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Games you LOVED at first, but they eventually petered out

Dacvak

Dacvak

No one shall be brought before our LORD David Bowie without the true and secret knowledge of the Photoshop. For in that time, so shall He appear.
What games started out insanely strong, but just slowly got weaker and weaker until you stopped playing?

One that comes to mind for me is Dave the Diver. I absolutely LOVE that game. I love the style, I love the gameplay loop, I love the progression... To a point. Once you start unlocking some of the additional task management elements, the gameplay loop goes from being a swift and concentrated 20-40 minutes, to 2-3 hours. And it starts to feel like diminishing returns, or that you're juggling so much that no one thing really stands out. It becomes more like work.

I still love that game, but I admittedly don't want to play it anymore. The loop is just way too long and unfulfilling for me now.
 
Jinzo Prime

Jinzo Prime

Member
Assassin's Creed Odyssey. I loved saliling from island to island, taking out targets, crawling through tombs, and making progress into the story. But once you start trying to fill out your assassination checklist and discovering all the locations on an island, it starts to feel really daunting. I burned out afer 40 hours.
 
near

near

Gold Member
The Evil Within
Vanquish
Spider-Man

Three off the top that come to mind immediately. I completely dropped The Evil Within on two different occasions. 2nd half of the game just feels unpolished, when you leave the hospital I think it was, it’s been so long. Vanquish was an absolute drag to finish, and Spider-Man was a snooze-fest after the first two hours.

I’m loving Dave the Diver at the moment, I’m about 6 hours into it though.
 
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jshackles

jshackles

Gentlemen, we can rebuild it. We have the capability to make the world's first enhanced store. Steam will be that store. Better than it was before.
Sea of Stars

Amazing pixel art, good characters, great traversal, interesting battle system... that eventually turns into a story slog because the battle system never evolves in any meaningful way. By the end of the game, you know which characters and which combos will do the most damage, so there is very little variation. Each character only learns a single "super move", and about halfway through the game you stop learning new regular moves all together.

The cherry of frustration on the top is that the true ending is locked behind pointless grinding and backtracking.
 
S

SlimeGooGoo

Banned
Hrk69 said:
Recently Dragon Quest 11

I was loving every minute of the game but then something happens and you are forced to play with one character

I gave it a shot but I immediately uninstalled the game. Shit is terrible.
Click to expand...
Angry Meryl Streep GIF
 
StueyDuck

StueyDuck

Member
Celeste, originally for like the first 2 hours I loved it because it felt like towerfall.

Then the game turned to ouchy brain wank and it was always kind of overrated let's be honest. Supermeatboy did the whole difficult indie platformer thing waaaay before it and is a superior game in many ways.
 
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jufonuk

jufonuk

not tag worthy
Tears of the kingdom
I don’t know and can’t tell but I still think I prefer BoTW. I only had one more boss to do before I get to the final boss but the sheer size of the map and the underworld exploration etc just took too long. It felt like a slog, so I stopped playing.

I will get back to it I reckon just at the moment. I’m working my way through other games
 
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simpatico

simpatico

Member
feynoob said:
Spiderman PS4.

Great gameplay and fun game to play. But once you start it from the scratch again, it gets boring as fk.

You just want to reach your next destination, instead of swinging from building to building.
Click to expand...
The MJ parts make replays impossible. Kinda like the first couple hours of Uncharted 4. I bought that on PC, booted it up and instantly remembered all the BS I had to sneak through to get to the main game. Still haven't gotten around to it.
 
DryvBy

DryvBy

Gold Member
jshackles said:
Sea of Stars

Amazing pixel art, good characters, great traversal, interesting battle system... that eventually turns into a story slog because the battle system never evolves in any meaningful way. By the end of the game, you know which characters and which combos will do the most damage, so there is very little variation. Each character only learns a single "super move", and about halfway through the game you stop learning new regular moves all together.

The cherry of frustration on the top is that the true ending is locked behind pointless grinding and backtracking.
Click to expand...
This is my most recent answer. I loved the first 1/3 of the game but quickly got bored out of my mind.
 
Lokaum D+

Lokaum D+

Member
DQ11 - Ost made me quit.

BOTW - Empty world, repetitive gameplay, easy Boss fights, there is barely a story to follow, in the end i finished the game and ll never understand how did It manage to score soo high...

Starfield - what a waste of opportunity.

Death Stranding - too much walk.
 
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64bitmodels

64bitmodels

Reverse groomer.
StueyDuck said:
Celeste, originally for like the first 2 hours I loved it because it felt like towerfall.

Then the game turned to ouchy brain wank and it was always kind of overrated let's be honest. Supermeatboy did the whole difficult indie platformer thing waaaay before it and is a superior game in many ways
Click to expand...
How was Meat Boy better?
 
Rudius

Rudius

Member
Jinzo Prime said:
Assassin's Creed Odyssey. I loved saliling from island to island, taking out targets, crawling through tombs, and making progress into the story. But once you start trying to fill out your assassination checklist and discovering all the locations on an island, it starts to feel really daunting. I burned out afer 40 hours.
Click to expand...

MujkicHaris said:
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

Very good game for the first 10 hours until I started noticing the patterns in the quests and the story but also how empty the world really is. The game is beautiful though.
Click to expand...
Same problem on both. Just too much "content".
 
StueyDuck

StueyDuck

Member
64bitmodels said:
How was Meat Boy better?
Click to expand...
it just was.

I didn't have to sit through boring ouchy brain story beats, it didn't overstay its welcome and if you wished to have more difficult experiences they were there for you as the player to find.

the ability to just quickly jump into a meat boy level and just have fun after 2 clicks is what makes it so special, the same as Hotline Miami.

Also, the overall aesthetic and design etc was just more fun and playful the added replay of multiple deaths was as dumb but fun thing to add even if it wasn't necessary.

That original Soundtrack as well for SMB before the whole split was genuinely top tier stuff
 
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Thabass

Thabass

Member
Final Fantasy XIII. Great combat...until you do it so many goddamn times that it just becomes unbearable. Also the gil grind in that game is stupid, luckily there's a place and time where you can do some light farming for a specific item in the last area that makes it a bit better, the drop rate WITH the accessory to help farm it is quite low.

Not to mention the even more egregious mission design structure: go to a Pulse L'Cie, get a mission, go to another Pulse L'Cie, get a mission, and then it removes the last mission you obtained from your task list. Ridiculous.

Even with all the linear pathways in the early game, it's still a decent game, but it's easily my least favorite game in the series. What a missed opportunity.
 
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64bitmodels

64bitmodels

Reverse groomer.
StueyDuck said:
it just was.

I didn't have to sit through boring ouchy brain story beats, it didn't overstay its welcome and if you wished to have more difficult experiences they were there for you as the player to find.

the ability to just quickly jump into a meat boy level and just have fun after 2 clicks is what makes it so special, the same as Hotline Miami.

Also, the overall aesthetic and design etc was just more fun and playful the added replay of multiple deaths was as dumb but fun thing to add even if it wasn't necessary.

That original Soundtrack as well for SMB before the whole split was genuinely top tier stuff
Click to expand...
Celeste also has more difficult experiences, they were also there for you to find. the B-Sides and C-Sides are examples of this

the controls are fundamentally more slippery and rage inducing in SMB as opposed to Celeste's super precise and easy to grasp physics- it's a small bit of artifical difficulty for the game. Not to mention that Celeste's actual level design and exploration of its stage gimmicks and ideas is way more creative, complex and ingenius compared to Super Meat Boy- it's incomparable IMO.

There's less of an exploration element in the levels too, there's no such thing as strawberries in Meat Boy so there's less of a completionist element in that game too

the aesthetic is questionable, Celeste has very beautiful pixel art work and effects. Meat Boy's visuals are good too but Celeste's are far more nice.

and yeah i vastly prefer the story in Celeste. I think it's a real nice way to tie up the game. The cutscenes are always skippable too so I don't see the problem here.

Both games have top tier soundtracks, but I applaud Celeste's more as it makes me care about genres that I'm not as big of a fan of compared to Meat Boy's OST.
 
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C

Cattlyst

Member
Probably Shadow of the Colossus for me. Sticks in my mind as I was totally enamoured with it for several weeks and played through several colossuses (colossi?) and spent ages just exploring the world. And then I just dropped off it and never continued playing. It’s not that the game got weaker as it’s epic…I dunno. I think I just got bored of the ‘go here, fight this boss’ gameplay maybe.
 
M

mayham2199

Member
The original Dragons Dogma was like this for me. I was going into work hyping the game up to everyone. By that weekend I wouldn't even touch it anymore.

Outerworlds was very similar loved the first planet a lot. Felt just like FO but in space. Then after I got off that planet I don't know why but I just slow started hating it more and more. I was rushing to the end after that.
 
T

touchfuzzy

Member
Most of them? I have trouble with JRPGs especially. FFVII Rebirth, Xenoblade Chronicles 3... thought they were amazing locks for GOTY for the first 10-20 hours of each, then slowly petered out and after 40-50 hours just didn't really want to play anymore. You kind of see all the battles are playing out exactly the same and the nonsense story not really going anywhere or making sense. I liked when they were finished at 40 hours back in the day, not half-finished.
 
Lokaum D+

Lokaum D+

Member
Rudius said:
Whats the problem? It's not like DQ8?
Click to expand...
Since i played vanilla DQ11 my major problem was the Overworld theme, i just coudnt stand and a lot of cutscenes just didnt hit because of the OST choice, overall i didnt liked the mid OST at ALL and i m glad that DQ OG composer is dead and SE is free to finally try something else.

I know that the new DQ11 has 8 overworld theme now but i dont think i ll ever try this game again, If DQ12 comes with that mid shit i m out.

Edit: Also DQ8 was launched 20 years ago, at that time i was 16 and the OST was great, game music evolved but DQ music stayed on the past and dont resonate anymore with my old ass.
 
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semiconscious

semiconscious

Member
Topher said:
Dragon's Dogma 2. Dragonsplague ruined the game for me. Probably the single worst design decision I've seen in a game.
Click to expand...
i actually did the whole damn quest to get the eternal wakestone
including nailing the damn sphinx in the back with a one-shot arrow
& what'd i get for it? i got the ability to undue the results of a stupid fucking game mechanic that never should've existed in the first place...

but, even without the dragonsplague, dd2 got old for me pretty fast. & i'd really enjoyed (& replayed) the original...
 
Mossybrew

Mossybrew

Banned
touchfuzzy said:
I have trouble with JRPGs especially.
Click to expand...
Yeah I hear this too, I usually steer clear of them but play one occasionally and often regret it. Final Fantasy XVI was the last one I played and yup, got bored on the back end of the game with so much pointless busywork quests and just never went back to finish.
 
Fbh

Fbh

Member
FFXVI for sure.
I was loving it for the first 5-6 hours. To the point I'd go online and see some mixed responses to it and I wondered WTF some people were talking about because I really felt like I was playing the beginning of what would become one of my favorite entries in the series.

Eventually though you start noticing the flaws and they just keep getting worse and worse: The complete lack of challenge, the boring empty world with nothing to do or find it, the incredibly bland sidequests, the very basic progression, crafting and gear systems, the "dungeons" which are just linear corridos connecting combat arenas, the fact you never go to any cool cities outside of a few linear missions, etc.
Then once you are like 60-70% into the game even the story, which had been the one consistently good thing IMO, starts to go to shit as most of the interesting elements get left behind for yet another cookie cutter JRPG plot with all the expected tropes
 
Larxia

Larxia

Member
Hogwarts Legacy.
I played the older games on ps2 and I was thrilled to be back in hogwarts. The first hours in the castle were amazing to me, I really loved it and I spent so much time just exploring and running around, enjoying the atmosphere and looking at each little details.

I loved it so much that I wasn't even progressing much through the story, I only got the broom after 20 hours lol And... that's where things went downhill.
As soon as I started to explore the open world outside of the castle, the whole magic was gone. It was just a very bland, generic open world like I have already seen 1 million times before.
I'd call it even worse than your typical ubisoft open world, because the copy / pasting was really shocking here. Some of the puzzles, like Merlin riddles, are literally copy and pasted multiple times, you have to clear the same exact puzzle several times.

Worst of the worst, the game design / open world design philosophy of the game is atrocious.

One example : I was once exploring a cave. This cave was really big, I was wondering why there was all of this for nothing. I found ennemies, fought a lot of them, explored everything, but... nothing to discover. Ok, weird I guess.
Then, a few hours later, I talk to a girl in Hogwarts, and she tells me her uncle has been captured by goblins and asks me to go free him, and guess where he is? Yes, you got it, in that cave I explored before. Every ennemies respawned and I have to go through the whole thing again, except that now, there is the uncle in the room at the end of the dungeon.

This type of design is extremely bad and shouldn't exist. If you want to make something immersive and rpg, I should have been able to find the uncle directly in my first visit, and start and end the quest this way.
After this quest, I understood that exploring the map was completely pointless, since it will just be a waste of time and you won't find anything if you don't have the right quest active at the right time.

Real shame, game started great, but atrocious open world design.
 
TerribleAtThisGame

TerribleAtThisGame

Member
Most open world games for me. I realize after 20 or 30 hours that all that "freedom" is exhausting, feels like work and is rarely as fun as a tight linear game to me. They also tend to front load. You end up doing the same handful of things you did in the first 10 hours for the rest of its time yet there is no encounter nor level design gimmickery to keep those elements fresh.
 
Bring Back Scalebound

Bring Back Scalebound

Banned
Dragon Quest 9.

Might be just me, but a game with created party members with no dialogue or personality of their own, won't be one I will be playing for long... I don't need to say that I don't care much for DQ 3 either.

The gameplay of DQ 9 is excellent. I loved playing it. But after hours of it, I didn't hate the game, I felt apathetic towards it, which is worse then hating it.

The game is carried by her:

E7z4knEXoAgqJ69.png


She's hilarious, and one of the best DQ characters.

But it wasn't enough for me.
 
rabbity-thing

rabbity-thing

Member
Two oldies for me...

Brutal Legend:
As the game went on, the light hack and slash mechanics gave way to make room for the RTS mechanics that the game was actually built around. The weird hybrid gameplay never really worked for me. It ended up feeling like a mediocre action game mashed together with a mediocre RTS game. In retrospect, I almost feel like this would have been far better as a mosou-style game or even a more action-oriented tower defense game. The Warcraft-lite, however, was a huge letdown.

Alice: Madness Returns:
This is such a weird one. Every single environment is just plain amazing when you first start playing it. Then, without fail, the levels just seem to keep going. I don't think I've ever played another game with quite the same flaw. Fantastic on-point levels with creative weapons, satisfying platforming, great secrets, and interesting enemies that become an absolute bore because they all overstay their welcome. The wild thing is that the game shifts gears so often that you are given multiple opportunities to feel this tiresome disappointment. They could have saved themselves a ton of money and development time by making the levels shorter. The game would have been better for it. Sometimes less is more.
 
Laptop1991

Laptop1991

Member
Mafia 3, i didn't finish it as the more i played it i found the game disappointing in the end,
Saint's Row 4, the superpowers made the game worse for me and made getting in cars and listening to the radio irrelevant, and
Just Cause 3, it was ok but i kept thinking of JC2 alot while playing it and how it was missing the elements of the previous game.
 
John Marston

John Marston

GAF's very own treasure goblin
Jinzo Prime said:
Assassin's Creed Odyssey. I loved saliling from island to island, taking out targets, crawling through tombs, and making progress into the story. But once you start trying to fill out your assassination checklist and discovering all the locations on an island, it starts to feel really daunting. I burned out afer 40 hours.
Click to expand...
I'm a bit of an OCD completionist and like to complete sidequests but when 4 more sidequests kept popping up after completing some me too I gave up around 60 hours.

Same with Far Cry 6.
After about 20 hours I went "Oh I've seen this shit before".
 
T

TropicanaTwista

Member
Dacvak said:
One that comes to mind for me is Dave the Diver. I absolutely LOVE that game. I love the style, I love the gameplay loop, I love the progression... To a point. Once you start unlocking some of the additional task management elements, the gameplay loop goes from being a swift and concentrated 20-40 minutes, to 2-3 hours. And it starts to feel like diminishing returns, or that you're juggling so much that no one thing really stands out. It becomes more like work.
Click to expand...
Read the title thread and this game popped into my head. Think I put about 20 hours into it and was absolutely loving it. Then yea, the doves became over a hour long, which there is a two a day. Then there was some missions that required you for night dives on top of that.

It's a shame because the basic gameplay loop was pretty dope. It just became too much too fast.
 
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