The Harshest Difficulty Spikes

Image Credit: Square Enix

Sometimes you’re playing a game, having a great time, just just chilling out and enjoying the vibe. Then all of a sudden an obstacle appears in your path and completely halts your progression. This sort of challenge is harder than anything that you’ve experienced up to this point in the game. This is what’s known as the difficulty spike.

Difficulty spikes have been around for as long as games have existed. Games like Pac-Man and Tetris will gradually increase the speed of the game, while other games like Battletoads or SNES Lion King will beat the player down and make them want to quit on level three.

Today I’m going to be looking at difficulty spikes in RPGs. I’m not going to be considering endgame boss fights, or optional superbosses for this list. To me, boss fights at the end of your adventure should be difficult, and it would have to be a drastic spike in difficulty for me to even consider putting it on here. As for superbosses, they’re meant to be an optional challenge that you take on after you’ve done literally everything else. Again, they’re supposed to be difficult.

Shadow Yukiko (Persona 4)

Image Credit: Atlus

“I am a shadow… The true self!”

If you’ve only played Persona 4 Golden, I don’t think that I can properly convey how much the original PS2 release of Persona 4 hated its players. It really feels like every single boss in this game was designed to be the most obnoxious thing imaginable. I feel like I could’ve put any boss from the early half of the game on this list. Shadow Kanji comes with two helpers that heal and buff him. Shadow Teddie will blindside you with massive damage, and the copycat killer’s fight is just annoying. It’s not hard, but the gimmick wears out pretty quickly. But I decided to give the entry to the game’s first real challenge.

Shadow Yukiko is a massive jump in difficulty from the last two Shadow bosses. Shadow Yosuke is more or less a tutorial, while Shadow Chie doesn’t hit hard enough to be super threatening. But with Shadow Yukiko, the kid gloves are coming off.

The most notable part of her kit is all of the different magic attacks that she has access to. She has Matarunda to lower your party’s attack, Fire magic with the single target Agi and the AoE spell Burn to Ashes. She has Mind Charge which doubles the damage of her next magic attack. And she has a move called Shivering Rondo, which is a unique move that deals heavy non-elemental damage to anyone afflicted with the Fear status effect. On top of that, she has no weaknesses and absorbs fire damage. She also has an above-average crit rate and physical attacks that can hit up to two times.

She also comes with the ability to summon a Charming Prince add-on to assist her. The prince has a couple of basic physical skills that he can use. But scarier than that is the magic he has. Sukukaja to increase Shadow Yukiko’s accuracy and evasion, Diarama for a substantial amount of healing this early in the game, and Terror Voice to inflict Fear onto one of your party members which synergizes with Shadow Yukiko’s Shivering Rondo to pretty much guarantee a KO on one of your party members. Izanagi help you if your MC gets hit with that. The princes are weak to Ice, however Shadow Yukiko has the move White Wall which removes that weakness for three turns. Fortunately Shadow Yukiko is only able to summon the prince once.

What makes this fight so difficult is the sheer amount of damage that Shadow Yukiko is able to put out. It’s entirely possible that she’ll continually spam Burn to Ashes and wipe your party, or put you far enough back to where it’s not worth trying to continue an attempt. Chie is also weak to Fire, so she can be a bit of a liability in this battle. You can get a Persona with Red Wall like Slime or Anzu, but they’re both weak to Fire as well, so you’re probably better off with Fire-Resist Personas like Orobas and Oberon and just leaving Chie to her own devices (I.E. floor tanking).

The fight in Golden is more of a sidegrade, rather than being necessarily easier or harder. The biggest change to the fight is that Shadow Yukiko is now weak to Ice while the Charming Prince is weak to Lightning. The trade-off for having a weakness is that she has a lot more health (1050 to 2500), but lower offensive stats, meaning she doesn’t hit nearly as hard. She also lost Mind Charge, so she can’t burst your team down as easily with Burn to Ashes, and Matarunda so she can’t lower your team’s DPS. She overall doesn’t hit as hard as she used to, but the fight can drag on thanks to her increased health pool.

Shadow Yukiko is what I like to consider a “filtering fight”. You either learn the game’s rules and adapt, or decide that it’s too much and drop the game. She’s certainly not the most difficult fight in the game, but she’s a considerable step up from what the game asked of you up to that point.

Riovanes Castle (Final Fantasy Tactics)

Image Credit: Square Enix

“Draw your sword, Ramza.”

From a fight that filters players to a fight that can outright stop players from progressing! Final Fantasy Tactics is an incredible game. It does a great job of merging the job class system from FF5 with the Strategy RPG elements of Tactics Ogre. However, if you’ve played any SRPG in your life, then you already know that a game like FFT will have “that” level. The infamous level that veteran players all have their own unique horror stories about.

Riovanes Castle is the final hurdle of the game’s third chapter, and boy oh boy does it leave an impact. This mission is split up into three parts, so let’s take a look at what’s on offer for each section. First is breaking into the castle. This is a standard “defeat all of the enemies” mission that you’ve done a million times up to this point. There are some powerful enemy units like Archers and Knights, but it’s nothing that you can’t handle by this point in the game. The second part is where the fun begins.

Upon entering the castle’s keep, you’re greeted by Wiegraf, a recurring villain in FFT’s ensemble. And this time he’s not screwing around. This is a 1-v-1 duel between Ramza and Wiegraf. He comes decked out in a full set of diamond equipment. He also has Holy Knight abilities, meaning he can strike you from a distance. Writing it out like this makes it seem pretty straightforward, but I promise that Wiegraf can end you in a couple of turns if you’re not prepared. And when you finally beat him, there’s a part two to this fight!

Through the power of his Zodiac Stone, Wiegraf transforms into Belias, a giant four-armed goat monster. This is where your party finally shows up to help you, but to match your party, Belias summons three Archaeodemons to help him fight. This is where the fight turns from hard to brutal. Belias and his entourage hit incredibly hard and can easily overwhelm your party. Belias himself comes with the ability to use Summon magic, which can hit your entire party.

And finally, the roof. The roof may just be the dumbest battle in all of FFT. You’re pitted against another important character (Elmdore) and his two assassin lady friends (Lettie and Celia). Your job is to beat Elmdore while also keeping a guest character (Rapha) alive. How hard could that be?

Well for starters, your three enemies are all incredibly fast, meaning that it’s entirely possible for all three of them to get their turns before you, kill Rapha since she’s right in their way, and then you fail the mission without even getting a chance to play the video game. Your best bet is to just hope that Elmdore’s AI does something stupid and lets you sneak in for the kill against him. But if the stars align for you, you’re in the homestretch of FFT. And you’ll be getting the best character in the game in just a few missions.

So, how do you combat this silly string of missions? Well, the first part is easy. The enemies aren’t that strong, and you should have an idea of how your team functions by this point. As for Wiegraf, you can invalidate his Holy Knight abilities by equipping Ramza with a Chameleon Robe which lets you absorb Holy elemental damage. This leaves him with just his weaker Martial Art skills.

There’s no one build I can recommend for Ramza for this fight. Wiegraf is like the hiccups. He’s annoying and everybody has their own method to get rid of it that they swear works 100% of the time. Personally, I remember in my first playthrough I built Ramza to be a teleporting punch Monk, blinking around the small arena and using his unique Tailwind and Focus abilities to keep buffing his Speed and Attack respectively. Any stat buffs used during the fight with Wiegraf carry over into the Belias fight. Eventually Ramza got so fast that he just kept taking multiple turns in a row. Really your playthrough up to this point should be building Ramza to comfortably survive this fight.

Also, a funny side note about this strategy. When I did this on the PS1 version of the game, Tailwind was just called Yell because the translation was admittedly not the best. And the idea of Ramza just constantly blinking away from Wiegraf just to start screaming in the corner is a hilarious mental image that I always think about when I do this fight.

As for the roof fight, good freaking luck. Just hope that Elmdore does something stupid, or Rapha somehow manages to survive.

But there’s one part to this fight that makes it truly infamous that FFT veterans have been screaming at their monitors for me to bring up. After finishing a section in this level, you’re asked if you want to save your game. If you’re playing the PS1 version of the game, DO NOT save over your main slot! There’s no way for you to abandon a mission, so if you get stuck at Wiegraf or the roof fight and you’re only using one save slot, you’ve basically just softlocked yourself and have to start the game over. This was thankfully fixed in the Ivalice Chronicles version of the game.

I think that you can tell a fight or a level is truly infamous when you go to look up the level and the first thing that shows up in the search results is a Reddit thread about how difficult this fight is. As an FFT veteran myself, seeing all of the posts about a new generation of players struggling at this part was heartwarming. This awful level is like a bonding experience for FFT players. Everyone sharing their horror stories and what builds they used to get through these atrocious fights.

The Ravens (Trails in the Sky)

Image Credit: Falcom, GungHo

“Thing of evil!—prophet still, if bird or devil!—Quoth the Raven ‘Nevermore’.”

Trails in the Sky is a fantastic game, and I’m sad that I missed out on the remake’s release last year. I think that I either got caught up in other things that were happening, or I just didn’t realize that it was coming out. If I had played it, it absolutely would’ve been in my Games of the Year list. TL:DR on my overall thoughts on 1st Chapter. The game is great. I love the characters, music, and world. And the ending of the game was absolutely insane. I cannot recommend the game enough. Alright, enough praise. Let’s get upset with the game!

For this entry, we need to go into the game’s second chapter. Not the second game, but chapter two in the first game. I freaking love this part of the game. Not only are you introduced to two of my favorite characters, Kloe and Agate who were mainstays in my endgame party, but the whole city of Ruan is such a vibe. I’m a sucker for seaside cities, even though I’ve never lived near the seacoast. Plus there’s this one part of the chapter where Estelle, Joshua, and Kloe all take part in a play that was reminding me of FF6’s opera scene. But there’s unfortunately one giant sour spot in this part of the game.

Fairly early on when you arrive at Ruan, you’re sent to investigate this group of thugs called The Ravens. They’re a group of delinquents who your team suspects of having burned down the nearby orphanage. You go to confront them, and after an incredibly badass display from Kloe, she finally joins as a playable party member and the fight begins.

In this fight, it’s your three party members (Estelle, Joshua, and Kloe) against a flock of six Raven thugs. This fight is just well and truly miserable, and The Ravens have pretty much all the hallmarks of an obnoxious fight. First of all, there’s six of them, so they’ll be getting twice as many turns as you get. They can debuff your characters, attack from either up close or at a distance, they can heal each other and revive any of their party members that you’ve knocked out. And then there’s the enrage mechanic.

See, Trails has this “cool” feature in boss fights where when you get the boss down to half HP, they go into this enrage state. They get a temporary buff to all of their stats, they jump to the top of the turn order, and they gain access to a crazy powerful attack. This is normally balanced by the fact that you’re only fighting one enemy, and not six. In the case of The Ravens, the three leaders can all enrage. Their special attack, No Mercy, is stupidly powerful and can knock out any of your characters from full HP.

The trick with this garbage fight is to just continuously blast them with AoE attacks. Make sure that you’re using the most current gear, and check that your orbments on Estelle and Joshua are as high level as they can be. Grinding isn’t really a thing in the Trails games. Trails in the Sky especially likes to arbitrarily halt your progression if you’re in the middle of doing something. Kloe is also more of a liability in this fight. Given that she only became playable during this fight, you can’t change any gear on her, or have any clue what she’s supposed to play like. 

Everything about these doofuses just compounds into one obnoxious fight that will catch new players off-guard and make them wonder if they’re doing something wrong. When in reality, the mad lads over at GungHo and Falcom just overtuned the heck out of these guys. That being said, you can change the game’s difficulty freely, so these guys are manageable if you’re okay with swallowing your pride.

Onett (Earthbound)

Image Credit: Nintendo

“Knife to beat you, dumb!”

Man, for a game that I’m not particularly a fan of, I sure seem to talk about it quite a bit. Earthbound is a strange game for me. I think that the game is good, but I’m honestly not the biggest fan of it. I’d much rather replay Mother 3 if I was going to play any game in the “Mother” series. And I think what puts me off of wanting to play Earthbound again is having to go through Onett again.

Onett is the first area in Earthbound. Yeah, the term difficulty spike is very fitting for this place. Earthbound is not an “ease you in” kind of game. More like “you’re gonna learn today!” Onett is really where all of my problems with Earthbound are put on full display. For starters, you’re alone in this city. Ness is the only party member that you have. And Ness is not the damage dealer of the game. He takes on more of a slower tank/supportive role with moves like PSI Shield and Lifeup.

Ness’s tankiness is sadly not a lot of help in Onett. You end up getting attacked by multiple strong enemies at a time, and they’ll just kill you in a couple of turns. Enemies like the Pogo Punk, Skate Punk, and Yes Man Junior not only hit hard, but they often travel in groups, and they can call for backup if you do manage to fight one by himself. By this point in the game, Ness’s only PSI skill should be Lifeup, the weakest heal spell in the game. You don’t have a lot of PP either, so you’ll only be able to use it so many times. So then you’ll want to use items to heal your HP. But this brings me to the next problem.

The inventory system in Earthbound is awful. Each of your four characters only has fourteen inventory slots, and things like equipment and key items aren’t separated into their own pockets. Getting a new party member is great in Earthbound because it gives you another backpack to carry your stuff around in. Ness has two key items that he always has to carry on him; the Sound Stone and his ATM Card. Then there’s your four pieces of equipment, so that’s almost half of your inventory spaces gone already. Your inventory is probably also filled with useless Bread Rolls and Cookies that you got as drops from the crows you were fighting on your way into the city. The best healing items that you can buy are $14 hamburgers, which was a lot in 1995, and is $31 in today’s money.

And then there’s the two bosses you have to fight to progress. First is Frank, whose whole gimmick is just him shanking you. He’ll cut you for big damage. He’ll cut you for small damage. He doesn’t any tricks outside of stabbing you. Just stay on top of your heals and you should be good. Then comes part two of the fight which is against his machine: Frankystein Mark 2. This hunk of junk has more HP than Frank does, as well as stronger attacks and higher defenses. This translates to him hitting harder, while you’re doing less damage overall.

After beating Franky and his machine, you’re given access to the game’s first dungeon, and it’s honestly not that bad. It has the same problems of swarming you with groups of enemies, but they’re much weaker than anything you were fighting in the city. Plus you should have, or be close to getting PSI Rockin’ for Ness, which is strong and hits all enemies in a row.

Onett is such a strange way to start your game off. The prologue wasn’t this hard, and neither was the walk from Ness’s house to Onett. But when you step into the city, the kid gloves come off, and everything wants you dead. Heck, the rest of Earthbound isn’t even this difficult. I’d argue that it doesn’t get this hard again until you come back to Onett at the end of the game, but by that point all the strongest enemies have taken over. Plus this happens right before you go to the final area, so it makes sense for it to be difficult.

Closing

And there you have it. These are some of the more notorious fights and areas that come to my mind when thinking about difficulty spikes. I want to give an honorable mention to Final Fantasy 10 for having less of a difficulty curve, and more of a difficulty roulette. The bosses make absolutely no sense to me, and because their gimmicks are all over the place, if you can’t figure out what the fights want from you, you’ll just die. Some notable fights for me include any fight with Seymour, Sinspawn Gui, Yunalesca, and BFA. FF10 is a bizarre game.