Some of your "I should have picked that other game instead" moments.

[Bengraven]

That's a real succession of unfortunate decisions involving Xenogears.

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The funny part is that technically there's another, third layer to all this confusion.

I remember hearing about this acclaimed RPG about killing a God, if not THE God, and yet I got confused on the title.

So I bought the big RPG out at the time and got all the way to the end and I was a little confused, because while you did in fact kill God at the end of the game I did not see why people thought it was so deep and heavy. I didn't see all the religious imagery and themes they were talking about. Just a lot of cute animal people and a fishing mini game.

I didn't realize until shortly after I beat it that I had bought the wrong game.

But I wasn't complaining because I love the game and that game was Breath of Fire III.

 

[Finaika]

I bought Sonic CD instead of Silpheed.

 

[Combichristoffersen]

something the best of us can only dream of

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It did sound like a threesome with two MILFs, yeah

 

[Bard]

Shame??

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Yes, it's the better game.

 

[NightShift]

I remember having to chose between DMC: Devil May Cry and Metal Gear Rising and it still haunts me today. I don't even know why I made the wrong choice there since I'm a much bigger fan of Metal Gear. I guess it was just because I didn't like Raiden? Rising did make me like him a lot more though.

 

[Merton]

In college with not a ton of money. I got FF13 and my friend got God of War 3. I should have gotten god of war 3.

 

[housequake]

In 2014, I went looking for a new game on my still reasonably new PS4. It ended up being a toss up between Dragon Age: Inquisition and GTAV. For some reason I decided to go with GTA, which I then booted up and played for about 20 minutes before wondering why I bothered paying that much money for a game I'd already played about a year ago and wasn't massively enamoured with. I probably would have really liked Dragon Age.

 

[Oscarzx n]

Lmao I just spent 50 hours playing AI The Somnium Files and spent a majority of the time wishing I was playing almost anything else.

Could have been playing Great Ace Attorney, or Paradise Killer, or The Forgotten City or Persona 2 or a replay of Dark Souls 2 I'd been considering instead.

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I mean is certainly not perfect, the gameplay sections while not "bad" are a step back from to the Zero Escape games and the tone is less consistent, but for me the story was really well told and there are some things that it does better than the Zero Escape series.
Also, why 50 hours? I'm pretty sure it took me like 28 or so.

 

[Dr Pears]

I remember spending a looong time deciding between Infamous or Prototype. I tried the Infamous demo and really enjoyed it, but everything I read about Prototype in magazines at the time seems like it'll be the best game ever so I got Prototype.

Got bored of Prototype like an hour into the game and really wished I picked Infamous instead.

 

[Deleted member 31873]

I asked my parents for SiN for Christmas in 1998 when everyone else was playing Half Life. It wasn't a terrible game; just kinda generic FPS, and I never finished it.

I've still not played Half Life.

 

[Menchin]

I'm about to have one of those moments either way I go with Elden Ring and D2: Witch Queen, because I want both but can only get one and then the other one in 2 months

 

[SanTheSly]

I mean is certainly not perfect, the gameplay sections while not "bad" are a step back from to the Zero Escape games and the tone is less consistent, but for me the story was really well told really well and there are some things that it does better than the Zero Escape series.
Also, why 50 hours? I'm pretty sure it took me like 28 or so.

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Hated the gameplay sections being dictated by dream logic that would just require retries for things you had no real way of predicting would be incorrect options.

Hated the fact the story wanted to be everything at once instead of just picking a tone and being good at it. AI could have been an amazing noir detective fiction story if it wasn't so interested in terrible action scenes that go beyond farcical. I also wasn't a fan of how excessively convoluted the story became by the end as well.

The runtime was so long because I regularly left the game just running in the background of my PC for 2-4 hours at a time because it wasn't holding my interest. If I deduct all that time, it might be closer to 36 hours of actual play time.

It had been on my backlog for a while, and I was interested to play it. The opening few hours were solid and I wish the whole game had carried that tone. I only stuck with it because a twitch channel I mod for is playing it soon and I wanted to be fully aware of what to expect going in, and not have it spoiled for me. In retrospect, I would rather it had just been spoiled.

Further context: I also hated 999 by the end too so I think I'm just gonna avoid future Uchikoshi games.

Further FURTHER context: If I ever hear that god awful song again I am going to scream.

 

[Total Cereal]

Sort of the same thing, but then the Wii came out I only had just enough money to buy it and extra controllers for my brothers and didn't have enough for another game (had preordered Twilight Princess years earlier). We decided to sell some of our Gamecube games, and at our local game store, there was a deal where if you trade in two games with a trade-in value of $20, you get a free $50 game (Wii games were $50). So, lucky us, we had two Gamecube games with a $20 trade-in value: Pikmin 2 and Gotcha Force.

Now, if you know anything about Gamecube game collecting, you'll know that Gotcha Force is one of the most valuable games on the platform, often going for over $500 for complete-in-box copies (which ours was). But, at the time it wasn't all that valuable and we didn't play it anymore, so we traded it in. Pikmin 2 was also pretty valuable for a little while too, but I've since rebought it (luckily right before the pandemic).

Anyway, the game we chose to get with this awesome trade-in promo? Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz. We played it for about an hour before we decided to return it because it was so awful. Tooootally worth it...

 

[fbnaulin]

Having a SEGA Master System, we asked our father to buy Shinobi. He brings us Alex Kidd: High Tech World, instead. Sad times.

 

[Cloud-Hidden]

Your babysitter bought you video games?

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She was basically my grandma. Both of my parents worked full time (we were middle class), so I spent a ton of time at this woman's house basically from the time I was tiny through 5th or 6th grade. She was family to me, and I to her.

Looking back, she really went out of her way to try to make me feel special. She had the tiniest ass house in a not very nice neighborhood. I have memories of her driving through the bank lane to withdraw an envelope of cash so she could take me to McDonald's, or occasionally, to go buy a toy or game. She was truly wonderful and caring.

Of course, if she really loved me, she would have stopped me from choosing Steel Harbinger over MGS.

 

[mrmickfran]

Tatsunoko vs. Capcom or New Super Mario Bros. Wii

I went with NSMB and will never forgive myself

 

[-Peabody-]

I waited outside for 7 hours in a Minnesota winter to get a Wii at launch. I only had enough for one game at the time since I was a kid but I thought "Hey I can get Twilight Princess for Christmas, let's go with Avatar the Last Airbender instead."

Only game I had for a whole month.

 

[That Naive Cube!!]

I shoulda got Pokémon Red instead of Blue back in the day.

For my tastes, Red had the better version exclusives.

 

[Enthus]

When I was a kid, we went to the Times Square Toys R' Us. My mom let me pick one game to get.

I was deciding between Wario: Master of Disguise for DS and A Link To The Past for GBA. I went with Wario because I wanted to get a DS game.

I think I played an hour of it

 

[ghostcrew]

Told this story a thousand times here in regret threads but I traded in my copy of Panzer Dragoon Saga for Bomberman 64.

And it didn't quite cover the whole cost so I had to pay some extra.

Should've chosen not going to the fucking game store that day.

 

[Deleted member 17210]

I bought Karnov for NES instead of Rygar. Karnov was way worse than the arcade game. I loved Rygar when I did get it, though.

 

[Jimnymebob]

Batman of the Future Return of the Joker on PS1 instead of The Misadventures of Tron Bonne...

 

[scare_crow]

She was basically my grandma. Both of my parents worked full time (we were middle class), so I spent a ton of time at this woman's house basically from the time I was tiny through 5th or 6th grade. She was family to me, and I to her.

Looking back, she really went out of her way to try to make me feel special. She had the tiniest ass house in a not very nice neighborhood. I have memories of her driving through the bank lane to withdraw an envelope of cash so she could take me to McDonald's, or occasionally, to go buy a toy or game. She was truly wonderful and caring.

Of course, if she really loved me, she would have stopped me from choosing Steel Harbinger over MGS.

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This is very sweet with a very funny ending.

 

[scare_crow]

Preorderd Elden Ring instead of Horizon.
Think I made a mistake.
On the other hand I want to support studios that put some effort into their launch editions.
With Elden Ring I will get a steelbook + other goodies.
Horizons lauch editions probably includes a single paper flyer that advertises PS+.

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This doesn't read like you made a mistake at all?

 

[Slaythe]

I bought Star Wars episode 3 game instead of the original god of war- regret it to this day….

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Bro no

ROTS is awesome and that vs mode was so jank I still have memories of laughing to tears with my friends. ( and btw check out the xbox series x BC version of that game ! )

Gow is completely outdated with 0 thing to make up for it at this point.

 

[NoctisLC]

I picked Hexen over Mario 64 as my first N64 game as a kid. Sadness.

 

[dskzero]

She was basically my grandma. Both of my parents worked full time (we were middle class), so I spent a ton of time at this woman's house basically from the time I was tiny through 5th or 6th grade. She was family to me, and I to her.

Looking back, she really went out of her way to try to make me feel special. She had the tiniest ass house in a not very nice neighborhood. I have memories of her driving through the bank lane to withdraw an envelope of cash so she could take me to McDonald's, or occasionally, to go buy a toy or game. She was truly wonderful and caring.

Of course, if she really loved me, she would have stopped me from choosing Steel Harbinger over MGS.

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This is one of the best things I've read here lmao.

I picked Hexen over Mario 64 as my first N64 game as a kid. Sadness.

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Hexen is still one of the best games ever, but i can imagine how as a kid I wouldn't have been able to figure anything out.

 

[Cloud-Hidden]

This is very sweet with a very funny ending.

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This is one of the best things I've read here lmao.

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One more quick memory, at the risk of totally derailing the thread:

I remember waking up one morning on the little air mattress I slept on in her living room, and Mrs. Kay asked me what I wanted for breakfast. The previous week she had these frozen mini-pancakes that I fucking loved. I had never seen them before, and I ate like half the box. I told her I really wanted those frozen mini pancakes again. She apologized and told me that she didn't have any more mini pancakes. I didn't cry or pout or anything, but I must have looked really disappointed. I told her I'd just have bacon and eggs (I know, tragedy, right?) I remember her saying, "Okay, I'll be right back baby." I fell back asleep on my air mattress.

I woke back up to the sound of rustling plastic and looked into the kitchen to see Mrs. Kay beaming, a couple of Kroger bags in her hands. It was like 7 o'clock in the morning. She went out and bought me frozen fucking mini-pancakes. Even as a child, her selflessness was not lost on me. I realized what she had done for me, and to this day I have never had a more delicious breakfast.

RIP Mrs. Kay. You were the best (and my only) grandma.

 

[NoctisLC]

This is one of the best things I've read here lmao.


Hexen is still one of the best games ever, but i can imagine how as a kid I wouldn't have been able to figure anything out.

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Yeah it was fun but I got stuck a lot.

 

[Poltergust]

Lmao I just spent 50 hours playing AI The Somnium Files and spent a majority of the time wishing I was playing almost anything else.

Could have been playing Great Ace Attorney, or Paradise Killer, or The Forgotten City or Persona 2 or a replay of Dark Souls 2 I'd been considering instead.

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I like AI, but if you are still in the mood for a mystery-solving adventure game then I definitely recommend The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles.

Unlike AI where I have to give it some qualifiers to make it more palatable to most people (such as "just so you know the main character is super horny all the time, so try your best to look past that"), TGAAC is just all around amazing and stands among the best in the series (as a duology, I mean).

 

[Faceless_Caesar]

I rented Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver from a Blockbuster back in the day and they put RE:Survivor in the box instead and they didn't have any replacement copies to give me. I also purchased Time Crisis 2 used from a Gamestop and they put Crisis Zone in the box instead.

 

[ShinUltramanJ]

Wish I bought anything other then Doom on Switch.

 

[Dr.KeBorkian]

Preorderd Elden Ring instead of Horizon.
Think I made a mistake.
On the other hand I want to support studios that put some effort into their launch editions.
With Elden Ring I will get a steelbook + other goodies.
Horizons lauch editions probably includes a single paper flyer that advertises PS+.

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Horizon also has a steelbook and digital art book and dlc

 

[SanTheSly]

I like AI, but if you are still in the mood for a mystery-solving adventure game then I definitely recommend The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles.

Unlike AI where I have to give it some qualifiers to make it more palatable to most people (such as "just so you know the main character is super horny all the time, so try your best to look past that"), TGAAC is just all around amazing and stands among the best in the series (as a duology, I mean).

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Yeah, I will be getting to it soonish. Might need a short VN break first but I am looking forward to getting to those games eventually!

 

[GundamStyle]

I chose game gear and sonic, instead of gameboy and mario. Ended up forgetting the console in a hotel a week later. I was less than 10.

 

[Alienhated]

I bought Disaster Report 4's physical copy on Ps4/5 at the same price of the digital pc edition, but the Playstation version has no in-game button reassignment option and half of the epilogue is paid dlc...

 

[Justified]

Pre-order MGSV got the Diamond dog box and the protected arm. I ended traded it in for Mad Max (that I enjoyed more) by the weekend which was released on the same day.

 

[Farlander]

Not exactly a case of choice, but ever since its announcement I wanted to play Spider-Man 2 game so much (I was like 12-13 at the time).

But I lived in Eastern Europe, we were mostly PC gamers there, and my family had a PC, getting consoles was very difficult.... so Spider-Man 2 launched on all platforms. My parents bought me it day 1, under my request.

So, for full reference, this is the Spider-Man 2 game that was advertized for all platforms AND had screenshots on the back case of PC version as well (which previously always received direct ports), an open world action adventure with realistic swinging.

And this is what I found on release date is the PC version of Spider-Man 2 ACTUALLY like.

A sort off open world game where every district was a small closed off area and webswingig was based on pointing and clicking the reticule cursor on sparsely placed special web icons.

I was disappointed so.... so much. I literally couldn't understand what the hell.

 

[Nairume]

I once went to the game store to specifically get the Grandia II PS2 port and saw that, right next to it, was the newest Harvest Moon. As much as I wanted Grandia II, I knew that Harvest Moon had previously provided me an insane amount of gametime, so I decided to go with that to stretch my purchase out further since money was tight enough that I either could buy one full priced new game every few months with allowance money or hope that my grandparents would kick a little extra my way to pay for things. Turns out that new Harvest Moon, Save the Homeland, would be one of the worst games in the series prior to the split between Marvelous and Natsume and would also be so stripped down in terms of what you actually do that it didn't even serve the purpose of being a long game to keep me playing it for a very long time. I ended up just having to save up again to get Grandia II, which I ended up loving as much as I was expecting.

On a similar note, when I was really trying to get into playing Dungeons & Dragons, I was in a weird situation where the one book store in town that carried D&D products never had a copy of the player hand book available on a regular basis because they would only ever get one copy in every few months and it was always a mad dash by various nerds to try and get the one available copy. Desperate to try and get into playing some kind of Tabletop RPG, I decided to go with just buying the player book for one of the other systems they had on hand. There was plenty of WoD, but I ignored those because of the stereotypes. All they seemingly had for non-WoD and non-D&D starter books were the PHB for the Everquest RPG (which was just D&D 3.0 but with EQ flavors) and Battletech. I flipped a coin, landed on EQ...and then decided to go with Battletech because I figured that giant robots would be fun as hell and I could probably convince my friends to get into that.

Turns out that the Battletech book was a Battletech supplement for the Mechwarrior RPG...thus completely useless without THAT core book (which the book store never got another copy in because those books never sold enough to warrant a restock). All I was able to do with that stupid book was just read the lore and pretend I was generating characters in the life path system to generate a character sheet full of things I had no idea what to do with them. I spent a solid year regretting not going with EQ until I discovered the D&D 3.x System Reference Document basically let you get by without the player book (and then I managed to get the book itself shortly after it anyway).

Xbox 360 launch.

Perfect Dark Zero when I should have bought PGR3 or Kameo instead.

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Same for me, though my regret was not getting Quake 4 instead (though maybe that was also still bad based on how people act about it).

 

[Cloud-Hidden]

Wish I bought anything other then Doom on Switch.

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But... DOOM on Switch kicks ass?

 

[TheAggroCraig]

We got a Sega CD when I was a kid and I was able to pick out a game for it, either Power Rangers the FMV or Sonic CD... I reluctantly picked Power Rangers not realizing it wasn't a game and never got around to playing Sonic CD until Sonic Gems Collection like 10 years later.

 

[J-Skee]

Yes, it's the better game.

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I had to look it up. I personally don't see the appeal, but to each his own. FFX was my introduction to JRPGs & I would never trade that.

 

[ShinUltramanJ]

But... DOOM on Switch kicks ass?

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Not for me it doesn't. My most regretted purchase of the generation.

 

[The Gold Hawk]

There was a 2 month period where I decided to grab Battlefield Hardline and the Order:1886 instead of Bloodborne.

Now, I don't think Bloodborne is a perfect game or as good as people say it is but it's a butt load better than Hardline.

I leaned towards the X360 version but for some bizarre reason I convinced myself to pick the PS3 version instead. And so I returned home, blissfully unaware at the time that I chose the version that contained a gamebreaking bug that would make the game all but unplayable and wouldn't be fixed until months later.

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Which gamebreaking one would that be? The one that killed the PS3 due to the autosaves or the one that would crash if you entered any body of water..and also broke autosaves?

Spoiler

I also made the dumb choice to get the PS3 version and had both of those haha.

The Legendary Dragonborn, travelling 30 minutes out of their way over the mountains to avoid an ankle deep stream...teeth clenched that the autosave wouldn't kill the console

 

[BlueBrand]

On the SNES, picked up Ultraman instead of Super Castlevania because Ultraman was on TV at the time and I thought it was interesting. I even remember making the decision in the store and thinking, hmmm, I've played the other three Castlevania games and this just looks like more of the same..... I think about it everything I see Ultraman or Castlevania now.

 

[ClearMetal]

Which gamebreaking one would that be? The one that killed the PS3 due to the autosaves or the one that would crash if you entered any body of water..and also broke autosaves?

Spoiler

I also made the dumb choice to get the PS3 version and had both of those haha.

The Legendary Dragonborn, travelling 30 minutes out of their way over the mountains to avoid an ankle deep stream...teeth clenched that the autosave wouldn't kill the console

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Wait, those existed as well?

I was talking about the one where the game would slow down to a crawl when your save file grew bigger than 5 MB or so. Which would happen after only a dozen hours of play time. From what I remember it was a problem with the game not cleaning up the overworld, leaving everything that was ever added to it (ranging from small items to entire dragons skeletons) in place, inflating your save file in the process. I don't quite remember the details, but I believe the resulting lag was because of how the game and the PS3 didn't get along on a fundamental level, like a problem with the memory or something?

It was just a bad port all-around. The game never ran smoothly on the PS3, not even after these issues were eventually fixed.

 

[andymcc]

I bought Sonic CD instead of Silpheed.

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Hell yeah dude, that's making a good choice.

 

[The Gold Hawk]

Wait, those existed as well?

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Yeah. It was a great time. I was saving before going near any bit of water. If that quest required diving, swimming or splashing in puddles then my might Dragonborn was not willing to undertake it.

I think the autosaves one was unrelated to the water and just good old Bethesda jank. But it didn't help.

I was talking about the one where the game would slow down to a crawl when your save file grew bigger than 5 MB or so. Which would happen after only a dozen hours of play time. From what I remember it was a problem with the game not cleaning up the overworld, leaving everything that was ever added to it (ranging from small items to entire dragons skeletons) in place, inflating your save file in the process. I don't quite remember the details, but I believe the resulting lag was because of how the game and the PS3 didn't get along on a fundamental level, like a problem with the memory or something?

It was just a bad port all-around. The game never ran smoothly on the PS3, not even after these issues were eventually fixed.

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Oh my god yes! I remember that now. That might be why there were certain cities (Solitude and Whiterun I think) that I would never teleport to. It would just crash due to dragon corpses. Or maybe that was also a seperate glitch.

Yeah, real bad port. In fairness, not a great console for developing, but still a real bad port

 

[LurkerSinceForever]

Xbox 360 launch.

Perfect Dark Zero when I should have bought PGR3 or Kameo instead.

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QFT, did the same thing. Perfect Dark was cool and all but that and some arcade games was all I could afford for a couple of months.. The bot matchens sistaned me for a long time tho :)
My own contribution would be Dark age of Camelot back in 2001. My first proper MMO.
Started a hunger that took me almost 20 years to end, have bought and played almost every single MMO for 2 decades.. should have just bought Onimusha instead 😅

 

[MegaSackman]

Deathloop instead of Disco Elysiun FC, I know I would 100% enjoy the latter while I've never been interested in Deathloop until awards season, played it for half an hour and deleted it and I've no money for Disco now.