If at first you don't succeed, try and try again

[Johnway]

plenty of opportunities were i dug in and just passed it with grim determination for the most part.

Most notable being of course, Dark souls 3. Admittedly, i did beat some of the bosses inviting npcs to help me. its come to my attention that enemies seriously struggle when there is more then one target. But whatever, DS series is prime example of trying and trying again. i may have beaten the game (defeating the soul of cinder) but the DLC i just walked away and didn't bother with it. Dark souls 1 against ornstein and smaugh was nothing short of a nightmare. Spend nearly 3 weeks trying to succeed and this was when i had no concept of the game mechanics, so i was fat rolling and was just grinding like crazy just to level up and prepping and attempts.

Another example, Guacamelee 2, christ almighty trying to get the good/true ending is nothing short of harrowing. Almost broke me those last challenges. But we got it done and i have no intention of doing it again.

other examples: no time to explain. its more the clunky controls and precision platform/puzzle game agitated me significantly.


Recent handheld examples? JRPGs have always been about a war of attrition so i spend plenty of time grinding till i am strong enough/lucky enough to succeed. Recent mentions legend of heroes: trails of cold steel. Its not difficult, just bloody annoying. Its difficult to beat some of the later bosses on the first attempt because i'm ill prepared and there's no way to know what to expect. But hindsight is 20/20 and i can make adjustments afterwards.

shin megami tensei 4 i had similar issues, but i had eyes on a bigger prize: The true neutral ending. A bloody annoying process of doing both lawful/evil actions that you can get the true path. i almost didn't succeed and more luck and looking through a walkthrough before it was too late. Too bad my save game got corrupted...

 

[BeardyHat]

There's definitely been plenty of times, given I've played lots of Dark Souls and plenty of other hard games. Generally, I'm pretty persistent and overcome most things I've encountered and honestly, those don't tend to stick with me for some reason. I do recall one boss in Dark Souls 3, I believe it was optional and in the bottom of some church grounds? I can't even remember what it was, but I kept persisting, kept persisting and finally made it.

But what really sticks with me is Lies of P. The second to last boss was tough having a skillcheck for parrying, which after a dozen or so times, I finally beat, but damn it was a *****. I certainly felt pretty accomplished after that. But, beyond that was the last boss. I tried about 10 or so times and finally just decided to drop the game entirely. I knew I could beat it, given enough time and tries, but Lies of P was really rubbing me the wrong way by that point.

I was pretty tired of the proscriptive playstyle of the game--parry or bust--and I feel that a big weak point of the game is that pretty much every boss has multiple phases, which I honestly just find tedious, especially after defeating the multiple phase previous boss I mentioned above. I don't mind beating my head against the wall with a tough boss, but when that boss starts to require me to memorize multiple movesets in different phases, my eyes start to gloss over.

I thought for awhile I'd get back to it and finish that final boss, as again, I'm well aware I can do it, but it would have required me to go back and farm crystals to summon phantoms and thinking about having to do that, coupled with my lack of love for the game mechanics caused me to just write the game off entirely.

Liked it well enough, but don't feel that it's worth my time to actually properly finish.

 

[Cashmann]

We've had a thread on difficult games before, but I don't think we've had a thread specifically for difficult moments before.

Maybe it was because the game's difficulty spiked, because you tried to take on something you weren't ready for or because the game threw something at you that countered the strategy you had been using. What are some notable moments in gaming where you ran into a difficult section that you just kept trying and trying, either until you succeeded, cheated or simply gave up?

Thank you for this advice. I wasn't aware that the difficulty spiked. thought that I was just out of IRL practice.
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