10 Times Video Games Admitted They Were Too Hard

One of the hardest aspects about designing a video game is balancing enjoyment with challenge. Make a game too easy and players won't have a sense of accomplishment as they effortlessly make their way through each level. Conversely, players will stop finding enjoyment in a game that's too difficult and are likely to stop playing altogether. 

While there are plenty of games that manage to hit their difficulty sweet spot upon release to give players something that's both fun and puts their skills to the test, it's also common for developers to use patches to make further tweaks to balancing and gameplay after launch.

Sometimes, however, developers can get the difficulty so wrong that it takes more than a simple readjustment to fix.

There's been plenty of times when games have admitted to being too hard. These can come in the form of boss fights that are drastically altered after developers overestimate how much challenge players could withstand. They can also be notorious levels that are reworked in later releases, or mechanics that are implemented to make the intense challenge more manageable. 

Although developer intervention has made many of these games easier than they were, they are still difficult games.

Whether it's The Nameless King, The Orphan Of Kos, or Malenia, there's no shortage of demanding boss fights in FromSoftware's roster of Soulsborne games. However, the developers took their infamous level of difficulty to new heights with Shadow Of The Erdtree, the critically acclaimed expansion for Elden Ring.

Designed for high-level players, this DLC contained the most brutal bosses that the developers have ever created. None, however, compared to the unrelenting punishment of Promised Consort Radahn, the expansion's final boss.

With his extreme damage output, long combos, oversized hitboxes, and barrage of AoE attacks, he proved to be too much for many players. Social media was quickly flooded with frustrated fans complaining that this fight was borderline unfair, and the developers listened.

FromSoftware would release two patches in response to the outcry to make Radahn significantly easier. First, they gave players more help by boosting the damage for the summonable NPCs in patch 1.13. Then, in Patch 1.14, they drastically reduced the boss's damage, fixed the size of his hitboxes, and made him less aggressive at the start of the battle.

Consort Radahn is still a tremendously difficult fight, but now players have a better chance of beating this DLC.