Hoping to make your life's design a bit more dynamic!

I remember that Ancient 100 floor dungeon in Lufia 2 being pretty brutal.

That is true. About halfway through that dungeon, the battles are pretty hard and get difficult by the 70s. Otherwise, the puzzles are what made it hard as the rest of the battles outside the secret dungeon were no problem..other than the optional egg dragon.

If you wanna mention extra dungeons, Star Ocean 1 and 2 had some brutal extra dungeons too, I am sure you know that though. ToP was pretty annoying, though not as bad as the other games.

I really haven't played many difficult RPG's, the original Tales of Phantasia was quite hard near the final boss, as I didn't bother with grinding...I wanted to beat the game pretty quickly that night. Hahaha!

I haven't beaten this game yet, but I thought I would mention Arc Rise Fantasia for its very challenging boss battles. What's cool is that it doesn't seem challenging in an unfair way and the game does give you lots of information to base your strategy on and you can do a lot of weapon customization to prepare for various bosses. Some of the battles are just brutal.

PC RPGs definitely tend to be more difficult! Especially, the older back you go.

Might and Magic IV & V got easy as time went on, until suddenly I ran out of crystals (or whatever they were exactly) to be able to cast magic! I was lost without being able to cast spells from half my party.

As for console RPGs, I remembered Rings of Power the other day. That has to be the most difficult game I've ever played. I linked a friend to a Let's Play video on youtube, and the guy playing summed it up rather well in his first few videos. From the start he even could have died if the completely overpowered wandering monster had come after him. The furthest I got in the game was recruiting 3-4 other people. I can't even remember how far that was, though I know not too far into it. And it's completely simple to ruin your game by picking the wrong option and accidentally pissing an important NPC off. Or worse, attacking them.

Well, Zophar was a tad difficult in Lunar 2 until you figure out that shadow was to be avoided. But honestly, I don't really remember off the top of my head a brutal final boss. I do remember having to do a little grinding in Final Fantasy IV at the end before taking on the boss, but it wasn't exactly a brutal fight. I know I've had a couple, just can't remember them off the top of my head. Anything that has an instant kill of multiple characters that can't be avoided though, now that is what I consider a killer final boss

Ancient Magic --> King Orhess. This boss-fight was very hard in my eyes. Took me 5-6 attempts to beat him and the fight alone lasted round about 20 minutes.

Final Fantasy 5 --> Omega (one of the optional super enemies). Hard, too. But not as demanding as the boss of Ancient Magic.

Two games that I have recently played (as in, this past week).

Evo: Search for eden: Although some of the levels can be completed in, literally, 10 seconds .. and sometimes you can close your eyes and push left and still win a level...some of the BOSS BATTLES were really really hard. The shark battle comes to mind, as, perhaps, one of the hardest first bosses I have ever seen in any game. But the queen bee (I think the king as well), Father yeti and quite a few others were also very hard. You had very few breaks, where you could easily win against a boss (cave man was not too bad, whooped on him). Surprisingly, the very last boss was easy and I won on my first try.

Monstania: A lot of the battles were easy and I did beat the game in a day, and in 4 hours. But a few of the (boss) battles were very hard. The sea slug battle comes to mind as hard, especially at first and the spider battle around the start was not easy. I also had to restart numerous times on the second to last battle with, what seemed to be infinite spawning of enemies. This game had an odd balance of really hard battles followed by very easy/simple ones and vis versa. Hmm..I would say a good half dozen or so were a big challange, maybe more and certainly more than most games can say!

How did I forget...

Kings Field! That game was hard and required quite a bit of grinding. Really, one wrong step and sometimes it could easily lead to the end of your life. I beat the game, but exerted a lot of effort and it was not easy! I think I went to the final boss around lvl 30 and was whooped on and went back and got 6-7 levels and had an easier time of it.

Dark Stone: I remember being a pretty good challenge. But I could be wrong

Just beat, for the first time, Phantasy Star 2. Shocked that one has not been mentioned yet. Very good, very hard, especially dungeons which are an excercise in patience.