ADMITTING DEFEAT - WHEN A VIDEOGAME BREAKS YOUR SPIRIT

Well, there are tons of games I never beat because they are too hard, but if we focus only on games that I really liked:

1. SaGaFrontier Riki's scenario. This is my favorite game of all times and I played through each of the characters 3 times... except Riki! I just can't defeat that Ring Lord, because he's invincible and you need to impress him with cool combos but no matter what I try I just can't get any big combos going when I have a monster-type in my group.

2. I Am Setsuna. I love it almost as much as Chrono Trigger, but eventually you get to dungeons that have no save point for 2+ hours and normal monsters start to be able to easily wipe your party in just one turn. I played 2 hours... died. Quit for 2 weeks. Tried again. Played 2 hours, died again without reaching any save point. Permanent rage quit.

3. Breath of Fire III. Really only quit that one because I couldn't beat the next dungeon without running out of resources. The battles didn't even give enough gold to pay for the healing items you needed to win them anymore and you just got into an endless spiral of difficulty: less gold -> can't afford better equip -> even less gold -> can't even afford healing items anymore.

4. Star Odyssey. I kinda liked the setting of this game, but the game is ridiculously hard as the monster difficulty only scales with your level. If you level up before getting the next tier weapon or another party member, you are literary stuck in the game, not able to win any battle anymore. There was no way to lose Exp in the game, if you died, you lost half the gold, but that's ridiculous! If you have ANY gold loss from dying or from buying any item you currently don't need, the game immediately becomes impossible to win because you won't be able to afford the next weapon before your next level up. After I explained the developer my predicament, he refused to fix this obvious flaw. =/


That's all I can think of right now. Wizardry never was a problem for me. I played through the SNES version of part 1-3 using Save/Load State on an emulator, with that I managed to have quite some fun and finish the game. I remember finishing Wizardry 7 when I was young and had lots of time. I quit Wizardry 8, but only because I got bored. I finished the japanese Wizardry game for PS3 as well (and all its expansions too). And I played Elminage Gothic up to the final boss at least. After 200 hours grinding, I just didn't have enough motivation to grind for the final boss anymore.

In Wizardry's case, a Speedrun might be the better alternative.
Damn, all this talking about it is making me want to actually play the durned thing again. Map making on graph paper and all.

Dark Souls 1 defeated me. Ornstein & Smough, the boss of Anor Londo, killed me more than 60 times before I gave up and quit. And then I came back a year and a half later and beat them (after another 25 tries).

Now I've been stuck on a boss in Dark Souls 3 for three months, and it's in the same exact room in Anor Londo. Fuck that dungeon, and fuck every game that it appears in, and fuck the boss chamber in particular.

I've quit playing other games due to the difficulty but they were always shooters or platformers or action games. I'm bad at them. Dark Souls tricks me into thinking it's an RPG though so I feel really awful about not being able to win. Aside from Dark Souls, I've never quit an RPG for any reason except it being boring.

I expect to lose at games where the difficulty is in timing and reflexes and coordination. And I can deal with losing at games where the difficulty is in observation and pattern-recognition and memorization. But when the game's difficulty is in strategy and numbers and planning, I take it as a personal insult when I lose. And I vow on my grave to prove the game wrong about its assertation that I'm not worthy of victory. RPGs typically fall into that last category. Dark Souls, though, expects you to master all three skills.

Final Fantasy 4: Rage quit in the final dungeon of the game due to the obnoxious encounter rate, and the amount of running around I did made this harder.

Final Fantasy 5: Quit due to my over-bearing perfectionism rearing it's head and making me obsessive grind to rank up my Jobs.

Fallout 3: Okay, this one is more of a story than a quick explanation. I had never played a Fallout game before this one but when I researched what it was about, I was intrigued! I was a pro at Oblivion, being able to wreck the game with ridiculous character builds, so I thought Fallout 3 would be similar.

And I was wrong. When I made it past the prologue and the vault and laid eyes on the Wastelands, I was frightened. The PIP Boy was no help because, at that time, I had no skill at reading maps in a game. There was no clearly defined road to travel on (and if there was, I didn't take it out of curiosity). Put the game down and didn't touch it for two weeks.

Final Fantasy XIII: Played this on the 360 and quit it when I got to Gran Pulse because I was beyond frustrated with the game. TWO FUCKING YEARS LATER, I get it again on my PS3 and manage to beat it because I -gasp- learned Libra was my best friend. -facepalm-

Dark Souls: I uh...died many times to the tutorial boss. -_- Shuddap, don't judge me and my lameness!

Saga Frontier 1+2, and Romancing Saga: Love the games but MY GOD...the combat and the scaling enemies irritated the living FUCK out of me. I guess I went into the games expecting something else and found myself getting destroyed after awhile, and simply walked away from these three games.

Drakengard 3: The Final Song in this game wrecked every bit of my gamer skill I thought I had because of the sheer brutality of that damn segment. And I had made it halfway through the song before I missed ONE ring, and had to start over. To this day I haven't picked the game back up.

I know I have WAY more, but these were the ones that stood out to me the most. That, and I don't want to make this post any longer than it already is.

bahleted

author=SnowOwl
It should probably be the other way around but as I got older I got increasingly impatient with games. If they include grinding for more than a very small percentage of the time, I just can't stand them. What's really weird is that I still enjoy games like DotA...

Then I think its safe to say you don't like the Disgea series. Grinding is their thing.

author=Sated

author=Feldschlacht IV

author=Rys
3. Breath of Fire III. Really only quit that one because I couldn't beat the next dungeon without running out of resources. The battles didn't even give enough gold to pay for the healing items you needed to win them anymore and you just got into an endless spiral of difficulty: less gold -> can't afford better equip -> even less gold -> can't even afford healing items anymore.

Are we talking about the same game? BOF III isn't insultingly easy, but it's not particularly hard, either. What dungeon is this?

Agreed. The only part of that game I found difficult was the final boss, and that was because young me was determined to use Rei and his weretiger form instead of something I actually had control over.

(Eventually realised that was dumb, won easily.)

You can use Influence to target Rei's opponents without him ever targeting you.

author=Punk
Another tactic is using Chain + Rei as spot one, morphing Ryu into the strongest Kaiser dragon form, and then having Rei use influence to target Ryu's attacks; although, for one AP point more, you can use the controllable Kaiser by fusing it with the Failure gene, but you'd probably find it better to give Ryu "Aura" and spam that since it's only 20AP (I think you can lower the AP cost with an accessory).

Good shit, but if you use the Failure gene you'll just get the shitty controllable Kaiser with low stats. If you want the True Kaiser, which you do, use Trance+Radiance+Infinity genes, which give you a controllable Kaiser with ultra stats,

author=Feldschlacht IV

author=Punk
Another tactic is using Chain + Rei as spot one, morphing Ryu into the strongest Kaiser dragon form, and then having Rei use influence to target Ryu's attacks; although, for one AP point more, you can use the controllable Kaiser by fusing it with the Failure gene, but you'd probably find it better to give Ryu "Aura" and spam that since it's only 20AP (I think you can lower the AP cost with an accessory).

Good shit, but if you use the Failure gene you'll just get the shitty controllable Kaiser with low stats. If you want the True Kaiser, which you do, use Trance+Radiance+Infinity genes, which give you a controllable Kaiser with ultra stats,

This is also true! I forgot about that combination!

What I tend to do before the final areas of the game is abuse the gift shops in Faery village so I can up certain stats for my characters:

Rei: Attack, Speed, Defense, HP (so he's not such a glass cannon)
Ryu: All stats except intelligence, due to him being my primary fighter
Nina: Speed, Defense, Intelligence, AP
Garr: Defense, Attack and HP - no need to focus on his AP or Speed too much
Momo: Same as Nina
Peco: This bastard was the most OP in my team behind Rei and Ryu due to me not training him until late in the game - I used him to get all the spells from Deis for Nina, and then raised him to be a a mixture of Rei and Ryu, stat wise.

Although, my final fight team was Rei, Ryu and Peco, and I managed to bring the final boss down in less than 10 turns with the simple: Focus x2 + Aura for Ryu, Rei using regular attacks and healing us when we need it, and Peco basically spamming attack, shaving off 300 hp per hit, while Ryu was taking off a wooping 1.5 grand a pop. Peco did have super combo, and could manage over 1000 damage by himself, though...if I was lucky.

author=Feldschlacht IV
I pumped up Peco with Fahl; he naturally has high HP and Def, and low Speed anyway, and Fahl is the most HP and Defensive Master in the game. He becomes straight up unkillable.

That's who I put Peco with toward the end, but I used his low level to get the chain formation and Deis's spells, and then a few other skills from other masters. Around level 34 or so, put him with Fahl and left him there.

Ryu was sort of my every man until mid-game, and then I began to spec him for all out damage dealing and secondary healer/buffer. Rei was always the speed hitter, so he went with masters that upped the appropriate stats. Momo was always an odd character cuz I never figured out how best to use her outside of being the secondary mage.

Nina was a beast that put the hurt on enemies with magic. Especially the ones from Deis. I tend to give the weaker/moderate spells to Momo - or give her 'group' spells, while Nina took the strongest ones for herself.