Your favorite video games are already packed with unique challenges and trials to take on, but sometimes you’ve played a game to the point that you’ve mastered them. When that happens, one of the only ways to play a classic game like new is to impose a challenge on yourself.
A self-imposed challenge can completely change the way you play a game, force you to use items and techniques you wouldn’t otherwise, and even have you experience new events. There are tons of games you can take up unique challenges for, but only a few can be called the best of the best.
10 The No-Pause Challenge - Breath Of The Wild
This classic and blindingly hard challenge from Breath Of The Wild is probably already being tackled by people in Tears Of The Kingdom, but not quite on a wide scale yet. This challenge is exactly as the name suggests, you cannot pause or open menus on your own.
This means that the cooking system and map are both completely useless to you. You can only quick-swap the items you have, and you can only swap out armor through the use of the dye shop. It’s a fun challenge to take if you’ve already managed to do everything else you can in the game.
9 The Chuck Norris Challenge - Oblivion
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This is a hilarious challenge for what can be an incredibly funny game. You can decide how hardcore you want this Oblivion challenge to be with a few other modifiers, but the simplest form is to solve all of the world’s problems using nothing but your fists.
If you find yourself being attacked by an assassin, you can just whip out ole righty and lefty and give the baddie a five-finger beatdown. It may sound easy at first, but if you choose to forgo armor, you become the ultimate glass cannon, making for plenty of funny and tricky moments.
8 Four White Mages - Final Fantasy
This is one of the oldest self-imposed challenges in gaming. When playing through the original Final Fantasy, you set your party up with four white mages and see if you’re capable of beating the entire thing with just them.
It’s not nearly as hard as you might think, though it is fairly time-consuming. If you somehow manage to breeze through this challenge, you can always try the four thief challenge, which some people would say is even tougher, especially in the NES version of the game.
7 No Upgrades Or Boss Weapons - Mega Man X
The entire Mega Man series has a simple self-imposed challenge to only ever use the base buster shot you have at the start of the game. As the series progressed, upgrades began to become a thing, but some players denied them.
You can get a variety of upgrades in Mega Man X, and you’re even forced into one, but this challenge says that you shouldn’t use any upgrades or weapon types you gain from bosses to beat the game. You need to be a master of patterns to be able to make it through this tough challenge.
6 No Spirits - Super Smash Bros. Ultimate
This challenge might sound impossible, but some people have claimed to have done it. If you’re interested in taking up the challenge, you simply play through the World Of Light without ever using a single spirit to help you.
Anyone who’s played through the mode will know how challenging something like that has to be. If you’re a Super Smash Bros Ultimate expert, you’ll probably still find yourself struggling against a few of the trickier fights, but adding difficulty is the point of a self-imposed challenge, after all.
5 Arsene Only - Persona 5
You can attempt a version of this challenge in every Persona game, but your results will surely be mixed. The point of this challenge is to keep and only use your initial Persona, Arsene, throughout the entirety of Persona 5’s enormous story.
You may already be aware that your initial Persona is both weak and levels up in a relatively unimpressive way, and you’d be right. This challenge forces you to use every mechanic to your advantage to have the best hope of success, and even still, some players fail this challenge.
4 Handgun And Knife - Resident Evil 4
This is another classic challenge that exists throughout almost the entire series in some form. You may agree that the challenge is at its best in the much more action-heavy Resident Evil 4.
You can augment this challenge by disallowing yourself to use the merchant for upgrades of any kind, and you can even bar yourself from ever using grenades. It’s a tough challenge but one that many players have been able to pull off over the years, so you might want to give it a try if you haven’t already.
3 No-Hit - Dark Souls
You might have flashbacks to all those attempts at the many tough bosses in Dark Souls, but many people have managed to beat the entire thing without taking a single hit. Those who have accomplished the challenge need to know every enemy attack, have a ton of luck, and get into the groove of the incredible soundtrack.
This is one challenge you’re almost certainly going to have to try over and over before you get it right. Imagine taking on Ornstein and Smough without taking a single hit. That is exactly what you have to look forward to with this challenge.
2 Nuzlocke - Pokemon Scarlet & Violet
This challenge is a classic of the Pokemon franchise and is available for you to do in some form in every game from the main series. The rules change a bit from person to person, and you can choose whichever ones to follow to make it as hard or easy as you’d like.
Some of the most common rules are that you only have one chance to catch a single Pokemon per route, you must give them a nickname, and when they faint, you have to release them immediately. The run can be utterly crushing, but it adds a new layer of challenge to relatively easy games.
1 Genuine Roleplay - Skyrim
You probably love a solid RPG from time to time, but you probably don’t go too hardcore with the role-playing aspect of those games. This Skyrim challenge tasks you with creating a character, back story, and alignment as you would in D&D and play as that character.
That means if you’re someone who is a loner, you probably aren’t going to be joining clans or guilds, but at the same time, if you’re someone who stands for truth and justice, you probably aren’t going to enjoy the spoils of war by looting your fallen enemies.