Hardest video game to beat?

[Otter Mii-kun]

What was the hardest video game that you managed to beat? How long did it take you from when you first started it to when you finally finished it?

For me, way back when I was a youngster still in elementary school, I managed to beat Super Mario Bros: The Lost Levels (Japan's Super Mario Bros. 2) on the SNES's Super Mario All-Stars package. I didn't think that game was all that difficult originally (since I was so used to playing the first Super Mario Bros. a lot on the NES that I had at the time), but with more recent playings (including the version found on Super Mario Bros. Deluxe and the Virtual Console release (the first time the original FDS version was released outside of Japan) especially), I found it so difficult that I had to restore from a saved restore point multiple times in the same level in order to beat it. Super Mario Bros. 3, despite what some people say, is even worse in this regard, and I don't remember ever beating that one.

[EmeraldSky]

Zelda can get fairly brutal without a Game Genie in the late game...

[Neo Emolga]

Final Fantasy VIII - Ultimecia was hell for me, but I pulled it off. I made the mistake of leveling my characters to 99, which scales up the difficulty and strength of all the enemy monsters (like wtf, the point to grinding is to avoid that problem?). Essentially I made the game as difficult as possible unintentionally.

Getting through Sans on a Undertale genocide run is no easy feat either. That took me several dozens of tries. GET DUNKED ON!

Lastly, the original Metal Gear Solid, I found, was not an easy game. Fun? Oh, definitely, but very hard. And that was pretty much the only MGS game I really played.

[Shieldbearer]

My hardest game must have been Dark Souls 2. It took me a few days to beat it on my first run, and I had unknowingly over-leveled way past the meta, too...

[Sanctus]

Dark Souls 3. First time playing a souls game and I pick a Pyromancer for crying out loud.

[Homura]

Dark Souls 1? I haven't beaten Bloodborne (the undisputed hardest soulsborne game). DS2 and 3 are definitely easier games compared to 1, but probably because of my experience with the souls series by then.

[Shruikan]

Hardest game I actually finished would be Fire Emblem Fates: Conquest. I took on average about 2-3 days to beat each level. The in-game time says it took me 50 hours, and that's not counting any resets...

[ShadowBolt25]

Hardest Game to beat is Pokemon Sun / Moon ( since it is unavalible )

[Neo Emolga]

Hardest Game to beat is Pokemon Sun / Moon ( since it is unavalible )

Only to certain people. The dev team could still beat the game in it's Alpha or Beta format. So I don't think that is applicable in this case.

Beyond that, the discussion is about hardest games to beat that you've actually beaten.

[Elbub]

Hardest Game to beat is Pokemon Sun / Moon ( since it is unavalible )

And yet it's still somehow easier to beat than the first generation implying that newer generations are getting so easy that you can finish them before they're even out.

It's very difficult to say. I mean, I used to find the first two Monkey Island games insanely hard to beat when I was younger because

a) the proliferation of the internet to look for the answers wasn't a thing yet and

b) because my silly child mind couldn't figure out to use the banana on the metronome to distract the piano-playing monkey JoJo, in order to pick him up and take him to the pump controlling the waterfall and use him on it, an 'obvious' nod to the American term 'Monkey Wrench', which I'd never heard of at that point because I was a young English lad.

I also tend to not actually complete video games any more; I much prefer to play open-ended games which don't have a linear story-line. So, uh, going back... Half Life 2? Portal? Plants vs. Zombies? There's also always Fallout: New Vegas and Binding of Issac from more recent times. None of them were particular difficult to beat, but I don't have much choice, so I guess I'd have to say Half Life 2 simply because it's the hardest linear game on the list. And it's not hard.