn't figure out the spell puzzle in those ice towers, because nowhere in BT1 or BT2 could I cast spells to solve puzzles like that. So having to read hints only to get killed was a double defeat.

 

[theverybigslayer]

I was probably supposed to have a huge party to begin with,

Yes, you were.

 

[Seboss]

Black Crypt for the Amiga was pretty tough, much like Chaos Strikes Back.

 

[Keldryn]

The other game wa some crap SSI game. Bear the start of the game the answer to one quest was white zinfandel. It wanted you to type it in correct but the person who tells you its white zinfandel spelled it wrong. That fucked me for days. I didn't get that it was a spelling error so I tried about everything and then figured I check a dictionary.

Prophecy of the Shadow

I got stuck in that same spot, because the font was hard to read. The "Zi" in "Zinfandel" looked like it was simply a "Z" with a bit of a cursive serif on the tail. I could have sworn the word I read in the game was "Znafandel" but I could be wrong, it was a long time ago.

 

[Keldryn]

I found The Bard's Tale III to be extremely difficult, but it was also pretty much my first CRPG. I eventually bought the clue book for it so I could get past either Arboria or Gelidia (I can't remember which now). BT1 and BT2 were also pretty difficult, but I never finished them, or even got very far. At least in BT3, you could save your game. In BT1 and BT2, you had to find your way back to the Adventurers' Guild (or whatever it was called) and remove your characters from the party to save the game. It was tedious, and very easy to get killed on your way back. Especially when you start the game with virtually no equipment.

Knights of Legend was insanely difficult. Another RPG where you can only save your game by returning to an inn in a town. The combat system was slow and detailed -- and deadly -- and a random encounter on the road could easily take an hour to resolve. A quest-related battle (all of the quests involved a battle to retrieve an item or rescue someone) could take three hours. Your characters are barely clinging to life after that gruelling battle, and you get ambushed on the road back to town and slaughtered. Oops, reboot the game and replay the last FOUR HOURS of wasted time.

Yeah, I never finished that one either. Tedious and frustrating.

Wizardry VII was very difficult. Combats were very frequent and could get deadly very quickly. Even with importing characters from Bane of the Cosmic Forge, who get hacked down to 5th level. By 1992, I was getting really tired of combat-intensive RPGs where you walk through mazelike forests/dungeons that all look the same.

Phantasy Star II on the Sega Genesis was an absolutely insanely brutal game. The dungeons in that game were ridiculous. One of them was something like 16 levels deep, and you would often have to trek to the farthest point on one level of the dungeon, fight your way down 2 or 3 levels, then find another passage back up a few levels to get to a previously inaccessible area where you can get to a lower level, and so on. The original game included the hint book for a good reason -- I have the Phantasy Star Collection compilation on my Gameboy Advance, and I can't even get through the first dungeon without a map, due to the layout. The battles were frequent and tough, and you had to do a lot of levelling up.

 

[Jim Kata]

In BT3, you are almost forced to have a thief and use him to sneak up and backstab during certain encounters. It is a tedious way to play, though.

That doesn't really work on those seven mages because their artillery magic kills the entire party while the thief is sneaking in shadows. Or that's what I remember anyway. Maybe it's easier with an optimized party, which I'm pretty sure I didn't have. After all, I soloed the first world with an elven mage until I found out that a thief would be necessary to complete the game. And then I had to bring in another mage to become a geomancer while the first became a chronomancer. And then I probably brought in a warrior and a monk when those corsiars in the forest world started getting critical hits for instant kills. I was probably supposed to have a huge party to begin with, but I don't really like crowds, so meh. I also couldn't figure out the spell puzzle in those ice towers, because nowhere in BT1 or BT2 could I cast spells to solve puzzles like that. So having to read hints only to get killed was a double defeat.

I think I soloed most or all of BT1 as a monk. Unfortunately monks and hunters become useless after the frist game or maybe second, because you get such uber loot and monks can only attack once with melee weapons.

If your wizards cast flesh anew and the other healing spells your party can hold out indefinitely. There were also spells to draw enemies closer and once they were at 50 feet or so witherfist and a few other ungodly spells could wipe them out completely. The ice mage guys were actually pretty easy and don't require the crazy thief attack stuff, but some of the battles were brutal. If you had leveled a bit I am sure that one would have been easy.

 

[theverybigslayer]

What party do you recommend for Bard's Tale 3?
Thief and warrior classes were useless in BT1.

 

[SkeleTony]

Nahlakh. Been a long time since I played it(doesn't run on modern machines because of the Turbo pascal error thing) but I remember getting to a point where I thought "There's no way...this is like tens times worse than Natuk on 500% difficulty!".

Wizardry Gold/VII was insane.

Almost ANY of the old standards in 'roguelike' games(Nethack, *Band, ADOM, Crawl etc.) are pretty slam-your-nuts-in-the-drawer difficult.

And any roguelike/Ascii game made by Tarn Adams(aside from the silly arcadey type mini-games) such as Liberal Crime Squad, and especially that new Dwarf Fortress game.

 

[Surgey]

The last one I can remember is Icewind Dale 2, if that counts. Sometimes you just had to save, go into a fight to see what it was, then load and cast a bunch of buff spells beforehand. That or my party just wasn't varied or cheesy enough or something.

I'm sure there were harder, but I can't remember. I had trouble with BG and BG2, partly for the fact I really could never understand AD&D (I much prefer 3.5), but it was hard in its own right, I think.

 

[Binary]

What party do you recommend for Bard's Tale 3?
Thief and warrior classes were useless in BT1.

Off the top of my head... you need a Thief and a Bard on BT3. You also need at least 2 casters (one will became a Chronomancer). I also had a Ranger or a Paladin who became a Geomancer, I think?

Always leave a slot open to hire a monster or Hawkeye

 

[theverybigslayer]

What party do you recommend for Bard's Tale 3?
Thief and warrior classes were useless in BT1.

Off the top of my head... you need a Thief and a Bard on BT3. You also need at least 2 casters (one will became a Chronomancer). I also had a Ranger or a Paladin who became a Geomancer, I think?

Always leave a slot open to hire a monster or Hawkeye

Thanks

 

[zenslinger]

Burgertime was a bitch, man.

 

[KevinV12000]

Burgertime was a bitch, man.

I don't say this often, because I hate how it doesn't mean literally what it is supposed to mean, but:

LOL

 

[Binary]

I think it might be fair to say that Oblivion is one of the most insanely difficult RPGs I have ever played: I had to be insane to play it until I'd finish it

 

[Forfeit]

Mine was Betrayal at Antara.

Its quite an old game, that featured a few characters, and you could control three of them at each time.

The deal is that the game had very dificult enemies. Even beating random thieves was a pain in the ass, and your armor and weapons had to be constantly repaired, because every blow you did reduced its damage and efficiency.

Not to mention that you got tired, and that reduced your potential too. There were some boxes with puzzles in it, and those were quite hard too. If you didnt use your mind, you wouldnt get the contents. No lockpicking.

But the hardest part was when you got into a city, and there were no places to sleep. You had to fight enemies after enemies, and you couldnt sleep to regain your energies. You had to do a quest to be able to find a place to crash.

 

[Ladonna]

There are plenty of RPG's that I define as insanely hard meaning too tedious to keep playing. I would add two that I can think of that I both enjoyed, and barely limped across the finishing line due to difficulty.

Dragon wars: This game is still one of my favourites. Its basically a Bards tale type game visually, with Wasteland like engine. The Combat really was difficult, and there were a number of ways though the game.

Dark Heart of Uukrul: A dungeon crawler with damn hard tactical combat, and great puzzles. The last part of the game is insanely hard.

 

[Stalin]

Mistmare, for all the wrong reasons

 

[Ladonna]

Heres a link for Dragon wars if you feel like playing the game. I played mine on the C64, but i am sure the PC version is fine.

It has automapping too, just in case any of the youngsters here are put off by Mapping :wink:
http://www.classicgaming.cc/pc/dragonwars/

 

[Stephen Amber]

Bard's Tale 2. There's a riddle on the top of Dargoth's Tower I still don't know the answer to. It's been bothering me for 20 years. Another notable locale is the Grey Crypt, which was completely dark, magic dead, and nasty. A pretty cool game back in the day on the apple II C. BT3 I did manage to beat, though didn't really care for the Nazi Germany time travel thing. I have no desire to go back and play those now, though... simply too primitive.

 

[Ladonna]

The Bards tale games are too primitive to play for me as well. Dragon Wars however is much better in this department. Much more Role playing, story, etc.

Think of it as a Bards tale 'Wasteland'.

 

[Nael]

MM3: Isles of Terra is probably the hardest CRPG I ever played. It's like Minesweeper with a plot and lots of focus on skills and stat-padding.

As far as the toughest game in general I've ever played would probably be a draw between either X-Com or Farcry. I suck at Civilization-type games too.

 

[Ebonsword]

Re: What is the most insanely difficult CRPG you've ever pla

The most ridiculously hard CRPG I can recall is Deathlord, an EA roleplaying game from 1987.

God, yes! That game was brutal!

I tried playing it multiple times on my C64 and always gave up pretty quickly.

Also, from what I remember, they didn't explain what a lot of the Japanese stuff meant. So, I'd pick up a naginata, and be like, "okay...should I be excited that I have this or what?"

I thought that the Bard's Tale games were freakin' hard, too. I had the first three and I don't think that I ever beat a single one of them, despite putting dozens of hours into each one. With Bard's Tale, though, it was really the puzzles that made them difficult. Combat wise, I remember being able to kick the crap out of pretty much everything in the games. Which I suppose is not that suprising since I did nothing but wander around the dungeons for hours on end fighting dudes while trying to figure out how the stupid puzzles worked.

But, Deathlord had difficult combat on top of confusing nomenclature, saving upon character death (you really can't get more hardcore than that, can you?), and an irritating lack of information on exactly what you were supposed to be doing. So, Deathlord definitely wins out in the "most difficult" category (at least among the mostly mainstream RPGs that I played).

 

[MetalCraze]

ADOM. I was afraid for my mental health so I've stopped playing it (mostly because of the ridiculous starvation rate)