Alright, Devil Suvivor, we need to have a talk.

Players play games for many reasons.

Sometimes, they want to be engrossed in a good story. Sometimes they simply want to screw around and kill things. Sometimes they want to challenge their physical skills, and sometimes they want to challenge their problem-solving abilities.

But if somebody's playing a game that they're enjoying, they want to keep playing it. There's only so many times that they can attempt a mission over and over before going "I don't want to play this game any more" and shelving the game forever. Sometimes, a frustrating level isn't so bad, especially if it's towards the end. After all, the player has come this far, and what they've learned throughout the course of the game is ready to be challenged. At that point, the player is willing to go through that frustration if it means seeing the game's finale. Psychonauts had a painful final level, but the frustration made it worth it.

However, Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor has a mission like this, and I'm not even a quarter of the way through the game. So I want to know: what game designer played this level and thought "yeah, I doubt this will be that bad". Really? Let's take a look at the mission:

The mission has monsters to fight that are several levels higher than you.
-This aspect isn't actually that bad; after all, the game is meant to be challenging, so this is nothing out of the ordinary
The mission has civilians that you have to protect.
-This right here should be already be a red flag to some gamers; these kind of missions are already a pain. But they're bearable.
The civilians have poor survival skills
-I'm talking to you, Mr. "I'll put myself in a spot where I can get attacked by two demons on the first turn instead of just one."
If a single civilian dies, the mission is over.
-Now it's getting bad. In some games, the mission is only failed if all the civilians die, and typically there's some reward for saving them all (see: Fire Emblem). However, in this particular mission, you have to keep an eye on every civilian's health at the same time, and spread your party members out to keep them protected, also dividing your strength against a difficult foe
The player cannot let any demons reach the edge of the stage
-Okay, now the game is just getting obnoxious. We already have so much to worry about; why is this extra element also in play? Why are we given two goals like this at the same time, when up until the point the game has only been "kill everything on the screen"? If I gang up on a monster in order to finish it off before it heals itself, a monster on the other side of the screen gets a free pass to the finish line, and really, none of my teams are strong enough to kill a monster on their own.
A civilian can be killed at full health by a monster
-This only happened one time, but it still pissed me off.

I'm not entirely surprised a mission like this is in the game (in concept, not in practice). Developers want to throw varied objectives at the player in order to stop the game from getting repetitive and thus, to stop them from being bored. However, there comes a point when the developer needs to look and make sure this level is not detrimental to the entire experience. There are many examples of these kinds of levels throughout games: water levels, autoscrolling levels, stealth levels, escort missions, yeah, we hate them all. We've all had frustration navigating Sonic underwater while a timer counts down until our death, or in Goldeneye when the best strategy for the bunker level was to go and kill everybody, THEN save Natalya, rather than having her follow you everywhere and get herself killed. A good developer takes the time to make sure the player isn't frustrated by these out of place missions; after all, in Half-Life 2, Alyx is actually helpful to the player, rather than just somebody to babysit. Water levels can be fun, too.

But whatever you do, please don't make the player grind in order to beat your game. It's terribly boring.