10 Video Games That Punished You For Trying Too Hard

There's something so utterly cathartic about levelling up in a video game. Whether it's the satisfying ring of all that EXP filling up a bar or that delightful feeling of being able to use new and overpowered abilities thanks to your blood, sweat and tears, if improving oneself in the real world was as fun as this, then we'd all be absolute Adonises.

However, as with everything in life, too much of a good thing can turn the whole experience sour. If you spend your entire time with a video game KILLING BOARS for hours and levelling up way beyond what the bosses can handle, you'll breeze through the game without challenge and likely kill any tension the title was trying to craft in the process.

Therefore, some video game developers took it upon themselves to make sure that the try-hards amongst us ended up dying just as hard, and whether through level caps in certain areas, enemies that offer diminishing returns, or straight up levelling up everything along with the player themselves, punished those looking to use their sheer heft to bully their way through.

So let's put down the beef and pick up the seasoning, as it's about to get salty.

The Final Fantasy series is no stranger to level grinding diehards trying to suck every bit of EXP they can out of every encounter, and in some of the titles, it was an absolute necessity to farm fights over and over in order to take on some of the more ridiculous super bosses.

However, in Final Fantasy VII, Square Enix clearly had had enough of people slaughtering their beautiful beasts over and over, and made it so that when the player levelled up, the enemies also saw a boost in their stats. This was done to try and place an importance on levelling up your Guardian Force summons over flat buffs to the actual party.

The problem was, is that if you hadn't taken the time to master the GF system, you could easily find yourselves in unwinnable situations where enemies severely outclassed you in every regard, meaning you'd actually have to return to older areas to grind just to get on their level!

Such a case happened to a young Jules where he fought against an impossible Ultimecia just after switching discs and thus had no other save points or options for farming. Brilliant times.