Games that you abandoned and then managed to finish years later?

[bjork]

Same with Final Fantasy Tactics. GAWD. As a kid I would just grind and do the tavern quests and would burn myself out before following through. Finally ACTUALLY beat it a few years ago. I'm playing it again but in Spanish this time lol. Good excuse to revisit a perfect game. Even if missing healing spells is bullshit.

Just in time for the new one to come out, get ready!

 

[zacharinolongpants]

Just in time for the new one to come out, get ready!

I really want it but I'm already knee deep in it again lmao. I never played the sequels. Maybe I'll actually wait for the inevitable remasters.

 

[Turbo Kid]

I remember Final Fantasy Tactics had a certain choke point where some players abandoned the game. There was a tough boss you could end up fighting unprepared and you were screwed if you didn't have an old enough save to go back to.

 

[zacharinolongpants]

I remember Final Fantasy Tactics had a certain choke point where some players abandoned the game. There was a tough boss you could end up fighting unprepared and you were screwed if you didn't have an old enough save to go back to.

Yeah it's got multiple stages and it lets you save between stages. If you don't have a backup and get stuck on a stage you better figure out some miraculous alternate party composition with the tools you gave yourself beforehand or you're indeed screwed.

 

[Kremiso]

Yeah it's got multiple stages and it lets you save between stages. If you don't have a backup and get stuck on a stage you better figure out some miraculous alternate party composition with the tools you gave yourself beforehand or you're indeed screwed.

yeah many of us have experienced that
i had a lone memory card, always almost full of different gamesaves, well the PS1 was a gamer gold period and so yes straight when playing that lol;
i think later in time i had 10 if not more memory cards

for a similar reason i restarted FF7 when on second CD, i missed a lot of materia and my party was also not strong enough; first JRPG title for me, coming from European 8 and 16 bit home computers
---

i'm reading a lot of lovely cuts of life (frustration and rants included :) ) thanks for sharing!

 

[Firenoh]

Holy crap, I forgot about Tokobot. That was a cute game that I never finished, I wonder if I was stuck in the same place.

Tokobot is a really cute concept, but as a 3D puzzle platformer, it never really faired well against the competition. Give the PS2 port a go, since that one has dual analog support.

 

[Xeno]

.hack infection. I bought it back when it came out. I was disappointed with it, I found it too hard and I didn’t understand it. A couple of years ago I got interested in trying it again. I fired up PCSX2 and played through part 1 through 4. I loved it this time around. It’s so immersive, I’ve never played a game like it. I bought GU on Switch, I enjoyed that too.
I even played the .hack game on PSP and PS3 but those games are nowhere near as good as the PS2 games.

 

[Xdqwerty Xdqwerty]

Contra 1 and 4

 

[RandomHajile]

Gothic 3 comes to mind. Hated it when it came out in 2006, mostly because it was so different than Gothic 1/2. I abandoned it and spoke ill of it every time it came up. Then, around 2017 or so, I saw that new community patch and downloaded it. It fixed most of the issues and I stuck with it long enough to complete it. Do I think it's one of the best RPGs ever? No. But with the fan patches, it's decent enough. It's still rough as heck though.

 

[DarkMagicianGirl]

Bombastic for the PS2 (sequel to Devil Dice on PS1). I was stuck on the final boss for years since I was 7 back in 2007, getting all the way to the angel world before hitting a wall (mainly cause I didn't care to memorize dice faces). I would come back, playthrough it again, and then get stuck in the same spot. MANY years later, like around 2023, I boot up the game again, playthrough it, and ACTUALLY BEAT IT. I finally got to see the ending after all that time and honestly it was really sweet.

 

[CaptainToad]

Receiver 1. Game's super-random and it's easy to die so I'd play it for like 15+ minutes at a time some days while I'm bored or listening to music. Took me years to finally actually beat it. Still haven't played Receiver 2 yet even though I was excited for its release.

 

[R66-Y]

Dragon Quest 3 (SNES), at first i dropped the game because it was a bit boring to me, but after two or three years later i beat it and ended up loving it.

and Devil May Cry 3 (PS2), was too hard for the little old me but after several years i come back and finish it

 

[Orange-Juice]

Midnight club 3 Dub edition then remix, Never understood how to finish the game as the system of "Do all races that aren't red" was quite hard for me to understand when i was younger lmao, but came back years later and a whole lot smarter as I can understand differences in colours.
Nowadays I finished it every two months or so.

It's pretty therapeutic. Every two months play the game and finish it, then set it aside for a another two months.
Sucks that we'll never see Midnight club 5

 

[Badseed Badseed]

I abandoned this gem back in the madness of the crash of '83. I've never looked back

 

[Xeno]

View attachment 115984

I abandoned this gem back in the madness of the crash of '83. I've never looked back

Did you bury your copy?

 

[Vardalis]

Persona 2: Innocent Sin ironically; it's been in my top 20 ever since I actually did get over that initial barrier of sitting down and giving it a fair shake. Coming off of Persona PSP at the time I just couldn't get over the shift in gameplay. I didn't like the dungeons not being in first person. I didn't like the (slightly) more tactical grid gameplay being swapped for pure turn based. I also just couldn't get past that first few hours of gameplay and gave up around the second school and air raid bunker.

I also dumped Oblivion a few times and actually pushed through to finish it a few years ago. I didn't really like it any more than any of the previous times (Fallout 3 and NV just gripped me way more than Elder Scrolls) but at least now I can say I've finished it.

 

[Nickakyoin]

For some reasons Kid Icarus Uprising. Not because I hated the game, absolutely the opposite. But it was absurdly overwhelming by how much intense action it has.
Still one of the best games Nintendo ever pulled off with the most personality. Pit and Palutena are two beautiful dorks and I love them so much.

Other examples...idk, at moments also Persona 1, but I forced my way to beat it. And yeah, I hated it.

Post automatically merged: Oct 3, 2025

I remember Final Fantasy Tactics had a certain choke point where some players abandoned the game. There was a tough boss you could end up fighting unprepared and you were screwed if you didn't have an old enough save to go back to.

You're going to retry it with the new remaster?

 

[Kobu]

Secret Of Mana. By the time I actually put forth the effort to finish I must have restarted it over 20 times over the years.

 

[Dick Kickem]

Contra 1 and 4

Contra 4 is DEFINITELY a game I abandoned, I just haven't got back to it yet. Something about the controls didn't click with me.

 

[BLKJotaroK420]

Final Fantasy IX, always loved the classic FF series but always had difficulty finishing longer games until recently, but IX always had meaning to me, watching my older brother play it. I finally managed to beat it last year and thoroughly enjoyed it

 

[Kremiso]

Final Fantasy IX, always loved the classic FF series but always had difficulty finishing longer games until recently, but IX always had meaning to me, watching my older brother play it. I finally managed to beat it last year and thoroughly enjoyed it

i ruined this with my own hands
discovered an enemy that gives a lot of exp points, grind there for a couple of hours, and i had a too much strong party

battles when on second and third cd's were a cake, and i got bored
shame on me

 

[ThatOneLum ThatOneLum]

Easy. This is exactly my experience with Dark Souls 1.

I was in Uni when the first Dark Souls came out, and I tried it out in my friend's dorm. Didn't understand it. Certainly didn't enjoy it.

I barely reached the undead burg, and then dropped it like it was hot.

Years later, I ended up with the game on Steam and tried again. Same thing happened when I reached the Taurus Demon.

It was only after getting into Bloodborne first, then coming back that I finally got the game to click, and now its my top game in the series, including Elden Ring.

 

[Boo Man]

I had RE6 on Xbox 360 and you could only play Leons story and the rest of the content was locked behind a paywall as "DLC" even though it was litarally printed on the disc..
but yeah id still like to finnish it one day

 

[dropsmegamega]

Planescape Torment, because its so slow and text heavy early on that younger me abandoned the game in the second area. I replayed it many years later after playing other isometric crpgs and it easily became one of my all time favorites.

Also Grim Fandango. It was just too hard to figure so I abandoned it despite enjoying the setting. I replayed it many years later...and it was still too hard. But uhs hints saved me!

 

[Kremiso]

I had RE6 on Xbox 360 and you could only play Leons story and the rest of the content was locked behind a paywall as "DLC" even though it was litarally printed on the disc..
but yeah id still like to finnish it one day

i have completed the Chris Redfield part a couple of days ago, and i can confirm i have liked it a lot more than the Leon one; also confirmed that it mostly works like a third person shooter more than a classic Resident Evil chapter

now i think to understand why at Capcom decided this story order sequence (i'll not spoil)

there is also another story part to play, plus the extra game modes, so i missed quite a lot back then