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.
Same. It took me months to give it another shot and after that I couldn’t stop
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.
Not gonna try that again until I’m retired. I don’t need my play to feel like work.
I bounced off Dwarf Fortress a lot over the years, even with the packs to help. Eventually I got the hang of Adventurer Mode and quite enjoyed it! Now I’m just waiting for that mode on the steam version!
I bought the Steam version of Dwarf Fortress. I did not realise it was actually a time machine.
Every time I started it, I would instantly jump 4 hours into the future.
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.
Monster Hunter. When I was a kid with a PSP I bought Freedom Unite since the box art was cool. Had not a fucking clue what was happening or how to even understand the weapons.
Years later I bought a 3DS, 3 Ultimate, and even a circle pad pro for it. Nope, still just didn’t even crack an hour of playtime because everything was just so strange. Finally, in probably 2019 or so I decided that there was too much cool word of mouth about the series for me to not try and figure out how it worked.
I got Generations Ultimate, and decided that if I could figure out how to play Monster Hunter that I wouldnt be a complete failure in life. I just played, found that nothing made sense, but just… kept going anyway. I started researching what the different weapons were for, realized that they’re basically just different fighting game character-type movesets, and from there I slowly explored the game until id ended up burning 240 hours or so on MHGU.
I discovered Monster Hunter World after that, and it was all over for me. I never get to g rank, but I’ve put probably a combined over 1k hours into the series, which is much more than I usually would for other games. Just fucking fantastic games in almost every way, except for tutorialization.
Monster Hunter for me as well! Tried 3 Ultimate on the 3ds and it just did not click for me. Tried it again with Rise and World and loved them
I got the monster hunter on 3ds (MH 3 Ultimate), and I liked playing it, got pretty good at it, but man…the graphics on that system just isn’t right for that game. They tried making it look to non pixilated on a system that was too pixilated for it.
I’ve planned for quite a while to get it as a rom for my PC or steam deck and use some filters to smooth the jaggedness out of it and see how it does, but still haven’t gotten around to it yet. Really need to get on that. I played like 30 hours worth and stopped.
it’s originally a wii game (MH 3), for the Wii it looked impressive IMO. considering it a full port to the 3ds impressed me too. but yeah, it’s a console game on a too small handheld for most part.
This is encouraging, as I have a game session of MH4 Ultimate forgotten in my 3DS for years now.
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.
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.
Well, there’s Baldur’s Gate 3 now… should keep you entertained for the next 5 years 😃
I’m excited to try that. No couch co-op :-( Nobody makes those anymore.
It’s a phenomenal game, probably the best I’ve played since Red Dead 2
If you liked the first two, have you tried Planescape Torment? Basically the same engine
I didn’t know about that one - it looks great! no couch co-op, sadly, so my wife won’t be interested, but I think it looks great!
Thanks for the recommendation.
I wouldn’t really call it a favorite, but I definitely ended up liking Nier: Automata pretty well after bouncing off it really hard when trying it at a friend’s house. That’s because we were trying from the start, and it starts with a section that’s about half an hour long, with only two checkpoints, vastly harder than anything else in the game, and in which the first half isn’t even the same genre as the rest of the game. It’s seriously one of the worst intros I can think of in a video game. The rest of the game is, y’know, a pretty good third-person action RPG.
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
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.
The factory must grow
The factory must expand to meet the ever expanding needs of the factory.
Minecraft / Minetest - I’m used to games with active quests etc. so the openness threw me off but now I host a server for the kiddos and we have all sorts of adventures and random builds
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.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/kdstSHeoNGA?si=xo1ea2b1WGYBexJJ
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Oof, this one pains me.
I bought it on release and played for like 2 hours, only to never pick it up again.
Unironically The Witcher 3. It just didn’t click at first.
That’s one of my all time favorite games now. Same thing, didn’t like it at first, but once I started playing more of the game, they had some of the most interesting side quests.
Same. I wasn’t even an hour in. I was fucking around on some rocks and died from a ten foot drop. Early gameplay before getting some skills was kinda meh too. I didn’t come back for almost a year.
Fallout 3 took me a couple tries to get going, but it was hard to put down once hooked.
Fallout 4. I died easily early on and quit after 20 minutes. A year or so later I picked it back up. 700 hours of gameplay later, I think I’ve changed my mind.
I got Rhythm Heaven Fever for the Wii when it first came out and just couldn’t get it. I mean, I understood what I was supposed to be doing, but I could barely pass any of the songs. I figured I just didn’t have any rhythm and put it on the shelf.
Fast-forward to 2020 when I was rearranging some stuff and came across Rhythm Heaven Fever again. I hooked my Wii back up for shits and giggles and started playing and was doing great. Either I had magically gained a sense of rhythm or (most likely) the TV I had been playing on when I first got the game had some sort of latency issue.
Now I’ve gone through all the Rhythm Heaven games, but Fever is still my hands-down favorite. I put a copy on my Steam Deck and sometimes I just load it up and play through some songs when I have a few minutes to kill.
The fact that Fever is your favorite tells me you are a person with good taste. That was the one that really had the best balance of difficulty and novelty. Plus, Remix 9 in that game is probably the best song across the series
That’s how I feel about Guitar Hero. It was cool when I was in early middle school, but I was bad at it. A while ago I’ve discovered Clone Hero (it’s free!) and started playing it. I now play only expert and I’ve gotten pretty good by my standards. I use a Wii guitar via Bluetooth and it’s very good.
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.
