Toughest RPG you ever played?

[FFNut]

Wondering what was the toughest RPG you ever played? Was it Dark Souls? Legend of Zelda 2? What was it?

My my pick is the 7th Saga by Enix. The game itself isn't tough until you meet up with a rival, they are levelled a few levels ahead of you and tend to hit your weakness every shot. You can't grind to beat them as they will level too. It takes a lucky shot in those battles to get through them if you ever do get through them, and it is my pick.

[Pumpkin]

XCOM. I am not good at video games

[FFNut]

Lol I'm not that great at them either Pumpkin. I fun learning my way through most, but hit a game over screen more often then I enjoy.

[Depression Moon]

I think it's Final Fantasy III. Pokemon Blaze Black 2 also kicked my ass a bunch.

[Edge7]

I think the "hardest" RPG I've ever played was SMT IV, but less because of the actual difficulty of the game and more because the game feels significantly less balanced than Nocturne (Smirking, buffs feel less useful, Demons become irrelevant a lot faster, the removal of random encounters led to a lot of unfair back attacks).

The most challenging game I've ever played (and beaten) would probably be Vagrant Story. I'm still not sure how to beat Guildenstern without Raging Ache and Phantom Pain or spending countless hours looking up a weapon forging FAQ.

(Honorable mention for Zelda 2, tho. That game dragged me through hell and back)

[Vyk]

It probably isn't, but the first thing that comes to mind is Final Fantasy Tactics. Frequently having to use only four people to fight against eight or more adversaries, weird difficulty spikes, the uselessness of most classes compared to unique characters, etc. I hit a point where I couldn't do the one on one fight where Ramza squares off against some general. Tried maybe five times and have up. Then told I should have grinded out older battles over again, or use other classes than I'd chosen, that certain skills breeze through that part. I eventually learned some exploits of the system but then it wasn't enjoyable anymore

[Lyndis Highwind]

Probably Golden Sun. It didn't help that I was really young when I played it, but I remember always being so stuck all the time. A close second would be Fire Emblem Radiant Dawn. That game was haaaaard too.

[Madame Adequate]

I've not played Drakkhen. But I really want to. I want to get murdered by a constellation because I looked at the sky wrong.

Of the ones I have actually played, probably Vagrant Story.

[Wolf Kanno]

There are a couple I can think of.

Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey - Most MegaTen games have a classic learning curve for RPGs, by which I mean the game starts off hard as hell but eventually gets pretty easy towards the end. Not this game, it just gets harder. The fair challenge of the game is the twisted dungeon design with warp points, hidden paths, rooms of total darkness and of course the high encounter rate. The real bitch are the bosses of whom many of them are luck based missions after a certain point in the game. This is the real issue, as many of them get overpowered special moves (and unlike previous entries, they lose them when you acquire the boss as a minion) and combined with other gameplay features, can get you killed pretty quickly with little in the means of countering. Normally the series is pretty fair. Not this game.

Demon's Souls - Trial and error gameplay, serious item management that will result in grinding if you get too careless, dying has more bite than later entries in the franchise, regular enemies that can often put up as much of a fight as some of the bosses, and some sadistic level design where half your deaths are dodging off a cliff to avoid a powerful enemy attack. Demon's Souls is one of the nastier entries in the Souls/Bloodborne franchise and the only one where dying in the tutorial is mandatory. The saving grace of the game is that most of the bosses are pretty easy, of course the ones that are not...

Zelda II: The Adventures of Link - A bad translation that makes solving many of the puzzles more difficult than they needed to, actual puzzles that require some weird game logic to even solve, enemies that drain XP, enemies with absurd stats and hyper-competent A.I., brutal bosses that all feel like they were designed to easily counter whatever Link can throw at them, a Lives system that automatically sends you back to the beginning of the game whenever you run out, and the Valley of Death which is filled with Castlevania/Mega Man style goddamn bats whose sole reason to be there is to knock your ass into instant death pits. I can see why many fans don't like it.

Final Fantasy III (Famicom) - High encounter rates, damage algorithms with RNG, battles against eight enemies at a time, limited save points, item management, some jobs are absolutely worthless, brutal enemies with a number of tactics at their disposal to make certain dungeons an uphill battle, brutal boss battles, vague instructions on where to go next, and the nastiest series of endgame dungeons in the series. Playing this game almost made me disbelieve this was made by the same people who gave us FFVIII and X.

[Del Murder]

Oh yeah, Zelda II is smurfing hard. Especially the last level.

I remembered Dragon Quest VII to be a hard game (so hard that I quit) but I'm playing the remake now and it's not so bad. The original Dragon Quest was pretty hard. NES games were just brutal in general.

[Formalhaut]

Personally, it's a toss-up between SMT IV and FFT. On balance I'd say I just found SMT IV harder. The beginning is so smurfing difficult. You have hardly any resources, not many demons, and there's no defence stat. You get hit for so much in those early first few hours, I basically had to die to get Easy Mode, which still wasn't that easy.

With FFT, it was actually pretty easy once you get the OP abilities, but a battle can turn south pretty quickly if you're not paying attention. I'd say FFT spikes with difficulty, while SMT IV is more difficult all the way through.