Deluoode BBS | Steins;Gate Forum

Whether you're more of the masochistic type or just have tougher skin and a more refined palatte than other gamers, there are some of us who enjoy a particularly difficult game, for one reason or another. But what is it about them that brings you that sense of enjoyment amongst the suffering? What would you consider so difficult about a given game? And would you recommend it to others, or would it be too evil to do so?


For my own submission, this would be Peaks of Yore, which I've recently picked back up this weekend. It's a game about climbing mountains! And not just your typical video game mountains, but ones that will have you wondering when you'll get to the top! It's a game that requires learning an interesting way of moving to make some tricky maneuvres, a good bit of endurance for some of the taller peaks, and a lot of patience. You will fall, you will miss jumps, and you will run out of rope far sooner than you had expected. And to top it all off, you will have to start again from the bottom. There are few games that can scratch the very specific urge I have of mastery, and this is one of them. At the top of every climb is a true sense of achievement. You have either learned something new, proven you're a more capable and faster climber, or have conquered a mountain you thought insurmountable. There really is no better feeling than that after a few hours of grit, sweat, and a few emotions along the way: anger, despair, accomplishment, and fear to name a few. But just know that every time you fall, remember to pick yourself back up and go again. It is more than possible, you just may not know it yet.

Easily one of my favourite parts of the game is that you need to explore the cliff faces to get more tools to help you out. You will first start with very little, and this forces you to have to learn to either use what you have to the best of your abilities, or to just steel yourself and take the plunge, figuring out how every scenario can be bested. At the end though, you do get rewarded for journeying off of the main route, but that cannot compensate for any lacking fundamentals, it can merely smooth out the sections that would've just been irritating without the help. This is absolutely a game that I would recommend though! There is a very well thought out onboarding process that, while it may seem slow at first, puts you into positions where the only obstacle to progress and success is yourself. There is also an expansion to the game that I believe is more than worth getting, with a caveat: due to its difficulty, play through the game until you finish the third book. Atop that, I adore the art style and just general premise of it all: Swiss style mountaineering in the 19th century! As a little afterword, there's a game with a similar idea at its core, White Knuckle, that came out (in early access) last year. I have not played it myself, but I am left wondering where they got the idea from!

I've always been drawn to challenging games, I'll contribute my favorite:

Smash Melee: Fighting games in general are hard for a variety of reasons. Smash Melee has all the hardness of other fighting games but with a ridiculous tech skill barrier of entry. And once u learn how to do inputs consistently u now need to play a fighting game. Shit's very challenging and I really enjoy it even tho im shit at it. Again, it can be said in general that fighting games are very hard. Regardless of the game, u need to be able to execute ur tech skill/combos in a constantly changing situation against a thinking opponent who is using all of their defensive options to be able to stop u from doing so. Then there's layers of reads, conditioning, callouts etc that just gets deeper the better u get. I wish the umineko fighting game had a playerbase that shit looks sick.

Starcraft: RTS is a pretty dead genre these days but Broodwar is still alive, especially in Korea. This game just has a million things going on at once, playing at a competent level requires an astronomical amount of speed while also applying strategy against a thinking opponent. Even trying to have perfect macro/resource spending vs no opponent is hard as u expand to more bases and move up the tech tree of whatever race u play. It's a great game but I don't play anymore. Even when I did play I wasn't actually good at the game and just did aggressive all in builds to try to end the game early which removes the hardest aspects of the game such as lategame macro and movement of maxed out armies. Really sick game its just not fun enough for me to sink my time into trying to get decent at, I was much better at SC2. I still watch pro starcraft its an amazing spectator esport.

I'm down to play either if anybody wants to, although im a handless monkey at broodwar (and smash too but I can at least feel like im playing that game lol)

Steve wrote: Mon Sep 07, 2026 4:13 pm

Starcraft: RTS is a pretty dead genre these days but Broodwar is still alive, especially in Korea. This game just has a million things going on at once, playing at a competent level requires an astronomical amount of speed while also applying strategy against a thinking opponent. Even trying to have perfect macro/resource spending vs no opponent is hard as u expand to more bases and move up the tech tree of whatever race u play. It's a great game but I don't play anymore. Even when I did play I wasn't actually good at the game and just did aggressive all in builds to try to end the game early which removes the hardest aspects of the game such as lategame macro and movement of maxed out armies. Really sick game its just not fun enough for me to sink my time into trying to get decent at, I was much better at SC2. I still watch pro starcraft its an amazing spectator esport.

I'm down to play either if anybody wants to, although im a handless monkey at broodwar (and smash too but I can at least feel like im playing that game lol)

I love love love watching pro Brood War (and Warcraft III too for that matter) and would love to play online. Though I'm already pretty bad at Warcraft III, so the game that it dumbed down might be even more demanding lmao. Maybe I should start with SC2, even though Brood War is infinitely more charming on an aesthetic level IMO. When it comes to competitive games, it's definitely hard to top Brood War.

I keep tabs on games I play and these are ones I've noted as being especially hard:

Master of Magic (1994): Amazing turn-based strategy game from back in the day. It's a lot like Civilization, but everyone is a wizard with magic spells. However, it's completely bugfuck insane impossibly hard. I get stomped even on the easiest difficulty. But then again I've never been great at these games.

Riven (1997): One of the most cryptic and difficult point-and-clicks I've ever played. I managed to beat it with the help of two friends, but it was not easy. One ridiculous puzzle relating to a number of pillars with animals on them is one of the most insanely obtuse and difficult puzzles I've ever seen in one of these. At the same time, it's probably my favorite point-and-click I've ever played (so far at least). It has an amazing atmosphere like nothing else and the environmental storytelling is second to none.

Money Puzzle Exchanger (1997): Batshit intense puzzle game. Anyone who can survive very long after level 19 is a genius.

Touhou Yumejikuu ~ the Phantasmagoria of Dim.Dream (1997): The apex of raw, random speed dodging ability. Lunatic in this puts hair on your chest and if you 1cc it you deserve a blowjob with Reimu on your dickhead and Marisa sucking your balls.

Ketsui ~Kizuna Jigoku-tachi~ (2003): Cave games are infamous for their difficulty. The hardest achievement I probably have in one is a 1cc of ESP.Ra.De, but the real crazy difficulty comes in the games with TLBs and 2nd loops. The Ura loop of Ketsui is infamous. Everyone knows the "hardest boss ever" from Mushihimesama, but the requirements it takes to unlock the Ura loop in Ketsui are maybe even more demanding: Beat the first loop without dying or bombing once and getting a score over 120 million (already the kind of shit that marks you as one of the chosen), THEN play a harder version of the first loop just to get to the TLB which is a devious set of patterns (end of this video). To think that there were some superhumans in the arcades back in the day who were able to do this with NO SAVE STATES OR CONSOLE PORTS TO PRACTICE WITH is mind-boggling.

osu! (2007): I can't play rhythm games. All of them are black magic to me. Any of them could go here.

Touhou Seirensen ~ Undefined Fantastic Object (2009): I'm trying to Lunatic 1cc this right now and I now know why it has all the Buddhist imagery... nothing reminds you more of the endless cycle of being trapped in the evils of samsara than constantly resetting after you die on Kogasa over and over and over again.

Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup: the most polished roguelike (not roguelite) I know of. Unlike Nethack and co., when you die, it's almost always your fault for having been overconfident. Can be played online!

CPMA in CQ3 mode (nearest thing to QuakeLive): still the king of competitive FPS, never surpassed and I bet my money it'll never be. Good luck finding people to play a LAN with, though.

I've played through a handful of hard games. Hotline Miami, Blood: Fresh Supply, the Dark Souls trilogy. But no other game has been as hard as Ninja Gaiden. Specifically Ninja Gaiden Sigma. Anything and everything will kill you near instantly if you don't learn the games mechanics well. The bosses are actually easier then a majority of the basic enemy types. And the placement of them in the levels can be down right evil. Every time you leave a area or load a save the enemies respawn. And there's a save point that you can get trapped in. It's a small little cut out by this road. Whenever you load back in, you're immediately jumped by a group of Black Spider Ninjas. These evil bastards are insanely fast, can stun lock you, can set you on fire, and even suicide bomb you. If you don't start moving right when you spawn. You die. And to make matters worse, they can trap you in the little cut out where the save point is. AND better yet! There's another group of them on either side of the path waiting to ambush you!!! (This normal enemy type killed me more the all of the bosses COMBINED!) I had never made it so far into a game and heavily considered just dropping it right then and there. I can't even count the amount of times I died in that one spot. But thankfully, I managed to tough through it and "git gud". And I'm glad I did, because despite it's difficulty. It was a absolute blast! Everything about it is just so cool, and its combat is very satisfying and rewarding.

truuu ninja gaiden is notorious, good shout

Finally getting round to properly reading all of these so far, and there's a good amount of games in this already! If there's anything I need to take away from all this is that I probably ought to play some games from before my time. The spread of genres too is really quite impressive; I would never have thought of a point-and-click or puzzle game to suggest prior to now, and singling out a single roguelike, rather than the genre as a whole, must suggest there's some merit behind the decision. I am left wondering if there's a particularly hard city-building game though... Maybe we'll stumble upon it someday!

I beat Mairo & Luigi Superstar Saga, great game. But the last boss was really unnecessarily hard.

rileymross wrote: Sun Sep 20, 2026 8:52 pm

I beat Mairo & Luigi Superstar Saga, great game. But the last boss was really unnecessarily hard.

I played this around two years ago. Agreed, random difficulty spike out of nowhere only to make the final boss more tedius. I've always enjoyed the Mario RPGs... well, the good ones at least ;-)

Time trial of a Mario Kart World track in Mario Kart Wii that I put a few hours into. Very visually appealing/exciting run which is why I'm sharing it here, a blast to drive as well.