Levels/dungeons/bosses which give you problems even on multiple playthroughs

[Bananamatic]

Any games except for arcade ones(yes that includes touhou) :V

Simply put, that one stage/boss/part which gave you tons of problems on your first playthrough...and even though you are much better, it still requires several attempts to get past. Or if you just feel that it'll suck...just like on the 10 previous playthroughs.
And try to keep the spoilers to minimum :V

As for me...
Tales of Symphonia - Fresh playthrough on Mania, anything before being able to buy Lemon Gels. I always fear Ktugach and Adulocia...too much damage for the low amounts of HP you can heal at the early parts.
And the second Balacruf Mausoleum fight. Sucks to lose it because you have to kill the first boss again. And 30% gels don't do much vs all that damage.

God Hand - This is a hard game by itself, but...the final 2 minibosses are just ridiculous.
I've never attempted to beat the fat ninjas without Shaolin Blast because they beat you in seconds. On Normal.
And the afro pimp right after - he does 4x more damage compared to the final bosses for some reason. Reset, reset, reset.

[theshirn]

SMT: Devil Survivor.

Beldr.

Beldr, Beldr, Beldr.

Has an attack that hits everyone on the field for around 50 Mystic damage (your max hp at this point is likely between 160-240) and restores a significant chunk of that to his own hp.  Also can deal some nasty fire damage to anyone who gets into a fight with him.  And the only way to hurt him is by PUNCHING HIM WITH A CELL PHONE STRAP.  And ONLY the MC can do it.  And all other demons on the field are several levels higher than anything you've fought up until this point.  And when reinforcements arrive, they make a priority of HEALING HIM.

[Ghaleon]

Nothing really came to mind right away except for patchy, who doesn't really game over me. But her stage is complete BS if you haven't memorized it (and I often forget portions of it), and as a boss...She makes me chow more lives/bombs than any other TH stage 4 boss, including satori and motherfucking whats her name. Her and the very first time you fight the star dragon in lunar eternal blue (sega cd version). I forget what it's called then, phantom sentry I think. Anyway, OH GOD MY ENTIRE PARTY got confused by his gunshot volley..for the 4th time. arghaghaghag. I mean seriously, it's supposed to confuse you occasionally on hit, but that stupid spell always confuses my entire party EVERY TIME.

[axman36]

Laughing Octopus in MGS4, at least if you don't plan on using the Rail Gun. She can kill you nearly instantly and she bloody comes out of nowhere half the time! Trying to kill her with a tranquilizer gun wasn't the best of ideas then...

Orzammar in Dragon Age Origins. Longest drawn out area with about 6 bosses. Only about 2 of them are actually interesting. The rest are just incredibly annoying and a pain in the ass to kill.

Collector Ship in Mass Effect 2. Because of Scions... seriously, screw them.

The Library in Halo. So... many... bloody flood.

The gateway in the second to the last area for Dark Carnival in Left 4 Dead 2. Thousands upon thousands of zombies poor out, and if your team is not well-coordinated, you're as good as dead.

Probably more, but I can't think of anything at the moment.

[KomeijiKoishi]

Giacomo/Ayme/forgot his name from Baten Kaitos. You encounter them THRICE throughout the game, and one time TWICE IN A ROW.

Beldr.

Atlus went way too far with this guy.

[theshirn]

Atlus went way too far with this guy.

Devil Survivor had a couple tough fights, but Beldr was just ridiculous...

Also, Uzuki Yashiro from TWEWY.  She's not so bad on Neku's side of the field, but she RIPS BEAT A NEW ONE SO HARD.  Given my tendency these days to play on the highest available difficulty at level 1, it's not uncommon for her to shred Beat twice in a row with that five-star attack and kill me right off.

[KomeijiKoishi]

Devil Survivor had a couple tough fights the last two days, but Beldr was just ridiculous...

Also, Uzuki Yashiro from TWEWY.
[/quote]
She and SHO MOTHERFUCKIN' MINAMIMOTO. If you beat this guy on Normal the first time you meet him, you either spent too much time levelling or are Chuck Norris.

[Esoterica]

Also, Uzuki Yashiro from TWEWY.

She and SHO MOTHERFUCKIN' MINAMIMOTO. If you beat this guy on Normal the first time you meet him, you either spent too much time levelling or are Chuck Norris.

Guess I'm Chuck Norris² then, since I was playing on a higher difficulty.  I honestly didn't think he was that hard.

Uzuki keeps wrecking my boss rush attempts though. :C  And the secret boss that I won't mention for those that haven't fought him.

[axman36]

I didn't know clicking on Sho would cause him to teleport away. So... I was kinda... constantly clicking on him.

[Third Eye Lem]

SMT: Devil Survivor.

Beldr.

Beldr, Beldr, Beldr.

Has an attack that hits everyone on the field for around 50 Mystic damage (your max hp at this point is likely between 160-240) and restores a significant chunk of that to his own hp.  Also can deal some nasty fire damage to anyone who gets into a fight with him.  And the only way to hurt him is by PUNCHING HIM WITH A CELL PHONE STRAP.  And ONLY the MC can do it.  And all other demons on the field are several levels higher than anything you've fought up until this point.  And when reinforcements arrive, they make a priority of HEALING HIM.

At least SMT is sticking to their guns and not making the games TOO easy in this era.

Let's see what I can think of off the top of my head...

-Ratchet and Clank: A Crack In Time's Dr. Nefarious. I haven't fought the Up Your Arsenal version of him, but GOD DAMMIT I can't dodge his attacks. Compared to the other games, your weapons aren't nearly as awesome, and trying to stall him with Time Bombs is hard because he keeps moving. I haven't touched the game since he kept schooling me. (On a related note, the Hoverboard and sewer sections of the first RnC can stuff it up their arses for being so annoying to play through game after game).

-Wild ARMs 3: Survey Point #17. That stupid statue puzzle where you have to keep two statues from killing you and Maya so you can move along. What a pain to do.

-Jazz Jackrabbit 2: Hard Mode, Diamondus, both levels. SO. MANY. BEES.

-Aveyond 3: Gates of Night, final boss. What a bastard. He spams a painful lightning spell with which there's almost no protection against, and you can't party heal easily BECAUSE YOUR HEALER'S BEEN HYPNOTIZED INTO HEALING HIM EVERY TURN. I hope you have a poison spell/Spider Eggs handy, because it's the only way to erode his HP safely while healing your party.

-Lego Batman: Mr. Freeze. Just try to kill him without getting killed yourself by his freeze ray. I dare you.

-Lego Indy 1: Anything that has soldiers with explosives (Motorbike Chase and Pursuing the Ark come to mind).

-Pokemon Diamond/Pearl/Platinum: Cynthia. Garchomp. Solo Infernape run. It's annoying to get your stater KO'd and then sacrifice one of your HM slaves to revive it. An annoyance, but it doesn't stop the battle from being easy.

-FFTA2: Brightmoon Tor. Also "The Final Quest," the fourth and fifth teams will kill your party members repeatedly unless you use Adelle's Heritor skills to revive them.

-Castle Crashers: Industrial Castle. I died too many times on this stupid level. I cannot fight giant enemies or combo properly to save my life (my strategy usually consists of mashing the Y button like crazy).

[axman36]

The mention of Castle Crashers reminds me of Lava World.

Two level 99s and myself, nearly maxed out playing this level on insane... we started off with 5 health potions... and we couldn't even reach the midboss. RAAAGHHH!!! Hate going there even on normal.

[Third Eye Lem]

The mention of Castle Crashers reminds me of Lava World.

Two level 99s and myself, nearly maxed out playing this level on insane... we started off with 5 health potions... and we couldn't even reach the midboss. RAAAGHHH!!! Hate going there even on normal.

Geeze, I'm glad I didn't go there yet, then.

Here's some more "memorable" stuff I can remember...

-Mega Man 10: Wily Fortress. All of it. Stage one's holographic archives (I suck at dodging), stage two's spikes and crushers, and stage three...Freaking stage three. That was the hardest part of my EASY MODE run. Stage four and five were mostly "try not to get killed and spam E-tanks". Blade Man's and Nitro Man's stages deserve honorable mention for hard-to-dodge obstacles.

-FFX: Seymour, battle two. Took a while to kill because I kept attacking his parasite friend, attacking him directly makes him use Flare/Multi-spells and it kills my characters horribly. Then again, grinding in that game is an absolute pain, I don't know how I managed to get all the way to Calm Lands without going insane...

-Metroid Prime 2: Spider Guardian. it's STILL a pain in the Trilogy remake. I'm not sure if I wanna do 3 either...Damn tokens!

-Sonic Adventure 2: Pyramid Cave. Stupid ghosts holding me and making me sitting ducks for the robots...

-An Untitled Story: Once you get to the ice castle area...You just wanna cry. A lot. The developer is a sadistic little monster.

-Lego Indy 2: Disarming Duel FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF--never touching this PoC again.

-MapleStory: Phantom Forest. Just...Phantom Forest. The place is a misaligned maze full of malicious monsters that'll mangle you magnificently. It's easy to get lost or killed by a wandering high-level monster (Bigfoot, for starters, does over 12k contact damage), and the only way to get to one of the higher-leveled maps in the game is through a map full of annoyingly dangerous monsters and two jump quest maps (but you only have to do it once, after that you get an item to skip that part of the map). The jumping maps have a rotating pillar of death that will kill you for over 40k damage, and it takes precision timing to avoid it. There's no way to survive said pillar unless you're putting all your points into HP and are playing as a Hero (they get the highest HP bonus of all classes), and are an extremely high level, and even then, you'd probably have no reason to go to that part of the map anyways unless you're doing the Crimsonwood Keep party quest or something...MapleStory is hard at higher levels, since monsters starting at level 80 or so do over 1000 contact damage and most classes only have a few thousand HP at that point. It's more hardcore than most people think.

[Tamer Anode/Cathode]

Megaman ZX: Prometheus. Stupid fireball spam.

Red Alert 2: Red Revolution (Soviet Mission 11). Imagine having to fight your way across the entire map to destroy a target. Now imagine that target is heavily defended by walls of anti-surface and anti-air weaponry. Now imagine you have few resources, further resources are hard to defend, the enemy is sending constant waves of tanks and paratroopers at you, and the enemy is capable of mind-controlling your units and sending them back at you.

Sonic Rush Adventure: Sky Babylon Act 2. That stupid antigrav-balloon thing makes the level nearly impossible to S-Rank.

[Formless God]

SMT: Devil Survivor.

Beldr.

Beldr, Beldr, Beldr.

Got him on my first try at Lv.27  :V
Maybe that had something to do with high Magic and lurking the GameFAQs boards. At maxed out Ma I could

Spoiler:

solo the one before Babel in ONE turn.

But that was on an old account. Also ... bad, bad memories :ohdear:
Okay here.

HELL YES G-MAN IN THE URL

On-topic,

- Levels : Touhou and DDP (except for lolMokou and 1-1). Anything past Chapter 2 in Mirror's Edge and many missions in GTA are worth a mention too, I guess.
And BRAID. Jesus Christ how the hell am I supposed to do Death by Movement ?

- Dungeons : Amara Deep Zone / Labyrinth of Amala. Don't even get me started. I don't want to enter that shithole again. The last dungeon in Digital Devil Saga also gets a (dis)honorable mention here, as the floors and ceilings gap you.
Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask are also a couple pain in the rear.

- Bosses : For now, only Persona 4, 2nd Cycle, especially if I'm low on cash.

[Krimmydoodle]

The very first Goomba in Super Mario Bros.  Seriously, if Bowser trained an army like he trained that one Goomba, he'd be unstoppable.  Too bad he blew his military budget on building a bunch of useless castles.

Oh, and Braid is a bloody awesome game, although it's not exactly one that I would think about being subject to difficulty in multiple playthroughs, seeing as a lot of the difficulty is in wrapping your head around what the flying fuck is going on, which is gone on a second run, unless you're really forgetful.  I guess some of the late puzzles can still be a bit of trouble in execution; World 6's Impassable Foliage comes to mind here.

I'd have to think more about other entries for this topic.  It's been far too long since I've played something other than Touhou, rhythm games, or Ace Attorney (still need to finish Miles Edgeworth, on that note), so my mind isn't fresh on examples.

Oh, right.  The Yukari fight in MegaMari.  Back when I was doing my (now-abandoned) project of doing an LP of it, Yukari was the only boss in the game I was completely unwilling to buster duel.  Cheap bitch and her gap of doom.

[lumber_of_the_beast]

The very first Goomba in Super Mario Bros.  Seriously, if Bowser trained an army like he trained that one Goomba, he'd be unstoppable.  Too bad he blew his military budget on building a bunch of useless castles.

Seconded. That thing has killed me more than any other enemy.

[The ⑨th Zentillion]

Some bosses:
Golden Sun 2 - Star Magician and Dullahan, it usually takes me a couple tries to beat them.
Star Ocean (SFC): Succubus in the Portmis vault, the Van trial grounds boss (damned eagle!), Looters in the bonus dungeon.

[Ionasal kkll Solciel]

Red Alert 2: Red Revolution (Soviet Mission 11). Imagine having to fight your way across the entire map to destroy a target. Now imagine that target is heavily defended by walls of anti-surface and anti-air weaponry. Now imagine you have few resources, further resources are hard to defend, the enemy is sending constant waves of tanks and paratroopers at you, and the enemy is capable of mind-controlling your units and sending them back at you.

Kirovs are your friend - three of them, even head-on, should be more than enough to reach the target - especially since the target itself is not guarded by AA.

Honestly, I'd go with the last Allied mission, if we're talking about RA2, even if you know how to cheese out the Nuke Silo and Iron Curtain (Chrono Legionnaires, anyone?).  Poor managing of antiair, antitank, and antiinfantry means that your base gets nuked by V3, Iron Curtained Terror Drones and Rhino Tanks, and your base is vulnerable from all sides.  A ground assault is not recommended, due to the bases you'd have to destroy on the way, and the Elite Guard are Elite Apocalypse Tanks, plus Flak Cannons and Sentry Guns, making air assaults impossible (considering the Harrier is one of the weakest units).

[Third Eye Lem]

Golden Sun 2 - Star Magician and Dullahan, it usually takes me a couple tries to beat them.

Dullahan? Yes. Unless you just spam the crap outta him with summons. Star Magician? No, he's a wuss. Just make sure you kill the Guardian and Refresh Balls when they appear, and let your summons take care of the rest.

[Furienify]

Star Ocean 3

First boss fight you get into on the Lunar Base- in fact, most of the Lunar Base is ungodly dangerous. I'm talking about that Angel/Seraph thing that does that swirly/spin attack that absolutely rapes your health and mana both.

[Bananamatic]

Star Ocean 3

First boss fight you get into on the Lunar Base- in fact, most of the Lunar Base is ungodly dangerous. I'm talking about that Angel/Seraph thing that does that swirly/spin attack that absolutely rapes your health and mana both.

Peppita with Lunatic Shoes destroys the robots even at lv1.
For the Proclaimer...I usually do it with a manual party or stunlock him enough so he won't use it. But yeah...on my first playthrough, he gave me a lot of problems.

[axman36]

Prototype - Elizabeth Greene. Giant freakin tentacle monster with... rocks... chucking rocks at you... hitting you in the air! Then hitting you with those green energy orbs! Then right when you are done getting bombarded by rocks hunters come on over and eat you.

Grand Theft Auto San Andreas - Zero's second mission. The one where you fly a little RC plane through the second city and shoot down trucks while trying to remain on your fuel limit. Agh...

Just about every escort mission in every game I've played - Probably because of my experiences with World of Warcraft, but yeah. Metal Gear Solid 3, World of Warcraft, Any Grand Theft Auto games... it's simply annoying. Some are easy, like Twilight Princess', but many are simply annoying.

[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.

RRRRGH

[Widermelonz]

Armored Core Silent Line:
Mission 1-7: Archive Area Ambush - The raging sandstorm in this level makes everything so hard to shoot. To make matters worse, the things you have to shoot are really fast and they shoot lasers at you. And those laser hurt more than should. Then, towards the end, you have to defeat IMO one of the hardest opponents in the game: Corpse Maker.

[BoLaD]

The stage 2 boss of DOJ makes me want to off myself almost every time I fight it.

[theshirn]

Fire Emblem 7.  Battle Before Dawn.

OK, Jaffar just died, restart.  Jaffar died again, restart.  Again.  Again.  Again.  Hey, I kept him alive this ti-nope, they killed Zephiel, restart.  Jaffar died, restart.  OK, I saved both of th-no, Ursula just killed him with Bolting, restart.

&c.&c.

[Third Eye Lem]

Fire Emblem 7.  Battle Before Dawn.

OK, Jaffar just died, restart.  Jaffar died again, restart.  Again.  Again.  Again.  Hey, I kept him alive this ti-nope, they killed Zephiel, restart.  Jaffar died, restart.  OK, I saved both of th-no, Ursula just killed him with Bolting, restart.

&c.&c.

Makes you wish there was Shove/Smite and Battle Save, huh?

[?q]

Fire Emblem 7.  Battle Before Dawn.

OK, Jaffar just died, restart.  Jaffar died again, restart.  Again.  Again.  Again.  Hey, I kept him alive this ti-nope, they killed Zephiel, restart.  Jaffar died, restart.  OK, I saved both of th-no, Ursula just killed him with Bolting, restart.

&c.&c.

Thank you.  For a moment I thought I was the only one who saw Jaffar chain-die... except judging from how you mentioned Zephiel dying, you must not have been playing ENM >.<

Also seconding Uzuki from TWEWY.  It's kind of sad how that fight gets easier when Koki comes in.

[GMOFucker: Makin' GMOs To Fuck 'Em]

Also seconding Uzuki from TWEWY.  It's kind of sad how that fight gets easier when Koki comes in.

Then it gets worse again when they both go insane. I had to switch to easy for all four battles against Uzuki/Kariya on my first playthrough and I still had a ridiculous amount of trouble with their berserk forms after switching difficulties.

Also, somewhat interesting: It's possible to to trap Kariya in a long loop of movement with two Lightning Rooks. You can't even do that until postgame (or even you trade pins or something) but it can be pretty useful for getting his drops.

[theshirn]

Thank you.  For a moment I thought I was the only one who saw Jaffar chain-die... except judging from how you mentioned Zephiel dying, you must not have been playing ENM >.<

That can happen on HNM/EHM.  HHM, that isn't even the worst level.  That's a tie between Genesis and Cog of Destiny (AAAGH SO MANY VALKYRIES AAAAAGH)