Same! I love the idea of the game, I've tried to play it like three times, and every time I just lose the motivation to play for some reason. I want to like it because I love the world that it's in, but something about it just keeps losing me.
I had like four false starts where I barely left White Orchard, but then I was in just the right headspace and spent the next few months completing every single quest and DLC in the game. It just suddenly ‘clicked’ for me. It may do so for you at some point.
Kenshi. I got it in 2013. It seemed interesing but ran so badly on my machine at the time that I gave up on it. Played it again when I got a better PC and some religious people came around to preach and hand out bibles, I put them in a skin peeler.
Oh it's a distant memory now, but I remember the first time I played RimWorld I bailed out again in less than an hour and didn't touch it again for at least a year
Fast forward to now and I think it's claimed 1500h of my time
Disco Elysium for me! Didn't understand it and thought it was weird. On the third try, it was amazing. I finally understood what it was trying to do. It was an art piece and I don't think I'll ever have that same journey again for a long while.
For me, it was Witcher 2. The combat system felt very weird and unintuitive, so I barely got past the tutorial before giving up on it. Later decided to pick up the first game, and after that, the Witcher 2 system made so much more sense.
similar, though for me it was less that it wasn't resonating and more that even getting to that point is a decent amount of play time if you're exploring
I think I finished the game in three distinct chunks each a year apart - up to the bloody baron, to the final quest, and then literally just the last two or three hours of the final quest because I didn't realize how close to the end I was. and I had like a 1.5 or 2 year break between chunks 2 and 3 lmao
In each case the game just didn’t gel with me on the initial play, even if I could objectively tell it was a quality game.
Currently playing through Stranger of Paradise again now. I think I expected a more traditionally “Final Fantasy” game my first time through and dropped it at 10 hours. Started fresh recently and am tearing past where I was and playing it enthusiastically now, it’s a lot of fun.
I’ve played some souls-like games in the interim which helped with the general gameplay loop and control scheme. Also have upgraded hardware since my first run, which makes a big difference as the game was previously a shimmery mess full of slowdowns.
This reminds me that Death Stranding has no day/night cycle. There's some Kojima-esque explanation involving nanomachines chiral crystals, but it seemed like complete BS and never made any sense to me.
Regardless the game is great, and I really need to get the second one.
Edit: Also upside down rainbows. I can suspend disbelief for a lot of things, but I guess my line is rotation of solar systems and physics of light.
Guild Wars 2. Didn't click with it at launch, tried it again a few months ago and oh my god so much has changed in over 13 years. I'm still playing plenty of other games but it's nice to have an MMO (without monthly fees or any kind of FOMO) to come back to every couple of weeks.
I'm the exact oposite. I loved it at launch and played it extensively. But after Heart of Thorns I fell off. Ever since then it grabs me once in a while but I usually just fall off once the story content is over. Sometimes I play around a little longer but it just doesn't stick anymore.
Bought it not long after it came out because I was so in awe with the visual style. Played it for some hours and thought it was fun, but it was not clicking with me as much as I thought it would. It got even worse when I got stuck in the progression. I put the game down and did not play it for a while. Fast forward 3 months and I decide to pick it up again. For some reason this time I found out where to go next and from that moment I could not stop playing it. I could not believe how vast the exploration felt. To this day it is still my favourite game of all time.
First go was after finally playing Planescape : Torment and I just wasn't in the mood for another text heavy game, even though it came highly recommended and had some voiceacting from some podcasters I knew about.
Then the Final Cut came out with all the professional voice acting and it was absolutely excellent.
This one is mine too. I think for me is that I'm always trying to minmax if not builds on rpgs then outcomes so i can see the most/best content on a single play through. But that is not a good way to experience DE; you really gotta let go and literally let the dice fall as they may.
Slay The Spire. You never seemed to get powerful enough and the fights always whittled away my health. Much later I played Balatro and this sonehow inspired me to give it another go.
I do think some of the boss design is anti-fun though, or at least punishing you for not following the build the developers want you to. The sequel already seems to be better for letting you play it your way.
My first run on slay the spire was mindbrokenly overpowered, and after that I spent so many hours chasing that high. Nothing seems cool enough compared to what I had
While I enjoy building a shiv deck without needing to worry about Time Eater, I currently find StS2 very unbalanced on high ascensions. Act 1 feels harder than Act 3 in most runs and some hallway fights are tougher than some elites. Hopefully that gets addressed during the course of the Early Access period.
Slay the Spire. I hated it when it first came out on the Switch, then got the itch to try it again after watching some challenge run videos.
I got it on Steam during a sale, and now I've put over a thousand hours in the game ;_;
Possibly my favorite game, "From the Depths" got me like this. It's a vehicle builder that gives you a lot more stuff to design, both in functionality and in letting you make something look how you want, than most others I've seen... But the learning curve is like a brick wall and I just didn't get what I was supposed to do the first time around.
Same, I tried to play it several times but couldn’t get into it. Learned about some exploits and installed some QOL and graphics mods, and it’s a blast
Stardew valley was this game for me. I basically sped through getting married and then put the game down after maybe 20 or so hours. Then I got it on switch and have over 1.5k hours
There's a community saying: everyone loves Monster Hunter, they just haven't played it enough yet. It's an incredibly common experience for new Monhun players to hate it on their first or even second go around, but then eventually fall in love! It happened for me twice in fact. I played Tri on the Wii back when I was a kid, and then World on release in college, but did not get far either time. Then I tried it again a few years later and now I have played at least one monster hunter game from every generation as well as most of the spinoffs and it is my favourite series ever!
I really don't like the look of the game and not just because of the over the top fantasy aesthetic, but it just looks like you're beating up animals? And then they try to limp away while you razor spin flash hecto cancel them or whatever?
It seems disrespectful. I don't think I'd have the stomach to get past the presentation.
Outer Wilds. Wandering around in the village in the beginning was a bit boring so I put it down. Took it up again some days or weeks later and continued to play until I found the thorny seed on my home planet. That was the point where I was hooked and at the end it became one of my favourite games of all time.
I haven't heard that take yet. Usually if you like the flying (I loved it) then that's the biggest hurdle to clicking with the game.
I didn't even know you could ...
::: spoiler spoiler
leave the planet
:::
so I was pretty wrapped from that part on. Then they just keeping revealing more and more mystery. Like it's a game about lore and puzzles, and the puzzles are tests of how well you understand the lore. It was like catnip for me.
It was the game that took my CRPG virginity. However, I finished the escape from the dungeon (basically the intro) and stopped playing it for a couple of years.
Then I randomly tried it again one weekend in university while drunk and marathoned it.
Dark Souls, kinda. Got DS2 when it was pretty new, and couldn't get into it at all. Then I tried DS1 years later and absolutely loved it. So I tried 2 again, and it still didn't click. Then 3 released, loved it to bits, played through 1 again, tried 2 again, SotFS this time, and I still hate that game. The way everything moves in 2 is just awful, and I will die on the hill that it's a poorly made mess, from the ground up.
The other souls games are great though. Still have to get around to BB since the frame rate killed it for me on the ps4, but it works great in emulator now, as well as DeS
For me, a friend let me borrow Demon Souls but it just didn't click. Years later, I played Dark Souls and it immediately became my favorite game. DS2 was my least favorite of the series, in equal parts because of the much different control/feel and also the wasted mandatory levels you have to spend to get reasonable i-frames. It just feels clunky compared to the rest of the series. I do really like the level design and environments though.
Probably Gunfire Reborn: It's sort of a cartoonish FPS roguelike I initially bought on sale, played a bit, and wrote off, but I randomly picked it up one day months or maybe even years later and ended up getting hooked. The unique weapons keep it interesting and the and semi-casual nature of the game makes it easy to pick up and play for a bit, then put down when you have to do something.
Arma 3 was a big reason why I built my first PC. Purchased it in alpha and fucking hated every second of it. Tried it again here and here but it just never clicked, everything was so confusing and it got worse as more dlc and mods were released...I just figured full simulations weren't my thing but was still happy to support the game. In 2022 some friends had me join them for some KotH and I finally learned the basics. Then I joined an Antistasi group, told them I was new and they taught me everything. Now I own the entire series and routinely play A2, A3, and Reforger...I literally have a 2tb ssd just for Arma because I have so many mods, like I am full blown addicted to this shit now.
Baldurs Gate 3. When I first saw it on the Fitgirl website I thought it was boring DnD stuff. A month ago I decided to try it out and have been hooked on it like crack.
For me it was Saints Row 2. When I first saw the game, I was like "what is this GTA knock off?!". But when I finally played the game, I was hooked and went "Haha! It's so funny spraying shit on buildings!"
Some chase sequence where I shot my own horse in the back of the head, he immediately faceplants and throws me like 20 feet and land on my head and break my neck. "Fuck joystick aiming." I still haven't picked it back up. Maybe the PC port will do it for me, idk
I had this exact same experience. The idea if RDR didn't dry much for me b so I ignored it. One day I saw "gold edition", or whatever the one with all the DLC and expansions included, for like $15. Thought "why not".
Took a while to play it, but when I did I was hooked. Even the, at first, seemingly ham fisted undead expansion was really fun.
RDR2 I got at launch, played it almost immediately, but never really got more than half a dozen hours in before realising I was just going through the motions
Yeah, I couldn't nail it on the head but by the time I got to the more free play open world part I was just like "I don't really know what I want to do... And I don't care"
Might have been that, at that time, I'd burnt out on open works sandboxy games
I remember I was playing Assassin's Creed Odyssey around the time I tried RDR2 and I was hooked on the former. I'm just not patient enough for it, I suppose.
rimworld, dwarf fortress, factorio. ugh. cannot escape it now. though with DF the “jitter” of the chars moving messes with my eyes, so i really dont play it much. i know its turn based, I just like smoother movement or a roguelike where my actions begets movement in “clips”.
I tried DF, felt too hard. Then I read the story about cats dying from alcohol poisoning, and tried again. That was back in the Ascii days. The game ended up on my all time favs list after that.
Dragon's Dogma. I tried any number of times to get into it over the span of years, I'd put 8-10 hours in, but I just couldn't manage it, it felt like I always hit some kind of unreasonably gruesome difficulty spike and I could never overcome that, and I'd drop it. But then one time I played it and I just... Never hit that spike, for whatever reason. Played it all the way through to completion. Great game, knew I'd like it, I just couldn't find a foothold!
Grounded. It initially felt impossible cuz early game practically every enemy one-shots you. Abandoned it for a while, then a friend played it and told me the secret is to learn all the movesets and perfect parry every single hit, and I was like "that sounds unreasonably difficult", and then immediately played it for like nine hours straight.
Dwarf Fortress back in the day (I think it's more user friendly now). I just couldn't figure out how to do most things.
Then I just decided to like job it: watched some videos, took some notes -- basically did my homework, then was able to build a base and last long enough to starve. And again. Then the next time ran out of booze. Then was doing great but eventually had too many dwarfs and starved again. Then goblins. Then a big monster. And it goes on like that and that's the fun!
Destiny. I picked it up at launch, played the campaign, then thought "that's it?" I didn't exactly realize what Bungie was doing. I picked it back up when The Taken King launched and have been playing ever since. Still play D2 even though many people have dropped it.
For some reason, the repeated misspelling of "Spelunky" as "Speulnky" has really tickled me. I'm genuinely sorry if you're dyslexic or similar, but "shpoil'n'key" is irrationally funny.
Path of Exile. My friend introduced me to the game but he was a hardcore player so I started playing hardcore with him. A few years later I decided to try the game on my own in softcore and got addicted.
I have close to 5000h despite only playing like 8 leagues. (And who knows how many hours on PoB)
Mass Effect. I didn’t get far in the original. Played the Legendary Edition trilogy all the way through. Went back to the original. It’s the tank (Mako). It dies in like 2-3 hits and you get less XP for kills in it. It’s just not fun and they never fixed it in the original. Legendary fixes it. At the very least, it’s balanced to the game’s difficulty setting. Where in the original it’s stuck on the hardest setting, but only for the Mako missions.
Original came out in like 2007, Legendary came out in like 2016. Might be off by a year or two with one or both.
Tbh I never really had an issue with the Mako sections besides them just being boring. Also the scanning mini game in 2 got extremely tedious very quickly.
Sorry for the late reply... just saw this. IIRC one of the "Legendary Edition" fixes for 2 was speeding up the scanner. There's a button you hold and the scanner moves more quickly. However, the zones are quite sensitive.
Andromeda has the same feature, but worse. When you're in the Mako (or whatever they called it, I already forgot), you can scan for minerals, but only if the mining computer is open (RB/R1), and the screen is way too big. I've never seen a mineral register over half. Crafting sucked in Andromeda (and honestly in all of ME) in general; once you'd researched a thing, you could just buy it, or more likely find 0-2 copies a day out in the field, and you just sell what you don't need. Once I realized that, I stopped hunting for minerals, and I only researched, never crafted (outside of like 2 missions that required it).
At first, I was a bit put off by what I felt were stiff mechanics (I played the Ori games first), then I tried it again after a while and realized the mechanics were really just precise.
And now I'm absolutely hooked on Silksong and nothing else compares.
Skyrim with mods is a special kind of addiction which I've never really seen anything else replicate. The bizarre thing is that the base game is kind of... bad. But comfy.
Stationeers. I bought it a while ago and apparently played it for an hour, although I don't remember anything about that experience. Then I got into it again and got really into it.
EDIT: It happened with DRG a while ago too. That was because my motion sickness prevented me from getting into it, but a while later and with a PC upgrade I was able to get into it.
Demon Souls, couldn't get into it the first time, then I gave it a shot sometime later but with a guide for only the order to do levels ( I have no walkthrough policy) , it is fantastic (ps3)
Baldurs Gate 2. Never played the first and didn’t know D&D so it was a LOT to get used when Final Fantasy was the most complicated RPG I’d played before trying it.
Fumbled the intro dungeon and just couldn’t get into it so it sat in a drawer for awhile. Then Throne of Baal was announced and for some reason I gave it another try and got SUPER into it. No idea how many times I’ve played through it now. The engine really doesn’t hold up well but I love the characters so much.
Enter the Gungeon. I stopped after a while because it felt a bit too hard and I felt like I wasn't progressing. Came back 3 months later and had a blast and beat it.
Thank you for not saying Titanfall 2. Team Fortress 2 came out first, so few things annoy me more than when the playerbase for that game calls it TF2 instead of "TiFa 2" or something like that.
It's a cliché, but Dark Souls. Rented it through Redbox with my brother-in-law, made it past the tutorial boss, then somehow pissed off the Crestfallen Warrior right next to the bonfire and got ganked at spawn a dozen times in a row before putting the game down.
A few months (and many articles praising the game) later I picked it up on sale and played the whole way through, and it's now one of my top games of all time.
Not a game, but as a Fallout fan I hated the show at first. The acting is bad and everything looks too shiny and new to be 200 years old (plus I don't like how the show is inspired more by Fallout 4 than any other game in the series). But I gave it another chance a year later, and it's growing on me. Binged the first season in a a few days. Sure beats a lot of the other crap on TV these days.
Well for me I just had to suck it up and accept the camp, and the fact that Bethesda doesn't give a shit about lore consistency. It probably doesn't help that I'm starved for new Fallout content as we wait a decade or so for the next game to finally get announced. Helps me look past the flaws.
Factorio. When it first came out, I played about 30 mins and I couldn't really get into it. Few months later I tried again, and now have over 3000 hours logged into it!
The Citadel. I didn't realize how fast the combat loop was at first. The first level was setup like a stop and pop shooter, but it's really a run and gun style.
Happy to say - none. Only time a game didn't click right away was due to being way too young for it, and all of those were most excellent once I played them again later in life.
That's me with Borderlands 2. I tried it for 15mn like 5 years ago, thought it was shit, installed it again a week ago to have another look and it's actually not bad. Repetitive, but well written (lots of puns) and constantly renewed roster of guns that make combat feel kinda new. 6.5/10
Witcher 3. It had me for a bit then lost interest again. But, I'm planning on trying again.
This is me and every Witcher game. I would probably just rather read the books from the sounds of it
The books are great.
The books are essentially a prequel of the games plot. But they are good.
I would still give Witcher 2 and 3 a chance. Only the first one is pretty bad
Same! I love the idea of the game, I've tried to play it like three times, and every time I just lose the motivation to play for some reason. I want to like it because I love the world that it's in, but something about it just keeps losing me.
I had like four false starts where I barely left White Orchard, but then I was in just the right headspace and spent the next few months completing every single quest and DLC in the game. It just suddenly ‘clicked’ for me. It may do so for you at some point.
Kenshi. I got it in 2013. It seemed interesing but ran so badly on my machine at the time that I gave up on it. Played it again when I got a better PC and some religious people came around to preach and hand out bibles, I put them in a skin peeler.
Baldur's Gate 3. I tried it when it was in early access and thought it was too clunky. Tried it again a few months ago, absolutely love it.
I tried playing it after release and just didn't really get into it, but I feel like at some point, I will and will appreciate it more.
Oh it's a distant memory now, but I remember the first time I played RimWorld I bailed out again in less than an hour and didn't touch it again for at least a year
Fast forward to now and I think it's claimed 1500h of my time
Disco Elysium for me! Didn't understand it and thought it was weird. On the third try, it was amazing. I finally understood what it was trying to do. It was an art piece and I don't think I'll ever have that same journey again for a long while.
Check out Esoteric Ebb... I've only played a few hours so far, but it's got a few things I actually prefer over DE
Thanks for the recommendation! I'll check it out.
Dragon Age Origins. My third try it finally clicked, but a year after I bought it!
Get Wynne!!!!!!!!!
FTL the space dogfight roguelike. Took me 10 years to revisit and I've gotten more than a hundred hours in it since then
FTL for me as well. Fantastic game. Took me a while to get into it.
For me, it was Witcher 2. The combat system felt very weird and unintuitive, so I barely got past the tutorial before giving up on it. Later decided to pick up the first game, and after that, the Witcher 2 system made so much more sense.
similar, though for me it was less that it wasn't resonating and more that even getting to that point is a decent amount of play time if you're exploring
I think I finished the game in three distinct chunks each a year apart - up to the bloody baron, to the final quest, and then literally just the last two or three hours of the final quest because I didn't realize how close to the end I was. and I had like a 1.5 or 2 year break between chunks 2 and 3 lmao
This happened to me with three games:
In each case the game just didn’t gel with me on the initial play, even if I could objectively tell it was a quality game.
Currently playing through Stranger of Paradise again now. I think I expected a more traditionally “Final Fantasy” game my first time through and dropped it at 10 hours. Started fresh recently and am tearing past where I was and playing it enthusiastically now, it’s a lot of fun.
I’ve played some souls-like games in the interim which helped with the general gameplay loop and control scheme. Also have upgraded hardware since my first run, which makes a big difference as the game was previously a shimmery mess full of slowdowns.
Hollow Knight for me too. It all started to click after getting a movement ability or two.
This reminds me that Death Stranding has no day/night cycle. There's some Kojima-esque explanation involving
nanomachineschiral crystals, but it seemed like complete BS and never made any sense to me.Regardless the game is great, and I really need to get the second one.
Edit: Also upside down rainbows. I can suspend disbelief for a lot of things, but I guess my line is rotation of solar systems and physics of light.
It's such a vibe. I loved it. I don't know how they made just walking fun
Guild Wars 2. Didn't click with it at launch, tried it again a few months ago and oh my god so much has changed in over 13 years. I'm still playing plenty of other games but it's nice to have an MMO (without monthly fees or any kind of FOMO) to come back to every couple of weeks.
I'm the exact oposite. I loved it at launch and played it extensively. But after Heart of Thorns I fell off. Ever since then it grabs me once in a while but I usually just fall off once the story content is over. Sometimes I play around a little longer but it just doesn't stick anymore.
The Witcher 3. First couple of times it didn’t click. Now it remains one of my favorites.
Hollow Knight
Bought it not long after it came out because I was so in awe with the visual style. Played it for some hours and thought it was fun, but it was not clicking with me as much as I thought it would. It got even worse when I got stuck in the progression. I put the game down and did not play it for a while. Fast forward 3 months and I decide to pick it up again. For some reason this time I found out where to go next and from that moment I could not stop playing it. I could not believe how vast the exploration felt. To this day it is still my favourite game of all time.
Disco Elysium.
First go was after finally playing Planescape : Torment and I just wasn't in the mood for another text heavy game, even though it came highly recommended and had some voiceacting from some podcasters I knew about.
Then the Final Cut came out with all the professional voice acting and it was absolutely excellent.
The voice acting (and writing) is some of the best in all of gaming
This one is mine too. I think for me is that I'm always trying to minmax if not builds on rpgs then outcomes so i can see the most/best content on a single play through. But that is not a good way to experience DE; you really gotta let go and literally let the dice fall as they may.
Dark Souls. Bounced off it a bunch of times on PS3 and PC, then got the remaster on Switch and it got its hooks into me and never really let go.
Factorio. I really didnt understand it when It was first released. Got to my first steam generator and quit.
Freaking love this game now, so many hours. Conveyor belts are the same as happiness.
I checked the comments to make sure this had been mentioned. It was absolutely this game for me, got 2000+ hours now (I'm still shit at it, haha)
Don't have to be good at a game to enjoy it.
Dark Souls
Eventually went back to it after beating Bloodborne.
I was stuck on Fatty&Beanpole for a while, dropped the game, came back and now I've got 800+h in it
Slay The Spire. You never seemed to get powerful enough and the fights always whittled away my health. Much later I played Balatro and this sonehow inspired me to give it another go.
I do think some of the boss design is anti-fun though, or at least punishing you for not following the build the developers want you to. The sequel already seems to be better for letting you play it your way.
My first run on slay the spire was mindbrokenly overpowered, and after that I spent so many hours chasing that high. Nothing seems cool enough compared to what I had
The best run I ever had was an exhaust + wound/status deck. Every run all I want is that build again but it never lines up :(
That's kind of the point. Adaptation > max potential.
While I enjoy building a shiv deck without needing to worry about Time Eater, I currently find StS2 very unbalanced on high ascensions. Act 1 feels harder than Act 3 in most runs and some hallway fights are tougher than some elites. Hopefully that gets addressed during the course of the Early Access period.
Act 1 is the hardest hands down. I lose most of my runs there, almost never lose a run after act 1.
Slay the Spire. I hated it when it first came out on the Switch, then got the itch to try it again after watching some challenge run videos. I got it on Steam during a sale, and now I've put over a thousand hours in the game ;_;
Skyrim.
I couldn't stand the ultra hype. I didn't see anything special about the game. To me it just looked like a dumbed down fantasy Fallout without guns.
Then like a decade later I picked it again.
Ended up first playing hundreds of hours on normal, then hundreds more on VR.
Oh so many mods.
I've never actually played the main story very far. It gets so boring so fast.
Possibly my favorite game, "From the Depths" got me like this. It's a vehicle builder that gives you a lot more stuff to design, both in functionality and in letting you make something look how you want, than most others I've seen... But the learning curve is like a brick wall and I just didn't get what I was supposed to do the first time around.
So many games but Hades lately. It’s so good!
Somehow they made Hades 2 even better.
Same here. Didn't click with me the first time, now I have 100 percent'ed both games with almost 600 hours between the two.
GTA V. Also didn't help that I was running it on integrated graphics.
I've been playing regularly for 8 years now.
BOTW. First time played handheld and screen was too small to appreciate it. Picked up again years later on a tv and finally loved it.
balatro
Same, but be careful. While it's engaging, it's pretty empty
As weird as this will sound, Skyrim. Picked it up, played a tiny bit then didn't touch is for 3-4 months
Same, I tried to play it several times but couldn’t get into it. Learned about some exploits and installed some QOL and graphics mods, and it’s a blast
I predict that Cyberpunk 2077 will become this game for me in like 3-5 years
Stardew valley was this game for me. I basically sped through getting married and then put the game down after maybe 20 or so hours. Then I got it on switch and have over 1.5k hours
Same, except I bounced off somewhat earlier at first. Have nowhere near your hours though.
Also Death Stranding. Excellent game once I was in the right headspace.
Yeah, I kept bouncing off that headspace. Good reminder that I'll be there next week if I finish my chores this week
Monster Hunter.
There's a community saying: everyone loves Monster Hunter, they just haven't played it enough yet. It's an incredibly common experience for new Monhun players to hate it on their first or even second go around, but then eventually fall in love! It happened for me twice in fact. I played Tri on the Wii back when I was a kid, and then World on release in college, but did not get far either time. Then I tried it again a few years later and now I have played at least one monster hunter game from every generation as well as most of the spinoffs and it is my favourite series ever!
Same. Didn't click with me at first, but one day I put in some real effort and now I'm a capable Master Ranker of the New World
I really don't like the look of the game and not just because of the over the top fantasy aesthetic, but it just looks like you're beating up animals? And then they try to limp away while you razor spin flash hecto cancel them or whatever?
It seems disrespectful. I don't think I'd have the stomach to get past the presentation.
Outer Wilds. Wandering around in the village in the beginning was a bit boring so I put it down. Took it up again some days or weeks later and continued to play until I found the thorny seed on my home planet. That was the point where I was hooked and at the end it became one of my favourite games of all time.
I found it repetitive and got annoyed even after discovering the mechanics of a few planets.
I liked the flying part.
I haven't heard that take yet. Usually if you like the flying (I loved it) then that's the biggest hurdle to clicking with the game.
I didn't even know you could ... ::: spoiler spoiler leave the planet ::: so I was pretty wrapped from that part on. Then they just keeping revealing more and more mystery. Like it's a game about lore and puzzles, and the puzzles are tests of how well you understand the lore. It was like catnip for me.
I want to revisit cause I know it is meant to be a good game. but the idea of restarting again puts me off.
How long is a game supposed to take?
If you already know some of the tricks to the knowledge puzzles then probably not long.
But if you got a good ways in (like past my spoiler) and it still didn't charm you, it might just not be the game for you. At least not right now.
Don't force it. Maybe one day you'll get the urge and it'll be right there waiting for you :)
Baldur's Gate 2.
It was the game that took my CRPG virginity. However, I finished the escape from the dungeon (basically the intro) and stopped playing it for a couple of years.
Then I randomly tried it again one weekend in university while drunk and marathoned it.
Dark Souls, kinda. Got DS2 when it was pretty new, and couldn't get into it at all. Then I tried DS1 years later and absolutely loved it. So I tried 2 again, and it still didn't click. Then 3 released, loved it to bits, played through 1 again, tried 2 again, SotFS this time, and I still hate that game. The way everything moves in 2 is just awful, and I will die on the hill that it's a poorly made mess, from the ground up.
The other souls games are great though. Still have to get around to BB since the frame rate killed it for me on the ps4, but it works great in emulator now, as well as DeS
For me, a friend let me borrow Demon Souls but it just didn't click. Years later, I played Dark Souls and it immediately became my favorite game. DS2 was my least favorite of the series, in equal parts because of the much different control/feel and also the wasted mandatory levels you have to spend to get reasonable i-frames. It just feels clunky compared to the rest of the series. I do really like the level design and environments though.
Sekiro is what did it for me. I bounced off every souls like until Sekiro
You're not alone. Loads of people (me included) just don't like DS2.
DS2 exists for when you don't want to play DS1 or DS3 anymore but you want more souls game to play.
It is also the roughest game to get started in but also by far the best game to cycle into New Game+ multiple times. It's weird like that.
Probably Gunfire Reborn: It's sort of a cartoonish FPS roguelike I initially bought on sale, played a bit, and wrote off, but I randomly picked it up one day months or maybe even years later and ended up getting hooked. The unique weapons keep it interesting and the and semi-casual nature of the game makes it easy to pick up and play for a bit, then put down when you have to do something.
Looks kinda like a cartoon unreal tournament, might give it a try.
Arma 3 was a big reason why I built my first PC. Purchased it in alpha and fucking hated every second of it. Tried it again here and here but it just never clicked, everything was so confusing and it got worse as more dlc and mods were released...I just figured full simulations weren't my thing but was still happy to support the game. In 2022 some friends had me join them for some KotH and I finally learned the basics. Then I joined an Antistasi group, told them I was new and they taught me everything. Now I own the entire series and routinely play A2, A3, and Reforger...I literally have a 2tb ssd just for Arma because I have so many mods, like I am full blown addicted to this shit now.
Arma is soo good. Some of my fondest gaming memories come from Arma 3.
Baldurs Gate 3. When I first saw it on the Fitgirl website I thought it was boring DnD stuff. A month ago I decided to try it out and have been hooked on it like crack.
For me it was Saints Row 2. When I first saw the game, I was like "what is this GTA knock off?!". But when I finally played the game, I was hooked and went "Haha! It's so funny spraying shit on buildings!"
Red Dead Redemption 1. 2 I unfortunately was never able to get into.
Some chase sequence where I shot my own horse in the back of the head, he immediately faceplants and throws me like 20 feet and land on my head and break my neck. "Fuck joystick aiming." I still haven't picked it back up. Maybe the PC port will do it for me, idk
I had this exact same experience. The idea if RDR didn't dry much for me b so I ignored it. One day I saw "gold edition", or whatever the one with all the DLC and expansions included, for like $15. Thought "why not".
Took a while to play it, but when I did I was hooked. Even the, at first, seemingly ham fisted undead expansion was really fun.
RDR2 I got at launch, played it almost immediately, but never really got more than half a dozen hours in before realising I was just going through the motions
2 was just so slow compared to 1. I know they were going for ultra realism, but it made it not fun for me.
Yeah, I couldn't nail it on the head but by the time I got to the more free play open world part I was just like "I don't really know what I want to do... And I don't care"
Might have been that, at that time, I'd burnt out on open works sandboxy games
I remember I was playing Assassin's Creed Odyssey around the time I tried RDR2 and I was hooked on the former. I'm just not patient enough for it, I suppose.
Hollow Knight
I tried Hollow Knight, but it didn't click for me... With half the comnents here mentioning that game, I apparently need to try it again.
rimworld, dwarf fortress, factorio. ugh. cannot escape it now. though with DF the “jitter” of the chars moving messes with my eyes, so i really dont play it much. i know its turn based, I just like smoother movement or a roguelike where my actions begets movement in “clips”.
I tried DF, felt too hard. Then I read the story about cats dying from alcohol poisoning, and tried again. That was back in the Ascii days. The game ended up on my all time favs list after that.
Dragon's Dogma. I tried any number of times to get into it over the span of years, I'd put 8-10 hours in, but I just couldn't manage it, it felt like I always hit some kind of unreasonably gruesome difficulty spike and I could never overcome that, and I'd drop it. But then one time I played it and I just... Never hit that spike, for whatever reason. Played it all the way through to completion. Great game, knew I'd like it, I just couldn't find a foothold!
Grounded. It initially felt impossible cuz early game practically every enemy one-shots you. Abandoned it for a while, then a friend played it and told me the secret is to learn all the movesets and perfect parry every single hit, and I was like "that sounds unreasonably difficult", and then immediately played it for like nine hours straight.
9 hours straight?! You gotta pump those rookie numbers up!
I really enjoyed Grounded and look forward to trying the sequel at some point.
Dwarf Fortress back in the day (I think it's more user friendly now). I just couldn't figure out how to do most things.
Then I just decided to like job it: watched some videos, took some notes -- basically did my homework, then was able to build a base and last long enough to starve. And again. Then the next time ran out of booze. Then was doing great but eventually had too many dwarfs and starved again. Then goblins. Then a big monster. And it goes on like that and that's the fun!
Destiny. I picked it up at launch, played the campaign, then thought "that's it?" I didn't exactly realize what Bungie was doing. I picked it back up when The Taken King launched and have been playing ever since. Still play D2 even though many people have dropped it.
Various actually
My steam top X :
For some reason, the repeated misspelling of "Spelunky" as "Speulnky" has really tickled me. I'm genuinely sorry if you're dyslexic or similar, but "shpoil'n'key" is irrationally funny.
IDK english spelling sucks dick.
Try Noita. It's like Spelunky on crack
I mean, I've had it on my wishlist for years, but also, I don't want to have all my time disappear, I'm starting to be productive in my spare time
Noita, or as I've taken to calling it, "Witch Spelunky"
Bloodborne, and then Sekiro
Path of Exile. My friend introduced me to the game but he was a hardcore player so I started playing hardcore with him. A few years later I decided to try the game on my own in softcore and got addicted.
I have close to 5000h despite only playing like 8 leagues. (And who knows how many hours on PoB)
Mass Effect. I didn’t get far in the original. Played the Legendary Edition trilogy all the way through. Went back to the original. It’s the tank (Mako). It dies in like 2-3 hits and you get less XP for kills in it. It’s just not fun and they never fixed it in the original. Legendary fixes it. At the very least, it’s balanced to the game’s difficulty setting. Where in the original it’s stuck on the hardest setting, but only for the Mako missions.
Original came out in like 2007, Legendary came out in like 2016. Might be off by a year or two with one or both.
Tbh I never really had an issue with the Mako sections besides them just being boring. Also the scanning mini game in 2 got extremely tedious very quickly.
Sorry for the late reply... just saw this. IIRC one of the "Legendary Edition" fixes for 2 was speeding up the scanner. There's a button you hold and the scanner moves more quickly. However, the zones are quite sensitive.
Andromeda has the same feature, but worse. When you're in the Mako (or whatever they called it, I already forgot), you can scan for minerals, but only if the mining computer is open (RB/R1), and the screen is way too big. I've never seen a mineral register over half. Crafting sucked in Andromeda (and honestly in all of ME) in general; once you'd researched a thing, you could just buy it, or more likely find 0-2 copies a day out in the field, and you just sell what you don't need. Once I realized that, I stopped hunting for minerals, and I only researched, never crafted (outside of like 2 missions that required it).
Both Project Zomboid and Old School Runescape. Dropped both of them quick the first time around and now they are the only two games I play
Hollow Knight.
At first, I was a bit put off by what I felt were stiff mechanics (I played the Ori games first), then I tried it again after a while and realized the mechanics were really just precise.
And now I'm absolutely hooked on Silksong and nothing else compares.
Skyrim was this for me. Took me a bunch of tries to get into it but its one of my most played games now
Skyrim with mods is a special kind of addiction which I've never really seen anything else replicate. The bizarre thing is that the base game is kind of... bad. But comfy.
Now my most-played games on Steam!
Stationeers. I bought it a while ago and apparently played it for an hour, although I don't remember anything about that experience. Then I got into it again and got really into it.
EDIT: It happened with DRG a while ago too. That was because my motion sickness prevented me from getting into it, but a while later and with a PC upgrade I was able to get into it.
Space Engineers. It was a bit hard to get at first, but then it clicked like crazy
Valheim.
The first time I tried it, I got a really terrible seed, which turned me off pretty quickly. I also went in solo and blind.
My second time around, I got a pretty decent seed.
One where the Swamps actually gave me iron for once, and the Plains and Mistlands weren't surrounding my tiny ass meadows spawning area...
I also watched a few tutorials and played with friends.
By the end, I had 1800 hours in the game and had built entire towns in vanilla mode.
I spent about twice as much time in creative/debug mode just building away.
I haven't played in a year but I can't wait to dive back in with the new North location once it releases.
Demon Souls, couldn't get into it the first time, then I gave it a shot sometime later but with a guide for only the order to do levels ( I have no walkthrough policy) , it is fantastic (ps3)
Baldurs Gate 2. Never played the first and didn’t know D&D so it was a LOT to get used when Final Fantasy was the most complicated RPG I’d played before trying it.
Fumbled the intro dungeon and just couldn’t get into it so it sat in a drawer for awhile. Then Throne of Baal was announced and for some reason I gave it another try and got SUPER into it. No idea how many times I’ve played through it now. The engine really doesn’t hold up well but I love the characters so much.
Enter the Gungeon. I stopped after a while because it felt a bit too hard and I felt like I wasn't progressing. Came back 3 months later and had a blast and beat it.
Sekiro
Monster Hunter for me.
Currently for me its The Last Stand Aftermath... Lots of roguelikes on this list for a reason I think.
Kingdom Shell currently, holy crap what a bizarre and beautiful world.
TF2
Team Fortress 2 or Transport Fever 2
Team Fortress 2
Thank you for not saying Titanfall 2. Team Fortress 2 came out first, so few things annoy me more than when the playerbase for that game calls it TF2 instead of "TiFa 2" or something like that.
tbh I don't even know what Titanfall 2 is 😅 maybe I'm getting old 🫠
It's a cliché, but Dark Souls. Rented it through Redbox with my brother-in-law, made it past the tutorial boss, then somehow pissed off the Crestfallen Warrior right next to the bonfire and got ganked at spawn a dozen times in a row before putting the game down.
A few months (and many articles praising the game) later I picked it up on sale and played the whole way through, and it's now one of my top games of all time.
Hades & BotW were like that for me.
Not a game, but as a Fallout fan I hated the show at first. The acting is bad and everything looks too shiny and new to be 200 years old (plus I don't like how the show is inspired more by Fallout 4 than any other game in the series). But I gave it another chance a year later, and it's growing on me. Binged the first season in a a few days. Sure beats a lot of the other crap on TV these days.
Hmmmmm I'm at the first part of this comment, confused how so many people seem to like it
Well for me I just had to suck it up and accept the camp, and the fact that Bethesda doesn't give a shit about lore consistency. It probably doesn't help that I'm starved for new Fallout content as we wait a decade or so for the next game to finally get announced. Helps me look past the flaws.
Witcher 2, baldur's gate 3, cities skylines.
Oblivion, LittleBigPlanet
The Witness.
Now to dive into this thread for my next play 👀
Factorio. When it first came out, I played about 30 mins and I couldn't really get into it. Few months later I tried again, and now have over 3000 hours logged into it!
Outer wilds
HBS Battletech
The Citadel. I didn't realize how fast the combat loop was at first. The first level was setup like a stop and pop shooter, but it's really a run and gun style.
Deadlock
Persona 5 Royal.
Happy to say - none. Only time a game didn't click right away was due to being way too young for it, and all of those were most excellent once I played them again later in life.
Schedule 1, tried it early alpha, meh has potential, tried it few months ago, amazing!
Amazing Indy game, now on second playground!
https://www.scheduleonegame.com/
That's me with Borderlands 2. I tried it for 15mn like 5 years ago, thought it was shit, installed it again a week ago to have another look and it's actually not bad. Repetitive, but well written (lots of puns) and constantly renewed roster of guns that make combat feel kinda new. 6.5/10
TormentorXPunisher
Barotrauma, but moreso the Submarine Editor side. I've sunk over twenty hours making only two subs and I love it
Deleting garbage that the app dropped in the wrong place
what?
Good question. Reply to a different post. I have no idea why the app dropped it here. Sorry