Played Earthbound on the SNES and found that, after an easy stroll around outside the house killing monsters, I suddenly got totally raped by these weird gangsters in black clothing and died a lot because each of their attacks would take off over a third of my HP. Because I absolutely hate level grinding just to get past a single section in the main game sequence, I coneded defeat at the hands of godawful balance: Why does the game suddenly get so insanely hard so early on?

Although I was able to get slightly further on in the game (defeated Frank and his robot thing courtesy of many many saves and reloads), I never played past Giant's Step.