Games you almost passed

[swansdown]

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Edited September 8, 2023 by swansdown

[Argle]

Jeanne D'Arc

Cruised through most of the game, got stuck on the final boss. Weird. Didn't break me up to move on though since I had gotten 60 hours of fun from the game.

[Thalzon]

Oh, lots.

SMT Nocturne - Made it to the final dungeon, got lost, gave up.

Persona 3 - Got to the final boss. Died twice due to random bad luck (charmed both times with disastrous results)

Little King's Story - Got to the final boss, died 3 times. Since you can't save right before and must do a flying sequence each time, I gave up after that.

Punch-Out Wii - Made it to the second bout against Aran Ryan.

Darksiders 2 - Finished the Earth section and the game froze in such a spectacular fashion I didn't ever play it again.

Devil Survivor 2 - Yamato is a huge cheap bastard.

Henry Hatsworth - The final boss is a huge cheap bastard.

Samurai Warriors Chronicles - One of those games I can't tell if I beat it or not since the story kind of peters out after a while. I didn't see the credits but no more story missions unlocked and the rest was just non-historical silliness.

And that's not including the games I played for an hour and then never picked back up.

[Brandon Strader]

I got up to the flight of the silver dragons in FF9 and then quit for years, came back to the game and finished it start to end.. that was years ago! Probably the mid-2000s. (like A.D. 2500 or so)

[Rexy]

Sonic Heroes. Could beat all the stories, but never the Special Stages (thus never saw the true ending through my game copy).

I must be that lousy. *_*

[MindWanderer]

Breath of Fire 2, Xenogears, and Final Fantasy III (Japan), same problem: Most of the game was great, but the final dungeon was a long slog that I had to grind in order to get strong enough to beat the forces of attrition. Got bored very quickly at that point. Phantasy Star II, same deal, except that the slogging thing started way before the last dungeon. I've restarted that game 3 times, and always get bored during or just after the dam sequence.

Got stuck on one of the Riku fights in Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories. Massive leap in difficulty there, where I had to choose between trying over and over for a near-perfect battle, or go back and grind (and grinding effectively in that game was hard). I don't even know how close to the end of that game I was, but certainly more than half.

Oblivion, exact opposite story: I've restarted that game 3 times as well, spent probably 100 hours on it each time, and never even started the main storyline. Once I restarted because my build clearly wasn't good enough and every damn thing I ran into anywhere nearly killed me; the other two times, I got busy with other things.

Soul Reaver just got boring. I killed all the henchman vampires, getting increasingly stupid powers with each one while the fights with incidental monsters got longer and longer. Just wasn't enjoying myself at that point, and the prospect of killing hundreds more random crap monsters in slugfests to reach a personality-free final boss with a personality-free protagonist wasn't tempting at all anymore.

[AngelCityOutlaw]

Any Final Fantasy game I've ever played I made it to just about the end and then usually got stuck on a boss or just got bored.

[Flexstyle]

Psychonauts. The Meat Circus can go boil itself.

[Argle]

Darksiders 2 - Finished the Earth section and the game froze in such a spectacular fashion I didn't ever play it again.

I finished DS2, but then I went back and played the Crucible... got up to level 72 or something and the game froze. And that was the end of that.

[alrubedo]

Played Drakengard all the way through and was trying to earn all the endings when I had to do that ridiculous black and white ring challenge. And I stopped, and never bothered with the game again.

Fast forward - playing the third installment, since I figured I needed a hack and slash gorefest. And like before, was trying to earn the endings....

Then hell happened. And hell promptly handed me my ass in monochromatic fashion. And after hearing a dragon die so many times, I just...said nope, and moved on.

[HoboKa]

Soul Reaver - LOVED the starting cinematic, but I can only will myself to get up to the spider vampire boss - it just doesn't keep me interested long enough. The voice actor, Tony Jay was bad-ass as the Elder-God.

Wild Arms 2 - Yeah I might get a lot of fan hate here. Wild Arms 2 to me is like 1/10 the awesomeness of Wild Arms 1. The only thing keeping me going was the cool music, ironically - the enemies just didn't scale up fast enough to my damage output so everything just exploded - even bosses; so I gave up about half way in. Very disappointed with that title. But I do hold hope for WA 3,4 & 5 And am thinking of getting the PS2 remake of WA 1

Breath of Fire 4 - Story wasn't compelling enough to keep me going. It was too dark and gloomy, like they tried way too hard to be serious all the time (except for the very starting when Nina finds the Hero). I got to the Empire Continent thingy and felt like I had progressed nowhere, considering I put in more than 40 hours >.<

Final Fantasy 5 - I actually like that one and may return to it someday to beat it. Just found the grinding of job skills to be too much (and yet I bought Bravely Default - which is ALSO on hold progress-wise lol)

Tales of the Abyss: The only Tales series game I tried. Never want to return to this series after slogging through it for so long. All of the characters were flat as paper - except for maybe the main char...the game felt painfully padded out after the halfway point. Maybe this was the weakest link of the series to get into idk >.<

Silent Hill: Downpour: SH + quick time events = %@&% NO

I got to the final segment in the jail and just went BLEH. Hate that game with a passion. I'd rather play SH4: The Room. Hell, even Home Coming was better; well actually a lot better, because it still had Akira Yamaoka. But 1, 2 and 3 blow them all out of the water =p

And there are likely many others that I have forgotten.

[Frederic Petitpas]

OMG therer so many hahah notable ones would be FF7, BF2&3, Quest64, Half-Life

[Garrett Williamson]

For a while, Sonic Adventure 2. I was stuck on Knuckles's part of the last stage and then about a year ago me and my cousin decided just for the heck of it to go back to that memory card and try finally beating the game. And we did.

Sonic Heroes was another one. I was not going to put up with getting a whole bunch of stupid chaos emeralds in bonus stages that were often a pain to get to in the first place. And then getting the emerald in the stage got really hard. So I pretty quickly gave up on that one.

I also actually got near the end of Super Mario Galaxy and then abandoned it. I don't know why, I just did.

There are actually a lot of games I nearly finished that I never did. Probably more than the ones that I actually did beat.

[MindWanderer]

Final Fantasy 5 almost made my list. I dragged myself through the final dungeon by the skin of my teeth, skipping all the optional bosses and blowing a mess of elixirs on Exdeath.

I did finish Wild Arms 2, and I remember enjoying it at the time... but now I remember virtually nothing about it. Just having to search for every city and shooting fireballs at everything. And the weird transformation mechanic thing that made every boss fight virtually on rails. So I understand that one. I played WA3 for a while, but I don't even remember why I quit. I understand Alter F (the remake) was garbage.

I did finish the Meat Circus, eventually. It was hard, but not one of my top most frustrating platforming/action sequences. The Ares fight in God Of War, the 8-bit Luigi stage in Mario Galaxy, and every single occurrence of the blob-monster at the end of Devil May Cry were way worse for me.

Oh, that reminds me: Super Mario Sunshine. I beat the game, but so many of the shine stars were utter BS. Only 3D Mario game I every played and didn't complete 100%.

Edited June 26, 2014 by MindWanderer

[Ethan Rex]

Probably all of them. I still have yet to beat any Mass Effect, MGS3, Mario & Luigi Dream Team, DKC Returns, Final Fantasy I II IV VI and XIII, about half of the Mega Mans (including the X series), Kirby's Return to Dreamland, the DS Zeldas, Ico, Ni no Kuni, Sonic Colors, and Golden Sun: Dark Dawn, despite still currently owning all of these.

I have a serious case of Video Game ADD and it's almost to the point to where my Seal of Quality for a game is whether I finish it or not.

[FenixDown]

I never finished Persona 3. I got burned out preparing myself for the final boss fight in the final weeks of the game story. I later on played the PSP version and spent days trying to get a rare monster/chest to first appear, and then give me the items I needed to complete specific quests. I became several levels overpowered and even started cycling through my party members to keep them leveled evenly and through all that time I never got the drops I was after despite using a guide to pinpoint which floors they appear on. So I gave up again.

I never finished Star Ocean: the Second Story despite making it to the second disc of that game. The only Paper Mario game I ever stuck with long enough to beat was Super Paper Mario. I made it to the last night of Catherine and just stopped for some reason I don't remember. There are plenty of others I just don't recall at the moment.

[big giant circles]

Most current one is Pikmin 3. Pikmin 2 was incredible, but I find Pikmin 3's controls clunky and frustrating, plus the lack of the bus-whistle command to make them line up behind you. I think I'm even at the last boss, but it's quite a frustrating endeavor since I've managed to get through the entire rest of the game without ever feeling truly comfortable with the controls, and then I run out of daylight and have to try and skip through another several minutes of boring unnecessary cutscenes, that I think I just ragequit the game and don't really have any interest in picking it back up.

Again, very disappointing considering how much I liked Pikmin 2.

There's a few more for me, but I'll just leave it at that one for now.

[DragonAvenger]

Tales of Phantasia. Played the dejap translation, and probably got to the second or third final dungeon...then just stopped, not sure why. The other would be Xenogears, got almost to the second disk. Just wasn't feeling the game, tbh

[BaconProcurement]

Dark Cloud 2. Got to the end, couldn't beat the last boss and gave up on the game altogether.

For nearly 20 years I didn't beat Final Fantasy IV. My first playthrough on the SNES was interrupted by my brother giving back the game to person he borrowed it from. When I played it again for Playstation, I got to the moon and the save file ended up becoming corrupted. Bought the DS one and just plain lost interest in playing half-way into the game. Finally, beaten it last year to completion.

Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. After beating the sky dungeon (and looking at that ugly bird like creatures for way too long) I got depressed (the dungeon theme didn't help) and I didn't bother with the rest of the game. I should really get on to beating this game.

[Melbu Frahma]

I never actually beat FFVI, despite having been steps away in the final dungeon on at least four different playthroughs. Just never quite got around to it.

[Thalzon]

Psychonauts. The Meat Circus can go boil itself.

I got bizarrely lucky where the game glitched out ascending that horrible trampoline segment at the start, and basically spawned me at the end of it with little Olly in tow. The rest was simple.

[Arrow]

Zelda: Wind Waker was like this for me for a long time; I'd saved the game outside the entrance to the final dungeon and then just... got nervous? I dunno. I did eventually finish it off, though.

And now another Zelda title suffers from this: Spirit Tracks. I loved the hell out of that game, but once I opened up the portal to the Dark World, I put it aside for what was only supposed to be a few days. Four and a half years later, I have yet to go back and beat it, mainly because with each passing day, I feel I'd have to start the whole game over to get back into the swing of it and remember how to play well enough that I'd be able to handle the final boss.

[Miyakan]

-Metroid Fusion. I got stuck on a boss and I haven't gone back to it.

-Metroid Prime Two, I got to the last boss, beat the First boss after about 10 tries, then got destroyed by Dark Samus.

-Metroid Prime Three, I got halfway through, then I bought the trilogy on Wii and started the whole series over. I'm halfway through two, hoping the new controls will make dark Samus easier.

-Majora's Mask, I really want the Fierce deity mask, but I can't manage to beat the Goron section. That and I moved for uni so I don't have an N64 at the moment.

-Final Fantasy VIII and XII, I got about 3/4 of the way through, and now I no longer have the memory cards they were on.

[The Coop]

Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow.

Sure, the cart's small, but it got lodged near the end and had to be removed manually at the doctor's. Keep that in mind the next time someone says, "You talk about that damn game one more time, and I'll cram it down your throat."

[RiverSound]

I never actually beat FFVI, despite having been steps away in the final dungeon on at least four different playthroughs. Just never quite got around to it.

I was plowing through the comments to see if there's anyone I can quote, and voila, there I go. Isn't it kinda sad in retrospect to remember taking the steps in the last dungeon but for some reason not walk all the way up to kefka... Ff6 is the best gaming experience of my life, too. I think I'll never find peace until I complete the game... Then I've lived a full life. Someday..

Also, the infamous Castlevania 2 was the bane of my childhood. How was I supposed to beat that game as a kid in a country where we didn't have nintendo power?? Lol, that was about 4 years wasted with that impossible game.

Edited June 27, 2014 by RiverSound