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Nope. If I know a game is going to be too difficult for me and there's almost a 100% chance I'd never finish or figure it out, then I wouldn't buy it. That would be a complete waste of money and would make about as much sense as buying a pair of shoes that are two sizes too small.

Well, I do have Crimzon Clover in my library. (Bullet hell SHMUP.)

Perhaps at some point I might try playing TGM2 Death mode, though actually getting that game legally is not exactly practical. (It takes years to get good enough to consistently clear that mode, and TGM3 has and even harder Shirase mode, which the best Tetris players in the world can't consistently clear.)

(It would be really nice if the TGM series would appear on GOG, particularly since those games currently have no legal home version.)

Been gaming long enough to have a good idea of what I would suck at. So I see a lot of releases and think to myself, "Man, that sure looks like fun. And I would totally suck at it." Platformers are a good example for me. And time-limit games.

I guess I'd buy it eventually, just out of curiosity, because sometimes other people are wrong and you never really know until you try it yourself, but I'd be very reluctant to pay much for it. In the case of BLACKHOLE though, I've been able to resist so far, since it just doesn't look all that interesting compared to other games I could play, so the expectated frustration with difficulty is not the only reason I stay away from it, but the best excuse.

Crimzon Clover is such a thing of beauty though that I don't mind the blowing up. Usually I just pick the time attack mode so that I can keep going until it ends.

I give up . Can't understand you anymore .

Personally, I love games that are hard! :D I litterally play all my games on the highest difficulty setting possible. :P And whenever I see games that look hard and interest me, I get them and play them until I can overcome the difficult sections. I can't really say I have stopped playing a game because it was too hard. The only things that make me stop playing a game is boredome from it or losing intrest in it. :P

I don't think you can know in advance which game will be too hard for you. I'm always amazed by how puzzled some people are by games I consider easy, and with what ease they beat games that are completely unmanagable by me. I wouldn't trust other people's views on which is a tough or easy game.

So, not a possible criterion for buying or not.

Now there's a perfect example. I actually enjoy playing "decipher Fairfox dialect", but a lot of people think it's too hard and not worth the effort. :) Or they think she's gone past the stage of "English dialect" and created a new pidgin instead.

I have to confess, I cheat when I do that.

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I was sure I would never beat Volgar the Viking, but no matter how often I died, I kept playing. At the end I was able to beat it without being hit once. I´m so glad I bought it, because otherwise I never would have experienced it.
On the other hand, I´m not able to survive for long in Don´t Starve, let alone seeing the end. In such cases where things are hopeless, cheats are welcome. Nevertheless I´m glad I bought this brilliant game.

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Forgot about that time attack mode. It's great when you just have a few minutes and want to have some fun, while still being challenged.

I wish there were more short but hard games, or games with short but hard modes. (See my other example of TGM2 Death mode, which might be harder than Crimzon Clover, though I don't know how TGM2 Death and CC Unlimited compare in difficulty.)

I think time limit games are OK for me if the time limit is short; long games with time limits are not my thing. (One indication: If it's possible to save while the time limit is running, and if it's not feasible for a casual player to skip the save, the game is probably too long.)

On the other hand, permadeath puts me off from a game. Again, it's more acceptable if the game is short (like, clearable in one playing session), than if it's long. In other words, it's OK in something like TGM2 Death (then again, one doesn't generally use the term when talking about Tetris), but not OK in something like Nethack. Roguelikes seem like an interesting genre, but the common insistence of permadeath, or of severe punishments for death, puts me off from them.