Pointless Self-Imposed Challenges

[CelesJessa]

So, I have this bad habit of trying ridiculous things in games, just to see if I can. I think it's from growing up with two brothers who would turn their back to the screen when playing TMNT: Turtles in Time, and play it all the way through without looking at the screen once. (Neerds)

Anyway, my most recent stupid achievement is beating Final Fantasy 6 with only four characters. Basically, as soon as I found Setzer in the World of Ruin I decided to attack Kefka's tower.

http://img193.imageshack.us/img193/8422/shatf.png
This looks like a great idea!

Well, it was more like, as soon as I found Setzer I leveled the hell up until my team was at least twice the recommended level for taking on Kefka (http://img59.imageshack.us/img59/492/ff6m.jpg). It was still pretty nasty because that still meant you had teams of one person going through the Tower and beating the Statues (that was actually the hardest part. My teams were: Celes on one team, Edgar on another, and Sabin and Setzer on the other (not in that order)) And not to mention, you know that nifty feature during the final battles where if someone is out of commission it replaces them with someone else in the lineup? Well, if nobody else is in the lineup it just gets rid of them completely, so you can't bring them back at all. Add that to the fact that the form right before you fight Kefka's final attack can instantly take out one or more of your party members in one shot, you can get in trouble pretty quickly.

http://img339.imageshack.us/img339/2278/kefkasdyingbro.png
Suck it.

I still beat it though. To be honest, by the time I leveled up that far I was pretty much murdering everything in my path, even in my teams that only had one person. Why did I decide to do it? Just to see how the ending would change. (protip: it doesn't change that much. (http://img254.imageshack.us/img254/284/cutem0.jpg))

So I was wondering, what kind of stupid self-imposed challenges have you guys ever put on yourselves when playing a game?

[Aerozord]

I was working on playing FF1 with only a single black belt. He leveled so fast only bosses could survive more then one hit. And by more then, I mean I occasionally had to attack them twice. Problem was against groups of monsters. They nickle and dimed me to death

[mauve]

I'm more prone to doing the opposite-- In FF12, I set my overpowered end-of-the-game team loose in the earliest levels of the game and watched the AI-controlled members of my party go to town on everything in a six-mile radius.

Watching unarmed Basch chase down and sucker-punch friendly Dreamhares to death is totally worth the time I spent futzing with his gambits to get him to do that.

[RickZarber]

I think it's from growing up with two brothers who would turn their back to the screen when playing TMNT: Turtles in Time, and play it all the way through without looking at the screen once.That is hardcore awesome.

I'm not usually one for making games harder, but there happens to be a recent example: the other day when I was playing through Portal again out of boredom, (and also because I needed to play something I was good at after finding out how much I suck at TF2,) I decided to "clean up" by incinerating every loose object in every level. So basically, I carted shit around with me through the levels until I could throw it into an emancipation field. By the end of the live fire level, I had a pretty impressive pile of broken 'bots, cameras, cubes, and rat man miscellany.

[McTahr]

ADOM contains my greatest moments of self-imposed challenges.

Link. (http://www.adomgb.info/challenge.html)

I've tried Eternium, Iron, Lithium, Steel, Titanium, and Restricted games.

Lithium is actually terribly easy if the RNG plays in your favor and you get the spells/whatever needed to skip the Eternal Guardian/Dwarven Graveyard questlines.

[Specterbane]

The only real challenge I can recall putting myself to was pretty tame, beating all the 8-bit megaman bosses (except for the original since I'll never have that game practiced enough) with just plasma to see if you really can start with anyone easily. It is pretty easy, especially as you get to 5 and 6 where they're just phoning it in. I can't remember if I've done it with any of the other ones that come after that, but it's really just a matter of memorizing a simple pattern and not letting yourself slip.

[PyrosNine]

I'm actually currently playing Aria of Sorrow in a "Punchyfist" run, in respect of a Demon Souls run on Let's Play archive wherein a character went through a game full of weapons and enemies with stronger weapons with just his character's fists, equipping only knuckles or hand to hand weaponry.

This so far has limited me to three weapons, the knuckles, the cutall, and the mach-fist, which I haven't actually got yet.

To further supplement my punching/Kung Fu, I found that Aria of Sorrow expected someone to go all fists:

Bullet: Were-jaguar/Balore (Dragon Fist Punch) Were-tiger (Uppercut)
Guardian: Cagnazzo: Rapid fire punching from my STAND (ORE ORE ORE)
Enchanted: Anything that increases strength, but Headhunter's great for letting me gain strength from all those useless non punchy souls).
Ability: Kicker Skeleton (Fly Kicks)

However, the problem with this kind of run is that it requires me to use a lot of magic (or find and kill the Iron golem) because the accursed Belmont spasm occurs when I touch enemies, and punching enemies means I have to get real close-like, then give them what for. Some enemies sprites or animations make this difficult/impossible, requiring me to kill them with other means. With the kicker soul, I can cherrytap anything to death without harm, but for the most part I have to blast the more annoying enemies with my magicks.

On the whole however, I'm seeing a curve, as the sheer difficulty in hitting enemies (and avoiding getting hit) has increased my skill at the game immensely, and after a certain point even without using attack boosts from clothing or souls I gain more damage per level than I would from upgrading to stronger weapons, and I can attack much faster with my fists than most swords. I punched out Death without breaking a sweat, funnily enough.

The most satisfying fights happen to be the fights against other martial artists in the castle (thought I can't wait to fight Julius) as Persephone, the Were line, and Kicker Skeleton, all fight with the same sort of rules as I do, so I'm not getting annoyed that some female monster's hair is keeping me from punching her.

The only time I ever broke this challenge, was when I found the handgun. It's just...well...I wanted to play like Alucard (not Genya Arikado) for a bit, as I forgot to grab it the first time I played the game.

[DarkDrgon]

my favorite challenges are solo party runs of RPGs. It makes breath of fire 2 obscenely difficult, since every character has a solo adventure. What I tend to do is go as much as I can solo, and make the rest a low-level run (I don't get Bleu out of principle)

Sten's solo section is the hardest, because Trubo will fuck you up.

[Fifthfiend]

Does "really high" count?

[EVILNess]

my favorite challenges are solo party runs of RPGs. It makes breath of fire 2 obscenely difficult, since every character has a solo adventure. What I tend to do is go as much as I can solo, and make the rest a low-level run (I don't get Bleu out of principle)

Sten's solo section is the hardest, because Trubo will fuck you up.

I recently did a low level run through of the original Breath of Fire. I beat Tyr's Real Form without using the ultimate dragon spell to cheese her to death (It gives you 999 HP and you do 999 dmg every shot) I basically found out that the game is suprisingly easy to do low leveled because of the lesser dragon transformations giving you a set amount of dmg each turn plus items like the EKey and the FlameRP which to do large numbers of set amounts of damage, not to mention the StarHR. Marble3s make the normal battles trivial.Basically I beat Tyr with little problem, although there was a few close calls in the fight.

[DarkDrgon]

I recently did a low level run through of the original Breath of Fire. I beat Tyr's Real Form without using the ultimate dragon spell to cheese her to death (It gives you 999 HP and you do 999 dmg every shot) I basically found out that the game is suprisingly easy to do low leveled because of the lesser dragon transformations giving you a set amount of dmg each turn plus items like the EKey and the FlameRP which to do large numbers of set amounts of damage, not to mention the StarHR. Marble3s make the normal battles trivial.Basically I beat Tyr with little problem, although there was a few close calls in the fight.

The first one isn't too bad. The reason the second is so hard is because of the story chokepoints, where you have to run through a dungeon Solo. If you're trying to do a low-level game, you need to have the chef carpenter in Township, to synth together damage items.

[Raiden]

I used to play Pokemon Red and Blue so much as a kid, I did the challenge where if your pokemon faints, you have to consider it dead and let it go. That got boring after a while so I upped the ante.

My player's inventory was a backpack, a belt, and two pockets. The backpack could hold the bicycle and map and stuff that didn't affect the actual pokemon combat. My belt could hold six pokeballs, either full or empty. And I only had two pockets for things like potions and such. Which meant at any given time I could only have 6 pokeballs and 2 useable items on my person. If I had a full team of six pokemon while walking around in the wild and found a pokemon I really wanted, I had to ignore it because I couldn't fit anymore on my belt and I didn't let myself use the teleporting pokemon crap. And also meant I could have at max maybe 2 potions, or 1 potion and 1 antidote and other such stuff. Plus I kept the whole "fainting means you have to release them bit".

Made the game a LOT harder.

[Seil]

So I decided to play Fallout 3 like I would if I was actually the stalwart hero of the land. I had very good karma even at the point where Roy and whatsisface kill all the humans in Tenpenny tower. So I killed Roy and whatsisface. That'll show them to betray my trust and kill everyone.

I did happen to leave the Overseer alive at my return to the vault, though. So he's fine, a few speech challenges later.

[Raiden]

Is that really much of a self-imposed challenge? I mean, they give you achievements for that.

[Seil]

Well, my challenge is playing RPG's as the person I am in real life regardless of the in-game consequences, so I don't know.

[akaSM]

I'll start playing Bioshock this week, and I'll go with what it seems to be the hard route; it seems little sisters can be either rescued or killed, and I just can't feel ok by killing them :(. Also, the only contact I've had with Bioshock is...well, that Rapture thing someone made in Minecraft ^_^

[Doc ock rokc]

I'll start playing Bioshock this week, and I'll go with what it seems to be the hard route; it seems little sisters can be either rescued or killed, and I just can't feel ok by killing them :(. Also, the only contact I've had with Bioshock is...well, that Rapture thing someone made in Minecraft ^_^

Oh Your going to have SOOO much fun!

[Kerensky287]

I have spent several games of TF2 setting right mouse to "move forward", picking a class that isn't Scout, and then giving up the keyboard.

What results is a game where my only options are primary fire, switch weapons, turn/look around, and move forward.

It works surprisingly well with Backburner Pyro and Huntsman Sniper.

[EVILNess]

I will say that I did beat the demi-fiend on Digital Devil Saga without using that red-star strategy (Or whatever it is called.) cause I didn't know it existed at that particular point in time.

Not that it makes the fight much easier anyway.

I have also done a solo Ramza playthrough on FFT. Man, that first fight is irritating as fuck cause if things don't go a certain way you are hosed. Other than that it's pretty easy if you can keep yourself from getting surrounded.

What else... I did a solo white mage run on Final Fantasy many years ago. Hmm... anything else?

I have also beaten DMC, Ninja Gaiden (Not Black), and DM3 on the hardest difficulty, but I beat them back to back. I would say that DMC3 is the hardest, but I had the least trouble with it cause I had just beat two very similar games. DMC kicked my ass at first. Also, fuck Dante Must Die mode, you couldn't pay me to inflict that on myself. Those of you that have done it I salute you but I never will.

I got all the way to Magicant on Earthbound in a No Weapons/Armor/Bottlerockets run. The hardest part was getting leveled up to the point where you can use PSI Rockin, and of course the random battles were much deadlier than most of the bosses (Minus Plague Rat of Dooom, he was a bitch.) I never did finish it though cause the save battery in my cart is dead now. One day I'm gonna look into replacing it with a new one.

Umm, oh not really a imposed challenge but I did beat FF4 Hardtype when it was released with Final Fantasy Chronicles. That shit was borderline not fun let me tell you.

I have also tried several times to get Excalibur 2 in FF9. I have yet to succeed though.

That's all I can think of...

[phil_]

I think I might try Pyros's fist challenge in Aria of Sorrow. I'd like an excuse to play it again.

[greed]

I started Pyros' kung fu master challenge last night with Dawn of Sorrow. It's pretty fun. Can't wait til I get the werewolf soul. The Slaughterer soul is what I'm currently using and that's pretty ace.

[A Zarkin' Frood]

I know it's stupid, but some people consider this a self-imposed challenge. I have no idea why so many people suck so hard at Contra though and claim it's a hard game. Especially the first game was easy as that one game on easy mode. But I play it without the Konami code. There I said it would sound stupid, but since so many people see it as mandatory you could probably say it's a self-imposed challenge. Not impressive, or anything, mind you.

I also once started a Dawn of Sorrow playthrough with on hard and limited myself to use only the weakest tier of weapons, because the game is pretty easy. I made pretty good progress, but got distracted by something else. I don't know how far I got. It might've been the Puppetmaster fight. I'm not sure.

Another thing I started but never finished was a run of Nocturne, where I only used the first three demon's I caught (that means I never changed my party) Again I got distracted by something.

One thing I finished, though, and it was easier than I expected, was a run of Metal Gear Solid two without attacking guards or using any weapons outside the boss fights (Because I'm a pussy).

These self-imposed challenges are mostly something I do when I have really nothing else to do or I'm waiting for some other game or means of entertainment to arrive in my lair.

[Nikose Tyris]

Playing a personal challenge in SoulSilver right now.

1) Pick 6 pokemon that all share a type (Pure type preferred, it's cheap to use dual types to expand your range) and those will be the only pokemon you may use. (You may trade in eggs to provide for your lineup.) (I'm going Electric this run)

2) Catch everything you see/find unless you have one already.

3) Never use an item on your pokemon. No Repel. No Escape Ropes. Only use what Key Items are required. (Also HM's only).

4) Accept every failure. Never reset to avoid a loss.

5) Defeat Red.

My Pokedex is currently at 76 caught; I started with Pichu and Shinx. my other 4 pokemon will be joining the team soon enough. I have 4 gym badges so far.

[Geminex]

Ever heard of a nuzlocke run?
Basically, you play a pokemon game with hardcore rules.
Said rules being that if a pokemon gets defeated in battle, it counts as dead.
You can only catch 1 new pokemon per area, and it has to be the first one you find.

There's a bunch of other rules restricting item use and stuff like that, but those're more optional.

Anyway, it makes pokemon pretty intense. Try it sometime.

[Nikose Tyris]

I've heard of it, I just really don't want to do it. Nuzlocke runs seem counterintuitive to what pokemon's based around (Collecting!) and it doesn't really appeal to me.

Also, my "Only 6, all the same type" has been working out lovely for me so far, and almost seems more challenging. Electric types do not approve of Miltank, nor does Miltank approve of Electric types.

Also fuck Milk Drink, I hate that move as much as I hate rollout.

[Token]

I did a Nuzlocke run of Pokemon Quartz this summer, but quit near the end when A) I got my new laptop, and B) I realized I was getting attached to the fakemons. Then I decided to do something entirely fucking crazy: a Nuzlocke run of the TCG video game. If a card got knocked out, I wrote it down, took it out of my deck, and never used it again. Really fun, really challenging.

[Geminex]

Oh god, the TCG was so rad.
And I can imagine! Jesus, did you only do it for pokemon, or for energy cards and stuff like that as well?
For me, half the game hinged on making sacrifces at the right times, so yeah... that'd murder me!
I might try it.

As for getting attached, I'm pretty sure that's the point of the nuzlocke run. I certainly did. -.-

[Token]

If the energy was attached to something that was knocked out, it was out of the deck. Luckily, Energy is easy to come by.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

I did a single character run of FF6 once. I had troubles in the final tower (cause my other parties had no characters with levels or equipment) till somehow my Mog went super in his dance modes and took out Doom by himself. My single character was effectively invincible though- one of Kefka's early forms has a 10 attack strike when he dies which is normally brutal- 6 of hem missed, the ones tha hit did about 200 damage each.
We used to beat various Tekken games blindfolded but that's pretty easy with certain characters.
I once won all the cups on Mario Superstars Strikers without fouling a single opponent (I would restart when if I did it by accident). That was- difficult.

[Loyal]

Pokemon TCGOh dear. You're giving me memories. I think I need to listen to the soundtrack again.

I'm planning on doing a FE: Radiant Dawn run where you have to use all the Laguz, once classes are over and I have a wealth of free time once more. Due to the way this game runs, most of the challenge runs used in other FE games are... problematic. So I have to make do by choosing working with the gimped classes.

[Magic_Marker]

I'm trying to get in shape. Based on my progress I'd say it qualifies as pointless and self imposed.

[PyrosNine]

For those attempting a Sorrows fist challenge:

The most important technique in your arsenal is upon seeing an enemy, getting on your hands and knees (as if begging forgiveness) then punch the enemy in the junk. Strike hard, strike quickly, then turn around and slide away. Swordsman and Weapon Masters may comment on your lack of honor, but a real kung fu master knows that whatever works is the most efficient method.

In other words, to not get hurt by most early attacks and monsters the best method is to crouch and punch, back up, then do it again. Skeletons and armors will typically attack the air above you with long range attacks, leaving their junk exposed, and if you space it right you can do a lot of damage before fleeing (because you'll take damage when their legs reach you).

But once you've mastered this technique you can punch anything, from Cthultu to Vampires, to Cute Anime Moe blobs.

Show them that your pimp hand is indeed strong!

[Yrcrazypa]

I'm doing a Mount and Blade Warband run where I only use cavalry. Oh, you mean challenges! Haha, I thought you meant things that make the game pathetically, hilariously easy.

[DarkDrgon]

I might do a live LP of fallout 3 on Blog TV during break. It's gonna be a challenge because I've never played it, and I'm going to follow what everyone in the room says to do.