Tales Series / That One Level

Some of these levels are just the worst to go through.

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Tales of Phantasia

The Tower of Flames late in the game. Amazing music, but the dungeon has the annoying feature of having cracked floors that allow lava to seep through. And stepping on them will cause damage to your whole party. And if you think that's not so bad, to complete the dungeon, you have to go through a room filled with lava! Even if you manage to make it there by using spells or items to heal your HP, you are prevented from proceeding at this point, because of the intense heat. In order to proceed, the player needs to obtain a Random Drop from the Goddamn Bats in this area and use a Rune Bottle on them.
The Ice Cavern/Temple of Fenrir around the same time as the abovementioned Tower of Flames. Overall not as infuriating as the Tower of Flames, but it is an Ice World. And it's pretty large, with a maze at the end to go through, which can lead to a good spell for Arche or pointless equipment. And then there's Fenrir at the end.
Treant Forest, because it's a maze with most screens looking identical and the hint of following the bush babies is not all that helpful. It's even worse if you're a completionist who wants to find all the chests as it's a very large map. Also, there's a high encounter rate for battles where you're deprived of Arche, an extremely helpful magical, flying character. Worst part is, you need to go through this area twice.
The Morlia Gallery from Floor B11 onward has so many problems and annoying features.
- First of all, upon approaching this area, your Holy Bottles break and you have no way to avoid or alter the encounter rate. Which was incredibly high in the original version.
- Several of the upcoming rooms are mazes and dark, with only momentary flashes of light letting you get a short glimpse of your surroundings. Chances are, you will get stuck on multiple dead-ends. Now couple that with the encounter rate...
- There are a good ten levels to reach the end. And for each floor you go down, the music becomes more distorted, until it becomes annoying to listen to.
- The enemies are higher in difficulty, with several of them being capable of causing a Party Wipe. Especially enemies like the Beastman and Tuskboar combos, who will prevent you from running away, because they hit constantly and won't allow the run away meter to fill.
- And after completing this obnoxious place, you are rewarded with an item that allows you to alter the rate of random encounters, which is obsolete at this point, since you already completed the worst area.
Dhaos' Castle in the past, a long, sprawling dungeon full of Demonic Spiders. If you didn't already hate golems, you definitely will afterwards.

Tales of Destiny (and its sequel)

Tales of Destiny

Terrazzi Castle can be a real pain if you don't know the solution to the Zodiac Puzzle. It's also impossible to know where to even start the puzzle unless you get a hint from a guard, and even with the hint players can get very confused. Since the word 'goat' is only useful if you already know the puzzle is referring to the zodiac.
Cloudius in the PS2 remake was reimagined into a veritable maze. Many Japanese players initially took hours struggling to find their way through it and gave up out of frustration.
- Even in the PSX version, the moon-sun-star-Saturn puzzle is a puzzle with absolutely no clues given as to how to solve it. Solving it is essentially a matter of Trial-and-Error Gameplay until you stumble on the answer.
Dycroft is a teleporting puzzle with a confusing layout and a high enemy encounter rate, and several puzzles where Stahn is separated from the rest of the party and must solve alone while being mobbed by enemies. In the remake it is made worse, with several areas that look the same and moving crystal puzzles added in.

Tales of Destiny 2

The jungle puzzle with the fire wolves is in theory easy, involving digging pits and tricking the wolves into falling in the pits. The problem comes in with actually interacting with the wolves once they're in the pits. It's incredibly easy to fall in a pit yourself while trying to engage the wolf, resulting in your falling in and having to start the puzzle over. Depending on your pixel perfect accuracy it can either be one of the easiest puzzles to complete or one of the hardest in the game.
Kalviola's dungeons, while straightforward, are bursting at the seams with Demonic Spiders that Teleport Spam and have a high enemy encounter rate. In the later sanctums it is possible to have minibosses from eariler in the game appear as normal enemies.
The God's Egg has a thin rail puzzle that requires some pixel perfect accuracy in walking across them. If you fall off the rail, not only do you have to start the whole thing over, you take fall damage and are required to fight a respawning enemy camped in front of the teleporter required to restart the puzzle. Much frustration is to be had here.
- Also in the God's Egg, the character trials. Each character must fight an enemy alone. Yes, including the spellcasters. This can easily become a problem if you have not been using a character for a while (and with the character tiers, this is almost certain) and thus have no skills unlocked for them. Fortunately, the enemies are basic type enemies and not bosses.

Tales of Symphonia (and its sequel)

Tales of Symphonia

The Balacruf Mausoleum is quite the Marathon Level. The fact that there are fairly frequent encounters is the least of your worries here, since this dungeon is an early endurance test. You've got to get through the aforesaid large amount of encounters, use the Sorcerer's Ring to solve some complicated wind puzzles, defeat a boss, make your way back through the dungeon with the encounters all reset, then defeat another boss, all without saving. Die at any point during this sequence, and you've got to start all over again. You can also miss out on some hidden treasure if you spin the final puzzle's windmills in the wrong order. But even if you know exactly what you're doing, it's still going to take a while.
The Meltokio Sewers. Bad, repetitive background music plays throughout this area, and you need to do annoying sliding block puzzles into specific places to proceed. On top of that, there's a shrinking/growing mechanic that you have to use to get into the right spots to push the blocks. Frequently, the block sliding puzzles won't be so much difficult as time-consuming, making them even more annoying.
The Earth temple requires that you gave an NPC in an entirely different dungeon a potion just to get into the temple itself. Beyond that, you need a few other things that aren't found in the dungeon before the gnomes will let you pass. Granted, the game outright tells you where to find the items you need, but the fact you may end up wandering all over Tethe'alla before getting any substantial meat out of the dungeon makes it incredibly annoying.
The Temple of Lightning for having overly dark rooms you need to traverse, where it's easy to get off the path and, unless you button mash, get to fall back to the main room and start all over. There's a lot of backtracking in this area as well, as you need to keep changing where the lightning hits which lightning rod. Fortunately, it wasn't too hard to navigate the dark areas in the Gamecube version... but on the PS2 and Wii remakes, it's so dark that it's almost pitch black.
The Ice Temple and Welgaia are no cakewalk if you don't like sliding puzzles. Plus in the Ice Temple you're required to fight certain opponents so you can get the Penguinist Gloves, which you need to be able to pick Celsius' Tear.
The Temple of Darkness is overall very easy to get through, the problem is that Shadow has been separated into five blobs who have a tendency to randomly scurry around like headless chickens instead of properly following you. Getting those buggers to follow you is bad enough, but you need to make sure none of them get stuck anywhere or you'll need to backtrack.
Latheon Gorge is a large gorge that the player needs to traverse by feeding specific fruits to flowers. Giving them the right one, they begin to blow wind out at set intervals and giving the wrong one makes them wilt. The player needs to set these flowers up in the right way, so as to continue to climb and make it to the top of the area. And if the player is trying to get all the treasure chests, they need to backtrack a bit.
The Ymir Forest itself is a rather easy to traverse area. It's the puzzle that one is required to go through to head into Heimdall that makes it the bane of most players. A young elf boy is blocking the entrance to Heimdall, saying he wants to get a fruit for his sick mother, but is too scared of the monsters to get it. Said fruit is hanging in a tree and instead of asking your party member with wings to fly up and grab it, you need to do a complicated route of having a small fish in the water push it through the entire forest, without the fish disappearing because you forgot to free the blocked way or get scared off by the larger fish.
Welgaia is an extremely annoying dungeon for a number of reasons - it gives you no hint about where you're meant to go, music that gets really grating after a while, everything looks the same so you can easily run past the buttons needed to progress in the dungeon and numerous sliding puzzles.

Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World

The Temple of Lightning is now worse, not just because of the dark rooms still being around. No, now those rooms are also filled with random lightning bolts. And getting hit one too many times ^note14 times, to be exact by one actually alters your Karma Meter and can lock the player out from getting the Golden Ending.
The Iselia Human Ranch is an obnoxious dungeon where the majority of its problem lies in one room. A decidedly large room, but it involves lots and lots of platform puzzles, turning the machines on for the right platform to move, making sure the platform is moving in the right direction and more platform moving that requires backtracking. You will hate this area.

Tales of Legendia

The Forest of No Return and the Mirage Palace. You'll be glad that Moses allows you to skip the Forest of No Return and Will can make you skip puzzles in the Mirage Palace. But they are repeated. The Forest Of No Return must be forded through a second time. Thankfully, the Mirage Palace can be gotten through by mistake.
The Waterway. It's painfully long for the point in the game at which you're expected to clear it the first time, and the enemies aren't that fun to fight. The repeated environments also make it easy to get lost in. You eventually have to do it all again in the Character Quests, and it's just as tedious as before.

Tales of the Abyss

The three instances, where the party is forced to traverse world map areas, rather than proper dungeons. This is mostly a problem, because the framerate is slower in those areas.
- Inistra Marsh: You walk even slower than usual, because it is a marsh and the ground is unstable. Problem is, there is a Behemoth that may approach the player when they get halfway through this place. The Behemoth is pretty difficult to defeat to begin with and the party keeps saying to not fight it, merely distract or run away, if encountered. While it can be defeated, it doesn't drop any Gald or Experience. ^note Unfortunately, because you are slow, it can be difficult to avoid the Behemoth, since it isn't held back by slow movement. Thank goodness Holy Bottle work on it.
- Meggiora Highlands: You need to enter this area twice and the first time around is a timed mission. It's technically not a difficult area to get through, but it is large and the timing really on your heels. It can be ignored, but then a friendly, harmless NPC dies. Oh, and your party is split into two parties of three at this point. The second time around, your actual goal is very close-by. But the player can go through the huge highlands and do some extra puzzles that, if completed, nerf the upcoming boss.
- The Escort Mission, when the party splits up into two groups. One takes refugees from Engeve to Chessedonia and the other, coincidentally, needs to head to Chessedonia themselves, to talk to someone important. Once again, you move slower than your usual speed and the party stops now and then to rest for cutscenes and nighttime. The best reward the player gets is to make it to Chessedonia, without encountering any enemy, which is difficult as enemies are once again faster than you and Holy Bottles don't work. The player needs to swerve over and over, as the path is best to walk on, but enemies spawn near it. And the second group has one encounter that likes to spawn right next to a bridge, making it almost impossible to avoid that specific encounter.
Mushroom Road is an optional area you'll visit for the Rugnican Deathcap sidequest, but it's a confusing maze of similar-looking pathways, with progress being a matter of trial and error. It's also full of nasty enemy encounters, far beyond what you would be seeing in the main story both during and after the point you first have access to it. Even having Asch back as a Guest-Star Party Member doesn't help much.
The Isle of Feres is structured like a Dungeon Town and its similar-looking buildings make it very easy to get lost, something the party comments on in a skit. It also features frequent "trap rooms" that lock you in until you kill all the enemies inside, some of which are required to progress. There isn't even a climactic boss fight at the end of it, (unless you count the final Sword Dancer encounter), giving the long slog no real payoff.

Tales of Vesperia

Caer Bocram is not a truly hard area in hindsight, but on a first playthrough the area is tedious and frustrating to explore. The main reason being is that to progress, you need to find three journal pages that give a hint to the password needed to open the vault door located in the main building. You need to use a blastia device that acts as something of an elevator to explore higher levels of the city, but going between the different levels and trying to find the notes is very tedious since the pathways are cramped meaning enemies are very hard to avoid. Not helping is that the password itself can be very difficult to figure out since you need to figure out what each word is supposed to mean in relation to each other. The boss at the end is a decent spike in difficulty for that point as well.
The Sands of Kogorh is a sprawling, wide-open desert area where the main gimmick is that your water gauge gradually depletes as you wander around, and the only way to replenish it is to use the Sorcerer's Ring on nearby cacti. Because of this, you can't afford to get into too many battles here, as your water gauge will continue to deplete even in battle. If your water gauge becomes empty, then your party members will gradually lose HP overtime until their HP hits 1. By then, a single encounter with an enemy could spell a game over. It's very easy to get lost in due to how wide open the area is with barely any discernible landmarks to help keep track of your bearings, and the cacti don't respawn when used, meaning you'll have to manage your water resources wisely. Not to mention that if you're going out of your way to find all treasure chests, they're really spaced out between each other and some are really well hidden. Thankfully, once you pass through this area once, it becomes optional on the world map.
Baction. Unlike most dungeons in the series where you either have a map or don't depending on the game, you instead have to make your own map by exploring, which fills out a mini-map on the top of the screen that is supposed to help you navigate what is a maze-like dungeon consisting of several similar small rooms. In theory it's a neat concept, but the map system combined with how confusing the layout is means you have to explore a temple where you have little to go off of. At one point you need to track down a way to shut off a barrier, which forces you to explore to do so, making it take even longer. It's filled with hard enemies as well (the worst being the Knight Bishops, who will spam First Aid if you try to Shoot the Mage First, healing 6000 HP each time, and might come in pairs that stand far enough apart that you can't stop both of them from casting), and in the original version of the game, your only sources of healing were items or artes like Guardian Field or relying on Karol's rather lackluster healing artes (the Definitive Edition gives you Flynn and Patty, but even then their healing's not as great as Estelle's). It ends with one of the hardest bosses in the game, and the first one to use a mystic arte as well.

Tales of Graces

Wallbridge early on. It's a confusing maze of ladders and bridges, with an uncommon, annoying camera angle that can make it easy for enemies to ambush you. You also have a rather unorthodox team of Asbel, Sophie, Pascal and Richard. While it gives you healing, you are surrounded by two glass cannons.
The Bathus Citadel and Research Center on Fodra. The former is a huge size and has obnoxious sliding puzzles to proceed. And the latter involves battery puzzles, that force you to backtrack through tight corridors full of enemies.
World's Eye is filled with difficult enemies, is an absolute nightmare to navigate and ends ends with two back-to-back boss fights, one of them listed above under That One Boss.

Tales of Xillia (and its sequel)

Tales of Xillia

Bermia Gorge for first-time players. It's early on and, while it does make good usage of the game's climbing feature, you can easily get lost and turned around. Especially if you try to get all the sparkly points or Aifread's Treasures. And then there is the boss at the end who won't come down!
Fort Gandala on both routes. Especially if one is attempting to play without using Gels.
- Jude's route leaves your party with Jude, Rowen and Alvin. Jude is the only healer in your party and he's not all that good and Rowen's low HP gives him a disadvantage. There's also the fact that navigation will soon be focused on going through air ducts and locked rooms, meaning you will likely wander around for a while, wondering where the heck it is you're supposed to go to.
- Milla's route has her as your only party member. She has no healing abilities of her own and she encounters the same enemies as the other group, with no one to back her up. She is also far more limited in where she can go, which fortunately makes things shorter.
The S.S. Zenethra is the biggest, longest dungeon in the game... and it's horrible. The area looks boring, the layout is symmetrical, but with lots of dead-ends and branching paths. Said paths are also very narrow, making it difficult to avoid random battles. It's also the first area, where petrification can hit you, which petrifies both characters, if one of them is linked. And you get a Game Over, if everyone is petrified.
The Dimensional Crossroads. A thankfully short area, but full of uneven ground and the design is all over the place, with random colors or sparkles to distract you and not sure where to go. Also, for no good reason, the party is split up into leaving the player with their lead character for a bit, before the other joins. And then you don't get the rest of your party until the Final Boss battle. It looks cool, but is unnecessary.

Tales of Xillia 2

In general, several of the areas to traverse, since it reuses the locations of Xillia a lot. Especially bad with the Bermia Gorge, since a long sidequest involves finding cats in various locations. Have fun climbing and jumping, looking for the cats in Bermia Gorge.
The Helioborg Research Facility, a very early dungeon area. The buildings are dark and everything looks the same, so you really need to use the mini-map, to know where you are going. The inside hallways are narrow and look identical, as well, meaning more re-checking on which floor the party is currently at. The fact that this area also contains a Wake-Up Call Boss does not make it any more pleasant.
The S.S. Pelune, as it is one giant Call-Back to the S.S. Zenethra in the previous game. The same symmetrical layout, the same bleak atmosphere, the same branching paths and dead-ends and narrow hallways with unavoidable random encounters. And Holy Bottles do not work on the enemies, so don't waste them. Fortunately, it's much shorter than Zenethra. Unfortunately, the first part includes a timed mission where you need to move around and find the few attacked NPCs that are injured, but not dead yet and can be saved. They can be ignored, but some of them give good items.
The Land of Canaan is not a long area, but is very dark and makes it difficult to see where you are going. There are also certain blocks that will disappear if you get too close, forcing the player to backtrack and find another path in this maze puzzle. And your walkways are very narrow, so it can be difficult to avoid battles. Said battles aren't tough, but annoying because one merely wants to get through this place already!

Tales of Zestiria

The Water Shrine Lefay. The gimmick of the dungeon is that you have to use Mikleo's invisibility ability to sneak past several eyes on the walls. If you get seen, you'll be taken right back to the start of the dungeon. While thankfully there are some teleports, you'll often find yourself walking into a room and get seen right away without knowing it. The first couple floors will helpfully point out the tiles which will teleport you, but on the upper two floors you will get no such aid. While the dungeon itself doesn't have a tough boss or tough enemies, it can be confusing to navigate, which means battle after battle while still trying to watch out for the eyes. It gets annoying and tedious quickly. The biggest kicker is at the end, a teleport will land you a couple of tiles before the final door... and there's an eye watching one of the tiles in between.
Any enemy that can use Seraphic Artes is a Demonic Spider. As such, the Pilzerback Wetland, where every single enemy uses them, is one of the most frustrating areas to navigate.
The Elaine Ruins in Alisha's DLC qualify for sure. The dungeon has absolutely terrifying enemies to fight: specifically the ones from Hexen Isle and the Calix subdungeons, and many of them group up and deal insane damage! With no Sorey, it means Rose is your only character capable of Armatizing, meaning she is the only one capable of dealing enough damage to clear enemy waves. Making it worse, most enemies resist Fire and Earth, and you don't get Zaveid until almost halfway through (and don't get Mikleo in your party at all). For those who have yet to grind enough to match Calix-tier enemies, this situation could be too much to handle. Considering most dungeons in the game are around three floors that all circle through each other, it's a big change of pace when the game throws you into one with over ten floors. Adding to the mess is the number of bosses. There are three boss battles, all three involve fighting two different enemies, and almost all of them resist fire and earth. Making the dungeon more annoying is how some sections require you to go to smaller sections to retrieve items or find other ways to move forward. The only good thing about the dungeon, the music, can get repetitive if you decide to use Holy Bottles to just skip the enemies.

Tales of Arise

The final dungeon, the ruins of Rena is a very long gauntlet where most of the "regular" encounters are against Degraded Bosses. There are only two teleporters that allow you to fast travel back and forth to and from the entrance and the teleporter before the final boss fight requires fighting the right one of six encounters against minibosses, one of which is the recurring Tales Series bonus boss Sword Dancer.

That One Level / Tales Series