Hey folks! Here’s an interesting thing that happened with me: I love action RPGs, I love western RPGs, I was addicted to Skyrim. So when The Witcher 3 launched, one of the most well received open world action RPGs I loved it, right? Well… No. In fact, for some reason I can’t really understand I could never play more than 2 hours before dropping it.
I restarted that game about 5 times before, never liked it, wished I could refund it.
Until about two weeks ago I randomly decided to try it again and… oh boy, let’s just say I’m a child considering if I should sleep for work tomorrow or continue playing all through the night.
Does anybody else have a game that they couldn’t like but it suddenly clicked and now they enjoy it?
It kinda happened for me with Fallout New Vegas. I was maybe 11 and never played anything from the series. I spent my time killer hobo-ing my way through but I always felt like I was missing something, then I started reading negative opinions about it online and got influence by that, so I dropped it. After some time I played Fallout 3, liked and thought it was much better than New Vegas and decided to give NV another shot (I was at 12 or 13 by then). I loved it to the point where it is probably on the top of my emotional top 10. It got me into 50s/60s music, got me interested in politics and ethics, made me become a fan of science fiction and old school RPGs focused on story and a variety of approaches. Really a fantastic game
NV is by far my fav Fallout game. I think I’ve replayed it more than any other game. And I still find new stuff every playthrough.
Same here, even if tbf I almost never finish new playthroughs. I usually get lost in some side quest I never encountered, or ones I never approached that way (think about the cannibals in the strip)
The first Dark Souls. At the time I had played Demon’s Souls, but didn’t really play games for the challenge so I was very much not used to those types of games. Was also a diehard FPS player.
But a good friend, the same one that introduced me to Demon’s Souls, gifted me Dark Souls. It was a game a genuinely enjoyed, but couldn’t quite find my groove. I’d create a character, get to a certain point, then feel lost or too frustrated to proceed. So I’d stop playing for a few months, then pick it up again and roll a new character.
This trend repeated for a while, and I DID progress farther every time. Eventually, I hit a wall with one of the bosses and raged quit. So fast forward to my inevitable return to the game, instead of starting over I just went right back to that boss and tried again, and again, and again… and actually won?! That was the moment I feel like my gaming potential was awakened.
From Software fanboy, but also truly invested in a good challenge.
Unrelated, but I’m polishing of Nioh 2 now with NG+ and the DLC
I have DS3 sitting on my shelf and will probably play it some time. For me the reason I haven’t even booted it up is the reputation… I’m a pretty good twitch gamer, but I play games to relax, not to feel stressed. I often turn the difficulty a layer or two down from what I can handle, because I’m not really playing to be seriously challenged most of the time. I get plenty of that in real life.
Stardew Valley. I pirated it because I really didn’t think I would like it, but was curious about all the positive buzz that was going on around it. Played for maybe 45 minutes and decided that it wasn’t for me. I think it was two weeks later that I picked it back up again because some article wouldn’t stop singing it’s praises. Start playing, look up, 4 hours had passed.
So I bought the game and proceeded to put over 200 hours into it.
Then I bought it on Switch and put like 160 hours into it.
Then I bought it on Mobile and put like 60 hours into it.
Never thought I’d click so well with some silly farming game.
I’m going way back here, but I recently grabbed the original Doom, mostly to show my kids for historical value. I did play the shit out of the shareware version of the game, but I never got into the full game particularly… by the time I was old enough to survive the harder levels, there were fancier games out.
Now, I find myself surprisingly addicted to a 30 year old shooter. I had forgotten why this game is such a classic, it’s just… it’s just friggin’ good. In terms of fun and depth of play, it holds up just fine compared to far more advanced modern games.
I’ve never been able to have Skyrim or Witcher 3 click for me, despite trying a few different times (because so many seem to regard them as gold standards of action RPGs, a genre a do like!)
But, to answer your question, for me its probably Stellaris (and, through that, many of the weighty 'paradox games).
I’d always liked games like Civ (Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri being the first 4x that grabbed me, back in the 90s). But, ‘Paradox games’ were something I tried a few times, and bounced off of every time. They’re just a different beast, in terms of ‘weight’.
But, after having tried Stellaris and bounced off of it, I got talked into playing it multiplayer with some of my friends who play it more regularly, and having a knowledgeable person there to explain some of the weirdness and strategy to me made it all click.
And once I got that down, Crusader Kings and Victoria now were like, understandable to me. Though, I do think Stellaris is my favorite out of the bunch.