This question popped into my head when I was playing Void Stranger. I just got done with the game and will probably never play it again despite not finishing it. The game is genuinely amazing but it just gets so demanding as you progress through it. I ended up watching the second half of the game on YouTube.
What is your favorite game that you feel is really cool and special but you never felt the pull of actually finishing it, and why?
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I like skyrim, but completing it is kind of missing the point IMO. The draw is to install a whole bunch of new mods and see if the game still works.
I had 200 hours played and still never beat the main game. Did everything up to that point.
you’re not even really missing anything either. The endings kind of nothing. You unlock the ability to yell a few different summons and can optionally get a cool looking hat that kind of sucks, though.
get a cool looking hat that kind of sucks, though.
Sucks like it’s not good or sucks like that one part of Lazlo’s really cool hat made of witch skin that gently sucks the back of his head?
I’d like to enjoy it as you do, I have never played it but I have it on Switch and PS4, so when I get to it, it will be modless.
I probably spent longer trying to get mods to work than actually playing the game.
Me and most games that I have ever installed mods for
I’m heavily modding Skyrim VR currently and now that .esl support was back ported, I’m hovering around 400 mods. It’s joyous, and I’m afraid how much I may break at the same time. Nexus Collections are helping as well. Maybe I’ll test MO2 one of these days.
I have never completed or even come close to finishing the game. And I was a day one 11/11/11 purchase lol.
Hey! Did that recently and whoops 100+ hrs later… I figured what the hell let’s beat this thing. Ending was meh
Stardew Valley. He keeps adding things before I finish what was already released.
This is me and Terraria.
We’re on last update™ 3 or 4 now, right?
6 I believe
LOL I’m not gonna complain. Granted I’m also never going to finish it.
Me and Warframe
My roommate is heavily holding out her next playthrough until 1.6 drops. Here’s hoping Stardew Valley Very Expanded gets updated soon after.
I think what you’re describing is how I felt with Hollow Knight. When I set it down for the last time (so far), I did so knowing I would probably never return to finish it.
I don’t get a lot of time to game, and the time I get is punctuated by months of hiatus each year. Any game that’s too long, too difficult, or too complicated to pick back up quickly after I’ve been gone awhile is not a good fit for me.
I was too far along in the game to even consider starting over, not to mention that a lot of the magic would be lost. But I was also far enough along that I know I don’t want to put the effort into relearning the mechanics, figuring out what I’m supposed to be doing, and having to re-explore everything.
Granted, by the time I stopped playing, it had already grown tedious and I wasn’t enjoying it much anyway. It stopped being rewarding was just mostly just punishing at a certain point.
After I set Hollow Knight aside, I found other games that I liked better and were more accommodating to my circumstances (ex: Hades). And now, even if I did want some more time with Hollow Knight, I’d honestly just wait for the upcoming sequel / prequel / whatever it’s going to be (Silksong).
This also happened to me. Spent a week getting through Path of Pain only to die on the last hit from the two dudes at the end. I just turned it off and by that point I had advanced far enough to beat the game but just never did. I got the gist of it and my time is now too valuable to go back and relive the trauma of fighting those bosses…
I went through the same thing with Dark Souls. Got it because of its reputation of difficulty, saw it was as I expected mostly pattern memorization but also was put off by the game simply refusing to tell you anything about anything. Got to the Gaping Dragon and quit for about a year. DS3 then came out and I gave DS1 another go, finally clicked. Beat it. Beat 2. Bought 3 beat it, got its dlc then beat those. I now have all those games and the only one I haven’t beaten is Sekiro. But I’m not going to say I will never beat it. Owl will be my bitch someday…
I actually had a similar experience with Hollow Knight where I had to stop playing for a while and when I picked it back up I forgot where I was and where I’m going, so I had to start all over. It was really worth it imo, because the end sections of the game are insanely cool. But I can understand not wanting to repeat ~10-20 hours again.
I fucking loved Hollow Knight but I put it down right before finishing it and… god… I’d have to start all over again T_T
Red dead redemption. I refuse to go in that fucking barn.
What a great piece of storytelling. Those doors opening and seeing all those guns pointed at you. “Guess I’m going to have to commit genocide” was my first thought quickly followed by “oh no, wait, what’s happening!?”
The only winning move is to not play.
Most of the games I don’t finish are because I don’t want the story to end. Currently its cyberpunk
“Meet Hanako at Embers” haunted me for weeks until I finally mustered the strength to take the plunge.
I got so burned out trying to finish the side content that I became completely disillusioned with the game and probably won’t ever touch it again
Satisfactory, it’s so much fun, but looking forward to the endgame builds is super daunting.
Let’s not forget 1.0 still isn’t released yet.
If you ever looked at Factorio and thought it would take too long to get to the good shit: Satisfactory is the option for you. It’s slow; but still 4 times faster than Factorio lol
Really? I’ve always felt the opposite, Satisfactory only just got blueprints and those are a huge part of how I play Factorio
Progression wise? There’s less stuff to research, it doesn’t take nearly as many resources to hit milestones, and the map is 100% static and the same every time you play, with far fewer enemies to slow you down or destroy things. It’s so much faster to reach the top tier in Satisfactory than Factorio in my experience, even before the last major update that added blueprinting. Blueprinting makes it just that much faster to scale up.
Not my absolute favourite game, but one that I loved is Kingdom Come: Deliverance. But I just don’t have the time to invest into relearning the combat system anymore. Which is a shame because I think the world it creates is amazing and you can get a bit lost in it.
Didn’t you find the dialogues in the game very bland? This plus the clunky combat system really put me off?
I don’t think the dialog was that bad, not great but passable. I guess I looked past a lot of issues, performance, combat, because I just wanted to keep exploring the world.
Yes, the world was beautiful, and I really liked the idea of the game, but for me a big part of the game enjoyment is the story and this game was too shallow.
I fucking loved that game. I was immersed immediately, running around town fucking shit up with my boys, getting in fights, getting in trouble, it was incredible.
I played it constantly for a few weeks, never even approached the ending. Then at some point I was immensely powerful, kitted to the nines, my friends were all dead, and I was just some random nameless Knight errant fighting goons and all the magic was gone. I haven’t played it since. Doubt I ever will.
Can’t wait for a sequel though
I spent too much time dicking around in that game, now regular bandits are wearing plate
Skyrim.
I spent about 100hrs playing and even built my own house. There’s a branch in the story line part way through where you have to choose to be a Dragon killer or supporter. I couldn’t choose so I just kept doing side-quests. Not played it in years though.
Isn’t that the dlc? Maybe I’ll confusing it with the vampire hunting
Noita, kinda. I’ve won a few runs and unlocked most of the secrets, but some of the late game quests just get absurd to the point of taking dozens of hours and even with a perfect god-mode setup there’s still ways to get instakilled.
I love a game with depth and secrets but noita definitely reached the point of “y’know, I’m not having fun anymore. This is just work”
Ahh man… I haven’t been able to get noita to launch recently. I followed every forum guide I could find and still no luck. It was my top game played on steam this last year. I miss it.
The sun quest was one of the wildest things I’ve ever done in a video game
Fucked if I’ll ever beat Nethack without wizard mode.
Death Stranding is another, though for a completely different reason. I know there’s some super cool fun shit somewhere in there; but getting through the first few hours of the game to get to that point is so boring I always end up putting it down before getting to anything worthwhile. And that’s with actually thinking the walking system is pretty kick ass.
Nethack is like the Jumanji of games. You finish it by introducing someone else to it.
Death Stranding is one of my favorite games of all time that I will recommend to literally nobody.
If you can try version 3.4.3 that was one of the last good ones imo. 3.6 has hard nerfs to so many ways to survive in that game, none of it fair imo. I ascended 3 times on the old version and can barely pass gnomish mines now, it is torture.
I was never very good at nethack, but the 3.6 nerfs felt very mean lol.
Most recently I found that the speed system has become meaningless in order to make it harder. Eg I found a mimic, which had 3 speed, playing an Elf, with 12 , in the old version you would get 4 turns before the mimic would be able to attack, but it hit me twice in 2 turns and instantly killed me. Then I have to google patch notes to find out why I died… Thanks dev team!
Death Stranding is one of my favourite games, but it’s definitely not for everybody… I’d recommend giving it another go at some point, but don’t expect it to change too dramatically.
I think I beat it once, but only after a shitload of save scumming.
Fallout 4. I keep finding new mods and other stuff to do so I never really got around to finishing it, even though I put hundreds of hours in.
The main story is the worst part of the game, so nothing of great value is lost.
Finishing the main storyline can potentially block off whole questions depending on how you handle it. I usually progress it to a certain point and then stop.
IRC they just released the latest chapter of sim settlements, so yeah. I’ll probably return to FO4 in a year or two. Fallout London is also progressing, so that should be interesting. Thanks to content mods, you can largely skip the main quests of the original game.
It’s become the new skyrim.
I think skyrim’s golden age of modding is largely a thing of the past, but I haven’t played it in a few years (500+ mods at the time), so please correct me if I’m wrong.
Depends on if you count Skyblivion and Skywind as mods for Skyrim I guess
Yeah. How I am with it. Spend so much time modding that I never actually get around to playing it. Add that to thr mod that makes every building have an interior and suddenly even when I do play it it takes forever to get anywhere
Tetris
It finally was done by a human. Finally proving it is actually possible.
Tear that kid open and you’ll just find three AIs in a trenchcoat
Why is it always you three?
DeepBlue, Watson and ChatGPT shrug
Bg3. It’s a fantastic game that I put 100 hours into. I’ll never finish it though because I was just done with the well put together gameplay loop. It made me realize I may be done with that genre altogether now. I’ve put uncountable hours into various crpgs, and I’ve had my time with them. I finished off with one of the absolute best. Good enough for me.
How do you tire of an entire genre?
As an example, I’m done with MMOs. I played RuneScape back when it first launched (RS Classic) and continued for a while into the RS2 era and eventually I was just done. I tried WoW and a few other big games but eventually I just realized I was playing RuneScape again, and I played that already. That isn’t to say these new games weren’t different. They offered A LOT of new things, of different things, at their core I was just playing an MMO, and I’d done that already.
I’m also done with shooters. I’d say FPS, but the truth is it applies to third person as well. Again, I played a bunch over the years. CounterStrike, Battlefield 1942, Halo, and a few different Call of Duty games. I’ve dipped my toes into many over the years. If all my friends are playing, asking me directly, sure I’ll hop in. I don’t hate them, but I won’t suggest playing them. I’ve played them a million times. I’m tired of them.
Just to flip it around. I love platformers. I’ve played so many platformers. Each have such huge variety. Friends will have moved on and I’m still going for 100% completion. Even after 100% I’m looking for a leaderboard, or self-imposed challenge to keep me playing.
I’m confident some people feel about shooters the way I feel about platformers. If someone says their tired of games like BG3, I don’t get it. I could never tire of that genre. It has too many options to keep things fresh. But I know some people feel the same about shooters.
I don’t get it, but I guess I get it.
Arpgs like Diablo or pathofexile are my “will always play” games. Like you I’ve played the mmos, shooters, and others and feel like I’ve “finished” those genres and am satisfied not going back unless with friends.
It’s both a nice feeling but also a sad one. I still follow fps games and watch videos of them, but playing them… Meh
If you haven’t looked into it yet check out Last Epoch. It will be launching 1.0 on Feb 21, but the early access has been amazing.
I’ve jumped in a few times since they started letting people play years ago! I’m a big fan and am eager to give 1.0 a whirl.
I like how they are embracing the solo vs trading play style and leaning into rewarding both types of players uniquely with power for that choice.
great stuff. I’m really looking forward to it too. I like how the skill modification trees work and all the various synergies that are available.
I haven’t paid much attention to the single player vs multiplayer stuff because I’m trying to go in blind enough to not try and min/max from day 1. I feel that pushes me to not enjoy the game as much since i’m skipping over experimenting with builds or skills. I’m really hyped. Feb 21 can’t get here soon enough.
I see, I definitely feel that with MMOs, but it’s more because the successful ones are always following the same formula just done well, like XIV, WoW and GW2; while games that had something very interesting like Peria Chronicles get gutted of what was different and cancelled after.
You should try Escape From Tarkov. Yea it’s a shooter, but it’s intense and, most importantly, not call off duty or battlefield
Europa Universalis IV and Stellaris. For exactly the same reasons.
I spend way too much time in those games. Hundreds of hours each. But the end game is just too much of a slog. You already won, so there is no challenge; the framerate tanks into unplayable territory; and the micromanagement to manage the late game wars and economy becomes insane.
But starting with a different empire, and doing early/mid game again is awsome!
I have one of the fastest, most powerful laptops that exist, and the last century or so of stellaris brings it to a crawl.
Bg3 at 4k ultra settings? 144fps. Stellaris? There are some entire seconds without a new frame.
Same reason that Dwarf Fortress also has the same problem. Simulation is a lot heavier than graphics, and it’s CPU heavy, but gaming computer usually have acceptable CPUs and powerhouse GPUs, so they bottleneck on the CPU with simulation games.
I have an i9 13900, so uh, it isn’t exactly a mid tier CPU.
Stellaris just can’t have a full, long game without eating shit at the end frame wise.
edit: i9 13980HK, slightly wrong model, point stands as its a very high end CPU that’ll beat the snot out of anything normal. Stellaris is actually just brutal to run end game.
Subnautica. I always have a lot of fun building out my base and discovering things and poking around, but after a while I get distracted by another game and put Subnautica on the back burner. By the time I get back around to it, I’ve forgotten how to play and end up starting a brand new playthrough.
Another one is Darkest Dungeon. I have over 100 hours in that game and loved it, but I kind of stopped playing after all the strategies I had been using stopped working and all my parties kept getting annihilated. I was spending so much time recruiting, training, curing, etc that it sort of stopped being fun.You are keeping away an amazing story from yourself. I highly recommend the mod where you can get all of the required storage directly on your vessels, so you can focus on exploring and enjoying the story. Do yourself the favor and thank me later. 🥹
Yeaaaa… Do what the other guy said. Subnautica is an amazing game. I wish I could play it again for the first time
