Great games that made you give up for any reason

[unerxai]

A few months ago I decided to give my SNES Classic some playtime since it had been stored in its box since I bought it. I figured I should play (for the first time) one of the most critically acclaimed games of all time: Super Metroid.

 

I loved most aspects about the game; the music and sfx, the graphics, the controls, the powerups. At first I was ok with the backtracking in this huge map. Since I had played games like Shantae before, I was familiar with the concept. But at one point it was too much in SM. I was spending so much time backtracking, searching for new paths to unlock with my recently obtianed power-up, I was just having very little fun with the game. I mean I've played many games in the past where I've been stuck (Hexen comes to mind) and I usually persevere, but in Super Metroid it was just too often. I guess I just sucked at the game.

 

I still think it's a great game though. Anyway maybe you have some similar experiences to share.

Edited March 22, 2021 by unerxai

[scalliano]

You think that's bad, I own the CART and have never finished it.

[Midnight_00]

Multiple Ultima games. Even with 6 I've never had the patience to play it for more than 20 minutes or so, and I haven't tried 7 yet. Anything older than that can't hold my attention, unfortunately. Actually, this happens with me for RPGs in general, even more recent ones like those Legend of Heroes games. I guess I just don't have the patience for them. As for FPS, every time I try to play Rise of the Triad I give up within the first few levels. I think I just find it a bit too weird for my liking.

[Azuris]

5 minutes ago, Midnight_00 said:

Multiple Ultima games. Even with 6 I've never had the patience to play it for more than 20 minutes or so, and I haven't tried 7 yet. Anything older than that can't hold my attention, unfortunately. Actually, this happens with me for RPGs in general, even more recent ones like those Legend of Heroes games. I guess I just don't have the patience for them. As for FPS, every time I try to play Rise of the Triad I give up within the first few levels. I think I just find it a bit too weird for my liking.

 

Try using a shorter "filler game" to play between you play seassions of the RPG, something like Streets of Rage, Doom or Super Mario World that doesn't take your attention for a Eternity.

 

That helps keeping the RPG fresh.

 

I am also suffering not getting through JRPGs (western rpgs not sooo much).

 

An Example would be Final Fantasy X.

I am "stucked" at that Mountain fighting the Boss.

I don't want to grind much longer and i don't want to use a really specific tactic for him.

I  want some variation in Gameplay and to come with my own tactic.

 

[roadworx]

mafia 2, because of a stupid fucking bug that pretty much softlocked the whole game for me. it really, REALLY pissed me off, cuz i was nearing the end

[[McD] James]

I stopped playing Earthbound halfway though because even though I enjoyed the humour, characters and presentation, I found the battles to be way too simplistic and repetitive.

 

I stopped playing Chrono Cross halfway through because I couldn't stop comparing it in my mind to Chrono Trigger. I probably should have let it stand on its own merits rather than constantly measuring it up to one of the best RPGs ever made. 

[Hawk of The Crystals]

Final fantasy 10, i just got bored of it real quick, which i find stupid considering that i can pick up 7 or 6 anytime and never get bored.

 

[Vic Vos]

I just don't like JRPG's at all.

[Jello]

Well, while we're on the subject of JRPG's, Final Fantasy 8 made me quit halfway or three quarters of the way through. I found an island where I could level up relatively quickly, but I didn't realize that all the enemies in the game leveled up along with you. So I thought I was doing pretty damn good by the time I was done leveling, went back to the main game and enemies that I was completely obliterating before were casting devastating spells. Like, enemies that I met in the first quarter of the game could suddenly wipe my party out. Got bored of dying pretty quickly.

 

Actually, almost the exact same thing happened in Final Fantasy 9, and I'm pretty sure I was three quarters of the way done with that one as well. That was when I pretty much gave up on the Final Fantasy series, even though 4 and 6 are two of my favorite games. I've never played one after 9.

[Rudolph]

XCOM 2012. Normal is too easy and predictable, Classic is just too frustrating and the Council Missions are just cheap trial-and-error.

 

Also I got tired of losing soldiers to unfixed bugs like enemies spawning out of thin air right on top of you or downed squadmates falling through the floor.

[D4NUK1]

Thief 2, that's trying the hardest difficulty.

[Chow Yun Thin]

Killing Floor 2.

 

Every once in a while I get a nostalgic twinge from some awesome moments in that game, and I liked their gameplay loop a lot more than COD Zombies. But about halfway through I started playing more for earning cosmetics. Out of the nearly 1500 hours Steam says I played, only about 20-25% was actual playtime and the rest was waiting at the main menu for a half-hour to get a cosmetic or lootbox. It was really outside factors intruding into the game that made me quit cold turkey.

 

During the Early Access period, the devs put in a cosmetic drop system a la CS:GO and probably hoping to reap a similar kind of reward (AFAIK, they didn't). People got pissed at that and the devs managed to assuage most of them by saying they don't want to use the DLC weapon system from the first game, and that the funds from the cosmetics will go towards developing free content updates.

 

There was another controversy where they did a crossover with Chivalry: Medieval Warfare and tied an in-game weapon with that game. People got mad at that, but to the devs' credit they put in a sharing system where if player A had that game and access to its weapon, all players in-game with A can buy the weapon in KF2.

 

The last straw for me was when during a lead-up to a Halloween event, they said they were gonna charge for upcoming DLC weapons piecemeal. Even though the DLC weapons were subject to the sharing system put in earlier, it was something they explicitly went against when they implemented the cosmetic drop system. At around the same time, they announced that their shark game Maneater was going exclusively on Epic Games Store. So they were "apologizing" to the playerbase about charging for DLC weapons while taking cash from the Fortnite company at the same time. That was when I decided to wash my hands of the game and their devs. Deleted the game and removed my browser history of their subreddit. It also didn't help that I was listening to Jim Sterling's ranting on predatory MTX that's rife in the videogame industry.

 

"Giving the Cold Shoulder" was the perfect title for the last achievement I got for KF2.

[spineapple tea]

Half Life 2 is a bitch when you're low on health and in an area with mostly combine soldiers around, especially that bit at the beginning of nova prospekt. That and the fact that in the nova prospekt prison, you got all these antlions around and they just block the tight hallways. Just a bitch to go through and might make me give up entirely.

[almostmatt1]

I used to be a much bigger fan of Skyrim than I am now, but I never actually finished it... I have a terrible habit of starting RPGs over and over without getting that far in any one file. Same thing with Fallout 4 now that I think about it. 

[Macross+]

Final Fantasy VI, I managed to reach the final area of the game but due to complacency and exhaustion from all the grind I just stopped, it was one of the biggest mistakes I have ever done.

[alps]

return to castle wolfenstein, well, normal route anyway. i learned some tricks that allowed me to complete it. lol for the end level pattern tho

[Tetzlaff]

Stalker: Shadow of Chernobyl. I just couldn‘t get it to run properly on my PC. I eventually uninstalled it because I didn‘t want the experience to be spoiled by numerous bugs.

[unerxai]

2 hours ago, Tetzlaff said:

Stalker: Shadow of Chernobyl. I just couldn‘t get it to run properly on my PC. I eventually uninstalled it because I didn‘t want the experience to be spoiled by numerous bugs.

I've always heard the Stalker games are pretty much unplayable unless you use a mod, due to the numorous glitches and bugs. Never played them myself though.

[Rudolph]

33 minutes ago, unerxai said:

I've always heard the Stalker games are pretty much unplayable unless you use a mod, due to the numerous glitches and bugs. Never played them myself though.

Call of Pripyat is relatively stable and bug-free. Also, there are plenty of mods out there that fix and improve the games.

 

Also, there is STALKER: Lost Alpha, which is a recreation of the first game as it was meant to be released and is free to play.

Edited March 24, 2021 by Rudolph

[BrassKnight]

Persona 5 and Yakuza 5, I really those two games but schoolwork got in the way so I didn't have any time to play it, I'm doing with my current work right now and Yakuza 6 is coming out so I might finish Yakuza 5.

[vyruss]

Middle-earth: Shadow of War for modern game that's recently done this to me, and Breath of Fire 3 for old game.  Both of them had the same things going: interesting systems and mechanics, entertaining story and gameplay.  Both of them were abandoned for the same reason: the entertaining gameplay became too much of a repetitive grind.

[Taw Tu'lki]

Some fightings and racing games.

[hybridial]

Whilst I absolutely intend to play through it some day, I have started Planescape Torment probably a dozen of times and barely made it out of the starting area each time. 

 

I have finished Baldur's Gate 2 before (... like once) but I also play it partially getting restartitis a lot. 

 

I have a half played file on Fallout 2 that I think I haven't resumed for 2 and a half years now. 

[SOSU]

I started Diablo zwei once, played it for like an hour then stopped and later forgot i had the game :D

 

 

[holaareola]

1 hour ago, hybridial said:

Whilst I absolutely intend to play through it some day, I have started Planescape Torment probably a dozen of times and barely made it out of the starting area each time. 

Ah, Planescape. If you avoid a combat build it's well worth sticking with, one of the few game stories that stands up outside gamedom for me. I can almost forgive the amnesia cliche for how deeply it is eventually revealed to be woven through the story and the world.

 

Another thing that comes to mind about Planescape is that your party almost makes sense. The party is such a core facet of RPGs, there for the vast majority of your time in a game. And yet, apart from Planescape, I can think of few that give an emotionally and logically convincing reason for why ~3-5 poor sods give up their lives to be your all-in-one soldier, servant and donkey, schlepping all the crap you've accumulated from one mortally dangerous situation to another.

 

For me, it was GTA4, or whichever had the Niko Bellic guy. Apart from the story only hitting me as so-so, and the minigames/social side tiresome in the extreme, I really enjoyed the core gameplay, world and missions and could see why the series is a AAA standard-bearer. Anyway, I felt like I was sticking fairly close to the main line but at some point I saw a completion stat and it was 10% after 20 hours' play or something. Fuuuuuck that -- I've spent tens of thousands of hours gaming, many in the most vital years of my life. It's put me off Rockstar games until I die or retire, whichever comes first.

 

 

Ah, also Super Metroid, how did I forget OP? I came very late and could appreciate the innovations, but I didn't think it was a good game. Feel is really important to me, and IIRC even as a god damned round ball you still had no momentum or sense of weight whatsoever - lift the button and stop instantaneously. A bizarre state of affairs to me, when Super Mario from the same company had years before clearly showed how much getting the fundamentals right pays off.

Edited March 28, 2021 by holaareola

[Tetzlaff]

Right, Planescape Torment! I really liked the atmosphere and story but couldn't get into the gameplay. Started some quest and got killed sooner or later. But I have to admit I have almost no experience with RPGs like this.

 

On 3/24/2021 at 2:38 PM, Rudolph said:

Call of Pripyat is relatively stable and bug-free. Also, there are plenty of mods out there that fix and improve the games.

 

Also, there is STALKER: Lost Alpha, which is a recreation of the first game as it was meant to be released and is free to play.

 

Thanks for the info, I will try it sometime again with mods.

 

 

[continuum.mid]

Morrowind is one of my favorite games. I've beaten the main quest and Bloodmoon several times, but I had to use God Mode on the final boss of the Tribunal expansion. The lead-up to the fight is a seriously difficult dungeon, and even after preparing well for it, the final boss could kill me in one or two hits.

[P41R47]

Pretty much every damn JRPG from SNES and NES that aren't the most acclaimed. (FFVI, Chrono Trigger, Earthbound)

I started playing Shin Megami Tensei and i really like it, but the monotonous look of the dungeons bored me to death.

I know there is a GBA version that improves it a lot, but unfortunatelly that one isn't translated yet.

 

What i totally hate is the usual setting of fantasy on most SNES and NES JRPG, i'm pretty tired of swords and dragons, thats why the most acclaimed feel good still to these days.

-7th Saga is almost a solo run for the hole game, and its kinda boring that way with soo much grinding.

-Arabyan Nights is good, a little simplistic, but good.

-Dragon Warrior serie are pretty much the epitome of swords and dragons.

-G.O.D. Heed the call to awaken is amazing, a far better and refined version of Earthbound, but i was experiencing a lot of slowdowns on my cellphone so i stope playing it.

-Goemon Gaiden - The missing Golden Pipe is funny, but becomes pretty grindy after one hour into it.

-Lagrange Point setting is just fantastic, but the not explained game mechanics make it kinda hard to get into, basically, every move spend some energy, problem is i don't know where to replenish it and it doesn't replenish at the healt replenish point.

-Laplace's Demons is really good, but as it plays kinda like a rougelike with permadeath it throw me off a little as i want something more casual.

-Lufia serie feels awfully generic, but i confess i didn't give it a proper try.

 

Right now i'm playing Beggar Prince for Genesis, Metal Max for NES and Romancing SaGa for SNES.

 

Beggar Prince is amazing, and even when you play only as the prince of Shatt kingdom all the time, the dialogues and events are quircky and funny as hell, with a lot of sociopolitical satire. Awesome experience.

 

Metal Max is just awesome dystopic tank building RPG, yes, think Mad Max but here you build up tanks instead of cars. Every tank has their pros and cons, and you can fully customize them to be more durable, or being faster.

Plain awesome.

 

Romancing SaGa is hard to get into, but its offer variations to the sword and dragons formula to feel fresh.

 

And also playing Mystic Ark on and off because every quest is damn long. I'm on the first world and i'm more than 10 hours into it. And it has like 14 different character with their respective world. Go figure!

[Azuris]

On 3/24/2021 at 10:18 AM, almostmatt1 said:

I used to be a much bigger fan of Skyrim than I am now, but I never actually finished it... I have a terrible habit of starting RPGs over and over without getting that far in any one file. Same thing with Fallout 4 now that I think about it. 

 

Oh yes, stopped Fallout 4 because i couldn't stand the Voicing of the Character.

It killed the Immersion for me.

 

Also the Shift in Tone between the Answers was awkward.

 

To add one more Game

Breath of Fire IV

Stopped right before the Boss because i didn't wanted it to End.

Was such a great Story.