HDII Top 100
Difficulty Rankings
Find the most difficult, or the easiest, games as rated by players. Games must have at least 5 difficulty ratings to be ranked.
| # | Game | Release Year | RatingAvg | Weighted RatingWtd | Number of RatingsRatings | |
Difficulty Rankings
Find the most difficult, or the easiest, games as rated by players. Games must have at least 5 difficulty ratings to be ranked.
| # | Game | Release Year | RatingAvg | Weighted RatingWtd | Number of RatingsRatings | |
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The hardest games released in the 2000s, ranked by community difficulty votes. 100 titles have enough ratings to qualify, led by Ikaruga at 9.1/10, ahead of DoDonPachi DaiOuJou and Tetris: The Grand Master 3 - Terror‑Instinct. Scores are averaged from player votes, with a five-rating minimum to appear.

HDII voters have Phantom Blade Zero at 6.15/10, below Onimusha and nowhere near Sekiro. No death penalty, enemies that stay dead and boss phase checkpoints mean even Hellwalker lets you off easy, and the real test is locked behind your first clear.
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Stardew Valley is the easiest game on the site, and four Animal Crossing games crowd the top six. Pokémon takes more than half of the top 25, two 3D Marios sneak in, and a game about watching paint dry still is not the easiest thing players have rated.
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Haunted Castle, a 1988 arcade cabinet most people have never played, takes the top spot at 9.13/10. All twelve of the hardest entries are classic stage-based Castlevanias, only Order of Ecclesia cracks the top half for the metroidvanias, and Symphony of the Night lands second from the bottom. Filter the list to metroidvanias only or Castlevanias only.
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The Long Dark takes the top spot at 8.38/10, tied on score with a free Finnish simulation from 1992 that beat it on nothing but sample size. Valheim, Subnautica and Minecraft all rate too low to make the list at all, and Minecraft posts the largest sample and the lowest score of the lot.
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