u/Snifflyjewel

I'm a huge Final Fantasy fan so this was a must to eventually for me. I put it off so much because of the Low Level achievements in the list. After doing this set, it was much easier than I had initially thought it would be. There were only two major road blocks and I'm throwing the word "Major" in pretty loosely. Those would be the Demon Wall and The Carry Armor. Carry Armor took me several tries (Maybe 10 or so?) I just had to wait for the stars to align in my favor for that fight honestly. Do I think these achievements need to be in the set? I dunno, I get why people complain about them. But I didn't find them to be that difficult. It's worth noting, I think that I have platinumed the game on Playstation before. So I'm already pretty familiar with the game.

No, for me, the hardest achievements wasn't beating Emerald or Ruby Weapons without cheesing Knights of the Round. No, it was the fucking mini games. Lol The one I had most difficult with was the Speed ride shooter thing where you had to get 5,000 points. Most people seem to have the most difficulty with the Snowboarding achievements (And the point value on one of them suggest it should be the hardest) But I only had a fair amount of trouble with them. Maybe I got lucky. The 50 point snowboarding achievement took me maybe an hour compared to a few with the shooting game.

I did this set in two runs. I did my 100% run on one playthrough and saved my Low Level run for the second.

Another hard aspect of this set is just keeping track of all the missables. Thankfully, I was able to only miss like 2 achievements in my 100% run, and they were ones that I could easily pick up in my Low Level run. Like talking to the guy in Don Corneo's weird sex dungeon for some lore and getting the extra scene with Tifa towards the end of the game.

I really liked the set, but I understand how it can seem overwhelming. I had never done a low level run before and I have always wanted to. So now I can say that I have and it was a rather generous low level run. Plenty of room for error. Just keep multiple saves on the off chance you mess up. I did, but I didn't really need to go back to any of them. My highest level character was 31. So I would've failed the previous version of the challenge when it was level 28. Though if I did it again, I'm sure I could get it below 28.

First time every playing this game! Felt more like a bunch of smaller Kirby games crushed into one game. Lol I didn't mind, just an observation. I've only mastered one other Kirby game and that was Nightmare in Dreamland for the GBA. This set is much easier than that game. Hardest achievement was probably clearing the Arena without healing. Even then, there's a cheese method. I honestly thought gathering all 60 treasures was going to take forever given the amount of complaints in the comments. But it maybe to me a few hours?

Turning into Mario or Samus also took me an hour or so. That's just entirely RNG. Some people say they've gotten it in a few minutes, while others said it took a couple of days. I saved that achievement for very last.

I had forgotten how much I love the original God of War trilogy. This was very fun to revisit. Hardest achievements were probably just beating the game on the hardest difficulty. Everything up until the final fight was pretty doable. But the final fight is just a huge spike in difficulty, even for very hard standards imo. The first phase took me a while to learn the patterns. The clones were just....blegh. I hated them. Lol The clones were the hardest part of the fight for me. Once it was over and I heard the words "Kratos has done the impossible: He saved his family." It really felt like I had done the impossible. Lol The third phase, maybe I got lucky? I beat that phase on my 3rd attempt, and the fight was over very quickly.

One achievement I thought was going to be much harder was to beat the game in under 3 hours and 30 minutes. I never did the 5 hour version of the achievement on the PlayStation because it felt daunting. But I ended up doing this in 2 hours and 26 minutes. The rolling strat helps and it's super easy to learn. Cutscenes don't add to the timer, nor does the pause/save menu. You can use infinite magic. So max out Poseidon and Hades and wreck shit when you have to.

Also, on a side note: Fuck the last challenge in the Challenge of the Gods. Holy moly, I don't know if it was an emulator issue, or if it is like this just on any version, but you just get knocked around like a pinball and it really felt that gravity was just working against you. Physics just ceased to function. I'd get hit, and just go sailing off the edge. Or if I was near the edge, I just fell off like dead weight. From zero to terminal velocity in an instant kind of fall. Lol It was just very wacky and I did not have fun with that particular challenge.

My favorite Pikmin of the series. I really like all of the Pikmin games. This one took me a while to get around to because the first Pikmin set gave me a rough time. Lol This set, in general is a little more challenging than the first one. That being said, there is nothing in this set that's harder than the Distant Spring achievement from the first game. (Though it is possible I'm just a better Pikmin player now having done the first game's set.) The set for the first game was pretty easy up until that absurdly hard one. Lol This set feels more balanced is what I'm trying to say I guess.

Collecting all treasure in 15 days or less was actually pretty doable. I did it in 14 days and I didn't even really look at any maps or anything. Try to aim for getting all the treasure out in the open land in 3 days per level and you'll be pretty comfortable. Time doesn't pass in the caves so no worries there.

Hardest achievement was probably a few of the target scores in Challenge Mode. Some of there were pretty darn tight.

I really never thought I'd get this one. This was my very first RPG I ever played as a kid so it's near and dear to me. When I looked at this achievement set I couldn't believe what I saw: 100 consecutive super jumps. Lol

But, I finally did it. The 100 jumps maybe ate 6-8ish hours of my time playing his game? This was by far the hardest achievement I've done on the RA site. I wish there was an "easy" way to give advice to those who want to try it and are intimidated by it. It's a daunting task. I started off using visual cues on a spikey. Eventually that evolved into sound cues. I ended up using like the first or second note of the 1-up sound as my "metronome". Taking breaks is highly, highly important. For many of those hours, I went at it non stop. That first time I made it over 50 jumps, I went "Okay, I'm not giving up until I get this" and I'd go many attempts without making it over 30. I eventually gave up, went to bed and went to work the next morning and came home and got the achievement within 15 minutes. Lol So main piece of advice, grind it out until you know you can make it over 50 and then take a break and come back to it with a fresh brain/mind.

Edit: Also, don't count linear. Don't go 1 through 100. Anytime I'd get close, I'd get super anxious and choke. What I did that helped me, was counting through 10 and starting back at 1. You get the achievement the second you get 100. So you don't need to focus on exactly where you're at in the count.

The only other hard achievement I think that's on here is getting all 100 coins in the Midas River course. That didn't take me anywhere near as long though. Maybe an hour. Lol

The main missable, I think, to watch out for is the chest at the very beginning in the Mushroom Kingdom you have to get by jumping on Toad's head to get to a higher platform while he's walking through the main hallway. It's in the first few minutes of the game and can easily sneak up on you if you don't know about it in advance.

I intentionally saved the "Big Finale" achievement last where you have to get a Star shaped firework in the end credits. Lol

I'm so glad I was finally able to master this game :)

I was trying to get the achievement through RA to try to beat the entire Pit of 100 Trials without using any Special Moves or danger-related Badges and wouldn't you know it? Rolled the Poison Shrooms for the first time on this playthrough. Lol

Pretty good set I think. Grateful it went easy on the 1-up collecting. Those are always my least favorite in any Mario set for some reason. Lol There was one 1-up achievement that was a little wonky on the Tower in world 5. I just went back to it once I had an inventory full with those P-wings after beating the game.

Hardest part was maybe beating some of the worlds in their entirety with small Mario. Thought World 8 would've been the hardest in that regard, but it turned out to be World 7 that I struggled with the most as small Mario. Lol

Some of the individual challenges that gave me a hard time was beating an Airship with the Frog Suit and beating an Airship with the Hammerbros Suit. On both instances I'd collect the suit, attempt the Airship, lose the power up, reset. Until I eventually got frustrated, grinded out the suits only to beat the Airship on the first attempt after taking the time to collect those suits. Lol

Another hard one was beating 5-3 in 15 jumps or less. It ended up being harder than the alternate version of the achievement where you had to complete the 3rd Airship in World 8 in 20 jumps or less.

Having mastered the original trilogy and never played this game, I thought this would be an easy master. Damn, I was wrong, and it feels good to get this one mastered. Game itself isn't that hard. But those Gold Medals for the Time Trials were PAINFUL. Lol Some of them were stupid easy that I got on my first few attempts. Sometimes I'd spend hours just on one level trying to get that damn gold medal. Golden Temple was one that ate up a bunch of time. There was one level in the Forest that was just abysmal to get a gold in.

These were the levels that absolutely wrecked me in TT:

2-1 2-4 2-7

3-1

5-4 (Probably the worst one for me)

6-1 6-4

7-6 7-B

8-7 8-B

9-1

These listed time trials I just had to treat like a boss in souls game. In a souls game, you challenge a boss over and over and over because they have a set a moves and patterns in which you just have to get the muscle memory to dodge. Same applies to some of these levels. Just attempting it over and over again until you get the muscle memory to jump/roll at the right time to get the optimal speed and to dodge/bounce off enemies.

Some of the bosses in Mirror Mode (Which is basically this games equivalent to a no hit run) were rough, like the final boss. Some of these bosses in the Time Trials were entirely RNG if you wanted to get a Gold Medal. This mostly applies to the last two bosses.

Finally got this classic done! I like this set for the most part (Fuck them butterflies. Lol) I think it serves well as a beginner entry for what to expect for the 3D Mario platforming sets for the site. I've done Mario Sunshine and Galaxy and I think this one is the easiest of the 3 that I have done. There are some challenging ones. Like getting the start from "Blast to the Stone Pillar" without the cannon was pretty tough. Getting the red coins while the Submarine is still there in Dire, Dire Docks was also a hard one.

I don't think it was the hardest, but the one that made me the mad most was collecting the red coins in Tick Tock Clock while it was in the fastest speed. That got me tilted pretty quickly. Lol

And, if you decide to to for any achievement in this set that involves butterflies, you're gonna have a bad time. Lol

Took a break from doing Zelda masteries to play the one Spyro game out of the original trilogy I never played. Lol I liked it a lot! Of course, I like the other two more. Though that may just be nostalgia talking.

Set wasn't anything too hard. I've gotten so used to doing Zelda no damage challenges that these bosses were pretty easy to no hit. There were some janky controls for the final boss no damage challenge. But nothing compared to the BS that was the no damage Gruntilda from Banjo Kazooie. Lol

If I had to pick the hardest achievement, it would be the no damage on the final boss because of the janky controls on the UFO.

Very gratifying to torch Moneybag's ass at the end though. Lol

I honestly thought I would never beat this game. I was finally able to beat this game for the first time!

Phew, this one was intimidating at first. I played this game as a kid but I was never good at it. I had only made it to like the 2nd palace. But I couldn't get further than that. The hardest part about this set is just getting past the learning curve of the game. The no damage achievements weren't bad. There's almost always a way to cheese the bosses in this game. Even the Thunderbird, as long as you use Reflect, it's not hard.

I think the hardest achievement will vary from person to person. But to me, the hardest one was the achievement, "Work Harder, not Smarter" Where you had to beat the game with no Shield, Spell, Fire, and Life. The plus side, is after doing that, made my "No Game Over" run soooo much easier. I got that one on my first try with a few stupid deaths like getting knocked into the lava by a random flying enemy.

The "No Candle/Cross" Achievement is also hard. But you don't have to beat the game. That realization came to me after I beat the 3rd dungeon. You just have to make it to the Great Palace. So you can literally grab the necessary items from the remaining dungeons and move on. I completely skipped the 6th dungeon. My stats were 5/5/5 and I made it during the final stretch with 6 lives. I died 3 times maybe? I used "Spell" during random encounters to turn the flying enemies into blobs. Then for the designated caves, I just used Fairy. If I ran out of mp, I just died to refill.

Probably the hardest Zelda game there is out there. But I think I'd do this set over beating Vaati without getting hit though.

So I still think The Minish Cap is the hardest Zelda set, followed by this one with ALttP after that.