I don't know if I suck, or beacuse I played them when I was younger and was new to gaming. but my top 3 hardest would be.

Final Fantasy 4 (I could never beat the final boss, I had to Gameshark it, but I have been meaning to get back to it and redeem myself for my misbehavior as a young and foolish boy)

Final Fantasy 8 (I bought above mentioned gameshark to beat this game, but I had trouble setting it up and decided to give it one more go and somehow I won)

Dragon Quest 8 (It took me 80 Hours to get though this game, Jessica with max Sex Appeal FTW (She gets a multiheal))

These also happen to be 3 of my favorite RPGs (not so much 8) I love a really hard game and the feeling of YES I BEAT IT HA HA!!!

Final Fantasy 4 US was already made much easier for its release. You should try playing the hardtype version. Cecil has an additional attack.

For me the hardest RPG was some DND-based SNES game called Wizardry V: Heart of the Maelstrom. I still get my ass kicked every single time. I never figured out how to heal, though.

Dragon Warrior II was hard as fuck to beat and I had a lot of free time back then so I actually maxed out all my players and it was still really hard

plus there's this cave right before the final area of the game where you pretty much have to make a map for yourself because there are random tiles on the floor that will collapse and you won't die but you'll have to repeat a whole area over again each time - it's like something that /might've/ been a puzzle in Lufia but in Lufia there wouldn't be random encounters while you're doing it and you'd probably start over at the beginning of the room - and there'd be clues like the floor would be semi-transparent there - but these were the NES days so they just kept it hard as hell like that because too much coding

Also there was this one area with a shitload of rivers and some LOOM of sorts and either I didn't know what to do next at that point or I kept dying or I kept dying trying to figure what the hell to do


Actually Secret of the Stars was harder but also totally not worth it either

Yeah I think that the Gold Box games win in terms of brutality.  Otherwise, in terms of "Impossible to finish but not necessarily cheap" I would have to vote for Rogue/nethack etc.  But I assume we are talking about Japanese turn-based RPGs so:

Shin Megami Tensei: Anything.  A running theme in this series is that you cannot grind very easily, so you just have to keep going forward.  Unfortunately, if you have not properly memorized enemy properties and prepared for them, you will probably be destroyed.  In recent titles, you even gain or lose turns depending on whether you hit the enemy with what he is weak against or not, so it really makes the difference.  It's kind of a rewarding sort of difficult and not a frustrating one, though.

Also Dragon Warrior II.

Also Secret of the Stars but I liked that game.  I was very young though and anything that had numbers that went up was fine by me so I probably did not judge it fairly.  Like come on it's published by TECMO.

Don't laugh at me but Xenosaga, 1 and 2 anyway. I beat 3 without TOO much trouble, it's almost a shame the series ended there because they had finally hit their stride in the gameplay department. 1 and 2 are so god damn slow paced battlewise, and coupled with the extremely cheap/difficult bosses.... well, it's a bitch to play through! I mentioned this in a THINGS THAT PISSED YOU OFF IN GAMES topics awhile back but I'll never forget the time I spent like 30 minutes fighting one boss in XS2, carefully setting up my strategies, wittling him down, preparing for the final blow when I accidentally entered the wrong ATTACK COMBO and he promptly fucked me up. It's completely unforgiving a lot of the time.

I don't really like challenge in games. I mean, I like to have to use a LITTLE strategy and stuff, sure, but I hate being cockblocked just because I'm not TWINKIN MY DUDES and grinding ridiculous levels and shit. For me, fast paced/smooth gameplay and an interesting story are the best things I can look for in an RPG.

Probably fucking Xenosaga.  If not that, then some SMT game, like maladroit said.

This completely. Xenosaga 1 had the hardest and sometimes most unforgiving battle system ever. And even if you were winning shit would change LIKE THAT.

The other two were a little better.

And yeah, SMT: Nocturne (the only one I've played) was pretty brutal.

just in standard RPGs: SMT: Nocturne
including turn based SRPG: Final Fantasy Tactics. The Elmdor fight. My god.

fft had nothing on tactics ogre, toughest game ever made in my opinion.

try doing hell's gate without cheating.....

There are so many hard games I could list but none of them are turnbased RPG's.

nethack

Hmm... toughest turn based RPG I have ever played... that is a good question... I think Breath of Fire II had its difficult moments, especially in some of the tough areas like HighFort... and Barubary, fucking impossible I swear... I felt like I could go on in life when I beat that game...