With the growth of the video game industry, more AAA productions have been designed with the aim of offering a smooth experience and being accessible to the greatest number of players, thus pushing developers to lower the difficulty level. Indie games are still exceptions, but if you are looking for a real challenge in the most popular games, you will surely have to select the hard mode to add spice to the adventure by increasing the number of enemies or limiting your access to resources. intended to help you complete the game.
However, some games are still imagined to be genuinely difficult and require perseverance on the part of players to progress, whether it is the underwater level recognized to enrage players in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or reappear at the campfire every two minutes after being poisoned by a rat in Dark Souls.
Ninja Gaiden: Black throne from games more difficult to finish from the market
Even if Ghosts’n Goblins is widely regarded as the most difficult game in history, it does not make this ranking because this iconic title is an arcade game dating back to 1985. So we did not have access to all the data for some of the indicators used.
Our ranking takes into account the level of difficulty as well as the popularity and reviews of the games.
| Game | Final difficulty score on Ranker.com * | Number of hours for the main story | Number of hours for a complete player ** | % of abandons before the end of the game | How Long To Beat Score | Final score | |
| 1 | Ninja Gaiden: Black | 343 | 16 | 48 | 6% | 89% | 7.30 |
| 2 | Dark Souls | 645 | 43 | 105 | 4% | 93% | 7.18 |
| 3 | osu! | 28 | 344 | 1600 | 31% | 81% | 7.03 |
| 4 | Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice | 346 | 29 | 70 | 4% | 90% | 6.97 |
| 5 | The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim | -133 | 33 | 230 | 10% | 87% | 6.85 |
| 6 | Super Meat Boy | 119 | 10 | 44 | 15% | 80% | 6.83 |
| 7 | Kerbal Space Program | -6 | 115 | 363 | 17% | 85% | 6.73 |
| 8 | Bloodborne | 222 | 34 | 75 | 3% | 93% | 6.72 |
| 9 | Celestial | 40 | 8 | 38 | 2% | 88% | 6.64 |
| 10 | BioShock | -153 | 12 | 22 | 7% | 86% | 6.61 |
The 10 best challenging games to surpass yourself
These extreme games are part of the “masochistic” video game trend (the contraction of “masochism” and “hardcore”). This growing trend refers to a type of game designed to frustrate gamers using complex mechanics and nearly impossible storylines. Dark Souls, Cuphead and Super Meat Boy are among the most significant examples of this trend in recent years.
If you want real headaches and want to inflict some level of pain on yourself, we challenge you to try this ranking of the most extreme games.
This ranking only takes into account the level of difficulty of the games.
| Game | Favorable votes on difficulty on Ranker | Unfavorable votes on difficulty on Ranker | Final score on difficulty on Ranker | Difficulty score |
| Ghosts’ n Goblins | 1,365 | 396 | 969 | 10.00 |
| Dark Souls | 1,114 | 469 | 645 | 7.45 |
| Battletoads | 1,038 | 404 | 634 | 7.36 |
| Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles | 691 | 319 | 372 | 5.30 |
| Cuphead | 586 | 236 | 350 | 5.12 |
| Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice | 468 | 122 | 346 | 5.09 |
| Ninja Gaiden: Black | 611 | 268 | 343 | 5.07 |
| Super Ghouls’ n Ghosts | 500 | 223 | 277 | 4.55 |
| Mega man | 590 | 315 | 275 | 4.53 |
| Castlevania | 541 | 268 | 273 | 4.51 |
If you haven’t had your batch of Castlevania while playing the game, be aware that Netflix recently completed the eponymous series which now has a total of 4 seasons.
The longest difficult games to complete
Among the more difficult games, we’ve also grouped the longest games to complete fully using data from How Long to Beat, which tracks the number of hours required to complete games.
| Game | Number of hours for the main story | Number of hours for the main story | Final score |
| osu! | 344 | 1600.0 | 10.00 |
| Kerbal Space Program | 115 | 363.0 | 3.52 |
| The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim | 33.5 | 230 | 2.08 |
| Dark Souls II | 44 | 120 | 1.91 |
| Dark Souls | 43 | 105 | 1.85 |
| Nioh | 35.5 | 95.5 | 1.73 |
| Enter the Gungeon | 21.5 | 155 | 1.71 |
| Dark Souls III | 32 | 94 | 1.68 |
| Bloodborne | 34 | 75.5 | 1.65 |
The title at the top of our list requires 1600 hours or more than 66 full days if you want to complete all the challenges in the game! As indicated above, osu! is not designed to be finished, which explains the mind-blowing number of hours. But if you’re aiming to complete the main story, osu! asks you “only” 344 hours of your time.
We also notice that the toughest games aren’t necessarily the longest to complete, apart from osu! and Kerbal Space Program, because the games on our list take an average of 20 hours to complete.
As a benchmark, completing a game’s main story typically takes 40 to 60 hours at most.
Methodology
We ranked a series of games based on the following metrics: