You underestimate my willingness to lower the difficulty if I'm stuck

I'm pathologically stubborn and will stick with just about any game until I beat it, but Isshin the Sword Saint (Sekiro) took me a long time.

Pure Vessel in Hollow Knight. I have a file that's at like 111% and I just need to beat the final pantheon but I've never managed it. I don't even know how bad Absolute Radiance is, I've never made it that far.

Stay Puft...screw this pixel perfect dancing marshmallow lol so frustrating

My mom. When she says, "Turn that off and get your homework done," I always cave.

Pivot tables.

Excel is one of my favourite games, but I've never been able to completely grok those things.

They seem like a waste of time when it's much easier to use formulas to construct indirect ranges and work on those.

I've never seen what's beyond the fourth level of Battletoads for Gameboy. That fucking labyrinth.

About 100 hours on the final boss of FF8 because I fucked up and saved right before the fight with basically nothing in my inventory. I repeated the fight for literal weeks, trying different strategies and item use patterns and stuff.

It was very rewarding to complete, but I’ll never play that game again.

Sekero is just about my favorite game. I've completed it at least 20 times and will do so again.

I've beaten the Demon of Hatred 2 times and I never want to play that motherfucker ever again.

Haven't beat the dual boss at the end of Elden ring, or the final DLC boss.

Think i've done most the rest of Soulsborn bosses.

In terms of time, some Demons souls boss I got stuck on, put the game aside for years, then went back to.

In terms of number of tries, I think O&S in Dark Souls one still holds the title. I ran into that brick wall for a long time before getting good.

Can't think of any game series I had as much difficulty in and didn't just give up, unless you count the Mun in Kerbal Space Program as a boss, cause that took a long time.

Mike Tyson

I was never able to beat the final boss in Alpha Protocol because it would just CTD upon starting the fight.

I was actually never able to beat the nilianth in the final level of Half Life. I think I tried 2 or 3 times, it was extremely annoying getting sent to the parkour room constantly and I haven't been back to try it again in a decade.

Hogger

... fucking Hogger, man

I've been stuck deep in Bomberman '93 for about 15 years. It's the boss level that starts with the multiple enemies on motorcycles and then progresses to a single boss who flies around the perimeter of the level and shoots fire. Every few years I'll load up my save and spend an hour or two re-learning the fire guy's patterns and making attempts, but never quite well enough.

I've heard Bomberman '94 is really cool, but I'm not allowing myself until I finish this one!

i gave up on consort Radahn. but i guess they made it easier later with a patch? never went back to try again after trying to beat him for a week.

In Hollow Knight, the Grimm fight. I spent hours learning the patterns. I’m pretty sure that’s what created the drift on my joycons during that time.

I don't think I've ever beaten Doom 2 without cheats or mouselook. I just can't time those rockets correctly.

Mike Tyson/Mr. Dream in Punch-Out!! (I did beat them with Game Genie though).

This asshole

I still haven't finished Breath of the Wild. I think I pretty much did everything else in the game that by the time I should have gotten to the final boss but by that time I felt I had gotten enough out of the game and if it was going to just be the same kind of battle as the other two boss battles I wasn't interested. I really enjoyed the game, just didn't care to finish it 😅

Don't know if it counts but stupid meat circus climb in psychonauts. Never finished that thing.

DS3's Pontif Sulyvahn! GRR! I'll get you next playthrough! Just you wait!

Ruby Weapon in the Final Fantasy VII PS1 game.

I even followed the guide, so I just couldn't figure it out.

The final battle in Star Trek 25th Anniversary (before it was patched). It's just not possible to win this!

Currently for me it's the Silksong Choral Chambers gauntlet. It's been about 5 months. I can get to the last two Sentinals, only as of last night, but fail. It's taken that long as I give up, don't play for a week, then go off exploring other areas.

Armstrong in metal gear revengance... Not because he was hard on his own, but because the game bugged on the way to get to him and I couldn't rotate my blade to break the things he was throwing at me.

I got to the boss with a tiny sliver of HP left and spent like 3 hours trying to beat him with it. I THINK I beat it, I don't think there was another phase or something, but during a cutscene that happens after fighting him the game froze... I threw the controller and never turned the game on again lol

Riku in the first Kingdom Hearts took me so so long. Halfway because of that fucking unskippable cutscene.

Similarly, I was never able to defeat Maleficent, so I never beat the first game at all.

Also, Lion King for the SNES. Technically it wasn't a boss that I couldn't beat, but the goddamn lava level. I had that game my entire childhood and was never able to beat it. When I was 22, I had a bunch of 12 hour overnight shifts with a work buddy who said he could beat it. So we passed it back and forth. It took us a few days and probably a hundred lives. But finally. Finalllllly, we did it.

Level 7-4 (the maze level in Super Mario Bros).

Not a boss, but the only way to beat the level is to take the correct path. If you get it wrong you get sent back to the start.

Man if I ever had to fight Groal the Great again...

I was a couple of attempts short of calling it quits on Simon in Clair Obscur. I don't like QTEs and the whole fight is "parry or die"

And yes I know now that I could have done the cheese strat of megabuffing Maille for a one shot but I think reading strategy guides for single player games is a major dork move

Afterward, I wasn't excited or proud. I was just relieved to not think about it anymore

The first bosses of Cuphead 😭

Celeste

There's one screen that's just keeeeps going in the very last level, shit took me like 20-30 hours spread over two weeks

Nameless king. I finally caved and accepted I would have to summon to beat him... Ah fuck.

The only soulsborne I didn't beat, but I didn't play after getting hard stuck on him. I did beat everyone solo though, which is why it was such a decision to think about summoning.

Gwyn in Dark Souls.

The problem was my biggest success. I managed to score a zweihander, pretty early on in the game. I upgraded the hell out of it and was able to clear most bosses with some grinding and a lot of determination. I did this with a failing PS3 controller that generated spurious inputs, resulting in randomly switching to my alt config (unarmed) if I squeezed the controller too hard. I even learned a new level of personal zen and patience after realizing that getting angry would make me perform worse. I got gud.

Then I arrive at the end boss and get absolutely wrecked.

Why? I never had to parry. Not. A. Single. Time. Strike, juke, medium-roll, retreat, strike again. Don't be a target, and keep moving. Meanwhile, every guide to beat Gwyn says you have to parry his attacks. I basically had little choice but to retrain how to play my character modifying an entire game's worth of muscle-memory in the process.

My save file has been in this condition for years at this point.

Battletoads. I thought me and my brother were just retarded or something until.I grew up, got the internet, and learned that it was one of the most unforgivingly brutal games of our era.