Most frustrating games?

[Bananamatic]

That's because the fourth generation of Pokemon was terribly designed.

The first member of the Elite Four opens with something ten levels higher than the strongest wild Pokemon you have access to.
Cynthia's Pokemon are ten levels higher than that and (mostly) not pushovers at equal levels.
Enjoy your grinding.

Pokemon Colosseum was the same way, incidentally.  (Yes, I just admitted to playing it >.> )
The final battle sequence put you against four ordinary trainers, and then a team of special users five levels higher than all of them, and then a team of high tier+ five levels higher than them.  Again, enjoy your grinding.  And kill the Slowking before it Skill Swaps with Slaking.

Dang, I need to get Colosseum then....but it's almost impossible to get around here.
Played only XD and the final boss(or rather the entire game) was an extreme pushover.
I've game overed only once because I've left my pokes in the purify chamber and went into a battle with a lv11 Ledyba.

Oh well, I'll watch a playthrough or something. Sounds more interesting than Gale of Darkness.

Where does Nintendo want us to train for the E4 anyways?
I wonder how Yellow was designed, the gym leaders make an insane level jump from 28 to 44-50 in 2 gyms and it only goes higher. Are the pokes "strong" as if they were wild or something?

Same for G/S/C. There are barely any training points in Kanto and the levels go from 44 to 81.
Sure, Red is manageable at high 40s, but still....

[Suikama]

Or you could get some actually good pokemon and sweep them with ease :V

SporeDancePUNCHPUNCHPUNCHHAHAHAHAHA

[trancehime]

Yeah, but that involves REMAKING YOUR ENTIRE TEAM FROM LEVEL 30 A GRAND TOTAL OF TWENTY-NINE TIMES.

The HELL with that.

It only took me like a month to do that... with a full guild of 30 people... :V

How the hell do you train so much anyways? I get sick even from getting 1 level in the 40s from the wild pokemon.

I'm the best grinder there ever was.

[beaver1231]

*Stares at Bananamatic avatar*

[theshirn]

It only took me like a month to do that... with a full guild of 30 people... :V

I'm the best grinder there ever was.

Aaaagh...that's, like...doing that six times over, plus including the part where you have to get each other team up to level 70 in the first place...

...you really may be.

[theshirn]

As much as I love it, I'm going to have to add Freespace to this list for two missions.

One, where you have to fly a captured enemy fighter and scan their ships.  There are four sentry guns and four patrolling fighters; get within 800m of them, and you lose.  Fire your weapons, and you lose.  Also, your engines are only in partial working order and your afterburners do basically nothing.  You have to scan a sizable number of ships as they warp in, all the while avoiding the sentries.  Finally, the last, massive destroyer warps in.  Once you scan it, you're ordered to see if you can enter the fighter bay.

Get close enough, and they send out SIX ENEMY FIGHTERS to attack you.  And any two of them could easily destroy your crippled ship.  Command tells you to get out of there...but wait!  Your subspace drive malfunctions, so you have to try to dodge said six enemy fighters for about 20-30 seconds until your drive comes back online (and then they can kill you as you're warping out).

Add to that that afterburners (which can be held to maintain maximum speed) are mapped to Tab, and the jump command is Alt+J, and Freespace CRASHES IF YOU MINIMIZE...yeah, easily one of the most ungodly frustrating levels I've ever played in any game.

...possibly matched, though, by two levels later!  That mission starts with an installation being destroyed and four escape pods being sent out.  The destroyer sends out two Dragon-class fighters and leaves.

You are not given the opportunity to customize your ship or weapons loadout, but thankfully you're at least given a Valkyrie, one of the more maneuverable ships available.  Unfortunately, Dragon-class ships are easily the most maneuverable, and far more than you are.  About a minute after the two fighters are sent out (which requires a good chunk of luck to destroy both of them), a wave of four more heavy assault fighters are sent in, and after destroying those, four more.  Thankfully, you only need to protect two of the escape pods for the objective (protecting all four is a bonus, but not required), but that in and of itself is VERY difficult.  Not least because sometimes, after destroying all three waves of fighters, ONE OF THE ESCAPE PODS WILL BLOW UP FOR NO REASON if it's at low integrity.

Then, you need to fly out to protect a communications installation.  This gets spammed with waves of fighters (usually 4 at a time) and bombers (3), and goes down RIDICULOUSLY fast.  You have to hold off three or four waves of each type; any one wave is sufficient to destroy it.  Yes, even the fighters.  Oh, and did I mention that any one fighter can easily destroy all four escape pods?

The level of precision and luck with which the mission must be performed is maddening beyond belief.

[Ghaleon]

*Stares at Bananamatic avatar*

what's wrong with his avatar? I think he should use the biker-looking guy cosplaying as cirno one. That's priceless >=P.

[Cadmas]

what's wrong with his avatar? I think he should use the biker-looking guy cosplaying as cirno one. That's priceless >=P.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvnRBywkUZ0

[Ghaleon]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvnRBywkUZ0

Roffle, that was really funny! thanks >=).

[AlexX Unlimited]

The first member of the Elite Four opens with something ten levels higher than the strongest wild Pokemon you have access to.
Cynthia's Pokemon are ten levels higher than that and (mostly) not pushovers at equal levels.
Enjoy your grinding.

Absolutely ZERO of the elite four gave me trouble, it was just Cynthia. And even then, taking out Cynthia required better strategy rather than flat-out grinding. It was a lot easier if you knew how much damage you could do too, so that you could take out her more annoying pokemon (such as Milotic) before she could get a chance to use a Full Restore on them (since you're allowed to switch when the computer does it makes it easy to end a round with a Roar of Time and bring out something else to avoid having to deal with the turn of cooldown).

Anyhow, I'll bring up the Megaman Zero games. It's SO FREAKING HARD WAIT WHY CAN'T I PUT IT DOWN OH CRAP!

Dunno why, but I love the games despite the torture they put me though (gee, that sounds familiar...).

[?q]

Where does Nintendo want us to train for the E4 anyways?
I wonder how Yellow was designed, the gym leaders make an insane level jump from 28 to 44-50 in 2 gyms and it only goes higher. Are the pokes "strong" as if they were wild or something?

Same for G/S/C. There are barely any training points in Kanto and the levels go from 44 to 81.
Sure, Red is manageable at high 40s, but still....

Red was intended as a bonus battle; Blue's highest-level Pokemon was a Lv. 65 Arcanine IIRC.  (Not bad considering Lance's last Dragonite was Lv. 50.  I loved how there was virtually no grinding to do in the second gen.)

Koga and Sabrina were meant to be interchangeable but difficult in the Yellow version (as if they already weren't).  If you knew about Kadabra/Alakazam's weakness to physical attacks, Sabrina was actually kind of easier in Yellow.  Koga... well, Venomoth isn't known for being very strong even at a ten-level advantage.

Absolutely ZERO of the elite four gave me trouble, it was just Cynthia.

I'm surprised at this, unless you used a different approach than I did.
Phoebe+Dusclops+ten level gradient was like a cruel joke.

[Tamer Anode/Cathode]

Not bad considering Lance's last Dragonite was Lv. 50.

How does that even work, anyway? Dragonite evolves at Lv55, how is he able to violate the laws of nature so frequently?

[?q]

How does that even work, anyway? Dragonite evolves at Lv55, how is he able to violate the laws of nature so frequently?

He's freaking Lance.  He, Chuck, and Rival got the only cool lines in that game.

Plus his other two Dragonites were at a lower level... and the Lv. 50 one had Outrage.
But if nothing else I thought it was neat that Lance's three Dragonites all had different movesets.

[Bananamatic]

Blue's Arcanine was 58 IIRC.

Also, Lance's Aerodactyl has Rock Slide. Talk about sharking :V

[Third Eye Lem]

The original Ratchet and Clank was one of the more annoying and difficult games I played recently. The lack of any decent strafing controls, Ratchet's pitiful starting health meter, Goddamned Bats at every turn after Umbris, expensive items and lack of any good grinding area (unless you use the Blackwater City racetrack trick, which IIRC was fixed in the Platinum/Greatest Hits version) for bolts a pain to play. Oh, did I mention the hellish platforming from Hoven onwards? No? Well, be thankful I did just now--WAIT WHAT'RE YOU DOING RUSHING OUT LIKE THAT GAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH WHY DIDN'T YOU USE THE VISIBOMB GUN TO SNIPE THAT SHIP WHAT'S THAT YOU'RE OUT OF AMMO FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF

Seriously, Visibomb and Devastator munitions are hard on the wallet. Visibombs are also pretty much a must-have in the later levels, they can kill pretty much anything in one shot and are great for sniping (which you will do a LOT of in this game). This is like the Ninja Gaiden of the RnC series, notwithstanding the two PSP (ported to the PS2) games. Since I agreed to get A Crack in Time this X-mas, and I lent Up Your Arsenal to my girlfriend, I'm strapped for some decent run-and-gun action after I beat Tools of Destruction. Awesome game. I haven't gotten all the skill points yet, but two of them stop me from doing that--getting past the flamethrowers on the bridge leading to the arena in the Imperial Fight Festival, and destroying 75% of all enemies in the third rail shooter level (the one with the black hole). The former one gives me fits, I'm supposedly doing everything right but I don't know whether the bridge starts at the end of the stairs leading up to it, or onto the stairs itself. Sheesh. I hope that skill point isn't bugged...

Speaking of impossible solutions, anyone remember DRoD? I played the demos of all four main games, and I played the heck out of the "Architect's Edition" (the original game released for Windows back in the day, but tweaked and has a level editor added) up until level five, where I'm stuck on this one room where you have an outer wall, and inner alcove/fortress of sorts, and a barricade blocking the interior from the exterior...There are roach queens in the room, which lay eggs every 30 turns that hatch into regular roaches that hunt you down and kill you...You're supposed to go to the middle, hit the switch, then try and work your way out while killing everything and not get killed yourself. I'm not skilled in fighting monsters in open areas ("open" meaning monsters attack you from two or more angles), so I had to download a replay of the level, then use ScreenCopy to take screenshots of the room step by step (why doesn't DRoD have a frame-by-frame playback feature is beyond me), and try to memorize the level that way...But I got bored and moved onto Ratchet and Clank instead.

Oh, and let's not forget about New Super Mario Bros, which was mentioned earlier. I FUCKING HATE THIS GAME WITH A BURNING PASSION DUE TO THE SHITTY SAVE SYSTEM. I think that sums it up right there. Level design is fine. Hard, but fine. Save system is not. I might as well just play this game on a ROM because I'm not gonna hunt down star coins and/or a signpost/tower/castle/warp cannon just to try and save. It's ridiculous. And the Wii game continues this lovely tradition! WTF, Nintendo? Why didn't you include a regular save feature like every other good-natured game company does? On a related note, Mario Galaxy and its purple coin/cosmic race missions, along with Luigi mode can go screw themselves with a flagpole because I'm NOT gonna try to play them to 100%. Yet. Maybe. I dunno. I'm lazy.

Metroid Prime 2 (Trilogy version) was another toughie, I barely survived the Emperor Ing. PEOPLE LIKE IT WHEN THEY DON'T HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT AMMO FOR THEIR BEAM WEAPONS, RETRO STUDIOS. THIS IS NOT A HALO-STYLE FPS WHERE YOU HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT THAT. T^T Corruption would be more fun if you didn't have to do a bunch of absurd achievements just to unlock all the stuff in the shop via tokens. I could just play through the games and enjoy them as they are, but I'm a bit of a completionist, so...Yeah.

What else...Oh, Ricochet Infinity. Fun game, lots of powerups and community levels to go through, but to unlock the final paddle (each paddle has a special power), you need to collect 100k gold rings. That's right. A hundred thousand. I have like 30k rings now, but collecting them is like walking from Oregon to New York on foot. I WILL unlock that paddle one of these days, though!!

PoFV. Full stop. Not touching that again. Ever. Then again, I stopped playing Touhou regularly until I discovered Cheat Engine (thanks for making the cheatlists, Drake! Now finish the rest of them!) and haxed my way through with unlimited bombs and lives.

Other games I played that gave me fits:
-Diddy Kong Racing: No. Just...No.
-Lego Star Wars The Complete Saga: 100% MORE LIKE 100 HELLS TO ME CHALLENGE LEVELS FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF
-YuGiOh Duelist of the Roses: Why did I buy this game again?
-Pretty much every MMO I played ever: Why did I spend so much time playing these grindfests? I must admit, though, again...Dragonica was the most fun I've had in an MMORPG in some time.
-Zelda Oracle of Ages: MINIGAMES! Thank you, good bye.
-Mario Party (every single one of them): See Zelda Oracles (though I like MP4's minigames, and it's easy to own the computer...At least on Easy mode, I never ever ever played on Hard mode or heaven forbid Hyper mode or whatever)
-3D Ultra Pinball (or any pinball game): I cannot win at these. Ever.
-An Untitled Story: Good game, but HARD!
-F-Zero GX: I agree with the earlier post saying this game is hard...But that's only if you want to complete everything in the game and unlock all the parts and characters. Otherwise, it's a fun game!

@All the Pokemon complainers: Have you guys watched the speedruns on Speed Demos Archive? There's a reason they stick with a single 'mon, they get all of the EXP! There's also this little thing called the "Lucky Egg" introduced in second gen, and it's not that hard to get if you're willing to spend some time grinding for it. It's not as hard as you think. The Pokemon series' maingame is relatively lax on challenge, why do you think people spend so much time battling others? The only thing I find off-putting is that unless you get a Pokemon with Max IVs (which either requires tons of rerolling and chainbreeding, or an Action Replay [Pokesav is optional]), you're gonna be at a disadvantage. Part of me feels like the metagame is a bit TOO serious and not really worth going through all the trouble, but it's fun if you have friends willing to battle with you like I do. ^_^
As for the individual games:-R/B/Y: Challenging, at least the grind is, but as I said before, speedrunners know how to make the most of what they have and take out the competition. Gen One feels a bit closer to MegaTen in terms of challenge and executing some things, but overall it's not TOO hard. Same applies to FireRed/LeafGreen, except it's a bit easier because you can catch a Chansey in the Safari Zone and try to get a Lucky Egg.

-G/S/C: ZOMG RED IS SO HARD HAHAHAHAHA fool, this is where you can find a Lucky Egg if you're diligent enough, and you can grind at Mt. Silver if you're having trouble. Unlike some people, I can tolerate grinding as long as it's not too painful. Pokemon's grind is not painful (for me at least).

-Ru/Sa/Em: If you ask me, this is the weakest generation of the lot, or at least the maingame was. Steven (Wallace if you're playing the Emerald version) is weaksauce compared to the other final bosses, their Pokemon don't even get past level 60. Of the starter-only runs I did, Sapphire was the easiest (Swampert FTW) one I did.

-Di/Pe/Pt: I disagree with AlexX about this being the worst iteration of the Pokemon series. There was a lot of stuff Game Freak did right here, such as splitting moves into physical and special categories (instead of basing them on type like in the previous games), and giving us tons of new moves and items to play with. I can't say the same about online battling, though, since we have ShoddyBattle for that, but still. Cynthia was also pretty kickass too. Too bad the plot was basically a rehash of Ru/Sa/Em's, only it's just one organization trying to seize BOTH legendaries (Giratina was an unexpected part of the equation). Overall, I enjoyed this Pokemon generation a lot (barring the Pokemon Ranger/Mystery Dungeon games and Battle Revolution) and I feel if they make a fifth gen it'll just get better.

Which leads me to another small rant...As I said before, I find it irksome that if you want to get ahead in the Pokemon games you need to utilize cheat devices/suffer hours of grinding, or ask someone else to make the Pokemon for you using Pokesav. And even then, no one wants to battle on the DS, they wanna play on ShoddyBattle, or just role-play it out or make their own Pokemon stories or whatever. The point is that the Pokemon metagame needs a kick in the Poke Balls to become fun again, and I feel the only way to do that is to revamp the battle/stat system and somehow make online battling central. If this does happen, though, it'll probably be an entirely new game that doesn't bear anything resembling Pokemon, and it'll be an MMO of some kind. I must also complain about event Pokemon, because A- they can be missed, in which case you muse generate them yourself or ask someone to generate them for you, B- no official tourneys will ever let them in to be used because they're too powerful or not everyone has them, and C- they're overrated anyways. Overall, as much as I love the Pokemon game, I think it's lost its magic and it'll either take a brand-new IP to revive the genre, or a serious game-changing announcement that will make Pokemon amazing again.

Okay, post over.

[GMOFucker: Makin' GMOs To Fuck 'Em]

The entire Fire Emblem series tends to be frustrating, since if a unit you like dies you have to restart the entire chapter if you want to keep them. Maybe I just suck, though.

[theshirn]

The entire Fire Emblem series tends to be frustrating, since if a unit you like dies you have to restart the entire chapter if you want to keep them. Maybe I just suck, though.

Now restart if anyone at all dies.  Then play FE7, HHM.  Chapter 23x.  Hawkeye.

:rage:

[DarkslimeZ]

Touhou. Has made me rage harder than any game in my entire life.

Also, huh what, yeah, if you're playing FE7, 8, 4, or 9, then you don't know what frustrating is. ;p

[?q]

-Diddy Kong Racing: No. Just...No.

I have to disagree; this game was pretty easy for the most part.
Granted, having to drive well off the track to find the odd Silver Coin wasn't cool.  But still doable.

PoFV. Full stop. Not touching that again. Ever.

PoFV is only frustrating if you expect to win.

-Zelda Oracle of Ages: MINIGAMES! Thank you, good bye.

I'll grant this.  Goron baseball with Biggoron's Sword was ludicrous.

-Mario Party (every single one of them): See Zelda Oracles (though I like MP4's minigames, and it's easy to own the computer...At least on Easy mode, I never ever ever played on Hard mode or heaven forbid Hyper mode or whatever)

Unless you're playing a button-mashing or luck-based game, Mario Party's AI isn't that good.
You should be complaining about the bad luck the game shoves down your throat in every game from 4 on.

----

Have you guys watched the speedruns on Speed Demos Archive? There's a reason they stick with a single 'mon, they get all of the EXP!

Simply put, I don't want to do that.

@theshim:  If you hit Kishuna with a Longbow or something in 23x, doesn't every enemy except the four reinforcements warp out?  That sounds like the way to go tbh.

[Ghaleon]

Seiken Densetsu 3 frusterates me when I hit level 38 finally, and I manage to get 20 copies of every class advancement item EXCEPT the one I actually want to class change into with ALL THREE guys every time. I don't know how it happens. The game just KNOWS. Oddly enough I didn't have this problem with my actual cartridge playing on the Super Famicom. Must be some kind of bugged rom dump for the rom version

[Bias Bus]

Izuna's pretty up there on the frustration meter

Yeah, part of it can go into the fact that it's a rouge-like, but if you're playing this game, you will die...ALOT. Got a new and/or rare weapon and/or item? Don't get attached to it. Nine times outta ten you'll get gangraped by a bunch of monsters that appear out of fucking nowhere.

Or step on a trap that will totally fuck up your luck and you'll end up dying in THE most gayest of fashions.

[theshirn]

@theshim:  If you hit Kishuna with a Longbow or something in 23x, doesn't every enemy except the four reinforcements warp out?  That sounds like the way to go tbh.

Hah, if only!  No, just Kishuna warps out (which removes the whole seal) and the four reinforcements in his room spawn.  They're also magic-users instead of fighters, with mid-level tomes and a Recover staff instead of silver weapons.

But...have you played Hector Hard Mode?  In that type, all the regular generals and stuff are replaced entirely with Druids, Sages and Bishops, and a couple have Sleep and Berserk staves.  Which would be really easy if not for the fact that KISHUNA WARPS OUT ON HIS OWN on turn three or so.  Cue Purge, Bolting, Sleep and Berserk ALL OVER THE PLACE.  I fotget how many times I restarted, but eventually I just gave up hope on keeping Hawkeye alive and beat the level.  Only time I've ever left a man dead in FE (except killing off Sylvia in FE4, but that doesn't really count...)

[Verloren]

Highest difficulty. Fire Emblem Radiant Dawn.

Micaiah's part 2 chapters.

T_T They make me cry... why does her team have to suck so badly...

[fluentLOVE]

Gran Turismo 3 or 4. Trying to get all gold on the license tests is just... ARGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Also, Starcraft. Esp. when you're playing on iccup and you get cheesed every other game.

[Generalguy]

Ever try Touhoumon?

Lorelei opens with a level 69 EXCirno.  With Sheer Cold.

Ever tried Touhoumon Lunatic? Level 100 Touhoumon start appearing in the Koga/Sabrina gyms.

By the time you reach the Elite Four, almost everything is a Last Word or Final, with base stats around 650-680. The starters have base stats of 540, and that's already pretty high.

Took me about 2 months to beat the Elite Four, and had to train Marisa from level 30 to level 75.

[An Odd Sea Slug]

Cho Ren Sha. FFFFFFFFFFFFFFF

Seriously, why do I keep torturing myself with all these hard-as-hell shmups. <_>

[Bananamatic]

Cho Ren Sha. FFFFFFFFFFFFFFF

Seriously, why do I keep torturing myself with all these hard-as-hell shmups. <_>

My friend told me that it's easier than PCB normal :V

Dodonpachi is pretty frustrating too....I often get killed out of nowhere or some boss patterns are complete dick moves.
Add only 6 lives for the entire game.

I remember how I've complained about having "only" 6 extends for EoSD or the fact that you have only 5 lives for EoSD extra.

[Azinth]

Dodonpachi is pretty frustrating too....I often get killed out of nowhere or some boss patterns are complete dick moves.
Add only 6 lives for the entire game.

I remember how I've complained about having "only" 6 extends for EoSD or the fact that you have only 5 lives for EoSD extra.

Now go play Mars Matrix and enjoy going thorough 6 above-Lunatic level stages with three lives and no instant-acting bombs.

[Bananamatic]

Now go play Mars Matrix and enjoy going thorough 6 above-Lunatic level stages with three lives and no instant-acting bombs.

HAHAHA WHAT IS THIS

can you even focus?
This isn't frustrating....it's just plain gay :V

[Azinth]

HAHAHA WHAT IS THIS

can you even focus?

Tap the direction pad lighter.  There's your focus. :V

Oh yeah and you know how you have to be good at chaining in DDP to get to the second loop?  In MM you have to be good at chaining just to get to full power.  Goddamn cubes. :<