What is the most unfulfilling game you played?

[Flon]

Pokémon X/Y. Tried to get back into the series with this game, and it just felt like a lot of nothing. I barely remember anything about it, but it did take quite a while to beat.

Final Fantasy X too. You just traverse to point A to B through long stretches of thin maps. The combat starts out pretty good but it doesn't evolve, making the difficulty too easy and making a lot of end game fights already feel solved. I finished it feeling disengaged from the story, characters combat and world.

 

[Wallace Wells]

Battlefront 2 (PS4). The game was a slog to get through

 

[The Citizen Kane of Games]

FFXV and Destiny 1.

Although I played destiny just for the single player on a borrowed PS4, not the way to enjoy a Gaas.

 

[nintendoman58]

Final Fantasy XV.

It was right when I reached the last third of the game when I felt it. There was something so...shoddy about that game's structure with its plot. Like all sorts of bad things were happening to the characters and all I could think was: "Wait, I'm at the endgame already?"

 

[Aexact]

Terra Battle

It's a mobile gacha game but it has a rare feature among gachas that allows you to not get duplicates and get every character if you grind a lot.

I was really active in the community, being among the first to theory craft and finish new raids, helping newer players compete quests, posting on the forum and reddit.

Over time, the game added more features designed to make whales spend more. New items to spend money on, a stat that doubled the amount of time to complete a character, power creep that required the newest characters to beat.

Then the servers shut down. Terra Battle 2 came out and it "fixed" the issue of being able to not infinitely draw duplicates and adding other features that were other bad lessons from other gachas. Just a feeling that I'd been duped into playing a game for three years trying so hard to get me to buy energy so now all I have is to grumble like a curmudgeon against the ills of gacha games whenever something remotely similar is brought up in the conversation.

 

[Desma]

Ni no Kuni. That was a waste of 50 hours.

 

[MrS]

Uncharted 4 made me question if i even enjoyed games anymore. Boring as fuck.

 

[Starfire22]

Uncharted 4 made me question if i even enjoyed games anymore. Boring as fuck.

Click to shrink...

Haven't played 4 yet, but for me it would be 3. (At least from what I remember)

 

[zelig]

Skyward Sword. I finished it because 'ZELDA!!1', but it left me an empty husk of my former self. It broke me. Took away something from inside me that would never return.

 

[Cliff Steele]

Reading all the FFXV answers here while I finished it 3 fucking times lol.

Guess I have a problem.

On topic:

I played and platinumed Days Gone. I spent around 70 hours with this game but I always forget about it. I don't know why but every time a thread on era pops up with a new update or something I'm like "oh yeah I played that" but then I stare into nothing when I try to remember a single thing about it's story or characters. Utterly lifeless and forgettable game.

 

[Rodney McKay]

Mass Effect Andromeda.

Played it pretty much to 100% (didn't do EVERY mission, but got 100% on each planet), did all the companion missions, and nothing came close to the enjoyment I got from the past games.

I expected Bioware's first fully current gen game (DA:I was in previous consoles, but still looked pretty great) to look incredible and be a big next step for the franchise. Instead it actually looked WORSE than inquisition in a lot of ways (character model variety and animations, ugly/boring new alien designs, recycles most of the previous aliens). The main character sucked (bad writing and bad voice acting) trying to make a joke-y Star Lord type character and failing miserably. The companions were fine, but most never got interesting (yes most of the past games characters didn't get great until after ME1, but Andromeda is also a million times longer than ME1). And the main story and villains just sucked full stop; not that interesting, barely anythjng happens, and I don't care where things left off.

Even worse was that about a year or so later I went back and tried playing it AGAIN thinking that the patches and PC mods would make it better.
It was better, but like 20-30 hours into it and doing the same pointless open world missions I had to stop and realize I could be playing literally any other game and have more fun.

 

[SirNinja]

Pokemon Let's Go Pikachu/Eevee. If it was just a straight-up HD version of R/B/Y like it frustratingly-almost was, it would be all right, but they had to shoehorn so many terrible mechanics into it, including (but not limited to): the weird catch mechanic, forced motion controls, the inability to battle wild pokemon for XP, and the extremely easy difficulty to make up for all that. I finished it feeling about as unfulfilled as I could possibly be. I'm just glad I just borrowed it rather than bought.

At least I got a bonus Spirit in Smash Ultimate from it!

 

[Kazooie]

Skyward Sword. I finished it because 'ZELDA!!1', but it left me an empty husk of my former self. It broke me. Took away something from inside me that would never return.

Click to shrink...

That's Breath of the Wild for me!

 

[Cecil]

Far Cry 3

Somehow, that first feeling of the sandbox gameplay, some well done set pieces, and some stubbornness from me to just get it over with got me through the whole game.

But:

• The save system works against it functioning as a sandbox title.
• The healing system is only annoying.
• The whole second island is so much worse then the first island
• Yes, it has a mandatory stealth sequence in the story missions, that's exactly so annoying that you imagine it.
• The story is offensively stupid. We cannot keep letting things like this pass as acceptable. This is Direct2Dvd trash tier.
• And no, Vaas is not a good or interesting character, in any way. He's a psychopath that from time to time brutally murders people in the game. That's it.

 

[ClickyCal']

That's Breath of the Wild for me!

Click to shrink...

Same

 

[Richietto]

I put well over 100 hours into MGSV and despite enjoying my time after I finished I kinda just felt nothing for it. I could have been playing better games instead of wasting time on something that I barely remember enjoying.

 

[Ænima]

Ass Creed Odyssey

I really liked AC Origins so i started Odyssey pretty pumped for the exploration. The start was feeling great untill every new place just looked like a copy paste of last place i visited, the more i played the more i felt im just dragging around a huge map of reused assets, but i kept pushing as there was some missions involving Atlantis that was pretty interesting to me. By the time the main story ended i literelly said out loud "Was that it?" I movend on to finish cult members, and once again i just felt i wasted my time hunting them all out. After this uninstalled the game to never look back at it again. Around 100h of gameplay and i really only enjoyed the missions about Atlantis, and even those ended in a cliffhanger to make you purchase the Atlantis DLC.
I wish i could refund my time with this game.

 

[Rodney McKay]

Oooh, and another one: Red Faction Armageddon

Red Faction Guerrilla was one of my favorite open world games last gen thanks to its destructible buildings, the fun side quests (especially the puzzle-y destroy a building with the given items ones), and satisfying upgrade system (destroying buildings, getting scrap, upgrading equipment so I can blow up the builds better, repeat).
Basically it was just a fun sandbox to blow stuff up in.

Armageddon takes away the sandbox and makes it a linear action shooter the destructibility is still there, but the areas are so small you barely get to blow much of anything up, and you actually get penalized for destroying too much stuff.

You can destroy stairs that you are required to climb up, so they had to add a magic re-construction tool that apart from making no sense (nano-machines) it just not nearly as fun as blowing things up.

 

[Deleted member 543]

I wish Breath of the Wild or MGS5 were the least fulfilling games I'd played.

It's probably Lost: Via Domus. Not a fun game, even as a big fan of the show at the time.

 

[Billy Palmer]

Dark Souls 3

It's objectively a great game but the greatest-hits feel, massive Bloodborne influence when I had just played like 200 hours of that, asset reuse etc. were just too much for me and it left me so cold I didn't even end up beating it and just gave up.

Click to shrink...

Completely agree.
That game is objectively very, very decent, but I was completely bored by it.

Honestly I was more engaged and at least entertained by the campy-janky stuff in DS2, despite the fact that it's clearly worse in most ways.

I did also feel quite empty at the end of DS1 too.
But that was more of a 'profound empty' (cringe). Burning was a cool but shocking ending after everything leading up to the moment.

 

[Chopchop]

Crysis 3.

The game was gorgeous, but somehow just so incredibly boring.

 

[Foxnull]

KOTOR2 for me. It came together laughably bad in the end. I expected SO MUCH more, god damn.

 

[wafflebrain]

Two recent examples being Man of Medan and Blair Witch, which sucks considering how sparse horror releases are to begin with. Medan was one where I just kept waiting for the pacing and spooks to pick up throughout but it never came, and it felt like a Mr Magoo simulator...I fudged a decent amount of QTEs and every member of my team survived by the end...talk about snoozers for a 'slasher' story.

With Blair Witch the issue again was one of pacing, forested areas were great but the

Spoiler

witch house

dragged on entirely too long and thus sapped all the unsettling atmosphere out of the thing by the ending. I just wanted to be done with it by that point...not the feeling you want to instill in a horror title unless its due to you being nerve wracked. Bloober Team is usually good but they missed the mark on this one.

As for most unfulfilling recent example would be Rage 2, sure gunplay was good but much of your time is spent traversing one of the most dull open worlds ever conceived...copy paste bland ass structures as far as the eye can see. Granted I didn't play a lot of it so I'm sure I missed a good deal but what I saw wasn't promising.

 

[poofynamanama2]

Nier: Automata.

I bought into the hype, slogging through 30-hours of mediocre hack-and-slash combat (the last half of which was done with the 'automatic combat' option for the sake of my own sanity) - constantly expecting an emotional relavation, and instead just finding more trite, tired, anime bullshit.

Click to shrink...

Amen. The character designs are fucking awful, as is the voice acting and I didn't see a single good cutscene playing through route A and some of B. The story might be "good" but the execution us quite bad.

 

[Window]

I hate to say this because there are things I liked about the game but it was Mass Effect: Andromeda. It becomes a total chore in the back half. The combat mechanics are fantastic and the characters are good but they're let down by everything else. Quest design is a total bore, cutscene direction is amateur hour, enemy encounters and types become rote real quick and the main story never takes off mostly choosing to regurgitate the plot Bioware's been recycling since KoToR. I have no idea why I stuck through the end to finish it.

 

[Ultimate Bear Cub]

Hyrule Warriors. Keep in mind the last musou game I played was Samurai Warriors. I just lost interest in musou games I guess. I still think it looks great and enticing. There is just not enough for me in the game.

 

[danowat]

Breath of the wild, I just didn't get it at all.

 

[Motorcycle Dork]

Persona 5. Too much of a slog, too many days wasted, and the writing is a complete mess. The game is riddled with many contradictions, that Nyarlathotep might of well make a book out of it. Only kept playing because a friend assures me it gets better, nope. Only a few characters were likable, everyone else was too whiny. Oh yeah, and the ending was a let down.

Spoiler

Bruh..why go back to your hometown? Your parents technically disowned you! They give two shits about you man.

I can see that P5R introduced better things and removed problematic stuff, plus Joker returns back in the new semester...but nah. It won't compensate the time I wasted. Just an over-hyped flashy game.

On the plus side, it introduced me to Megaten games, that's a win.

 

[Piscus]

Vanilla Destiny.

I never got over it.

edit:

The original Destiny, without the expansions.

Click to shrink...

woah! same!

 

[Squishy3]

Lords of Shadow 2.

 

[Zinc]

Paper Mario Sticker Star. I can't remember a single character or story moment from this "rpg". Mario and Luigi Dream Team was maybe even more unfulfilling due to its length.

 

[Bladelaw]

Two major ones I drag out when these topics come up:
Uncharted 1: I never played the sequels because I was so put off the first one. I couldn't stand the gunplay, the cover mechanic, the waves upon waves of enemies, the climbing. I powered through due to all the praise but then the game ends

Spoiler

with a quicktime event

after that I was done.

Hollow Knight: This one bothers me a lot. It ticks pretty much every box I have for "Game I should really love". Challenging combat and bosses, metroidvania exploration, and ability acquisition. I still can't stand the map, the knockback on hit ruins the feel of combat, the environments all had the same dark, greenish dark, or bluish dark aesthetic and most of the combat abilities were ok at best. You could band-aid the map and knockback but the worst was exploration and travel was a chore instead of a joy. Every now and then a boss fight would liven things up but there's so much bullshit I needed to wade through to get to the good parts I just felt...hollow after playing. I was relieved to be done instead of wanting more. Maybe I got caught up in the hype but man was this disappointing.

 

[Alex840]

Assassins Creed 3 and Watch Dogs.

 

[Astral]

Kingdom Hearts 3. This fucking game that I waited like 15 years for left me with more questions than answers. I was stupid to expect more closure than what we got.

 

[captainmal01]

In the past 5 years: Dragon Age: Inquisition and FFXIV base are the ones that stood out as boring me. I finished DA:I because I was desperate for an RPG at the time, but I regret doing so.

 

[Virtua King]

Dragon Age: Origins and Breath of the Wild

Both ended up being colossal wastes of time.

 

[ScOULaris]

Stardew Valley. I got it when it came to the Switch and put about 15 hours into it in within a week. Then suddenly the tedium and meaningless of what I was doing in the game hit me hard, and I asked myself, "Is this even fun? What am I doing with my life?"

Then I immediately dropped it and never returned.

 

[A-Scuffington-Post]

Ni no Kuni. That was a waste of 50 hours.

Click to shrink...

really? lol....I absolutely loved Ni No Kuni (white witch). I wish I could say the same for part 2........I played up to where you have to start building and I just lost all interest.

 

[Deleted member 19813]

The original Destiny, without the expansions. Especially since I played it solo.

Click to shrink...

This was my exact response.

 

[Sub Boss]

Resident Evil 6

 

[Kamaros]

as a lover of the series back last gen, Mass Effect Andromeda wiped the floor with my face.

 

[Deffers]

I'm gonna give you all a blast from the past and say Fracture, an eleven year old mistake of a game that I regret laying hands on.

So the big draw of this game was terrain deformation. It was... unimaginably lame, from start to finish. I beat the whole dumbass thing in one night, and hated myself for it. So hard, in fact, that eleven years later, I still remember.

 

[Kupo Kupopo]

lately? astral chain. quit after 6 chapters. game just feels like a very-highly polished, but totally hollow, shell. trite, soulless, & featuring the astral plane, one of the ugliest environments i've ever spent time in in a video game. lots of time...

 

[Aexact]

really? lol....I absolutely loved Ni No Kuni (white witch). I wish I could say the same for part 2........I played up to where you have to start building and I just lost all interest.

Click to shrink...

I felt the opposite actually! The ARPG battle system in 2 felt more natural and the fantasy scenarios felt like cute fairy tales rather than abstracts on linking the real world person with an exaggerated fantasy world version. Kingdom building is very mobile game-y but it was straightforward and a clear sign of progression compared to filling a Pokédex.

 

[Poppy]

probably borderlands 2

by the time i was nearing the end i was just like why did i bother playing this game

actually someone upthread said dark souls 3 and thats the real answer. at least bl2 i was playing with a friend, dark souls 3 i was playing to keep up with the times and because i liked demons, dark 1 and especially bloodborne so much. but i basically got to the point where i had done most of the stuff and got to the nameless king and just thought yeah this game is not doing anything for me, it just is evoking a bunch of things that were interesting to me a long time ago but without building on it in a way that felt important to me

 

[Sparks]

Recently, probably Read Dead Online.

I want to like it so bad, but the thing great about Rockstar games and Red Dead especially is the character interactions, the feeling of being a character in this world. When you have a bunch of fuckin' The Purge cowboy lite mute's running around, it really does not feel like I'm living in this Western.

Kingdom Hearts 3. This fucking game that I waited like 15 years for left me with more questions than answers. I was stupid to expect more closure than what we got.

Click to shrink...

Oh god this instantly came to me as well.

It's like an old friend you havent seen in a long time they are finally returning to have a meal with you. And then they spend the entire dinner talking about some obscure anime you don't care about then end the dinner by flipping the table and making you pay for it all.

Such a disappointment.

 

[A-Scuffington-Post]

I felt the opposite actually! The ARPG battle system in 2 felt more natural and the fantasy scenarios felt like cute fairy tales rather than abstracts on linking the real world person with an exaggerated fantasy world version. Kingdom building is very mobile game-y but it was straightforward and a clear sign of progression compared to filling a Pokédex.

Click to shrink...

wow that is crazy lol yeah man idk, I had full interest in part 2 but soon as I got to that part of the game I just lost all interest. It wasn't hard at all, not quite sure what happened really but I just was like mehhhh and just dropped playing it. lol.

 

[Radishhead]

Pokémon X/Y.

I wasn't having fun with it at all, but I finished the story anyway. Being a huge Pokémon fan at the time, I was kidding myself into thinking I was enjoying it.

I thought that it was too easy, that the setting was uninteresting, and that the story was pretty lame.

X/Y got me off the Pokémon train. I'm hoping Sword/Shield will get me back on.

Click to shrink...

My answer too.

 

[Rathorial]

Final Fantasy 13

Boring story, disliked most characters, bland level design, no towns made the world feel dead, character progression overly linear vs. FF12 job board, and the combat system was incredibly shallow.

Completed it only because I was in college, and had to get my money's worth on stuff back then.

 

[Deleted member 1003]

FFXV