Late Night: True CRPG Confessions

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I have an interesting confession. I was just thinking about some of the best CRPGs I've played, some of the most visually impressive compared to gameplay vs… yadda yadda.

Then I started thinking about the actual games in my library that I have finished. And I have started more games than I have finished, that much is certain. I was curious if other people have had problems finishing games that "everyone" has considered iconic or necessary as part of a healthy CRPG diet.

For me… Skyrim. I'll admit it. I liked Skyrim, I guess? I don't know. It was one of the most visually impressive open-world games while at the same time being somehow lifeless. I have over a hundred hours sunk into the game, because I'm a completionist that likes doing every side-quest. I don't often play games more than once - there are simply too many of them - but Skyrim I started many, many times. I joined the Wizard's guild and explored the map and…

…was completely underwhelmed by actually doing the main story. So I never actually "finished" Skyrim, though I'd wager I've seen at least half of the content.

Maybe, one day, I'll go back and finish Skyrim.

For now, I'm playing a host of other games from Crusader King 3 to the new 'reckoning-re-reckonining-ing game thingy that I got at a discount because I had apparently purchased - but never finished - the original game.

Anyway if anyone else has any true CRPG confessions to share, I'd be interested in hearing them.
 
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I've never been more than a third of the way into Baldur's Gate I or II, or Planescape: Torment, yet I've finished all of the Icewind Dales. I'm planning on fixing that with soon with Torment.

I enjoyed NWN2: The Mask of the Betrayer DLC, but in many respects I think it's one of the most overrated things out there, and tries to jam too much into a small package.

I've never finished Morrowind without mods. Even the first run through, when it hadn't been out all that long, I thought bows sucked too much so installed a mod for that. And probably some UI related stuff too. Despite the pervasive clunkiness, it remains one of my favourite games.

I liked Skyrim. I mean, sometimes I hated it - especially when some random bug doesn't let me finish a quest or start a DLC (serious!), but most of the time I liked it quite a bit.
More than BG I and II. :p

Mass Effect is an okay series containing mildly entertaining fights and cut-scenes buried in lengthy sections of mediocrity.

Wizardy 8 is better than Fallout 1. And anything Baldur's Gate.

I'm just getting started.
 
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Oh I got a few as well.:biggrin:

  1. I have never finished Pillar's of Eternity 1&2 or Original Sin 1&2. I usually get halfway through playing them then some new game pulls me away.
  2. I love every BioWare game even Dragon Age 2 and Mass Effect Andromeda. Along with that I love cut-scenes and I'm rarely bothered by them as others.
  3. I also enjoyed every Fallout game except Fallout 76. I know many hate Fallout 4 because of the settlements, but that didn't stop my enjoyment with mods.
  4. Yes I use nude mods if that makes me a pervert who cares..
  5. I hate any game pre-2000's CRPG nowadays for many reasons as well.
  6. Baldurs Gate 1&2 are not the greatest RPG's ever made.
 
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I have never finished Pillar's of Eternity 1&2 or Original Sin 1&2. I usually get halfway through playing them then some new game pulls me away.

Pillars 1 is another game I've played through 95% of twice but never finished, the second time with The White March installed. I did finish Pillars 2.
 
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I've never been more than a third of the way into Baldur's Gate I or II, or Planescape: Torment


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I know I know! :)
I tried to remedy that when the Enhanced Editions came out, but once again I got distracted and ultimately lost interest.

I've also never managed to get more than a dozen hours into Dragon Age. Yet I finished Mass Effect 1,2, and 3, despite having mixed feelings about them. Yeah, I don't understand myself either.
 
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Nah, if I like a game I tend to finish it.

I don't think it's a matter of confessions as a confession implies a sin which implies doing something wrong, when the reality is, some people have a completionist mindset and some don't, there's no right or wrong about it.

Computer games in their original form never even had endings, one just played until the game became impossibly hard - see space invaders, pacman, tetrus, frogger etc. It was a long time until computer games even had an "I Won!" screen, and even then only 0.01% of players were even expected to achieve that - either very rich/dedicated kids in Arcades or extremely dedicated Mario or Ultima addicts.

A computer game is something one used to 'just play for a bit'. Just because the concept of an end-screen became the norm it doesn't mean anyone is expected to complete the game, this is a modern phenomena that has also had the negative effect of forcing devs to downgrade and neutralise difficulty throughout their entire game rather than implement the traditional gradual escalation of difficulty.

Like many other aspects of computer games, around the year 2000 computer gaming was in a perfect balance for my tastes, in that games of that era had the benefit of both escalating difficulty combined with actual endings to aim for.

So, for me, as a completionist in mindset, those early games from the 80s never held my attention or love as I never was able to get a sense of completion, but I did enjoy the increasing challenges, and, likewise, modern games tend to turn me off as although they have end-screens they've completely lost the concept of gradually increasing difficulty, making them a slog that encourages abandonment out of tedium fatigue instead of difficulty limits.

But, yeah, games which offer both an ending objective and gradually more complex/difficult gameplay are where my bag is at.

I've known people who spend their weekly $60 on a game, play it for a week or two every evening, then abandon it for the next $60 game ad-infinitum, and there's nothing wrong with this, this is what people used to do in the 80s as the core expectation of the product.
 
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I know I know! :)
I tried to remedy that when the Enhanced Editions came out, but once again I got distracted and ultimately lost interest.

I've also never managed to get more than a dozen hours into Dragon Age. Yet I finished Mass Effect 1,2, and 3, despite having mixed feelings about them. Yeah, I don't understand myself either.

Carrying on from my previous post but now replying to your & @JDR13; 's posts, Baldur's Gate 2 was the first game I ever played where the sense of tedium seemed to have replaced the sense of gradually escalating difficulty as a game design principle.

Don't worry JDR, I have played it to completion and do like it a lot now, this isn't a shit on BG2 post, it was just the first game I played where I was enjoying it but had to abandon it out of exhaustion. It just piles too much shit on you, both quest-wise and companion-wise while not really focusing you in any one direction.

Which, of course, is it's whole charm, once one is prepared for it, so the second time I played it I went with a much more prepared mindset and ate the game in chunks without expecting to ever achieve anything in one sitting, which was all good fun, but took some getting used to.

I'm guessing Mass Effect is just a much more focused game and more designed for the notion of completionism, like the Icewind Dale series, than the more story-drag scattergun approach of the Bioware fantasy formula.

BG2 isn't really something one replays for greater difficulty challenges, it's something one would replay for story and character variety. So I doubt I'll ever replay it, at least until I've forgotten everything, which will be difficult as it is a very memorable game.
 
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The last decade or so, I am no longer able to finish any game that is longer than 40-50 hours. I move on to something else (not necessarily gaming) and just loose interest.
 
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I almost always finish what I start, if I don't it bothers me constantly. I cannot uninstall a game if I didn't finish it because I think "I'll come back to this later". The games that haunt me the most are NWN2 and Arcanum. I'm also aware of the time I sink into any one game because I buy more games than I can play and am mortal - I do not have time to play every game I own. OH THE AGONY!
 
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I almost always finish what I start, if I don't it bothers me constantly. I cannot uninstall a game if I didn't finish it because I think "I'll come back to this later". The games that haunt me the most are NWN2 and Arcanum. I'm also aware of the time I sink into any one game because I buy more games than I can play and am mortal - I do not have time to play every game I own. OH THE AGONY!

Hire someone on fiverr to finish them for you :lol:
 
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I don't have much time these days to play long hours, and tend to go back to games that I played before that I know and comfortable with. A major factor for me for playing any new games is the user interface and accessibility, and if the story is engaging.
 
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About finishing videogames I tend to finish every single one of those. Assuming there is at least one interesting thing inside.
I didn't finish boring grinders that have no redeeming content nor ever will, that's Dragon's Dogma and likes. Played them till the point I got a feeling I'm not having fun but am doing an unpaid job.

Sometimes however…
Because of not enough time I still didn't finish DLC from AC:Odyssey. I did complete the main game (basically did everything!), then left it till all DLC appear. But then I got problem with my free time. I will do the DLC sometime in the future though, the game is still installed. Maybe next month.
Because of it's too hot to play games I still didn't finish HZD. Only the final main quest remains (did everything else including DLC and sidequests).
Same goes for nonRPG Council which I made to chapter 4 but it's too hot to continue. Hopefully next few days the temperature will drop so I can finish and get rid of these two.
 
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@JFarrell71; - Yeah, that one was difficult for me to finish as well for whatever reason, though I did eventually manage to. It is also one of my all-time favorite games. Sometimes those go together, for me.
@Shagnak; - I finished the BG games as they were based on the D&D system and I just loved them to pieces. Never finished a single Bethesda "Elder Scrolls" game, but liked 3-5 just fine. Skyrim I put a ton of time into, I just kept getting distracted by other games that I was more intrigued by. I never actually finished Wizardry 8! But I loved what I played of it. Might have to finish that one day too.
@Couchpotato; - I know a lot of people who just couldn't finish POE/POE 2, but I enjoyed them enough and finished them fairly quickly, I think. I'm a BioWare fan as well, I love all of their games. The Mass Effect games were fantastic and I'm not even a huge sci-fi fan. Dragon Age (all of them) was one of the few game worlds/games that my wife and I really enjoyed together.

I love Fallout 4. I don't know that I'd call BG 1 and 2 the best RPGs ever made, but they're up on my list definitely. I'm salivating over the EA release of BG3. I don't use mods much at all, let alone nude ones, but I have had some *really* weird Japanese visual novels recommended to me that I played and was a bit... surprised with. Nothing really shocks me, but there's some weird stuff out there. I like oddities and esoteric for esoterica's sake, so I often find myself playing games that push the boundaries a bit.
@lackblogger; -
So, for me, as a completionist in mindset, those early games from the 80s never held my attention or love as I never was able to get a sense of completion, but I did enjoy the increasing challenges, and, likewise, modern games tend to turn me off as although they have end-screens they've completely lost the concept of gradually increasing difficulty, making them a slog that encourages abandonment out of tedium fatigue instead of difficulty limits.

I would gather that we probably play games for different reasons and get different things out of them, as I remember being delighted as a child with games in the 80's and loving them for what they were - Pools of Radiance remains one of my favorite CRPGs to this day, and I'd say that SSI's "Gold Box" games were the height of my computer gaming joy; but that's also probably because I was around 12 at the time they were popular, so I grew up with them when D&D and computer gaming were the second and third most important thing on my mind after causing trouble in general. Just checked when "Pools" came out; I was actually only 9 or 10 when I played that game. I loved the Hell out of it.

I actually played a remake of it a bit ago and it was fantastic still, probably nostalgia filled but I still enjoyed making my party of 6 and wandering around a fairly large world deciding what quests and jobs to take on next. It aged very well for me, in ways that some games - like, say, Ultima 3 - haven't. I wouldn't put myself through Ultima 3 again.

What were some of your favorite games from the 2000-ish "golden era" you speak of? I'm trying to remember what I was playing around that time, but I think I might have been mired in MMOs in general back then as nothing is jumping out at me.

I will say that some games now become a slog and that more content isn't always better. I'm finding that in Kingdom of Amalur Re-Reckoning, for example, I just kinda want the game to be done. I'm having fun in my generic Skyrim fantasy world, but it's getting to the point where I'd set it down easily for a new shiny.
 
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@Myrthos; - It has to be a really good game for me to put more than 50 hours into it now, I agree. Wasteland 3 was about the perfect length, for me, for a game to feel fun and full of content without getting boring by the end; and it provided (me) with a satisfying ending.
@Philistine; - You're taunted by Arcanum, too, eh? :D
@joxer; - What was the last really good CRPG that you've played, and do you have any coming up you're looking forward to?
 
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The last really good PC exclusive: Troubleshooter.

Coming up I look forward to:
https://www.rpgwatch.com/forums/showthread.php?t=45885

Troubleshooter - Abandoned Children was a hidden gem for me. I really like it, and I need to go back to playing it. I didn't stop out of boredom, I think I just started playing something else. But I enjoyed what I played of it immensely.

As for the rest of your list, Cyberpunk 2077 is probably the one I'm most excited about. I remember playing Cyberpunk 2020 in the 90's and, well, I guess they got the corporate takeover of the world and a semi-apocalypse right.

:D
 
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Never played more than the first 5 minutes of Witcher 3!
I've never got more than a third into The Witcher 1! I bought the collector's edition with all the books and stuff, so I've made a few attempts at getting into it.
I don't even own Witcher 3 :(
 
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