What is the biggest challenge you have ever overcome in a video game?

[Dagger Dias]

The thread about how final boss battles should be done inspired me to make this one. Basically what I want you to do is go through all of your memories as a gamer and find the one game (it can be a specific boss or event in the game, or the entire game itself) and tell me about how you struggled against parts of this game, or perhaps the entire game, and how you were able to overcome that challenge. Revenge can motivate someone, even when its against a video game.

I'll go first.

My biggest challenge came from Tales of Phantasia. Never, and I mean NEVER, have I ever wanted revenge against a video game as much as that one. The first time I played through it many years ago, I could not figure the battle system out, and struggled even towards the beginning. I got to Dhaos' castle (which is about halfway through) before finally giving up and throwing strategy guides across the room in frustration.

The second time through it was about 3 years ago. I wanted to give it another shot. This time the battle system made more sense because I was older and understood it. Once I got to the part where I gave up as a kid, I got stuck again. That place seemed to be impossible. So I remembered one of my old motto's "when all else fails, level up!". I sat down and fought random battles for 4 hours straight so my guys could level up a lot. Then I tried to get through the castle again. I barely made it through. Barely. Dhaos was really tough. The game remained hard after that point, and I limped through it just so i could finish it because I was getting frustrated.

Then when it came time for the final event of the game.... I had grown so fed up with the game (was still mad at it from my younger days) that I wanted to get revenge against it. I wanted to obliterate the final boss. So I grabbed my Metallica cd's (I owned every single one of them at the time, except Death Magnetic which had not come out yet) and levelled up while listening to them. I'd take an hour break or so between cd's, then started again. By the time I ran out of Metallica cd's my characters were on level 94, they weren' on the highest level possible, but they all had maxed out 9999 Health and 999 magic. Now I was ready.

I made it through the final level without too much frustration, but the final boss had me ripping hairs out. My guys were maxed out and it STILL took me a miracle to win. I had finally gotten revenge on that game by beating it, but it remains as the single largest challenge I have ever had to overcome in a game. After the ending I said to myself "I am NEVER playing this ever again, but dammit, I did it!".

So.... you guys got any epic victories of your own you'd like to share? Feel free to go into large detail like I did.

What was the boss/event/game that you found harder than any other, and what was it like when you finally emerged victorious?

 

[Rated R Stustar]

I have two, they aren't exactly big but they're the best I can remember.

1 - After many failed attempts, I managed to perfect the Dragonforce song on Guitar Hero 3, it may have been on easy but that song is so fast whilst trying to hit every note, but I managed.

2 - My bro and his mate were playing Resident Evil 3 and all of a sudden Nemesis burst through a wall, they crapped themselves (not literally) and they passed the controller to me, and having no experience of playing the game + the fact I was terified of it (I was young) I managed to beat Nemesis with the only gun avaiable a handgun, so yeah not really big challneges but I felt good about them.

 

[ABMorales787]

My challenge has to be me beating Megaman 6. I can't stress this enough. It was like when The Rock became obsessed with beating Austin at Wrestlemania 19. I got the game in '96 for my birthday. I never beat it. I did, however by '98 I could make it to the last boss battle with Wily. In '98 Hurricane George hit the island and we had our games on a drawer in the balcony. Big mistake, the hurricane blew them away. 10 years since I got the game, I get Megaman Anniversary Collection on 2006 for my birthday. Like a man on a mission, I played through the games in order beating 1-5 in a matter of days. I got to '6 and in mere hours, I was face to face with Wily. I beat him. It took me 10 years to do it, but I did it.

 

[The_Hooded_One]

This is easy...Grand Theft Auto San Andreas...FUCK FLYING! I got through the 1st 3 stages only to never progress in the game because of the mission "Learning How To Fly" the controls are terrible and I would often crash for no good reason. GTA SA at 1 point was my all time favorite game but that fucking mission broke my heart and when I play SA now I just fuck around killing people and all the side stuff.

 

[Fizzy]

Holy shit fucking Sephiroth from Kingdom Hearts 1. Now this game was difficult to begin with, but this just threw it over the top. The two Kingdom Hearts are my two favorite games bar none. I simply love them, but the first game when you fought Sephiroth... Holy shit... When I started the game, and saw Cloud I was like holy shit, maybe Sephiroth's in this game. Never did I expect this. It took me over 30 tries at level 80 with Ultima keyblade. When I beat him I was happy. Fucking mad at how hard he was, but very happy that I never had to fight him again. They really showed why he is my favorite video game character ever.

 

[Mr. TM]

You know, I also hate the flying missions in GTA, it kills the stream of the game for me, like the mini chopper mission in GTA: VC. But after some patience, I win easily enough.

One Challenge I had when I was younger was Skate or Die 2. Its a skateboard game with 4 levels. THe last level is a giant maze that always confused me. Not only is it a 4 level maze, each floor has mutliple parts. It took me forever to make it, just by trying to draw each and every level out on graph paper to find my way.

 

[Kayoh]

The biggest challenge I have ever overcome in a video game was beating Vector Tower Defense 2. How lame is that? LOL

Seriously, though. I love the Vector TD games (I still haven't beaten Vector TDx, I think it's impossible tbh) but VTD2's maps were so much tougher than the original VTD. I finally managed to beat it and once I learned the strategy that is required I ended up beating it almost every day for a week to try to get my name on the leaderboard. LOL

 

[Leafy]

Well I've had two challenges.

1. Dragonforce on hard. Once I beat expert I went back and remembered I never beat this song on any thing. So I beat it on easy, than normal, and I just could not beat hard. So I threw my guitar at the ground and waited like 3 months until I played again. And for some reason I got a lot better by not playing. I'm not even going to try on expert.

2. Red on Pokemon Gold. For you not familiar with him he's the very last trainer you face. He's in the back of this cave and he has all level 90 and up pokemon. That stupid person taunted me. I would beat all of his pokemon and then he would pull out a level 95 Snorlax. That thing was practically invincible. He would go to sleep after any damage, healing himself to full health. And after killing him he would pull Charzard out and slaughter any remaining pokemon. I hated the color red after him. But a single pokemon killed all of his. Usaring. I've never stuck to the starters in pokemon and pick the stupidest looking pokemon and train him until they're unstoppable. For some reason Usaring plowed through Snorlax and I beat him. That was by far the hardest challenge I overcame.

 

[Kayoh]

2. Red on Pokemon Gold. For you not familiar with him he's the very last trainer you face. He's in the back of this cave and he has all level 90 and up pokemon. That stupid person taunted me. I would beat all of his pokemon and then he would pull out a level 95 Snorlax. That thing was practically invincible. He would go to sleep after any damage, healing himself to full health. And after killing him he would pull Charzard out and slaughter any remaining pokemon. I hated the color red after him. But a single pokemon killed all of his. Usaring. I've never stuck to the starters in pokemon and pick the stupidest looking pokemon and train him until they're unstoppable. For some reason Usaring plowed through Snorlax and I beat him. That was by far the hardest challenge I overcame.

Hahahahaha, I remember that too. That Snorlax was RIDICULOUS...and I very specifically only having level 60-70 Pokemon along with a level 40 or 50 Houndoom who I had just recently caught. Man, that was rough.

 

[Dagger Dias]

2. Red on Pokemon Gold. For you not familiar with him he's the very last trainer you face. He's in the back of this cave and he has all level 90 and up pokemon. That stupid person taunted me. I would beat all of his pokemon and then he would pull out a level 95 Snorlax. That thing was practically invincible. He would go to sleep after any damage, healing himself to full health. And after killing him he would pull Charzard out and slaughter any remaining pokemon. I hated the color red after him. But a single pokemon killed all of his. Usaring. I've never stuck to the starters in pokemon and pick the stupidest looking pokemon and train him until they're unstoppable. For some reason Usaring plowed through Snorlax and I beat him. That was by far the hardest challenge I overcame.

I don't remember him being that tough.... but then again I had the team of Feraligatr, Mewtwo, Ho-Oh, Lugia, Celebi (gamesharked), and Mew (also gamesharked).... all on level 100.... The hardest challenge for me in Pokemon Gold was catching all 3 of the legendary dogs. Raikou and Entei nearly drove me insane because I used my only master ball on Suicune. It felt SO awesome when I finally caught all 3 of them because I had done it without cheating and for 2 out of the 3 I didn't use a master ball.

 

[latinoheat8979]

I'm goign to go old school on this topic. The hardest challenge I had to over come to beat a video game was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for the original Nintendo. After the water level 2 that game gets ridiculosly tough. In level 3 I had a very hard time getting across that "sewer jump" to the other side, then if you're lucky enough to make it you have to keep jumping on single blocks while avoiding enemies that could knock you off to re-start the whole jump process again. Once you get past that sewer jump level it levels 4 5 and 6 (especially 6) are tough the enemies double and new enemies are introduced that take a lot of health power. I was lucky enough to beat this game after what seemed like hundreds of hours of gameplay. At the end you don't even battle Shredder you have to beat the Technodrome's Eye which isn't that hard compared to the levels you beat.

 

[Rizza]

For me it was the legends road on UFC Sudden Impact for the PS2. It was basically you had to beat 8 guys in a row on hard. Which is damn near impossible. The way the game is, if you dont spot every submission coming from a mile way, You can get tapped by anybody and everybody, I mean I got tapped out from people in that game that have never even attempted a submission in their lives. No realism there, and the Stamina System sucked because it was your health bar, if you threw punches in bunches, you health bar would go down, and you would get KO'ed in one hit. I finally did it though, last year actually, and I have had the game since 2005. When I beat it though, I was jumping up and down and shit, I was covered with sweat, and was concentrating so hard that my eyes was continually watering. Intense victory to say the least, and besides getting my drivers licence and losing my virginity, it had to be the happiest I've been over anything when I beat that goddamn game.

 

[Mr. Steve]

I don't remember him being that tough.... but then again I had the team of Feraligatr, Mewtwo, Ho-Oh, Lugia, Celebi (gamesharked), and Mew (also gamesharked).... all on level 100.... The hardest challenge for me in Pokemon Gold was catching all 3 of the legendary dogs. Raikou and Entei nearly drove me insane because I used my only master ball on Suicune. It felt SO awesome when I finally caught all 3 of them because I had done it without cheating and for 2 out of the 3 I didn't use a master ball.

FACT: I beat Red with a LVL. 86 Typhlosion. DON't ask me how. FOr me, it's a few of the Mass Effect sidequests. Usually, I play a game on easy, then move up as I beat it. THat being said, Mass Effect has only Normal, Hardcore and Insanity. Deciding I was "badass" I played it on Insanity...I haven't beaten it yet LOL.

 

[Kenny Powers]

Final Fantasy VII was a beast to try to beat in the beginning. Sephiroth was vicious with all his forms killing you over and over again while healing himself. I took literally a whole hour just to beat him. The Weapons were hard as hell too. Some weapons I couldn't even beat. FF7 was one of the greatest games of all time. My friends and I would play it for hours on end after school. Snowboarding and racing chocoboos.

Another classic game that I beat again recently was Super Mario Brothers 3. It's easy to get through the levels with whistles and extra lives, but that last level was extremely hard. If you have the right equipment then your fine, but it takes a while to get to the kingdom. Koopa himself wasn't hard, just trying to get there was though.

 

[MasterShakeIz4Real]

There's quite a list for me so here we go.

MORTAL KOMBAT II on HARD: I JUST did this Saturday night after 15 years of trying (as in I never beat the game until. On ANY difficulty). I used Reptile (wooha) and got ALL the way to Shang Tsung. Now the WAY up to that was hard, it took about 2 hours to do, non-stop. After that, Kintaro and Shao Kahn took me another hour to beat. When I finally beat Kahn, I almost wanted to weep... not really. Point is, that game is ridiculously hard mainly for the fact the CPU just... combo's and blocks the shit out of you then proceeds to fatality you. There are some people who can beat this crap with ease... You're a better man then I.

The Original Devil May Cry 3 On Dante Must Die: Everyone remembers how hard the original DMC3 was when it was released. Well, try doing it on Dante Must Die Mode. When I did that, I wanted to break the controller every day for a week. You gotta be STYLISH in that mode, meaning don't get your ass hit. Good thing is though, me playing that made me better at Hack N Slashes, so I kinda raped Bayonetta on its Hardest difficulty. GoW3 is next lol.

Honorable Mentions: Pokemon Silver: Fighting Red (Ash) at the very End. Beating Akuma in Street Fighter 2. Samurai Shodown V (T____T a thread on its OWn for that one). Saturos in Golden Sun (When you fight him alone). Anything involving Ninja Gaiden Franchise.

 

[Mitch Henessey]

1. Grand Theft Auto: Vice City- Tommy Vercetti is my favorite GTA character, but man was this entire game a huge pain in the ass to get through. Trying to kill Sunny in the final mission was so hard for me. I tried to kill him with every type of gun there was, but he was just so hard to take down. After a couple of days, I was able to get some extra cash, buy the rocket launcher, and was finally able to take him out.

2. The Matrix Path Of Neo (PS2)- This was another game that made want to throw a brick thorough my TV. The only easy part in this game is when you decide between the red or blue pill Morpheus gives you at the start of the game. The final battle between Agent Smith and Neo was very difficult. It took me a week to get through this, but that was mainly because I kept getting my ass kicked, got frustrated, and stopped playing. Learning how to fight was real hard because the controls were very complicated.

3. Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 (SNES)- As a kid, I was so excited to get this game. I was having fun with it until I had to fight Motaro. I used to think Goro was difficult to beat, but Motaro was a lot harder. You had to beat him with out using any energy attacks because they wouldn't damage him. It took me a while, but I was able to take him down with Liu Kang.

 

[HBK619]

Honourable mention goes to Red in pokemon crystal.

1.Dragon Quest VIII:Journey of the Cursed King
I got up to the guy who stole the scepter(which you need to destroy)and after 60 hours(yes i was training that hard to get to level 30)i finally defeated him.I only then realised i was halfways through the game.But beating that guy(he had two forms as well)made the rest of the game easy.

2.TNA Impact
Vsing Jeff Jarret at the end of the story.It was so hard.You couldnt use chairs which where a big advantage.He could take you down even without a finisher and you needed about 3 or 4 finishers to put him away.

 

[Alex]

The Dahaka on Prince of Persia Warrior Within. He was really hard, most of the time he'd take half my life off if I didn't move out of the way fast enough (and you need all the life upgrades to face him) Then when I finally took off enough and he was hanging off the edge of the platform I attacked him as fast as I could, then he recovered, and about three quarters of his life came back. It wasn't till I used the sand powers that he became a lot easier and I beat him

 

[Sparky]

TM, i found the Flying one's easy. It was the racing ones i found hard. I don't know why, I'm ok at racing games but on grand theft auto I crash every few minutes. the challenge for me was th emission where your outside the night club in GTA grand theft auto vice city and have to race that guy. It took me fucking weeks to do that mission.

 

[Y-2-Jay]

Beating ocarina of time back in 05. Do you wanna know how long it took to be beat this mother fucker 5 looonnnngggg years. And once i beat gannon i pooped a little, cheered then said "what other games do i have"

 

[.]

2.TNA Impact
Vsing Jeff Jarret at the end of the story.It was so hard.You couldnt use chairs which where a big advantage.He could take you down even without a finisher and you needed about 3 or 4 finishers to put him away.

That was a complete biatch.

1. I had no idea how in the name of God to get to the elevator in the back in Metal Gear Solid 1. I ran aound in circles for ages i hid behind a forklift for 14 minutes(my brother timed me[note: I was 5 and it was a demo]) i was in such anger and i then sat down for my dinner and my dad(who hated me playing games) picked up the pad and got to the elevator in 10 seconds!

2. The last level of Jade Cacoon.

 

[Kashagi]

I first played Ocarina of Time as a child when it had been out for a while, there was one dungeon puzzle that had me stumped for almost a full year. I stopped playing the game because I COULD NOT get past this one room, it pissed me off so much and I didnt get past it until a cousin came down from Adelaide and showed me the solution.

Whats hilarious is how ridiculously easy you will see the puzzle was, but for some reason I just didnt get it at all when there was nothing to get, chances are you wont remember it as it was such a forgettable room.

This puzzle was in Dodongos Cavern, and if I remember right was the final room before Dodongo. All that was in the room was a block with a clear path to PULL the block through in order to gain entrance to Dodongo.

Problem was, IT TOOK ME 8 MOTHERFUCKING MONTHS TO FUCKING LEARN YOU COULD FUCKING PULL IN THIS MOTHERFUCKING SON OF A FUCK GAME. What amazed me was I never ACCIDENTALLY pulled the bastard, I just spent 8 MONTHS TRYING TO PUSH IT IN EVERY DIRECTION WITHOUT EVEN CONSIDERING YOU COULD JUST SIMPLY PULL IT A FEW INCHES.

Simple puzzle, but because it pissed my child self so much it will go down as the biggest challenge I have ever overcome in a game.

 

[Tastycles]

For some reason it took me an age to do the Grand Theft Auto mission on GTA3. You have to get a load of cars for Kenji, and for some reason, you have to do it in a time limit. I've done it millions of times since, but the first time I did it, I just couldn't do it, or the mission where you first meet the crooked cop and my progress was halted for a long time. Weirdly, when I reattempted the game a couple of months later, I did them both first time.

 

[Slowdude]

In Pokemon Platinum, the Battle Frontier (All the facilities besides the Battle Hall which is easy) is so annoying. You have to beat 20 trainers in a row before facing the "frontier brain" the first time then beat another 27 in a row before facing them again. During the 21-49 battles the pokemon the random trainers use are so ridiculously over powered its not funny. My EV'ed Swampert, Latias and Salamence were taken down on battle #47 of the Battle Tower dying to a freaking pidgeot using facade and roost over and over. I still haven't got the gold print for any of the frontier facilities as I always lose a few battles before the gold print.

 

[Bozzaholic]

Playing football manager 2008 and by some miracale managing to get promoted in to the premier league with Colchester United in my first season. Avoiding relegation and trying to build a team was next to impossible but with some great tactics and even better results (managing a 1-1 draw at Liverpool, beating Arsenal 2-0 at cuckoo farm I managed to scrape enough points to do it) every season there after was slightly easier but that first in the prem league was a nightmare