I was 14 when Sephiroth kicked my ass in Kingdom Hearts 2. I was dying for him for hours and hours because he was the only obstacle separating me from my 100% completion of him.
Moments like that, especially when you’re young, stick with you. The hardest game has a way to punch holes in your brain. Feel the frustration and eventual exhilaration from dueling a system that you feel is designed to offend you, or worse, is designed so badly that it is actually an insult. I’m here.
These are our picks for the hardest games our staff of PC gamers have played. Games that didn’t budge, and games that probably still haunt each other.
Get over it with Bennett Foddy
finished? I never have. never.
Morgan Park, Staff Writer: Not a particularly surprising answer, but when it comes to difficult games, Getting Over It comes to mind. This is partly frustrating because I love it. The man in the pot with the sledgehammer is so weird, and the regular narration about the game’s difficulty is surreal. Never before has a game made me so enthusiastic. lose proceed in front of you. Just when he thinks he’s mastered a nasty slingshot that climbs a cliff 140 degrees, Hammer loses all friction and pops out at the beginning of the entire game. Screw it. but also? genius.
elden ring
finished? yes, finally
Sean Martin, Guide Writer: Malenia is the toughest boss FromSoftware has come up with. She’s Ornstein and Smough, Orphan of Kos, Isshin, Midir, and even she’s worse than the gargoyles in Dark Souls 2. She’s gone crazy searching for answers to her waterfowl dancing (opens in new tab), an attack that charges like a hummingbird made of knives. I felt such a triumph when I was finally puzzled that I could run away if the timing was right and then dive in. I noticed.
ghosts and goblins
finished? No. I’ve never passed a level 2 floating platform.
Jody Macgregor, Weekend/AU Editor: I had a Commodore 64 version when I was a kid. However, Ghosts n’ Goblins looked very difficult. One hit ripped off his armor, leaving him in his boxer shorts, and a second meant death. Jumps were tricky, with no mid-air aftertouch to fine-tune your momentum, and you would sometimes slip through moving platforms. The C64 version also had the best soundtrack, but this could have been a bug specific to his C64.
Spelunky and Spelunky 2
finished? No. far cry.
Chris Livingston, Feature Producer: I have amnesia in my muscle memory, and it’s not as obvious as it is in the Spelunky games. I was still crushed all the time, even though I was watching them. If you’re lucky enough to survive the ice cave, you’re lucky to make it to the Temple. Only if you are lucky enough to survive the jungle. Frankly, I still die a lot in mines. I love Spelunky, but every time I play it feels like the first time.
FTL: faster than light
finished? Once — you bastard!
Rich Stanton, Senior Editor: FTL is one of the best games I’ve ever played. I was obsessed with it when it first appeared. Like most games these days, FTL has since been patched (popular mods are pretty much the true definitive), making it a little easier. But oh my god: before that, you’ll run into this totally his OP final boss ship that brilliantly executed every weapon and crew a captain could dream of, and then destroyed nothing.Difficulty curve is just an impassable wall that has nothing to do with skills. I still get annoyed when I think about it. FTL: That last ship is shit.
Disney’s Aladdin
finished? No.
Robin Valentine, Print Editor: I’m always a little baffled when people talk about Dark Souls as if it’s the most brutal and unusually difficult game ever. It’s hard for sure, but when I was a kid in his ’90s, every cute platformer I played hated me far more than FromSoftware. I recently went back to Aladdin, one of my all time favorites, and rediscovered that yes, it was nonstop mean bullshit from start to finish. Good music, engaging animation, and truly wicked game design. I never finished it when I was 8. Now that I’m a tired 33 year old, I don’t think I have any better hopes. Grab it on Steam (opens in new tab) Also bundled is the brilliant but brutal Lion King.
Jotun
finished? No, screw Odin and the horse he rode.
Lauren Morton, Associate Editor: According to Steam, I’ve played Thunder Lotus’s boss battler Jotun for 15.7 hours, and I’m pretty sure at least 4 of those hours were spent in the final battle with the Allfather himself. It’s a quarreling bear. The old man unleashes a series of guided missiles, while every boss you’ve beaten so far drops in for a cheeky cameo. I don’t know how many times I tried that fight, but in the end I beat the game anyway and decided Mastermind of the Gods could push it in.
Devil Dagger
finished? No, how can we end eternal doom?
Tyler Wild, Editor-in-Chief: At the start of Devil Daggers, materialize into a square platform surrounded by a black void. Soon, a gigantic HR Giger-ey monster begins spitting out demonic skulls. If you touch the skull, you die. If anything else touches you, you die. If you fall off a platform, you die. All you have is a fast foot and a gun that shoots magic daggers.Your only goal is to stay alive as long as possible. The current record is 20:28.76. My personal record is 1 minute 10 seconds. There is no known ending for Devil Daggers. There is only one achievement called “Devil Dagger” which is unlocked by surviving 500 seconds. Only 0.2% of Steam players have unlocked that achievement, and some of GOG are just 705 according to in-game leaderboards.
Pathfinder: Righteous Wrath
finished? Nearly — 160 hours down, about 15 hours left
Ted Litchfield, Associate Editor: We’re still on board with the new CRPG renaissance, and it reigns, but until we tried Owlcat’s second Pathfinder game, nothing quite replicated the trial-and-error difficulty of that arcane, old-fashioned tabletopie. No. You’ve got all of your AD&D favorites here: ability drains, level drains, timed quests, unclear quest outcomes, crazy specific enemy resistances, and permanent crowd control effects. This game is harder than Baldur’s Gate and it took me 10 years to finish the game. The peak for me was a pair of time-sensitive quests in the first act of the game that could affect all the way to the endgame. to fix the 8 hours of progress (and redo the 45 minute setpiece battle) to speedrun the first act without a break, just to get back to where it was before.Discover Second quest I kirkThe kicker is that its predecessor, Pathfinder: Kingmaker, Even harder.
Final Fantasy 14 Savage Raid
finished? Are you trying to successfully complete 4 Savage Raids while maintaining your mental health?
Molly Taylor, News Writer: I’m not a hardcore raider by any means, but when Endwalker was released, I was finally determined to take the savage raid by storm. Wow, it sure was fun until it wasn’t! I had never been to Static, so all my parties were like being stuck in a prison cell in Las Vegas overnight, looking for a party to advance one mechanic, the next him. 3 hours will always wipe the mechanics in front of it. It’s been a lot of fun learning new strategies, perfecting rotations and getting better at classes!But after struggling to put together a capable party for her second savage raid in this tier, I’ve had enough I tried to continue my third raid, but sadly I was a defeated woman, a shell of my former self. But new layers of raids are on the horizon, and I’m determined to beat them.
Riven
finished? smile.
Wes Fenron, Senior Editor: See, I’m an idiot. is that what you want to hear? Am I too impatient to finish a quiet, introspective puzzle game that requires no reflexes and just asks you to think? 15 years ago he played Riven for a few hours and it was such a shock. Since then, I’ve been scared of Rand Miller.
If you’ve never played Riven: It’s the sequel to Myst, a challenging puzzle game that at least has the decency to split every puzzle into small self-contained areas. After Myst, Cyan Worlds decided to change the design trajectory by creating his one big interconnected world. This allows you to wander from one context-free puzzle piece to the next in complete ignorance of how they fit together. Solving Riven required diligence enough to write down everything I saw, patience enough to explore without a guide, and smart enough to actually connect the dots to solve each puzzle. I was 0/3. Riven is probably a masterpiece, but the most I got was to uninstall it forever after running around in the deep water for a few hours.
witness
finished? No, I don’t care and don’t judge me.
Andy Chalk, NA News Lead: I don’t like math or logic puzzles, but that’s okay because I don’t. (Yeah, probably related.) But for some reason (probably nostalgia for Myst), I decided to run Witness. The beginning went well, and I actually felt smarter as I went through one color and shape brain teaser after another. But it didn’t take long before my brain started feeling the strain. And the usual train of emotions soon followed. I’m angry, I’m bored, I’m leaving. Witnesses may not be “hard” in the traditional video game sense of dodging bullets and defeating bosses, but brains are hard too.Defeated Elden Ring with mouse and keyboard (opens in new tab)don’t you dare judge me.
halo 3
finished? i hope so.
Tyler Kolp, Associate Editor: It’s been tradition to play all Halo games on Legendary difficulty with your buddies. Many of the details about that experience have faded, but we know Halo 3 was the hardest game for us. I remember being instant killed by Jackals sporadically during brutal encounters. It was like filling out a form online and hitting cancel instead of submitting at the end. Sudden death came at a most infuriating time. And the boss fights were even worse as it reduced the chances that the amount of enemies they threw at you was pure strategy to RNG. can’t have does that matter? All I remember is pain.
