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What is your favorite game you'll never finish?
Whether because they're too much for you emotionally, too difficult, or you'll never make the time to do so, what games do you absolutely adore but will likely never actually complete?
For me it's easily Life is Strange. I am so absolutely in love with the cute indie girl slice of life stuff that the second it starts to get real, I have to step away. I'm sure I'd love the rest if I could get through it, but at this point I'm pretty confident I'll only revisit it to get that quick hit of gender euphoria and set it down again.
Pathologic 2. It's spooky and grinding and you go into it knowing you can't save everyone from the plague, and I want to play it, but it's something I really can't handle with the world the way it is. Maybe one day, but probably not.
It's similar for me with Alien: Isolation. Every time I have tried to get into it, as soon as I encounter the xenomorph I have lost my nerve and quit. And the same has happened with the Penumbra/Amnesia series too. I love horror games and have played quite a few to completion, but I also hate them since I am a bit of a wuss when they're a little too scary. :P
Sorry, kinda unrelated rant: I played maybe 50-70% of Alien: Isolation. At some point I got frustrated with the Alien AI. The Alien can teleport and its behavior is just far too routine to fill the amount of hours the game requires of you. I think it would have worked really well if they were targeting 5 hours of gameplay.
There are mods for the Alien AI that alter it in interesting ways, including complete overhauls of the Xenomorph’s behavior. Check out Bay's Alien Isolation Overhaul V2 on Nexus Mods for probably the best and most popular iteration of this.
Play Isolation in chapters, that's the best way to go about it imo. That's how I got through the Dead Space series; the games are divided into nice little chapters that I can put it down and pick it up again when I want.
Now if only more games could get on that Alan Wake boat and show recaps of the previous chapter for when I invariably put the game down for too long, I'd be set.
Hollow Knight. It's such a beautiful and amazing game. I love the aesthetic. I've started it a few different times. In my current save, I'm decently far into it. But some of the bosses are just so hard, it's not fun to play. It's especially tedious when you go in to fight a boss, you lose, and then your save point is 15 minutes away. I generally don't like looking up walkthroughs when I get stuck in a game, and I've had to do that a few times in Hollow Knight just to end frustration. It's a punishing game, and I just don't have it in me to grind as much as it requires.
Hollow Knight is one of my favorite games from last decade. I still haven't gotten every ending, but I have made a lot of progress. This game became my essential Metroidvania because it just nailed (heh) everything.
You could cheat if you want. You can boost your stats or make yourself invincible during the fight.
I didn't try it but a quick search gives me: https://github.com/cerpintext/DebugMod.
I know what you're talking about, I absolutely loved that game, but I'll never finish it 100%, the whole Pantheon deal requires just too much commitment. I understand why it's there, but it's not for me.
This is the one. I don't regret not finishing a lot of games. Life is too short to force yourself to play something you don't enjoy. But I really enjoyed a lot of Hollow Knight. It's that 10% I didn't enjoy that made me put it down. I'm not going to regret not finishing it, but I'll lament it. I wish this game were less punishing.
Arguably it sounds like you did finish it--just not in a completionist sense.
I played the Switch version, and I've made it through just about everything besides the koroks. I want to get everything because I'm so close, but I haven't picked the game up in months. I think I'll get a guide and use it to get the rest - 900 seeds is just too much for me to find them all by myself because I'm old and have responsibilities.
This game is my true spiritual successor to the way Ocarina of Time made me feel. I am so excited for BotW2!
Yeah, the game is pretty much perfect, but an in-game tracker/encyclopedia is something I'd love to see in the new one. I desperately want a cookbook so I can remember what I cooked!
Undertale's 3rd run.
I absolutely concur. Your reason is the same as mine!
I may be filled with determination, but I don't want to have a bad time.
I don't finish probably 90% of games I play. It's usually because somewhere between the second and third acts most games mess up their narritive pacing or their rewards structures.
RPGs are particularly egregious about this. Right before the finale you tend to get stuck in a dungeon where the story basically goes on pause, you're stuck with a bunch of tough enemies that don't give you enough experience points to deal with the exponentially higher EXP requirements are at your currently high levels. So the game throws you into an extended grind where you are stuck in this loop of battles that used to be fun but have been turned into a job. And to make this worse, a strangely high number of games will lock you into this dungeon so you can't even go outside to look for some variety or the comforts of familiar safe environments.
The second most common reason why I don't complete a game is simply because there's too much of the same content or it otherwise feels like the content is generic. Mario games are the perfect example; most 'classic style' mario games just have the same gameplay loop over and over again. I found Super Mario 3D World to be the most egregious of the bunch; the settings were too simple and abstract and that made every level virtually indistinguishable from any other. But on the other hand, Super Mario 64 and other games in that mold are much more interesting; the worlds feel distinct, there are secrets that use mechanics unique to those worlds. And even though those worlds do get "reused" to be played through yet again, you are given different goals which provide different challenges.
The one game I think is in my forever "I'll eventually finish it" is Shadow Hearts. It's such a cool game, and I bought the entire series but haven't moved on to the sequels because I'm still waiting to finish the first one.
I purchased Witcher 3 three times, on PC, PS4 Pro, and now on the Xbox Series S. I love the universe and the combat. I dislike the degradable weapons and armor, and the overly complex crafting systems. The main reason I quit before was the humongous loading times. The reason I bought it again is that loadings are much shorter in the current gen. At this point, I went through the first 30 hours multiple times. It's not exciting anymore. Maybe I'll go back if the promised optimizations somehow Include the Series S. Witcher 3 combat is probably more fun at 60fps.
I hate that feeling that comes when you restart a game over and over and you're so burnt out on the beginning that you feel like you just can't get to the stuff afterwards. I imagine it's a lot worse when that beginning section is 30 hours long...
Yeah. Some cheat codes would come in handy, but they only work on PC :P
I felt like I got pretty far into Witcher 3 on PS4 when I played it years ago. Tons of exploration, tons of side quests, but my percentage complete was only like 20-30 or so, not even including DLC. Just an unbelievably huge game. I've got a PS5 now and I'm waiting for CDPR to release that promised next-gen upgrade also, before I try to get back into it. Really hope they actually deliver on that, the promise was made before the scandal about how they treat employees, and the whole Cyberpunk debacle.
Recently I dove back into Red Dead Redemption 2, another game I got very far into but never finished, years ago. Now that's a huge game. I love so many things about it, apart from the main storyline which is just depressing and anxiety-inducing. But holy crap, that immersive frontier world is second to none. I've never seen another game that relishes the tiny inconsequential details the way RDR2 does. The amount of spoken dialogue alone is staggering. My partner likes to give me a hard time because I'll sit down to play, stroll into the Van Horn saloon, and just play blackjack for a few hours. Honestly even the card games are better in RDR2 than most other virtual casinos. (Seriously my only real complaint about this game vs. the original RDR is the absence of Liar's Dice.)
Elder Scrolls III-V. There's so much in these three games that I realistically don't think I'll ever get around to completing all of the static quests. I also get this sort of misunderstands the assignment, but I can't pick one of these.
Ori and the Will of the Wisps. Ori and the Blind Forest was the first game I played on my first console and I really liked it despite the combat feeling a bit repetitious. So I had really high expectations about the second game of the series. Most of those high expectations were met -- combat was fun and varied, movement was fluid, graphics were amazing, the characters were adorable and the story felt more fleshed out. All that being said, the way the game doesn't "nudge" you in the right direction was extremely frustrating. I'm not an expert gamer so I don't want to make judgments on its game/level design but that was my experience. Encountering enemies I have no chance of beating because I didn't find secret caves to get enough HP and mana and figuring that out only when I look for guides online wasn't a good experience, so I eventually moved on.
For the record, I don't want the game to hold my hand, but I also think throwing a player out into the world with no way to figure out where to go and what to do will prove to be a frustrating experience. Maybe clues that tell you what to do next existed in the world and I simply didn't have the vocabulary to notice them, but regardless, that what made me stop playing.
I'm with you, I need to be nudged. But that's how game sequels generally work. There must be added complexity. I don't even mind more difficulty all that much, but they gotta be smart about it. Dishonored 2 just gave everyone magical eyesight.
Sequels reward expert players.
Yeah, I don't mind the difficulty at all as long as I know what I'm supposed to do. I prefer the "here's a monster, you have to kill it to progress but it's gonna be tough" way rather than the "here's a monster, you have to kill it to progress but you can't do it right now because you didn't do these 10 hidden things you didn't even know you were supposed to do".
The former feels like a challenge, the latter feels like a chore.
I finished that game and I really liked it, but after it was done I learned that there was a tree I was supposed to find at the start of the game to have a heal. I beat the whole game without healing once during fights... I had to one shot everything.
Well, it's gonna be Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask, because my parents threw away my N64 and all the games I had for it a few years ago... I was on the Spirit Temple in Ocarina and had literally done EVERYTHING in Majora except the final boss, but so it goes
Subnautica. I really wanted to play it because the graphics look incredible and I have heard its a really fun game with a great story.
However... My biggest fear in life is getting lost at sea or somehow finding myself alone in the fast emptiness of the ocean. I had hoped that the fact that it is a video game would mean I would be fine, but the second my character jumps into the water my anxiety spikes through the roof and I am hyperventilating until my character is back in their rescue pod or I've shut down my ps4 because I didn't have it in me to get back to the pod. So I'll probably be taking a pass on this game and the rest of the series.
In a similar vein, the Outer Wilds makes me anxious. I don't mind the time constraint, but piloting through space fills me with agoraphobia, especially those locations near the edge of the solar system.
... The whole point of Subnautica is to get lost at sea (and slowly explore it, and build a mental map of the sea), and being alone with some terrifying underwater beasts. You probably made the right call ! (except if you wanted to try some exposure therapy).
Exposure therapy was the initial goal :) I hoped that it would allow me to get more comfortable with the idea of being surrounded by water. Ironic how strong of a phobia this is given that I was a year-round competitive swimmer for 15 years but what can you do.
I too spent my adolescence and youth at the pool, first as a swimmer and then as a lifeguard. The kind of competitive swimming where you're at the pool 4-5 days a week creates this very strange relationship with the pool. Everything is so rhythmic that you internalize everything about your environment: the tiles on the pool floor and where they're chipped or discolored; the exact length of the pool; the taste and smell of the water, everything. The pool becomes this extension of yourself that you are intimately familiar with. When you juxtapose this with how many unknowns exist when swimming in a large body of water I can easily see how something like your phobia could develop.
Just to offer, if you're working through feelings that strong, it might be helpful to work with a therapist or counselor? In general, the lay idea of exposure therapy is pretty different than what the term means in a therapeutic context.
Mario and Luigi: Superstar Saga (spoilers) – I haven't played the game for about 15 years at this point, but from what I remember, the final boss (Cackletta I think?) has a 2nd form that essentially wipes your party to 1 hp, and launches a barrage of attacks that you have to dodge perfectly before you spend an entire turn healing. If you screw that up and die (likely), you have to go back to the beginning of the fight, making each attempt take about 15-20 minutes.
Oh geez, I remember this. My ten year old hands were shaking as I tried to press all the right buttons at the right time, yeah, for like 20 minutes. Brutal, honestly. Definitely the RPG feeling of "ok, this run", like 40 times before the everything actually worked.
I did beat that game! I don't remember the final fight, but it wasn't insurmountable. Such a great RPG!
Divinity Original Sin 2 and Disco Elysium. For DOS2, its becuase I need to beat an annoying boss to level up before the final boss. For Disco, I just straight up don't know how. I am almost finished, but I have no idea where the next event is.
If you need a hint on where to go next in Disco, feel free to ask around. I have played through it several times now, as have a few other people here on Tildes. But based on the fact you said you're almost finished, and also knowing where I got a bit stuck the first time I played it too, my guess is you probably need to go to the abandoned FELD building on the boardwalk and inspect its surroundings a bit more thoroughly... just make sure you have some shivers buffs handy before you do any checks there. ;)
I've considered playing it from the beginning again, because I completely forgot a lot of the details of the great story. And I want to talk to my lizard brain some more. (⌒▽⌒)♡
I don't blame you. That voice. 🥰
I bet Cuno, that kind soul, would help him out!
Maybe you can lower the difficulty for DOS2 or respec your characters and change some skills. The difficulty curve in DOS2 should be getting relatively easier as the game progress. If you have appropriate build (i.e. following a guide), the fight should be trivial.
I really liked DOS2, but I hit a wall where every fight I got into was incredibly hard, or I was just getting absolutely wiped. I think the balance in that game kinda sucks. I know there are lots of really busted builds, but I made choices that made sense at the time and wound up pretty significantly underpowered. Hopefully they do a better job balancing Baldurs Gate.
We ruined our save trying to fight that flaming witch that was just hanging out in the open. She one shot kills the party and the game autosaved right next to her for some reason making it impossible to load without her initiating the encounter.
Its not that the fight is so hard that I can't beat it, it was just tedious enough that I didn't want to. I probably will go back to it though.
Dark Souls and Hollow Knight for the same reason. I love the idea of the games, Iove the worlds, love the art. They both make me so incredibly angry that I just don't enjoy playing them.
Minecraft due to being an open-ended sandbox game with endless ways to play it. Even if I get bored of vanilla survival there's creative, hardcore, flatcore, skyblock, adventure maps, the mushroom island challenge, datapacks, modded, and so on and so forth. Each version of the game, the mods that don't update leave empty niches that get filled by other mods that do things in new, innovative ways. Each version also adds more features to the datapack system, which opens up new possibilities in unmodded gameplay. Personally I've made a small food mod, a small challenge modpack, 63 datapacks & resource packs, and I've got a backlog of ideas for enhancing or overhauling gameplay. Many of them are too ambitious for me to do but every once in a while I'll get inspired to reduce one of those ideas down to the essentials so that it's more elegant in design and more manageable to implement.
So yeah, although I take long hiatuses from the game sometimes and a larger portion of my time with the game these days is spent developing for it rather than playing it, I doubt I'll ever "finish" playing Minecraft entirely.
If we take "complete" to an extreme and assume it means I would have to do everything myself with no help from my partner, probably Outer Wilds. It's my favorite game of all time, but I will probably never attempt it alone because the ship and jetpack controls are too difficult for me. Sure, I have infinite loops to practice, but I don't have infinite time in my life, haha~
Super Hexagon, if you count beating hyper hexagonest as finishing the game. I've gotten back into it recently and now I can't even been normal hexagonest. That mode just kicks my ass. No idea how anyone beats the hyper one. I absolutely love the game though.
I got every Steam achievement on that game years ago, for some reason I went absolutely bonkers on this game for like a month. Going from the first level to the second was the biggest jump in difficulty I think, after that it was just grinding it out.
With games like Super Hexagon, I find I make my biggest jumps in skill in my sleep: similar to learning a new piece on the piano, the consistency was what was important. Something about the muscle memory and the pattern recognition just coalesces overnight.
Likely GTA games. I got pretty far in San Andreas last year until I realized I was just skipping the cut scenes to get to the missions to unlock more of the map/weapons. Which is a fine gameplay loop until the cut scenes start to get old and the mission variety dries up. It happened with me and GTA IV two years ago. I think I got even further with GTA IV where I think I only had a handful of missions left!
I'd say GTA V is definitely an improvement, but, well, it is still GTA. It was the first in the franchise that I finished.
I didn't really like it, but Muv-Luv Alternative is the only one that is in this situation right now.
Like, I loved Muv-Luv Extra and Unlimited, and then... Alternative was a bit of a slow slog to get through. But then it got interesting and....
CHOMP
After that I just fled and don't dare to return.
That scene felt so cheap and out of nowhere. Of all the possible shock horror situations you could make in that setting... that scene just feels fabricated to give Takeru some more arc.
I liked the game overall but I would never read it again. For me the game peaked at the first big operation (The offensive on the island hive, I think it happens before CHOMPS?). Some of the political intrigue is cool but I had no patience for the protagonist.
I found it very effective, really. Like, the contrast in that scene compared to everything else that happened beforehand (Extra didn't have any violence whatsoever, Unlimited not either, Alternative before this didn't show much besides some awkwardly animated mech combat) made this super extreme, if they went all-out constantly it wouldn't have worked like it did. Like, in Mortal Kombat you get used to it super quickly so gore doesn't surprise you, but here it really hits you out of nowhere like a truck. The buildup with the distraction doesn't help either, since the whole backstory talk makes you even less likely to anticipate it.
I can genuinely say that it's the most shocking thing I've ever seen in media. But too much, like it genuinely made it hard for me to sleep for a few weeks after it happened, and I still think about it sometimes and get uncomfortable.
On the other hand, the whole coup arc was a miserably boring slog for me.
I got really into the Binding of Isaac a while back, and I eventually bested the Chest on a busted run, but then they released an expansion pack, and another expansion pack, and then a third expansion pack, and I figured that Really Real Platinum God with a bazillion percent completion wasn't worth it for me.
Majora's Mask. I had it as a kid and I just loved it despite not being able to beat the first temple at the time. Nintendo packed so much atmosphere and charm into Clocktown that it left an impression on me. But I've always hated games with a timer because I prefer to do things at my own pace and so I just kind of gave up. I did eventually beat the first temple on the 3DS version, but for whatever reason I never got around to the second temple.
One of the first things I did during Covid was get out the old N64 and work my way through Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask. I had never beaten either of them as a kid and was able to play all the way through. Like you the time limit always stressed me out. This time I reset the clock as soon as I started to feel anxious and just took a bit longer to beat the game.
I love Majora's Mask but I too wish there was a way to explore without the pressure of the timer (although given the fact that much of the game was built around the 3-day system, I guess that would break a bunch of its mechanics...).
You might already knows this @hamstergeddon and @rosco, but for anyone who feels really stressed by the timer and wants a little more of a cushion, there is a way to slow down time. This gives you the equivalent of 9 in-game days to explore in the N64 version and 6 in-game days in the 3DS version.
Persona 5, I loved the gameplay, I loved the characters but it dragged so much by the end, I just couldn't bring myself to finish it. Maybe one day.