Personal experiences with Achievements from Hell!

"most ANNOYING achievement ever was from a visual novel, where you had to bake a cake, take a picture and send that to the devs." Oh my God hahahahahahaha That's ridiculous!

But isn't that interesting though? This is why I think achievements need to be well thought out or because I can't ever tell you the last time I felt good getting an achievement. Just relief that it's over. I felt good beating a game and getting the best ending possible cause it was a GOOD ENDING. Or as I mentioned earlier. I played through all six origins stories of dragon age origins and felt GREAT when it ended cause I felt like I developed 6 really unique characters and got the endings most suited to each of them. That felt great! Completing Spelunky? Fastest uninstall I ever did....and then they go and release Spelunky 2...great.

Spelunky took me 300+ hours to get 100%. The hardest for me was the no-gold, because of needing to avoid all of those flying specks of gold when stuff is accidentally blown up and all of the hidden nuggets in behind some visible barriers in the foreground. So I totally get it about that game. I am not a completionist though and so I don't go for many 100%, usually if I beat a game, then I move on, some exceptions, of course. (I am going to wait the 2 weeks for the PC release of Spelunky 2, even though I have toyed with buying it on PS4 for the last month, but finally decided against it.)

I hate the achievements that require friends because yeah, my friends don't have the same games as I do most of the time.

Also, I don't like switching from Xbox to Steam and realize that I have to get all the achievements again :(

And about a hard achievement, maybe SteamWorld Dig 2's The Impossible Dream (0.6% completion rate). For that one you have to complete the game in less than 4 hours, get every secret, never die outside challenges and get a lot of gold (which requires some farming too), all in the same run. It's not hard because it's difficult (you can do it on the easiest difficulty setting), but because it requires lots of careful planning and dedication. The best route to get the achievement also involves some sequence breaking to get to a farming spot as quickly as possible. I still have to get that achievement on Steam cause I just recently got the game again :P.

Hollow Knight and Celeste are pretty hard regarding 100% achievements completion.

The "Seriously" achievements in every. single.gears.of.war.game.ever... and whatever the ones are for insane campaign (is a bitch doing it solo with their idiotic companion ai's). i think one of the "seriously" cheevos from the 360 era required something like 3 mil kills or some other ridiculously large number... which they lost / reset my progress on at somewhere north of 75%... was so pissed.

been playing a lot of gears 5 the last week or two and there are parts of the campaign (on insane) where you just die repeated sometimes 20+ times just to progress one small checkpoint. or maybe i just suck at these kind of games a lot more than i used to?

I'm still trying to get a hell run on Spelunky, I'm not even gonna try to get all of the achievements

If I like the game enough, I'll give my best to get all the achievements; since I'm enjoying my time with it why not check out all that it has to offer? That has been long my attitude towards completionist style. But with getting closer to my 30s and with diminishing patience, time and energy, I started to struggle a lot with achieving %100s and getting platinums.

Recently for months upon months I've been trying to get all the achievements in MGS V but have been failing to do so miserably. Going from point A to B to C to D between the empty lands of Afghanistan and Africa, hitting the same enemy camp for the 500 time, killing the same enemy tank unit for the 100th and collecting animals and blueprints here and there just to tick artifical boxes in the never ending objective list has gotten to me. I was frustrated and uninstalled the game twice and reinstalled it subsequently because I didn't want to give up but last week I just couldn't take it anymore and decided to call it quits. And I don't think I'll be coming back to it this time, it's just way too tedious.

So, for me achievements that are tied to massive challanges are alright and I don't mind grinding that much. But when achievements require you to do the repetitive tasks for about 100 hours, I just can't handle it anymore. The tedium of it all is truly unsurpassed. And also achievements that have you grind online for hours, especially when said online has been dead for quite some time. AC Black Flag wanted you to reach Level 55 on multiplayer which took about 40-50 hours like 7 years ago. Good luck doing that nowadays.

So I love achievements, but I don't bother achievement hunting on some games because they have such ridiculous ones. You know, the grind-intensive ones (kill 1 million enemies!) or ones that just require some very specific circumstances.

The experience that stands out for me, however, was from D:OS 2. I'd played the first Divinity Original Sin and 100% completed it which I was proud of because it was a long RPG with quite a few achievements to unlock. Got to D:OS 2 and although I have put in 230 hours into playing it, I still don't have 100% completion. Why? Because it requires you to play complete playthroughs of all 6 of the pregen characters. Yep, 6 different playthroughs of a 100+ hour RPG. I love the game, but no way am I doing that.

The absolute most annoying games, however, are the ones that include an achievement for being a Kickstarter backer. There's absolutely no way to get those achievements unless you backed the game originally. I've spent too much time growling at a 95% completion score, knowing I will never get up to 100% =)

I'm a completionist so I know the frustration of getting those hard achievements. Funny but there were a lot of achievements that I found really difficult and felt kinda proud after I've done them but I can't really think of anything that was that bad. Like others, I hate achievements that are unreasonably grindy (like getting 1 million kills), I hate speedrunning and hate the ones that require RNG. Some games and achievements that come to mind:

• Grindy:
  DiRT Showdown - Showdown Superstar (Grindfest and barely anyone played the game.)
  Unloved - Longest Road X (Reaching max level with barely any players to play with. Got my last 100 levels in solo...)
• RNG:
  Killing Floor - 777 (There was a map with a slot machine where you had to win on the first try. Only problem is it was almost at the end of the map.)
  Rise of the Triad (2013) - Complete Episode # 100% achievements (The game is kinda buggy and it was up to RNG if every enemy has spawned or not.)
  Poker Night at the Inventory - Straight Flush (Only took me 14.6 hours...)
• (Kinda) Hard:
  Killing Floor - Devil Cake (Basically just do a lot of maps on the hardest difficulty. Since the playerbase was kinda small when I started to play I had to do most maps solo. It took some time.)
  PAYDAY: The Heist - You are GOLDEN! OVERKILL salutes you! (Do most maps on the hardest difficulty, kinda like the KF one.)

Also, I haven't tried it but heard Greece Lightning in Titan Quest is also really bad.

Finishing Heroic mode in the original Hard Reset (where you couldn't dash) was extremely difficult and enduring, all the checkpoints are removed except the ones at the beginning of the level and it is on the highest difficulty, honestly it took me 25-30 hours to get.
Also completing New York minute Hardcore in Max Payne 3 where you have to do the whole game in one sitting without dying took me many, many tries, and a lot of practice of certain sections as you have to be mentally prepared for every single combat encounter in the game. Not to mention how long it took to find enough people to boost the multiplayer achievements.
Dunwall City trials achievements in Dishonored 1 and the tactical Challenges in Vanquish are also burned in my memory.

I haven't played Spelunky but it sounds like you went through one of those experiences where you're just so desperate to prove to yourself you can do it. Congratulations, it's a personal sense of satisfaction you will carry with you :)