That One Sidequest: Difference between revisions

* Unlocking T.T. in ''[[Diddy Kong Racing]]'' requires beating his best Time Trial time on every course in the game. The problem? T.T. is ''good.'' ''Really'' good. And being as it's Time Trial mode (and he's a ghost), you have no weapons at your disposal in order to beat him--just your mad driving skills and the game's famous "Zipper Trick," which requires you to let go of your accelerator right before hitting a speed-boosting Zipper. The good or bad thing (depending on [[Nintendo Hard|how you like your games]]) is that, in the DS port, this sidequest is now ''much'' easier due to the addition of upgrades to your vehicles. Using Pipsy in combination with an upgrade that increases your vehicle's maximum speed makes beating all T.T.'s times, if not a piece of cake, at the very least a muffin top.

** Just use the first hidden character you found (and it is really easy) and it is a piece of cake.

 

 

** The Meta-Ridley trophy, which requires the player to beat down Meta-Ridley until he's near death, wait for a trophy stand to appear (the fight is [[Timed Mission|on a timer, by the way]],) then throw it at Meta Ridley, ''jump off the Blue Falcon, catch the trophy in mid-air, and then get back on.''

*** Getting back on is completely unnecessary - the player can't die after Meta Ridley does - and it's possible (technically) to kill him at just the right moment that his trophy falls on the Blue Falcon anyway. But the latter requires you to wait for him to do just the right move when his health is low (and it's still timed, after all) so most players will have to make the plunge anyway.

* Survival mode in ''[[King of Fighters]] Maximum Impact 2'', required to unlock all the stages in the game. Got a few hours to spare against increasingly difficult characters (everyone you're unlocked so far, trickier if the final boss is included among those characters), with a pumped-up version of one of them every 10 fights with additional perks you can't access? 200 fights, so even if you've unlocked up to Armor Ralf so getting hit isn't as much of an issue, you've got hours ahead of you, since you can't save your progress. Fail once, and you have to start over.

** Reading about the final challenges in ''[[King of Fighters]] 2002 UM'' alone is downright scary if you haven't devoted your life and sacrificed your unlikely first-born for the skills required in the challenge mode.

** Last for the Arcade League, we have "Nice Threads". Assault match, yes, but this time it's on Scrapyard, so prepare to meet a trio of [[Sentry Bots]] and a whole bunch of autoguns both outside ''and'' inside. Thankfully enough, there's a Lasergun near your spawn, so you can use that to break inside easily without dying.

** Starting off with the Challenges, "Stain Removal". Good luck trying to find any windows to destroy after dealing with the first set.

** "But Where Do The Batteries Go?" It's simple. Run to the end of the Scrapyard,<ref>the Assault version, not the normal version</ref> pick up the item and return to the start. But what makes it hard is the amount of enemies in the level, the autoguns, and the fact that some enemies wield miniguns. By the time you make it out, you have a chance of either escaping successfully, or getting blown up by a rocket. Have fun!

* Earning the gold medal for the Astro Jocks level in ''[[Time Splitters]]: Future Perfect'' is an extremely difficult task. The platinum medal is all but impossible.

** The true That One Sidequest are Briskbreeze Tower and the Warehouse. Both are ten floors tall and contain [[My Rules Are Not Your Rules|cheating bosses]]. Oh, and for those people that use the "flee, use potion, port to friend" technique, people cannot port into these towers. These are so tough the first floor is there just to warn people how tough they are.

** Another dungeon, The Waterworks, was made for a new challenge for the new level cap. Five normal battles, two puzzle rooms (which can act as either additional battles or heal locations), and two bosses that have complex and powerful cheats.

** [[Blatant Lies|One Small Favor]], a [[Chain of Deals]] [[Fetch Quest]] that's taken [[Up to Eleven]].

** Elemental Workshop III, where you have to manipulate a bunch of blocks on a grid to operate a machine. Takes a frustratingly long time, but if you have any desire to use the machine to make more equipment after the quest is over, it's possible to "break" the machine so that you have unlimited turns, and possible to make it so that you can use the machine in ten moves or less.

 

 

* ''[[Final Fantasy X]]'' is a prime offender. Obtaining each character's [[Infinity+1 Sword]] is an extremely simple effort, but acquiring the sigils, key items that are required to power up each weapon to its full potential, is invariably a highly arduous task. Infamously, getting two sigils requires achieving a perfect score in a highly luck-based chocobo racing [[Mini Game]], which is every bit as annoying as it sounds, and by dodging ''two hundred'' lightning bolts in a row in another [[Mini Game]] that demands, well, lightning-quick reflexes. Wakka's sigil and [[Limit Break|overdrives]], while not difficult to acquire by any means, require at least ten hours of blitzball, the game's love-it-or-hate-it [[Unexpected Gameplay Change]] mini-game.

** The lightning bolts were comparatively easy compared to the chocobo racing task (had 0.7s) for a long, long time. The logical conclusion is that whoever programmed that one had a grudge against the guy who designed Caladbolg.

** And ''[[Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days|358/2 Days]]'' has {{spoiler|unlocking Sora}}. Goddamn [[Bonus Boss|Dust]][[That One Boss|flier]]!

* ''[[Phantasy Star IV]]'' has the dog quest, where you have to find a dog, which randomly pops up in one of five cities. If you don't have a specific item in your inventory, it runs away, and you have to search the other four cities. The only way to get said item is to find the hidden shop that has virtually no hints to where it is.

** The cherry on top for this sidequest is the [[Bonus Boss]] at the very bottom, Ragu O Ragla. He is as difficult as you might imagine him to be (he even gets his own special battle music!). You have to be completely prepared, as he uses all elements and counters all attacks. Then you have to fight him a second time right after you beat him. The prize for your day-long endeavor? A gear for a single party member that can only be equipped at the highest level.

** In a moment of game design sadism the likes of which are rarely seen in RPGs, there is an enemy within the deeper levels of The Abyss (past level 60 and on) with an attack that will ''return you back to the very fucking beginning''.

== [[Sports Game]] ==

* Collecting all of the snowflake tokens in ''[[SSX]] 3''. White tokens on a white surface are not easy to spot.

 

 

* Recruiting the final character {{spoiler|Lehran}} in ''[[Fire Emblem|Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn]]''. To do this, Ike needs to fight {{spoiler|the Black Knight}} much earlier in the game. Now, the problem here is that under normal conditions, Ike will be unable to scratch {{spoiler|the Black Knight}}, who in turn will generally only need two hits to ''obliterate'' Ike. The only way to survive is to make Ike fast enough to avoid the second hit, and then pick him up with another unit and have them flee far, far away before the enemy's turn. And grinding Ike for this encounter won't help either, because if you manage to win, you can't unlock {{spoiler|Lehran}} anyway.

** Recruiting Illyana in ''Path of Radiance'' was a challenge. You have to get your main character to her, not have her attack you, and make it back to defend your fort. She has barely any health, and the enmies outnubmer you about four-to-one.

*** ...unless you'd already done a playthrough skipping the tutorial story, at which point you'll notice that all of the characters from that story will be horribly underleveled whereas they'll keep all level-ups from the story if you played it. You'll never skip the tutorial again.

** In ''[[Fire Emblem Jugdral|Fire Emblem thracia 776]]'', recruiting either [[Cool Old Guy|Conomore]] or [[Lady of War|Amalda]] was quite a pain in the ass due to how many reinforcements kept coming and coming and coming. And for worse, if you wanted Amalda, you'd have to bring Sleuf to do so... and an unpromoted Sleuf = easy to capture Sleuf. (At least Miranda was a [[Magical Girl Warrior]]...)

* Getting the [[Game Breaker|Vandaler class]] in [[Vandal Hearts]]. It's an [[Eleventh-Hour Superpower]] for your main character that gives him every learnable spell, autoblock on all frontal and side attacks, an absurdly high block rate for back attacks and sky high stats and unique equipment that's better than anything in the game. You just have to find each of the six Prisms, one in each chapter, in battles that aren't repeatable. Some of the Prisms just require you to examine a strange looking tile, some require you to talk to a certain person in a tavern, complete a secret objective in a battle and then talk to the person again, despite them not actually telling you the objective. One requires you to find and not sell three unique, valuable items in previous chapters that are only found by examining out of the way tiles in intense fights. And after that, each one puts you into a special challenge battle in which you not only have to defeat all the enemies, but make sure to get the special item in a difficult to get to chest. One such battle requires you to actively place your units not to kill enemies with counterattacks and navigate a difficult block pushing puzzle in which one wrong move makes it all impossible. Do all this, you get to use the Vandaler class for the past few battles.

** The easiest Prisms to find require you to send a unit to a counter intuitive location on the off-chance that funny looking tile isn't just a quirk of some mapper's choice and is one of the pre-designated special item location.

 

 

** The Paramedic missions, specifically in ''[[Grand Theft Auto III]]''. A top-heavy ambulance that's prone to tipping, no map support, pitiful time bonuses, and no cumulative progress made this a LOT harder than it had to be. And God help you if you try to do this in the Portland area {{spoiler|after killing Salvatore}}. ''Vice City'' was just as bad, considering that, if you did it early, you had to drive on the beach, which had so many bumps and such poor traction that you would probably do a complete roll by acccident.

** Firefighter in Shoreside Vale in ''III'', due to the difficulty in quickly getting across the two islands.

** ''[[Grand Theft Auto Vice City]]'''s RC Plane missions are an even better example - the horrid flying controls had legions of gamers tearing out their hair in frustration.

*** Same for Zero's RC missions in ''[[Grand Theft Auto]]: San Andreas''. Nearly impossible. Thankfully, not required.

** In ''[[Saints Row: The Third|Saints Row the Third]]'', Snatch is even more irritating than Escort. Why? The people you need to snatch [[Artificial Stupidity|sometimes get stuck on your car and won't get in]]. Sometimes they get knocked down and take precious seconds to get back up. Maybe they do get in the car, but some asshole gang member pulls you out of the driver's seat, making them get back out. And all while you're trying to get them in the car, you've got an entire army of gang members trying to kill you, often bringing in the Specialists and Brutes. It won't take long before they bring in enough Morning Star snipers to turn the whole damn place into a laser rave, and need we highlight the fact that their sniper rifles can make your vehicle explode after a few shots?

*** Another reason is that Escort is now easier, since the vans are slower and not as numerous. However, the irritating "do X before the Pleasure meter will fill further" requirements are still intact...at least for traditional Escort. There's also Tiger Escort, which trades that for [[It Makes Sense in Context|a tiger in the passenger seat]] that will occasionally claw the Boss and [[Interface Screw|cause your steering to drift left or right randomly]], along with an Animal Rage failure meter that will decrease over time, unlike standard Escort's Footage meter.

** Getting 100% displayed for an area does not involve finishing the whole level without dying, it is simply a matter of getting all the treasure bubbles. However, getting the Play trophy is very difficult.

*** Acing the first Don Jalepeno level. [/thread]. for those who haven't played the game, suffice to say, you have to beat the level without dying. Said level's primary theme is explosives. That you handle manually. Which is easy enough to do if you're careful (provided you don't accidentally stand on the wrong part of one of the switches). Then you get to the final stretch, and they throw jetpacks into the mix (more specifically flying under a series of three pillars with precise timing, then dropping a bomb on some terrain. At least twice).