What are the worst difficulty spikes you have experienced in a video game?

[Sonygamer455]

Canis Lunis 2 in Buzz Lightyear of Star Command (PS1).

Can’t believe I haven’t talked about this in here yet! Anyone who has played through this game will probably agree with this one because this one is easily the hardest in the entire game!

While every other level (besides the last) is very straightforward and involves you chasing the villain to the end and then fighting them, this one has a strange twist that no other level has. At the start of the level, Wirewolf will run away from you at a very high speed and then the doors will close behind him and you cannot go any further. That said, in order to go further, it requires you to kill all the enemies in the room and you have to do it before a bomb behind the door goes off. This has to be done multiple times throughout the level before you eventually face Wirewolf in the end.

Okay, for starters, Commander Nebula makes no mention of having to kill all the enemies in order to progress. In fact theirs no mention in the entire game or even the instruction booklet that you’re supposed to do this, so new players are bound to be unaware of this because lord knows I was when I first tried it. Not only that, but it’s easily the longest, hardest, and most tedious level in the whole game and it requires you to be pretty on point with your blaster when killing enemies. Making matters even worse, despite the game having a good variety of weapons, only 2 of them are actually usable here for some reason and while better than the standard issue laser, they’re not the greatest.

I don’t mind having a level that kind of deviates from the rest because they can be fun when done right, Canis Lunis 1 and Bathyos being an example of this within this very game. However, this one, while doable, is just absurd because it is noticeably more difficult than any other level in the game despite not being the last, it’s confusing if you don’t already know it and it just goes on too long compared to the rest. It only gets worse when you want to do the time trial and pick up XR’s pieces and I have only ever done this on cadet difficulty, I shutter as to what it would be like on Ranger.

Yet, go figure, directly after that you face Zurg on Planet Z, the main antagonist and what Commander Nebula calls “The Big One”, but his level plays out like every other one in the game and not anywhere close to what Canis Lunis 2 throws at you. And then fittingly, the very last level you have a huge boss fight with him and while challenging, it’s still not as hard as Canis Lunis 2. If Zurg’s level on Planet Z played out like Canis Lunis 2 did, I would probably be a lot more forgiving of this since he’s the main antagonist and is supposed to be harder than the rest, but giving this to anybody other than him just doesn’t make sense. It’s a strange choice by the developers in my opinion and one that I think is a huge mistake on their part.

 

[Raymond_Racer]

Now that I've played several more games since my original post, I think I will revise my list:

• Galactic Commander Mars (Pokemon Diamond Version & Pokemon Pearl Version, DS): An under-levelled Purugly with a Speed stat belying its appearance, the no-miss Feint Attack that hits surprisingly hard if you haven't got a Pokemon who's decently bulky, and just enough bulk combined with Sitrus Berry and Mars' Potions to withstand a decent number of hits from anything short of a STAB Fighting move Machop or Monferno.

• Early Post-Game (Pokemon Black Version & Pokemon White Version, DS): Right out of the gate, the first trainer battles of the Post-Game locations are 10 levels higher than the final boss of the main campaign (level 52-54 for Final Boss, 62-65 for early Post-game NPC battles). Generally, a gap of 10 levels or more is massive unless you're running a team with a high base stat total, so unless you have a Gen 4 save you can transfer from, Gen 5's post-game content can be quite an uphill battle.

• Super License Test S5 (Gran Turismo 6, PS3): One lap of Ascari Race Resort with the Flying Walrus itself, the Bugatti Veyron. The 900+HP W16, near 2-tonne weight, trick suspension and low-drag low-downforce body make it a very unruly beast for circuit racing, and you have to get at least a 2:20.000 or better to even pass the test; a nightmare time to get if you haven't got a wheel. Even if you do get the bronze to unlock the final Super License races, you need to shave off 6 whole seconds to get the Gold time for the final License Test reward.

• Thin Ice (Counter-Strike: Condition Zero Deleted Scenes, Steam): While most of the level itself isn't all that bad, the biggest sticking point is the end-level boss. You have to fight a Harrier Jump Jet with nought but an AWP, a Scout-Rifle and a limited number of healing items on the rooftop of the bridge of the ship that the terrorists had hijacked in this mission. The Harrier outranges, out-damages and can outmaneuver you, especially when it's in the fog in the distance, and what's worse is that there is very little cover available and a Terrorist grenadier tossing grenades onto the bridge rooftop that you need to deal with as soon as possible (ideally before the Harrier takes off)

• Final Battle (Bioshock Infinite, PS3/360/PC/MacOSX/Linux): You have to defend the Airship you have hijacked from enemy attackers on all sides, including both ground troops and enemy gunships. If your airship takes too much damage it's game over. To help you hold them off, you have a summon you can use to attack groups of enemy ground-troops or airships at any time, but each time you use it it has a long cooldown which gets even longer when destroying the gunships. The most consistent way to hold the line is to stack a number of damage-absorbing shield-traps around the ship's core to prevent as much damage as possible from hitting the core itself in between summon attacks, but even that is not perfect as melee enemies can detonate the traps forcing you to reset them which you may not have the time or resources to do in the heat of the moment.

• Cabaret Club Czar - Club Moon (Yakuza 0, PS3/PS4/Steam/XBOne/Luna): Majima's business side-mode requires you to run a hostess club as effectively as possible to prevent the five biggest club owners in the area. After you have a large enough patron base in a given area, the club owners challenge you who can rake in the most business on a single night. Each of the preceding clubs has an underhanded trick to cripple your earnings in the challenge (tiring your hostesses, attracting your customers out, etc.) the host of Club Moon however, performs the tricks of the other four preceding clubs all at the same time, putting you at a major disadvantage, meaning you'll have to grind as much as you can to get a large enough patron base that you won't be affected as badly when the hit comes in.

• Emperor Fynalle (Streetpass Mii Plaza: Warrior's Way, 3DS): The Final Battle of Warrior's Way has far and away the largest army in the entire game. Not only that, but his battle works entirely differently to every prior battle. In every regular battle, you must divvy up your army into three different infantry types (Cavalry, Spearmen and Bowmen), then match up your army against the enemy leaders in a "rock-paper-scissors" game (Cavalry=R, Spearmen=P, Bowmen=S). Whoever has the advantageous class in each clash halves the disadvantaged force's strength, with equal infantry types remaining unchanged. The winner of the clash is the force with the higher strength after deductions, and the first army to take two victories wins the battle. For the Emperor however, your entire army fights as the infantry type you choose, and while clash wins do not matter, the infantry count does. After five clashes, you must have more surviving units in your army to win. If you lose, you lose half of the troops that you started the battle with, which can only be replenished from Streetpass hits (dependent on other players' Plaza sizes and whether or not they've played before) or from Play Coins (Warrior's Way has some of the steepest Play Coin costs of any 3DS title at up to 15 Play Coins for the highest tier; only Super Smash Bros. for the 3DS has steeper costs AFAIK, and even that's for optional reward items).

• Tanks! - Level 12 (Wii Play, Wii): Throughout the game, there are a number of tanks that exhibit different behaviours in order to take you out. Green tanks are introduced in Stage 12, and though they are static, Greens fire tracer rounds which fly as fast as the rockets used by Teal tanks but can ricochet against walls twice before breaking. This combined with the fact that they will adjust their aim to find the optimum angle for a bank-shot that will take you out from your current position. In their debut stage of Level 12, there are two such tanks as well as two Pink tanks that are most similar to the player's tank in movement and attack power, meaning you have to not only fight two moving targets but also keep track of two ricocheting projectiles so that you aren't blindsided in the heat of battle.

• Hollow Bastion - Demyx 2nd (Kingdom Hearts II, PS2/PS3/PS4/XBOne/PC/Switch): One of the most infamous difficulty spikes of the PS2 Era, the second Demyx encounter features his signature water-clone challenge from his first encounter at Olympus Coliseum Underworld uprated with more clones and on a relatively stricter time-limit. Between clone-summoning phases, Demyx will fight directly by summoning water-based attacks which have massive area denial in the small arena you fight him in, plus a powerful counter-hit if you get behind Demyx and fail the Reaction-Command QTE. Combine that with an obtuse elemental system (there is no Water magic in Kingdom Hearts so Demyx is actually Ice element and therefore weak to fire, contrary to most other RPGs where a water element is present), and the fact the penalty system to prevent Drive Form abuse makes it Four Times As Likely to trigger Anti-Form than normal, which means using Wisdom Form for magic spam isn't a safe option.

• Basil the Batlord (LEGO Racers, PC/PSX/N64): Each of the seven champions in LEGO Racers has certain patterns to their AI behaviour, particularly in regards to their item usage. Captain Redbeard & Johnny Thunder (Bosses 1 & 4) both primarily favour Projectiles (Red), King Kahuka (Boss 2) prefers Shields (Blue), Baron von Barron (Boss 5) uses traps (Yellow) and Rocket Racer (the final boss) goes for boosters (Green). Basil the Batlord is Boss 3, and like Gypsy Moth (Boss 6), does not prioritize one brick type over another, meaning he can get an early Booster and speed away if you don't get a Boost-start, plus this lack of favouritism means it's less predictable how he'll behave when you're catching up, meaning he could block your projectile with a shield, sabotage you with a trap if you aren't prepared, or just boost away again. This isn't helped by the fact that the opening round; Knightmare-a-Thon, is the only track in the game without a shortcut. Meaning the only way you can catch Basil if he has a strong first lap is through your own driving skill and effective use of items.

Continuing on from this initial post:

• Felicity Rampant and Raum Kampfjet Mk.V (Borderlands the Pre-Sequel, Various Platforms): Both of these bosses suffer the same problems as the CS:CZDS Harrier boss fight; very high enemy damage output, very low available resources. Felicity Rampant is a prototype 'Constructor' bot which as the name implies, builds robot mook enemies to overwhelm the battlefield. Even if you stay on the move at all times and focus as much of your damage on Felicity, you will have to break off aim from her eventually to destroy support drones that protect her with a barrier and/or heal off damage. The Raum Kampfjet Mk.V (RK5 for short) is a gunship protecting the site of a powerful artifact, supported by infantry and the race of aliens that left the artifact in the first place. The grounded alien enemies are very acrobatic making them very hard to hit, while certain aerial varieties are shielded & can electrify themselves, making them resist the one element that quickly destroys shields.

• Animal Crossing Puzzle League: Cornimer (Animal Crossing: New Leaf Welcome Amiibo, Nintendo 3DS): The final boss of the Puzzle League gamemode introduced in Animal Crossing: New Leaf's Welcome Amiibo Expansion, pits you up against Tortimer under the guise of the "Cornimer" alter-ego. Unlike the other stages, where you have a "Campaign building" stage where you can build some level of a head start going into each boss & warming you up with the Puzzle League mechanics, you are dropped right into the final battle with 0% support. Furthermore, you can only gain support by getting Combos (Matches of four tiles or larger) and/or Chains (multiple matches in sequence from tiles cascading after an initial match); Not only that, but Cornimer will regularly toss two whole rows of garbage blocks at a time, on top of the speed of the existing blocks climbing up the board gradually increasing; so you have to plan out your moves quickly before you can top out & achieve victory as soon as possible to prevent the board from topping out.

• B-Type 9-5 (Tetris 1989, Game Boy): Unlike A-Type where you have to survive as long as possible and score as many line clears as you can to achieve a High Score, B-Type tasks you with clearing 25 lines as efficiently as you can while working with a randomly-generated layout of pre-arranged Garbage Blocks to beat each level; there are a total of 60 levels arranged by Speed & Height. The first number is the game's speed and each number correlates with the piece movement speed at that level in A-Type. The second number determines how many rows of Garbage Blocks your game starts with, going up by two lines for every level starting from 0 at 0. 9-5 as the highest level gives you very little margin for error as it is the fastest speed with the highest stack of garbage. Combined with the early quirks of pre-standardized Tetris gameplay (no 7-Bag predetermination of pieces, rotational biases for L, J and I pieces, no hard drop, etc.) and this final stage can be quite brutal.

• Chomper's Pizza - Base 2 Base (Plants Vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare 2, PS4/XBONE/Origin/Steam): Introduced in an update to GW2 were two Time Trial minigames; one for each faction, where the player controls a special character to traverse the hub-world map from points A to B through a series of checkpoint rings before time runs out, with occasional targets that need to be hit to stop the timer, similar to the yellow Time Crates in Crash Bandicoot's Relic missions. Stage nine of the Time Trial minigame for Plants has multiple targets that are considerably further away from the checkpoints than most other Time Trial stages for either side, meaning it's much less likely for the player to notice them before time runs out; and even if the player does notice they have to make sure their shot is on-point first time or they won't make it to the next checkpoint, making this stage quite an exercise in reflexes & rote memorization.

• Courscant: Knightfall (Star Wars: Battlefront II 2005, PC/Xbox/Playstation 2): This is the level of the main campaign where you get to live the infamous Order 66. Unfortunately though it's through the boots of a Clone Trooper for most of the level instead of Anakin Skywalker himself. In this stage, you will face hordes of Jedi enemies; all of them having the same damage output and movement options as the Jedi hero characters in the main multiplayer modes, albeit with considerably less health. The worst part of this mission is the "Defend the Library" Objective - you have to protect at least one of six bookcases from an onslaught of Jedi for two whole minutes before all of them are destroyed. The only viable class to play in this stage is the Engineer, since his shotgun can consistently one-shot Jedi in their melee range, he has a deployable health-pack that you can use for self-healing to stay in the fight, and most importantly, he has a repair tool that can be used to top up a bookcase's health in the Library Defense objective of the mission.

 

[Sonygamer455]

The bonus target for the Sofa Car Challenge in Wreckfest.

So in Wreckfest, you have these optional bonus targets for every event you do and they're usually pretty easy with an occasional tricky one, but then you got this one. It requires you to wreck at least one opponent and while that doesn't sound too bad, trying to wreck one sofa car with another on the default damage setting is like trying to cut a steak with a plastic spoon, it's very hard to do. I had to put the damage to realistic just to even have a chance at knocking someone out because normal just wasn't cutting it, when it usually does. I've beat the career and of all the bonus targets I ever did, this was easily the hardest in the entire game.

In the dev's defense though, they made a desirable update to the game to prevent you from being wrecked if you get ejected from the vehicle. Which was a good choice, but some say they forgot to tweak the bonus target in this challenge to make it more accessible and I believe it because theirs no reason for it to be this troublesome

 

[INEEDNAWZZZ]

Earl in NFS Most Wanted. I've played through the game 30+ times, and speedran it a couple of those times too, and Earl always manages to trip me up. His rubberbanding is so much worse than anyone else in the game; I can't help feeling the developers did the AI early on, realised it was too hard but forgot to tone it down for him.

 

[Sonygamer455]

Earl in NFS Most Wanted. I've played through the game 30+ times, and speedran it a couple of those times too, and Earl always manages to trip me up. His rubberbanding is so much worse than anyone else in the game;

I'm right there with ya. I don't remember how my most recent playthrough went, but I do remember the times I played through it in the past, I always found him to be the hardest overall. The speed trap race wasn't bad, but that sprint race was where I struggled the most. Just shy of the halfway point in the game, yet he is the hardest one. 🤔

I can't help feeling the developers did the AI early on, realised it was too hard but forgot to tone it down for him.

Eh, I don't know about that. I believe somewhere in the game it states he used to be #1 on the blacklist at one point and I get the vibe his difficulty could have been intentional.

 

[Sonygamer455]

The daily challenges requiring you to wreck 15 vehicles in 3 minutes in Wreckfest.
So tournament has different challenges for you every day you get on Wreckfest. Most of the time, they're not too hard, usually they're quite easy, but then you have these challenges. Usually, you're having to use a special vehicle of some sort and the rest will be special vehicles as well, so they're harder to take down and they somehow expect you to be able to wreck 15 of them within 3 minutes. I can beat any other challenge they throw at me in tournament, but these are the ones I am lucky to even get a silver and I don't think I have ever gotten gold on them. I am sure some madman out there has beaten them before, but these challenges are just way too hard and feel more like a game of luck than a fair challenge. I am not convinced they were playtested.

 

[Com Fox]

2nd Battle against Rj in Brok: The InvestiGator

There are 2 fights in the game I would consider difficult even when in the lower difficulty settings and while the heard of robots is very late in the game and is more of an option if you don't want to do the puzzle instead, the 2nd Battle against Rj is in the middle and is almost unavoidable.

Raj has a 3 hit combo move that hits like a Truck and he rarely flinches to attacks so you have to try and imploy hit and run tactics as much as you can, like the Squealer Leader though unlike the Squealer Leader, Rj openings aren't consistent. Not to mention the amount of health he has.

And the thing is, you fight Rj a 3rd time and the 3rd is not as hard as the 2nd one. More so because the arena is a lot less claustrophobic and you have the option to give him Mercy if you're winning

 

[Wolfman_UK]

Aegis Installation region in the Amur district in Snowrunner. I actually think a few of the missions / contracts are impossible without a modded truck (which I do not like using).

I haven't gone full OP with it but without this truck (IX wrecker) not a chance. Excluding Chernokamensk, the areas in Amur are hard enough, but Aegis Installation deserves a place in room 101!

 

[m355y]

The first "training" mission in the original Driver, set in the underground car park, was so hard it almost stopped me ever getting into the main game. I seem to remember the issue was getting it to register a 180⁰ as well as the time limit.

Once you get past that, the main game seems positively straightforward at times.

 

[INEEDNAWZZZ]

The first "training" mission in the original Driver, set in the underground car park, was so hard it almost stopped me ever getting into the main game. I seem to remember the issue was getting it to register a 180⁰ as well as the time limit.

Once you get past that, the main game seems positively straightforward at times.

It is hard as hell at first, especially for me as a five year old who didn't have a clue what a slalom was, but over the years I've actually grown to love it as you can get a real feel for how the game handles, and replaying it and improving your time shows how you become more accustomed to the game's 70s car chase physics. Is it a bit too obtuse? Absolutely, given how many people never saw past it, but I do understand what they were trying to go for and I actually run through it for fun whenever I replay the game.

I think I might even have a record time in it; my best is 24 seconds flat. You can actually cheese the 180 and 360 by circling the pillar as you turn back around for the slalom by hugging it quite tightly. Once you have that down, you can breeze through it in no time whatsoever and it feels awesome when you string it all together.

 

[Sonygamer455]

Earl (aka Blacklist Rival #9) in Need for Speed Most Wanted (2005).
Okay, I am aware I already talked briefly about him a few posts above, however, I want to talk about him in full now since I recently started playing the game again and raced him a few times this week.

So when you challenge him, you have a speedtrap race and a sprint race you have to do to beat him. The speedtrap is surprisingly not too bad, but that sprint race however, is exactly that and it's the very reason I am posting this. Generally, he's pretty fast in this race and he can be pretty hard to catch up to once he gets ahead of you. Even if you manage to stay in front most of the time, he'll really pick up the pace once you get within 90% of the race, and if you don't have a large reserve of NOS ready, well good luck trying to cross the finish line first. Mind you, I got his car after winning and compared his specs to mine and his car was only slightly slower, yet he drives like he has some extra upgrades on his I have yet to unlock. Obviously, the rubberbanding is to blame for this and while I found this sort of behavior is typical for MW, Earl is noticeably a lot worse about this for some reason than anything I did prior. My theory is the devs did this on purpose since he holds the keys to Rockport and he was once #1 on the Blacklist, but I could be wrong. The fact the sprint race is abnormally long really doesn't help either.

Still, at the end of the day, he's #9 on the Blacklist, just shy of the halfway point in the career, yet he manages to be quite a bit harder than anybody before him. While I haven't finished my current playthrough yet, I recall in the past, he actually ended up being the hardest blacklist in the game, even more so than Razor was. (who was Blacklist #1) Are his races doable? Yes, they're not impossible, you can still beat him with a bit of effort, but he cheats more than normal and is just needlessly harder than he should be for a mid-career boss.

 

[m355y]

It is hard as hell at first, especially for me as a five year old who didn't have a clue what a slalom was, but over the years I've actually grown to love it as you can get a real feel for how the game handles, and replaying it and improving your time shows how you become more accustomed to the game's 70s car chase physics. Is it a bit too obtuse? Absolutely, given how many people never saw past it, but I do understand what they were trying to go for and I actually run through it for fun whenever I replay the game.

I think I might even have a record time in it; my best is 24 seconds flat. You can actually cheese the 180 and 360 by circling the pillar as you turn back around for the slalom by hugging it quite tightly. Once you have that down, you can breeze through it in no time whatsoever and it feels awesome when you string it all together.

Oh yeah, once I finally, FINALLY got it to register a 180 and passed it at the 93,615th time of asking, I started to appreciate it and to be honest its probably the bit of the game I remember the most. That said, I think genuinely it makes the rest of the game seem a bit easy. It's almost too successful for its own good - when you finally set loose on the streets of [wherever its set], you can handle the car so well it's kinda a piece of cake.

 

[DivitLad]

Driver 1 - The final mission with the relentless kamikaze cops. They're on you as soon as the mission starts, and their cars are faster than yours. Any corner, roadblock, or slowdown of any kind is pretty much guaranteed death.

Man that game was awesome fun, survival mode the police cars were flying allover the place trying to ram you lol, Lose the tail man

 

[Sonygamer455]

The Skrendel Brothers in High on Life.
(Language Warning)

So these are the bosses you take on closer to the end of the game, but despite that, they're easily the hardest of them all, even more so than Garmantuous. They're more aggressive, their attacks are just harder to dodge than all the others and they're the only ones that managed to kill me during the fight. They're not impossible. defeating them is doable, but they're harder than they need to be for what they are, especially considering they're not even the final boss, yet they put up more of a challenge than the final boss for no apparent reason.

 

[GTboyz]

Bloodborne, Old Hunters DLC.

Grinded a bit from the base game, and I still get brutalized the hell out of the DLC especially when fighting Laurence and those 2 shark giants. Even most of the other bosses weren't as hard as those.

 

[Def-Infinity]

Elder Scrolls Online - Veteran Moon Hunter Keep; Specifically Mylenne Moon-Caller. And yes, we have to memorize every mechanic for every boss or spend the next 2-3 hours bickering over who is doing the worst job in the group.

This boss flat-out ends runs.

This boss can be a NIGHTMARE if people do not pay attention! So be careful and watch your feet! The tank should hold the boss pretty much in the middle of the room, or at least hold it still and turn it away from the group. Do NOT drop taunt for a second because you will wipe the group out.

Pounce – The boss will occasionally pounce on a random player (usually the furthest away but not always). When this happens the boss will try to tear apart the person on the floor who is now pinned. This is where the boss MUST be interrupted to save the pinned player. If you are not fast enough your teammate will die to around 200-300k damage. This can happen to the tank as well so be careful! Base mechanics are key, “interrupt” or die!

Heavy Attack – The boss will throw out a nasty heavy attack at whoever has aggro. This of course should always be the tank so the tank should BLOCK this. However if for some reason the boss is using this vs another player (dps/healer) you must time it and dodge roll the attack. You will NOT block this as a healer/dps…it will kill you.

Wolves – During the wolves will spawn in 3s every 20% starting from 80%. These can be debuffed with a taunt but don’t always respond to taunts and will hit whoever they like, and they can also enrage so be careful. Do not run around the room if they are chasing you as a dps/healer. These should be focused on as a priority over the boss. The tank, however, can chain these in and root them so also of course “time stop” IS an option here to control the adds. Kill the wolves then get back to the boss.

Wardens – DO NOT PANIC! I have seen many PUG sessions where people see these and either ignore them or run around the room in circles. Tip: neither works!
The wardens will spawn during the fight 2 at a time (excluding the first spawn which is 1) at the same time as the wolves and they are your priority targets. They channel nasty lightning attacks and confuse the hell out of the mechanics.

Now, let’s break this up a bit. They will place a huge aoe on the floor (they channel then fire it) and stay OUT of this big aoe. They will also cast lightning across the floor which you must avoid(just move your feet all the time so these don’t catch you. And finally, lightning bolts will come from the sky. These land very fast and the next shot is just as quick.

When this happens each player will have their own lightning bolts, so move around in a nice little circle (only a couple of feet or so) and keep moving so they always miss you until they are gone. DO NOT chase each other and do NOT stack. If you do so multiple players will put their OWN effects on top of other players, they will double up and die! You MUST stay separate. Above all the wardens must be focused before the boss is attacked again. During this time the tank needs to keep hold of any adds that come in and the boss and focus holding aggro and NOT letting that dog go loose! Relax and focus on the mechanics together!

 

[Tornado]

After all these years of playing videogames and I still can't think of one worse than when you're playing Going Commando and you get to Yeti World or whatever it's called and suddenly all of your weapons are basically useless no matter how much you've leveled them up before getting there and basically only area of effect explosive weapons (which have nearly no ammo) are of any use and all of the enemies attack you in packs with attacks that are barely telegraphed.

 

[Sonygamer455]

Speaking of Yeti's, here's one I can add to the thread.
Yeti Boxing in Spyro Year of the Dragon.

So I played through this game again just recently and while theirs plenty of areas in the game that were a struggle for me, this was the one I struggled with the most. Forget Spike, forget The Sorceress, this was the hardest thing in the entire game for me and apparently, I am not alone on this either. What makes this one hard is the controls are just wonky and the opposing Yeti has a bad case of mind-reading AI and seems to know all your moves before you even make them. I am sure theirs a trick to beating him easily, but he was quite the challenge for me and it's kind of stupid how much harder he is than everything else the game throws at you.

I am speaking for the original when I saw all this though, I haven't played the remake yet, so I don't know what to say about that one.

 

[Sonygamer455]

Spike in Spyro Year of the Dragon.

Yea I know I just mentioned him in my post above, but after fighting him again last night, I forgot just how bad he really was. This guy really held me up when I fought him as a kid and even now he's still a challenge. I decided to fight all the bosses last night just for fun and after playing this one again, I don't even blame my younger self for struggling with it because I lost so many lives trying to defeat him. He's only the second boss in the game, but he is actually harder than all the others, including both times you fight The Sorceress.

So what makes him so hard? Well for starters, you have to aim carefully with those rocks if you expect to hit him and hope his gun doesn't get you in the process. (easier said than done) Once you get past that phase, the powerups make things easier, but he'll then start shooting at you even more and they're harder to dodge as a result. He'll also use the powerups if you don't grab them in time. However, I think my biggest problem with this boss fight is Sgt. Byrd doesn't drop any fodder for you and this is the one fight where you'll need it most. Pretty much, you lose health and you never get the chance to get it back unless you defeat him.

Credit where credit is due though, he was at one point even harder than this during development, but they toned it down a bit. However, while he is doable, he's still harder than he needs to be since he's only the second boss in the game and yet somehow ends up being even harder than all of them for no reason. The fact fodder never spawns during the fight seems like an unfortunate oversight because if it did, it wouldn't be so bad. Again, this is for the original, can't speak for the remake.

 

[Sonygamer455]

The freeze tag mini-game at Gypsy Roads in Spyro Season of Flame.
So pretty late into the game, there is a mini-game on Gypsy Roads and how it goes is you have to chase these 4 fire pixies, which move abnormally fast, and freeze them before the timer runs out. If you freeze one of them and another gets close, they'll be unfrozen and you'll have to chase it down again. If you beat it, you have to play the mini-game again on hard, this time with 5 instead of 4.

Thing is, the fire pixies move so fast, have so much area to run around and unfreeze so easily, it's tremendously harder than any of the mini-games that came before it and in my opinion, harder than anything else in the entire game. Like, forget Crush, forget Gulp and forget Ripto, this is the hardest thing in the game for me. However, the game does have cheat codes that allow you to have all breath types including the powerup breathes and they make the mini-game marginally easier, but it's still not easy either way. Once you beat it, the rest of the game isn't too bad.

Maybe theirs a trick to it I haven't figured out yet, but this mini-game used to frustrate me as a kid and it kept me from beating the game for years. Even now, I still loath at the thought of having to play it again. If my save game gets corrupted, having to play the game again isn't going to frustrate me, it's the thought of having to play this mini-game again that will. I get it's set pretty late into the game, but it's pretty absurd how a mini-game like this somehow manages to be much harder than anything else in the game including the bosses and having to play it twice certainly doesn't help. A challenge as small as this should not be this difficult.

So I posted this years ago and while I totally understand where I was coming from, it turns out I had been misjudging it the entire time! Although I neglected to say it, I thought the Fire Pixies unfroze themselves on their own after a while, and based on what I wrote, I apparently thought the other Fire Pixies had to get close to one another to unfreeze them too. Upon playing it again just yesterday for the first time in many years, I have come to realize, they apparently cannot unfreeze themselves and the only way they can be unfrozen is for another Fire Pixie to directly touch them.

Upon learning of this, I was able to breeze right through both challenges with little issue. Can it get kind of tricky? Yes. Do I consider it to be a difficult spike anymore though? Honestly no, it's not so bad now that I know it better than I did before. Interestingly enough, I had totally forgotten there was another challenge like this in another realm. Funny how things change when you have a better understanding of how it works!

 

[Sonygamer455]

The Crystal Popcorn mini-game on Magma Cone in Spyro 2.

So how this goes is, you compete against Hunter to see who can gather the most crystals within the time limit and you have to grab them once they come up before they disappear again. Not just once, but twice with the 2nd being much harder than the first. Whenever I played through the game for the first time back in May, the first round was tricky but doable, but the 2nd however, I had a lot of trouble with this one. Hunter is just so fast and hard to get ahead of and the fact camera couldn't keep up with my movements no matter what mode it was on didn't help at all.

People talk about the Trolley and Alchemist mini-games being the worst, but me personally, I feel like once you know what to do, they're not so bad. I can't say the same for this one though. This was easily the hardest part of the game for me and even Ripto and the aforementioned mentioned mini-games were easier than this. You know you're doing something wrong when a little mini-game/sidequest is harder than everything else including the final boss. I honestly don't really know how I beat this mini-game other than the fact I just got lucky and I dread playing it again. If anyone knows an easy way, feel free to share because I don't really know one besides just following Hunter, grabbing his before he can, improvising along the way, and hoping I get lucky enough to win.