That One Sidequest: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

 

 

 

 

 

See also [[That One Level]], [[That One Boss]], [[Last Lousy Point]].

 

 

== [[Action Adventure]] ==

** ''Zero Mission'' and ''Fusion'' in particular have rather well-hidden items that can be a pain to get to. The one [[Emergency Energy Tank|Energy Tank]] in ''Zero Mission'', just outside Robot Ridley's lair, will have you ripping your hair out. Guaranteed.

*** And there was an underwater part in fusion that had two ways to get back up to the main station. One was to get the ice missile and blast your way past those balloon enemies. The other method involves shinesparking over extremely rough terrain in sector 4, past several enemies that may or may not simply be in the wrong place at the right time, and then break through a wall of blocks with said shinespark effect still intact. It's all here in [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ig_8_acwGBo this video]. What do you get for all your efforts aspiring to shinespark perfection? [[The Dev Team Thinks of Everything|A different set of dialog when you reach the map room]]!

**** You also have to go back and get it anyway. Which can be difficult in and of itself, to some players.

** ''Super Metroid'' also has its fair share. '''[[Guide Dang It|THE ITEMS ARE IN THE WALLS!!!!!]]''' And who would have thought that one pipe in Brinstar, that looked like every single [[Mook Maker|enemy spawn tube]], would lead you right to that [[Weapon of Choice|Missile]] [[Department of Redundancy Department|Expansion]]?

* ''[[Onimusha]] 3'' has an optional training mode that you unlock along the way. The training sessions are in no way easy, but they are completely doable, at least until you reach Critical training. It requires either almost superhuman reflexes or huge amounts of dumb luck to get through, especially in the PC port. Passing it gets you a neat item and unlocks the good ending.

** To help a little, using the [[New Game+]] lets you keep your figurines, and starts you off with a Deluxe Picto Box...even though you still can't develop the pictures until you reach the second dungeon. So choose wisely on what pictures you take.

** It is just barely possible to complete the entire gallery without having to use the [[New Game+]]. [[Guide Dang It|Apparently]], if you take a picture of Link's grandma, you also get a picture of his sister, and if you get a picture of Tetra on your first visit to Hyrule, you get the entire pirate ship's crew. And, you can take pictures of the first two dungeon bosses while you're fighting them again in Ganon's castle. And to top it all off, you can take a picture of the final boss ''during the battle'', save, then go have it made.

** And the amounts of sheer [[Guide Dang It]] and just plain inconsistency. You need to take pictures of everything that is alive. This includes the fairies you put in your bottle, which the average player is conditioned to think of more as items than as characters, and the harmless tiny crabs on a few beaches that you have no interaction with whatsoever. It does not include the King of Red Lions, arguably the most important supporting character in the game. Taking a picture of any one of the [[Rule-Abiding Rebel|Killer Bees]] gang in Windfall counts for all of them, despite each of them having their own lines...but you need to take individual pictures of each of the island Koroks, who all say the same thing. Which palette swaps count as individual enemies? Apparently, whichever ones the developers felt like, as there are both black-robed and white-robed Wizzrobes that count as one enemy - and this is downright evil when it comes to the above Red Wizzrobe, since a player who tried to take both would naturally assume that said enemy is just a normal Wizzrobe and there is therefore no need to take its shot. Would they think to do so because it's a miniboss? Well, all the minibosses before now were perfectly ordinary shots, right? There are also three individual pictures of Darknuts, never mind how they all follow the same pattern. And then of course, there's Kogoli, an otherwise ordinary character at Dragon Roost that just randomly disappears after a plot event that doesn't involve him in any way, screwing over players who were putting off the tedium of getting all the NPC pictographs.

** Of course, there's the matter of the reward for doing the entire Nintendo Gallery. It's {{spoiler|one more figurine. And that's it. By this point, the astute reader has picked up that this is not so much a sidequest as an exercise in masochism.}}

* Getting all 20 hearts in ''[[The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past|The Legend of Zelda a Link To T He Past]]'' includes not one but two [[Luck-Based Mission|luck based missions]].

** This can be made considerably easier by just waiting in the spots where they spawn, they will respawn there after a little while and you can shoot them as soon as they appear. Finding the right spots is still tricky though. Most of the spots are on fairly easy-to-remember, because of them being certain landmarks.

*** This can still be tricky no matter what, as some of the Poes, like the one near the crossroads leading into Gerudo Desert and the one on the small outcropping over the river have a nasty tendency to spawn inside walls and disappear about a full second later.

** There's also the Piece of Heart you get by racing Dampe a second time. You have to do it in less than a minute, which is extremely hard ''even if you use the Longshot to speed through the last room.'' Thankfully, there is a way to cheat; playing any warp song pauses the timer for about two seconds (so you'll have to do it a lot).

** Getting the Biggest Quiver from the Horseback Archery Range in the Gerudo Fortress. ''Very'' little room for error. It's ''incredibly'' hard to get the 1500 points required, and for [[Sarcasm Mode|extra fun]], it's entirely possible to end up with ''1,490 points.'' When something like that happens, it feels like the game is taunting you.

** Also, the race against the Deku Butler after beating Woodfall Temple. You follow the Butler through a long tunnel, and if you mess up once, there's a good chance you'll have to start the entire thing over again, and at the cost of a whole heart.

** Other example will be the Swamp Shooting Gallery. This particular challenge gets you the largest quiver and a piece of heart, but is impossible without superhuman reflexes or repeating over, and over, and over, and over, and over...

** The Gilded Sword's increased power and reach makes it worth getting, but it can be tricky to do so. Basically you have to go swordless for a night, beat the boss of Snowhead Temple, win at the Goron Race Track before the second day is out, and go swordless for another night. The Race Track is the hard part, as the high speed steering can take some getting used to, you have to watch your magic, especially if you didn't get the meter upgrade, and [[Scrappy Mechanic|if another goron bumps into you on an incline, you lose your spikey rolling]]. For [[Self-Imposed Challenge|extra fun]], try doing this all on your first visit to the zone. The temple is doable without a sword, though getting all of the stray fairies takes some finesse.

*** Compared to other items in the game, the Gilded Sword is actually EASY to get. You can play the song of time and Goron Race over and over until you get the gold dust, go swordless and play the Song of Double Time twice, give the sword back again, and play the Song of Double Time two more times. Of course, this does waste an entire three days.

** Don't forget the Dark Ore sidequest. Not only is Dark Ore 200 rupees a pop, you also have to have opened a couple of specific warp gates, and also have to go through what must be the temple of [[Goddamned Bats|Tektites]], with their god [[Boss in Mook Clothing|Rocktite]]. Oh, and did we mention that you can only get hit '''''once''''', otherwise you won't make it with enough? And if you're one short? Then it's all the way back to the Fire Realm to shell out another 200 rupees for you!

*** That one is a bit broken, as if you manage to kill Rocktite just before fetching the Dark Ore, [[Guide Dang It|it will not respawn when you pass through the tunnel]].

*** Of course, by that point in the game your wallet is perpetually filled to the brim from all the enemies you've killed, and the only point in the game you might actually need your armour would be the final battle, in which case there is a nice huge treasure room to raid instead.

** And don't forget the Cave of Ordeals. FIFTY FREAKING ROOMS WITH EVERY KIND OF ENEMY IN THE GAME. The final room even has three Darknuts (see [[Boss in Mook Clothing]]). Oh yeah, and there is next to nothing in terms of healing items, and the rooms are small. Let that sink in.

** Really, to gain all 64 rings across both ''Oracle'' games has to be the most extraordinary feat in the Zelda series. You have to play both games at least twice (four playthroughs in all) in order to account for unlinked and linked versions of both. And there are some (like the Rang Ring L-2) that are so laughably rare that you can go through all four playthroughs and never see them. They're that badly randomized.

*** Special mention to the linked game Hero's Caves, each of which contains an exclusive ring as its final prize. Each of them is itself that one sidequest.

*** Easy to get but hard to find is the Gold Joy Ring. It can only be found by bombing an unmarked spot on a literally random wall in the Goron caves in Ages. How anyone was supposed to find this one is beyond comprehension.

** The [[Minecart Madness|Rickety Coaster]]. Getting a Piece of Heart requires [[Timed Mission|going really fast]], which isn't too much of a problem. The problems is that the motion controls don't work to well and interpret "lean left" as "lean right" from time to time, making it a [[Luck-Based Mission]].

* In order to get all the stray beads in ''[[Okami]]'', you have to defeat the final blockhead by painting on his weak spots. They only appear for less than a second, you have to remember the exact order. If you fail, boulders drop from the ceiling, and you have to run away from it before you can do it again.

** It's worth noting that this particular blockhead has ''eight'' weak points. The average human being can retain ''seven'' items in short-term memory at a time.

** And the race with Kai which requires you to memorize all of the shortcuts on a fairly long track and utilizes [[Rubber Band AI]].

** That '''''FUCKING''''' beehive. only worth 20 praise, it requires you to roll one round object from in water from at least the middle of Agata Forest to the bear at the top beginning. Unlike the acorn and cabbage that are also part of the sidequest, the beehive is so jittery that it will slide backwards at even the slightest incline, even if you try to brace it by a rock. It also seems to be magnetically drawn to the cliff that takes up the last half of the challenge, and if it falls off, you have to start all over again.

** Speed boosts are dirt cheap. You can grab them out of crates in the middle of nowhere. And you're going to have a bunch left over by the end of the game anyway unless you spam them during races and looter's caverns. This is pretty much what they're there for.

* "Mandrake Is The Best Medicine" in ''[[Castlevania]]: [[Order of Ecclesia]]'', wherein you have to get Mandrake Root. Doesn't sound so hard, right? Well, did I mention that it's dropped by Mandragoras, which only appear in one level, and only in the areas of that level that take the longest time to reach from the starting points, and which explode without dropping anything if you don't kill them quickly enough? Not only that, but the enemies in this particular level are extremely annoying. So, yeah.

 

== [[Driving Game]] ==

* 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.

 

== [[Fighting Game]] ==

*** Thankfully, for those who only care about getting all the trophies, the game lets you claim up to five of the accomplishments without actually earning them.

**** Unfortunately, the Galleom Tank trophy is not one of them, as the Boss Rush achievements are the only ones that cannot be skipped, and must be earned manually. [[Difficulty by Region|European players are laughing.]]

** 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.

* ''[[Dissidia Final Fantasy]]'' has the 151 Accomplishments system (basically Trophies or Achievements). Many of them (Defeat all characters 30 times each, participate in 300 battles, etc.) will be easily accomplished over the course of normal gameplay, and more even tell you the conditions for fulfilling them, so while they may require more grinding (one requires the player to deal 1.5 ''million'' points of HP damage over the course of the game. Max HP for any one opponent is 9999. This takes a while.), they're not ''difficult'' per se. [[This Is Gonna Suck|Then you have the others]].

** Time Attacker (Accomplishment #61) requires the player to clear the Arcade Mode (Preset character with preset abilities vs. a gauntlet of foes, ending with the game's [[SNK Boss]]) within 1200 seconds. For extra fun, the [[SNK Boss]] has a [[Limit Break]] that he can use as often as he likes, whenever he likes, cannot be stopped from executing it, and its animation takes up ''[[Overly-Long Fighting Animation|over a minute]]'', adding elements of the dreaded [[Luck-Based Mission]].

** The above, ''again'', for Accomplishment #146, My Road To El Dorado, which is acquiring all accessories. Suffice to say that it requires pretty much the same as the all-gear one, except with ''even more'' [[Item Crafting|trading for items.]]

** The accomplishments for battlegen-ing the colored gems (Numbers 126-133). Battlegen, for the uninitiated, is the Dissidia system wherein performing a specific action to the opponent, such as landing an [[Limit Break|Exburst]] or [[Punched Across the Room|slamming them into the wall]] has a chance to generate a pre-determined item. So, you can see from the get-go that it's a [[Luck-Based Mission]]. Making it worse are the many elements of [[Guide Dang It]] inherent to the process. First off, the game never tells you that Battlegen-ing these items is what will fulfill the conditions of the accomplishments. Second, the game never even tells you that these gems ''exist''. Thirdly, the game never mentions that the only way to get at opponents from whom you can battlegen the gems is via either friend cards (in other words, online multiplayer elements) or the Stiltzkin cards. And finally, the game will never tell you how to get the Stiltzkin cards, you need either trial and error or a guide to figure out how to get all eight. That you will then have to fight. Until the game decides to have mercy on you and randomly generate the gem.

** 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.

* 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.

* In ''[[Team Fortress 2]]'', some of the achievements are borderline impossible without staging them with a few friends. This was most painful when the achievements were required for new unlockable equipment. An example medic achievement: killing twenty enemies in a row paired with a Heavy without either he or the Medic dying. For the Demoman, destroying five Engineer buildings within the span of a single ten-second Ubercharge (one Engineer can only place four buildings, and placing them close enough would rend two of them obsolete).

** Remember kids, veterans only get headshots.

** As an explanation for the above, if you manage to get past the hellhole of enemies to get to the hostage situation, you MUST get a headshot on the terrorist holding the VIP. Otherwise, it's back to square one for you...

** The original Perfect Dark has some difficult side items as well - specifically, the firing range. A skilled gamer could probably get most of the silver stars with a little practice. Getting all the gold stars, however, is nearly impossible. The major stumbling block is the [[AR 34]]: You must get 500 points (a bulls-eye is 10 points) in 20 seconds with 100% accuracy, using an assault rifle. Oh, and the targets break when shot too much, so if you break a target and let even a single bullet through afterwards, you fail.

* [[Halo: Reach|"If They Came to Hear me Beg..."]] The challenge here is to air-assassinate an Elite on the penultimate level from a height that would kill you. You'll mostly find yourself missing and going splat, hitting a Grunt instead, hitting the Elite with a normal beatdown, or the game just not recognizing your assassination. Have fun reloading the checkpoint.

 

== General ==

 

 

 

 

* Lord Recluse's Strike Force in ''[[City of Villains]]'', especially if you're going for the "Master of Lord Recluse's Strike Force" badge that requires completing it with no defeats on your team and all temporary powers disabled.

** Not to mention the fact that the third mission of said Level 45-50 Strike Force awards a badge needed for an accolade power whose Hero equivalent can theoretically be achieved at Level 7 (Level 1, if you're lucky enough). And all it does is bump your Endurance up by five points. Yeah. That's balanced.

** The universally-loathed "Swabbing Duty" quest in Cape of Stranglethorn. To elucidate - the captain of a pirate crew that you're trying to infiltrate charges you with [[What Do You Mean It's Not Awesome?|cleaning the ship's deck]], which takes the form of a minigame in which you have to keep the deck free of stains for two minutes. Unfortunately, the stains spawn at a ''ridiculously'' fast rate and have to be dealt with in a few seconds otherwise it's game over. If you have any kind of lag at all on your system the quest becomes pretty much impossible. There are reports on various game forums of frustrated players giving up after ''days'' of fruitlessly trying to complete it, while others have had to resort to remapping their keyboards and creating macros. For a ''two-minute minigame''. The worst thing about it is that unlike 99.9% of the quests in [[World of Warcraft]], it's impossible to level past it, so if you're no good at the type of "twitch" gaming this quest requires you can get hopelessly stuck and left with no option but to abandon the quest. Yep - no matter how powerful your character, you can be forced to forfeit an entire questline because you can't ''mop'' fast enough. Nice work, Blizzard.

*** In 4.2, possibly earlier, you can just talk to the whiny deckhand and pay him 1 Gold to do it for you. The captain even [[Lampshade Hanging|lampshades]] this when you turn the quest in, telling you he "heard frenzied mopping" and figures it must have been you.

*** A couple of which need a very specific group setup to even work. Wrong class? Though luck.

*** Yea well, take a look at the newer Glory of the Ulduar Raider achievements. Though I will admit Immortal was absurd given the random nature of a lot of the fights. At least the new one doesn't require that.

*** On entirely different level, fishing achievements. Half of them require you to catch absurdly rare fishes or similar stuff. Mr. Pinchy probably being the worst. There are only about a dozen or so spots where you can fish for him (pools that need to respawn after 5-6 catches), and once you have it, the pet needed for the achievement is only one of four possible outcomes. You may use him three times over 6 days, and if you are unlucky enough, you never get the pet and need to fish for him AGAIN. And back when achievements were introduced, you had to be at the highest possible fishing skill and top fishing equipment to reliably fish in these pools, and they were highly contested for the normal catches. On the bright side, this makes the already boring task of leveling fishing all the way seem comparably tame (unlike other gathering skills, the difficulty doesn't influence the rate at which it increases - you simply need like 30 sucessful catches at higher levels to advance a single point).

** Also consider the Meta achievement What a Long, Strange Trip It's Been - You need to complete all of the holiday event Meta achievements, and each one of those usually has a few that are extremely annoying. Also, good luck if you're out of town during the 1 week some of these events run.

** The ''very'' aptly named "the Insane" title and its acheivement, Insane in the Membrane. To get it, you need to be honored with the Bloodsail Pirates and exalted with the entire Steamwheedle Cartel, the Shan'dralar, the Darkmoon Faire, and Ravenholdt. The problems with this? For one, getting from hated to honored with the Bloodsails means killing Booty Bay guards, which kills your Booty Bay (and thus Steamwheedle Cartel) reputation. Even then, it is ''far'' from easy getting to exalted with the Shan'dralar (turn in Unique librams, along with other items, over and over and over) ''or'' the Darkmoon Faire (ditto, but with the hard-to-assemble Darkmoon decks), and getting to exalted with Ravenholdt is next to impossible if you're not a rogue (again, but with pickpocketed lockboxes). Oh, did I mention that you have to hold those reputations simultaneously?

*** Not ''quite'' as bad nowadays. The Shan'dralar faction has been removed completely so it is not required for the achievement. Also, the Darkmoon Faire has been revamped with several new ways to earn reputation, although the new methods can only give you so much per month.

* [[Infinity+1 Sword|Relic weapons]] in ''[[Final Fantasy XI]]''. You just have to be lucky enough to have the correct base relic drop during a Dynamis run, buy over a hundred million gil worth of Dynamis currency (and your linkshell will at best give you a discount since selling currency is how Dynamis runs are funded), convince your linkshell to take the time to beat up a foe that [[Randomly Drops]] a certificate you need, then convince them to stop after beating up fifteen other bosses to try to defeat an easily bored [[Metal Slime]] that drops the final ingredient. Easy, right?

*** Ebisu's Fishing Rod and skilling a craft to 100 for the headache inducing win.

*** As for quests that sane players actually regularly perform, the journey to obtain the Utsusemi: Ichi spell probably qualifies. It entails collecting a large number of randomly dropped items (between about 100 and 200, depending on the item) to gain notoriety in a far-away settlement. Then one needs to travel to this settlement and take on a final quest, involving travelling through an area infested with aggressive, high-level enemies. The real challenge in this barrage of quests is that it is not only very tedious, but also quite dangerous and difficult for newer characters. And what bites the hardest is that you ''need'' this spell if you are going to try the Ninja job class for any given reason.

* ''[[Wizard 101]]'' has Sunken City, a dungeon with the hardest enemies you can find in [[Noob Cave|Wizard City]]. Towers that the girl you're doing it for commands you to enter to defeat some more of the hard enemies, unavoidable battles with the [[Running Gag|hard enemies]], only to find that you need to enter a tower with multiple floors to get a key for Grubb's place, and have to fight a boss with ''one thousand health''. And after the battle, you STILL have to go defeat Grub and collect the amulet.

** Sunken City (and it tougher cousins Tomb of the Beguiler and Kensington Park) are actually meant for to be a challenge for teams of four wizards that had beaten the world so that is why they are so difficult.

** 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.

 

== [[Platform Game]] ==

** The Toy Time Galaxy has ''Luigi's Purple Coins''. The time limit imposed may as well not exist, as the [[One Hit KO|Green Slime of Death]] will see to it that you die ''long'' before your time runs out.

** Dreadnought Galaxy's Purple Coin challenge is a giant pain in the ass, simply because the [[Minecart Madness]] style of the level means you can't miss a single one.

*** To be fair, this could be because the developers ''literally hated making the sequel'', so they made the entire game ridiculously hard ''on purpose.''

* Racing the beetle in ''[[Donkey Kong 64]]''. It's not having to beat him that's so bad so much as the fact that you must have a certain number of coins by the end, and the beetle can [[Collision Damage|make you drop some on contact]].

*** That one wouldn't be so hard if it wasn't for a glitch that makes the propeller go for longer if you have over 100 Golden Bananas, meaning you pretty much have no chance if you're trying to get it after beating opening the last level. It's possible, but requires you to exploit the ability to hit covered lights from a certain angle.

*** [[Guide Dang It|Beaver Bother is a lot easier if you don't approach the beavers directly.]] Approach them from the side and they will fall into the hole when they aren't looking.

** Anything involving Diddy's rocketbarrels. Pain in the arse to handle, and when combined with ''two'' [[Pass Through the Rings]] challenges, it's enough to make a sane troper eat the cartridge out of pure despair.

** Mr. Vile's minigame in Bubblegloop Swamp is another irritating one. It seems pretty simple, at first glance: fruit pop out of the holes, and the task given is to eat more fruit than Mr. Vile does. Mr. Vile, however, is pretty darn fast, and the player must transform into an incredibly slow crocodile to access the minigame. A powerup can be unlocked later in the game that gives you super speed, making it relatively easier in that respect. But don't think you've won just yet! Once you beat him, you have to beat him again, only this time, worms will pop up alongside the fruit, and eating a worm causes you to become temporarily stunned. But wait! There's more. Now you have to play the game a third time. ''This'' time, both fruit and worms pop up again, but you can only eat whatever is displayed at the top of the screen. (ex: If it shows a worm, you must eat worms, and eating fruit will stun you.) The display changes randomly from fruit to worms. The fruit and worms themselves spawn randomly as well. And it all has to be done in succession; if you screw up, it's back to the first game. It's more annoying than difficult.

*** You only have to start again from the first game if you leave the area. You can start again from where you left off, but it requires you to let him bite you, costing you two hit points.

** What about the Dynamite Ordinance challenge? Or Clinker's Cavern? Both of which consist of Banjo wandering around a maze-like area in first-person view while under a strict time limit, trying to locate and destroy a decent number of creatures which are small enough to be hidden just out of sight, in rooms that all begin to look the same. Oh, and if you don't get rid of all of the Clinkers in time, you have to escape from the area before you suffocate and lose all health. If you're lost, tough.

*** At least the Clinkers make a tell-tale noise when you're near. The hard part is finding them in the room.

** And the Black Velvetopia level, where the neon Figments fit a little too well into the black velvet level design.

** There's also the Sand Castle, which adds in some [[Guide Dang It]]. One of the hearts in the second world is supposed to be hidden in a "sand castle," according to its hint. There's a small castle made of sand in the desert, but it's too small to do anything with. Is it something else in the level you have to trigger? No. You have to go back to the ''first'' area and enter the castle behind the waterfall, which is an extremely trecherous platforming segment. At the bottom of ''one'' seemingly inconsequential platform, there's a thinner platform beneath, which you must [[Leap of Faith]] to, to hit a switch. This lets you into the Sand Castle... which is a [[Palette Swap]] version of the castle you just came through, and you have to ''do it again.'' Siiiigh...

* ''[[Spyro the Dragon]] 2'' had a number of little side quests for orbs, one of which involves riding an infamous trolley around a track to get 50 gears for some pelican. This seemingly simple task will leave you traumatized with the phrase that horrible bird says to you every single one of the hundreds of times you are destined to fail, [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKaHh217fcc "Trouble with the trolley, eh?"]

*** The cards are [[Lost Forever]] now, due to being out of print for several years. On top of that, [[No Export for You|only Japan had all the cards while other places got a fraction of what Japan had.]]

* ''[[Super Mario World (video game)|Super Mario World]]'', getting all 96 levels. But that means all the exits. Including Valley Ghost House's alternate exit. And {{spoiler|Tubular}} the Special World.

** This is just the tip of the iceberg, almost every level in this game is [[That One Level]].

* Nearly ''every'' timed mission in ''[[Sonic Rush Series|Sonic Rush Adventure]]'' requires near-perfect timing. There is almost no margin for error, lest you fall short of the arbitarily short time limit.

** Rush's [[Spiritual Successor]] ''[[Sonic Colors]]'' DS has Mission 2 in Sweet Mountain where you have to rescue 25 Wisps. It isn't that hard if all you're trying to do is pass it or collect it's red rings however it becomes a total nightmare when trying to S rank the mission, the part that especially makes it hard is when you reach the robot that tosses you up in the air where you have to dodge the balloon bombs to enter its mouth. You move at a very slow pace during that part which wastes your time and since it's a rescue Wisps mission there are no extra time capsules to earn to give you extra time on the missions countdown timer. By the time you're past the robot part you probably won't have enough time left to earn an S rank during this mission.

 

 

*** "Short and sweet" on ''Lego Rock Band''. The song is not particularly difficult or challenging - on the opposite it's very easy, but it grows very repetitive on all of the instruments, it's overly long (7 minutes!), and it's boring, boring, ''boring'' as hell. Expect your drummer to fell asleep on his instruments halfway.

* Some of the ''[[Dance Dance Revolution|DDR]]'' releases have one step chart that's clearly much more difficult than the rest. ''DDRMAX'' had the first stepchart (i.e. the sequence of arrows you have to hit) with a difficulty rating of 10, on a song named Max 300 for its very fast BPM. [[MAX 2]] continued the tradition with Maxx Unlimited. On any given difficulty, these songs usually have the hardest stepchart on that difficulty. In the home versions, mastering a difficulty meant getting an "A" grade in every song on that difficulty, which basically boiled down to beating the Max song on that difficulty. (Later games tended to have several songs this hard).

* Obtaining all the Perfects in any game the ''[[Rhythm Heaven]]'' series. In order to get a Perfect rank in a minigame, you naturally have to complete it without making a single mistake, which is hard enough as it is (keep in mind, the games are very finicky about what counts as a mistake. You have to be completely precise; getting a "half-hit" won't count). But, oh wait, you can't just ''choose'' any minigame and try to get a Perfect on it, you have to wait until one is picked at random, and then you're given three tries to get a Perfect on it before you lose the opportunity. After that, you'll just have to wait until the next time it's picked. You can't even ignore it and try to complete it later when you feel it, because playing a different minigame instead still takes up one of your chances. Even if you're generally good at the games, the added pressure of knowing you only get a limited number of chances really doesn't help for your concentration, and it just plain sucks when you complete a minigame perfectly when it hasn't been called up, it won't count.

* ''[[Bit.Trip]] COMPLETE'' comes with 120 Challenges; 20 in each of the six games. To complete a challenge, you have to make a perfect run through it - hit all the Beats, dodge any Avoid Beats, etc. In ''RUNNER'', this also extends to hitting everything that gives points - but not all of them, or else you jump into a pit or another enemy. Challenges like Labyrinth (''VOID'': get through a maze of Avoid Beats and collect the Beats in a strict time limit); Fool You Once (''RUNNER'': a large portion of stuff that give you points actually forces you into enemies, also needs to time the jump pads for specific spots); Back Attack (''FATE'': a large portion of enemies come from the back, and so must stay alive to fire off at least a few shots to collect their Cores); and Harder, Faster (''FLUX'': starts slow, increases in speed and difficulty, and essentially limits your view to nothing in the middle of it all) require near mastery of the system being used.

 

== [[Roguelike]] ==

** Any escort mission in a higher level dungeon, ''especially'' when you don't know what the target floor is. [[Artificial Stupidity|You can't control them at all like you can your partners, and they're prone to wandering off in the wrong direction]].

* [[Ancient Domains of Mystery|ADOM]] features several truly painful ones.

 

 

* ''[[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.

** The butterfly minigame. You have to run down paths, collecting all the blue butterflies, while avoiding all the red ones, all before time runs out. What's that? That sounds easy to you? Well then, perhaps we should mention the [[Depth Deception]]-inducing camera angles, the dark blue lighting that makes identifying the colors ridiculously difficult, and the fact that each time you fail, you have to fight a battle (the penalty for hitting a red butterfly) before backtracking all the way back to the start. The time between attempts is always longer than the attempts themselves.

** Rikku's Sigil isn't annoying for its difficulty, but for its duration - you have to do a ''lot'' of walking, often to areas of Bikanel that are spelled out in unnecessarily cryptic fashion by a stone about twenty miles from the nearest save point. Even with a "No Encounters" item strapped to one of your characters, you'll still be walking around a very boring desert for something like three hours.

** ''[[Final Fantasy XII]]'' is another bad one. To get the game's most powerful [[Infinity+1 Sword]], you [[Guide Dang It|practically need a strategy guide]], because it requires you to leave four treasure chests alone without giving you the slightest indication of where those chests are. There's another way to get the weapon, but it's a [[Luck-Based Mission|1/1000 random treasure chest drop]]. Another nasty sidequest involves a trek into Phase 2 of the Henne Mines, the game's most difficult [[Bonus Dungeon]]. It's an hour-long journey through a narrow and confusing dungeon infested with [[Goddamned Bats]]. There are no saves, and at the end of the Mines is Zodiark, one of the game's three most difficult [[Bonus Boss|optional bosses]]. The reward for beating Zodiark is the ability to use him as a [[Summon Magic|summon]], but because he requires the character to be under a certain dangerous status to use his ultimate attack, Zodiark is [[Awesome but Impractical]].

** Danjuro, the ultimate dagger, is dropped by a single Rare Game, which has as its requirement ''256'' enemies to be slain in the Great Crystal, and then at least another ''32'' each subsequent time. All of the enemies are at a particularly high level, and can even take out Level 99 characters if given half a chance. While there are an unlimited number of enemies to kill, each one can take at ''least'' ten seconds to kill. If a player killed one every ten seconds, the first spawn would take ''42'' minutes to appear. Add onto that the obviously low drop rate for the Danjuro, and you've got a quest that is ''begging'' to be evaded via cheating or skillful moving around. Similar enemies have confirmed quirks to make dropping easier, i.e. Nelvihek's Grand Helms by leaving the screen as the enemy dies.

** Pretty much any of the ultimate weapon sidequests with the exception of Fomalhaut (which can be obtained long before the end of the game).

** Finding [[Humongous Mecha|Omega Mk. XII]] is an exercise in hair-pulling frustration. The most satisfying part isn't beating him, but actually tracking the mofo down.

* ''[[Final Fantasy VI]]'' has several:

** Two words: Emerald Weapon.

*** Two more words: Ruby Weapon.

*** [[Guide Dang It]] meets [[Luck-Based Mission]] with a side of [[Squick]]. And if you sold your Chocobo Lure materia, forget it.

** Getting all the Enemy Skills is pretty difficult. [[Unwinnable|One of them won't get all of them]] because only bosses use Trine and you get it after you kill the last boss that uses it ([[Guide Dang It|unless you wait to complete the Pagoda sidequest until after you get the last Enemy Skill Materia]]). You can only get Pandora's Box once. Chocobuckle is even worse, because if you're too strong, or you think ''I've got KOR now so why don't I just sell Chocobo Lure?'', you won't get it. And a spell actually has to ''hit'' and you survive it; Manipulate is pretty much the only way this will happen with some spells, and some have instant death.

** Several sidequests in ''[[Final Fantasy VIII]]'' with Centra Ruins, where you must first go through the ruins and defeat Odin under an unnerving time limit and ''then'' battle dozens of powerful Tonberries in order to summon and defeat the extremely powerful Tonberry King ([[Guide Dang It|none of this is hinted in the game]]) and Chocobo Forests, where you must find several annoyingly secluded forests throughout the world map and solve the confusing puzzles within, with the only in game help being a cryptic douchebag who more often than not leads you in the wrong direction, sidequests being arguably the worst.

** Sidequests being ungodly rare and not ever worth the prize for completing them, save the addicting card game.

*** There is an NPC that does mention the Tonberry King (where he was though, I forget). As for the deep sea underwater center, the puzzle performed early on will determine whether or not you have the necessary pressure needed to open the doors and raise the cage. The scripted battles only occur if Zell breaks the pressure machine. If the puzzle is solved correctly, then Encounter-None can be used in the deep sea center.

* One trophy/achievement in ''[[Final Fantasy XIII]]'' requires you to ''five-star'' '''every''' mission. Have fun with that.

** ''[[Dragon Quest VIII]]'' has the Dragovian sidequest. Works fine until you face the Darksteel Dragon.

*** Humorously, during the [[Boss Rush]] against all the dragon's forms, the Darksteel Dragon is the easiest if you have Dragon Soul, since all forms have their HP halved, and Darksteel's gimmick is very low HP and very, VERY high defenses, and Dragon Soul ignores defense. All other forms require 2 or 3 shots of Dragon Soul from a fully-tensioned hero. Against Darksteel? One shot at 20 tension, maybe 50, and he's done.

** The first game's version can actually be a decent moneymaker (though it doesn't beat the "Coin in the cup" game), but the second game ups the difficulty to an insane degree.

** The dice game is the best bit maker once you can do maximum bets, but ''Suikoden 2'''s game will make you want to destroy your television.

** In the second game, getting all the Recipes for the cooking mini-game can be a chore, especially with the notoriously hard to get recipe #24 from the Do Re Mi Elves, and ''especially'' if you're trying for Clive's Quest at the same time, which is another "That One Sidequest" for it's time limit.

*** Funny thing that while getting the Recipes are That One Sidequest, the actual cooking mini-game is a fan favorite.

** Getting all the dogs in ''[[Suikoden III]]''.

* In ''[[Pokémon]]'', of course, the biggest goal for completionists is that you [[Gotta Catch Them All]]. But this requires so much work that only the most dedicated players will be able to do it... And you have only a limited time before the next gen comes out, making you do it all over again with an even bigger number of Pokemon.

*** No longer do you have to have the correct nature! Game Freak has heard your pleas and has included in HG/SS an upgraded massage, which both increases happiness and beauty. If you do it 8 times, you can max out your beauty and that's that.

*** At least with Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald, you have to manually change the phrase yourself to trigger a tile change. Diamond/Pearl/Platinum are even worse; they change ''every day''. Thankfully, Feebas appear very often on their designated tiles, so once you lock on, you can just keep fishing on that tile.

** Most of Jiminy's requirements are hard, but not insane, as long as you either take the time to plan things out, or know the secrets. But some (like the poster duty minigame mentioned above) is impossible unless you've leveled up two of your forms to their max, others all but require you to have Fenrir, an [[Infinity+1 Sword]] gained by defeating Sephiroth (yes, that Sephiroth), winning tournaments with a certain number of points that require leveling up all of your forms and summons to their max (which takes a few hours of level grinding) just to enter, and winning a 50 round tournament with battle level 99 (the highest level in the game) with an insane point requirement... It can get to the point where you just don't want to go to Olympus Collusseum ever again.

** Until you realise that to get the secret ending, you can also just finish the game in Hard Mode, which is the mode you should have played from the beginning, because it provides actual challenge during the story...

* ''[[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''.

*** Of course, when you consider how big the game actually ''is''...

** Similarly "The Museum of Oddities" in ''Shivering Isles'' is one for players not all that interested in completionist-y dungeon diving. Unlike Nirnroots, some of the objects you must collect for this quest spawn randomly.

** Another in Morrowind is acquiring [[Infinity+1 Sword|Eltonbrand]]. First, it requires you to acquire [[Infinity-1 Sword|Goldbrand]] as part of an obscure quest that you are extremely unlikely to find on your own. (The one person in the game who tells you about it isn't exactly trustworthy and even then, his directions are bad, leading you to swimming around in the ocean further south than you need to.) Then, you get directions from [[Physical God|Boethiah]] to find him/her ([[Gender Bender|it's complicated]]) a sculptor to rebuild his/her shrine. If you manage to do that, then wait the two in-game weeks required for the statue to be built, you can finally claim Goldbrand. To upgrade it into Eltonbrand, you need to become a vampire (something most players of the game may not even realize is in the game for many, many hours) and perform a specific quest with a specific amount of gold in your inventory. THEN you get Eltonbrand. Complicated and [[Guide Dang It|near impossible to find on your own]], but very [[Game Breaker|worth it]].

** Another ''Oblivion'' quest would be the collector, finishing that one is a pain, unless you opt out midway through and finish the others in that questline instead. Ir doesn't help that the original printing of tbe strategy guide actually gave an additional location for a statues that doesn't exist.

* Finding all the Keepers on Citadel Station in ''[[Mass Effect]]''. Even when you know exactly where they all are, you literally have to walk/run to ''every remote corner of the station'' in order to scan all 21 Keepers.

*** Getting Liara's is especially bad, since you don't get her until you're already about 24% through the game, leaving absolutely ''no'' margin for error.

**** Liara is not bad. Just don't complete ''any'' Citadel sidequests. Follow the main quest straight to her. Far more egregious is the Super Power Gamer, which requires you play the entire game and every sidequest to squeak by the level cap at 50, then start a new game on the same career and play the ''entire'' game including ''every'' sidequest and UNP, to barely squeak by at 60 during the final gauntlet about five kills away from the [[Big Bad]].

* ''[[Baten Kaitos]] Origins'' has a sidequest that ''takes longer to finish than every other sidequest and the main quest combined.'' To accomplish it, you must feed one of your quest magnus one copy of ''every other quest magnus in the game''. 3 of them are [[Lost Forever|permanently missable]], 3 of them take 30 hours in real time to create (seriously), and there's a ton more that are in highly unintuitive places. Some of them can only be acquired by accepting a sidequest ''that doesn't show up on your sidequest list'', some of them are semi-missable (you can recreate them, but it's a major pain to do so), and MANY of them can only be acquired by letting them age. One of the quest magnus you need to use for this doubles as an ingredient for the game's [[Infinity+1 Sword]]. And to make matters even worse, you have no in-game means of keeping track of which magnus you've used for this. Forgotten which ones you're missing? Too bad! Your reward for doing this is permanent critical hits, which ''would'' be a [[Game Breaker]], but by the time you're done with this nightmare, you should be good enough to stomp the final boss into dust without it..

** It doesn't compare with the one listed above, but Mizuti's sidequest in ''Eternal Wings'' needs to be mentioned here. Remember [[That One Level|Zosma Tower]]? All those damn timed 3D [[Block Puzzles]], done with a static camera that sometimes doesn't show you what you need to see? Well, you're going back there, down into the basement for five all new levels of fun. One particularly nasty puzzle requires you to use an elevator as a block stop. ''While it's in motion.'' Finally at the bottom? Remember that irritating boss fight, between [[Luck-Based Mission|Xelha and the Ice Goddess]]? They recreated it, this time between Mizuti and the Shadow Wizard.

* Good luck maxing all the social links in ''[[Persona 4]]'' if you haven't played the game before. Magaret requires lots of sheer luck and money sunk into her link, Ai's is the only one that can break or reverse, the Fox's take a few days to accomplish each and if you aren't doing them concurrently with your main quest, you can never catch up, and Naoto's requires max courage and knoweldge. While knoweldge is an easy stat to raise, courage is not. At all. And those are just the more obnoxious ones.

** ''[[Persona 3]]'' is even WORSE. A knowledgeable player in P4 can finish all the social links with a month to spare, including time for adventures. The same player in P3 would be lucky to have two days left at the end, and adventures don't even take up a full day in that game. Granted, the reason you have so little time left is because there's a social link that can only be started in the last month, but even without taking this link into account, you'll only finish with about a week and a half left.

*** Shiva is actually far simpler than the others if you've played other SMT games for one reason - Shiva's "recipe" ''has never changed in the entire series''. If you've played any SMT or Persona game before, you'll know what Rangda + Barong will make.

* ''[[Star Ocean the Second Story]]'' has a combination sidequest plus ''final boss'': If you get to just before the final boss, and then leave and visit a specific town, it'll remove the boss's limiter, turning the final boss, who is easily doable around level 50 to a ridiculously powerful monster, requiring levels in the ''200s'' just to avoid being instantly killed even while wearing items which reduce the damage he does with his elemental attacks. The resultant grind is ridiculously long.

** ''[[Super Paper Mario]]'': Having fun yet? How about doing the same thing ''twice''?

*** But of course the [[Bonus Boss]] won't fight you unless you beat it for a ''third time''.

** Getting the Amala Ring in ''[[Digital Devil Saga]]'' is quite the task. To be able to obtain it, you have to beat the [[Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne|Hito]][[Bonus Boss|shura]], [[That One Boss|who is quite possibly]] [[Luck-Based Mission|the hardest boss]] [[Up to Eleven|in RPG history]]. It's that hard to do. The kicker? The ring can't be obtained in Digital Devil Saga 1. You get it by buying Digital Devil Saga 2 [[Old Save Bonus|and transferring data from your save file of Digital Devil Saga 1]]. Yes, it's a sidequest that costs actual money.

* ''[[Digimon World 4]]'' has a sidequest that is already brutal in that you can't use heal techs/items once you get into the area where the quest is, not to mention plenty of traps that do damage based on your MAX HP. As if that wasn't brutal enough, to unlock a specific digivolution for the Digimon you started as, you have to beat it on the hardest (I think) game difficulty setting (think Diablo II difficulty settings here), with a hinted at [[Self-Imposed Challenge|special condition]] that you finish off the boss with [[One-Hit-Point Wonder|one HP remaining]]. I know self-imposed challenges aren't meant to be here, but you don't have to do this to complete the quest, you DO have to do it in order to unlock the best reward, so it's kind of a twist where the self-imposed challenge is optional. To get yourself DOWN to 1 HP without killing yourself (and automatically failing the quest, which means you have to start it over from the beginning), you have to use a quick-sand pit and let yourself get sucked in repeatedly until you have 1 HP left. THEN you have to navigate your way past a lot of traps (hopefully you took out the walls first before you went down to 1 HP, if not, you're in deep trouble), and kill the boss without letting it hit you once. Did I mention the [[That One Boss|boss can summon lightning that can strike you anywhere]] if you don't keep whaling on it accurately?

** Slightly less annoying, but still a pain in the rear, is an early subquest to sell lamps to the Dudbears. You're taught a few phrases in the Dudbear language, and then it's off to negotiate a series of dialogue trees so that they'll buy your lamps. It's somewhat made up for by the fact that you get 1000 Lucre per lamp, and the guy you have to give the money to ''doesn't even care if you don't give him the full 3000''.

* ''[[Fallout: New Vegas]]'' The companion quests are hard enough to ''start'', which, often have to be triggered by being in certain places with those companions, but sometimes you may unknowingly make it so that you lose the opprotunity to gain the "points" needed to start the quests. The worst case is Raul, who you can only find by going to a place filled with xenophobic Super Mutants that you aren't going to even want to try to get into until you're a decent level. However, once you finally get Raul, in order to start his quest, you need to talk with a few specific NPCs who you cannot have talked with before. If you have talked with them, then sucks to be you. Fortunately, this was fixed in a patch.

** There's also The Legend of the Star. You need fifty Sunset Sarsaparilla blue star bottlecaps. There are only one hundred of these scattered throughout the game, and the physics mean you could easily bump into them and not notice them being knocked to the floor, or heaven forbid clipping through it. You can also get them through drinking SS, but there's only a 5% of their showing, meaning you need 1000 bottles. Your only rewards are a crapton of worthless trinkets, a unique energy pistol, [[That One Achievement|and a bronze trophy]].

*** The chance for a bottle to drop a star cap isn't determined until you actually drink it, so you can get 50 caps right near the start of the game if you aren't averse to a little [[Save Scumming]].

* ''[[Sudeki]]'' has the Omnium Collector sidequest, required for one character's [[Infinity+1 Sword]]. As the title suggests, it involves finding a total of 21 chunks of Omnium, [[Twenty Bear Asses|which are dropped by enemies in the dungeon you just cleared]]. The catch is these things are expensive and drop only 5% of the time (at a generous guess) from an enemy that has only a 50-50 chance of appearing at each encounter, and said encounters can only be created by running repetitively back and forth between two rooms of the dungeon. Also, unlike every other collection sidequest in the game, this is the only place to gather omnium, it never appears by [[Rewarding Vandalism|breaking the crates that litter the scenery]].

** Two other sidequests are equally obnoxious, but for [[Guide Dang It]] rather than tedium. One, Heart's Heart, requires going back into a dungeon after defeating the boss and being given every indication to leave. It's not [[Lost Forever]] if you don't, but the way to get it afterward is so arbitrary some believe the event flags are badly programmed. The other is a collection request the player probably has the stuff for in their pocket when it becomes available, but just ''starting'' the quest requires heading somewhere out of the way that you have absolutely no reason to go, and claiming the reward involves tediously sneaking through an area patrolled by guards that will kick you out on sight.

 

== [[Simulation Game]] ==

* Getting Gracie-brand clothing in the original [[Game Cube]] version of ''[[Animal Crossing]]''. Considering the speed at which the game expected you to mash the A button, it probably justified the purchase of many turbo controllers.

** That taking your chances with Wisp or the taking the easy way out (which anyone can understand why) by using universal cheat code passwords at Nook's store.

** The Gulliver items in ''City Folk''. In all my time of playing the game, I've only even ''seen'' the UFO ''once'', and of course by the time I got out my slingshot it was gone.

* The fourth mine in ''[[Harvest Moon]] DS'': a 65,535 floor nightmare [[Marathon Level]]. The only real reasons to even try are A) To get the <s>Dragon</s>Goddess Ball, which will grant you one of several wishes, or can be kept in your inventory to slowly increase your farm's rating and B) a special event that can only be seen by reaching the final floor. It's damned expensive (You pretty much have to fill your rucksack with TurbojoltXLs and BodigizerXLs to stand a real chance) and frustrating (the monsters there are the toughest in the game, and the mine pits can drop an instant death-bringing 100 floors at a time) and other than the aforementioned Goddess Ball, all the good mine items are in the much smaller Mine #3 - which you had to finish to even unlock #4.

** This is actually fairly easy if you have the [[Game Breaker|Kappa Hat]] from the 3rd mine - it prevents your health from falling below zero, so long as it isn't zero before you fall through a hole. So you find the hole in the floor, eat some Black Grass (which is common as dirt) and bingo, you'll have zero health after you fall through. And the monsters won't harm you when you're wearing this hat.

* The Hub plotline in ''[[X (video game)|X3]] Terran Conflict''. Requires several hours of building massive factories to pump out the absurd number crystals, microchips, and other refined materials.

* Getting the wishing well in [[The Sims|The Sims 2: Seasons]]. To get it, you need to get a perfect score from the Garden Club. To do this, you spend hours and hours tending, spraying and watering your garden, praying that it doesn't snow or rain and destroy all your work, spend thousands of simoleons on flowers, hedges and decorations (Which also require a lot of upkeep) and eventually, [[Makes Just as Much Sense in Context|talking to the trees to increase their health.]] When (if) you finally get the wishing well, you can select three wishes. Two of them are quite useful, but wishing for money gives you a pathetically tiny sum of 1000 simoleons (Which is probably nowhere near how much you've spent working on the garden) and all three wishes are likely to fail, with disastrous results.

 

== [[Sports Game]] ==

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

 

 

* Collecting all the flags in ''[[Assassin's Creed]]''. It doesn't help that they're tiny and are perfectly camoflauged thanks to the [[Real Is Brown|gray and dusty]] look of the game. It's slightly easier in Acre because there are three separate flag types that are only found in a specific districts, but everywhere else only has a general flag type, so it's easy to miss flags and never know where to begin searching, short of having a good memory or [[Guide Dang It|a guide]]. What makes this sidequest worse is that there is no reward to it.

** In the second game, you have to collect 100 feathers which are also as hard to find as the flags in the first game. However, they emit a sound when you are near, are much easier to find in the night time, and actually give you a reward this time around.

 

 

* 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]]...)

** If you want a real annoyance, just wait until you encouter An Earnest Delight. It's a late-game dispatch mission, which can only be cleared if you have at least two Gria or Viera with complete MVP trophies or power level to around level 80 (when a well-built team can beat the final boss at level 50 on Hard).

** The Nu Mou vs. Bangaa mission is a serious [[Guide Dang It]]; you have to complete the mission as ''both sides'' three times before you learn it's a [[Batman Gambit]] by a third party which the two then team up to fight.

** Even harder than all of the above, once you finish all 300 quests, you gain access to one final tournament. The first few battles are extremely tough even with a max-level party, but the absolute worst is the third or fourth battle. It pits you against a bunch of [[Mighty Glacier|Master Tonberries]] and a bunch of enemies who are only too eager to cast Haste on them. Oh, and they get to take about six free rounds before you're even allowed to move. And the Tonberries are guaranteed to hit for 999 damage in a game where it's nigh impossible to have more than about 600 HP. If you're really lucky, you might still have one character left by your first turn. And if, by some miracle, you manage to win? You don't even get a [[Bragging Rights Reward]], you get to watch the credits again.

* The first ''[[Arc the Lad]]'' game contains one of the most ridiculous sidequest goals ever: win 1,000 Arena battles. The battles are easy, and by the time you've gotten even halfway to 1,000 wins, you'll have earned enough experience points to bring your entire team to the [[Cap|level cap]] several times over. The primary challenge involved in getting to 1,000 wins is simply being obsessed enough to keep fighting the same enemies, over and over again, for hour after hour, in spite of the sheer tedium involved in doing so. If you're actually insane enough to reach 1,000 wins, the Arena manager will reward you with a huge supply of the game's best accessories [[Old Save Bonus|for you to take with you into the sequel]], then [[Breaking the Fourth Wall|tell you to turn off the console, go outside, and get a life!]]

** After each battle with {{spoiler|Vanessa}}, you can view a Hot Spring Intermission with one of the party members who's deployed throughout the series of battles in one location. The fun comes in getting the other Intermissions from other party members you don't use normally in tough battles. You can have only 5 of the party members' Intermissions from this sidequest per playthrough. Each new hot spring location is tougher than the last. [[Sarcasm Mode|Yippee]].

* 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).

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:That One Index]]

[[Category:Scrappy Index]]

[[Category:YMMV Trope]]

[[Category:Videogame Culture]]