The Soulslike genre has a reputation for being one of the hardest in the gaming world. Brutal enemies, constant pressure, and lack of second chances make these games deeply challenging in a way that very few other genres can come close to.
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With many impressive games under the RPG banner in 2025, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, The Outer Worlds 2, and more offer outstanding experiences.
However, within the RPG space, there are quite a few titles that manage to break the mold and deliver an experience that is harder than even the most brutal Soulslikes. This can be through punishing mechanics or impossible decision-making, but whatever the reason, they show that gameplay difficulty doesn't always have to come from a single genre.
UnderRail
Every Build Choice Matters
- Combat is brutally unforgiving and borderline unfair.
- Resource scarcity is almost a guarantee.
UnderRail is an RPG that punishes mistakes with far more permanence than any Soulslike. Every encounter can be lethal if approached incorrectly, and poor character builds can make the entire game unwinnable, demanding flawless planning and optimization on a whole other level.
Unlike Souls games, where mechanical mastery can carry weak builds, UnderRail practically shuts the door on any players who are unwilling or incapable of learning. Also, no matter how far into the game they are, players will never feel truly safe. Late-game enemies have one-shot potential, and even one bad choice can destroy an entire run.
Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate
Lengthy Hunts That Can End In A Second
- Extended boss hunts with strict stamina and item management.
- A single mistake often snowballs into party wipes.
While Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate shares surface-level similarities with Soulslikes, this mainline installment couldn't be any more unforgiving. Hunts can last 30–50 minutes, and one lapse in judgment can compromise the entire team’s success, creating a constant feeling of pressure that remains right up until the hunt ends.
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On top of the length, every monster has complex, evolving move sets that require a completely different kind of mechanical prowess than just basic dodges. It is all about learning the correct strategies over time and perfecting them, rather than charging in over and over just to try and brute force a boss until they fall.
Darkest Dungeon
Managing More Than Just A Health Bar
- Permadeath, combined with other systems like sanity and stress, causes constant strife.
- RNG-dependent at the worst times.
Darkest Dungeon is difficult not because of mechanical complexity but because it challenges the player's decision-making and long-term knowledge above all else. Characters can die permanently, suffer mental breakdowns, and develop traits and diseases that permanently weaken them, meaning that players need to think about consequences in an entirely different way.
In Soulslikes, where death results in a simple reset, failure in Darkest Dungeon results in a more impactful loss, ranging from a single character dying to an entire party being lost. Add RNG into the equation, and suddenly even veteran players can struggle, being beholden to good or bad luck that could easily cost them a whole run and a roster of their best characters.
Shin Megami Tensei 3
Turn-Based Ruthlessness
- Enemies exploit weaknesses often.
- Team composition can be the main deciding factor.
Shin Megami Tensei 3 may seem like a basic turn-based RPG on the surface, but players will soon realize that they are in for a far more punishing experience. The Press Turn system allows enemies to chain extra actions when exploiting weaknesses, meaning a single spell choice can snowball into a full-party wipe before the player can react.
Because of this, mastery of elemental effects and weaknesses becomes compulsory, and players need to have a complete grasp of every single mechanic to make it through to the final stages. Even random encounters can be deadly, pushing players to their limit, even when they feel at their safest.
Gothic
Unforgiving Even At The Start
- Extremely harsh early power imbalance.
- NPCs act independently of the player, ending quests and even leading to deaths.
Gothic is infamous for its opening hours, where nearly every enemy can kill the player in a few hits. Progression is slow, and players need to earn their power through discipline rather than grinding through enemies as quickly as possible.
On top of this, dying can often mean losing significant travel progress with minimal checkpoints, adding a huge incentive to play it safe and smart rather than recklessly. In a sense, the world itself becomes the biggest challenge, as NPCs can kill each other and entire questlines can fail without the player ever realizing it, turning the environment into an extra opponent that needs to be respected.
Ys: The Oath In Felghana
Speed Is The Key
- Every fight is a test of reflexes.
- Bosses chain attacks with very little downtime.
Ys: The Oath in Felghana is an action RPG that moves at a blistering pace. Every enemy and boss attacks by unleashing relentless patterns that can feel nearly impossible to keep up with. The constant need for attention turns single encounters into tests of endurance, and one wrong move will surely spell the end.
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Rather than learning attack patterns, players instead have to build up their resilience and reflexes to prepare for long fights that never seem to end. Dying can also mean a major setback for the player, resetting them much further away than a simple run back from a bonfire.
Zelda 2: The Adventure Of Link
Well Before The Relaxing Open Worlds
- Demands frame-perfect platforming.
- Limited healing availability and severe punishments for mistakes.
Zelda 2: The Adventure of Link is often considered the most challenging entry in the franchise, and for good reason. Combat is entirely skill-based, with directional attacks, blocking, and tight timing that often drive many players away due to the sheer amount of precision required right from the get-go.
The runbacks are also anything but short, and dying even partway into the game can result in a huge reset that can take a large amount of time to recover from. Today, the game stands as a marker for early video game difficulty, remaining near the top of the list for challenge all these years later.
Wizardry 4: The Return Of Werdna
Designed To Break Players
- Early-game enemies can instantly kill the player.
- Progression requires deep system knowledge without much guidance.
Wizardry 4 is infamous for being brutally difficult even by classic RPG standards. The challenge comes from how unhelpful the game is. Normally, deaths can serve as opportunities to learn, but here, death can often feel completely unexpected, and progressing typically depends more on hidden mechanics and interactions than clearly defined routes.
Additionally, any chances to save and take a breather are few and far between. The game constantly assumes that players have an expert-level knowledge of every single system, making it absurdly hard to get into and barely manageable once players have a grasp of the basics.
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