8 Hard to Beat Wii JRPGs

The Nintendo Wii didn't exactly set the world on fire in terms of JRPG games, but the ones it did have, whether it be sequels to existing franchises or the birth of new ones, all seemed to have something engaging and exceptionally difficult as well.

It felt like the Wii had a ton of games with weird and intricate systems that you were forced to engage with; otherwise, you will find yourself scrambling. You can't just grind to be great in these games; you have to play the games on their terms, and that can lead to a ton of tough fights.

We're going to check out some of the toughest JRPGs on the Nintendo Wii.

8 Arc Rise Fantasia

Deceptive Beauty

Arc Rise Fantasia is one of the more colorful-looking games on the Wii, but don't let that vibrant look fool you because it's got some absolutely brutal gameplay that will quickly have you reconsidering whether this is a game you'll even be able to handle playing. There is a large amount of customization in this game, and failing to interact with it means you're going to be on the short end of the stick more times than not when you're facing off against one of the game's various difficult bosses.

These fights can end in seconds if you're not careful, with ridiculous party-wiping attacks and combos that chain together; you will barely be able to breathe once these encounters get underway. There is so much you need to exploit when fighting these bosses, from elemental weaknesses to figuring out how to interrupt attacks to managing your own SP so that you can deal damage effectively. It's so complex that if you're not remembering to manipulate some part of the combat to your advantage, it's going to be game over for you for much of your playthrough.

7 Xenoblade Chronicles

A Brutal New World

Xenoblade Chronicles launched an iconic new series on the Wii, featuring a fantastic story and some really complex, strategic combat. While it felt MMO-inspired at first, you quickly figure out that attacks are reliant on positioning on the battlefield regarding your enemies and monitoring a variety of resources. There isn't really a traditional healing ability you can use in this game, so you need to keep those abilities available for use whenever you can and just hope your AI-controlled party members are doing their best to stay alive.

Then you have the boss fights, which are among the most challenging that I've seen in a JRPG. The "see the future" mechanic means you constantly have to be preparing to unleash countermeasures for what the bosses are going to attack with, and sometimes that means sacrificing offense for defense. It makes these fights a wild chess match where the tide can turn at any moment, and desperately fighting to change the future move that is coming to destroy you can be really tough to figure out when you're juggling seven different cooldowns and a special chain ability gauge all in real time without a break in the action.

6 The Last Story

Challenging You To Turn the Page

The Last Story is one of the more surprisingly mature and great JRPGs you'll see out there, and I've always appreciated it as such. It's also an incredibly difficult game to get a grasp on. This action-based JRPG has a variety of systems that you'll have to engage with to figure out just what you're supposed to be doing at any given moment during combat.

Positioning and the way you interact with the environment matters, and bosses often require you to think outside the box to even make a dent in their often considerable health bars. It can be a tough game to get a grip on when it comes to the combat, and while it may seem simplistic at first, it's anything but, and some of the bosses in the game can really test your knowledge of positioning and your overall approach to combat.

5 Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World

New World, New Systems

Perhaps the hardest thing about Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World is the wild departure in gameplay you get here compared to the previous game in the series. This is a direct sequel, which is rare for the Tales series, and here, you're playing more of a monster collection game. Because of that, you have to get into Pokémon mode here, focusing on their evolution throughout the game, and if you do that, the game can be trivial at times.

The problem is if you don't pay attention to it, because then some of the bosses in this game are simply impossible to defeat. On top of that, the party AI in this game is wildly unreliable, so expect to find your teammates dead on the ground much of the time throughout the tough fights in the game because they're just allergic to being alive.

Also, you know how usually the main character is the overall hardest one to kill in most games? Well, here, Emil is a glass cannon for the ages. He can deal out tons of damage, but go down in just a few hits. No matter what you do, Emil is going down unless you take your enemy out quickly. I don't know why they made the game like this, but it has a different level of urgency than most games when it comes to fighting in the Tales of series.

4 Monster Hunter Tri

Remember When This Series Hated You?

Monster Hunter is one of Capcom's big moneymakers and firmly in the mainstream gaming world, but back when Monster Hunter Tri released, it was reserved for none other than the most hardcore players out there. Monster Hunter Tri is a brutal experience that also served as many players' introduction to the series. And what an introduction it was because there is no handholding, no shortcuts, and no way around tough obstacles but to go right through them.

You need to prepare thoroughly for fights, because it's not like you can just outskill your enemy here. This game is janky, and it only gets worse when you fight underwater, which was a first-time feature for this game and one that only added more frustration to the gameplay.

The toughest thing is how slow the combat is. It's all animation-based, and if you swing at the wrong time, you're just going to have to accept the consequences because you have no option but to watch it finish. If anything, it was the game that caused Capcom to restructure their approach to the series and finally focus on making the combat accessible, because here it was far too difficult to attract the fanbase they really wanted.

3 Shiren The Wanderer

Roguelike Pain

Shiren the Wanderer might have the look of a game that would be an easy and breezy experience. But do not judge a book by its cover, because this experience is as tough as it gets. The concept is a turn-based dungeon crawler Roguelike, and it's one of the most brutal in the genre I can think of.

Your level is always reset, you can lose important items, and you can make one wrong move and lose hours of progress. Every floor of a dungeon can introduce new enemies that can one-shot you if you're not careful, and it's overall just a wildly oppressive and stressful game that demands you die pretty much from the onset.

The randomness of the game is what makes it the most difficult. You can fall victim to enemies that appear way earlier than they have any right to show up, have wild status effects used on you that can put you into impossible-to-win situations, and if that's not enough, this game has some of the most notoriously difficult post-game content ever conceived, with bosses on top of bosses that will demand every bit of your attention span.

2 Baroque

Endlessly Strange

Baroque is one bizarre experience of a game, and it does not hold your hand at all and makes certain to bash you over the head with your mistakes throughout the game. The idea of the game is to navigate throughout floor after floor of this mysterious tower to find out just what the hell is going on, and each floor, you'll face off against a variety of different enemies and bosses.

The combat is stiff, so that makes things tough to even get a grip on, but also, your weapons are fickle throughout the game – you can literally lose them if you accidentally throw the weapons at enemies. That means you can find yourself without weapons at the most crucial time of the game. But that's also the point of the game, as each death makes you learn more about the story and get better prepared to face the oncoming threats. So expect to die a lot here, because the game demands it of you.

1 Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn

The Cost of War

Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn is one of the toughest games in the series, and it's also one of the best games in the series. The most punishing part of the game is the enemy AI. They are brutal, opportunistic, and make sure that any mistake you make gets punished tenfold. If you fail to make a good opening move and you expose one of your units, you can be sure the enemy is going to strike, and that strike is going to hurt.

The reason it's going to hurt is because of the permadeath feature that erases your unit permanently. This can lead to you just having to tough it out, or having to restart entire missions again. It makes the battles that much more exciting and intense, because the stakes feel all the more real. Your character's lives are on the line here.