I'm not sure if I was able to beat Andross on the final level of Star Fox 64. I have a memory of a cutscene, but it's just as likely that I was watching my older brother or one of his friends.
A few months ago I found our old 64 and a bunch of games. Cleaned it up, bought some cables and I before I knew it I was getting my ass handed to me by Andross once again. It was perfect.
I know it's not mechanically impressive or incredibly difficult, but I kind of enjoy the fact that I haven't been able to beat him myself. It's like being able to hold onto a piece of my childhood even as I grow older. No matter what happens, Andross will be there to talk shit about my father and kick my ass.
I remember being completely stuck in Skate 2 on a mission where you just needed to reach a certain score and do a couple harder tricks in an indoor halfpipe. I could never get the tricks to land and I eventually gave up after a couple hours of attempts lol.
That and the big monkey boss in Sekiro. Parrying has never been one of my strong skills in other From Soft games and that boss kicked my shit in before I could even react.
I think it was Sonic the Hedgehog 2's Casino Night Zone. There was a bouncy object that you needed to get low enough to squeeze by (or that is what 6 year old me decided). A friend and I must have played that level about 200 times and managed to glitch it one time to get through. We couldn't believe it or replicate it but we were through! Fast forward a week and my 4 year old cousin comes over and wants to play. HE DELETES THE SAVE FILE!!! I never gotten past it again!
Man, I had a couple buddies in high school who were deep into the GT games, and would unlock every single thing you could, and then replay it just for fun. It only took me watching them play a couple of times and seeing the amount of detail and finesse involved to realize it was not something I would find enjoyable to play in the slightest, haha.
For me, the firs one that comes to mind is beating Gannon in the second Zelda game on NES. Hot damn, the amount of times my brother tried to beat it I don't even want to recall. The fact that there's no saving in that game and you start from scratch after the third death made it all the more frustrating...sigh
I enjoyed the game, despite the game, which is probably why I didn't feel compelled to fully beat it. The mechanics were a lot of fun - but the storyline was a little wackier than I tend to like - so as a result I didn't feel a compulsion to see "me" beat it, and was content to just watch some cutscenes on YouTube.
Still, the mechanics to control two characters at once were neat, if not a little fiddly. Would love to see another entry in the series.
Ace Combat 7's elevator climb. It's the last thing you do too. It's just as tight as the tunnel run right before it (maybe a bit tighter, either way there isn't much margin even for the smaller aircrafts) but vertical this time, and there's, well, elevators also ready to collect you, at least they're immobile.
I did it once. And completely by chance and can't do it again.
There's also any light gun segment in any Yakuza to a lesser degree, I'm on PS4 so I can't point'n'click.
This is going to sound silly, but Flowey from Undertale. I don't have the best manual dexterity or hand-eye coordination and Flowey was too hard for me to beat. I had to have my husband do it for me.
The underwater level of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for the NES. The only time I remember getting past it was at a friend's house during a sleepover. After defusing the last bomb, we spent a few minutes taken completely aback, we weren't planning on having to actually play through level 3 and beyond.
For some reason I just was garage at the combat in Mirror's Edge. I remember coming across one really annoying dude I spend the whole day fighting. I was so close to the end that I didn't mind it. A few rooms further and there were 2 of them.. I probably could beat it more easily now but haven't found the time for it yet.
I hacked and slashed through all the warriors just for that stupid magician to come down into the arena and one shot me with his magic. I tried blocking, I tried rolling, I tried jumping, but could never get the timing right. It did not help that you had to start over from the beginning every time. I have seen videos on it now, but I never bothered going back.
There was a game called Titus the Fox in the 90s that I couldn't figure out at all. I think I couldn't even get to the 2nd level, and as an avid player of other side scrollers like Prehistorik and Lion King, this was really frustrating.
Not sure if it counts, but Fallout 2 would bug out right before the final scene. I ended up watching it on YouTube.
On a slightly different note, INFRA was great, but gave me so much motion sickness that I could never finish. :(
Ansem in Kingdom Hearts I, final battle. Could not complete that, and I spent months trying to beat it.
Turns out, if you skip Monstro (Pinochio's world) and move onto the other worlds, eventually Monstro doesn't become a world you can land on again as it gets swallowed by darkness iirc. The problem with this is that Monstro is where you learn the ability to high jump, and to defeat Ansem int he final battle he is about 1.5 times off the ground and it requires you to have high jump. There is no way to defeat him without it. I believe this was patched in the re-releases. Drove me absolutely nuts for years that I never defeated him and finished the game.
I remember those awful GT2 license tests. Everything fun about that game was locked behind the license tests as well. The tests didn’t allow you to collide with walls in the slightest.
I remember it would send you down Leguna Seca. There was also a part with a Dodge Viper and that car would constantly spin out.
But if you cleared them all you could do the rally car races which unlocked the best car in the game.
I do remember it had a used RX-7 which could carry you through most of the early game, then the Skyline which could handle most of the rest. They were cheap to upgrade, had a large upgrade pool, and handled great.
I used to spend nearly all my time playing DJ Max Portable 1 and 2, and I was pretty dang good at it. Pentavision had a (rarely used) online competitive leaderboard, of which I was a regular. However, there was one mission in Mission Mode that I just could not beat. In Mission 69 (did they do that intentionally?) the UI moves around left and right on the screen randomly, and you can only break 35 times while playing some of the toughest songs in the game. I could manage everything except the last song, Nightmare. The combination of the fast BPM, insane amount of notes, and the UI bouncing back and forth makes my eyes cross and I get instantaneously nauseous. Not to mention the hand cramping after trying it multiple times in a row. It shocks me knowing there are people who can actually do it.
The one the sticks out most in my mind is the whole sequence of fights at the end of Metal Gear Solid. I was just a kid and to defeat REX took months in its self, then I had to fight Liquid... that probably took me longer than the REX fight.
I did eventually get through it, with the patience only a kid from the 90s, with about 4 different games total, has.
A sort of low intensity hindrance, but I was intent on clearing the 2016 Mad Max game to 100% because the car-to-car battles between points of interest made even the more mundane tasks fun just for the trip there, but the designers made the mistake of making the game much easier as you progress through it: when you have cleared enough fortresses and shanty towns, road patrols and roaming bandits become much less common, all while your car becomes more powerful as you upgrade it. So by the end of the main quest it's just too boring for me to spend considerable time on.
I very nearly gave up on Elasto Mania because some of the later levels were incredibly difficult for me. But in that case I persevered because they challenge your skill more than your tolerance for the mundane and boring.
The one that still sticks out to me was the final battle in FFVII. My party was underleveled and I ended up with a glitch where I dropped a save point next to a ladder so I couldn't leave to grind out a few levels/restock items.
DK64 is one of my favorite games of all time. It requires you to beat four levels of original-style Donkey Kong to reach the final boss. I have never fought the final boss.
Persona 5 Royal, Okumura boss fight. I tried it like 15 times and got destroyed every single time. Even with recommend setup I just couldn't deal enough damage in 2 turns to get past green robots.
So I just cheesed it with endgame personas, no regrets.
IIRC there was some snowy mission where you had to do a jump at a specific spot. I did get past it but it took way too many tries. Then there was some mission in a shipyard or container port and you need to follow a guy around without being detected... I just gave up after several tries. I figured that I'd just get stuck somewhere else again.
Speaking more broadly, stealth mechanics will often have me quit or just not buy a game.
Typical answer, Ocarina of Time's Water Dungeon... But it wasn't even that I had trouble getting past it - I started OoT, played through the Water Dungeon, and beat Morpha, then put the game down on TWO SEPARATE OCCASIONS. Years apart!
I eventually got so tired of having done that twice that I found a save online that was right after the level, but then it wouldn't load in BizHawk. So I opened HxD, experimented with how the actual save data fits into different emulator header files, and eventually got it to load from right before the Kakariko cutscene and finally beat it. (I also then got kind of burnt out by the tower, so I learned how to do Tower Skip and have never actually played through it...) Love the ending to that game, but man does it have some down sections.
Baldur's Gate 1 - back in the day I made it to thelast boss, but him and his aides and room full of traps was really too.much for my party. Never finished the game. I plan to though. Strangely, I have finished BG2 without problems, piece o cake I would even say.
I gave up everytime on Morrowind's main quest. The game is so big it ain't needed to pursue some higher good and you still have many many many things to do.
I had to restart Star Wars Knight of the Old Republic 2 once because my firat character was too weak to bea final boss (you go 1 on 1) - bad build from my side. That was kinda pain, as the game is like 50+ hours, not 10 like other or many modern games.
I couldn't beat Yunalesca in Final Fantasy X back in the days. It is three-stage late game boss and the third stage always wiped the floor with me. I was rushing through the game because of the great story (the best I have ever experienced in any game) and I came in underpowered. I have beaten her in 2017 when I came into he fight fully prepared and actually wiped the floor with her :-D Did overkill for around 40 000 damage (she had 60 000 in her final form I believe).
I almost gave up in Earthlock where you have to fight some guardian boss. I didn't pay that much attention to all the mechanicsof the game and I couldn't bruteforce my way though this boss... Eventually read up on it and beaten it. Final boss was ok if I recall correctly.
My first playthrough of Witcher 3 was (because of my friend's suggestion) on Death march (highest) difficulty with enemies auto-leveling with me (so even the easiest enemy from the start of the game can kill you in a few hits even in late game). I got stuck in a fight with a few rats. RATS! They bite for around 1/4 of your health, are almost invisible (small) and hard to target and there was like eight of them in a small room you had to clean. I switched auto-leveling off for this fight and I don't feel any shame in doing so.
There are probably many more games that I can't remember right now.
The final bosses of both the Batman game and Ninja Gaiden game for NES. They were very similar in that they had obnoxiously long and tough levels to get through and then you had to fight back to back difficult bosses. The Batman game had you go up a shitty vertical clocktower and fight Firefly who could two hit kill you and then you immediately had to fight the Joker. Ninja Gaiden had an equally difficult stage to get through which tons of flying enemies that were difficult to predict and would knock you into open pits, then you had to fight the bosses with whatever lives, health, and whatever the ninja power ammo/mana was called. I was generally good at "Nintendo hard" games and beat many other kids couldn't, but these games I could never beat.
The White Palace in Hollow Knight. Not the Path of Pain or whatever, the level itself. Can't do it. There's one part in particular with sawblades moving up and down and you have to walk through it with perfect timing. Even with all the charms that make it "easy" I just can't do it.
The (I believe) final fight in Call of Juarez 1 or 2 (I forget). It's a box canyon where you are surrounded by what seems like an endless amount of enemies and zero cover where they are at differing levels of surrounding cliffs. I can get 6 or 7 of them before dying. I tried it so many times before giving up and moving on to the next game. I've had many of these over the years but this one stands out as the most impossible for me.
Zelda bosses really, really stress me out. Not one in particular, all of them. I don't work well under time pressure; I get frustrated not being able to figure out the specific 'boss' mechanic under that pressure; and even if I'm able to make some progress, the 'a-ha! Part-2' boss makes me feel demoralized.
But I love all the others aspects of the games! I loved exploring in botw and just ignored the main story line. In totk, I'm getting my partner to fight the bosses for me.
Frostpunk - Survivor difficulty - New World scenario. I just couldn't figure out the right combo for keeping settlers warm, fed, healthy, and upgrade tech all at the same time. I actually had to quit after 3 solid days of retrying because I was getting irritated more than having fun.
You know the part in Deus Ex Human Revolution with the electric lady and theres water on the floor? Got to that point, couldn't beat her and just stopped playing. Sure there was something I missed but I just uninstalled the game and moved on.
It was a game for a teenage criminal investigator group called TKKG.
You have to solve a crime in a point and click game, but me and my friend always got stuck at the same point (this was back then, when the thought to just search for the solution online never crossed our minds). There was a vicious dog chained on the stairs leading to a boathouse and he wouldn't let us through.
My friend went on vacation in the mountains in a foreign country and apparently met a german family, where the kid also played this game. According to him, you have to find a dog cake, to calm the dog down. We sadly could never find it....
Your story reminds me of the Death Stranding update that added a new car (in a game with only 3 vehicles), but locked it behind completing a racetrack with a perfect time. I spent hours trying to do it, but never even came close to the needed time. Particually frustrating when the rest of the game very rarely required any kind of speed.
The recent one for me has been the Radagon and Elden Beast in Elden Ring. Man, I loathe Radagon at this point. Getting this far in the game has been a huge gamer moment for me and I really want to finish it.
The Grant ending for Jurassic Park for Sega Genesis. Just could not figure it out! Looking back, I don't know how they expected kids to decipher the correct solution algorithm, especially since you only minimally interacted with the 2d environment to begin with.
I think I've only beaten 1/6 of the Gold Box D&D games I've played despite spending quite a lot of time on them.
Pool of Radiance: pretty sure I ended up charming the final boss and thought the game glitched out after that battle preventing me from continuing, but maybe I just didn't find what to do next.
Curse of the Azure Bonds: got pretty far, but don't believe I finished it for some reason.
Secret of the Silver Blades: same.
Pools of Darkness: same, but with ridiculous fights because everything's high level.
Gateway to the Savage Frontier: this one I completed!
Treasures of the Savage Frontier: didn't fully figure out the mechanics of the crystals/papers to discover the end plot.
Maybe it's time to revisit them with guides as necessary...
I always fail to overcome puzzles that require long term memory or moon logic. In essence, puzzles that require way more than logic. Which is almost every puzzle game.
I can understand why they would use memory as a source of difficulty, but moon logic pisses me off.
The final boss in Shovel Knight. I tried so many times, and I couldn't keep coming back to it, only to remember the level and try and fail again. I get the point of video games, but it stopped being fun for me. I own a plague night shirt and cosplay as a person that's beaten the game and played again. I'm a big fat phoney.
First level of the Lilo and Stitch GBA game. I couldn't get past this claw that would come down to grab at you, with you shooting at it when it would rise back up. Years later as a teen or adult I tried again, finally got past it, and found out there was more to the level. Between that and Frogger (which I also couldn't get past the first level), I was convinced for years that I just sucked at "level games".
Meanwhile, one I actually DID overcome eventually: Salamence in the original Pokémon Ranger. The game works by drawing loops around Pokémon to catch them. If they touch the loop, attack the loop or you lift your stylus, the loop breaks and you have to start over completely. Salamence needed something like 18 loops, and it moved a LOT. Usually you could have a partner Pokémon use some assist skill, like paralyzing them or making loops double-power, but with Salamence you could only use your Plusle/Minun, and it was immune to them.
It took months for me to beat it, not helped by the fact I'd get rusty between attempts since I could only face Salamence and thus couldn't practice on others. And knowing you can only do a match you're near-guaranteed to fail is bad for morale. One day I entered a sort of zen-like state and finally captured it, and was just so damned relieved. I don't remember any other challenge from that game, but Salamence is the reason I can never replay Pokémon Ranger on a new save file.
The final boss level in Helltaker. It suddenly went from "Slow paced thinky puzzle game" to "High speed twitchy trap dodging" for just one level, and reaction times are not my strong suit.
Some of the early action-RPG mix games had a mechanic that ultimately led me to never completing the game. Basically, when you're able to switch between characters and the game basically forces you to switch between them, especially in battle... that mechanic drives me crazy.There's an old set of Spyro the Dragon games where he ultimately teams up with another dragon, and I was never able to finish it because of the switching. In a similar situation, I've never finished Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch because I couldn't get the "switch between characters" thing figured out.
I despise looting or games that make you have to break immersion so that you’re looking in nooks and crannies for stuff for side quests unlocks. Spamming “E” going room-to-room while the dialogue is stuck in a loop, “Hurry! Help me open this jammed door!”, just doesn’t make for an enjoyable experience for me.
I had to google "dark souls 3 hard boss" to remember the name, and it spared no time in its answer: "This list has been updated to include some more of the hardest DS3 bosses.
1 Nameless King.
..."
An optional boss in an area near the end of the game. I tried it a few times and I was just not doing enough damage compared to the amount of work for it to seem possible. Even after beating the game I figure it wasn't something I wanted to spend enough time on. Even Malenia from Elden Ring I managed to beat, but Nameless King I resigned to being beat by.
I'm not sure if I was able to beat Andross on the final level of Star Fox 64. I have a memory of a cutscene, but it's just as likely that I was watching my older brother or one of his friends.
A few months ago I found our old 64 and a bunch of games. Cleaned it up, bought some cables and I before I knew it I was getting my ass handed to me by Andross once again. It was perfect.
I know it's not mechanically impressive or incredibly difficult, but I kind of enjoy the fact that I haven't been able to beat him myself. It's like being able to hold onto a piece of my childhood even as I grow older. No matter what happens, Andross will be there to talk shit about my father and kick my ass.
I remember being completely stuck in Skate 2 on a mission where you just needed to reach a certain score and do a couple harder tricks in an indoor halfpipe. I could never get the tricks to land and I eventually gave up after a couple hours of attempts lol.
That and the big monkey boss in Sekiro. Parrying has never been one of my strong skills in other From Soft games and that boss kicked my shit in before I could even react.
I think it was Sonic the Hedgehog 2's Casino Night Zone. There was a bouncy object that you needed to get low enough to squeeze by (or that is what 6 year old me decided). A friend and I must have played that level about 200 times and managed to glitch it one time to get through. We couldn't believe it or replicate it but we were through! Fast forward a week and my 4 year old cousin comes over and wants to play. HE DELETES THE SAVE FILE!!! I never gotten past it again!
Landing the jet on the aircraft carrier in Top Gun
Beating the snake level on Battletoads, probably attempted it a 100 times.
Lion King - level 2. The swinging monkeys level
Man, I had a couple buddies in high school who were deep into the GT games, and would unlock every single thing you could, and then replay it just for fun. It only took me watching them play a couple of times and seeing the amount of detail and finesse involved to realize it was not something I would find enjoyable to play in the slightest, haha.
For me, the firs one that comes to mind is beating Gannon in the second Zelda game on NES. Hot damn, the amount of times my brother tried to beat it I don't even want to recall. The fact that there's no saving in that game and you start from scratch after the third death made it all the more frustrating...sigh
Astral Chain, the final boss.
I enjoyed the game, despite the game, which is probably why I didn't feel compelled to fully beat it. The mechanics were a lot of fun - but the storyline was a little wackier than I tend to like - so as a result I didn't feel a compulsion to see "me" beat it, and was content to just watch some cutscenes on YouTube.
Still, the mechanics to control two characters at once were neat, if not a little fiddly. Would love to see another entry in the series.
Ace Combat 7's elevator climb. It's the last thing you do too. It's just as tight as the tunnel run right before it (maybe a bit tighter, either way there isn't much margin even for the smaller aircrafts) but vertical this time, and there's, well, elevators also ready to collect you, at least they're immobile.
I did it once. And completely by chance and can't do it again.
There's also any light gun segment in any Yakuza to a lesser degree, I'm on PS4 so I can't point'n'click.
This is going to sound silly, but Flowey from Undertale. I don't have the best manual dexterity or hand-eye coordination and Flowey was too hard for me to beat. I had to have my husband do it for me.
The underwater level of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for the NES. The only time I remember getting past it was at a friend's house during a sleepover. After defusing the last bomb, we spent a few minutes taken completely aback, we weren't planning on having to actually play through level 3 and beyond.
For some reason I just was garage at the combat in Mirror's Edge. I remember coming across one really annoying dude I spend the whole day fighting. I was so close to the end that I didn't mind it. A few rooms further and there were 2 of them.. I probably could beat it more easily now but haven't found the time for it yet.
The final boss in Barbarian for Amiga 500.
I hacked and slashed through all the warriors just for that stupid magician to come down into the arena and one shot me with his magic. I tried blocking, I tried rolling, I tried jumping, but could never get the timing right. It did not help that you had to start over from the beginning every time. I have seen videos on it now, but I never bothered going back.
There was a game called Titus the Fox in the 90s that I couldn't figure out at all. I think I couldn't even get to the 2nd level, and as an avid player of other side scrollers like Prehistorik and Lion King, this was really frustrating.
Not sure if it counts, but Fallout 2 would bug out right before the final scene. I ended up watching it on YouTube.
On a slightly different note, INFRA was great, but gave me so much motion sickness that I could never finish. :(
Ansem in Kingdom Hearts I, final battle. Could not complete that, and I spent months trying to beat it.
Turns out, if you skip Monstro (Pinochio's world) and move onto the other worlds, eventually Monstro doesn't become a world you can land on again as it gets swallowed by darkness iirc. The problem with this is that Monstro is where you learn the ability to high jump, and to defeat Ansem int he final battle he is about 1.5 times off the ground and it requires you to have high jump. There is no way to defeat him without it. I believe this was patched in the re-releases. Drove me absolutely nuts for years that I never defeated him and finished the game.
I remember those awful GT2 license tests. Everything fun about that game was locked behind the license tests as well. The tests didn’t allow you to collide with walls in the slightest.
I remember it would send you down Leguna Seca. There was also a part with a Dodge Viper and that car would constantly spin out.
But if you cleared them all you could do the rally car races which unlocked the best car in the game.
I do remember it had a used RX-7 which could carry you through most of the early game, then the Skyline which could handle most of the rest. They were cheap to upgrade, had a large upgrade pool, and handled great.
7c in Celeste, just too many perfect dashes, jumps and grabs.
I used to spend nearly all my time playing DJ Max Portable 1 and 2, and I was pretty dang good at it. Pentavision had a (rarely used) online competitive leaderboard, of which I was a regular. However, there was one mission in Mission Mode that I just could not beat. In Mission 69 (did they do that intentionally?) the UI moves around left and right on the screen randomly, and you can only break 35 times while playing some of the toughest songs in the game. I could manage everything except the last song, Nightmare. The combination of the fast BPM, insane amount of notes, and the UI bouncing back and forth makes my eyes cross and I get instantaneously nauseous. Not to mention the hand cramping after trying it multiple times in a row. It shocks me knowing there are people who can actually do it.
DJ Max Portable 2 - HeLLord
The one the sticks out most in my mind is the whole sequence of fights at the end of Metal Gear Solid. I was just a kid and to defeat REX took months in its self, then I had to fight Liquid... that probably took me longer than the REX fight.
I did eventually get through it, with the patience only a kid from the 90s, with about 4 different games total, has.
A sort of low intensity hindrance, but I was intent on clearing the 2016 Mad Max game to 100% because the car-to-car battles between points of interest made even the more mundane tasks fun just for the trip there, but the designers made the mistake of making the game much easier as you progress through it: when you have cleared enough fortresses and shanty towns, road patrols and roaming bandits become much less common, all while your car becomes more powerful as you upgrade it. So by the end of the main quest it's just too boring for me to spend considerable time on.
I very nearly gave up on Elasto Mania because some of the later levels were incredibly difficult for me. But in that case I persevered because they challenge your skill more than your tolerance for the mundane and boring.
The one that still sticks out to me was the final battle in FFVII. My party was underleveled and I ended up with a glitch where I dropped a save point next to a ladder so I couldn't leave to grind out a few levels/restock items.
Just very recently I couldn't progress beyond the tutorial helicopter boss on Armoured Core 6: Fires Of Rubicon
I spent hours failing on that. Ended up selling the game, good job I bought it on physical.
DK64 is one of my favorite games of all time. It requires you to beat four levels of original-style Donkey Kong to reach the final boss. I have never fought the final boss.
Persona 5 Royal, Okumura boss fight. I tried it like 15 times and got destroyed every single time. Even with recommend setup I just couldn't deal enough damage in 2 turns to get past green robots.
So I just cheesed it with endgame personas, no regrets.
COD Black Ops.
IIRC there was some snowy mission where you had to do a jump at a specific spot. I did get past it but it took way too many tries. Then there was some mission in a shipyard or container port and you need to follow a guy around without being detected... I just gave up after several tries. I figured that I'd just get stuck somewhere else again.
Speaking more broadly, stealth mechanics will often have me quit or just not buy a game.
Typical answer, Ocarina of Time's Water Dungeon... But it wasn't even that I had trouble getting past it - I started OoT, played through the Water Dungeon, and beat Morpha, then put the game down on TWO SEPARATE OCCASIONS. Years apart!
I eventually got so tired of having done that twice that I found a save online that was right after the level, but then it wouldn't load in BizHawk. So I opened HxD, experimented with how the actual save data fits into different emulator header files, and eventually got it to load from right before the Kakariko cutscene and finally beat it. (I also then got kind of burnt out by the tower, so I learned how to do Tower Skip and have never actually played through it...) Love the ending to that game, but man does it have some down sections.
Where should I even start? :-)
Baldur's Gate 1 - back in the day I made it to thelast boss, but him and his aides and room full of traps was really too.much for my party. Never finished the game. I plan to though. Strangely, I have finished BG2 without problems, piece o cake I would even say.
I gave up everytime on Morrowind's main quest. The game is so big it ain't needed to pursue some higher good and you still have many many many things to do.
I had to restart Star Wars Knight of the Old Republic 2 once because my firat character was too weak to bea final boss (you go 1 on 1) - bad build from my side. That was kinda pain, as the game is like 50+ hours, not 10 like other or many modern games.
I couldn't beat Yunalesca in Final Fantasy X back in the days. It is three-stage late game boss and the third stage always wiped the floor with me. I was rushing through the game because of the great story (the best I have ever experienced in any game) and I came in underpowered. I have beaten her in 2017 when I came into he fight fully prepared and actually wiped the floor with her :-D Did overkill for around 40 000 damage (she had 60 000 in her final form I believe).
I almost gave up in Earthlock where you have to fight some guardian boss. I didn't pay that much attention to all the mechanicsof the game and I couldn't bruteforce my way though this boss... Eventually read up on it and beaten it. Final boss was ok if I recall correctly.
My first playthrough of Witcher 3 was (because of my friend's suggestion) on Death march (highest) difficulty with enemies auto-leveling with me (so even the easiest enemy from the start of the game can kill you in a few hits even in late game). I got stuck in a fight with a few rats. RATS! They bite for around 1/4 of your health, are almost invisible (small) and hard to target and there was like eight of them in a small room you had to clean. I switched auto-leveling off for this fight and I don't feel any shame in doing so.
There are probably many more games that I can't remember right now.
The final bosses of both the Batman game and Ninja Gaiden game for NES. They were very similar in that they had obnoxiously long and tough levels to get through and then you had to fight back to back difficult bosses. The Batman game had you go up a shitty vertical clocktower and fight Firefly who could two hit kill you and then you immediately had to fight the Joker. Ninja Gaiden had an equally difficult stage to get through which tons of flying enemies that were difficult to predict and would knock you into open pits, then you had to fight the bosses with whatever lives, health, and whatever the ninja power ammo/mana was called. I was generally good at "Nintendo hard" games and beat many other kids couldn't, but these games I could never beat.
The White Palace in Hollow Knight. Not the Path of Pain or whatever, the level itself. Can't do it. There's one part in particular with sawblades moving up and down and you have to walk through it with perfect timing. Even with all the charms that make it "easy" I just can't do it.
The (I believe) final fight in Call of Juarez 1 or 2 (I forget). It's a box canyon where you are surrounded by what seems like an endless amount of enemies and zero cover where they are at differing levels of surrounding cliffs. I can get 6 or 7 of them before dying. I tried it so many times before giving up and moving on to the next game. I've had many of these over the years but this one stands out as the most impossible for me.
Zelda bosses really, really stress me out. Not one in particular, all of them. I don't work well under time pressure; I get frustrated not being able to figure out the specific 'boss' mechanic under that pressure; and even if I'm able to make some progress, the 'a-ha! Part-2' boss makes me feel demoralized.
But I love all the others aspects of the games! I loved exploring in botw and just ignored the main story line. In totk, I'm getting my partner to fight the bosses for me.
Frostpunk - Survivor difficulty - New World scenario. I just couldn't figure out the right combo for keeping settlers warm, fed, healthy, and upgrade tech all at the same time. I actually had to quit after 3 solid days of retrying because I was getting irritated more than having fun.
You know the part in Deus Ex Human Revolution with the electric lady and theres water on the floor? Got to that point, couldn't beat her and just stopped playing. Sure there was something I missed but I just uninstalled the game and moved on.
It was a game for a teenage criminal investigator group called TKKG.
You have to solve a crime in a point and click game, but me and my friend always got stuck at the same point (this was back then, when the thought to just search for the solution online never crossed our minds). There was a vicious dog chained on the stairs leading to a boathouse and he wouldn't let us through.
My friend went on vacation in the mountains in a foreign country and apparently met a german family, where the kid also played this game. According to him, you have to find a dog cake, to calm the dog down. We sadly could never find it....
Your story reminds me of the Death Stranding update that added a new car (in a game with only 3 vehicles), but locked it behind completing a racetrack with a perfect time. I spent hours trying to do it, but never even came close to the needed time. Particually frustrating when the rest of the game very rarely required any kind of speed.
The recent one for me has been the Radagon and Elden Beast in Elden Ring. Man, I loathe Radagon at this point. Getting this far in the game has been a huge gamer moment for me and I really want to finish it.
The Grant ending for Jurassic Park for Sega Genesis. Just could not figure it out! Looking back, I don't know how they expected kids to decipher the correct solution algorithm, especially since you only minimally interacted with the 2d environment to begin with.
I think I've only beaten 1/6 of the Gold Box D&D games I've played despite spending quite a lot of time on them.
Maybe it's time to revisit them with guides as necessary...
I always fail to overcome puzzles that require long term memory or moon logic. In essence, puzzles that require way more than logic. Which is almost every puzzle game.
I can understand why they would use memory as a source of difficulty, but moon logic pisses me off.
The final boss in Shovel Knight. I tried so many times, and I couldn't keep coming back to it, only to remember the level and try and fail again. I get the point of video games, but it stopped being fun for me. I own a plague night shirt and cosplay as a person that's beaten the game and played again. I'm a big fat phoney.
First level of the Lilo and Stitch GBA game. I couldn't get past this claw that would come down to grab at you, with you shooting at it when it would rise back up. Years later as a teen or adult I tried again, finally got past it, and found out there was more to the level. Between that and Frogger (which I also couldn't get past the first level), I was convinced for years that I just sucked at "level games".
Meanwhile, one I actually DID overcome eventually: Salamence in the original Pokémon Ranger. The game works by drawing loops around Pokémon to catch them. If they touch the loop, attack the loop or you lift your stylus, the loop breaks and you have to start over completely. Salamence needed something like 18 loops, and it moved a LOT. Usually you could have a partner Pokémon use some assist skill, like paralyzing them or making loops double-power, but with Salamence you could only use your Plusle/Minun, and it was immune to them.
It took months for me to beat it, not helped by the fact I'd get rusty between attempts since I could only face Salamence and thus couldn't practice on others. And knowing you can only do a match you're near-guaranteed to fail is bad for morale. One day I entered a sort of zen-like state and finally captured it, and was just so damned relieved. I don't remember any other challenge from that game, but Salamence is the reason I can never replay Pokémon Ranger on a new save file.
The final boss level in Helltaker. It suddenly went from "Slow paced thinky puzzle game" to "High speed twitchy trap dodging" for just one level, and reaction times are not my strong suit.
Some of the early action-RPG mix games had a mechanic that ultimately led me to never completing the game. Basically, when you're able to switch between characters and the game basically forces you to switch between them, especially in battle... that mechanic drives me crazy.There's an old set of Spyro the Dragon games where he ultimately teams up with another dragon, and I was never able to finish it because of the switching. In a similar situation, I've never finished Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch because I couldn't get the "switch between characters" thing figured out.
I despise looting or games that make you have to break immersion so that you’re looking in nooks and crannies for stuff for side quests unlocks. Spamming “E” going room-to-room while the dialogue is stuck in a loop, “Hurry! Help me open this jammed door!”, just doesn’t make for an enjoyable experience for me.
The goddamn bats in level 2-2 and 3-2 of Ninja Gaiden. Those devs definitely know how to fuck up your cadence.
Nameless King from Dark Souls 3
I had to google "dark souls 3 hard boss" to remember the name, and it spared no time in its answer: "This list has been updated to include some more of the hardest DS3 bosses.
1 Nameless King.
..."
It's this fella: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SyFNPZN82kg
An optional boss in an area near the end of the game. I tried it a few times and I was just not doing enough damage compared to the amount of work for it to seem possible. Even after beating the game I figure it wasn't something I wanted to spend enough time on. Even Malenia from Elden Ring I managed to beat, but Nameless King I resigned to being beat by.