There is one game series I felt had an insane difficulty spike, with the exception of the newest game; is Shantae. Most of the games it actually becomes easier as you gain new skills and spells; until the last level which decides to become am anxiety inducing perfect timing obstacle course.
The only parts of the game I found particularly hard were the long "scripted" events where you have to keep moving forward and can't save. (I think there are like 3 of those?) The rest was pretty easy to fumble through with liberal use of the save feature in places where it gets hard.
... "lonely me and my dog" setting, by suddenly adding more pets, and the adding insult to injury with artificial backtracking by requiring a return to the base to switch abilities... The game was SO good at first :(
Some of the worst offenders of "spoil the experience by doing too much" were "Divine Divinity" (last dungeon extremely long without story content), and "Recore" (last dungeon both long and major difficulty spike). Though Recore throws out the story earlier anyway, by undermining the...
Is it really that sudden? I find games with escalating difficulty levels rather frustrating, so I stay away. Though the worst offenders are typically RPGs that put and impossibly long final dungeon at the end, so you have forgotten the story (or don't care anymore) by the time your hear the ending.
Hoooo boy, you just wait for the Curo's (that dick black owl) segments of the game. Almost made me ragequit after that, the Ginso Tree is NOTHING in comparison.
