Is "replayability" overrated in gaming?

Achelexus

Achelexus

Member
Seems like people see replayability as a big deal in games. Sure, you get more money for your buck, but at the same time, do you really need to squeeze more time out of most games?
Personally, I have dozens of games in my backlog, and I bet most people have a similar problem. I don't really feel the need to play the same game more than once. I'd rather just move on to something else.
The problem I have is that sometimes games hurt the player's first playthrough for the sake of adding replayability. Example is missable things such as locking the players out of certain content due to choices.
I'd rather be able to experience the whole game in one playthrough rather than having to play through it multiple times due to some forced mechanic that locks me out of content.

What do you think?
 
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Even if you don't replay a game, I see no problem in being locked out of content, based on player decisions.

It can still be fun to compare your run with others.
 
I enjoy replaying games every now and then, in form of NG+ or taking different approaches to story choices or what not. However, I don't usually replay games right after I finish them. I often move on to something else and then later down the road, I revisit that game on a new playthrough when I've forgotten most of it.
 
In the old days replayability meant different ways to play the game like paths, characters, collectibles or endings. Today, I just want a game that gets to the gameplay and isn't filled with boring parts I don't want to suffer through over and over. This is why some of the games I never stopped returning to are just pure gaming with no friction like 16 bit titles. Edit: I give the new DK very high marks for this
 
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Never understood what choices/routes/builds whatever have to do with replayability.

I game is replayable if I enjoy it a lot and want to reexperience it.
Castlevania Sotn or Chrono Trigger are the same game every time. I will keep replaying them until I die.

Even RPGs with choices, if I wanted to replay them, it would be because I like them not because to try different things. In fact it is most probable that I would do the same choices like the first time.

I would say the post PS360 era that is flooded with open world or bloated borefests, has the least replayable games.
 
Personally, Idc about replayability at all.
Singleplayer games are one-and-done for me. I finish the main storyline, maybe a handfull of side-quests if they're intriguing or happen 'organically' and that's it.
 
Some of my favourite games, like Prey from 2017, are highly replayable, with multiple ways to approach each situation or even entirely different playstyles (neuromods, no neuromods, alien powers, etc.). But nothing is ever as impactful as that first playthrough. So I'd say no, judge the game based on how it feels the first time you play it.
 
Every once in a while a Lies of P or Vagrant Story or Stranger of Paradise will come along that has such good replayability that you end up going thru multiple times. In those cases it is very much worth it.
 
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It depends on the game and the genre. You're never going to see all the content in a dating sim on the first run and it would be weird if you could, and it's hard to imagine not replaying Devil May Cry or Ninja Gaiden and working your way up through the various difficulties.

I think Western developed games in particular favour bloat over replayability to get their run times up, and that makes them hard to go back to again. No one is excited for playthrough 2 of The Last of Us Part 2.
 
The whole "missables due to choices" thing is a perfect example. Instead of feeling like your decisions matter, it feels like you are being punished for not reading a guide

Baldur's Gate 3 is a great example of both the best and worst aspects of replayability, depending on how you approach it
 
Depends,some of my fav singleplayer games i replayed for up to over 1k hours and over(dark souls 1k+ bloodborne 900+ cyberpunk 2077 on my 7th build with over 800h,recently got the platinum) and some of them i just like ro beat once or twice (SOMA,nier,nier autamata,silent hill 2) and i have enough.

These games are full of stuff you can miss,like Dark Souls has this 2 whole areas hidden behind 2 back to back Illusory Walls,it has a bunch of NPC questlines that you simply wont figure out how to do on first playthrough and that is intended by the developer.

I honestly dont replay most games.like i got 68h in Clair Obscur Expedition 33,my characters are around lvl 80 k have the story finished but i do have some side content not done yet but i already deleted it off my ps5 because i loved the game but i had enough.

You know what actually hurts replayability?
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No. If you have a game that isn't repayable it is probably no fun and not worth playing at all and should stay in your backlog forever. If something is not replayable it probably also means that the moment to moment gameplay gets old really fast and the game is shallow or superficial.
 
Begleiter said:
I think Western developed games in particular favour bloat over replayability to get their run times up, and that makes them hard to go back to again. No one is excited for playthrough 2 of The Last of Us Part 2.
Click to expand...

This is something that has slowly chipped away at my enthusiasm to buy games, because in the past, I wanted to build a collection of games I liked playing, not a collection of "books" I'd read and not return to. Couple this game design with unfinished games at launch, sales and free giveaways from Epic, Prime or whatever, and my enthusiasm just died off.
 
Replayability is a want by the player. I always found that the biggest forms of replayability are in fighters, FPS, racing and sports games.

JRPGs and single story games have replayability to an extent, but depending on their length they can be largely one and done experiences. At least for me.

Every now and then I replay a game like Suikoden or an Uncharted/TLOU. A game like Persona 5 which took ages to finish, I'd never look back. So yeah, it depends.
 
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I guess it depends on perception and individual tastes, for example, for me, the resident evil games are infinitely replayable, barring some exceptions like resident evil 6.

Though I cannot imagine replaying any other single franchise as much as I replay these games, as most of them are one and done for me.
 
Replayability is extremely important to me. It's what gives games their long-term value.

That excludes modern Ubisoft games and stuff like it, which are 100+ hour one and done experiences.
 
Guess it depends on available time... With the very limited time that I have in my working and family life, I mostly never have the chance to replay a game. I might platinum/finish several times if it's required by it and it's a precious gem (Nier...) but otherwise when I finish it it's done and gone. And the same for games that are really long. If they're great (Xenoblade saga etc) I'll invest months to finish it (100hours means 3-5 months for me depending on how much time I have to play during the days) but it's mostly impossible to get back to them once finished.
 
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Other than games that require multiple playthroughs like a rouge-like or if I am trying to get trophies, I rarely play a game more than once. Just too many games in my backlog. If a game needs multiple playthroughs to get the Platinum trophy on PlayStation, I don't even bother with that trophy.
 
For the larger gaming population, it is absolutely not overrated. Games with high amounts of replayability (aka online games / gaas games) are what make money.


For me personally, I guess the term doesn't really mean anything to me. I'm happy to replay pretty much anything as long as I enjoyed my original experience with it. I go back and replay games all the time.
 
A game being fun and worth your time is more important than being replayble, but actually, being replayable is often tied to the actual fun you get out of a game.
So yes, it is important.

You can have the time of your life, but if the game ends too quickly, you feel like you didn't get enough of it and replaying the exact same game can only be fun that many times. Being able to shake things up a bit in another run will maintain the fun at a high level.

It is about finding a sweet spot between how long the fun lasts, if playing another time is fun and why, and how many times you can replay the game before being bored.
 
Underrated I would say as replay value is very important. It's why such games like GTA, Resident Evil, Elder Scrolls, and Fallout are easily the best games of all times because it's fun, awesome, and has huge replay factor.
 
No, replayability is one of the pillars in game design, if you make a game and you don't feel like replaying it, it's basically a bad game.

The problem you speak of is different to replayability and has more to do with Game Experience and it's more specific to certain genres like RPGs and Visual Novels which have narrative choices, in most game genres you will never experience what you're talking about.

My guess is that you're going through a burnout from those types of games, I recommend you play other genres until your burnout passes.
 
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There was a recent thread about Enslaved:Odyssey to the West that made me pull out my old copy and boot it up for the opening sequence. Had to download the game on my old XboneX.
It's old, I might play through it again for old time sake.
 
As a typically one and done player it means nothing to me. I'd rather squeeze everything out of it the first time because once I blow the load finishing the game it's done.
 
It's worthy when you make a lot of bad choices, decisions unintentionally at the cost of unpleasant consequences, it matters with great plot/gameplay and characters.
 
For me it is. I rarely replay games with the exception being open world RPG's like Fallout, Elder Scrolls. I am usually one and done.

If I am really looking forward to a game, I will wait for like 2 years after release for all the DLC to release and play the complete edition because I know I will never come back once I have completed it.
 
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I guess it is an individual thing. I do not replay a lot of games, but I do like to replay sequences. I sometimes go play "Jump up superstar" it is a masterpiece.

I would like an option to go replay sequences of games at times without my character reseting or having to reload a save. It would be fun to fight the final boss again or even a fun boss fight in a Zelda or Dark Souls without having to replay the game.
 
For me def yes I'm lucky to have access to a ton of games and can buy any game I want to play. Too many games to play to be replaying a single game. I can def see it being important to someone who doesn't have access to alot of games or just like playing the same game over and over also.
 
I constantly replay the Gears games.......theres no incentive to do so, the games are just good so I can replay them.

If a game has a new game+ with benefits even better.

If its some Nier Automata shit......mate! (I know, I know, Path A isnt actually the end of the game by any stretch, the Paths are one long playthrough)




Like coded in "replayability" isnt all that important to me because a good game is getting replayed either way, if its on some Quantum Break shit and I have to overwrite my save to replay the game then so be it.
 
I replay games constantly and find that replayability is very important if I like the gameplay loop.

If I don't enjoy the game, then I'm not replaying it and I don't care whether it's replayable or not.

But if I enjoy the game, then the game gets extra points for having different shit for me to do on repeat playthroughs.
 
Some genres like point-and-click adventures or puzzle games naturally have little to no replay value, since once you know the solutions, the core challenge is gone. But among modern games, especially cinematic ones, the lack of replay value stands out even more. Their main appeal lies in the story, which loses impact once you've experienced the key twists and emotional moments. Gameplay is often linear, offers little choice, or features a dull, fake open world. That's why even games like Detroit, Heavy Rain, or The Quarry, despite having minimal gameplay, still offer more replay value than many cinematic titles, thanks to their branching narratives and multiple endings.

I prefer sandbox games like Hitman or Grounded, where I can put in 100+ hours and still have fun.
 
Replayability for me is all about the gameplay.

For example: I finished The Last of Us once and never touched it again, the gameplay was good, but not good enough for me keep to playing the same thing again.

While on TLU2, I keep coming back just because of the Remastered version, in which they added a new mode called No Return, which is just focused on the gameplay, so it has tons of replayability.

Another example would be Devil May Cry 5, I finished once and then I only played the Blood Palace mode, which is basically a horde morde.

I enjoy mostly combat focused games, so I wish that every game that has good gameplay had an horde mode.
 
To me choices and decisions don't necessarily relate to replayability.

I loved having so much freedom of choice in Baldur's Gate 3 to make my own adventure, but that's it, it's not because other paths exist that I HAVE to see them, I think this actually defeats the purpose of choices and living your own adventure.
I can see replaying them to see more, but trying to see "everything" is not the right approach in my opinion.

The kind of thing that I replay the most actually aren't things related to choices and locked path, but more like things related to pure gameplay. For example I did replay Bayonetta multiple times because I loved the gameplay and you unlocked a new difficulty everytime, same with Metal Gear Rising. So I guess I only do it with short games which focuses purely on gameplay, and even then it's pretty rare that I do that.
 
It depends on what the replayability is for.

Unlocking new story threads/paths? GOOD
Restart game with all abilities available to experience overwhelming power? OKAY
Unlock new abilities that have no effect on the outcomes of the main game? BAD
 
I think it is overrated, especially once you aren't like... 6 years old anymore and can buy more games rather than just play whatever you have ad nauseum until your parents get you something new for Christmas.


Actually, I think the focus on replayability has, to an extent, become a negative. That's what's propping up the roguelike genre, and there's a ton of games that have some sort of roguelike trapping where I can't help but feel like the game would be so much better if it was just a straightforward, more polished 1 hour game as opposed to a 15-hour grindfest.
 
For me, it really depends how long the game is. I dont need replay value for 100h RPGs. But i can beat a 10h game in 1 or 2 days, so if they dont offer good replay value, im not paying full price for it. A good and bad example of this is in the good side, Detroit Become Human. You can beat the game in about 10h, but the game offers so many different scenarios that you are literally missing out on content if you dont replay the game in different ways.
By the time you seen most of what the game has to offer, it has became an 40h game. Then we have games like The Order, that is a short, linear game with zero replay value, what you see in your 1st playthrough, its all that is in the game. You can do that in less than 10h. I paid 5$ for this game and i felt the game is not worth more than 10$. This game would have been much better with an horde mode, for example, where you could just have fun with the combat system that was pretty solid in the game, but there was not enough of it during the entire game.

For cheap indie games, thats fine if they end up a 1 playthrough short experience. At the end of the day i just like to feel that i got my money back in entertaining value. Virtually bloating games with the same activities over and over, like Ubisoft does, is also not a good way to add value to a game.
 
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as an older gamer with zero games in my backlog, i'd've given given up gaming a while back were it not for the large number of great replayable games available (which often look much more appealing to me than many recent releases)...
 
Depends on the game. If the point of the game is to tell a story then most likely replaying it will be a slog unless it's a really good story. If the point is to challenge and reward you for getting better each time then replayability is important, but the game will be a slog if getting gud isn't worth the effort.
 
Replayability nice thing to have and its completely optional, so if you don't want to replay games then you don't have to.
 
Its underrated, as the argument in your post is a pretty common one among enthusiasts who want the current game to be over before they start the next.

A shorter, relatable game would be a better solution than an open world game stuffed with checklists. They both extend the hours someone gets for their money and for most people that's a major selling point.

Getting that replayability is hard, though. You have to design A:a game that offers a long but enjoyable learning curve, and B:a good way to meet the player's increasing skill and understanding of the game.

Demons souls was a revolution for challenge and replayability. Look at the impact of that. Also, the rarity. Most AAA games won't dare to try that.
 
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