History Main / EarlyGameHell

* The very first chapter of ''VideoGame/Bully'' traps you in Bullworth Academy with no safe places except directly inside your room. You have no resources but your fists (and even those are limited until you get in some gym time and hobo lessons), you haven't completed any of the classes at first, and the bullies (your enemy for the chapter) consider the boys' dorm to be their particular turf. It's much easier to get knocked out if you're not careful.

* In ''VideoGame/Bully'', the very first chapter traps you in Bullworth Academy with no safe places except directly inside your room. You have no resources but your fists (and even those are limited until you get in some gym time and hobo lessons), you haven't completed any of the classes at first, and the bullies (your enemy for the chapter) consider the boys' dorm to be their particular turf. It's much easier to get knocked out if you're not careful.

* The original ''[[VideoGame/{{Metabots}} Medarot]]'' starts rough. You only have one Medabots at this stage and since the game ends if you don't have any spare Medabots in reserve after a loss, every loss after the tutorial battle will result in a GameOver. Despite this, the game has no qualms about subjecting the player to 2 v 1 fights (including a trap triggered by talking to a random NPC) and some battles may as well be a LuckBasedMission. This is felt as early as the opening battle with Cyandog, who can sometimes knock out the player in two turns without there being a way to prevent it. This is more pronounced in the Kuwagata/Rokusho version because while Kabuto/Metabee has a powerful missile attack for his head part, the Kuwagata head only has a useless (at this stage) sensor function and it derives its striking power from frail arm parts, Since there is no secondary Medabot to draw away fire or provide support boosts, it's very difficult to get through the first town and acquire your second Tinpet (at this point which the difficulty evens out) without swapping parts.

* ''[[VideoGame/MightAndMagic Might And Magic VI]]'' could be very difficult at the outset. Until you get bows for all your characters, you won't have much of an ability to fight monsters at range, and it can be difficult to defeat even the enemies around New Sorpigal until you gain a few levels.
* ''[[VideoGame/MightAndMagic Might And Magic VII]]'' does this as well. Even the weakest enemies can be difficult at the beginning. Once you reach the mainland you appear in a city surrounded by the horde of goblins and it doesn't get any easier from there. It doesn't help that unlike in ''VI'' you can't reach maximum mastery in skills without promotion, and the second promotion is locked by a storyline event appearing into second half of the game.

* ''VideoGame/FatalLabyrinth'' can be like this due to the random generation, sometimes you '''will''' start the game right next to a dangerous enemy. But on the other hand, if you can a Battle Axe and some healing potions, the only challenge might be a ''GameBreakingBug''.

* The very earliest stage of ''VideoGame/{{Starbound}},'' especially during the game's early beta. The game starts you off with only a broken weapon to defend yourself with, plain clothing for armor, and the only tool you have to manipulate the world around you is a Matter Manipulator that ''verrrrrry sssssllllowly'' chips away at the world. In order to make the most basic tools (some of which aren't initially that much faster than the manipulator), you'll need to chop down an entire tree with only the manipulator's "wiggles" and break off around ten pieces of stone. Once you make proper tools, however, things do start to move at a better pace and exploring becomes much easier. It's also a bit of a LuckBasedMission. What type of SingleBiomePlanet you end up on is random. If you wind up on a desert planet, it'll be harder to find wood. If you end up on an snowy planet, you'll likely freeze to death if you can't gather wood for a campfire in time (and might freeze anyway if it's cold enough). If you end up on PlanetHeck, you'll find out that obsidian is even more time-consuming to mine through. Just having enough fuel to pick a less hostile planet can make things a lot easier.

** ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaBreathOfTheWild'' has this as one of its defining qualities.
*** The game can be grueling when you start off on the Great Plateau, as you only have three hearts of health, flimsy old clothes for armor, and are reliant on anything you can pick up off the ground for weapons and shields (likely a lowly tree branch, to start). Enemies are smart and will swarm you if they spot you, forcing you to be cautious and clever if you hope to best your foes, at least until you can get better equipment and upgrade your life bar. You may also face a Blue Bokoblin and a Decayed Guardian; in regular mode, as long as you keep your health at max, you can [[LastChanceHitPoint survive a one-hit kill]], although taking too long to heal immediately would result in a Game Over. It is even crazier in Master Mode, with making the enemies stronger (enough to OneHitKO you on top of losing the LastChanceHitPoint clause in this mode), more capable of seeing past your stealth efforts, and even adding Sky Octoroks and a Silver Lynel.
*** After getting the para-glider, there's nothing preventing the player from ignoring the map markers and going straight to [[TheVeryDefinitelyFinalDungeon Hyrule Castle]] or other areas such as the Wasteland, where you'll find yourself facing [[DemonicSpiders Guardians or Lynels]].

* The titular VRMMORPG of ''LightNovel/SwordArtOnline''. Half of all player deaths occurred before beating the first dungeon, and it took a disproportionate amount of time to complete (over a month, while it took about two years to do seventy-four more dungeons).

* ''VideoGame/AstralChain'': The first two and a half Files of a new game tend to strain a player's health the most, as they don't have access to the FinishingMove yet. Once they do, healing items become a bit less precious.

** Notable in that this is by design -- it was meant to be more or less an unwinnable to teach players to be careful about the enemies they engage (the encounter is entirely optional, but you're likely to attempt it on your first try)

* While ''Videogame/FinalFantasyX'' itself doesn't suffer from this, the same cannot be said about one of its minigames, Blitzball. The first match that you have to play is the only obligatory one and you have to play with Besaid Aurochs, by ''far'' the worst team in the game. Only Tidus and Wakka have okay stats, and you can't even have both at team at once. They are also only ones that have ''any'' techniques. This match alone is enough for some players to completely abandon the minigame in disgust. After this match however you get the option to fire Besaid Aurochs and hire another players, and the further you get in core game, the more players available to recruit you have, some of which are so powerful (such as Brother) that they make the entire minigame a cakewalk.

* ''TabletopGame/WarhammerFantasyRoleplay'' is this all over. Player Characters come from lame working-class backgrounds (like Peasant or Charcoal Burner or Ratcatcher) and most begin the game with very few combat skills and little in the way of money or equipment; depending on your class, you may not even start with a ''proper weapon'', and you can forget starting with any armour (though you might be able to scrape tohgether enough starting money for a leather skullcap or some tough boots). PerpetualPoverty is a state of being for low-level [=PCs=]: having more than 50 Gold in your purse at any moment is a massive accomplishment, in a game where the most expensive item is a Best Craftsmanship galleon worth 120,000 Gold; even if you roll up a nobleman, you will be scrambling for every penny. Not helping is the game's combat system, which is extremely (and [[BlackComedy often hilariously]]) lethal, because [[CriticalHit Critical Hits]] happen quite often and have a fair chance to cripple you (you have to roll on a table to see where you were hurt and how badly - a hit with a warhammer can range from "cracked sternum" and "broken wrist" to [[OneHitKill "head splattered like a juicy tomato"]]). The fortunate part is FromZeroToHero is also in full effect: even the most pathetic and hoarking ugly peasant can become a respectable martial champion or lord wizard... if they survive that long.

* On some maps, the early game tend to be the hardest part of a run in ''VideoGame/BloonsTowerDefense'' because of the map structure and the inability to afford enough defense to deal with all the paths with bloons coming out. The placement of towers as well as micromanaging the tower's attacking priority is vital for beating the earlier rounds. This is especially the case for the CHIMPS mode in ''6'' where you can't lose lives or use any power or insta-monkeys.

* The landlords on hard difficulties in ''[[VideoGame/{{Richman}} Richman 11]]'' can be this. Every player character starts with a total of 120k cash and deposit. However, the landlords start with multiple chain stores which will cost a whopping 60k when stepped on, as well as many hotels and shopping centers which are also nukes (and it doesn't help that the landlord will also start with a robo-laborer and will most likely use it on these buildings first, and use their remote dice or road block to go there to further upgrade it). The player on the other hand has only a remote dice, a banana peel, a robot doll and a portal (which replaces the road block on easier difficulties). And this is not considering that many landlords either deals more damage to cripple you even further, or take away or disable your cards so you won't even be able to get to the nearest card shop. Once the RandomNumberGod decides to let you survive this though, things will usually become easier.

** This trope is ''especially'' true for summoner playthroughs. In 1.3, their three pre-hard mode staffs are either an extremely rare drop that you need a mob statue to grind the mobs to get (slime staff), acquired by beating a boss (the Queen Bee, which ''also'' must be beaten for one of the only pre-hard mode summoner armors), or is made from hellstone, which requires the second best pre-hardmode pickaxe (corruption/crimson, which requires beating their respected bosses to craft). You could also [[SequenceBreaking sequence break]] using the Reaver Shark, an item acquired by fishing, to get hellstone before fighting a boss, but this was changed in 1.4. Fortunately, 1.4 also gave summoner some other early game options, such as the Finch Staff, Flinx Staff, Vampire Frog Staff, and [[WhipItGood whips]]. This gives the summoner a much easier way to start out, though the lack of early summoner armor or accessories and the weakness of the early weapons leave it still one of the hardest classes to start.

* In ''VideoGame/SuperSmashBrosUltimate'' has two ways to unlock things; you can fight baseline Smash battles with the Original 8, get an unlock battle every ten minutes, and earn Spirits through the Spirit Board once you have a fighter you excel with. Or, you can unlock everything via Adventure Mode, starting with just your randomly-chosen Primary Spirit starter and whatever OldSaveBonus spirits you have. The latter is this trope. The SchizophrenicDifficulty plus your lack of good spirits means you will often have to face powerful 3-star level spirits with a bunch of wimps. Fortunately, once you start to pull yourself together and get better spirits, the difficulty evens off, and by the time [[spoiler:you reach the Dark Realm]], you'll only really fear the strongest enemies in the game at that point.

*** Imrik's entire faction boni are geared towards Dragons (reducing their upkeep, making them more powerful, being able to recruit 6 unique versions of them), a late-game unit, which will not help when his first dozens turns involves fighting multiple armies of Skaven that, although easily defeated individually, will be extremely numerous and much more mobile on the campaign map, able to overwhelm the player and attack settlements while they're taking the long route to theirs. Unless Snikch is dealt with very quickly, it's extremely easy for the player to be bogged down fighting endless stacks of progressively tougher and tougher Skaven armies while his other potential enemies (Greenskisn or Dwarfs) grow more and more powerful. Add to that, that Imrik has a poor starting economy (due to no access to global trade via a port) which will make upgrading your cities/armies difficult. Once you get past these hurdl7\, you can see for yourself that the buffs Imrik gives to Dragons are ''huge'' on top of being a [[GameBreaker High Elven faction]].

** ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaALinkBetweenWorlds'': At the beginning, enemies are extremely dangerous and do a lot of damage, with those in Hero Mode being able to kill Link in just two hits. But then you get the special tunics that double defence, more and more Heart Containers and the insanely powerful upgraded items... and the difficulty drops like a stone as a result. The pattern actually occurs twice too, with [[DualWorldGameplay Lorule's]] first few hours of gameplay being a bit like a repeat of the start (thanks to the much tougher normal enemies). Then after a few dungeons and sidequests, that too loses its difficulty.

* ''VideoGame/{{Gothic}}'' is purposefully built on this to give a feel to character progression, making The Nameless Hero [[TookALevelInBadass taking a level in badass]] all the more noticeable. Initially, except for some VERY weak civilian characters and the odd monster at the bottom of the food chain, anything will easily kill you. You are expected to gather EXP by staying in town and doing non-combat quests, take full advantage of the rare opportunities where an NPC [[ReverseEscortMission deigns to escort you somewhere]], resort to thievery whenever you can, gather all sorts of consumeable trinkets that might save you in a pinch and, in general, choose your battles wisely, use unconventional tactics and avoid combat until you are ready to tackle the weaker enemies and work your way up from there.

** ''VideoGame/BioShockInfinite'' is this all over again, especially before you get the regenerating shield. You can't carry any health kits or salts this time, so you need to actively go get healing items. This is hellish on Hard, and more so with the 1999 Mode difficulty, before Booker has his shield, as getting shot ''once'' is a risky proposition, and there are several turrets around that laugh at his starting pistol and its poor ammunition capacity. This is exacerbated by the first Vigor obtained--Possession--having an extremely high Salts cost (without Elizabeth around to refill easily) and having no effect against non-mechanical enemies (though there is a purchasable early-game upgrade that allows you to posess humans), meaning he can't even use his limited resources to full effect.

** The Dash ability is key to getting bogged down and dogpiled in bigger fights, and it isn't unlocked for a few levels, either.

* In ''Videogame/{{Hexen}} II'', the first hub, Blackmarsh, is easy for all classes but one: the [[CloseRangeCombatant Paladin]]. Reason being, his second weapon isn't ranged like those of the other classes. That means a lot of painful things: having to rush in to destroy archers and ballistas while entirely exposed to their fire; playing cat-and-mouse with Wizards that pelt you with skull missiles and teleport to another end of the room if you take too long in getting within sword's reach; facing [[MightyGlacier Stone Golems]], that don't flinch and aren't affected by {{knockback}} (which mean the sword is very impractical against them), with the uncommon-in-Blackmarsh Glyphs of the Ancients because getting close to them means either ''literally'' getting your head smashed in even for a melee class such as him; and storing ''all'' your healing items for the fight with Famine, as you'll be too close to use Discs of Repulsion and reflects his magic bolts while you attack. To ''slightly'' compensate for the ordeal, the Paladin has his third weapon available ''much'' earlier than the other classes, and he, when using his sword with {{knockback}} and insane damage, '''laughs''' in the face of anything that isn't a Golem (which he can now play keep-away with).

*** The new Perk Tree makes the early game hurt even more as you now have to juggle perks that either give you more of a fighting chance over perks that let you dish out more damage with the piss poor pipe guns you get. No matter which you chose you'll need to gind for many, many levels before you start to get a clear advantage over everyone else.

** ''VideoGame/TheElderScrollsIVOblivion'' potentially inverts this trope due to its level scaling system. The system scales enemy encounters to the level of the player. During the early game, the most dangerous creature the player can encounter is a small imp, while bandits generally wear low tier equipment. On higher levels, the gameworld is filled with creatures like minotaurs, ogres and bandits wearing high end equipment. If you didn't level the right skills and attributes, you might find fights becoming nearly {{Unwinnable}}, resulting in a Late Game Hell.

** The GameMod ''VideoGame/RequiemTheRoleplayingOverhaul'' for ''Skyrim'' is a complete overhaul of the gameplay which results in a much more difficult early game. LevelScaling has been removed and most of the animals or mooks you can encounter are stronger than a low level Dragonborn; note that the first dungeon you have to visit is no longer a NoobCave. The encumberance capacity has been drastically reduced, while gold, arrows, and lockpicks are no longer weightless. Also, the efficiency of skills have been greatly reduced if you don't buy perks, which means you'll initially suck at, well, everything until you gain a few levels and some perk points. On the other hand, the complete removal of level scaling means the game because gradually easier the longer you play and gain levels.[[note]]The aformentioned ''Alternate Start: Live Another Life'' and ''Frostfall'' can be installed along ''Requiem'', though deliberately deciding to start at level 1 in a high-level area is an example of UnintentionallyUnwinnable.[[/note]]

** Several games in the series, [[NintendoHard already hellish as a whole]], make the early exploration hard even by their own sick standards. Patching up party members and replacing your [[EscapeRope Warp Wires]] [[PerpetualPoverty takes up all the money you earned getting the injuries]], giving you no cash for even basic equipment. Running into [=FOEs=] means an instant game over. Skill-heavy characters like mages and healers run out of TP after only a few battles, reducing them to plinking with daggers for ScratchDamage. It's not until you can level up a few times and get some decent skills that you can start saving for better gear. Even worse, [[VideoGame/EtrianOdysseyI the first game]] in the series does not let you reset your skills until halfway through the game, meaning if you made bad decisions assigning skillpoints before the first boss, you may have to either train an entire second team almost from scratch or just restart your playthrough. The fourth and sixth games aim to mitigate this by introducing a NoobCave (Old Forest Mine and Eastern Shrine respectively; the latter is still officially a major dungeon in ''Nexus'' but only has one floor), but unprepared players are still likely to have a hard time during the prologue.

* In the first games of each ''VideoGame/InazumaEleven'' series: Raimon Soccer Club is made of depressingly underpowered players and limited resources to the point even random encounters can be a problem. In addition to the poor bases, most characters will get tired out by half-time in a 60 minute full match due to the lack of stemina. They will be forced to ''crawl'' through the rest of the game because you have little to no substitutions. Once the characters level up and gain special abilities, cooped with the player mastering the stylus movement, the rest of the game is a cakewalk.
* This is one of the things ''VideoGame/KingdomComeDeliverance'' is infamous for; [[PlayerCharacter Henry]] is borderline useless in direct combat at the beginning of the game, isn't even ''literate'' let alone possessed of particularly beneficial skills. Cash is hard to come by, specialist tools like lockpicks and horses are expensive and hard-to-find, Henry can't even carry the wieght of a full set of armor. The worst part is a lot of this difficulty is either [[FakeDifficulty fake]] or exacerbated by an obsessive denial of information to the player.
** Paradoxically, thanks to the complete lack of LevelScaling, ths is reversed once Henry gets a few levels under his belt with the increase to his stats rendering most forms of combat easy.

* ''VideoGame/TheTiamatSacrament'': The hardest part of the game is the beginning, when the party has few abilities or items, and the procedures to learn new skills are grindy. Az'uar's inhale mechanic is also hard to use because of how it's easily interrupted. However, endgame enemies and bosses generally don't stand a chance against the party once they have most of their skills. There are also lategame equipment and skills that remove the drawbacks of Az'uar's inhale system, allowing him and Kelburn to unleash their best attacks more frequently.

*** Imrik's entire faction boni are geared towards Dragons (reducing their upkeep, making them more powerful, being able to recruit 6 unique versions of them), a late-game unit, which will not help when his first dozens turns inolves fighting multiple armies of Skaven that, although easily defeated individually, will be extremely numerous and much more mobile on the campaign map, able to overhwelm the player and attack settlments while they're taking the long route to theirs. Unless Snikch is dealt with very quickly, it's extremely easy for the player to be bogged down fighting endless stacks of progressively tougher and tougher Skaven armies while his other potential enemies (Greenskisn or Dwarfs) grow more and more powerful. Add to that, that Imrik has a poor starting economy (due to no acess to global trade via a port) which will make upgrading your cities/armies difficult. Once you get past these hurdles, you can see for yourself that the buffs Imrik gives to Dragons are ''huge'' ontop of being a [[GameBreaker High Elven faction]].

** ''VideoGame/XCOMEnemyUnknown'': While not as difficult as ''UFO Defense'', you'll spend the first few months of the alien invasion commanding four panicky rookies equipped with kevlar armor and basic assault rifles against enemies with plasma weapons, desperately trying to keep the nations of the world from collapsing into panic as the aliens abduct their citizens and terrorize their cities at will. By the endgame you've got six badasses in power armor, toting reverse-engineered plasma weapons of their own and even psionic powers, supported by aircraft that can go toe-to-toe with the biggest alien battleship and win with ease, and what's left of the world is sleeping soundly because they know you've got this.

* ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAutoSanAndreas'' has CJ start with pathetically weak stats, which means his melee attacks are weak, he can't sprint far, he can't hold his breath underwater for too long, and his low proficiency with guns (accuracy, reload speed, etc) and driving means he has to take cover when possible in a gun fight and drive very carefully. While the early game missions aren't too terrible, it can still be easy for new players to get tripped up with CJ's heavy limitations. As CJ's stats improve and the player finds better guns for him, the difficulty curve more or less flattens.

*** ''Shadow Of War'' also introduces a fun feature where Orc captains can adapt to certain attack or defensive option if you use it too much. You start out with five basic ones, standard attacks, counter, frost-based stun, vaulting, and a bow with limited arrows. Basically, you counter a captain's attacks too much and they'll start using more unblockables, vault over those and they'll soon grab you, throw you to the ground and continue to pummel you. Make them vulnerable by freezing them and they'll start blocking your stun attack. Forcing you to use only standards attacks (Leaving yourself vulnerable) or a very limited amount of arrows to damage them... and god forbid they're [[KungFuProofMook immune to either]] (though thankfully, no captain is ''ever'' immune to the Glaive). Captains adapt faster on Nemesis, and even faster on Gravewalker.

** This trope is ''especially'' true for summoner playthroughs. In 1.3, their three pre-hard mode staffs are either an extremely rare drop that you need a mob statue to grind the mobs to get (slime staff), acquired by beating a boss (the Queen Bee, which ''also'' must be beaten for one of the only pre-hardmode summoner armors), or is made from hellstone, which requires the second best pre-hardmode pickaxe (corruption/crimson, which requires beating their respected bosses to craft). You could also [[SequenceBreaking sequence break]] using the Reaver Shark, an item acquired by fishing, to get hellstone before fighting a boss, but this was changed in 1.4. Fortunately, 1.4 also gave summoner some other early game options, such as the Finch Staff, Flinx Staff, Vampire Frog Staff, and [[WhipItGood whips]]. This gives the summoner a much easier way to start out, though the lack of early summoner armor or accessories and the weakness of the early weapons leave it still one of the hardest classes to start.

* ''VideoGame/MarioGolf'' on the Nintendo 64 and Gamecube are difficult to play for the first time due to 80% of the characters being locked and forcing you to use weaker characters who cannot hit the ball very far. To unlock better characters, you have to beat them in a head to head competition and the rivals will ''always'' have hit the ball farther than you.

* In ''VideoGame/SurvivingMars'', there are two layers of this trope. When you initially land on Mars, you only have what material you brought on your starting rocket and any free metal on the surface. From that you need to build enough energy and water infrastructure to support a basic dome. Once that's established, you begin the Founder stage where you can only bring in one load of colonists. The number of colonists is only just enough to keep basic service buildings and a few farms operating, nevermind trying to open some mines. Happiness will be low and stress will be high due to this and there's little that can counter the problem. This stage either lasts a set amount of time or until a baby is born; only then can you bring in enough colonists to make everyone happy and start expanding.

** ''VideoGame/{{BioShock|1}}'' started you out at your weakest with little health, a small amount of eve, and weapons which either had low damage output or weren't affordable to feed. You see, you need to keep yourself supplied with health, eve, and ammunition, all of which cost a fair amount of money. You don't have terrible reserves of any, and all of them are rather scarce outside of vending machines. [[AdamSmithHatesYourGuts The result is that you spend quite a lot of time getting into fights and using up a fair amount of resources, and then taking the spoils back for recovery and ending up with slightly more than you had earlier at best, assuming everything goes well.]] The game gets much easier once you get a few upgrades to toughen you up and do more damage. Once you can start taking down the big daddies without bankrupting yourself, the game gets much easier as you can farm the infinitely respawning bastards.

** The new game mode in ''Afterbirth'', Greed Mode, has a main gimmick in that you fight waves of enemies that escalate in difficulty until you eventually fight a boss ([[DualBoss or a couple of them]]), which when beaten, allows you to proceed to the next floor if you choose not to battle a [[PaletteSwap champion]] [[BonusBoss boss]] for a guaranteed Devil/Angel Room. Its ''other'' gimmick however, is that you can only get your items (other than the aforementioned Devil/Angel Rooms, a free Silver Treasure Room, and a locked Gold Treasure Room every floor) from a shop. [[InfiniteStockForSale While the shop infinitely restocks]], you earn that money by beating the enemy waves. As such, this can lead to some really aggravating and painful early games, where if the game doesn't decide to give you good damage items early, you will just get overwhelmed by the sheer number of enemies attacking you. It's even worse in its hard equivalent, Greedier Mode, where not only do you get less money per floor, the game throws champion enemies at you constantly ''and'' makes the timer between waves shorter.

* When you begin ''VideoGame/WanganMidnight Maximum Tune'', you begin with a bone stock vehicle that can maybe hit 240 km/h tops, in contrast to the 340 km/h that a full-tuned vehicle can achieve. A full tone requires completing Story Mode, which, depending on the game, takes 60, 80, or ''100'' stages, and to make matters worse, every single stage uses up a credit. Until then, it's the only worthwhile mode to play because you just won't have the power to take on full-tuned vehicles in Ghost Battle or Versus Mode. There is also no point in taking on Time Attack mode, though the games rectify this somewhat by providing a "special car" mode (in the original ''Maximum Tune'' and its sequel) where you drive one of the three protagonist cars from the manga, or an "official machine" mode where you use a non-customizable, full-tuned car.

** The Race Point-to-Point levels are infuriating ''per se'' due to the gametype's rules[[note]]Reach point B starting from A and make sure to ''not'' miss any checkpoint[[/note]] and the time limit not giving much space for errors, but the early missions of this type ("The Offroad Stage" and "Car Theft") take the cake, especially "Car Theft" where you not only have to complete the stage in under two minutes in a ''large'' map, but you're also chased off by police cars armed to the teeth with Miniguns and Rocket Launchers while you're forced to drive an un-upgraded Bornbad GT-90 (which you don't get to unlock until later in Career Mode) with its weird turning.

** Despite the Renegades, the first faction you get in a war against in ''Clear Sky'', being much less well-equipped than any other faction, the entire battle occurs in the Great Swamp, an extremely flat area covered with tall grass and reeds that can hide their approach and little to no cover anywhere. Add to that that fact that you have ''barely'' more gear than at the start of the ''Shadow of Chernobyl'' example above, and suddenly it doesn't seem that outlandish to say that fighting [[EliteMooks Monolith]] is easier. The game even toys with you on this - you can find an endgame-grade rifle in the starting area, but it's in the worst possible condition and there's no ammunition for it.

*** Imrik's entire faction boni are geared towards Dragons (reducing their upkeep, making them more powerful, being able to recruit 6 unique versions of them), a late-game unit, which will not help when his first dozens turns inolves fighting multiple armies of Skaven that, although easily defeated individually, will be extremely numerous and much more mobile on the campaign map, able to overhwelm the player and attack settlments while they're taking the long route to theirs. Unless Snikch is dealt with very quickly, it's extremely easy for the player to be bogged down fighting endless stacks of progressively tougher and tougher Skaven armies while his other potential enemies (Greenskisn or Dwarfs) grow more and more powerful. Add to that that Imrik has a poor starting economy (due to no acess to global trade via a port) which will make upgrading your cities/armies difficult. Once you get past these hurdles, you can see for yourself that the buffs Imrik gives to Dragons are ''huge'' ontop of being a [[GameBreaker High Elven faction]].

* ''VideoGame/{{Momodora}}: Reverie Under the Moonlight'' has a ''hellish'' first couple of stages. Oddly, it's not just that you have a short health bar, few to no healing items, and are lacking the upgrades that make the game easier later on (although that certainly doesn't help), the enemes you meet at the start are among the most annoying and hard to deal with in the game on their own merits, particularly the shielded imps (even late-game enemies are very rarely capable of blocking your attacks), the unpredictable knife-throwers who are hard to hit without taking damage, and the bombers who can inflict Poison on you.