Hardest Space Game You Ever Played And Completed

[Bamax]

For me it was Star Trek TNG Echoes Of The Past For Sega Genesis (SNES is too easy and not as fun).

The fact that the RPG Lady was wrecked in this space battle is an experience I knew all too well. Nearly a PTSD experience if you go in blind not knowing what's coming or being prepared at all lol.

The fun thing is you can talk your way out of all space battles but this one... which will also make you VERY unprepared for this... nonstop onslaught.

I remember playing and repairing my ship while being fired on, only to go back to tactical and dodge as best I could while I healed. You can even be damaged so much you just sit still and get pounded with weapons offline.

It's brutal.

But wow did I feel I could take on anything after I beat that game! It was an acomplishment.


https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RpzAUIxsV-I

[Arioch]

I don't know if it counts as a "space game," but the last mission of the XCOM2 "Shen's Last Gift" DLC was insanely difficult. I still replay XCOM2 a ton, but I do NOT include the missions from that DLC.

[Cthulhu]

The hardest game for me was the final mission in the original Homeworld. Not only was it a massive campaign on a then innovative 3D map, it was also limited by the hardware. Even my 3dfx Voodoo 3 had trouble with rendering it all, stuttering at around 15fps.

[gaerzi]

I vaguely remember an old Space Marines game you had to clean out derelict space hulks, and I never managed to go further than three rooms in in the demo version I had from some game magazine CD. This one, I'm pretty sure.

Of course that might have been mostly because I didn't understand how the UI worked. I'm sure with a game manual it would have been better. Also if it had been translated, because I didn't understand English as well as I do now back then. I had also never heard about Warhammer 40K before so basically I had no idea what I was doing and why.

[Turrosh Mak]

I'm just going to drop this here. Let the PTSD commence:

[icekatze]

hi hi

Although it wasn't an official ending, visiting and returning from all the planets in Kerbal Space Program was probably the hardest. (Especially Eve.)

Honorable mentions:
• Colony Wars, getting all the way through to the "best," ending was no small feat for me back when I was in primary school.
• Original XCOM, which I probably wouldn't have been able to beat without a little bit of save scumming.
• Wing Commander Prophecies, if only because I was a wee little thing at the time.

[avatar576]

Not much of a gamer myself, mainly because I am t-e-r-r-i-b-l-e at video games. True story: I used to get lost in the bathroom playing GoldenEye 007 for N64 in multiplayer games. I'd spawn there and couldn't find my way out.
Although I used to play StarCraft on Battle.net way back in the day and could hold my own in 3v3 matches, I never did beat the single-player game without cheat codes. I still play MOO2 from time to time (which is how I found this comic), but I've never made it past Average difficulty.
I played Star Trek Online for a few years, but as an MMORPG, you don't really "beat" the game.

[dragoongfa]

I have found that sci-fi and space games in general tend to have some very obvious cheese tactics when it comes to completing them. I remember having difficulty with certain missions in various games but once I try the cheese approach they all become far too easy:

Notable examples:

Homeworld 1: I found it extremely frustrating at first (didn't help that I played Homeworld 2 first and I missed certain gameplay aspects of the sequel) but then I realized that salvage corvettes can capture enemy ships... Yes, I stole everything that wasn't bolted down when I restarted the campaign. Yes it made everything a breeze, no the feeling of dirtyness inside me was not enough to drown out the lolz.

Homeworld 2: Certain missions were annoying at first, until I learned how to properly turtle and consolidate the various gains while braceing for the A.I.s idiotic assaults. Made for longer than average missions but it was far too easy to just turtle and brace for the continuous assaults as the A.I. which never masses their power for a knockout strik, instead feeding their fleets into the grinder.

If I was to name a game that was Hard to master, with proper hard missions and which felt good completing then that would be the fan made: Wind Commander Saga: The Darkest Dawn. The Cheese tactics were not game breaking and were actually mandatory for certain late missions.

I don't know if it counts as a "space game," but the last mission of the XCOM2 "Shen's Last Gift" DLC was insanely difficult. I still replay XCOM2 a ton, but I do NOT include the missions from that DLC.

Shen's last gift missions are weird, in that they are supposed to be done early enough in the campaign to get access to SPARKs while requiring a tailored fit squad with moderately leveled and outfitted soldiers but when you get at that point the campaign is about to enter the mid game and there are better avenues to invest resources than a SPARK or two. It however is a must if you play with the long war mod. Then the investment is worth it.

[Arioch]

Yeah, the SPARK's just aren't worthwhile to build in a normal campaign... they're not particularly better than regular soldiers, since they take a lot of damage that must be healed, and can't use cover to avoid damage, and have to level up just like regular soldiers.

[Bamax]

Recently played the TNG Echoes Of The Past via an emulator and it was even harder than I remember.

At least now I understand why I was sweating after playing back in the day.

[elorran]

There is a little known turn based strategy game called Stars! Its very basic on user interface as came out in the mid 90's, and poetically looks like a glorified windows 3.1 spread sheet application from that era.
Its basically a empire build game much akin to Master of Orion. There is a race type called "inner strength" which has a number of pros and cons, but the AI version of the race are effectively pacifists and relatively easy to conquer. But if you allow them to build up enough and then anger them, they immediately build giant artificial asteroids and throw them at your planets enmass.
Finding a group of these huddled up in an alliance late into a game can cost you half an empire the following turn. Much as I found out one late evening of "just one more turn" some years ago.

[Turrosh Mak]

I used to host games of STARS! on AOL in the late 90s (96 - 97). The host would download everyone's order files by email then generate the results and send them back out at 28800 baud. We learned the power of the 1 immune JOAT and nubians loaded with antimatter pulverizers and energy capacitors. Good times long past.

[elorran]

Beam weapons seem to be the favoured thing for the online player base, and they're right up to a point. But I was always a fan of capital missiles enmass, especially when the common strategy was to build energy weapon ships and "forget" to have jammers on hand to counter the missiles. The mere fact that they deal damage half and half to shields and armour, makes them great siege weapons. But you couldn't just field those alone or you'd get so screwed over. Fond memories

[Bamax]

Curiously the TNG game plays like an episode of TNG.... and it rewards diplomacy and peace and punishes you if you prefer war and hostility.

The Romulans and just about anyone else flies unbidden into the neutral zone and you are the only ship on patrol.

Logically Starfleet expects you to survive because Picard is known for diplomacy, but if you choose to literally blow Romulans to space dust again and again... not only will Picard berate the player, but the Romulans will open fire on you on sight instead of even allowing you the time to repair your ship.

I have had tp repair my ship to go to warp again only to get attacked and watch the damage metrrs spike in the engineering room.

Leaving me no choice but to battle it out or die.

NPC spaceships have infinite photon torpedoes, fire phasers in pulses, and also have single regenerative shields.

The player has partition regenerative shields, meaning one side can fail if hit enough while the others stay up. Unlike NPC's the player only has 256 photon torpedoes.

Torpedoes do light damage anyway unless you manage to hit a bunch of them on target.... which is harder than it sounds.

Player phasers fire continuously when fully charged, and do the most damage but only at close range.

Which means that if damaged you have to wade through storm volleys of torpedoes without getting hit much and then zap with your phasers and run away if their phasers seal too much damage so you can heal.

[Nemo]

Honestly... Tie Fighter.

XCOM is certainly difficult - and much of that rests in the razor's edge you have in resources coupled with RNG. Tie Fighter was just scripted to kill you mercilessly. And if completing the mission isn't difficult enough, going for the bonus objectives and secret missions is.

Also, the briefing officer is THE voice of the Empire. Altogether far and away better than anything you will find from Disney or EA. Sad.

[boldilocks]

Probably either Star Control 2 or, there's this ancient sci-fi strategy game where you control a world and from what I recall you get contact with an alien species only for them to be swiftly wiped out by some unknown enemy. I never even made it to when that unknown enemy reached me. Can't remember the name of the game.

[DevilDalek]

Hardest, Aurora x4, dunno if you could ever complete the game though.
Completed,
Minesweeper,
Seriously, I have the most abysmal luck at it.. every **** time, boom, something sinks, its like navel mines were all made with my name on them. I should never be put in charge of a maritime fleet, ever.

[G. Janssen]

Independence War or I-War from Particle Systems. Still available on Steam. Newtonian physics, two cannons with limited shots, limited shields. Very realistic ships. It was a sim as much as a combat game. It came with a huge poster that showed the internal layout of the corvette that you command. Winning a battle meant planning, rotating the ship continuously to give bottom & top shields, forward firing cannon & backwards firing cannon time to regenerate their charge, picking a suitable target while taking fire from two other ships, managing 4 stations (cmd, nav, wep, eng) simultaneously and a lot of escaping. Trying to take down a destroyer or cruiser was a guaranteed suicide.
Manual: https://i-war2.com/jdownloads/Independe ... -WARGB.pdf

[Demarquis]

Ever play the sequel?

[G. Janssen]

Ever play the sequel?

No, but after posting in this thread I decided to download it. I'm reading through the manual as I'm typing this. Let's see if I'm as adept as I was 20 years ago. Probably not.