A lot of computer and video games have one particular part of the playthrough that is least looked forward to because it's boring, difficult, frustrating, or annoying in some other way. In this article, i'm going to be making a list of some of these. Now, this is only going to encompass things that are mandatory for completing a playthrough, not extra bonus features that are optional.
Warning: Contains spoilers for Hollow Knight, Dig or Die, Minecraft, and Terraria.
Collecting essence and the White Palace, Hollow Knight
The majority of Hollow Knight is very fun and reasonably fast paced. However, once you get the dream nail and exhaust all the exploration options, you need to collect 2800 essence to access the White Palace. Essence is dropped rarely by all enemies, spawned throughout the nearby area after using the dream nail on a whispering root, or gotten from defeating dream bosses. Unfortunately, it's only very rarely dropped from normal enemies, whispering roots only give around 20 each, and dream bosses give around 100, are difficult to find, and can be frustrating to fight. Additionally, it's possible to not have enough after beating all the dream bosses, which means you have to hunt down whispering roots and slowly accumulate enough essence to access the White Palace.
Which brings me to the next part: The White Palace itself. Basically, it's a really long platforming/parkour session, where precise movement and perfect timing are mandatory. If you don't finish it, you can't fight the true final boss and get two of the endings for the game. People who aren't good at parkour or don't have enough patience to get through this part won't be able to complete the game, and the fact that it comes right after the essence grind only makes it worse.
Building a rocket, Dig or Die
In Dig or Die the goal is to build a rocket to escape the planet you're marooned on, but the majority of the playthrough consists of exploring, fighting monsters, and upgrading your gear. However, once you get the final auto-builder, you need to make a rocket to escape. This means that you have to spend hours mining deep underground looking for rare ores, climb high into the sky to collect a giant rock core(which constantly regenerates, attempting to crush you), and worst of all, use explosives to mine diamonds in a volcano, which causes an eruption that only a teleporter(powered by a rare thorium generator) can let you escape from. The teleporter and the generator are both destroyed in this process. You also have to return to your house(or another well-defended position) before night falls, so factoring in travel time, you have very little time to waste all for one chance at getting a needed resource. Additionally, once you finally do get the rocket built, you have to sit inside it doing nothing while you get swarmed by monsters, forcing you to build a fully autonomous defense system capable of surviving being destroyed for a full minute. And how do you build this system? You guessed it, rare ores. After a certain point, the majority of your time is spent mining,
Collecting ender pearls, Minecraft
The goal of Minecraft(other than just building and having fun) is to find and activate a portal to the end dimension, and kill the Ender Dragon. Unfortunately, to even find these portals, you need eyes of ender. These are made from blaze powder(obtained from blazes in the nether) and ender pearls(obtained from endermen in the overworld). Blaze powder is easy enough to get hold of, but unfortunately, the same is not true for ender pearls. Ender pearls are an uncommon drop from an uncommon enemy, meaning you could go days without even seeing an enderman, and once you finally do see one, you have to beat it in a fight just for a chance at a pearl.
Once you get eyes of ender, you throw them into the air and they'll drift towards the stronghold, which contains the end portal. Unfortunately, they have a chance to break once you throw them, and you'll need to throw a good amount of them to make sure you're on the right path. Then, once you finally get to the stronghold, you'll need up to twelve eyes of ender just to activate the portal, meaning that you need around 16 ender pearls just to be safe. Then, once you get to the end, it's possible for you to spawn on a small island a good distance away from the main island(both of which are suspended in the void), so you'll probably need another ender pearl just to access the main island(throwing ender pearls teleports you to where they land).
But the journey doesn't end there. The Enderdragon is constantly healed by ender crystals, which are located at the top of giant obsidian pillars. Building up to them or shooting them with a bow are the two main options for destroying them, one of which carries the risk of them killing you(as they explode when destroyed) and the other of which takes a lot of arrows and good aim. Finally, once you've destroyed all the ender crystals, you can actually fight the dragon. Unfortunately, it flies around randomly, sometimes staying away from you for several minutes at a time before finally charging. Additionally, sword enchantments deal no damage to the dragon and it's rarely in melee range, which means you will need a powerful bow and even more arrows. All this while avoiding the swarms of endermen which constantly spawn on the island, which will attack you if you look into their eyes. All in all, it's extremely frustrating and can take real life hours or even days to complete.
Mining hardmode ores, Terraria
In Terraria, defeating the Wall of Flesh boss(which takes a lot of preparation on it's own) will cause the world to convert to hardmode, spawning new, stronger enemies and new biomes. Upon entering hardmode, the first thing you will want to do is upgrade your gear to be able to survive the new threats easier. Unfortunately, that takes the form of a lot of mining. Hardmode ores, cobalt, mythril, and adamantite(sometimes replaced by palladium, orichalcum, and titanium) spawn each time you destroy demon altars, which also spreads the corrupting biomes faster. Cobalt requires the strongest prehardmode pickaxe to mine and is rarer(depending on how many altars you smash) than any previous ores. To continue, you need enough cobalt for a pickaxe(at least, more if you want to make armor or weapons out of it), which you then need to collect mythril. Mythril is even rarer than cobalt, requires more to craft things, and requires a cobalt pickaxe to mine. Upon getting a mythril pickaxe(which you need to make at a mythril anvil), you use it to mine adamantite, which is even rarer and even more is needed, as you need to make a forge, weapons, and armor. All for it to become obsolete as soon as you beat the next boss.
Games are much more enjoyable when the annoying bits have been taken out and the whole game is fun to play. If you're a game developer, i would strongly encourage you to look at your game and see if it has "that one part" that players won't like. If so, either provide an alternate option, or remove that part entirely.
