What's a game you hate finished?

Okay it doesn't have to be hate finished, but what's a game you played to the end even though you weren't really crazy about it, you weren't having fun, or were just kind of meh about?

The first time I played Dishonored, I tried to get all the achievements for not being seen and not killing anyone on my first playthrough. It was a miserable experience, with so much trial and error. I didn't have fun with the abilities or exploring the levels, it was just a grind to the finish. I recently replayed it, along with the sequel, and had a great time just having fun and not stressing about the achievements.

By the time I got to the end of Control I was more than ready for it to be over. The boss fights were miserable, the checkpoints were terribly placed, and the loading times were excruciating. I didn't even really enjoy the Ashtray Maze because by that point I was tired of the game. From what I understand they patched the game with better difficulty options and checkpoints, so maybe it would be a better experience if I revisited it.

Less a "hate finish" and more a "tired finish" I've been a huge Assassin's Creed fan since the 2007 original. But Assassin's Creed Valhalla really wore out its welcome. It's beautiful, and I love the setting, and the combat is the best it's ever been. But the story and characters never really grabbed me, clearing each zone's story got repetitive, and it was the first time that the story resolution was so bonkers I had to look up an explainer afterwards because it went right over my head. I still haven't played the DLC despite buying the season pass.

How about you?

Syberia II last year. Absolutely hate-finished it. It boggles my mind how something so bad can have such a good reputation. The artwork is great, but almost everything else....oof.

My pretty scathing thoughts on it for anyone who cares.

I've told this story here before, but I rented Wolverine: Origins (for the PS2 I think).

I have very minor CP, and one of the things that are very hard for me in games is rapid button presses. Well, I was interested in the story, but I couldn't get past a rapid button sequence about halfway through (I forget what it even was). I went out, and bought a cheap controller with turbo, just so I could get past that one part (and a few later).

It still pisses me off that I bought a $25 controller I hated to get past two sequences for a game I paid $5 to rent from Blockbusters.

Prince of Persia: Sands of Time - I don't think any other game has ever made me this irrationally angry even once, let alone the multiple times I was throughout my time with PoP:SoT. Setting and dialogue were great. Camera and combat were very much not so. The hate could best be described as "seething", and even seeing the credits roll did little to make me feel better.

Then there is Sword of Vermilion (yeah, the 16-bit one) which I finished in 2013. The review I wrote back then sums it up well:

Spoiler:

Today I finally put an end to Sword of Vermilion. It's a very early 16 bit RPG and it's downright BRILLIANT! Rarely have I seen a game that conveys the suffering and feelings of futility associated with the hero's journey as clearly as this one!
Every moment of the game appears tailored to drag the agonizing experience out as long as possible - from the menu commands one must navigate through to first "open" a chest and then "take" the contents (after several hours of play I had begun wondering why I didn't have chest contents which I had clearly picked up...I thought), to doors that must be unlocked EVERY SINGLE TIME one passes through them, to fixed paths that seem to twist in ways to maximize possible travel time per screen, as well as an enemy encounter rate that can sometimes be described as "nearly every step".
Speaking of encounters, the battle system is extremely poor. Regular encounters take place in a style similar to Golden Axe, though not nearly as interesting. There only seem to be about 12 different enemy types the entire game. Boss battles are slow, 2d side-scrolling slugfests with atrocious movement, in which magic use is suddenly no longer allowed.

That this game was ever remotely considered "good" is a testament to a lack of alternatives. At least the quasi-3D movement was mildly impressive for its time.

Beyond the Beyond: I was a poor kid with little games and I Game Sharked that game to the end. It was boring and generic. The random battles just were awful and just bad.

AUs_TBirD wrote:

Then there is Sword of Vermilion (yeah, the 16-bit one) which I finished in 2013. The review I wrote back then sums it up well:

Spoiler:

Today I finally put an end to Sword of Vermilion. It's a very early 16 bit RPG and it's downright BRILLIANT! Rarely have I seen a game that conveys the suffering and feelings of futility associated with the hero's journey as clearly as this one!
Every moment of the game appears tailored to drag the agonizing experience out as long as possible - from the menu commands one must navigate through to first "open" a chest and then "take" the contents (after several hours of play I had begun wondering why I didn't have chest contents which I had clearly picked up...I thought), to doors that must be unlocked EVERY SINGLE TIME one passes through them, to fixed paths that seem to twist in ways to maximize possible travel time per screen, as well as an enemy encounter rate that can sometimes be described as "nearly every step".
Speaking of encounters, the battle system is extremely poor. Regular encounters take place in a style similar to Golden Axe, though not nearly as interesting. There only seem to be about 12 different enemy types the entire game. Boss battles are slow, 2d side-scrolling slugfests with atrocious movement, in which magic use is suddenly no longer allowed.

That this game was ever remotely considered "good" is a testament to a lack of alternatives. At least the quasi-3D movement was mildly impressive for its time.

Sword of Vermilion was my first Genesis game haha! I played through it a couple times this past decade and I don't know why but I'll probably play through it again. I guess nostalgia really is powerful. I mean the boss battles are so terrible the UI under your Spells just says "Can't Use".

That reminds me of the worst game that I hate finished was also on the Genesis. Beast Wrestler had the coolest cover art and the worst gameplay of any game on the Genesis. The cover art is what got me to buy it at a used game shop. I didn't have a lot of games and so I had to play it. You fight a string of beasts with your beast and get a simple ending about being the best beast ever...until your next battle. Then the game resets and you realize you wasted a bunch of time and your fingers are raw from spamming a couple buttons because the controls are so unresponsive you just hit buttons until one of them triggers an action.

Tom & Jerry on the SNES.

15 year old me had gone to the import game store to buy something (which has been lost to the mists of time), but they didn't have it so i ended up spending 6 weeks of paper-route money on this piece of garbage which was a terrible platformer.

Butt dammit if i wanty going to get my moneysworth!

Assassins Creed Odyssey stands out for me. In hindsight I'm not sure why I even bothered finishing it. I think I figured that if I've already put in 40+ hours, I might as well see it through to the end. I just grew so tired of it. It's a big long game, but so much of it is padding. It was just exhausting and I felt relieved when I finally finished it. Which is a real shame though, as I was really enjoying it for quite a while.

Bioshock. It starts extremely strongly, but in the end it's about 8 hours of fun in a 12-hour bag. I was curious about the ending so I turned the difficulty all the way down and powered through it, a little resentfully.

Jonman wrote:

Butt dammit if i wanty going to get my moneysworth!

I don't know if this is referencing anything, butt i lovey it!

Agathos wrote:

Bioshock. It starts extremely strongly, but in the end it's about 8 hours of fun in a 12-hour bag. I was curious about the ending so I turned the difficulty all the way down and powered through it, a little resentfully.

I felt the same when Bioshock initially came out. I've revisited it since then and have a more positive view of the whole package, but it's clear the last chunk of the game isn't as polished as the preceding bits.

OMG, Hydlide! How could I forget this horrific experience (even though I really wouldn't mind forgetting it).

Pretty certain it's the worst NES game I've ever finished. Worse than Astyanax, worse than Castle of Dragon. In fact, it might be the worst game I've ever seen to the end. My thoughts in a similar GWJ thread from 11 years ago. (Boy, so many old usernames you don't see around anymore )

Here's the only music you get until the ending sequence. The video is 3 minutes long, which means the under-14-second melody repeats 13 times in the course of it. The game took me at least 4 hours to finish.

This is what going insane must sound like. Or working in an ice cream truck.

Tales of Zesteria. I initially found the characters inane but occasionally entertaining. Over the course of the game I found them more and more irritating until by the end I truly loathed them. I died twice against the final boss and then uninstalled the game because I realised I didn't care what happened. I guess that's not technically a hate finish though.

Infamous. The world was mediocre. Zeke Dunbar was annoying as hell. The side activities were so dull I only every did one once and every step the protagonist took made an irritating tinkle tinkle noise like he was running on broken glass.

Given your definition of 'hate', I have to fight the instinct to say, "All of 'em!". But that's not far from the truth for me.

I prefer open world games, and I'm also quite bloody-minded about finishing games. As a result, I usually find that my gaming gum loses its flavour before I'm ready to put down the controller (say, two-thirds of the way through an Assassins Creed).

The last time a ploughed through a game out of spite was probably 'Horizon Zero Dawn'... or was it 'Watch Dogs'? Before that, 'Black Flag' put me off Assassins Creed forever.

Since then, I've realised that my time and happiness are more important to me than seeing credits, so I'm walking away from games more often now.

The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel. And to explain why, I'll need to spoil the end of the game. But that feels very in the spirit of this thread so I'll not spoiler-tag it.

The Legend of Heroes is a JRPGs, much beloved for their brilliant large-scale worldbuilding. They could also, in my opinion, use the strong hand of a good editor who realizes that more dialogue is not always better, and brevity has benefits. But anyway...

In the first Trails of Cold Steel game, you're a high school kid at a military academy which trains the future leaders of your country. There's also a mysterious building from ancient times on school grounds, which is one of the main dungeons you explore over the course of the game. As you find out near the end of the game, it turns out there's a mecha under the school.

The end of the game sees the school under attack, and in the final boss fight, you pilot the mecha -- for the very first time ever -- against another guy with a mecha who actually has training in how to use his. I can't stress that "very first time ever" part enough. To that point in the game, there are no simulation mecha combats. There are no tutorials. You never use this mechanic at any other point in the game. There's no way to change its equipment, or to level-grind to improve it (that I know of). And so the boss fight becomes this massive trial-and-error exercise in using the mecha's abilities, dying, and starting over. I'm pretty experienced at JRPGs, and I think I attempted the fight 20 times before clearing it successfully. The battles are also all turn-based, so it's not like you can get better at twitch reflexes as you try again.

In the sequel, the mecha plays a much bigger role, and its combat is implemented very thoughtfully. But man, what a terrible, frustrating end to a game that was too long to begin with.

AUs_TBirD wrote:

OMG, Hydlide! How could I forget this horrific experience (even though I really wouldn't mind forgetting it).

This is what going insane must sound like. Or working in an ice cream truck.

Poppycock! I'll have you know this game received the Nintendo Seal of Quality, good sir!

Privateer 2. I hate that game so. Much. Flames. FLAMES. Out the side of my face...heaving....heaving breaths...

But, it was a Privateer game, so I had to finish it. The tremendous cast helped.

Two stand out: the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on the NES. It was so hyped but so mediocre and HARD! I also remember being so incredibly let down by the gameplay experience that was Shadowgate (Dad thought I'd dig it), but 9 year-old me wouldn't let it go gentle into that good night.

I remember being very angry by the end of Earthworm Jim.

There was an old Genesis game I played that I think may have been called Rocket Knight or something similar. I found it really difficult as a kid but played it because I didn't have anything else. When I finally beat it, it had some message about having to play again on a harder difficulty in order to get the real ending. I was already tired of it by that point, and I never played it again after seeing that message.

Could be the last 2 games I finished...

Horizon Forbidden West HZD was such a great game, but HFW just couldn't end fast enough. Didn't care for the story, the combat became tedious and not particularly challenging, unless it was impossible (the final combat pit guy in the hills). I dragged myself to the finish line with a ton of side content still undone.

Guardians of the Galaxy I know a lot of people liked this one, but the combat was so boring, and the story just didn't click with me. I felt it was 2 hours of gameplay wrapped in a 15 hour walking simulator. Just not my jam, but I got to the end anyways.

I didn't actually finish Deathloop... or did I? Replaying the same thing over and over again, but having to memorize the correct order just didn't interest me, so I put it down. I'm pretty sure I saw 95% what the game offered.

Hmm I'll have to think about this one.. the only one that comes to mind is Mortal Kombat 3 and its cheap ass AI.

halfwaywrong wrote:

Assassins Creed Odyssey stands out for me. In hindsight I'm not sure why I even bothered finishing it. I think I figured that if I've already put in 40+ hours, I might as well see it through to the end. I just grew so tired of it. It's a big long game, but so much of it is padding. It was just exhausting and I felt relieved when I finally finished it. Which is a real shame though, as I was really enjoying it for quite a while.

Wow I'm nearing the end of Odyssey now (I'm in the DLC) and I've had a very different experience. While a few parts of the DLC are overstaying their welcome I've absolutely loved this title from the get go. It hit every sweet spot for me. Not saying your wrong just amazed how we can have different experiences.

Final Fantasy 8

Quintin_Stone wrote:

Final Fantasy 8

I'm with you there. I just had no attachment whatsoever to any of the characters, bosses, storyline, or even the gameplay gimmick of that particular FF (drawing magic out from monsters? that was just so tedious).

I really enjoyed ff8 the first time I played it. I tried to go back and play it again a year or two later with more of completionist approach and ended up running afoul of the weird enemy leveling system. I don't think I even got to the end of the first disc. There sure were a lot of strange design decisions in that game.

Most Assassin's Creed games since AC 2 -- they're just so big! Odyssey and Valhalla especially come to mind.

Also, most RPGs once I hit the level cap. My brain snaps from "let's explore" to "finish it!", all the game-fatigue hits at once and I beeline to the finish.

Honestly, this is pretty rare for me. If I'm not enjoying a game, I just stop playing it. That's why it took me like 18 months to finish Horizon: Zero Dawn. Eventually I found a story thread in there that pulled me through to the end. So the only one that comes to mind is:

Mass Effect 3 -- I love the first game. It's a top 5 (probably top 2) all-time for me. I disliked what they did with the gameplay of ME2, hated the overarching story, BUT the characters and side-stories were enough to pull me through. The third game, though? I finished it once to see how the stories from the first game closed out, but I've never been able to get through it again. Anytime I try a replay of the trilogy, I blow through the first game, a few times I've managed to make it through the second, but I've never gotten through the third game outside of that first play-through. And that's a bummer.