What's the most "out of place" difficulty you've seen in a game?
The concept of a difficulty curve is probably familiar to everyone. Obviously a game doesn't need a linear line of increasing challenge, but safe to say that it's a generally accepted norm that challenge level should at least *trend* upwards as a game progresses.
Sometimes though, you run into situations in games where there's either an absolutely titanic spike in difficulty early on (often followed by the difficulty diving right back down again), or the opposite where an endgame encounter is bafflingly easy.
What are your favorite examples of this?
I guess we should lay a few ground rules. I think these are kinda obvious, but may as well write them up regardless:
We're not talking about cases where the developers very clearly made something *intentionally* insanely easy. This is obviously a little subjective.
We're not talking about very obvious cheese tactics that completely de-fang an encounter. Again, what counts as "cheese" or an exploit is a little subjective, but I trust you to be sensible about this.
I'll throw out a few examples that come to my mind:
**Dark Souls**:
Capra Demon is *brutal* for how early in the game the fight is. After a few playthroughs, it's not that tough of a fight, but every single person I know (myself included) got their colon stomped by the Capra first time around. It's not even really the boss itself that's so difficult, it's the fact that you fight him and two dogs inside what is effectively a shoebox.
As for the opposite, I'd actually throw in Pinwheel. I think it could be argued that he's intentionally a complete joke of a boss, but I don't know. I've also heard some people say he's meant to be an early game boss, but I don't buy that for a few reasons.
**Baldur's Gate 3**:
That fucking harpy fight next to the Emerald Grove. That could very reasonably be the third or even second fight you find after getting off the Nautiloid, and it's *hellish* that early on, especially on a first playthrough if you kinda don't know what you are doing (which described me on my first run). I think it's the singing - a few bad rolls and you are in serious trouble.
**The Witcher 3**:
I don't know if I'm alone in this - but that goddamn Basilisk fight with Ciri during one of the Baron's flashbacks is absolute murder. I'm not even exaggerating, that fight is harder for me than just about any fight other than the Toad Prince or whatever he's called.
In contrast, Imlerith I always thought was kinda easy.
**Kingdom Come Deliverance 2**:
The entire early game. Look, I get it, it's more of a simulator-ish type deal, but I maintain that when the very beginning is literally the hardest part of the game and then it just get's easier from there.
Anyways, gimme your examples