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Modern RPGs are often geared towards casual players, which usually means they are very easy and not challenging at all. Old school RPGs used to be, well, hard. So what makes an RPG difficult? Are there any challenging titles in the market today? Are they worth playing? Let's find out!
There are many individual parts that are used to create a challenging game.
Complex mechanics and highly challenging gameplay, no easily accessible information without extensive trial and error, little to no handholding after a limited tutorial, death usually comes at a cost, limited save game locations are some of the most common aspects for an RPG to be considered as difficult.
Some games also add time limits, further upping the sense of urgency. Every moment counts and there’s not enough time to achieve everything.
Mastering the combat and various in-game mechanics is virtually a necessity in certain games. The attack speed, damage, enemy attack patterns or stats, dangerous environments, safe locations and just general know-how become extremely valuable to the players.
Information becomes power, opening new opportunities and giving a sense of constant growth and progression. And if the player decides to restart from the very beginning, they’ll immediately notice the difference in difficulty.
It can be a really cathartic experience to go through the game again, once the mastery is achieved.
The hardest RPGs usually give a lot of freedom for players to explore at will. There aren’t any objective markers or NPCs informing them about their next destination or how to beat the game.
This freedom also means that there won’t be much in terms of hints or tips for the next destination, the players have to pay attention to anything they find and NPCs they talk to. It feels much more exciting to piece something together rather than being led to the answer by the game.
As each adventure takes players to more difficult areas or challenges, there’s always the constant risk of losing progress. The most obvious answer is to just save the game before taking the risk. Of course, that’s one of the first things that are either limited or penalised.
Either there’s no save game option, other than overwriting the save with no backup or the checkpoints themselves simply respawn enemies.
The more lenient ones simply require players to head back to the “safe haven” to save progress, actually giving an opportunity to retrieve the previous game state if there were significant losses accrued.
Either way, the players must account for the risk themselves, rather than have the safety net created by saving the game at any point.
It’s practically impossible to master a difficult RPG without a large time commitment unfortunately. The most challenging ones can require long hours before players fully grasp the basics, often limiting the appeal, especially for newcomers and anyone used to modern types of games.
This is doubly true for games that require level grinding to reliably fight enemies, as the process can really eat up a lot of time and patience.
Here’s a few titles that any player seeking a challenge should try out if they haven’t already.
A very fun mix of roguelike RPG and base management, with fun coming from overcoming increasingly challenging expeditions into dangerous locations around the Hamlet.
The main difficulty comes from the complexity of managing “heroes”. From keeping them sane and equipped to maintaining their quirks (permanent buffs/debuffs) that affect their overall effectiveness during each expedition into the unknown.
Each attempt at exploration requires players to purchase food, torches and some healing/utility items, while reducing the inventory space for various loot, adding resource management into account.
Combat can be quite punishing due to constant debuffs and “stress” level, which can cause a serious affliction (or a blessing if lucky enough) once it reaches 100 or death at 200.
Death itself is permanent for every character, so a carefully groomed character with perfect quirks can simply cease his adventure due to unfortunate double crit from the enemies.
Even if the player becomes adept, the RNG (random number generator) can turn the tides against them in an instant.
Darkest Dungeon always keeps you on your toes.
Dark Souls and pretty much any Soulslike game that FromSoftware created, achieved a worldwide renown as a highly challenging action RPGs.
Dark Souls gave birth to the Soulslike genre (even if Demon Souls had most core concepts), a punishing but not impossible action RPG that rewards players ability to learn enemies' attack patterns and mastering their own.
The series is very hard for beginners since most mechanics are quite vague, requiring trial to get a real understanding. The tutorial covers only the most core basics, requiring players to learn through facing constant and unrelenting adversity to come on top.
The final test usually culminates in facing powerful and unique bosses. Each possessing their own skills, attack patterns, strengths and weaknesses or even secondary forms to shift things up again.
Soulslike games are like a love letter to the old school RPGs, where players were challenged by the game to test both their abilities and patience and earn the satisfaction of being able to actually complete it. Something that many modern titles sacrifice in the name of accessibility.
Whether it's a good or bad thing is up to individual preference.
Etrian Odyssey is a series of JRPG dungeon crawlers developed and published by Atlus (currently owned by Sega), with the first title “Etrian Odyssey” released in 2007 and the last one “Etrian Odyssey Nexus” in 2018 (Japan) and 2019 (worldwide).
The first two games in the series are quite grindy and players are expected to spend a lot of time gaining levels through repeatedly fighting enemies, due to level difference affecting damage dealt/received, making each random encounter a potential game ender if caught unprepared.
The remakes addressed a lot of problems and quality of life aspects, such as an option to automap (originally had players draw the maps themselves within the game) but also adjustable difficulty as well.
The games themselves are played from first person perspective, similar to the Wizardry series, from which the developers drew inspiration from. Players explore a labyrinth, fight various monsters that range from random encounters to boss battles and the dreaded F.O.E. (Field On Enemy in the original Japanese version).
The unique aspect of F.O.E. is that they can move around the map similar to the players and if they spot them, they’ll chase them down. The uniqueness comes from the fact that they’re able to “join” the fight already taking place! And yes, that also means boss battles.
F.O.E. themselves are really powerful enemies and often should be avoided until later in the game (even if they drop great loot and exp), making them very interesting additions to already challenging encounters.
For newcomers, the "Etrian Odyssey HD" is a great place to start the adventure and explore this JRPG dungeon crawler.
Wizardry IV: The Return of Werdna is a dungeon crawler from 1987 within the Wizardry franchise developed and published by now defunct Sir-Tech.
You control the villain from previous titles “Werdna” (Andrew, one of the game creators spelled backwards), a sorcerer trapped at the bottom of a 10 level dungeon.
Werdna starts with all of his attributes locked in at 8, 1hp, no spells or items. As he explores the maze he can power-up and summon allies by walking over a pentagram. Each level adds +1 to every attribute, +9hp to max health pool and a higher tier spells slots (starting at level 0 and increasing up to level 7).
The main difficulty (other than the game mechanics themselves) comes from extremely vague puzzles, limited keystrokes (yes, keystrokes) before game arbitrarily ends (around 1000000), no levelling up for your allies (no grinding levels), saving game respawns every enemy and trap on the map, you are randomly chased by instant death character “Lord Trebor” (Robert, another game creator backwards) to name just a few reasons why this game is considered one of the most difficult RPGs ever created.
If you are a fan of punishing gameplay and are capable of tolerating the old school DOS graphics, you should give it a try!
If the idea of spending a lot of time and effort to complete a game isn’t your thing, then definitely not.
But if you’re of the opposite opinion and believe that being challenged is exactly what makes completing the game worthwhile, then the answer is a clear yes.
It doesn’t matter whether you’re a newcomer or a veteran, if you personally enjoy the seemingly “unfair” difficulty and how the game tests both your abilities and persistence, give these titles above a try if you haven’t yet, you’re bound to have a great experience, if occasionally frustrating.
If desperate enough, getting some hints from veteran players could help out. Other than that, practice and persist against whatever the game throws your way.
The sense of achievement and succeeding where many others potentially failed are some of the main selling points of any challenging RPG.
Baldur’s Gate 3 could be considered quite difficult for newcomers, especially those who don’t know much about D&D systems and mechanics.
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