I think this quote sums up exactly what difficulty spikes are: "I'd like to think of it as taking a comfortable hike through a park, or something fairly smooth. Imagine the process of getting the best ending to be like a sudden 5,000-foot mountain to unexpectedly appear at the end of your hike, with your house nested at the very top of it." SomeCallMeJohnny

Fun fact about Miltanks: they're faster than Rayquaza.

Wait Sans is 2, then who's 1? Josh: That DAMN PIG!!! OH NO!!!!

Additional note: While Whitney's Levels go down in HGSS (by 1), Miltank is much worse due to the new mechanics. Not only does it have a Lum Berry equipped to remove Status Conditions, but it also has Scrappy for an Ability, which allows it to hit Ghost-Type attacks via Stomp.

"[Dragon Maleficent] can't be flinched, stunned, or stopped in anyway" *Insert clip of Stop-Gravity combo utterly murdering Dragon Maleficent*

When I saw that Yukiko was part of the countdown intro, I realize she wasn’t on the list. And then I was like “well then what boss could possibly repla-“ *MATADOR* “... Yeah, that checks out.”

It’s amazing how Johto Champions acknowledges how difficult Whitney is.

The Elder Wyrm was actually warned of you ahead of time, just in a cryptic manner. In a previous cutscene in the Veira village, the leader Jote warns Fran "Be cautious, The Wood is jealous of the humes who have taken you."

The IRS: * shows up at Josh’s house * Josh: *THIS LOOKS LIKE A JOB FOR FIRE*

I'm gonna be honest, I feel like Undyne the Undying is a larger spike in difficulty than Sans. Sans is difficult, yes, but he's the FINAL boss. Undyne is halfway through a so easy as to be boring game (Genocide Undertale) and is considered by some to be HARDER than Sans (mainly due to the randomness). Not sure I'd agree there, but I think it's fair to say the difference between Undyne and the no difficulty of Genocide is larger than the difference between Undyne the Undying and Sans.

"What if all 3 status ailment were inflicted to all your pokemons in one attack ?" Malboro ? Malboro.

Pro-tip for Matador: He can dispell debuffs on himself, but he can't dispell buffs on you. He only has Dekunda, not Dekukaja. If you can turtle for 4 turns at the start of the battle and spam Sukukaja (which Aeros can do; josh has Aeros on his team) you've basically neutralized Red Capote for the rest of the battle and Matador can't do a damn thing about it. Well, except spam Taunt/Andalucia.

Matador says "Hello Demi Fiend" Minotaur says "hello Flynn"

Wanna know the hilarious part with Whitney?: Miltank actually has a massive hard-counter with Bayleef since it specialized in Defense, but the Chikorita line was only ever useful in very specific situations in Johto (Grass-types really got the shaft in that reigon) so rarely anyone had the foresight chose it.

I remember my first round with Miltank as a little kid. Was steamrolled into the ground with no way to fight back. I was so pissed that I leveled my then lvl20 Bayleef all the way up to lvl40 before the rematch. Note: this was the first pokemon game I'd ever owned, so it was before I knew how type advantages worked and made me understand that "maybe it'd be a good Idea to have more than 1 pokemon in your team who's on a decent level?" ... That still didn't stop me from powerleveling and curbstomping her butt with a lvl 40 Meganium first though. >:)

the extra bosses in Star Ocean : Integrity and Faithlessness! in short : You fight the main story bosses again BUT suprise suprise... Thy are 1000 times stronger! and some like to SPAM there deadly magic attacks over and OVER! so even with a maxed out character, thy can STILL wipe you out in seconds!

I would say that limiting a topic like difficulty spikes to just bosses would make the countdown feel very one note and predicable, but there's actually a lot of variety in the choices on this list and both of the top two are the final bosses of easy games, so they fit without weighing down the rest of the countdown.

The trick with Dark Link is not using Z-targeting. He will still counter many attacks, but not all of them.

You forgot in the Sans segment about the fact that he _attacks you while you’re navigating your menu between turns._

3 additional points about Whitney: (2 & 3 are remake exclusive) 1: If attract immobilizing your males wasn't enough, Miltank's high speed means that she can flinch you with stomp. And feet don't recognize gender. 2: if you think you can avoid stomp with a Ghost type, guess again; Miltank's passive ability let's it use normal (and fighting) moves against ghost pokemon. 3: You mentioned using status conditions but Miltank hilda a lum berry which will automatically cure the first non-volatile status you hit it with. (NV status is anything that has a symbol, so burn, sleep, para, freeze, or poison/bad poison)

Was not expecting a Diddy Kong Racing boss. I gotta admit, I was surprised.

13:55 That miltank is the reason why I would ever use protect or detect in the adventure. Also, stomp and attract combo is trully annoying, since you have to deal with being infatuated and the flinch chance. It only could be worse if instead of rollout defense curl, they had given her body slam with 30% chance to paralize. But, if they ever get to make whitney even more difficult, they could give her a linoone with thunder wave, headbutt, attract and shadow claw.

"God help you if you choose Cyndaquil as your starter" Typlosion: *laughs in Thunder Punch*

Regarding Dark Link...if I'm not mistaken, he only has a chance to jump on your sword if you happen to be targeting him. If you don't lock on you have an easier time fighting your Shadow.

So glad that Ari is also going to be a big part of the channel now.

Ah yes my good friend Matador, the noob killer, but thanks to him you learn a lot of the game, he is the beginning of this dark journey through SMT Nocturne.

Yeah the thing about Dragonball Xenoverse and the super armor is that that was something that made even the hardcore Xenoverse 2 fans hate the first game. The super armor was literally one of the biggest issues that this game had since almost every boss had it. That's why when the sequel came around the usage of the super armor dropped significantly.

12:40 Should also probably ask why a Rock-type Gym had a Normal-type TM, _Brock._

You can make your sentence with “up until now” OR “with one exception”, not both.

A few more: Sleeping Table - Persona 3 Minotaur - Shin Megami Tensei IV Flamelurker or Maneaters - Demon's Souls Gascoigne - Bloodborne Pontiff Sulyvahn - Dark Souls 3 Demyx - Kingdom Hearts 2 J - Tokyo Xtreme Racer 3 Yuki-Onna - Nioh Watcher Knights - Hollow Knight Underground Boss - Frogger Beyond

With the Biggoron's Sword, Dark Link completely falls apart to the simple method of backflipping and following it up with a stab (it can be done with the Master Sword, but the Biggoron's Sword's increased range makes it more accurate).

Even the anime acknowledged how broken Miltank was!

The Final boss in Kingdom Hearts ddd was definitely went up to an insane difficulty spike that came out of nowhere.

I think Jonny summarized my feelings about Whitney and her cow years ago in his Johnny VS video

Matador’s the type of boss that wipes out the noobs, the goobs, and the unlucky duudes

This channel origonally got me into KZfaq gaming content way back in the day. I'm so happy to see that you still make videos!

21 years ago, I choose Cyndaquil as my starter...severely regretted when I got to Whitney. 21 years later...I will still pick Cyndaquil b/c you're not my real dad stop telling me how to play my game!

So the Elder Wurm can inflict Confuse, Poison, Leech Seed, Smokescreen and Tar Shot at the same time.

Ari. A Pokémon expert? I LOVE IT. YOU HAVE THE BEST WIFE EVER, JOSH.

So, regarding Dark Link.. I didn't know this wasn't more well known, but if if you don't Z Target him, he goes down like a sack of potatoes with regular sword swings as he won't block you anymore.

#6 - Josh immediately starts talking about Pokemon Me: *immediately thinks Whitney* Josh: (15 seconds later) "We're gonna be talking about Whitney from 2nd gen!" Me: "CALLED IT!"

Me: *sees Shadow Yukiko as the number transition* AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Forgot how TAAAAAAAALL Whitney is in the anime pd. I always found Morty to be much harder, mostly bc I am pretty unlucky and get hit with Hypnosis all the time. And Sleep in Gen 2 can last FOREVER!

11:15 Teaser for another video? 12:38 Jigglypuff, Snorlax and Dunsparce can learn rollout by leveling up in Gold and Silver. I think they're able to use this move because either the Pokémon has a sphere-like shape or they can just simply roll, so that's how normal types can use Rollout.

First nice to see SMT acknowledged, but useful hint. Don’t debuff matador buff up yourself to his level. Max accuracy/evasion versus max is neutral hit/evasion

Im still not choosing a different starter, Cyndaquil is my fave pokemon soooo....

"Huh, that guy still makes videos? I wonder how they're doing?" I see nothing has changed here since I binged all your videos back in 2014. A surprise to be sure, but a welcome one.

7: I know it's been forever since I've played FFXII but I can't remember that boss for the life of me :/ 6: When you brought up Pokemon I knew it would be Whitney 4: Huh, I never knew Dark Link's health was related to Links health all these years. I always went into the the Water Temple with the Biggoron Sword already in hand so if I got frustrated trying to beat him I pulled it out for the cheap way to win. 1: Yeah, somebody remembers this game :D I did grow through hell beating this boss back in the day. Always had to let go of the accelerator before driving over the boost pads actually be able to pass Wizpig.

“Fawful’s Minion liked the video”

For me and my comrads, it would have to be that early Wolf boss in Tales of Vesperia, Gattuso This boss fight implements a new environment strategy tyat only works 5% of the time since you can't really taeget the flowers that are supposed to release stun spores to stun the boss provided that it is close enough to be in range of the spores or that you even have any flowers left to use do to this wolf's high speed and adds of other wolves attacking you early on This boss fight shows up so early in the game that there is hardly anywhere to grind and access to shops and inns is very low as well

Worst thing about Dark Link is that he's only a mini boss, the boss of the Water Temple is Morpha and he's nowhere near as difficult as Dark Link You all remember Morpha right? Or as I like to call him "Longshot Simulator". You use the longshot to remove its nucleus, slash it, and repeat

Haven’t watched one of your videos in years. Holy shit you got good at this. One of the funniest countdowns I’ve seen in a while.

Ah the days of Gold and Silver and getting curb stomped by that annoying cow and her dang Miltank!

I'm really glad you have Shadow Yukiko shown every time you count down each example. She is an EVIL difficulty spike in my favourite game. xD

I wanna add something about Miltank, Whitney gave her a lum berry which means if you do ANY status moves to it (ie: Sleep, Poison, Paralysis, etc) It will cure it instantly the first time you do it. *fun.*

You also forget the fact that after finishing off Trunks; Beerus and Whis will proceed to wombo combo you, leaving you no other choice but to dodge, power up and spam supers if you manage to survive their hits.

That boss in Ninja Gaiden 2 that suicides twice and is almost impossible to beat without having two revive totems. This boss comes immediately after an dungeon of rocket launcher users, hard to see snipers, and ANOTHER BOSS.

I doubt you'll consider it but I will propose it anyway... Top 10 bosses who join your side. On the list I could see Axel, Magus, Mario RPG Bowser, and even SA-X.

So much rage, so much anger. I remember facing Whitney for the first time and getting WRECKED because of that Miltank, and yes I picked Cyndaquil first. Eventually, I was able to defeat her, then and after all that....SHE HAS A TANTRUM BECAUSE SHE LOST! Surprised she wasn't higher, bit given the bosses you posted, her spot is justified.

just been recommending your videos, keep up the good work

Doom Eternal: Marauder. An enemy you're not allowed to do damage to without timing it, in a shooter all about switching tactics and weapons. Nuff said.

That fucking Miltank, *GOD THAT FUCKING MILTANK!* I remember having both heart gold and soul silver, I rolled up with my male quilava, and easily thrashed whitney's first pokemon, but then that thing kept spamming Attract! I stood no chance as it rolled me flat, then bulldozed the rest of my team who I didn't bother to train since wasn't that great at pokemon and mainly relied on my starter!

One nasty difficulty spike for me was Plague Knight’s fight in Shovel Knight, specifically Shovel Knight's campaign. By this point in the game, he’s likely going to be fourth boss you’ll tackle, and he is way harder than the three before. He’s fast, sporadic, deals splash damage, rarely stays on the ground, and teleports all over the place, and since Shovel Knight lacks the added mobility of the other three playable knights, it’s a nightmare to even land a hit or two on him without being hit yourself. I mean, you could just spam the Phase Locket and/or tank all of Plague Knight’s attacks, but by this point in the game, you probably only have 1 or 2 upgrades for your HP and Magic, so those will quickly drain. Even with all the HP/Magic upgrades, Plague Knight’s still a tough fight, one of the toughest in Shovel Knight’s campaign. The only fights I can think of from Shovel Knights campaign that are around the same difficulty or harder are Baz, the final Black Knight fight, and the Enchantress, the first of those three being an optional boss and the other two being the last two bosses of the game (That aren’t complete rehashes of previous fights) respectively.

Josh: about to talk about Kingdom Hearts Me: laughs... Also me: *r e m e m b e r s d r a g o n l a d y* *a l s o e d g y b o y* *a n d b i g b a d d i e p h a s e 2*

The keyword of this countdown is: *Preparation*

There's no way in heck Undertale isn't on here somewhere. Genocide's a *****.

Thank you support lists for helping my f2p arse through Camelot in FGO. Especially the knights of the round. Some of them took a few tries with different servants to work out their gimmicks. Worse if you know a perfect counter, but either a) don't have that servant or b) have it but haven't leveled them.

Depends on how you define 'villainous' with Team Plasma. But, while I have yet to face her, I am well aware of Whitney’s Milktank’s difficulty. As for a Gym Leader Pokémon list. In the words of Emperor Palpatine... Do it.

In the case of the RPG Valkyrie Profile 2: Silmeria, the difficulty spike after chapter 3 was so ridiculously huge that the bosses were still difficult even after ridiculous grinding.

In this context, my favorite fight was against Majima and Saejima, where they remind the players that they're still powerful characters.

My personal tip for beating Whitney: trade in a Pokémon with Headbutt, then catch yourself a Heracross for fighting type moves. The tree where it can be reliably found in is in the town with the second gym.

Another evil pig is the pig guy from Red Dead: Revolver, he was really hard .

WHOA, Legend of Legaia in the preface!? Glad people remember that

Xenoverse with Beerus and Whis, man I got so frustrated on that boss, as soon as you mentioned it, I immediately got the flashbacks, O.O

An orchestral remix of Listz' Hungarian Rhapsody as the transition theme. Josh, will you never stop being AWESOME??

10. Never got that far due to errors that would ctd my game at first map station. 9. Haven't played the original Megaman series, save for later games that can't really be called "originals", like 11, so I don't really know the Nintendo difficulty ones. 8. Even with PS2 GameShark giving you "infinite" health and Ultima Weapon early, she can still hurt you, possibly one-shotting you on harder difficulties, and still take an hour to kill. 7. That. Bloody. Dragon. Took me two hours to kill that thing, even with maxed items at level 50 on the PS2 version, just because of those spores... 6. Miltank is notorious, but can be easily done in with a lvl 30 Machoke. Though, yeah, that's the grinding thing... 5. Barely started the series, so I don't have 5, yet. 4. OoT DL was a pain. Took 30 minutes to beat him, since I had grabbed every heart piece I could find, and beat him with the BGS with half a heart left. 3. Not a fan of fighters for the most part, but it looks fun, so I might play it. But that fight is just bs for doing that. 2. I really couldn't stand when my buddies and I played Genocide, not because of the difficulty, but because we'd just played True Pacifist, and really enjoyed it. 1. Never played DKR, but that pig has always looked like a p.i.t.a. on every video I've seen.

Honestly, I thought you were gonna add C. Hook from KH chain of memories instead of maleficent.

Also, for Megaman 11, the yellow demon felt like a true difficulty spike. Yeah, I was able to beat it with power ups, but it was barely when I went for the trophy that requires no purchase. Also, I saw the original version of it in an old Megaman game, and I felt very bad for anyone who had to deal with it.

I love how most people struggled with Whitney, meanwhile I planned the team out (I was actually a Cyndaquil user) and went for a Heracross. Miltank couldn't do the attract shennanigins with Tekhi (My heracross) being female, so I had less of a hard time, more of a 'Understandable why it's hard I guess I just got lucky' time

Some I can think of are perhaps either Rusted Dragon or the Apostles of the Seed from Hellsinker, the stage 4 and 6 bosses respectively.

"Bosses that are hard to beat but not because you can't" is the next topic eh Josh? There is gonna be a lot of feels in the next list ain't there?

In my opinion, Sword Dancer 2 from Tales of Symphonia takes the cake mostly because physical attacks do only 1 damage to him and his gigantic health bar. He already hits like a truck and he has high damage spells too.

love the video great job,the intro music is also insane awesome :3

I don't recall stating this before, but an interesting little tidbit about Dark Link in Ocarina of Time: once you reach the island and cross the waters to walk to the other door, your reflection vanishes. I don't think it vanishes if you don't walk across the island first, meaning even if you walk to the other door, he won't spawn unless you walk across the island first. This suggests that Dark Link will ONLY APPEAR if your reflection is stolen, or spirited away, by a foreign obstruction. I'm surprised Gaijin Goombah hasn't done a Culture Shock analysis on this phenomenon since it sounds like it'd be right up his alley. Anyway, the more ya know. :3

I still remember being so angry about Miltank pummeling my Pokemon back in the G2 days...Especially since like you I started with a Cinderquil....

Samurai Goroh, GX Even though he's admittedly tough as a Rival racer, it's the damned Red Canyon rocks that gave me the heads up that "Hey, did you at least have enough guts to complete the tutorial? Good. Because now we're taking your guts and smearing them across your machine as you race against literal dick dastardlies"

I got Diddy Kong Racing when I was 5. Favorite racing game of all time by the way. It was used already (by my cousins, mind you) and they were already at the Wizpig boss. I can only assume they gave up because they never got past it. It took me FOUR YEARS to beat that annoying bastard but I finally did it. And funny enough, it took me another year to learn there was a hidden fifth world, where I had to encounter him again. I beat that world, got to him, and beat him on my first try. Pretty sad but I guess it is sweet revenge for all that torment the first version gave me

Forgot a few things about Whitney's Miltank that make her even more painful: - It has Stomp, which can make you flinch, so yeah, have fun trying and failing to attack for 5 turns in a row cause of that and infatuation! Next 2 are only for the remakes of Gen 2: - Miltank has Scrappy, so you can't use a ghost and hope that'll save you since normal type moves will still hit. - It's holding a Lum Berry, which immediately cures any status condition it gets once, so yeah. I really hate this whiny little child and her stupidly OP cow...

19:48 oh not again. it's like he's everywhere...

To beat dark link with the Master sword, just don't z-target him, then proceed to spam B in his direction.

I've been following you since the early days of MLP, and I just gotta say, I like you, man. You're a swell guy.

nice list Josh i definitely rember that damn pig as well *shudders* im trying to rember things that gave me a hard time i think along with wizpig rocket Racer from Lego Racers comes to mind as a HUGE difficutly spike since you also had to perfect that race as well and it has a bit of luck to it

Monsoon from Metal Gear Rising comes to mind when talking about difficulty spikes in games.

Dificulty spikes,ey? *eggman : "you know what they said, the more the merrier" flashbacks*

Congratulations, Josh The part where you talk about how to beat Boo Beam Trap made laugh so hard That I cried.

Josh: Plan before you fight Maleficent’s dragon form! Me: Leeeeroy Jenkins! *SCORCHED*

Well, playing SMT 3 thinking it was a pokemon was the mistake here lol

Zehnoa from Trials of Mana. Both the original and the remake. It's basically Bullet Hell: the Boss Fight. ESPECIALLY if you don't have the proper spells to hit its weakness. Do not neglect the Luck path in Angela's Skill Tree. You'll need Cyclone.

SOOOO Fun fact, i was playing a rom of Masterquest OoT and i didn't have the megaton hammer cause you don't have to (and indeed maybe can't do) the fire temple before the water temple, so i only had my base master sword, i learned that he copies your moves really well, when you target him, the way i was able to get around his strenghts was to just start swinging and spin attacking beside him and not at him

Oooph I forgot how rough Wizpig was in that game. I'm surprised Genichiro from Sekiro didn't get a mention though.