Salnax on 26 May 2021
In no particular order (and sometimes stretching the definitions of "love" and "hate"):
- Age of Empires II - Some of the campaigns are better than others. The Saladin campaign, despite being presented as a moderately difficult one compared to the Ghengis Khan and Barbarossa campaigns, is pretty horrid due to a combination of challenging opponents, restrictive population and in-game tech limitations, the Saracens faction not having great bonuses to rely upon, etc. Some versions of AoE2 make certain sections easier, such as by increasing the population limit slightly, but will also make other sections harder, such as reshaping some geography to prevent cheesy tactics. This all culminates with a mission where you have to build a Wonder in a city while fending off attacks from 6 NPC players at once. And of course, Definitive Edition gives you an achievement for actually wiping out all 6 factions before beating the scenario.
- Doom - The entire fourth episode of Ultimate Doom is an unreasonable difficulty spike compared to the rest of the game, all while barely offering any cool ideas, mechanics, or enemies.
- Final Fantasy X - The Thunder Plains is a portion of the game with a gimmick. Lighting will randomly try to strike you and you will have a moment to dodge it, otherwise you get knocked on your feet and will slowly get back up. It could be worse... until you realize that you get rewards for dodging lightning enough times in a row. So the entire area ends up becoming all the normal challenge of a JRPG combined with random difficult QTE's mixed in whenever you're not in battle.
- Kingdom Hearts - Atlantica is one of the few worlds that appear in both of the major PS2 games. In each game, it is the worst area in the game.
- Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker - Who thought that making the first dungeon a stealth section was a good idea? For a game that promises the freedom to explore a vast world, it sure is quick to offer a slow and tedious section inside a few corridors.
- Paper Mario: Sticker Star - I'm apparently one of the few people who sincerely enjoyed this game, but I can't forgive how long and byzantine World 3 is. You have to go in and out of so many levels and figure out so many obtuse puzzles that many people probably never saw the more interesting Ice and Jungle worlds later in the game.
- Pokemon Red/Blue - I occasionally replay this game with the Pokemon randomizer to spice things up, and every time I get to the Safari Zone my desire to keep playing it dwindles. It isn't an especially hard section, but the limited number of steps you can take discourages experimentation, and you always have to go out of the way to make the same monotonous trek every game in order to get two necessary key items.
- Pokemon Gold/Silver - The Ice Path is obnoxious for similar reasons as the Safari Zone. It's a long arduous trek that ytou have to do every time you replay the game, but doesn't offer much of anything interesting besides ice-based puzzles (yay...) and an admittedly catchy piece of background music.
