Topic: Levels that ruined a game for you

I thought the former was hilarious, and, having played a lot of adventure games, I actually kind of enjoy backtracking, to a degree, so getting those witches was pretty okay.

I totally disliked those parts too.

There was this weird tower section I vaguely remember from Summoner2 on the gamecube. That's the only time a level has ever ruined a game for me.

The arson desk in LA Noire was a drag.
I think part of the issue is you go from solving something like the Quarter Moon Murders, and then you're promoted to vice... and then you're demoted to arson, and it's boring. I had to push myself to the end.
Then again, LA Noire didn't live up to being all that it could have been (at least for me anyway). Here's hoping we get another installment someday that makes some important improvements.

In The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks there was one part where you had to draw a shape on the touch screen to proceed. I swear that took over a year for me to finally get right. I was even drawing the correct shape, just not perfectly enough for the game to let me move on. Really made me frustrated, especially when I went to replay it years later and am still stuck on the exact same part again.

The last level of 007: The World Is Not Enough when you have to escape the submarine.

That Balloon Level on Star Parodia - At least the VC Version has horrendous slowdown. (And continuing on it made it an absolute nightmare).

You should be thankful. Without the slowdown it would be impossible.

It depends on the game for me. In the Genesis Sonic water levels I didn't like having to replenish my air and that alone made for a fairly nerve wracking experience. Most water levels in games I am quite fond of, like the ever dreaded Water Temple from Ocarina of Time!

It didn't exactly ruin the game for me per se, though it nearly did, but Turnabout Big Top (Case 3) did put a souring over Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney: Justice for All (especially since the first case wasn't that enjoyable either, even for a tutorial case). Thankfully, Farewell my Turnabout saved the game for me, and even today that case, on its own is worth the original RRP for Justice for All (easily one of the best cases in Ace Attorney history).

Oh God is that the one where you have to clear out four rooms without failing? That was awful. I died nearly 200 times on that stage.

Star 242 in Super Mario Galaxy 2. I've completed Mario 64, Sunshine and Galaxy 100%, but when you fail at something for hours and hours, it just makes you feel ill.

The first level of the original SMB
<shivers> The goomba man! THE GOOMBA IS TERRORIZING MIII

That's probably because you're young and didn't experience dread of water levels that much. They were atrociously bad, because they completely change the gameplay and overall mechanics. Most of the time you're slow, you have a time limit and you're controls are limited or anything you learn through the game is thrown out the window. In Sonic there was not running, but painful slow and stresful parts, with Mario you couldn't jump and stomp on enemies, in Battletoads it felt stingy and full jump was weird, TMNT as a kid was pure hell with screaming and all the presure with time limit etc. And sometimes it can be a maze. There are more of those.

Underwater levels can be fun, modern examples would be Tropical Freeze and 3D World are awesome... And then there is other spectrum like Tomb Raider Underworld or whatever it was called. No platforming, no action, no puzzles, no enemies, just slow, washed out boring swimming around. To me it's painfuly boring and I have no fun at all.

Oh yeah, first level of Tomb Raider Underworld - it made me cringe and I didn't even complete the game because of that.