E/E10+ Rated Games That Are Too Hard For Most Kids to Beat

[Randoman]

I thought I'd make this topic since I always found some E/E10+ rated games rather ironic, in terms of them being appropriate/family friendly enough but being too hard for most kids in that age group to be able to make it to defeat (we're talking just beat the main game, not completing 100%). Sure, the appropriateness rating isn't supposed to reflect the difficulty, but even then I can't help but feel it's quite the oxymoron somehow, to some strange degree. And for discussion purposes, we're not assuming the hardest mode of a game (since I doubt most kids would, for example, pick and stick through H5 of Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon).

Donkey Kong Country Returns and Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze would be my first pick (and they're the games that made me come up with this topic in the first place). I thought to myself one time "when I have kids, I'm going to let Mario, Donkey Kong, and Kirby be among the first games they play." Then when I thought of the two newest Donkey Kong Country games, I was thinking

"...yeahhh, maybe that's a bad choice..."

"But they're completely E-Rated and clean!!"

"True, but those games would probably frustrate them like crazy and I doubt they'd go far in those games."

Dillon's Rolling Western and its sequel also come to mind. I can definitely see kids defeating the first 3-5 levels in both games, but them making it to the end, let alone the last 4-5 levels of the game? Not likely. There's way too much resource handling and planning in terms of turret setups and working with limited money and other resources, and making all those decisions and choosing what elements to prioritize and compromise, in addition to making split second decisions during the raids (in terms of what enemies to go after first, which turrets to allow to be destroyed, and let's not forget protecting both the town and the train in certain parts) definitely sounds like something most kids couldn't manage at the last few levels. I'd be thoroughly impressed at any kid in his elementary school years being able to defeat either of the two games, especially the latter with the crazy final boss that has almost no openings in his final phase.

The Mysterious Murasame Castle is another one. The game practically punishes you for staying in the same area for too long and even when you do constantly stay on the move, you literally have to pull some crazy samurai dodging moves and reflexes to make it through. The game feels like a Zelda game where a majority of the puzzle and exploration aspects being replaced with shoot-em-up aspects (and not the easy kind of shoot-em-ups. Then again, both Zelda and Murasame Castle were based off the same engine). As with Dillon's Rolling Western, I'd give crazy respect to an elementary school kid who has the patience and the reflexes to beat this game.

Maybe I'm underestimating the gaming skills of kids these days, but those games I listed above heavily come to mind with them being among the hardest E/E10 rated games that I've played. And if it's worth anything, for reference I was able to defeat Super Mario World when I was 9 and All Super Mario All Star's games (even Lost Levels) and Final Fantasy IV when I was 11. Feel free to list games that you defeated before your teen years as well. It should help set a reference point to what kind of games are manageable enough for kids to defeat.

[MCProductions]

Crash Bandicoot 1. HOW THE FUCK DID I BEAT THIS when I was six? I can't beat it now for sure, Slippery Climb I'm looking at you, but I still have the 100% save file from when I was younger. Despite the plethora of lives you'll be choking on in the game, I swear Slippery Climb and Sunset Vista are the reason you get them, and it's not like these are optional stages, they're mandatory for standard completion, and then you have the save system, which is bullshit.

Sonic 2 on the Game gear, SPECIFICALLY the Game Gear port

Any Mega Man game ever

[Zera]

Okay, so I played games like Super Mario World when I was really young, well before I was able to beat them. Just beating the next level was satisfying, y'know? Perhaps I only speak from my own childhood, but I swear the quality matters FAR more than the difficulty in my overall enjoyment. Most games you call "frustrating" aren't hard so much as they are "poorly designed", unless you're going REALLY hard like Ikaruga. In other words, yes, you should absolutely give your kids DKC Returns! DO IT!

E games that tend to challenge me include Donkey Kong, Pikmin, Sonic, Advance Wars, Bangai-O, and sometimes Mario or Zelda. Also, Super Metroid is rated E, so your kids can play that too.

[Knight Falchion]

The first ones that come to mind are Radiant Dawn and to a lesser extent Shadow Dragon. While the latter is pretty easy on Normal, in my experience it's hard for younger kids to grasp how to play strategy games. I think Radiant Dawn speaks for itself.

Also seconding MC on Mega Man games since I can't think of any other examples right now and my library is mostly T or M-rated games

Edited January 10, 2017 by Knight Falchion

[The DanMan]

Mega Man.

Mega Man.

MEGA MAN.

[Refa]

I don't get why people are citing Mega Man. Clearly it was not too hard for most kids to beat, considering that was its target demographic and it was incredibly successful...

[The DanMan]

I don't get why people are citing Mega Man. Clearly it was not too hard for most kids to beat, considering that was its target demographic and it was incredibly successful...

The standards back in the NES/SNES days for difficulty were much higher.

After that, I'm pretty sure not many new fans got into it; it was mostly just those who'd played the Classic and X series gradually dropping off.

The last mainline Mega Man game, ZX: Advent, failed to break 100,000 units-- on the DS. And outside of crappy English voice acting (which every game in the series with voice acting not named X8 or Maverick Hunter X has), it's a pretty solid game.

Of course, I've only ever beaten it on easy...

The relative lack of innovation eventually caused older fans to drop the series and the high difficulty kept younger would-be fans from enjoying it. Mega Man had been slowly declining since midway through the X series.

[Refa]

So you were citing Mega Man in general and not just the Classic series? Talk about the literal definition of painting with broad strokes. There a lot of individual Mega Man games (Mega Man 5 comes to mind, as well as the ENTIRE Battle Network series) that sold well and weren't that hard.

EDIT By the way, the fact that later games HAD Easy modes was done to increase accessibility, so I'm not sure how you can talk about how sales declined because the games were too hard when there were definitely ways of circumventing that difficulty.

Edited January 10, 2017 by Refa

[The DanMan]

So you were citing Mega Man in general and not just the Classic series? Talk about the literal definition of painting with broad strokes. There a lot of individual Mega Man games (Mega Man 5 comes to mind, as well as the ENTIRE Battle Network series) that sold well and weren't that hard.

I should've specified the mainline games: Classic, X, Zero, and (to a deliberately lesser extent) ZX.

And the easy modes in the Zero Collection and ZX games are still moderately challenging to me-- a 17 year-old. I couldn't imagine a 7 year old picking them up nowadays.

[Jedi]

They are still plenty beatable with learning the games.

The Megaman Xtreme games aren't that difficult either, honestly I wouldn't call most Megaman games hard in the first place. Zero might be the lone exception, but you have plenty of things given to you to make the game easier on yourself.

The games aren't super punishing for the most part unless its like Megaman & Bass either.

I've played much much more difficult games in my lifetime so maybe I'm a tad skewed. Then again I grew up with Contra and Ninja Gaiden among other things.

Edited January 10, 2017 by Jedi The Red

[Blitzrick3]

From personal experience I would say Digimon World (1). It would be almost impossible for any kid to beat the game without a walkthought. Couple that with the digivolution lines being almost completly omitted.

[Refa]

I should've specified the mainline games: Classic, X, Zero, and (to a deliberately lesser extent) ZX.

And the easy modes in the Zero Collection and ZX games are still moderately challenging to me-- a 17 year-old. I couldn't imagine a 7 year old picking them up nowadays.

Adding on to what Jedi said, several of the individual games themselves are much easier. But anyways, if the only thing holding me off from playing a Mega Man game was its difficulty and I heard there was an Easy Mode, I'd at least be more interested in the game. I don't think children really pay attention to that sort of thing when deciding to buy a game, though. Also while I'm not familiar with ZX Advent's Easy Mode, I can say that Mega Man 10 and Mega Man Powered Up both had extremely forgiving Easy Modes. Definitely not hard enough to keep newer fans from enjoying the games, at any rate. Also, you're really underestimating how patient children are. Something that's moderately challenging to you might be a lot easier when you have all of the time in the world to figure it out (especially since after you understand the basic premise, you really don't need a guide book or knowledge of any arcane mechanics for...a majority of the games). For example, I find recent Mario games to be moderately challenging but they clearly can still appeal to children despite that.

Anyways, the Mega Man games in those series that I'd consider to be somewhat inaccessible for beginners are: MM1 (easiest, but only if you know it and has several moments of obnoxious difficulty), MM2 (Boobeam Trap, and Wily Stages in general can be frustrating for a newer player), MM3 (Doc Robots are actually a pretty sizeable difficulty spike), MM7 (could just be me, but the bosses felt harder than they were in the NES games), MM9 (basically the hardest MM game, also it's more interesting to play w/perspective), MMX3 (generally harder than the previous two games), MMX6 ('Nuff said), MMX7 (because it's a shit game), none of the Zero games if you're playing the Zero Collection (has a Super Easy mode that makes running through those games extremely easy), and ZX (honestly, more for how confusing its map is over how challenging it is).

[Reality]

The Adventures of Cookies and Cream

Developed by From Software

It's technically "intended" to be played co-op, probably with the philosophy that the parent will help the child through. The problem is, that co-op makes many of the later stages harder than they already are, because for a lot of the later platforming, the two characters must be in sync. Single player takes longer to get hard, but controlling both charathers with half of one controller each and having to watch both requires unexpectedly high coordination. Sky world part 3, and Bonus world part 2 standout as ridiculous even for single player.

The game is also difficult because you lose 20 seconds off the timer for taking damage/falling instead of using a health system. The level timers in this game are typically not generous to begin with, and losing a minute because of trying to partner with a child makes it worse.

I'm counting beating all worlds as too difficult for a child... getting all (possible) S ranks is more comparable to Great Giana sister's Hardcore mode. Some levels in this game blatantly aren't possible to S rank on.

After a few frustrating hours your child partner will leave, and you'll feel the need to take revenge by beating the game solo, and then, and only then, will your realize that the makeshift cutesey graphics and soundtrack composed of literal farm animals bleating was never meant for the amusement of children, but for the express purpose of mocking the experienced gamer trapped in this trojan horse.

The blurbs describing the game on the back of the box are absurdly insulting or at least misguided once you've beaten it for yourself.

You can see it on one of the AGDQ bonus streams, where it turns into a Let's play because the original runners leave after the 4th world and the audience complete the rest of the game. People like me bought it by checking From Software'se list of published games and thinking it would be funny to own a kiddy game made by the developers of dark souls.

Edited January 10, 2017 by Reality

[Shin]

Zelda II, I struggled to progress through it as an adult, I have no clue how anyone as a child would be able to get through it without a lot of practice.

[Rend Keaven]

Wind Waker was a 3+ when it was released in the UK. Sure it was easy to play, but I don't see a three year old reading all the dialogue and expecting to know the words and beat the first dungeon, especially if there's a stealth section before the first dungeon that I've seen 8 year olds struggle with.

[Dark Holy Elf]

MMX3 (generally harder than the previous two games),

Whoooa, really? I thought that was the easiest of the SNES X games by quite a lot! Maybe I'm biased because I played X1 when I was younger it was first, but when I played them years later I thought X2 was brutal (basically every Sigma stage boss is a nightmare) and X3 was easy mode by comparison, to the point where I promptly replayed it with no upgrades and still didn't have much trouble.

On topic, I dunno, I don't think there are many games I'd consider too hard for a child. I think kids are a lot more willing to die 50 times time to one level/boss than adults are, honestly.

[Refa]

Whoooa, really? I thought that was the easiest of the SNES X games by quite a lot! Maybe I'm biased because I played X1 when I was younger it was first, but when I played them years later I thought X2 was brutal (basically every Sigma stage boss is a nightmare) and X3 was easy mode by comparison, to the point where I promptly replayed it with no upgrades and still didn't have much trouble.

On topic, I dunno, I don't think there are many games I'd consider too hard for a child. I think kids are a lot more willing to die 50 times time to one level/boss than adults are, honestly.

Well, keep in mind that in the end, I'm just as biased as you haha. I do remember the general consensus being that X3 was harder than the rest, but admittedly I haven't played any of the X games in a long time.

Also I generally agree, although I think adults would be more suited to games that are more than just reflexes. For example, I would say that Professor Layton could give kids a lot of trouble. I'd never be able to play through that when I was a kid anyways.