What's your favorite game that you will NEVER finish?
What's your favorite game that you will NEVER finish?
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?
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).
Satisfactory, it's so much fun, but looking forward to the endgame builds is super daunting.
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"
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.
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.
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.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!
There Is a game call Ancient Domains of Mystery (ADoM) that has been around since the early 90's. It's a traditional Roguelike that I picked up and started playing in 2003 and I have yet to actually beat the game. I have thousands of hours on it in Steam and much much more than that before the Steam release and I have yet to actually win. It's hard.
Fallout 4 I have around 450 hours in it, and like 10 are in character creation and 400 are in settlement building.
I have not meet the Institute, I have had two run in with the Railroad, I have defended Far Harbor when you first arrive, I have meet Virgil ones and I have never been on board the Prydwen. I did get to some big fight in the Automatron DLC after you build the brain bot, but I have now idea if it was the last or not.
But I absolutely love the game to bits and can roll play in it for hours.
Rimworld.
Over the years, on and off, I've put 2k hours into that game, and I've never, ever built the ship or helped the High Stellarch or found the Archo Nexus. Never even gotten close. I love building bases and growing colonies, and with all the DLC+mods there's an endless amount to do, but yeah.. doubt I'll ever actually get to the end.
Fallout: New Vegas.
I spent many hours wandering the desert, being a completionist 100%ing all of the side quests I could find, finding all the stables, comparing lore and storylines with FoE, exploring, meeting people and comparing the geology to maps I looked up. Fabulous game, and I had a great time. I just never went into Vegas. I’ve honestly been considering another play through, but I will probably skip Vegas again out of principle.
Minecraft. I love building crazy things in creative mode or on peaceful but I will never play with monsters on or even attempt to fight the Nether dragon.
XCOM: Enemy Within. I haven’t beaten it in general (got really close on Normal), but I’ve been specifically trying to clear Classic since that’s the mode where the game is mostly fair for both the player and the AI; the AI literally stops pulling punches and the game stops skewing RNG in the player’s favor.
It’s the dragon I’ve been chasing for over a decade; I’ll squadwipe on a mission that fucks up my entire run, ragequit, and not touch it again for a year or three, then go “how come I never beat it?” and start the vicious cycle again. BUT GODDAMMIT, IT’S SO FUCKING FUN TO PLAY (except for Newfoundland, all my homies hate Newfoundland).
This is only vanilla btw, don’t even get me started on my Long War “attempts” (read: repeated wipes within the first couple of months).
EDIT: more gooder english and PTSD flashbacks of Newfoundland mission.
Honestly, most big RPG's. I really love character creation, and I love watching a character progress in power. For most games, however, I find that if you put even a little bit of thought into character building, you either become far too powerful too quickly and lose any sense of challenge the game can offer or the game has such aggressive enemy level scaling that you end up feeling punished for trying to progress. To that end, as much as I love their early games, I've never completed a Bioware game, most Bethesda RPGs, all cRPGs including Baldur's Gate 3, Kingdom Come: Deliverance, and The Outer Worlds. Whenever I get the itch to replay them, I always make a fresh new character.
Morrowind is tied as my favorite game. I might never finish it. I have felt the urge to finish it, but it goes away pretty quickly once I start. The game is just more fun when dicking around and exploring.
XCOM Enemy Unknown might be my favorite game that I'm just not interested in finishing at all. I like the matches and the strategy. Not really interested in saving the world.
Tetris apparently
The full grand campaign in War in the Pacific: Admiral's Edition.
Ypu fight the entire Pacific War in 3 day turns across a map with 40 nautical mile hexes with the full order of battle at your disposal. If you play seriously to win against a capable opponent, you have to manage everything right down to individual pilots. There are thousands of ships, thousands of planes and pilots, and hundreds of land units. It is almost more of a historical achievement than a "game". You can play against the AI, but the real experience is to play against another person by email. The full campaign could take 450 turns if you play it out right to the end. Of course, one side can concede early if defeat becomes inevitable, but even so, if each player takes one turn per day, it will probably take about a year to finish. And you won't just be spending time taking your turn, you'll also be reading up on the actual war strategies of each nation, analyzing your opponents moves, planning your own moves and strategies, figuring out supply logistics, learning the capabilities of the ships and planes at your disposal, reading intel reports, and managing virtual pilots and commanders. In many ways, WITP:AE is more of a technical and historical achievement than a game. I honestly don't know if I'll ever be able to complete the full campaign. I would certainly have to be retired before I'd ever attempt it versus a human opponent. And even if I could fully commit, who knows if my opponent would also have the fortitude to finish.
Factorio. I'm almost at the stage where you can build the launchpad for your rocket, which is technically the end of the game. But the Pyanomod and Space Exploration mods literally add like 1000 hours or more to the game, and I just think I'll probably be dead or society will collapse before I finish those up. The game is literally infinite if you want it to be.
I still haven't finished Bastion because I didn't want to break the loop.
I still haven't finished Planescape: Torment despite playing it over many years because I had too much fun reloading and exploring parallel branches.
Super Meat Boy, I think lol
It‘s not my favorite game ever, but it certainly is one of the best games in my library I‘ve too much of a skill issue to completely beat
The Celeste mod Strawberry Jam. It's a lot of fun, but I'd be more than satisfied with just getting through the expert levels, which are already at the point where simply watching gameplay of them would kill a small Victorian child, but I'm at just the right level of masochism that this is a tough but satisfying grind. But I've seen what's next, I'm fully aware of the horrors of the Grandmaster levels, and I know I'll hit my upper limit well before 100% completion.
I honestly have no idea if I ever finished Skyrim. I finished a ton of quests and became an unbeatable bow hunting dragon killer who yelled all the time. I'm pretty sure I got to some castle where I had to choose a faction and just didn't bother. I explored for a couple hundred hours and never played again. 7 years later I played Morrowblivion and then replayed Oblivion (I couldn't get Skyblivion to work if I remember right). I've debated playing VR Skyrim, but I don't want to repay for the game.
Oxygen Not Included
Alley cat
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Zack McKracken
I've enjoyed a lot of Earth Defense Force, but it seems like there's a TON of missions in it. I'm up to 30 or so and have already had some big "This is our epic final battle against the Giant Insects!" moments - and it goes up to 90-something missions, plus DLC.
Undertale. Got two of the endings and got to Final Boss of Murder Mode. Tried 50+ times and decided I’m just not skilled enough to beat that boss. Looked up a vid of the ending and was satisfied. What a wonderful game.
Well no-one else has said it yet but pokemon.
Over my childhood i played a hell of a lot of Red, Silver, Sapphire and Leaf Green, but i never got close to completing the pokedex.On my first pokemon (silver) i had three pokemon at lvl100, and the rest of the party was lvl95-98 playing the elite 4 over and over and over with a single pokemon just to get the last few levels (after running out of rare candies) but i never got the dex closer than ~30 pokemon off. Even disregarding the trade or alternate version exclusives and the [practically]unobtainables (legendaries from event codes) it was such a grind to get some of the last pokemon with high evolution lvls and i just never managed to finish that pokedex.
I have come to terms that i will never infact 'catch em all'.
Horizon Forbidden West; I went on holiday just before the final mission and when I went to pick it back up, I discovered that my controller was fucked. Now I'm waiting for the PC remaster because, I still find using a controller slightly unnatural.
Dungeon Master. I refuse to use a guide, so even though I've been playing it for almost 25 years, I still haven't finished it. Always run out of food...
Risk of Rain 2 for me. I’ve “finished” the final boss but there’s so much more to unlock and do in that game that I’m not sure I’ll ever be done with it. Absolute blast to play with friends especially when you get those miracle runs where you get all the items that are amazing for your respective classes!
Gta V will probably only be truly "finished" for me when gta 6 comes out (assuming that it's going to be as good of a game). 10 years later I still keep finding new stuff in it. I really hope 6 can live up to it.
Factorio with the space exploration mod.
Underrail. I love the game so much but every time I hit the level cap I just lose interest completely. Doesn't help that the guy developing it is violently opposed to modding.
For me I think it is more for JRPG genre games as growing older makes me unable to access them easily as I was younger due to time constraint, somehow I am more appreciate shorter game because I can finish them faster.
This reminds me of my Final Fantasy XII International Zodiac Job System that I had on PS2, lost track where I was progressing and not really want to finish it as I felt the world is large enough with some hidden optional bosses. Another instance of unfinished playthrough is my SMT: Strange Journey because I had lost my track due to irl stuff while the save had 80hr on the clock.
Another series that I would not finish is Harvest Moon/Story of Season, had Back to Nature and A Wonderful Life on PS2 back then (and now on steam), could not complete them as it feels more like a chore. First year is enough for me to mark it as complete.
Payday 2 too with thousands of achievements that I did not bother to collect, I just played them for fun and with friends.
A mod, not a game, but Terrafirmacraft.
I deeply love every part of it, except the ore prospecting system. I always use commands to find my first copper vein because I find it so grindy otherwise. Doesn’t help that the vast majority of TFC’s progression is locked behind copper.
So I guess technically I’ll probably never complete the game legit.
Fallout: New Vegas.
Love the game, it's potentially the best in the series. But I've hit the same game-ending glitch twice. Basically at a certain point an important faction decides to become completely hostile towards me despite me having positive faction rep and despite lots of tweaking with console commands to try to work around the problem.
I'd even restored a save from ten hours prior to triggering the bug and still had the problem once I progressed a quest line.
Super frustrating. I've experienced a lot of the early game multiple times but never gotten to the end of any of the major quest lines.
I got into no man's sky late after a bunch of updates. I've got too much cool stuff to start over.
Dead Estate. It's hard to 100 percent it
Ohhh too many to count. But the one that comes to mind is Demons Souls. I play all of the Souls games, but I just not built to finish a game like that.
Right now it's hogwarts legacy. My friend beat it within a week of launch, I got it the same day and only played maybe halfway through. It's a good game but idk can't get myself to sit down and play
XCOM: Enemy Within on Classic difficulty.
It’s been the dragon I’ve been chasing for a decade, but I’ll squadwipe on a mission that fucks up my entire run, ragequit, and never touch it again for a year or three, then go “how come I never beat it?” and start the vicious cycle again.
This is only vanilla btw, don’t even get me started on my Long War “attempts” (read: repeated wipes within the first couple of months).