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That One Sidequest: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
{{quote|''"Remember Canary Mary? [[Rubber Band AI|Did you have fun racing her?]] How I laughed when I was setting up those levels. [[The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard|I'm still laughing!]]"''|'''The Lord of Games''', ''[[Banjo
An optional, nonessential, usually out-of-the-way part of a video game that is extremely difficult and/or time consuming to complete, yet is nonetheless required for [[Hundred-Percent Completion]]. These are generally far more difficult than anything else in the game, and, in extreme cases, may be classified as nigh impossible.
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== [[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]]?
** The only game in the series, it seems, that relents is [[
* ''[[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.
* The figurine quest in ''[[The Legend of Zelda:
* Forget the ''Minish Cap'', what about the Nintendo Gallery in ''[[The Legend of Zelda:
** 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.
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** 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.}}
** If there's any consolation, it's that there's one figurine that ''isn't'' required to get a complete gallery. ''However'', said figurine is only obtainable through a [[That One Sidequest]] of its own that requires a [[Game Boy]] Advance and a GBA/GC link cable, and since Carlov disappears after you get a "completed" Nintendo Gallery, you can't obtain {{spoiler|Knuckle}}'s figurine if you've gotten all of the others.
* Getting all 20 hearts in ''[[The Legend of Zelda:
* While we're on the topic of ''Zelda'', what about the Big Poes in ''[[The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
** 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.
* ''[[The Legend of Zelda:
** 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...
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** 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.
* Want to obtain all the ship and train parts in ''[[The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass
** 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]].
* ''[[The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
** At least the reward is useful -- more so than other Zelda examples, at least. If you kill all 60 poes, he'll give you 200 rupees every time you talk to him, essentially making him a free power source for your magic armor.
*** 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.
* ''[[The Legend of Zelda: Oracle
** First, there's the Bomber's Ring. It requires you to score perfectly (8 rounds out of 8, flawlessly) on Platinum, the highest difficulty level. It's a game where you have to enter the button sequence EXACTLY as it's given - in the right order and with the exactly same rhythm and timing. And on Platinum, some of those sequences are more than 10 buttons long. You have to do that perfectly 8 times in a row, and even at that level, it's still randomized.
** Then there's the Light Ring L-2. It's one of four rings that can be won by scoring 350+ at the Lynna Village target gallery. The game itself isn't that tough, but the absurd rarity of this ring is. You'll win the other three rings (which you can get in other ways) dozens of times. But to win the Light Ring L-2 (available ONLY from this mini-game) requires such astronomical luck, because of how extremely rare it is, that it's like winning a real-life lottery. You'll spend hours upon hours upon hours winning the same rings over and over again before you probably just give up and content yourself with 99% completion.
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*** 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 Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword
** 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]].
** One of the Heart Pieces comes from a minigame where you must shoot tossed pumpkins with your bow. This is ''extremely'' difficult, since you have to hit almost every pumpkin to earn the prize, requiring very careful aim and shot-leading with a really drifty and wobbly motion controller. It's especially frustrating because the pumpkins aren't worth fixed amounts of points--their value goes up as you hit more of them in a row, and [[Rage Quit|drops back to the lowest level if you miss one]]. As if that's not bad enough, some of the pumpkins are worth double points, but they show up purely randomly (you could get several 2X-kins or none at all in any given round). Plus, the guy throwing them often waits an irritatingly long time between throws (it's a [[Timed Mission]]!). ''[[Up to Eleven|And]]'' he throws them farther and farther later in the game, [[Fake Difficulty|often over the top of the screen so you can't even see the damn things for half of their trajectories]], but sometimes he'll switch back to throwing them a short distance without warning just to mess with you. Good lord...
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** 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.
* The Looter's Caverns in ''[[Beyond Good
** 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.
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* 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.
* ''[[
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** ''Brawl'' does appear to have an example of [[That One Sidequest]] of its own: unlocking the Galleom Tank trophy requires completing [[Boss Rush]] mode on Intense.
*** 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
** Both ''Melee'' and ''Brawl'' feature the Cruel Melee/Brawl modes, in which the power and skill of the computer is ramped up considerably. The best way to actually succeed at these (which also must be completed for [[One Hundred Percent Completion]]) is to ''jump off the level''.
** Mew Trophy. At least Diskun is pretty much just a [[Guide Dang It]] set. The Mew Trophy is a [[Luck-Based Mission]].
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** 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.
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== [[First-Person Shooter]] ==
* Unlocking the invincibility cheat in ''[[
** Don't forget about how Trevelyan can screw it up at the end by being too close to the tanks...
* Many of the Arcade League matches/Challenges in ''[[Time Splitters]] 2'' are painfully difficult, making other matches/challenges look like cakewalks. Here are some to deal with, for newcomers of the franchise:
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** "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.
* In ''[[
** Many of the medic achievements, at least, require counterintuitive or downright counterproductive play. Ubercharging a scout is the most obvious example, but [[Blatant Lies|First Do No Harm]] requires you to get the highest score on your team without scoring any kills. The easiest way of obtaining it is to heal people who are about to score a kill instead of people who are injured. Oh, and to let people die if they're scoring too high (i.e. sabotage your best players).
** Ironically, this is after a patch changed a few of the worst Medic achievements. One required healing the same Heavy while they went on a 20-kill streak (now reduced to a manageable, but painful 10-kill streak) in which neither of you was allowed to die. Nevermind that you can be killed in less than a second by the more offensive classes as a Medic, and don't forget that there are two classes that can one-shot a Heavy, even with you healing him to 150% of his normal health. Oh, and the best part? The Heavy ''has his own version of the achievement'', so you get to do it ''twice''.
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* The updated rerelease of [[Perfect Dark]] on [[Xbox 360]] features some unlockable trophies that are needed to [[Hundred-Percent Completion]]. Among them, there is one that requires you to pretty much [[Speed Run|speed-running]] through the highest difficulty setting, one that asks you to complete the entire aforementioned highest difficulty setting [[Unexpected Gameplay Change|with your auto-aim off]], and even one that nobody on the internet have any clues about the requisites for it to unlock and just [[Luck-Based Mission|seems to pop-out once in a blue moon]].
** 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.
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== [[Hack and Slash]] ==
* ''[[God of War (
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*** 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.
* ''[[
** The Selki quests, which involves completing three ''separate'' quests ''multiple'' times against a mini-boss level opponent in a game where every time you first meet a boss, it will be ''[[That One Boss]]''. All that, for a rather unimpressive exp reward.
** The elemental totems, which involves finding 50 of an item that has a mid to low chance of randomly dropping from a specific and rather uncommon enemy, which shoots elemental magic at you (which you aren't likely to have a resistance to). Then once you're done, you have to do the quest ''three'' more times. And then you have to do the ''other'' three elemental totem quests four times before you're done with them for good.
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== [[Platform Game]] ==
* The three Trial galaxies in ''[[
** 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.
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** Don't forget the Daredevil challenge in Melty Molten Galaxy (bwahahaha).
** The Cosmic Mario races can be tricky, but not overly difficult. The Cosmic Luigi races, on the other hand, are infuriatingly difficult. Cosmic Luigi employs many tricks that players themselves use to go quickly, such as the long jump, and makes stunts that a standard player could achieve maybe one in every ten times.
** Most would argue that ''[[
*** Especially the Grand Master Galaxy Daredevil Run. The star is aptly called "The Perfect Run" because if you make a single mistake anywhere (and there are dozens of places to make mistakes) it kills you and forces you to start over from the beginning.
* In ''[[
** It should be noted that getting the Yoshi there isn't really that hard, but the course is a bitch and a half.
** Watermelon Festival, requiring the player to maneuver a very fragile, difficult to control fruit through a huge clusterfuck of enemies.
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** Let's not forget the extra Golden Banana quest: hunt down all the friggin' banana fairies. ALL OF THEM!!!
** The 2nd Rabbit Race has caused people to fling their controller across the room.
* Another Rare platformer, ''[[Banjo
** [[They Changed It, Now It Sucks|Nuts & Bolts]] even pokes fun at the difficulty of said Jiggy.
*** And if you haven't gotten all 100 Notes or the Jinjo Jiggy, you'd better get 'em before trying to get this Jiggy or pray that you get to it with enough time to get out from behind the propellers; grabbing the Jiggy doesn't keep 'em from starting back up!
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** 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.
* Collecting every single Figment in ''[[
** And the Black Velvetopia level, where the neon Figments fit a little too well into the black velvet level design.
* Though not many people have played it (or played it and liked it, anyway), the last few Hearts in platformer ''[[Vexx]]'' are pure [[That One Sidequest]]. In the final world, you need to collect six [[Plot Coupon|Plot Coupons]] to get a Heart, and they're scattered all over an ''extremely'' twisty and precarious level with [[Bottomless Pits]] at every turn, with plenty of scrawny, moving, and electrified platforms here and there that are all just ''begging'' to send you plummeting into the abyss. And if you lose a life? Too bad! You have to start collecting them all over again! The entire level is pretty [[Scrappy Level|scrappy]], but both of its "collect X of object Y" missions drove her to rage.
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*** You're [[Doom]]ed! You're still [[Doom]]ed!
*** Whack a mole.
* ''[[Mega Man ZX]]'' takes full advantage of its [[Metroidvania]] format in the first game. How does it do this? [[Lethal Lava Land|Area K]] and its damned Sub Tank. First, you have to go through an area with [[Advancing Wall of Doom|a wave of lava]] following you quite closely until you get to an area that instead has a [[Rise to
* The Ski Slope snowboarding mission in the mission mode in ''[[
* ''[[
** If you think the Sonic Adventure 2 Chao Garden is bad, the Sonic Adventure DX version is ten times more infuriating. There aren't any Chaos Drives, so the only way to raise chao skills is racking up a lot of small animals (Which give bigger bonuses towards levels, but subtract from stats that the animal is bad at.) And the Chao Races are made much more difficult by not being able to use your chao's Stamina skill as a speed boost, as hitting the buttons just makes pointless noise, oh, and if you do that you might accidentally [[Scrappy Mechanic|give the opponent a speed boost]], as the focus of the race keeps changing between your chao and the other 7 that you don't want to win. Its not all bad if you [[Good Bad Bugs|trick the system into giving Animal stats without using the Animal.]] But it still takes a long time.
*** It really is not as bad as it could be if you realize the following. First, in both games a chao can easily get all the emblems before their first reincarnation, meaning you only have to raise it once. Two, animals are significantly better than chaos drives, it takes about 3 animals(2 if flying) on average to level up that stat, but it takes about 5-7 chaos drives to level up. Third, you cannot level down due to animals, so if you had just leveled up with power, and start feeding the chao bunnies, you very little/no power. Fourth, the amount it takes to level is constant no matter how high your level is, so the amount it takes to get from level 97-98 is the same as it takes to go from 1-2. Lastly, you can transfer your chao between [[SA 1]] and [[SA 2]] via GBA link cable, so you only need 1 strong chao for some 10+ emblems? That's nothing compared to the amount of time it takes to get the all A rank emblems.
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** How the 1000th lum got there is a mystery, since Razourbeard ATE it early in the game.
** Thankfully made easier in the Playstation version, where there are only 800 lums and Razorbeard eats a red lum instead.
* The ''[[Super Mario World (
** ''Super Mario Advance'' gave us the Yoshi eggs. Did we mention that you don't get any extra hit points now? And there's no way to know where the Yoshi eggs are? In subspace!
*** For more fun, if you lose a life, you also lose any eggs you picked up. Hope you remember where the eggs where the first time and don't mind starting over!
** ''Super Mario Advance 4'' gave us optional levels that [[Bribing Your Way to Victory|require an eReader, and eReader cards to get to]]. And many of them were extremely difficult homages to previous games. Yeah.
*** 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 (
* In ''[[Yoshis Island]]'' getting 100% in each world is [[Platform Hell]], but 'Kamik's Revenge' takes the cake. Just getting to the skiing section is a nightmare, only to require the player to time each jump exactly right or start the entire level over again.
** 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
** Rush's [[Spiritual Successor]] ''[[
* [[Crash Bandicoot 3 Warped]] allows the player to reach [[Up to Eleven|105% completion]] by earning at least golden relics from every stage of the game. This is made very difficult by the fact that the game features several different types of levels and simply rushing through won't work in all of them.
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* 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).
* ''[[DJMAX]] Portable 2'' has missions that require you to complete a set of songs while fulfilling one or two goals at the same time (such as getting a high enough combo, keeping your accuracy high enough as you go from one song to the next, etc.). The earlier missions aren't too bad...with the exception of the "Rave 2 Wave" mission, which forces you to use the annoying CHAOS-W modifier, which causes notes to move in a wave-like fashion. And then you have the entirety of the later missions--one mission tasks you with getting a high score, but at the same time increasing your scroll speed every time you use Fever. Another picks 4 random songs for you, turns on the Random Max modifier, and must be completed with less than 20 Breaks. Perhaps the most infamous missions is "Just 1%", which requires you to, on top of using Fever a certain amount of times in a row per song, automatically fails you if you get the MAX 1% judgment on a single note, all while having you play some of the [[That One Boss|hardest songs in the game]].
* Obtaining all the Perfects in any game the ''[[
* ''[[Bit
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* One trophy/achievement in ''[[Final Fantasy XIII]]'' requires you to ''five-star'' '''every''' mission. Have fun with that.
** Even worse is the trophy/achievement earned for having held every weapon and accessory available in the game. This essentially involves completing every mission (as one accessory is only earned after completing the last mission) and farming Adamantoise and/or Long Gui for Platinum Ingots and Trapezohedrons, which will be needed for gil and upgrading weapons. There's a reason this is often the last trophy/achievement that players earn.
* ''[[
** ''[[
*** 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.
* ''[[Suikoden]]'' has one in the form of a [[Betting Minigame]], which you must win to get some of the characters and thus achieve the [[Hundred-Percent Completion]] and [[Multiple Endings|Secret Ending]]. The fact that such game relies so much on luck (or is blatantly rigged, depending who you ask) and ''also'' can suck your money dry has earned it a Troper [[Fan Nickname]]: 'The Game that Shall not Be Named'. That and the original name is kind of stupid-sounding.
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** 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...
** And ''[[Kingdom Hearts: 358 Days Over 2
* ''[[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.
* In later ''[[Wild Arms]]'' games, to get [[Hundred-Percent Completion]] you have to also fight the Black Box; a [[Bonus Boss]] who is only available if you've ''opened every single treasure chest in the game.''
** The series's ultimate That One Sidequest was [[Wild Arms 3
** 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''.
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* ''[[Anachronox]]'' is heavily inspired by ''[[Final Fantasy]]'', including following this trope. To get one character's [[Infinity+1 Sword]] you need to let PAL play in a children's area for a specific amount of time at a specific point in the game. If he plays for less than 6 hours or more than 8 hours he find other items instead. Even if he plays for the right amount of time but before reaching the specific point in the game he will get yet another item instead. This is a definite [[Guide Dang It]] moment as there is nothing in the game that hints at how long he needs to play or more importantly at what point the [[Infinity+1 Sword]] appears rather than another item.
* The piano sidequest in ''[[Mega Man Star Force]]''. A ten-round battle with the highest-level enemies, your HP carries over between battles, a ton of attacks flying at you all at once, making them almost unavoidable, a lot of enemies having hair-tearing gimmicks (hit that giant eye enemy with its back turned? No damage, sorry!), an enemy that can heal itself and raise 200 HP shields (for reference, a lot of your cards don't even breach 150), and to top it all off, three 1000-HP enemies that fling attacks literally every half-second at you.
* An example in the prequel series, ''[[
* Getting all of anything in a ''[[Mega Man X]]'' game certainly qualifies.
* The Kick all the Lucky Animals sidequest in ''[[.hack GU Games|.hack]]'' is one thanks to the need to hop all over the playing fields to find each variety, having to avoid getting [[Blessed
** But the Flyer quest is an even better example, once you hit all the towns you have to wander the fields and hope that the medical team would even show up, and then it's very likely you got them on the list already. Unlike the lucky animals, there's no known method for making the Medical squad appear.
* ''[[
** How about Colette's Dog Lover title (name every dog in the game) or Zelos's Gigolo title (talk to every female NPC in the game with Zelos as your onscreen character and with his Personal EX Skill equipped)? Not to mention Genis's I Hate Gels! title, which requires you to reach the first fight against Pronyma, more than halfway through the game, without using a SINGLE Gel, EVER. And since Gels are pretty much the only healing items you have... Sure, Raine can heal your HP, but what about MP?
*** The Gigolo title can actually be gotten ''far'' easier by this method: Get the three golden items, a spider figurine, a shard of glass, and some other sort of something, from the various inner self battles towards the end of the game in the now empty Half-Elf village. Before moving on to defeat the [[Big Bad]], go back to Meltokio and talk with Zelos's butler. You'll get the title automatically. Now, does this still count? Oh, yes. Why? [[Guide Dang It]]. Come on. Would you have really ''ever'' thought to do that if I hadn't pointed it out just now?
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** Let's not forget about the entire dog map sidequest.. [[Trauma-Induced Amnesia|Actually, yes, let's do just that.]]
*** The dog map isn't really that hard, it's just the game never tells you that you need to mark ''every location listed in the "fields" category'' of the world map (actually 95% of them), not just fill the map with the blue blur. You can easily complete the quest simply by checking the fields list and doing them all in order. What's worse, many '''guides''' don't even give this information.
* ''[[
* [[Tales of the Abyss
** Getting all the cooking titles in ''[[Tales of the Abyss]]'' is also a pain, if only because of how freaking long it takes. Each character earns a title for mastering all twenty recipes. To master a recipe, they must cook it thirty times. Oh, and once you've cooked something, you can't cook again until after you fight another battle. That means one must fight a minimum of 3600 battles in order to get the cooking mastery titles for all six characters. To put that into perspective, unless you grind ''a lot'', you probably wouldn't fight much more than 600 battles during the course of the entire game. At least cooking levels can be carried over into a [[New Game+]]...
*** It helps if you know that you don't need to actually ''win'' a battle to cook a recipe again. Entering a battle and then quickly running away can speed up this process substantially. Still repetitive as hell, though.
* ''[[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.
* The Lost Sanctum quest in ''[[
* 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.
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*** 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.
* ''[[
** ''[[
*** But of course the [[Bonus Boss]] won't fight you unless you beat it for a ''third time''.
** The original ''[[Paper Mario (
* The most expensive Frog Coin in ''[[
** [[Guide Dang It]]: Seed and Fertilizer. You might not even catch the Fertilizer. But the [[Infinity+1 Sword]] and [[Infinity+1 Sword|Infinity Plus One Armor]] are there.
** Another [[Guide Dang It]]: The Frog Coin in Mushroom Castle. If you don't get it your first time there, it's [[Lost Forever]].
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* In ''[[Legend of Mana]]'', one of the sidequests you can undertake is to rescue a despondant organ grinder from the Underworld. Which, for this subquest, are policed by [[Mook Bouncer|Mook Bouncers]] that will teleport you back to the very bottom level of should you so much as brush against one. And in the later levels, they disappear from view a few seconds after you enter the room. (At least the game does give you a little bit of mercy in that you encounter fewer of these bouncers each time you get sent back.)
** 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]].
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== [[Simulation Game]] ==
* The original ''[[Wing Commander (
* 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.
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** And before that, you had the Swimming Contest from ''Back to Nature'', which you needed to win to gain all the engergy bar-increasing Power Berries. You had to tap a button in a certain rhythm to swim at a proper pace: too slowly and Kai will beat you every time. Too quickly, and you'll run out of energy and have to stop for a few seconds... and ''everybody'' will beat you. There isn't even a prize for second place.
* ''Harvest Moon: Magical Melody'': Getting to the bottom of either of the frigging caves. If you're really lucky, you'll fall down weak spots in the ground that send you down multiple floors. If you're not so lucky, you'll fall...up weak spots several floors. Using the hoe guarantees that you can go down, but that's only in special areas and only one floor at a time. Plus, by the time midnight rolls around, you'll need to save all of the stamina you can get. There are 100 floors before you get to the bottom. Oh, and the cave on the lake has a rare and valuable fish you need to catch at the bottom, so if you forget to bring the rod then opps, try again!
* The Hub plotline in ''[[X (
* 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
== [[Sports Game]] ==
* Collecting all of the snowflake tokens in ''[[
* In the DS version of ''[[Mario and Sonic At The Olympic Games]]'', there are five missions for each character. One of Sonic's takes place at the triple jump. Your goal? To clear 15 feet... while making sure ''all your jumps are '''50+ degrees DESPITE ALREADY WONKY ANGLE CONTROLS.'''''
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== [[Turn
* ''[[Final Fantasy Tactics]]'' has a few. First off, there's the only real sidequest in the game, which is a long series of somewhat unconnected events, which provides two of the best unique characters in the game, as well as a few others, and [[Final Fantasy VII|Cloud]]. It requires you to visit unlabled sections of the map, and in some cases, use the otherwise ignorable 'rumors' section of the bar. The rumors section is only EVER used for background events (Basically, it provides info on the war that is the backdrop for the plot) besides this quest, and the plot of the game can be fully understood without ever going there. It's not so bad if you have a guide, but you'll likely never get to the end of it without a guide, as it's pretty common to forget the 'rumors' section of the game even exists.
** [[Bonus Dungeon|Deep Dungeon]] requires use of the rumors section to unlock as well, and is found in a very isolated portion of the map. The Deep Dungeon itself is completely unlit, except by spell animations and crystals left behind by dead enemies. In it, you need to find the exit to proceed to the next floor, which is completely unlabled even in the light, and even changes between one of five spots each time it's loaded. Why do you want to go there in the first place? Well, two reasons.
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** Speaking of ''[[Final Fantasy Tactics a 2]]'', do the words Brightmoon Tor ring any bells? First you fight about a dozen battles against reasonably difficult but still pretty easily beatable characters... and then you get to the top and some Level 99 monsters kick your ass almost before your first turn.
** 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 ''[[
* ''[[Luminous Arc 2]]'s Spa Battles'', oh god. It's an entirely optional sidequest near the end of the game, which the party was asked by [[Expy|Expys]] of ''[[Luminous Arc]]'''s Cecille (Cecillia) and Huge (Yugo) to clear out the [[Mascot Mook|Kopins]] from their hotsprings, with free spa baths (AKA special Hot Spring Intermissions for the [[Hundred-Percent Completion]]). Think it'll be easy since it's just Kopins? No, it's not. Each hot spring location is a series of battles against high-levelled stat-specialised Kopins, with either extremely high Defence or Resistence, which you won't know until ''the battle begins'', meaning it's easy for players to accidentally dispatched the wrong party members for the battle. The last battle of each location is with [[That One Boss]] {{spoiler|[[Luminous Arc|Vanessa]]}}, who can easily dishes out more damage than your HP can withstand without proper preparations (even when you nullify her Fire magic, her boosted physical attack can still hurts you). Oh and you face her while those high-levelled Popins keep on respawning and bothers you with their numbers and speed.
** 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.
* Obscure [[
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* Mention the tow truck missions to any player of ''[[Saints Row 2]]'', and they will regale you with how frustratingly hard and annoying it is. To start, the tow truck is slow. And the cars you hitch behind it love to wobble and wave, and eventually jackknife, usually getting you stuck. Especially on the higher levels when you have several gang cars shooting at you, its a hair puller. And to top it off, you can't heal. If the tow truck starts smoking before level 6, you don't have a chance. And there's no checkpoint. Blow up 2 feet from your destination on level 10? Too bad skippy, back to level 1 with you.
** Escort is another irritatingly-difficult one. You're basically driving a hooker and a client around town while they [[Auto Erotica|get it on in the back seat]], evading news vans along the way. Problem is, those news vans are very fast ([[Fake Difficulty|possibly even faster than when you drive them]]), relentless, and will occasionally set up roadblocks in front of you. Even worse, shooting guns to kill the vans' drivers lowers the Pleasure meter (which needs to fill up for success), though satchel charges don't seem to drop the meter. But the worst part is that you will sometimes be required to drive to a certain place (often on the other side of town), perform powerslides, run over people, hit other cars, etc., and the Pleasure meter WILL NOT MAKE FURTHER PROGRESS until you do so. Good luck dodging news vans with nothing better to cover than two people having sex in the back of a car for that long.
** In ''[[Saints Row:
*** 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% completion in every area of ''[[Little Big Planet]]'' is an exercise in futility. Yes, I've heard that people have done it. These people are lying. Somehow, someway, they have cheated. I can understand completing some of the harder areas like ''The Metropolis'', or ''The Canyons''. But to ace ''The Islands'', ''The Temples'', and ''The Wilderness'' AND obtain all of the items in the stage is practically a superhuman feat. The worst offender is [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47MF6o5_Uto a spinning wheel of death that will throw you into an instant-death electrocution] if you have not either: A) perfectly memorized the working's of LBP's physics system, or B) inherited a sort of muscle memory due to playing that part of the stage over and over. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T29bgo-ZDls You'll still feel stupid when you find out how to do it the easy way].
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*** 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).
**** Really getting 100% completion on this level is arguably worse, given that at least one chunk of items requires another player (and reminding you once more that this is the explosives level... With friends like these...).
* Most of the Side Quests in ''[[
* Collecting every last blast shard in ''[[
** You at least have an ability to sense nearby shards, although one of them is hidden so far off the coast that you can neither sense nor see it...
** ''[[
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