That One Level/Video Games/Turn-Based Strategy

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You've got all the time in the world, and you've got the right units...but you've also got to deal with these levels before you can proceed.

Disgaea

  • Disgaea: Hour of Darkness has several levels loaded with Geo Symbols, crystals that can cause various effects on the battlefield, but are mostly used to multiply the enemies' stats or remove part of your HP every turn. More often than not you're forced to sacrifice one or more characters in order to fight the enemies on equal footing. Examples:
    • Absolute Zero: Attack is halved and Defense is raised by 50%, making it hard to deal direct damage. The area is covered by the Ally Damage 20% effect, so every turn all your characters will lose 20% of their max HP. The enemies here specializes in poisoning, thus making it unnecessary to do direct damage to you. The Geo Symbols starts quite far from your characters.
    • Theatre of Death: All enemies have a 300% boost in their stats. In order to reach the Geo Symbol (wich is conveniently placed in the opposite corner of the arena), you'll need to do a chain throw to make one of your characters able to get rid of the symbol. The characters used for the chain throw will eat some serious damage and propably end their turn poisoned, asleep or paralyzed due to the enemies. There's a similar situation in the Hero's Tomb area, but it's just bigger, the boost is of 600% and to deal with the crystals you'll end up surrounded by enemies (and the boss), while your throwers WILL die before the second turn).
    • Main Corridor 3: Absurdly sturdy and strong enemies (three of them are even using weapons they don't specialize) which have their stats boosted by a whopping 900%. Six of them use tranquilizer guns that deal decent damage and put you to sleep. Requires a bare minimum of three sacrifices before you are actually able to damage them and not get OHKOed by the lighsaber wielding ones. Oh, and after that, there's a boss waiting for you (unless you take too long, so the boss will come and help the other soldiers).
    • The Nightdwellers level. Despite the fact that the intro to the level is one of the funniest scenes in the game, the level itself is terrible unless you're horribly overleveled. The entire stage is covered with a GeoEffect that causes everybody, allies and enemies, to randomly teleport around the stage at the end of each turn, which makes forming any coherent strategy pretty much impossible. It is possible to destroy the symbol that causes the effect, but it has a ton of HP, and you have to rely on luck to get any strong attacker near it. And you can only hope that your healers don't get teleported next to that freaking Red Ranger...
      • This type of map comes back once more in the last chapter. It's not an easy map to begin with, but making every square on the map a Warp tile is just vile.
  • While we're on the topic of Disgaea, Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories - Dark Hero Days has one particularly infuriating stage near the end of Axel Mode, once again due to Geo Symbol effects... Namely, a field that grows bigger and bigger with each round, meaning it will eventually cover the entire battle field. The effects it has on anyone standing on it? Invincibility. No lifting. Game Over. The very instant someone steps on the field, YOU IMMEDIATELY LOSE. Oh, and did we mention that the enemies are programmed to move towards it? Hope you like Level Grinding, 'cause the only way you're getting through this one is by making your entire team strong enough to kill all the enemies on the stage in one or two rounds. If you can't do that, you're basically doomed.

Fire Emblem

  • Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn has a level near the end of the game where you have to fight dozens of dragons to make your way to the very powerful king of Goldoa. Their brute force and numbers makes up for their terrible strategy and poor luck, and they feature both physical and magic attacks. Unless you use the battle save (unavailable in Hard and less than fully honorable at any difficulty), one mistake can cost hours of work.
    • The key to this is to use Kurthanaga, the dragon prince. Despite his low starting stats and speed, none of the other dragons aside from the boss will attack him in return. Meaning not only can you protect most of your units, but with the right planning he can gain at least 20 or so levels. The main bonus of this is how useful he will be against the later final bosses.
    • There's also one earlier in the game (Chapter 3-13) where you have to play as under-leveled characters fighting against a nearly endless wave of laguz. Especially egregious because Ike, the best unit in the game to which everything falls in two hits, is the enemy boss. You have to rely upon mostly brain-dead ally units to do the dirty work for you, and only one of them, (the one referred to by fans as the "3-13 Archer") actually puts up a fight. There were several joke topics on GameFAQs about how "3-13 Archer" was the best character in the game.
      • I wouldn't say that. This troper found that the AI is fairly competent if you leave them on Roam.
      • Don't forget that Soren might have a Blizzard tome by now, which not only allows him to attack from half the map away and probably kill anyone who isn't being rescued, but waste a really good tome on units that you don't want to kill.
      • At least 3-13 is redeemed (somewhat) by the Crowning Music of Awesome it plays. 4-3 doesn't have quite this much luck. Sure, it's probably the least scrappy of the Fire Emblem desert levels (which, given how bad they always seem to be, isn't saying much)... but then try playing it your first time through without a guide. You won't realize that Sothe's ultimate weapon and the Dragonfoe scroll (both of which are EXTREMELY helpful in Endgame) are buried here, much less where. You won't know to send Micaiah to the far east (which is quite counterintuitive, by the way) to get Stefan. You won't know that you need to keep the boss from being the last enemy you kill because there's a Laguz Gem (also EXTREMELY helpful in Endgame) buried at his position. And you won't know that you have to hurry to gather kills before the Black Knight shows up and annihilates all the enemies in his path. Yeah, in case you didn't get the message, that level is a MASSIVE Guide Dang It.
      • Chapter 1-5 in hard mode falls squarely under this for one simple reason: Jill. Also known as your "ally", who you have no control over, and who will grant you a Nonstandard Game Over if she dies...with A.I. that seems completely suicidal. And she starts a good distance ahead of your team, so even if you rush your entire army straight to her position, she'll still get a guaranteed chance to screw you over.
      • Chapter 4-5 in Radiant Dawn: the one with hordes of feral laguz coming at you, swamp that lowers movement rate everywhere, and a boss that would summon four more enemies every single turn, and, if you got close to him, would teleport away. At least it's a mage boss.
        • Although that one is somewhat redeemed by being the single most experience-rich map in the game. Buy everyone some extra weapons, fight defensively and let the hordes come to you, and soak the levels up like a sponge...
    • Chapter 23 of Path of Radiance and chapter 3-11 of Radiant Dawn. Pitfall traps and enemy ballistae to take out your fliers. The latter is made at least marginally more palatable by the fact that dragon-riders no longer count as fliers for the purpose of determining weaknesses, but is turned back around by the many enemies using Shine Barriers to block the only path available to ground-bound units (other than being carried over by a flier) for a number of turns. You know, ground-bound units like Ike, who has to capture the boss's position to end the chapter?
  • Any Fog of War chapter in any game is met with groans of disgust, but "Battle Before Dawn" in The Sword of Flame has a reputation for being particularly sucktastic, especially in hard mode.
    • To elaborate: there are three different AI allies whom you need to rescue, and they are in the bottom left, center, and right. One is the prince, who at least has the sense to hide and use Elixirs. The other two are Nino the wizard, who will get killed by any physical attack and Jaffar, who starts surrounded by enemy forces and can get killed by a couple bad rolls. To top it all off, the boss will move to get you and has the long-range Bolting tome, which will kill weakened units or the aforementioned Nino and the prince. Better be prepared to restart.
      • Even worse, there are two treasure rooms, each one holding absolutely fabulous treasure (one has a consumable item that permanently increases a unit's movement range by one, and another is an equippable item that removes a flying unit's crippling arrow weakness). However, the enemy starts much closer to those treasure rooms, and deploys their own thieves to steal the treasure for themselves. So, in addition to needing to defend all three NPCs, you also have to fight flawlessly in order to get to the thieves (who will have stolen the treasures before you get there) and kill them to get the treasures before they escape off the map.
      • To add an extra grain of salt into the wounds, in Hector's mode, the enemies sent to kill Jaffar all have Swordreavers (and some have Swordslayers, just for an extra "fuck you" to the gamer) which reverse the weapon triangle, putting Jaffar into a massive disadvantage at the beginning. Sometimes, you just have to restart because the game wanted him dead. Hope you got a flying unit/paladin at the ready!
      • Also, regarding the prince and his Elixirs; he will not use them unless his health is below 50%. When he has 20 HP to start with. In other words, if a Fighter attacks him and only does, say 6 damage, it would be WORSE than if it nearly killed him, because he won't heal the damage back!
  • The Sword of Seals has one late in the game. Chapter 21: The Sword Of Seals. Let's see, we've got reinforcements arriving in groups of four, and as many as five of these groups arrive on certain turns early on. Most of these are Dragon Riders/Dragonlords, one of the toughest classes out there. It's also a really big level. Then once you get close to the boss, you've got another really powerful enemy character showing up, one that all indications thus far have shown might be recruitable. He isn't. He won't attack you, mercifully, but he and his units will get in your way if you decide not to engage them in battle. Luckily, reports that you have to leave him alive to get to the Gaiden Level aren't true. Then there's a boss whose HP breaks the usual cap and who also has insane strength and defense. Here's hoping your mages have either been loaded with Angelic Robes (which you can actually buy in the secret store in this game) or have developed high dodge rates. Oh, and don't bother staying near the start and waiting for the waves of reinforcements to come to you, or else you'll have trouble beating the level in 30 turns, which is required to get the Gaiden level--and remember, you need to get every Gaiden level to unlock the Perfect Run Final Boss.
    • Chapter 8, Reunion, is an example of a level that's tedious more than difficult. The level is one long, winding, linear corridor that's only not trivial because the thieves trying to steel the treasure and a hostage that must constantly dodge arrows create an effective time limit on the level.
    • Chapter 16, Retaking the Capital has siege tome using opponents that can only be killed with a longbow and more likely need to be outlasted. This gives a low, but possible, chance of losing a unit each turn as there's no way to keep out of their range while still progressing. It also requires keeping a certain enemy alive to access the bonus level needed to unlock the true ending. The Sleep staff makes this part less painful, but even if it was obtained earlier it has extremely limited uses and low accuracy.
    • The "Sacae route" version of 17, 18, 19, and 20x aren't so much hard as they are tedious. The primary opponent type in these levels are Nomad enemies, armed with bows. Since bows are ranged weapons, your units can only counter attack if they are armed with a ranged weapon and the only options for that are either too fragile to subject to multiple attackers in a turn, or are too inaccurate to hit anything when retaliating. This means nearly every kill must occur on the player's phase, and the natural dodge rate of Nomads makes that unreliable. 20 is difficult, but only because it repeats the use of unreachable siege tome users, who can randomly kill support units, previously seen in 16. Since Sue and Shin having a high level forces the player into this route the two are often benched, despite being decent to good units in their own right, since the risk of playing the Sacae route is just too great (Earlier tier lists often put them at the bottom for this alone, but more modern ones rate them purely on their own merits).
  • Any time there's a desert level in a Fire Emblem game, you know trouble is headed your way, because your movement on the desert is mega-slow. Paladins normally move 8 spaces, but on deserts it's 2 spaces. Magicians (Non-mounted of course--hope you trained some. And no, this doesn't include the Spoony Bard.) aren't affected by this, and neither are fliers, which the enemy army typically has a whole lot of. The Sword of Seals makes it worse by forcing you to use Sophia--a level ONE Shaman who dies in one shot from just about everything--in this desert level, which just so happens to include Fog of War. And you need to keep her alive AND pass the level in 25 turns or you won't get the Bonus Level, which is needed for getting to the proper end of the game. Now, desert levels typically hide items in the sand. You find them by putting a Thief or high-luck-stat unit on the space where the item is (just barely evades Guide Dang It by putting the items near bones on the map). Going back to The Sword of Seals, you have to protect Sophia in Fog of War, worry about the time limit AND worry about finding all the items... AND one final item that only Sophia can find! Did I mention the Bishop with a Sleep spell who can freeze Sophia and make her helpless to just about anything? And odds are she won't resist it either--her resistance is low, considering she's level ONE.
    • Actually, Sophia's resistance is a respectable 8 at Lv.1, UNPROMOTED, and she ends up with the second-highest Resistance in the game. So she actually resists Sleep better than most promoted units...it's everything with a weapon, especially the Dragon Riders, that prove more dangerous to her. And, unfortunately, the Sleep staff has the unpleasant side-effect of hitting your best offensive characters more often than not.
    • C15 of Path of Radiance. Not only do you have a desert that slows down everyone except mages, flying units, and thieves; the map is full of Laguz shapeshifters whose stats after transformation are impossible to predict. Between this, the Guide Dang It locations of the treasures and Stefan, and the fact that you're rewarded for not killing the Laguz who are making every effort to kill you...
  • Chapter 13 in Shadow Dragon. Shooters and their 3 to 10 range all but flood the map. They are at least immobile for the most part, so you can shake off the mobile enemies--which are few at all, and easily taken care of individually even on Hard 5--and then proceed to drain their ammo....except each of them has more than 5 shots and the sole Fort on the map is covered by most of the Shooters. Either that or relying on luck and the fact that the AI Shooters won't necessarily attack people in their range when recruitable characters like the one in this chapter will attack the very people who can recruit them regardless of reasoning.
  • Thracia 776 is renowned for being Nintendo Hard, and there are many different levels in this game that would easily qualify as That One Level in normal Fire Emblem games, but the one level that takes the cake is Chapter 22. Lots of high-leveled enemies that all have a boosted 30% accuracy and avoid thanks to a particular character on the map, status-inflicting staff users (in this game, long-range staffs can affect anyone on the map, and bad statuses do not wear off over time) and lots of ballistas that are subject to the same accuracy/avoid boost that love to snipe your weaker characters off. Although it is very easy to simply cop out and use a Warp Staff to kill the boss and seize the castle on the first turn, one of the bosses, who has an army of very powerful soldiers protecting him, gives a very nice sword to someone if you have her talk to him. So, if you want that sword, or if you ran out of Warp Staves... godspeed, soldier.
    • Chapter 17 on the east path (17A) will make you feel like you had gone with Honor Before Reason and wish you had been sneaky. The particular character in question is also in this chapter, and there's a bunch of Shooters and Meteo mages around the castle to keep you from getting in quickly enough. What's that? You'll take your time and avoid the distance bastards until you wipe out everything else? No you will not, you will get torn up by Mage Knights and Poison spell Dark Mages up the wazoo. Poison itself is a nasty status effect here, averting Useless Useful Spell; it actually deals passable damage on each turn....or rather it would be JUST that if it didn't last indefinitely and the means for getting rid of it wasn't overly limited. Worse, the bastards with the poison spell can teleport themselves with Rewarp Wands, and thanks to the hyper accuracy, they will hit and poison you even if you strike first, and no you will not One-Hit Kill them unless you have a seriously overleveled character, and the hyper avoid makes it quite possible that a second character will have to attack and risk being counterattacked and poisoned. It's so bad that MageKnight404 got upset having to deal with it and was relieved when the character finally left, and he has experienced Chapter 22.
    • And those chapters actually pale in comparison to Chapter 24x. The whole chapter consists of a never ending swarm of berserkers with ridiculous crit rates and the mentioned Dark Mages with the stupid Poison-inflicting tomes.
      • If that weren't bad enough, the map is full of invisible trap tiles that warp any unit unlucky enough to cross it to an inescapable room full of said enemies and the only way to get them out is to use a Rescue Staff to bring them to the staff's user... The problem is that particular staff only has three charges and there only 2-3 of them in the entire game, and you've likely used them up at this point and/or are saving them for the final chapter. And to make things worse, this is an escape chapter meaning your troops has to make it to the exit and leave before your Lord can, otherwise any units left behind will automatically be captured. And since 24x is AFTER the chapter you are able to break your captured units out of prison (Chpt 21x), anyone abandoned/captured here will be considered DEAD at this point.
    • Even getting access to the chapter is a pain, due to the sheer amount of luck involved. In the previous chapter, you have to rescue children being pursued by those Dark Mages and carry the right child to a door who will unlock it, revealing a room with a chest that has the item required to unlock Chapter 24x, the problem with this task is that carrying another unit(even a child) cuts the unit's stats in half making attacking enemies very risky, the child who can unlock that door is totally random, this chapter is full of chapter-lasting Standard Status Effects, and the children are far away from that room and you have to fight those Dark Mages for them. If one of them captures/kills the child you need, you are screwed.
    • As one user on GameFAQs puts it: "People skip Ch 24x not just because it's not worth it; they skip it mostly for the sake of their own sanity."
  • ANY "Defend" mission if you actually defend, or attack in the wrong place, or send in the wrong units, or send in the wrong level units... Any defend mission.
    • Not all of them. Chapter 2-E in Radiant Dawn may be a Defend mission, but it is also a Best Level Ever.
  • Chapter 2 in Fire Emblem: Seisen no Keifu can give you a lot of headaches. Namely, the condition of keeping those three NPC knights alive if you want the Knight Ring (it lets foot units move again after attacking, VERY useful for dancers!). And no, you can't get it again in the second half. A close second is the final part of the last chapter in which you not only have to withstand a barrage of enemies, a powerful boss with a Holy Weapon and three Falcon Knights with Awareness and the Critical Skill but you also have to hurry over to Velthomer to take out Manfloy so you can get Julia back on your side!
    • And you NEED her back on your side, because without her the Final Boss is pretty much impossible.
      • To reiterate, the final boss has an (un)holy weapon that not only jacks his stats, but halves the attack power of anyone attacking him, and that's before the boss's defense is even factored. In other words, even your most powerful units will be lucky to do more than sneeze on him. The only way to negate this is with the holy light tome Narga, which can only be wielded by, you guessed it, Julia. Oh, and he has a long-range tome that lets him snipe your units from afar to boot, making even approaching him a risky proposition. So you need to hurry and kill Manfloy, while avoiding killing Julia, hurry Celice back across the fucking map to snap her out of, schlep Julia right back across the map to get the tome, and then try to get to Julius without him sniping off your weaker units. Fun!
      • It's rather easy once you figure out how to handle Julia- she will always try to reach Celice and otherwise, unless she can opportunistically 1 shot someone, will ignore your other units, the catch is not killing her- so if you leave Celice's weapons in Storage and move him into the nearby forest, he can easily tank her with his massive HP pool and extremely high RES (you did use Diadora right?) while your other units assassinate Manfloy.
      • An even better tactic is to send only Celice and Aless with their legendary swords equipped and drag Julia to Manfloy and kill him, making sure to always stay in Julia's attack range. As long as she can target either of them, she will always chase them and not the rest of your army, even better in that she will always attack outside of their range, effectively negating the risk of killing her from counterattacking. And with their swords providing enough resistance the two can easily take out Manfloy while shrugging off her attacks. This allows you to kill Manfloy, quickly re-recruit Julia, AND then have her quickly enter Velthomer for Narga all in one fell swoop.
      • Actually, using a Silence Staff on Julia would unquestionably be the best strategy (and you can also use it on Ishtar just before this), assuming you have a unit that has a high enough Magic (or can be made high enough with Magic Rings) to pull it off.
  • The Sacred Stones is rather easy overall, even without the Level Grinding you can do in the Tower of Valni. One level, however, is pure torture: Fluorspar's Oath. The level is set up so that you have to corkscrew your units around a winding river. You could use your 2 Pegasus Knights or your Wyvern Knight to fly a few units across to save some time, but then they get put in the range of Archers and Selena's long-range Bolting tome. Fine, use Colm and (If you promoted him to pirate) Ross to rescue a few units across. Psyche! Even on water, Ross is really damn slow when carrying someone, and will get owned by the sword-wielding cavaliers, the archers, and/or Selena's lightning. Also, you have to reach two towns before the Pirates and Brigands get it. Yeah.
    • Chapter 11, Phantom Ship on Ephraim's route, if you didn't grind in the Tower of Valni, is a nightmare on Hard Mode. You have to fight your way through a ship full of enemies to get to L'Arachel before she's stupidly killed because she's a noncombatant at this point, while her bodyguard Dozla is running off attempting (and mostly failing) to hit enemies with his huge Battle Axe. You could send your fliers to rescue her, but the seas around you are swarming with flying enemies, including flying spell-casters that can nuke the otherwise hardy flier Cormag. And at this point, there is nobody in your army big enough to rescue Dozla.
    • Heck, all of Ephraim's route. In between the aforementioned "Phantom Ship" and "Fluorspar's Oath" is "Landing at Taizel", a giant level which you get thrust into immediately after "Phantom Ship" (no chance to level-grind) and has enemies all over the place. Also, in order to recruit Marisa, you have to use the newly-recruited Ewan, who has a movement range of 4 and gets owned in one hit by everything because he's a Trainee-class unit and a Squishy Mage at that. The only way to properly make this recruitment is to lure her in with another unit, preferably unarmed because anything strong enough to stand up to her criticals would probably one-shot her due to her low HP. This requires careful planning to pick off any other enemies that are even remotely close.
      • And after those three, there's "Father and Son", which does hard the old-fashioned way: by being gigantic and filled with enemy reinforcements as well as chests that must be opened. And we're not counting the two Druids with really, really effective Berserk staves, that are almost guaranteed to make units with low Resistence go Ax Crazy and attack whoever's on their reach-- even those on your own side.
    • The game throws an early That One Level very early on at the Adlas Plains when Eirika is still the default main character. Before the level starts, the level boss decides to taunt Eirika by teleporting three random, defenseless civilians into the map, and putting them right near a den of giant spiders, which turns it into a Timed Mission as letting all of the civilians die leads to a Nonstandard Game Over. Between the NPCs and the spiders is a fairly strong force of Grado soldiers(which can inflict some very painful damage on your still-squishy units). And the whole thing is covered by Fog of War. It's basically a combination of almost every single Scrappy Mechanic in the series.
      • Not helping at all is the enemy outnumbering you a lot more than in the previous levels and being spread out all over; if anyone but Seth goes out on their own (like your pegasus knight trying to get the civilians out of spider range...) they WILL get ganged up on and most likely die. This level is one of the best arguments the "It's OK to use Seth" camp has in its arsenal early on.
  • And then there's Scorched Sand. Half of the level is made up of desert tiles, which make any non-flying mounted unit essentially useless and any armored unit even MORE so. And as for all other units, they get slowed down substantially, making the level just drag on for hours on end. Good thing this map offers obscenely good items to break up the monotony. Want to get them? Better check the strategy guide! And at the end of it all, you face That One Boss, who is way too likely to kill off even your best units. And there's actually two bosses. Which of them was meant when they were referred to as That One Boss? Why, both of them.
  • Prologue 8 and Chapter 6X of FE12. Prologue 8 has Katrina as the boss, and due to the way resistance works in this game, her attacks will do tremendous amounts of damage to you, if they don't just outright kill you. She, unlike many early-game bosses, can and will move to attack people in range. Chapter 6X is a small map filled to the brim with Fighters, and on top of that there's Caesar and Radd, who you actually have to keep alive so that they'll join you later. However, they won't hesitate to attack your best units and die trying. At least Radd is fast enough to avoid being hit twice.
  • Some of the Game Mods have their own difficult chapters:
    • Chapter 6 in FE Girls, a very elaborate hack of Sacred Stones. Similar to its real-game counterpart, but there's no fog, no giant spiders, and you only have to survive for 12 turns. However, you still have to defend the helpless citizens, who are now stranded on a pier and the first one will die on the third turn if you aren't going full tilt towards them. The enemies will flood this area, too, citizens or no. On top of this, ZEPHIEL of all people is here, and, starting on the eighth turn, HE MOVES! He'll reach the island with the pier, too, so if you stopped after rescuing the citizens, thinking you're safe, you're DEAD wrong. You actually have to start retreating, citizens in tow, unless you want to see the stragglers get slaughtered where they stand. Good lord.
    • Chapter 13 somehow manages to be even worse than Chapter 13-Ephraim in regular FE8. There's three different bosses, one of them actually appears behind you and will start chasing you, and the map is very large. And you get two new characters, one of which is a Dancer and the other one, while capable of fighting, is very hard to keep alive with all the enemies around. While one of the bosses can be swayed to your side, said boss is very aggressive, carries a Bolting tome, and moves. It's not unlikely to see her kill Lyn, the very person who recruits her. She's also the Lord. And you know what that means...

Nintendo Wars

  • The "Kanbei's Error?" mission of the original Advance Wars. The normal Campaign version of it is quite easy, with the biggest challenge being if you're trying to unlock an optional series of missions that requires you to finish this mission and the two previous in a certain number of turns (and even that's not too hard). The Advance Campaign version, though, cranks the difficulty way, way up, making it borderline impossible to win without a day-by-day guide or lots of trial and error.
    • Unless you have a grasp on the Tactical Rock-Paper-Scissors, any naval-based Drake mission can be really frustrating. And even some of the land ones; in "Captain Drake", Andy has to capture X amount of cities before Drake does. Except Drake has more units than you to start with. Oh, and he already has infantry on the center island. And you have to make infantry from factories. And you have only one lander and no way to make more. And Drake has a submarine. And...
  • Advance Wars Dual Strike has a number of levels that stray away from genuine challenge into Fake Difficulty and general annoyance:
    • Crystal Calamity is the scrappiest of many teeth gnashing missions. Your first objective in the level is to fire off all nine Silos in the level whilst operating under a real time timer in an otherwise turn based game. The Timed Mission is one thing, but if the enemy secures even ONE Silo, you lose. What's worse than that is that if you spend too much time fighting and do too much damage to the enemy forces you charge their special moves, leading to the very definite possibility of an enemy tag break that grants Black Hole two turns for each unit meaning they'll almost certainly reach at least one silo. Talk about Fake Difficulty. Plus on Normal Campaign, Black Hole could send the Black Bomb toward red team and screw you over that way if you didn't cheap out a Day 1 T-Copter. And it doesn't even end there, as there's a second objective once the first one is done, and if you mess up there, you have to repeat the whole thing again. The level is so bad that Totally Flaked mocked it mercilessly.
    • Pincer Strike. So many units, so many indirects, so much forest, so much fog, so much possibility of a Tag Break involving Drake, so much Fake Difficulty.
      • Pincer Strike becomes really, really easy with Sasha and Colin on Blue Moon. Lots of funds per turn, nothing to spend it on and the ease with which Market Crash is charged = no tag power for Jugger/Drake.
      • Or use the 3-day strategy. Yes, it's possible to beat that mission in 3 days.
    • Surrounded, especially the Hard version. It's made even worse that you don't automatically win by routing the enemy force, and only win by capturing the towers with your ever so slow Infantry, so Kindle looks like a big time cutscene abuser.
      • Seriously? That was easily the easiest of the four Clone Missions, seeing as how you have starting units and/or production properties blatantly placed near 3 of the 4 Com Towers, and the last isn't hard to get with an APC sneaking to it while you distract the Md. Tanks with a meatshield/indirect formation. Plug up Black Hole's bases (easier than it sounds since Orange Star starts out so ridiculously overpowered, made worse with a Jake/Jess pairing) and you're basically handed the win.
    • Verdant Hills. The AI just loves to Tag Break ending on Javier's turn. Since Javier ensures control of at least one tower, he will have so much defense that he pretty much prevents you from retaliating against your reduced control over the chokepoint.
      • The only "easy" way to win: ignore the top half of the map, which Javier and Jess will swarm over, and sneak a Mech to take the HQ once all of their units have left. Of course, this will destroy your Technique score. Getting an S Rank on this level will cause baldness.
    • Ring of Fire has difficulty dissonance on its fronts. How does the top front manage to be so very difficult but the bottom one which is the one that matters manage to be so very easy?
    • Neverending War on Hard Campaign involves having the map flooded with enemy Neotanks while you can't deploy anything better than a normal Tank. Some suggest to get the airport, but that's still a dragged out war. And the 100 Speed limit is how many Days again?
    • Into The Woods. Just......Into The Woods.
    • Dark Ambition is a boring piece of garbage thanks to Olaf's Winter Fury power that makes pushing through the defense of the HQ so annoying. In fact, if it weren't for that Stealth you get, you probably would lose thanks to the Megatank. (Yeah, what were you thinking, Allied Nations? You regarded the reverse engineering possibility and they actually would be causing you to lose if they actually had a Stealth of their own.)
  • Sunrise in Days of Ruin also qualifies. The Nest provides explosive bombs to rip apart your units at the most inconvenient times, infinite free units which can whatever Caulder damn well pleases, and lasers covering rough terrain to keep your forces spread thin and repeatedly suffer the abuse. And it's made worse that Caulder, with daily healing and ridiculous combat boosts to anything near enough his unit or just his unit itself, makes Sturm look like a Joke Character. Watch as a Duster with him loaded effortlessly destroys your Fighter. It's amazing how the level has a consistent Day-To-Day guide on YouTube that makes it so easy to beat. Oh, and here's the best part: you have to repeat the level 10 times to get a certain medal.
    • Said Day-To-Day guide is pretty much the only way to complete it, and even that only if Caulder feels like following it. For instance, if he uses a Fighter instead of a Duster, you're screwed because he's only able to target your precious bombers instead of being distracted by other units. Also, said guide completes the mission in around 10 days at most. If you don't win by 13, Caulder pretty much tells you to give up. Now thats nothing uncommon for video game villains, but unlike most others, he's not bluffing.
      • It's possible to beat it after 13 days, but good luck getting a half-decent rank.
      • This completes the mission in six Days.
    • Metro Map in Days of Ruin. The blue team not only starts with a property advantage, but get to work with a nasty forest clump that is even more bothersome to the player. It desperately needs a Day-To-Day guide, but the sole one available is for the high score that requires too much luck, even with Save Scumming.
    • "A Hero's Farewell" in Days of Ruin. The sea throws a Battleship and an Aircraft Carrier at you and the rough seas and lack of your own predeployed Battleship keeps you from doing much about either one quickly enough to avoid letting your Cruiser get shot, and if you don't kill the Battleship in one turn, your Submarine will inevitably get hit by the enemy Cruiser. The Aircraft Carrier, meanwhile, sends out Seaplanes. As for the land front, you're not going far quickly because of a terrain-covered Rocket Launcher, which allows Forsythe to build up.
      • The best part: if you go into the Tactics Room, instead of Lin, Forsythe himself tells you how to go about the mission. He's an Anti-Villain, yes, but still... the enemy CO takes pity on you!
    • Before that, "Greyfield Strikes"... you. Greyfield, in order to show who's in charge, randomly shuts down one of your units every third day. There's a fairly reliable day-by-day guide out there... but if Greyfield decides to call out any but one of three units, it falls apart.
    • Some people consider "A Hero's Farewell" more of a Best Level Ever, but just about EVERYONE hates "Lin's Gambit", a Fog of War Timed Mission where Greyfield's units make advancing quickly extremely frustrating. To top it off, if you're not good with naval combat, you're not going to do well in this mission. At all.
  • Any map with Sturm in Advance Wars 2: Black Hole Rising is a qualifier, because you're shoehorned into battle against a Game Breaker. All of his units get a 20% bonus to offense AND defense and are unimpaired by all terrain, and his Super CO Power (Meteor Strike) will severely damage a patch of your best units and throw another substantial boost.
    • Also on that note, "Sinking Feeling" (sink 9 battleships in 17 days) and "The Great Sea Battle" (final battle in Green Earth, against a well-armed opponent with a nasty CO Power) give people fits.
    • Probably the biggest That One Level of all in Black Hole Rising though is Liberation: Hard Campaign. Even though it's only mission 8, even though you're facing Flak. Having a factory with Hard Campaign production orders on such a small map is just brutal.
  • Bissum Desert (Campaign 36) in Game Boy Wars 3, although potentially managing healthy difficulty, may give players grief even if they do manage to get past the Do Well, But Not Perfect issues of the Campaign Mode in general. The gist is that the game's overly Glass Cannon mechanics generally work in White Moon's favor on this map. This isn't a bad thing in and of itself, even though the mechanics generally favor the player in plenty of maps in Campaign. However, the later part of the map does have its annoyance factor.
    • To elaborate on the difficulty of the map, it starts with White Moon having a bunch of planes deployed, among them 2 Interceptors, which can snipe your air units and can be very hard to get at safely on Day 2. The simple solution would be to not send out your air units right away, but navy is unavailable and since White Moon also has a bunch of tough land units predeployed to the east, you will need air units to help handle those buggers. This isn't so bad on its own, you just need to use any Interceptor units you have to hammer the enemy's, and set up an anti-air perimeter to keep your units safe from flanking. However, as soon as you try storming White Moon's HQ, things get truly irksome as you have to deal with crossing a most likely Artillery-covered area with a lot of Desert terrain--yes, you read right, not the terrain template you would know in Dual Strike or Days of Ruin, but terrain tiles that are similar to the Desert terrain in Fire Emblem. And unlike the Plains and Forests and stuff like that (which in this game actually have some Movement Costs at 1.5), the Desert gives off painfully high Movement Costs to the point where your land units being able to move more than one space at a time is the only reason why it's not a surprise that they're far less likely to be slaughtered than Cuan, Ethelin, and their group of Lenster Lance Knights in Fire Emblem: Seisen no Keifu.
  • Battalion Wars has some levels that fall under this:
    • Their Finest Hour in Battalion Wars 2. Due to the shaky controls of your options in the Airbase defense, you have to contend with either potentially jumping out of the MG Tower without warning and not necessarily knowing how to get back into it, or if you switch to either air unit, you have to keep track of how you handle the Wiimote or else you might crash into something. Either way, the starting part is annoying. Oh, but the worst is yet to come: there are AA units all over the place, the Airbase you spend the whole time trying to capture will produce Fighters and Gunships that are already on top of you to be Demonic Spiders before Pierce or A-Qira mention that they have been sent out, and all you get to fight them with is the Fighters, which, of course, have to contend with the AA units even if you do overcome the faulty controls. It's no wonder the time limit for a Perfect S Rank is 16 minutes.
    • In the first game, X-Day. How many times did you die on that beachhead? Or right after that beachhead? Or...
      • There is a way to get through the Artillery at the start of that level. Direct your units to move near the fence, so that they'll get right within the Artillery's safe zone.
    • There's also "Siege of the Vladstad", which is a perfectly acceptable level right up until the end. And that's even if you realize the Vladstag has a side entrance.
    • "Road to Xylvania" tops all of them. First of you have a Battlestation which unlike the sequel cannot turn to aim and thus you have to position yourself perfectly to beat the Pillboxes that will kill everything else in a heartbeat.On top of that the path is so curvy giving Heavy Tanks an advantage against the Battlestation. That's a just ridculuosly in itself,but then you have Gunships constantly after you mercilessly attacking anything in sight,and you only have 6 Missile Vets.You can spam the Y button all you want,they'll still get ya' down. Not to mention acid pits that are too easy to step into. At least Vladstag has assistance.
    • Bonus Mission 3 may be a Bonus Level of Hell, but it has earned its place here. At the start, you're immediately bombarded by 2 Artillery, each guarded by 3 Rocket (Bazooka) infantry to deter your Heavy Tanks. You must destroy this Artillery ASAP or they'll destroy the fortress that the game doesn't suggest is destructible and give you an automatic mission failure. You would want to work on tasks other than the Artillery because once the Artillery is destroyed, a respawning Bomber appears to make your life miserable, and you don't even get any anti-air units unless you're willing to count Assaults, which still do likely too little damage to be worth considering. And to top it all off, your only units for destroying all of the enemy vehicles are Heavy Tanks, which are slow and big, which means thanks to similar reasons as to why Pit in Super Smash Bros. is a Skill Gate Character, are given grief by the Anti-Air Vehicles' attack spams causing them to repeatedly bounce along with all the damage they take. Oh, and guess what is ready to hammer your infantry and further mess up your Technique score? Two more Artillery! And if you finally get past all of this, say hello to a Bomber and Gunship spam to give your Fighters (which arrive, about time) misery in killing them all quickly, which you need to do because of the fact that your Heavy Tanks are still mission critical, even if you wiped out every enemy vehicle. And if you're looking for a good score, you have so many units that basically amount to being little more than target practice for the Bombers that your Technique will be based on whether your units feel like surviving all the abuse.
    • The Reckoning in the sequel borders on being That One Level, but doesn't quite manage it because it's the last mission. However, if you want that perfect S-Rank, have lots of hair ready to be torn out. Technique, although having a ridiculously high minimum (a whopping 70% with just the Battlestation, the mission critical unit, alive), doesn't hit 100% easily, so you have to keep plenty of units alive, which means you'd want to get through the first half of the stage without anything lost, because the second part is full of Fighters and Strato Destroyers, which are bound to tear apart your units like paper, and your Anti-Air Vets have laughable lock-on range for their job if you thought you could switch to one to erase the air units faster. But things get really bad if you want 100% in both Power and Speed. Not only does the game place 2 Heavy Tanks and some Grunts behind the Mining Spider but Speed is absurdly strict for the fact that you'd have to deliver the painfully slow Battlestation from one end of the map to the other in order to do anything to the Mining Spider. This troper has done every other mission in the game on a No Casualties Run with a Perfect S-Rank (including Their Finest Hour, actually except Under Siege but he's convinced that one is possible with a competent teammate) and finds that a No Casualties Run at all is harder on The Reckoning than on any other mission between both games except maybe Bonus Mission 3 in the first game, if it's even possible to do, never mind trying to do it in the time limit.
  • However, the level that stands head and shoulders above all is Rivals, of the first Advance Wars.
    • Merely accessing the level requires a Guide Dang It by defeating all 4 Green Earth Missions as Sami, one level of which, Wings of Victory, is a That One Level unto itself. Proceed to defeat Sturm in the final mission, after which Eagle will challenge Andy to a "friendly" showdown. The map is wide, traversed by narrow bridges and islands, and you are given no units, a small base, and are a long way off from the nearest nuetral bases, which will not be nuetral by the time you reach them. You are forced to play as Andy. Your foe starts with forward units and a very strong base. The normal campaign version is harder than the majority of the advance campaign missions. The advanced mode of this mission? Your foe starts by owning the nuetral bases. And forward infantry. And an air force. In Fog of War. And both times, but much more pronounced here, he is using Lightning Strike, the best CO Power in the game. And with all those expensive air units you need to destroy, he will have very liberal use of that Power.
    • It gets to the point that the only way to defeat him is days (literal, 24-hour segment DAYS) of trial and error. And then you will still be crying as the mass of unstoppable Bombers, Fighters, Med Tank, Battle Copters, and Rockets roll over your base. Again. And again. And again.
    • There is a guide. It shows you exactly how to defeat the mission, by exactly, tile-by-tile, day-by-day, telling you how to fend off his attack in such a way, that allows you to escape with a few transport copters and infantry, while he overruns your base so thoroughly that you are actually depending on him saturating your properties, hoping that his own units block his infatry from taking your HQ. You then must execute a perfect suicide run for his HQ. If everything goes well, you triumphantly stand upon a shattered Green Earth HQ, a half-damaged infantry your unit on the map, and 30-some game-days of anguish behind.
    • Guess what? Even this exhaustive strategy guide DOES NOT WORK. Eagle will move his Battle Copter in a way that makes the entire strategy futile. Alright, not for everyone, but many, if not most, have a randomized AI rotuine that is set when you first enter the Advance Campaign, 22 levels earlier, that determines whether Eagle sports a miniscule achilles tendon, or if he is quite simply unbeatable.

Super Robot Wars

  • Due to the length of the Super Robot Wars series, a number of potential scrappy levels have shown up in the games, like the Macross Plus stage in Alpha 3. You begin the stage with only two units, both of which have fairly low HP and damage. Your enemies include a rather large number of units, particularly the infamous Ghosts, a new type of plane which has downright insane dodge rates, possibly the highest in the game, bar a few bosses. Normally, this wouldn't be much of a problem, as your characters can usually cast buffs on themselves in order to increase their own hit and dodge rates. However, for the beginning of the stage, you not only have no access to your buffs, but your morale is down, meaning an overall decrease in stats. Despite having two of the fastest pilots in the game out, you rarely get above a 30% chance to hit. Even when backup finally arrives, you still have no way of increasing your chances to hit for a good while, so even getting through the stage at that point is an exercise in luck, frustration, and lots of soft-resets.
    • That One Level is OG Gaiden Stage 15. Not only it pits you against a horde of (thankfully not reinforcements coming) enemies which has crazy dodges, united morale point... it later features one winning condition that requires a certain character to do it. Then, Player Punch occurs, then That One Boss appear... Good God, this level not only frustrates me on the game, but also frustrates me on the story and mentality to the point that I really wish this level could just go away...
      • Let's go for a classic: Super Robot Wars 3, "true" final mission. You're on a map with a gran total of THREE enemy units, two of which are the infamous Valcyon (the final boss mecha of SRW2), and the other being the Neo effing Granzon. Now, count the facts that in this game Focus and Hot Blood were RARE seishin, you couldn't upgrade neither mobility nor weapons of your units, morale raising seishins had a prohibitive cost and the two Valcyons were weak enough to die in a few hits without effectively raising your morale. Add that the final boss's morale went up by at least 15 for each turn due to your characters hitting him (not counting eventually shot down units), he could fire TWO times for each turn (so did your units, but it was more like a 'get twice the chances of getting shot down'), had insanely high HP and Armor and his morale could cap at 200 which meant EVERY SINGLE ATTACK WOULD KILL YOUR UNIT RIGHT AWAY....
  • Super Robot Wars Destiny. All of it. It starts out as a great game, with a lot of anime getting their introduction into the franchise, such as Megazone23, Godmars, Daltanius, Macross 7, and The Big O. It also explores the idea of what would've happened if the Earth had been sealed away, Irui Ganeden's goal in Super Robot Wars Alpha 2. And it ALSO features the OZ and the Neo-Zeon Movement as allies, simply because they're the only groups left that have the manpower to save the Earth, meaning Haman Karn arguably makes her debut as a Super Robot Wars protagonist. Then things get sour, fast. The Original Generation mooks are unbelievably fast and accurate to the point they're more dangerous than the final boss, every Super Robot has abysmal armor to the point even if fully upgraded so they're useless by the halfway point of the game, and you'll probably be using Fire Bomber as a blatant crutch.
    • You want That One Level, Try Mission 23 of that game, You cannot destroy the Adrasteas in that mission or it is game over, and you cannot allow the enemy to advance to the other side of the map which means you have to box in 2 Adrasteas and reduce their HP to 20% while knocking off the enemies flunkies, then the Reinforcements, do not get me started on them, because you have to fight a THIRD Adrastea in addition to his the flunkies that he brings, and even before that you have to fight 6 Garland GR-2's. (Garlands have High evasion rates) Which means you will be spamming Seishins out the ass just to keep up with protecting the area you are ordered to guard.
    • Another mission that will piss the hell out of you is Mission 37 which is a two part mission but the second half is what will reallly drive you mad! In the second half of that mission you have to hit 4 switches, one every 8 turns, the real problem is that the enemies have high evasion/accuracy and can respawn if you don't leave 6 of them active. So mentioning the Fire Bomber Units being a crutch, yeah you will need them for this.
  • There is also Super Robot Wars 2's final stage. Similar layout to 3's, with you against the Granzon, Valsion, and two Punch Clock Villains from Gundam ZZ of all series. Things go sour fast if you want to beat the Granzon for the Bragging Rights Rewards. The game, as long as you know what you're doing, isn't impossible or even very long... but by GOD that level is hard since the Granzon is immune to all projectile attacks and armor three times as thick as the Valsion's.
  • Pretty much the meat of both the OG games on GBA fits this trope if you're going for the skill points.
    • Speaking of which, the introduction of the Inspectors in OG 2. "But it's a Hopeless Boss Fight," you say. "you're supposed to lose!" No, not this one. This one is Hopeless only in that it's damn near impossible to win. The challenge of that stage is surviving. With only a battleship which you have had few to no opportunities to build up (depending on the route split) and three mid-level mecha, which have had no opportunities to be powered up (if you were able to get a certain Secret weapon, that's about it). Against a bunch of Mooks, a couple enemy battleships, and three End-game bosses that can probably kill your mecha in a single hit. And you have to escape through the far side of the map. That is to say, right through them.
      • Oh and get this: One of the secrets of the game requires that you not escape the battle, but you have to beat them, and taking out one of the most dangerous for last. And due to the set-up of the stage, it will be tough every time, even with the bonuses normally gained though a New Game+.
    • One mission in OG 2 requires you to defend an annoyingly large base from annoyingly fast enemies. Not only is it game over if they so much as reach the outside line, but you're going to be using one set of mechs you haven't upgraded (since it's Earth Route, you won't have had a chance to remove the way Katina dodges like a paraplegic whale, for example), the third wave comes from the back, your most durable starting robot isn't allowed to move until the third wave, the Shirogane battleship and the allied Barrelions will be contributing jack shit (at least the Barrelions are trying), your reinforcements deploy to the west so you can't use even the fastest of them to secure the east, and every time you fail (which will be often), Lee will insult your troops despite the fact that he was The Load for the entire mission.
  • The final stage of the PSP remake of Advance. Tough grunts and ridiculously high HP bosses with HP regen are nothing new, especially if you took the Nadesico route at the last path split and had to fight Don Zaucer... but unlike most levels in this game (or in the non-skill point using installments of the franchise in general,) there is a TURN LIMIT. You have 10 turns to wade through the strongest grunts in the game, backed up by TWO overpowered bosses, one of whom as far as I can tell has an automatic 0% chance of being hit (and not the type that goes away after one attack,) with the only ways to even HIT her being to use accuracy boosting spells (and SP is rather limited in this game overall, though by no means as bad as in certain other titles,) and her own counterattack range and accuracy being ridiculously huge. Thankfully, she's not REQUIRED to be defeated to clear the stage (though have fun clearing it with her sniping you constantly)... but the actual boss is so much worse. Some 260K HP, of which he regenerates 10% a turn, exceptionally high EN, which he also regenerates, and his attacks use far less of it than they ought to (not that you can really hope to drain his EN even without the regen, due to the turn limit), a VERY powerful and accurate MAP attack, and the ability to move and attack TWICE per turn. Oh, and while not guaranteed, he is surrounded by high HP/Armour grunts, some of whom have HP regen, all of which if they are right next to him can Support Defend (take a hit for him for half damage) THRICE PER TURN. It might be worth noting that this is also the game where enemy accuracy increases with each attack - if you dodge an attack, the next attack aimed at that character will be at a cumulative 15% accuracy boost, meaning that with enough attacks at any one character, eventually they WILL get hit (and there are more than enough enemy units for this).
  • Super Robot Wars K has several of these.
    • First, there's missions 5 to 8, Those Four Levels. Mission 5 pits you against EVERY SINGLE NAMED BAD GUY IN THE FIRST HALF OF Overman King Gainer, included Brunhilde, that in series attacked friends and foes alike, yet here only attacks you. Fortunately, to beat the level you just need to kill Brunhilde... except it has 10000+ HP (At Stage 5 it's pretty good, mind), and you've got like 7-8 Fragile Speedster bosses attacking you at the same time as well. At least the Mooks are easy. Mission 6 has the beginning of Gun X Sword, only Van is being attacked by a lot of Darius Empire Mooks instead. You basically have to survive for two turns until the Daiku Maryu crew shows up to aid him, which is easier said than done. Mission 7 is a mix of the two before: It starts with Dann of Thursday, plus El Dora V (that guzzles EN like crazy), Brownie and the Original Generation main character being attacked by a bunch of Overman King Gainer mooks and bosses (again). Again, you have to endure a few turns until the other heroes shpw up, only the enemies also get two tough bosses as reinforcements: OKG's Cynthia Lane and GXS's Ray. And like Brunhilde above, neither of them were with the Siberian railroad, but on their own team, yet here, they only attack you again. Finally, Mission 8 is MORE Gainer bosses/mooks, PLUS Cynthia again, plus GXS's Diablo of Monday. This one is slighty easier, but if you want the GXS secret characters, kill Diablo with Van or they're Lost Forever. Fortunately, after this hell, the next mission is a very easy Breather Level playing the beginning of Zoids Genesis, only with more Darius Empire mooks showing up chasing Zoids' Kotona Elegance so there's an excuse to get her without Garaga and Ron showing up as well.
    • And besides that, there's all the Virtual-On missions (The first two are long, boring missions set in corridors against mooks with Map Attacks, the last one is on an open field with more Mooks like that AND Elite Mooks with huge HP supplies AND the Attack Combo skill that allows them to crush your support units)) and the one playing Gundam SEED Stargazer (A "don't let the bad guys get to this point" mission... IN SPACE. On a game where everyone who doesn't goes into space in-series has a B as its Terrain Rating for... well, space, and terrains matter A LOT. See: King Gainer getting hit easily and missing often.) Ouch.
  • Super Robot Wars J has the attack on Hell Island, which could end up spelling the end for you if you don't know what you're doing. You start the level facing several fairly powerful mooks and Zaied from Full Metal Panic!. After beating him, Gauron shows up in the Venom (very dodgey, very accurate, lots of HP and equipped with a Lambda Driver, which more or less halves all damage inflicted upon him), along with more powerful mooks and a couple of Giant Mooks. Then, after after defeating them, you're forced to take on Zeorymer's Ritsu and his Rose C'est la Vie of the Moon, who has a fair amount of HP and is capable of dishing out a decent amount of punshiment. Then, after defeating him, the real final boss of the level, Baron Ashura, appears in his Mechabeast-ized form along with a group of even more powerful mooks, but before fighting him, you'll ALSO have to fight and destroy a possessed Diana A TWICE (which ITSELF has an inordinate amount of health points BOTH times). But of course, just fighting Baron Ashura himself isn't enough because, after ALL of that, he still regenerates all of his HP after you've defeated him, forcing you to fight and kill him AGAIN before the level is finally over. Sheesh. The only saving grace that keeps this level from being an absolute nightmare to slug through from beginning to end is that you get to see Mazinkaiser recieve its final upgrade during a mid-game event. In conclusion, this level (and SRW J as a whole, for that matter) isn't hard, per se, but rather is incredibly long due to the sheer abundance of high-powered bosses, which puts you in danger of consuming all of your resources prior to the FINAL, final confrontation due to a lack of foresight.
  • Being one of the harder handheld titles, Super Robot Wars L has quite a number of tarpits that even veterans may fall for them:
    • Stage 17, Operation Yashima from Rebuild of Evangelion. As suggested you have to deal with Ramiel (aka 6th Angel) but at the same time Mimetic Beasts are standing in your way. Since Ramiel gives a nice amount of cash and a rare Skill Part, it's common for players rush up with all their forces in order to destroy it at least once before the stage forcefully end on Turn 6. The problem is that Ramiel (in addition to HP and EN Regen as well as an AT Field) got its Will max out at 150 already, and in case of players who forgot after watching the movie, this Ramiel actually got a sweeping MAPW around it. That will certainly hurt. But it doesn't end there: on turn 4 Eva-00 and 01 finally show up at where the stage begins......And enemies spawn on left and right of them. If Shinji got attacked even once, GAME OVER. That means one have to leave some unit behind to propare for such scenerio, but that also mean you can't attack Ramiel with your full force. Touch choices eh?
    • Stage 30A, LIttle Queen, Little Sister. You have to last 9 turns against never-ending waves of Vajra while Ranka gets ready to sing them all away . But one have to make sure the Vajra do not reach the building before she does so, which is said easier than done since you don't have enough units to protect all tiles (which become worse when one of them leaves the map on Turn 4). Even with Brera flying off to one corner of the map and holds part of the wave, it's still going to be a nightmare.
    • The crowning example of this trope, however, is Stage 37 where you resolve the ending of Linebarrels of Iron, which is the biggest Crowning Moment of Awesome of this game if this stage doesn't annoy players so much. First off, you have to protect all 6 Machinas from being destroyed, which is easy......if Koichi (in his Linebarrel mode-C) isn't a NPC and does nothing but rushing into the enemy formation, chopping up anyone in his way (That includes Soubi, in case if you want to recruit him). Doesn't help that there're Original Mooks with armour-reducing weapons and they're more than happy to use it on him. Worse, since Koichi WILL attack anyone if they're in range, Linebarrel's energy and ammo will eventually dry out, leaving it as a complete sitting duck. The catch? You have to defeat Masaki (in his Naked) to return Koichi back to your control. This is just the first part of the stage.
      • The second part of this stage involves protecting all 6 or 7 if conditions fulfilled Machinas (who'll just stay idle in the middile of the stage) from anyone being destroyed in 4 turns, in order to begin Final Phase. Remember how fast and hard those Mass-Produced Machinas are during the first half of the stage? You have to deal with unlimited number of them. From both sides. This immediately happens after you defeat Masaki's second form, so there're basically no breathing nor redeployment time in between. Many who manage to protech Koichi in the first half may actually fall on this part.


Final Fantasy Tactics

  • Final Fantasy Tactics has a number of them.
    • The Dorter Slums area, the fourth storyline battle in the game. At this point, you've got some level 3 characters (if you're lucky), and very few abilities, not to mention two computer-controlled guest characters who strain believability with their inepititude. The foe is three archers (one of which is mercifully unarmed), two black mages, and a comparatively-high-HP knight. In other words, they have range, you don't. If you're trying not to lose any of your generic troops, the battle is a lesson in patience and luck.
      • Not as bad if you level grind before this battle, which is possible, or purchase Accumulate, which causes your level to increase much more quickly.
      • What makes this battle particularly annoying is that two archers have a massive height advantage. They start off on top of a tall building while you're on the ground. They can start shooting at you on the first turn and rack up some high damage with their shots while you can't do anything to hit them; they're way out of the range of any attacks due to the height they're at, and it takes several turns to get characters up there to attack them. By the time you get up there and kill them, it's likely that they've single-handedly wiped out half your party. The Black Mages and Knight are a pushover compared to the archers.
      • At least in the original, there was a minor glitch that left the highest-placed Archer unarmed, and the AI controling Algus and Delita would make it a priority to go chasing the poor bastard right off. If this happened, the battle would lose a lot of difficulty; arrows would not be raining down on you from the start of the battle, and the mages would often move to support the harmless archer, targeting Delita and Algus instead of your team. This gave you time to deal with the knight and often to take out at least one of the mages before they would change gears, leaving the battle in your favor.
    • Golgorand Execution Site. The opponent has eight units to your five, one of whom is a Recurring Boss. Also, the Time Mages will cast Haste on themselves and Slow on your own units. Winning is an exercise in luck and patience.
      • What makes the Gafgarion battles annoying is that most other special units you run into have, as their battle's sole objective, the defeat of that character (e.g. "Defeat Wiegraf!"). Gafgarion is treated as just another unit, so even if you take him down, the battle's still on.
      • At worst, this is a slight Guide Dang It situation. Gafgarion also never has the maintenance ability, which means you can steal or destroy his weapon. All of Gafgarion's abilities can only be used if he has a sword. If he does not, he does trivial damage with punches and poses no real threat.
    • The Dual Battle between Wiegraf and Ramza at Riovanes. Unless you have a very specific setup with a very specific inventory, this battle sucks. Wiegraf has an attack with an effect range of four squares that cannot miss, and he will always move to the maximum range before attacking, and does lots of damage (three shots in three rounds will kill an equivalent level Ramza if you don't heal). So it comes down to either killing Wiegraf before he kills you, which is hard because he's probably more mobile than you, or fighting a long, drawn-out battle consuming expensive resources. Did I mention that, on average, Wiegraf blocks two out of three attacks, even when the hit percentage is 90%? Extremely annoying battle.
      • And Wiegraf has a second form, which is also quite difficult. Fortunately, you get back-up for it. (So does he, but since you can focus-fire him down to win the battle...)
      • The absolute worst part about the duel with Wiegraf is that it's one of a string of battles you cannot interrupt. It's preceded by a Storming the Castle level, and if your only save file is after the successful storming, you are trapped, with no chance to withdraw, buy new gear, gain more Job Points or EXP, obtain the necessary very-specific-setup-and-inventory, etc.
    • The first fight against Marquis Elmdor and his two assassin girls. On the one hand, all you have to do to end the fight is critically injure one of them. OTOH, if you've been leveling normally up to that point in the game, they outclass you in every way. The assassins can inflict negative status (KO, charm, confuse) on a character with 100% success if the character isn't protected against them. The Marquis himself is essentially a souped up Samurai, meaning he can use powerful area attacks that require no charge time. Oh, and he can teleport with 100% success. The PSP version makes it even worse because he has Safeguard, meaning you can't steal his great equipment. The worst part? This first fight is an Escort Mission; if the relatively pathetic guest character is KOed, you lose. Naturally, the character will rush right into the enemies.On top of all of this, if you don't have ninjas on the field, the bosses will always go first and you have a very high chance of not even getting a turn before the guest character is dead and the battle failed. And, like the above fight against Wiegraf, this is also one of a string of battles that you can't interrupt (in fact, it's the battle right after Wiegraf).
      • Just to add to it, the assassins can Invite your party members--not Charm, Invite. As in, convince them to pull a Face Heel Turn and teleport away with Elmdor at the battle's conclusion.
        • The easiest way to do this is to actually utilize a Game Breaker exploit by capturing a Pig during the one story battle in which this is possible. Breeding and poaching the offspring in your roster can get you Chantages, which give female characters who equip them permanent Regen and Re Raise. Any female unit with this item equipped is completely unkillable. Raise up a pair of female ninjas with these equipped and have them rush the assassins, since ninjas are the only class that can go first. The assassins will ignore Rafa and gun for your ninjas, who will die, then Reraise on their respective turns and be able to start whaling on the assassins with no consequences. Without the Chantages, this battle is a lot harder, though you can still use ninjas as bait and revive them once they've drawn fire from Rafa.
        • If you can't catch a pig, you might want to send in a couple of Chocobos that are no doubt filling out your ranks. Sending in two Chocobos along with Ramza and one other unit will not only cause the assassins to focus on the Chocobos, but it will cause Rafa to back down instead of charging into the battle. Unexplained, but it works every time.
        • Aside from Rafa running in and getting herself killed, this battle is really easy if you just switch people to Ninja (a class you should definitely have available for most of your people), which gives them a speed boost and thus they will get to go first. Alternately you can equip people with boots which gives them +1 speed. Lastly, it's been mentioned that if you deliberately strip all EQ from a character, Celia and Lede will home in on that person instead—and since all you have to do is defeat one of the three, and two of them are now vulnerable to counter-attacking...
    • While easier than the first encounter with Elmdor and his assassins, the second encounter inside Limberry Castle is no walk in the park, either. Your goal is to defeat Elmdor in this battle - kill the assassins, and they'll come back as Ultimus Demons. However, Elmdor not only has a great equipment set (the Genji equipment, no less), but he's packing the Blade Grasp reaction ability - meaning any physical attack, front, side, or back, will have its hit-rate drop to about 30%. If you neglected to bring a mage to the battle, it's going to be a very long affair unless you get very lucky.
      • This is even worse because there are two abilities that are Lost Forever if you do not do specific things during this fight.
        • Ultima can only be learned by Ramza, if he is a Squire, and it is cast on him by one of the assassins and he survives. Technically, it is possible to get it the first time the assassins, but the odds of the assassins casting Ultima at all (let alone ignoring Rafa and attacking Ramza) are basically non-existent, so you need to get it this fight. Even though the odds are much, much higher, it can still easily take numerous rounds for either to decide to cast Ultima, let alone use it on Ramza.
        • Samurai abilities require specific swords to be in your inventory before they can be used. Masamune (an AoE, instant, no MP, Regen and Haste buff) requires you get Masamune, which can only be acquired by stealing it from Elmdor. The Genji equipment is lost forever if you don't steal it, but if you don't steal Masamune an entire Samurai skill can never be used (you can learn it, you just wouldn't be able to use it).
  • "An Earnest Two Five Timer Date" in Final Fantasy Tactics A2.
    • Side mission "Time to Act" in Final Fantasy Tactics A2. You are in charge of protecting 5 moogles (Black Mage, Moogle Knight, Fusilier, Tinker, and Thief) and you're only allowed to send out ONE person from your clan to support them. What makes this extremely aggravating for most players is some of the moogles can be downright stupid and suicidal. The Tinker will constantly spam Red Spring if no one on your side has Haste or he will use Green Gear to try and cause Poison to the enemy. Tinker abilities can hit either friend or foe, which makes this a Luck-Based Mission. The moogle Thief may spend more time trying to steal than actually fighting. If one of the moogles gets knocked out, you lose.
    • This is on top of the way that the AI chooses the target to attack. Does the enemy on the entirely other side of the map suddenly have less hit points than your current target? Better start wandering over there!
    • "Bonga Bugle - Blackfrost." You have to survey people and find out what the most popular resolution was. Problem here is that some people either give more than one or give one that could have more than one meaning. Of course you have to restart the mission all over again if you get the answer wrong. However, doing this mission multiple times changes the top resolution, so not even Save Scumming will work here! While the Head Editor does give a slight hint at what the answer will be, everything is vague here. What also makes this annoying is that there are TONS of NPCs on the field to talk to, including a few on the rooftops for some odd reason so unless you have a high move or jump stat, have Fairy Shoes or Galmia Shoes, or have a Gria unit, you might not be able to reach the highest NPCs. And you can't forget talking to people behind their doors either. Since all the units on the field are considered guests, you'll waste time watching them do nothing.
      • After trying and failing to do this mission the "right" way several times, this troper simply went straight to the Head Editor, picked a random answer, and then reloaded if it was the wrong one.


Other examples

  • Chapter 2-1 of Vandal Hearts is an early gimmick battle, and boy is it a doozy. There are a number of immobile, evil statues placed strategically around the map. These statues have possessed the villagers, turning them into insane, bloodthirsty killers. Your objective is to destroy all of the statues while keeping at least one villager alive. Sounds simple enough. The problem? Your party automatically counter-attack every single time without fail, and each of the villagers will go down in one hit, even from your weakest party member. It's a hair-pulling extravaganza.
    • The above battle is difficult, but with a strategy based around luring the zombie villagers and using the conveniently placed blocks on the map it is actually rather easy to finish the level without killing any of the villagers (you lose money if you do) and getting all the chests/secret treasures. A better example is 2-6 where you have to kill all the enemies on the map in 3 turns. Not only do you have to travel the length of the entire map to do so, but if any of the enemies manage to leave the screen before these three turns are up, you also lose. Oh, and the enemies are all Monk class so they have no specific weakness to any weapon or magic & can inflict poison just by attacking you. Have fun.
    • Although a lot of the fights in Vandal Hearts seem like this if you want to get all the hidden items/not have anybody die, pretty much all of them can be beaten by a properly balanced party and a decent strategy. Though some fights seem to require EXACT strategies.
    • The second game is much more difficult due to you and the computer taking simultaneous turns. You may be focusing on defeating one particular enemy and try to guess where he'll be so you can move behind him and take him out, but you've forgotten about that archer on the other side of the map! Now the computer's making him attack a character that has their back exposed! This means that now you've got two characters in compromising conditions and an enemy in a prime location to attack either of them. Have fun guessing which.
  • Chapter 7 in Valkyria Chronicles is one of these combined with a That One Boss and a heaping portion of Guide Dang It. Seriously, it's so absurd that it's almost laughable. You have to fight a gigantic tank about ten times the size of your own. It's armed with five machine gun turrets that can cut your infantry to shreds instantly, and two gigantic cannons that can slice off more than half your tank's HP in one go. First, you have to destroy all of its machine gun turrets so you can approach the monstrosity with your Lancers (not that kind). Then, you have to shoot at the bottom of a bunch of conveniently-placed ruin walls so that they fall over, blocking the path of the tank. It will then shoot at the wall with its main cannon, which causes three radiators to pop up. These radiators are only around for one turn, and take about four attacks to destroy - assuming you don't miss, which you often will - and you can only destroy one of them per turn. After you destroy two of the radiators, an invincible Valkyria warrior arrives along with other reinforcements. The Valkyria can instantly kill any character that isn't your tank, often knocking out three or four footsoldiers in a single turn. If you manage to destroy the final radiator, you then have to attack and destroy the tank itself now that it's finally vulnerable, while scrambling to rescue the soldiers that got killed off by the Valkyria. Does this sound bad enough yet? There's also a strict turn limit.
    • Actually the radiators can be killed by just lobbing one grenade into it rather than shooting it with your Lancer that many times. Not to say that the stage is not still incredibly hard though.
    • The second half is luck based. It can be incredibly easy. The Valkyria spawns in a far off corner of the map. In some cases, she is going to be so far away that her AI refuses to do anything unless you move someone closer to her.
    • The second half of Barious isn't really all that bad if you know what you're doing, although it's enough of a speed bump to be very hard the first time you play it. My nomination for That One Level goes to the second half of Naggiar instead. You start with a goal of "capture enemy base", with relatively light enemy presence (one Tank Destroyer and some bunkers) and Valkyria!Alicia systematically destroying the enemy installations. Then when you capture the base, you find yourself caught between a pair of Dromedarius, massive tanks that take effectively no damage when they're not shot in their weak points, fire area-denying incendiary rounds, and are backed up by a neverending stream of enemy footsoldiers (including a bunch of Elite Snipers). And Alicia gets taken off of the map in a cutscene. Your goal is now to destroy the tanks. You can have a very bloody fight against them as you struggle to keep your troops in one piece, or you can cheat and use your foreknowledge to position tanks and lancers behind the enemy tanks' spawn points before capturing the camp, then get an A-rank while completely ignoring all other units. Both of the video LetsPlays I'm aware of took the latter approach. So did I.
  • Any X-COM: UFO Defense mission that has chryssalids. Can you say "zombie apocolypse with ambushing giant insects creating more zombies"?
    • MOST missions in X-COM: Terror from the Deep, including cargo ship terror missions (bad AI means they can run into thousands of turns while you try to hunt down that one last alien hiding in a closet), alien colony assaults (same problem, except also with Tentaculats galore), and Artefact Sites (same as colony assaults, except they pop up randomly and you have to do them immediately or take such a huge penalty to your score that it can sink your game).
    • Similarly, there are two types of level in UFO Aftermath that will give you a bad case of twitching: anything involving the Deathbellows (aka the Squad-Killing Abomination From Hell), and most things involving bases, especially in the later stages when the aliens are breaking out the big guns. Having your entire squad wiped out by the balloon fish behind that door you carelessly opened? Hurts. Having them wiped out by an alien rocket launcher with a blast radius larger than some European countries? Hurts even more.
  • The final mission in Roland's Campaign in Heroes of Might and Magic II (and I assume Archibald's too, I never even managed to make it to that one.) pulls absolutely no punches. First off, the choice between three possible bonuses at the start of the mission ends up being a choice between three artifacts that hinder you instead. Next, the developers put an enemy hero right next to your castle, but just out of sight. If this is your first time playing this mission, it WILL catch you offguard and essentially force a restart. But the most difficult part is exactly how much of a challenge you face in this mission. Your opponents have no less than TWELVE towns, (technically thirteen, but one of them does absolutely nothing until the final battle.) backed up by a metric crapton of resources and mines. A playthrough on Youtube took roughly EIGHT HOURS to beat this mission, without accounting for failed attempts. And as if that isn't enough, those The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard elements in this game mean you and the AI are roughly evenly matched when you have the SAME number of towns. It is impossible to describe the pain, time and amount of attempts it will take to finally put this monster of a mission down. Though since this is the last mission in the campaign, all this is at least mildly forgiven.
  • In Heroes of Might and Magic V, the third chapter of the Inferno campaign requires you to defeat an enemy who starts with three Sylvan castles (a faction type that's unbelievably imbalanced), and all you're given is one Inferno settlement that can't access its best units (the only redeeming quality of their entire army). You are required to make a run and grasp the first enemy castle ASAP, but even after you succeed at that, the enemies' attacks will start raining on you, having multiple dragons and ents, units that you can't even match before you can upgrade the castle you conquered into its full power (because the only one that didn't have a dragon portal to start with was the outermost one). In addition, the enemy has a ridiculously powerful hero who will keep respawning in their biggest castle every time you defeat him, something that by the normal mechanics of the game wouldn't even be possible (if your hero is beaten, you lose the game).
    • And if you think that's bad, try the second mission of the Dungeon Campaign with one (handicapped) town against six and a lot of enemy heroes on higher levels than yours. Better find that Tear of Asha fast. Oh, and the next mission starts with zero to eight, but you start with two decent heroes and enough troops to easily capture two quickly.
  • Not so much a level (because it doesn't have levels) as a stage, but the Independence War in Colonization. You have to pass it to beat the game, but it's so hard and just downright unfair (Where did the 18th-century English navy get teleportation technology!?) that many players just avoid it entirely (which makes the game unbeatable). Since it's a sandbox game, this isn't too bad, but as time goes on the game makes it harder and harder to play without fighting the Independence War, so eventually you have to either attempt it (and the longer you put it off, the harder it gets) or just quit.
    • YMMV on the difficulty of the Independence War, but it is definitely boring. The game was designed to simulate developing an economy in a wilderness area; the military simulation is so crude that there is no real strategy or tactics involved in the war.
    • Also in the follow-up Civilization IV: Colonization. The problem is that at a fixed point in the game, the King of England will begin amassing an invading army, and the larger and more successful your economy, the larger that inevitable invading force will be. The counterintuitive secret to winning is to deliberately cripple your economy and trick the computer into sending a smaller invading force that you actually have a decent chance of beating. Which is stupid because the whole pre-invasion half of the game is essentially an economic and nation building sim.
  • Age of Wonders features a very difficult campaign in general, but the third dwarf mission, The Hall of Heroes really takes the cake. You start with a decent-size town and few resources, with your objective being to find the titular location. The briefing conveniently forgets to mention that you will come under attack almost immediately from the north and east by Frostlings, while the Dark Elves attack simultaneously from underground. The teleporter to get to the Hall is hidden underground, past heavy fortifications, and is personally guarded by two Karaghs. Resources are few, the AI will seem to be everywhere, and it will take many tries before you either get lucky or figure out one of the few strategies that has a decent chance of working.
  • Trying to get the Dauphin to the cathedral in Reims is one of the hugest headaches in Jeanne d'Arc. For one its an escort mission, that's bad enough. But also the Dauphin will always die in a single hit - even if its from a cheap shot from an Archer that spawned out of nowhere behind your party just to ruin your day. Oh, and did I mention there's a time limit? Yeah, take more than twenty turns or more and its GAME OVER.
  • Bleach: The 3rd Phantom has the Bonus Dungeon Urahara Tower. It's somewhat easy, until you get to the sixth floor. This is the first stage where you can unlock a completely new character (Gin), but it's almost prohibitively hard to do so. You have to kill him AND Izuru in five turns to unlock him, but there's a Menos Grande blocking the one path to them, so unless you can kill it within two turns, you're screwed. To make matters worse, the second turn is when the two of them start to run away, powering up all the while. You have to use Bankai if you have any hope of catching up to, let alone killing them. And god help you if it runs out before you're finished with them.
    • Guess what? It gets worse. Floor thirteen has you fighting Hitsugaya, Rangiku and about 10 other strong Hollows, on a map where there is so much distance between you and them that it's next to impossible to clear in 5 turns. You're fucked if Hitsugaya goes Bankai, crosses the field, and then uses Sennen Hyourou [1] on your best characters. Have fun trying to kill people when your attacks only have a 50% chance of doing anything!
      • Floor 18 is also painful. The map is pretty large and there are four unique characters, of which two have Absolute Defense, meaning that your attacks will, more often than not, do only single-digit damage. At least there's nobody to recruit.
    • In the main game, Chapter 9. Where to begin... You start out with just three characters, all of which are rather weak, and of which one is solely a healer. You have to protect Tatsuki, who is incapable of combat, from Ulquiorra and Yammy. Both of them are damn near impossible to beat. Once Ichigo shows up, things get a little easier (and even moreso when Kisuke and Yoruichi appear a turn later) but it only brings the difficulty down from "nigh impossible" to "very hard".
  • Front Mission 5 has a stage roughly in the middle of the game, where the objective is to defend four units at the center of the map, and the enemies keep coming in quite an amount of waves. To top it all off, it also has a two-phase boss fight thrown in at the same time, and the enemies that come as reinforcements have jetpacks, so they can instantly get to the structure you're at. Yes, you do need to destroy them. All of them. Fortunately, you are given a support unit and four base cannons for extra defense, though the cannons are rather fragile and have very limited ammo. And you only get a game over if all four units at the center are destroyed.
  1. ↑ (It deals damage, lowers accuracy AND evasion, and prevents you from moving or attacking.)
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