I would say any game where you feel the need to trivalize the content with cheats, overgearing, over leveling in the game would be a game that is hard/chhallenging. The fact that you feel the need to use these things, or resort to them shows that you are not skilled enouph to beat the game at the correct/standard level it was meent to be at. Like attempting to beat a stage at level 20 with rare weapons, when you failed to beat it at level 12 with uncommon weapons which was the recommended setup, and so your skill in beating the stage was not adiquite to finsh the stage correctly. Yet you could also have gotten intrigued with an area or mobs, immersed in just playing thru areas, and not relised you were out progressing the stage as well. I remember setng up bets with friends on who could beat ff7, legend of dragoon, xenogears, or such games in the quickest time. ALso beating a rpg is not the same as finsihing the rpg, since many of the trully hard or diffcult content is not part of the actual story arc, such as emerald or ruby weapon in ff7, two quite hard bodded t defeat without proper set-ups, yet were still doable without those setups as well. Many times in rpgs you as  the player create the actual difficulty in the game, using certain styles, units, or speed of play can create veried difficulties in the game.

Originally posted by gestalt11

Originally posted by Distopia

Wizardry.. RPG's have never been known for actual game-play challenge though.

No. I played all the wizardry games and while I will stipulate figuring out what to do may have been challenging.  The combat itself was the same as any other RPG of its kind(might and magic, bard's tale, etc) and once you had the right stuff was pretty easy.    I murderlized things with my faerie Ninja using a Canus Corpus.

Are you sure you aren't confusing your games there? ;)

Wizardry had several mechanics that really added a good bit a consequence to the game, much in the same vein as the PLATO game it was based on and PnP games.

• To end your gaming session you had to make it back out of the dungeon. Unlike a dungeon in modern MMOs, you had battles you had to fight your way back out.
• Characters can die from poison and other dots - even become paralyzed or turned to stone - and if your caster had no more spell points, that character was out of the action until you got back to town.
• Resurrection could result in the character being reduced to ashes. If you could not bring your character back from ashes it was lost forever.
• Characters aged. Get up to 40 or 50 and the character could actually drop in stats. It was also harder to resurrect them. That's a concern because... well, see above. :)
• If your whole party wiped in a battle it was lost unless you sent a partial party with spare slots ln order to drag the bodies out... if you can find them.
• Spell points were finite and did not auto replenish. Without returning to the surface and resting, your casters would eventually become useless.

Knowing when to run from a battle was just as important as managing your spell points and other stats.

Was the combat itself often simply spamming Fight Fight Fight Parry parry Parry? Yes. However Wizardry was more about surviving the night's excursion and returning alive  than about any kind of complex individual battle. Wizardry 1-8 drifted more and more toward the story experience as the interest of CRPG gamers changed but 1-3 were definitely hard games to play. In Japan, Wizardry's classic mechanics remained popular and even to this day in Wizardry Online, permadeath and other harsh repercussions for failure or lack of awareness still exist.

Originally posted by Benedikt

i think the hard part about old rpgs (e.g. wizardry 1-7, istar, realm of arkania etc.) was not a combat, but the fact, that there was no hand holding. You had to find on your own what to do, how to progress, which item use at which place etc. You had to actively look for things, they were not served to you on silver platter.

 

edit: as for combat - old rpgs were maybe slightly harder, but i dont think that much. main difference there imho is that what in old days passed as normal difficuly, without way to chooses any other, is now just one of the options called hard or even impossible. there were maybe more often some fights that were really hard, but that happens even now, e.g. heroic mode in WoW, some fights in the witcher etc.

Word.

Originally posted by AlBQuirky

How do you define "difficult?" In your own words, you seem to interchange "difficult" and "really hard."

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Originally posted by gestalt11
In other words don't say Deus Ex because I could win that game with a pistol with out ever investing anything in the RPG aspects of it.  Yes it would be really hard but I guarantee you I can do it.

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Just because a person can "beat a game" does not mean it is not difficult. I think what you may be looking for is "impossible."

 

In Dragon Age:Origins, it took 4 or 5 tries to defeat the monster at the top of the tower to light the beacon in the very beginning. To me, that is "difficult." If I am reloading quite often, I'd say the game is difficult.

If you truly roleplay your not-so-smart fighter, he will die many times due to his not-so-smart decisions. Not many people do that, though.

Most RPGs I have played have difficult parts in them. I do not recall ever playing one where I just breezed through the whole game beginning to end. Maybe I'm just not as "pro" as you are...

One of the the "RPG Mechanics" of Deus Ex 1 was skill points from weapons.  Adding skill points to a weapon made its FPS mechanics more precise and less of hassle (and I think do a bit more damage).

If you sucked at shooting no amount of skill points would let you boom head shot things.  Similarly you could do pretty well with a gun with just one point in it if you were good at shooting.

In later Deus Ex games (and its inheritors like Bioshock (tehcnically inheritor of system shock of course)) there are no skill points for weapons.  One of the complaints was that they did not have enough effect to make sense to be in the game except for maybe heavy weapons.  So now many games like Deus Ex leave the performance of the guns solely in the hands of the player's FPS mechanic abilties.

Due to this I flet i needed to differentiate or any game with a tiered structure of buyable abilities becomes an RPG.  Which is almost every game nowadays.

Sure older games where not to hard to annoy the fuck out of you and make you quit LOL, they had a good challenge tho and sometimes you would need to think twice about what to do. Like the OP said he has played some games where he has had to try the same fight a few times because he died or did it wrong.. You dont get that in modern RPGs really as everythign has been dumbed down so much you can basically walk through most games set to the hardest without even thinking about it...

I used to always play through games on normal difficalty settings when i was younger as I found that to be the best mix of a challegne and fun if you get what i mean..

Even todays dumbed down rpgs on super hard are not even as much of a challenge... Dont get me started on MMORPGs with hanving your hand held in nearly every aspect of the game..

Its probally why i enjoy Mortal Online and Darkfall as you dont really have any of that hand holding crap..

To the OP:

Baldur's gate I and II

Icewind Dale I and II

The Temple of Elemental Evil

Might and Magic III, IV, V, VI, VII and VIII (if you can swallow M&M's cheesy graphic of course)

All of old-school Ultimas

All of Wizardry-s

The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall

and dont forget Vampire: the Masquerade - Bloodlines (although i didnt find that to be that hard, but challenging? yes)

EDIT: How dare I to forgot Fallout 1 and Fallout 2. :O