# Games, that are very difficult but not frustrating.



## Sonata (Mar 9, 2009)

So, I am playing the goode olde Pokemon Puzzle League again.

So many puzzles at the Puzzle University I still need to solve.
Also, singleplayer 1 vs. 1: 
Well, I already need a few tries to beat Gary on very hard, 
which just allows me to challenge Mewtwo, which is even harder and losing against it makes me having to beat Gary again, 
so yeah, this is going to take forever.
And then there is even a higher difficulty. x..x;

So, all in all, my chances to actually ever beat the complete game are pretty low.
But yet, I don't lose my motivation...did anyone else experience this before?


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## Tycho (Mar 9, 2009)

Yup.  NetHack.


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## Kuekuatsheu (Mar 9, 2009)

oh wow, memories

Puzzle League was great, I did beat it long time ago (yes every single part)

my Sis and I were pros D:


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## Devious Bane (Mar 9, 2009)

Puzzle League, oh the memories...and seizures with hand spasms.

A hard game that's not frustrating? For me, Metroid Prime. Very challenging, but fun.


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## Lukar (Mar 9, 2009)

Disgaea. ^^


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## Sernion (Mar 9, 2009)

Monster Hunter series.
Dieing about 3-6 times for every new kind of enemy you will face is a must. 
But you can feel that you are getting better every time you die so I never lost my motivation to try again.


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## skulltoe (Mar 10, 2009)

EVE Online anyone?


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## TehSean (Mar 10, 2009)

Q3A


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## Dayken (Mar 10, 2009)

Contra 4
Mike Tyson's Punch Out (except for Tyson himself, what the fuck)
God Hand (yeah, it's a pain in the ass at first, but once it actually "clicks" it tends to shift towards a more enjoyable kind of hard)


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## Tycho (Mar 10, 2009)

Dayken said:


> Contra 4
> *Mike Tyson's Punch Out (except for Tyson himself, what the fuck)*
> God Hand (yeah, it's a pain in the ass at first, but once it actually "clicks" it tends to shift towards a more enjoyable kind of hard)



You found that game genuinely difficult?

It's all about patterns and nothing more, really...


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## Gar-Yulong (Mar 10, 2009)

Tycho said:


> You found that game genuinely difficult?
> 
> It's all about patterns and nothing more, really...



You find NetHack genuinely difficult? It's all about inventory management, luck and nothing more, really...


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## Darth GW7 (Mar 10, 2009)

STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl.
Pretty difficult, lots of redo's required.


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## Absinthe (Mar 10, 2009)

Devious Bane said:


> A hard game that's not frustrating? For me, Metroid Prime. Very challenging, but fun.



Seconded. The boss fights are one of the best parts too, especially in Corruption.


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## Kajet (Mar 10, 2009)

Mars Matrix
Audio Surf
Point Blank

Usually when I think of frustrating a general sense of cheapness/absurd unfairness and/or shit controls are to blame...


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## Tycho (Mar 10, 2009)

Gar-Yulong said:


> You find NetHack genuinely difficult? It's all about inventory management, luck and nothing more, really...



...

What?


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## Riptor (Mar 10, 2009)

R-Type 3, for the SNES. Most of the time, it feels like the deaths are YOUR fault, and not because the game was being cheap.


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## Dayken (Mar 11, 2009)

Tycho said:


> You found that game genuinely difficult?
> 
> It's all about patterns and nothing more, really...



You do realize that you're basically forced to avoid his punches for TWO ENTIRE ROUNDS before you get much of any kind of chance to hurt him, right? Not to mention just about every one of those punches is a one-hit KO.

I can memorize patterns, but he's still bullshit compared to the rest of the game.


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## Tycho (Mar 11, 2009)

When Mike starts off with the uppercuts, you can dodge and safely get in two high punches before you need to dodge the next one.  Those are the ones that are INSTA-KO.  The hooks he throws can be dodged and you can give him about 3-4 high punches before you have to back off.  The (seemingly) randomly timed jabs he starts throwing after you knock him down the first time are a pain in the ass, and I did have trouble with them (though they weren't 1 hit KOs).  Never use a "super" punch, he'll murder you while you wind up for the punch.  You don't ever really have enough of a time window to use one in the Tyson/Mr. Dream fight.

Also, @ Gar-Yulong: NetHack is one of the few games that can and will consistently kick my ass.  Having an awesome inventory and good fortune isn't enough.


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## GarthTheWereWolf (Mar 12, 2009)

Ninja Gaiden Black on the upper difficulties. That game is so well balanced it'll completely rape you, but still leave u feeling like its your own fault for sucking if u lose.


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## Estidel (Mar 12, 2009)

Lukar said:


> Disgaea. ^^



Seriously? You can clear almost every map in any of the games before the enemy even reacts.

As far as a personal response goes, I guess I'd go with the the Touhou games because at least I didn't lose to anything random.


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## Digitalpotato (Mar 13, 2009)

A lot of self-imposed challenges can be difficult but not frustrated. 

Examples would include:

-No-arena abuse and no-deaths in Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon. 
-Low-Level challenges in games like Breath of Fire 2 that do not have level-scaling systems or automatic bonuses. (Kingdom Hearts 2, anyone?)
-No getting hit in Castlevania
-No damage-boss fights
-speedruns of platformer games

that said I wound up unintentionally doing a relatively-low-level run in my Breath of Fire file. How in the hell did I manage to beat any bosses with my party at level 27?!


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## Bambi (Mar 13, 2009)

Operation Flashpoints' campaign.
Halos' original, legendary campaign.
Sudden Strike and Sudden Strike 2 on the hardest difficulty.
Dead Space on Impossible.


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## Dragon-Commando (Mar 13, 2009)

Playing all of my old Dos FPS games on the hardest difficulty without respawning monsters.

Doom 1/2 and Final doom are very hard on Ultra-violence. But when you die its more of an OH SHIT! than a THATS NOT FAIR! I found myself more afraid of things in these games than Doom 3, which plays pretty much the same regardless of difficulty level, exept maybe Nightmare, which is pretty much the same for all of them.

Duke nukem was very hard on Come get some, I had alot of fun. I don't actualy get frustrated with any of the older games, because they where hard, but not cheap.

Blood was also realy hard on its second highest setting, I don't expect alot of people to remember this one though.

One thing they all had in common though was that if you played them on the hardest setting they all had endless hordes of monsters and not enough ammo. That was the only way I would not play them. Making a game hard is one thing, making it nearly impossible is something else.


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## Yoshistar (Mar 13, 2009)

Let me just say that Ouendan 2 can be hellishly diifficult if one doesn't know the songs at first (and I thought Elite Beat Agents was hard... heh).  But that still doesn't stop it from being so frickin' fun... XD


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## Holsety (Mar 13, 2009)

GarthTheWereWolf said:


> Ninja Gaiden Black on the upper difficulties. That game is so well balanced it'll completely rape you, but still leave u feeling like its your own fault for sucking if u lose.



yesyesyesyes



As opposed to Ninja Gaiden 2, with it's ridiculous shuriken spamming ninjas -_-


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## Surgat (Mar 13, 2009)

Ikaruga.


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## Zeraio (Mar 14, 2009)

Some game from back in 1999 or so that was one of the VERY few browser games based with RLC (real time combat) that was a tank shooter. Got hard due to no healing and wave after wave of enemies while you "rushed" around in a pixel tank shooting other tanks that were made up of nothing but lines and bad color. Got hard after the first level but was never frustrating, just gave the desire to see if you could get them next time round by being faster.


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## GarthTheWereWolf (Mar 14, 2009)

Holsety said:


> yesyesyesyes
> 
> 
> 
> As opposed to Ninja Gaiden 2, with it's ridiculous shuriken spamming ninjas -_-



Its not that they spam the shurikens that makes it annoying; Its that they throw them offscreen that pisses me off. In the first one enemies wouldn't throw their projectiles if they were offscreen, so that things wouldn't get so rediculously out of hand like in NG2.



Surgat said:


> Ikaruga.



Omg yes! xD That game is insane, but so fun. An you know its all possible since the game provides u with videos of the levels being done properly. I've still yet to beat that game xP I always get to the last bosses final form where u just gotta outlast it before it dies on its own, but I never can do it... ._.


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## VÃ¶lf (Mar 14, 2009)

Holsety said:


> yesyesyesyes
> 
> 
> 
> As opposed to Ninja Gaiden 2, with it's ridiculous shuriken spamming ninjas -_-



I KNOW RIGHT! Freaking ninjas on mentor and Master ninja just throw a billion explosives and rockets at you and you blink- then you're dead! I'm almost thru on mentor now... I even like the bossfights better than the stupid explosives ninjas. >:\

I always run around with the tallons and use the running Izuna drop. And another game... Smackdown vs. Raw. You crank up the difficulty, the computer doesn't get better. It just counters you like 92% of the time, which is a ridiculous counter rate anyway. It's not more skilled, you just can't hit it XP


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## Shark_the_raptor (Mar 17, 2009)

Chrome Hounds.  Not really difficult per se, but it can be a pain when your Hound is outmatched.  It's -very- fun building the machines.  I can do that for hours, just to see what I can come up with.


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## Bokracroc (Mar 17, 2009)

Yoshistar said:


> Let me just say that Ouendan 2 can be hellishly diifficult if one doesn't know the songs at first (and I thought Elite Beat Agents was hard... heh).  But that still doesn't stop it from being so frickin' fun... XD


The songs make it enjoyable.


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## SuperFurryBonzai (Mar 17, 2009)

fallout 3 was difficult for me i may just be stupid and not know how to play...but i found it very hard yet i always come back to play


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## JeremyC (Mar 18, 2009)

I am currently playing Prince of Persia: The Warrior within. Man it's freakin hard (even on normal) but it is way too cool to discourage me.


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## lupinealchemist (Mar 18, 2009)

Fallout 1 & 2.  Still not sure how to properly use the science skill or ally skills.



I would say Baldur's Gate, but that is downright bullshit frustrating.


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## Tycho (Mar 18, 2009)

lupinealchemist said:


> Fallout 1 & 2.  Still not sure how to properly use the science skill or ally skills.
> 
> 
> 
> I would say Baldur's Gate, but that is downright bullshit frustrating.



You use Science on things like computers, to get information you might not otherwise get.  Science also opens up some different dialog trees with certain NPCs in the game.  As for ally skills... do you mean like Vic's Repair skills? Simply try to use your Repair skill on something and if his Repair skill is higher than yours he'll volunteer to do it for you.  (Sometimes, anyway - I've found that this seems to be somewhat unreliable, sometimes he doesn't actually DO anything, despite what he says.) As for members like Sulik or Cassidy, their skills are always combat-oriented, and they automatically put them to good use if you give them a suitable weapon.

In Fallout 1 you have a LOT less direct control over your party members, and you're usually limited to simple dialog choices to try and make them change their behavior slightly.  The only way you can get them to use better weapons (not sure about armor) is to use Steal on them and plant the weapon/item in their inventory, as far as I know.  There are mods that change this, I think.

Only things that downright frustrated the hell out of me in BG were charm spells and fear spells.  Fucking mages.


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## lupinealchemist (Mar 18, 2009)

Tycho said:


> You use Science on things like computers, to get information you might not otherwise get.  Science also opens up some different dialog trees with certain NPCs in the game.


Haven't found a computer yet that passed a skill check, I have almost 50 science. I was however able to get a charisma chip installed at San Francisco.


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## Tycho (Mar 18, 2009)

lupinealchemist said:


> Haven't found a computer yet that passed a skill check, I have almost 50 science. I was however able to get a charisma chip installed at San Francisco.



You'll want at least 81 Science to do lotsa stuff in FO2.  Big Books of Science can be purchased all over the place and there's quite a few freebies around too.


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## Bokracroc (Mar 19, 2009)

Unfortunately you can't damage baddies by using Science on them  My super charisma/nerd chick tried so hard to blind people with Science


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## Talosar (Mar 19, 2009)

Tycho said:


> Only things that downright frustrated the hell out of me in BG were charm spells and fear spells.  Fucking mages.



Oh dear. Baldur's Gate's mages were incredibly formidable. At levels 1-3 or so you just weren't equipped to deal with mages a couple of levels above you, especially when they'd cast horror or several magic missiles at once. Oh, and yes, charm was terrible.

Well, going back and playing again now I can beat them much more easily, but you were still thrown right into the deep end with that game. It was great, though - the rewards were always worth it (except at the Firewine ruins).


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## Lulian (Mar 19, 2009)

Half-Life is a good, classic FPS. Much harder when you compare it to Half-Life 2.


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## Tycho (Mar 19, 2009)

Bokracroc said:


> Unfortunately you can't damage baddies by using Science on them  My super charisma/nerd chick tried so hard to blind people with Science



I laughed pretty hard.  /salute.



Talosar said:


> Oh dear. Baldur's Gate's mages were incredibly formidable. At levels 1-3 or so you just weren't equipped to deal with mages a couple of levels above you, especially when they'd cast horror or several magic missiles at once. Oh, and yes, charm was terrible.



Oh, hi Asshole-at-the-Friendly-Arm-Inn! Imoen and those 2 evil-aligned fuckmooks outside Candlekeep are incredibly useful there.  Give them all daggers (FAST WEAPON) and sic them on him, try and interrupt his casting.  Silke in Beregost is a lot of "fun", too - her Lightning Bolt is horrifically destructive.  It's great if you can somehow avoid getting killed by it, because sometimes it'll bounce back off a wall and toast the bitch.


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## pheonix (Mar 19, 2009)

Extreme G III. I was in second on the final lap of one of the hardest tracks and got bombed by the CPU and lost. >.< Not to mention sharp turns at 500+MPH almost never go well. XD Fun game, hard as sin though.


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## LordWibble (Mar 20, 2009)

Any of the Devil May Cry series (barring 2, which was piss-easy). Horribly difficult, but if you die, it's your own fault. The game is never cheap.

SWAT 4. Got killed in a single shot walking through a doorway? Then why the hell didn't you use an optiwand, note the location of any suspects and chuck a flashbang in beforehand? The touch I appreciated most was when a suspect acted compliant, but just before dropping his weapon turned it on you. It meant you had to be constantly on alert. Absolutely brilliant game.


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