The hardest mission is one of the Halo 2 missions, there’s no question about that. Compared to Halo 2, every other Halo is a walk in the park on Legendary.
With all that said, I can’t really pinpoint the most difficult mission.There are missions I can count out as not being really that difficult, but at the end of the day, there are still a couple missions left with some pretty nasty sections. But if I’m allowed to name more than one: The Oracle, Delta Halo, Regret, Quarantine Zone, Gravemind, High Charity. Those are the ones I remember being the most painful from my latest run.
The Oracle isn’t mostly really difficult otherwise, but the elevator section and heretic leader boss fight make it come on my list. Defense sections like the elevator, where you only have a small area with little cover and enemies coming from all directions, are something I always find difficult, because when your shields go down, there’s nowhere to go and recharge them, unlike on ordinary parts of the mission. You just have to hope that you get enough time where you don’t get shot to let your shields recharge.
The heretic leader is the other problematic part of the mission. Holograms that can inflict damage combined with very little cover means that you really have nowhere to go. When you finally find that little peace of cover that gives you a moment of safety without cornering you, then you have to start killing the copies in the hopes that you hit the actual one, while still managing not to get shot at.
Delta Halo, in my opinion, is mostly really easy. First you have an easy encounter, then you get a Warthog, then you get a tank, and all the time you have plenty of powerful weapons. The reason I have it included here is that I have some nasty memories from my two latest Legendary runs. It’s the part where the Drones come in at the waterfall. Again, it’s the same problem as always: lots of enemies, practically no cover. Last time I survived by finding myself to a cave. Prior to that, the section compromised my whole run when I got an unfortunate checkpoint from which it felt impossible to escape. That’s what I love about the section: it consistently gives some of the worst checkpoints I’ve ever had.
When it comes to Regret, I have whopping three sections that I found frustrating last time I played. First was aboard the gondolas and the Banshees. Mostly it was the fault of a really crappy checkpoint, but I died quite a few times because, but I had to perfectly kill the two Banshees in order to not to die. This isn’t really about the mission in particular, because it doesn’t happen nearly always, but I might as well vent about it here, because nobody’s going top bother to read this far anyway, right? Another part I had bit of a problem with was right before meeting Regret. It’s one of the rooms where there are (at least) five Jackal snipers and four Honor Guard Elites. Jackal snipers are famously nasty, and here to problem was that if I missed even a single shot, I would get killed. Likewise, if I didn’t notice one of the snipers, I would get killed. With that said, the Honor Guards weren’t much of a problem.
Lastly, killing Regret of course is an issue for me. I really love these sections where you have little cover and lots of enemies coming from all directions. It wouldn’t really be that had if you didn’t have to jump in the middle of the open area just to punch Regret. After he teleports away, you’re standing in the open, and your only hope is that you get away before you lose all your shields. And then, you have to repeat that.
Here the section I hate: the gondola glide. Again: defense, little cover, lots of enemies, nowhere to go. There’s definitely a trend here, but that’s the recipe for the kind of section I just hate in any game As a matter of fact, I don’t really remember how I managed to survive from the section last time. My final memory is running around the gondola with an SMG trying to avoid Flood because it was the only weapon that had any ammo left on the whole gondola. Mind you, besides that, I’ve never had huge troubles with the level.
Gravemind starts with the lovely section where you have a completely open room with Brutes coming in from every door, and no other weapons that Needlers and Plasma Rifles. The mission gets substantially easier once you get your hands on a Carbine, but Halo 2 Brutes are such bullet sponges that with any other weapon you almost run out of ammo trying to kill a single Brute. The mission is quite fun afterwards, but it’s that single section at the start of the mission that always makes hate it.
High Charity is the only mission I listed where I can’t really point out a single section. There’s just something about the whole mission being littered with Halo 2 Flood that’s terrible. In all other Halos there’s always some fairly effective way to combat Flood. In CE the shotgun makes any Flood mission relatively easy, and in Halo 3 plasma weapons take care of the job very well. In Halo 2, however, I can’t think of a weapon that makes killing Flood easy. On this mission, anywhere where I can run around the Flood without fighting it, I do that. Flood coming from back on front during some parts definitely doesn’t make any of it easier.
That’s what I have to say about Legendary missions in Halo. These days I feel all other to be fairly easy on Legendary. That’s not to say they don’t have their moments but the missions on this list are those where I die more than “just a few times” between sections.