Hollow Knight. Bought it and played a few hours, died and got very annoyed that I couldn’t find my shade so lost motivation.
Picked it up again 2 years later and it’s arguably my favourite game ever now.
Elden Ring. So glad a friend dragged me back. Stone cold masterpiece.
Yessss! This is the game that caused me to have the idea to do this post.
I first played it about a year ago. I used the two hour Steam refund period, which in retrospect probably caused me to rush or not give it enough of a chance.
Fast forward to now, when I’m dealing with a nasty chronic health condition and lots of time on my hands. And I’m between games - basically waiting for stuff to come out, like the Factorio DLC.
So I poked around and somehow Elden Ring came up as a possibility. And then I found THIS video:
Elden Ring Is a Masterpiece — my thoughts after 60 hours
https://youtu.be/kdstSHeoNGA?si=xo1ea2b1WGYBexJJ
And it got me so hyped that I ended up watching a ton more videos. And finally I plunked down the $60 and gave it a shot.
Now I can’t stop thinking about it. I am in love with the jaw dropping terrain, inventive enemies, depth of play styles and options, the brilliant way it hints at things instead of spamming a map with quest markers and to do lists. I’ve had moments that felt like I was on the inside of an epic fantasy novel, living an otherworldly fever dream of awesomeness.
Oof, this one pains me.
I bought it on release and played for like 2 hours, only to never pick it up again.
I bounced off the first Deus Ex a few times… the first mission is just kind of dull.
The game is so funny if you know all of the Y2K era stuff that it’s a satire of.
Yeah for sure! It’s not surprising that it’s a cult classic at all. But ugh, after figuring out key bindings and going through the tutorial I would always lose interest by the time I started liberty island. Deus Ex just feels clunky at first.
Factorio. I tried it years ago and it just never clicked. I just started playing it again and suffice it to say I have gotten very little sleep over the past couple weeks.
I refuse to play that game knowing that I have an addictive personality and an unhealthy obsession with maximizing efficiency. It just doesn’t seem like a good idea to give a person with my type of personality the equivalent of heroin.
Ohh no. Just started Satisfactory. It’s going well, well into my sleep.
The factory must grow
The factory must expand to meet the ever expanding needs of the factory.
Dark souls
Demons souls through Dark Souls 3 I bought, tried, and quickly ended up on my shelf.
Knew they were amazing games, but I just couldn’t figure it out. Always played with a shield, was slow and methodical, and just didn’t get anywhere.
Then I read a post about someone who was having trouble so summoned another player. The summon showed up “Naked with a katana and charged in like a Jedi”.
So I said screw it, and tried a light no shield build. Didnt care how far I got, I just started grinding the early enemies and leveling up. Then it all just sort of clicked.
Got my girlfriend into the games, and we’ve played through them all together, just now finishing on bloodborne.
Not gonna try that again until I’m retired. I don’t need my play to feel like work.
Same. I still suck. I haven’t finished a single one of them games. It took me months of playing on and off to get past Vordt in DS3. But once I beat him and reached the undead settlement, that was it. I was hooked. I also just rarely finish RPGs in general lol. The art direction and general ambiance, the combat hitboxes, the music, the learning curve, the variety of builds… Fromsoft just knows something about games that most other companies don’t.
Fallout 3 took me a couple tries to get going, but it was hard to put down once hooked.
Oddly enough, Witcher 3. It took a mate of mine to convince me to give it another go, now I love it.
Same here. It just has such an extremely slow start. It only really clicked for me about 3 hours in or so when I realized just how huge it was.
I did the same thing. Bought it many years ago, it didn’t click with me. Tried again in 2020 and I’ve so far done all achievements and played through it about 5 times. Absolutely love it!
Rimworld. Did the standard start (industrial with 3 pawns) on cass. Died of hunger. Uninstalled the game.
Next week I was bored at my intership and redownloaded it and gave it another shot. Now I have close to 4k hours in Rimworld.
Same thing happened with Crusader Kings, funnily enough.
Edit: oh, that happened with M&B: Warband and Kenshi as well.
RimWorld is incredible. I’m hard pressed to think of another game with as much customization of play style or as vibrant a mod scene.
Dwarf Fortress. There aren’t many mods in the steam version afaik (tons for the free ascii version though) but… You don’t need mods for it. Want to capture invaders and host gladiator fights? Yep. Water trap to push invaders off a cliff onto some grates so you can collect their items after blocking the water trap again? Easy peasy floodgates Parcheesi. Want to gift lead mugs to the filthy elves? Strike the Earth, brother. (Doesn’t poison them though, sadly). Want your dwarves to only drink alcohol? They only have to drink water when they’re injured, 24/7 drinking besides that makes for happy dwarves. You’re battling a bunch of invading goblins and you have some dwarves die? Better bury them or their ghost will haunt your fortress. Oh, and don’t forget your necromancer will probably grab some new friends from the fight.
There’s very little you can’t do in Dwarf Fortress. It doesn’t get very high tech since it’s fantasy based, most high tech that you can get is windmill driven mills and water pumps I think, but there is so much depth to the game that honestly that’s perfectly okay with me
Edit: there are mods for the steam version too, baked right into the steam workshop
I don’t play dwarf fortress, but isn’t the steam version the same game just with a different tileset, replacing the ascii with pictures? This would mean mods still work the same.
Basically yes, all the changes that have gone into the steam edition (with the exception of graphics) has been added to the free ascii classic version, which can have tilesets added to it (though the ones that come with the steam edition are better than any of the tilesets I tried imo ). Also I was wrong actually, they did release steam workshop support for mods and there are several hundred on there already, so mod away!
Kinshi is such a deep game. I get how it’s hard to get into but damn once it clicks it’s crazy how far down the rabbit hole that game goes.
I still can’t get into Kenshi. It’s too much jank. I love the ideas and the stories people share.
Dark Souls and Syardew Valley.
I’m still bouncing on DS. I’ve tried about 4 or 5 times now, getting farther each time, but honestly… Hating it more each time. The last time I just full on started cheating with Cheat Engine after a lot of frustration and I… Still ended up frustrated and exhausted by the gameplay.
I’ve tried Dark Souls so many times and I finally just accepted that it’s just not my kind of game.
That’s about where I’m at with it. The way people talk about it makes it feel like a stepping stone I’m supposed to experience at least once, but it’s not enjoyable for me. It’s just unrelenting punishment for the entire game.
There’s no list of must play games. You do you.
Cyberpunk 2077
Got it on console first, and it was … rough. Got it as a gift on PC and finally got to experience the glorious story and wonderful characters.
Baldur’s Gate. I’ve never played DnD so there was a bit of a learning curve. I rage quit after two hours, almost returned it. Three days later I fired it up again and haven’t really stopped playing since.
I’ve been playing bg1 on Android lately, anything you would go back and tell yourself if you could? I’ve basically been flying blind and struggling a bit lol
Baldur’s Gate was a special game. It’s the only game my wife liked to play, and we couch-coopted it. We played the rest in the series together, full play through all of them, a couple of times. Never found that magic combo again, sadly, and to this day she laments that there are so few 3d isometric couch coop games.
And now I’m 158 hours in and can’t bear the thought of finishing it now that combat has become sooooo monotonous.
Terraria. At first I compared it to Minecraft before I started to like it on it’s own. Thanks to pre-Fandom wiki I broke through not getting it’s gameplay at all to enjoying it.
Same for me. But then a friend played like an hour together with me, showed me the ropes and I haven’t stopped playing since. Not all the time, but like one playthrough a month or so.
This one for me. The controls were hard to get used to and I died a whole lot and lost my stuff the first dozen nights. But once it clicked it got better and better, and holy cow the game has a lot going on inside of it.
I played Celeste, thought it was kinda easy and the hotel level kinda lame which is where I dropped it. A few years later I broke my leg, being a pc gamer before the steamdeck my switch was the only portable console I had and celeste the only unfinished game i had for it. I played the entire game in a week of 12 hour sessions while high as a mother fucking kite. It was amazingly good fun.
BioShock 1. I found the first level to be frustrating. Left it for a year and came back; it was easier, somehow, or I was more patient.
I’m so glad I gave it a second chance. Easily in my top 5 GOAT.
God yes what a classic. 2 is amazing too
Dark souls
Same here, played a bit of DS2, but never really got into it. Started on DS3, but got tired of that pretty quick as well. But when Elden Ring came out, I got really hooked on the games. I finished Elden Ring, then I played through DS 1, 2 and 3. And then a few more playthroughs of Elden Ring with different builds. I’ve started a bit on Sekiro, but jumped over to Lies of P when it came out. The plan is to play the new Lords of the Fallen, when I’m finished with Lies of P. It’s really satisfying to beat a boss after a few hours of learning the patterns.
Same. Spent 3 hours on Gundyr in ds3 just to watch my non gamer wife beat him second try. Hated the game then came back to it with a friend who had finished it and voila, my new never ending addiction.
