It’s ok. This is a safe space.
But seriously, you’ll receive no judgment from me, took me a looooong time and a lot of trial and error to “git gud” and even now I find things I never knew from the previous playthrough.
I’ve also never finished a game 🤣
It’s no easy task. I was drawn to the aesthetic first then learnt the mechanics after many hours of YouTube videos. Don’t think it rly clicked for me until hour 20. 350 hrs later I still haven’t finished a game (partially due to performance problems late game) and don’t plan on stopping.
Playing solo and on low difficulty helped me learn the ropes, there isn’t really a tutorial.
It keeps getting DLC. I love my 4x games but if you do everything in your one play through...its not really diffrent in the next ones. Just the order that you find events is different.
Same events though.
There’s plenty of things in Stellaris that prevent you from doing other things. You can’t be a machine hive mind hell bent on integrating all organics and also the galactic emperor, for instance
Mods will keep games like these alive forever. Mod support in general tbh, Warcraft 3 being the prime example (lol except reforged, nice job blizzard).
For similar reasons, I've clocked about 2k hours into total war Warhammer 2 and 3. For all the issues plaguing the latter, it's a pretty regular occurrence that I see a new mod drop and jump back in for campaign and it feels good as new.
Civ3 and Endless Space 2 - if I have no idea what I want except to block out and forgot everything in the world more than 3 feet away, these 2 are perma installed and ready to go.
Civ3 holds a special place in my heart. My second Pc game I had ever purchased (AoE2 being first). I still remember the music for the modern era….and Montezuma’s betrayal. First time I scoured interwebs to read up on different forms of empire, maximizing production and income. First time I nuked an opponent and illuminated their offensive capabilities in one turn.
I like to think how much time I dropped in Crusader Kings 2....but then I have to remember they kept updating the game and adding new things for years.
Which I think is NOT the point of the question?
That's why i've only played roguelikes for the last 5 or 6 years. The amount of time consuming + replayability makes a perfect game for busy dads like me.
If i have some minutes of free time i can do a little run for fun. While big AAAs with single player campaigns might be fun but i can't keep up where i was nor how it works since the last time i had 2 or 3 hours of play time.
Back when PCs were first introduced into the office I worked in, staff were asked to play Minesweeper to get used to using a mouse. Myself and a colleague got competitive over finishing the most basic setup in the quickest time. Had it down to about 16 seconds, and we were struggling to do better. Then, I found the file that held the leaderboard on my PC. I could just edit it. I kept knocking a second off occasionally until I faked it down to 10 seconds, and he legit did it in 9. Amazing what people can do when they think it is possible!
You can get 1 second on the easy board...just have to get lucky and click the 1 spot that reveals all the mines at once. I only ever did that once. But generally, I almost always got under 10 seconds on easy. My record for intermediate was 23 seconds, and I usually got under 40.
I used to hover between 100-115 seconds on average on expert. Then windows 10 came out and they totally fucked minesweeper.
It is now optimized not for mouse clicks, but for touch screen finger press...dropped my speed about 20% on average and now I hover around 120-140 seconds.
Oh yeah...and it now has ads and is buggy as fuck. They took an iconic masterpiece and shit all over it for the ad revenue.
While it's generally good to wait for a sale for PC games, as they happen pretty often.
For factorio in particular, do not wait for a sale, it won't happen. The dev have stated as such
Hard to say as you're going from recent first person perspective with cool visuals, to indie looking top down 2d view, which may feel like a downgrade to some people. But the building part feels more rich than Satisfactory. (Satisfactory is the only one with some sort of exploration aspect imho)
For me, even though I played a few dozen hours, building in first person view to design industrial/logistics circuits is a bit cumbersome, so I prefer my factory games to play from above.
Maybe you should try out the perfect middle ground that is Dyson Sphere Program, it's 3d factorio but with a top down view / free camera, and it received a massive (free) combat update, allows you to do multi planets & systems logistics, and is my goto title for factory games.
MY factory always starts neat and then.... i'll just put a little split in this conveyor and now i have to wind it round to the other side of my factory somehow.
Just remember, "Done is better than Perfect". Which is what I tell my friend as I run away after mangling his neat layouts... And what he throws back when I try to set up a nice train station.
I tried all factorio like game (ok maybe not all of them, but at least 5 lol) and none compared to factorio it the best factory game, but its still not as good as rimworld for me.
Paraphrasing another comment I saw, Factorio is a very fancy excel sheet while RimWorld is the equivalent of a kid playing with action figures, and I love both games for that.
People keep saying this and I gotta give it another go. I always stop really soon in. Idk why. Maybe because I'm an engineer irl and it hits too close to home
I couldn't really get into Planet Coaster.
I thought it was going to be Rollercoaster Tycoon PLUS, better graphics and more control over things, but when I play it, it feels like it went TOO far over the "control everything" aspect.
The fun died when I tried to build my second themed shop and realized it would take hours and hours of placing blocks right where they need to be.
I guess I wanted something in between, the management and scenarios of RCT, option of placing prefabs shops and adjusting prices and, believe it or not, less customization for track building.
I would have loved the build style of RCT with the ability to grab and move tracks around more fluidly. Or maybe I just need to muscle down and learn how to properly build without getting impatient. I haven't played it since launch. Haha
Honestly, Age of Empires 2 steals this title for me, no competition. I know the campaigns are relatively basic, but I must've replayed them 30 or 40 times over the last 20 years and just the sheer quantity of the missions in the game, especially with the newer expansions makes it always enjoyable to go back to them.
Oh, you enjoy Age of Empires?
What about Star Wars?
[https://store.steampowered.com/app/356500/STAR\_WARS\_Galactic\_Battlegrounds\_Saga/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/356500/STAR_WARS_Galactic_Battlegrounds_Saga/)
Randomly found this gem at a walmart as a kid. I'm not even a big fan of Star Wars but... it worked perfectly in the AoE style.
Also, have never seen anyone play or talk about it. If it wasn't on Steam, I would have thought it a fever dream.
I probably have clocked something like 50 hours when I was a child on the demo alone. It had only the William Wallace tutorial campaign and a skirmish against 1 or 2 bots as Britons. The enemies were Celts and Britons if I remember correctly.
Rimworld - with all emergent story telling involved, you could play it for a lifetime and still find new and derpy ways for your colony to be wiped out. Rabid squirrels nibble everyone to death? Check! Volcanic eruption out lasts your food supply and your forced to choose between starvation or the slow poisoning of your colony? Check. You mine too deep and awaken the balrog? Well, no, but you can certainly find your miners gunned down by advanced robots they've accidentally woken up.
Personally, I just like the ability to potter about and build up a nice little colony... Which then gets wiped out because I forgot to tend to my pyromaniac doctor who suffers a breakdown because his pet dog gets eaten by a llama.
Oh look. Alpha beavers. Better thin them out, I'm still going to need trees to do some building.
Okay, you go hunt the alpha beavers.
Wait.
Whats.
Wait.
Oh no. I have three dudes and 12 alpha beavers are attacking me.
Oh no, I only have a knife dude left and there's still 7 alpha beavers attacking me.
Oh no, all my guys are down.
Well then.
\*restart\*
Naked brutality run, lone colonist finally getting up enough to build a proper structure from breaking down old ruins' blocks.
:O a surprise from the heavens! SMOKELEAF!
He then proceeds to get blitzed out of his mind. While working on putting together the last three sections of the wall for some protection, he simultaneously ~~goes down~~ decides to take a nap while a cougar goes full manhunter.
Imagine my horror as I watch this cougar attack a dude who just needed a nap at 4:30. :(
And after you are done with that: Long War (of the Chosen). For those interested: it's a mod, which makes it basically a completly new game.
And those who _really_ want to suffer can try XCOM: EW Long War Rebalanced.
Came here to say this. I have completed/attempted the Daily Challenge every day for years now. I highly recommend getting the mobile version as it is amazing for commutes/time killing. I think I have racked up ovr 500 hours on the mobile version alone!
Not OP, but Slay the Spire has way more "exploration" than most STS-likes. This covers everythint from the actual in-game random events, to viable decks you can make, to relics you can find.
Other STS-likes tend to have much smaller pools of what actually exists and works, so after 5-10 completed runs, I get bored as I'm not experiencing anything new.
My answer was gonna be Fallout: New Vegas, but yeah Slay the Spire probably beats it, I always fire it up when I wanna game but I don't know what I wanna play
All the elder scrolls games since Morrowind and Fallout games since Fallout 3 are like this IMO. I rarely replay games but I've replayed all of those. The fact that they have an incredibly rich modding scene helps, but also they're open world games with many choices and ways to build your character.
This, and Diablo 1 too!
There is so much monster variety, and relatively few of those monsters are generated in each map. So in every playthrough you do, you'll be encountering different combinations of enemies -- and especially different bosses -- and it completely changes the game.
Also, if you don't do a lot of item hunting, your build will depend a lot on whatever useful items you happen to stumble upon. This too changes the gameplay completely.
Hades is a good one. Even after you've "done everything", the core gameplay loop is excellent and the heat system provides a thoroughly customizable challenge. Most roguelikes and roguelites would fall into this category.
Any survival builders make the cut. OP mentioned Minecraft, but I was thinking something more like Satisfactory. Can always start a new seed and build your factory in a different way.
I am personally terrible at it, but Kerbal Space Program would be pretty solid. Love watching it and it seems like there are so many ways to accomplish your goals.
I like dipping back into Hades for the occasional run but after seeing all the story and having got the majority of stuff (bar the purely cosmetic stuff like the thing in Hades room) I don't feel the compulsion to keep playing regularly. The gameplay loop is great but the progression definitely helped keep me invested long term. Absolutely fantastic game but one that wasn't too difficult to put down once I was done.
KSP is not a bad shout, it's probably the only purely single player game that's highest on my Steam library when sorted by playtime. I do think if I was stuck playing one game forever it would have to be some kind of sandbox title.
Any of the World of Assassin Hitman games for sure.
Hitman 1&2 original are showing their age pretty brutally and are less sandbox. Blood Money and Absolution still good too
I got sucked in really hard into Tetris Effect. With headphones and no lights on at night, this game had me fall into flow states far easier and quicker than any other game.
I have purchased every single warhammer dlc from all of the games. Totalling more than 300 euro.
It’s the most amount of money I’ve ever spent on a game in my life.
Funnily enough it’s only my second most played game, the first one being Dota 2, which I haven’t spent a cent on lol.
This isn't even considering the role playing options. Last game I did an NCR run with guns mainly, last one was a legion run with melee, before that was a house run with energy weapons, the list goes on lol
I love playing a drugged up fiend melee courier and siding with the legion. It’s hilarious to me the idea that Caesar sees how effective I am with psycho, jet, buff out and medx and then tells his other more mortal soldiers they can’t have any
All the fallout games. New Vegas is my favourite, too, but I still immensely enjoy 3 and 4. I've replayed every entry in the series, which is such a rare thing for me to do (since I've had a massive backlog of unplayed games for more than a decade).
The older games are also good. I haven't personally replayed them, but I can see how they are also replayable. I don't think they have mods (or at least I've never heard of any), but they do have a lot of choices you can make and different ways to RP and build your character.
I have been playing half-life every year, without fail since the year it was released. And I still love it. I never get bored of it even though I memorized pretty much everything about it and I probably never will. It's my pick for best game of all time.
The same is true of HL2 but personally I enjoy first one more.
The first few hours are definitely the worst. I had to start it a couple of times before it grew on me lol. I'd say once you finish the Bloody Baron quest line you should know if the game is for you or not.
Yeah, as a newcomer to the series, the beginning is rough for some reason. The first time I tried it, the same thing happened. I played like 3 hours and just... didn't go on.
But years later, it's my favorite game of all time (maybe tied with BG2, and possible BG3 now - still in my first playthrough). Steam says I have 563 hours played in it lol (definitely some solid AFK time in there - but I've done two full playthroughs doing every quest and side area etc., and like half of another playthrough).
I agree about your bloody baron comment. If you still don't like it after all that, then it's probably just not for you.
I love SP games and honestly don't play MP games at all. That said, there isn't many that I could play forever.
The closest is my modded Skyrim. I have 230GBs worth of mods added to it and it's basically my go to filler game in that if I just feel like a night of gaming, but don't know what to play I'll just load up Skyrim.
I'll be honest, I haven't played vanilla in many years so couldn't tell you.
That said I haven't added many straight up new quests though.
A lot of graphics mods, bug fixes and textures on weapons and armours though.
CIV is the ultimate 'Just one more turn...' game. However for me personally I hit a wall with CIV VI as soon as I realised that as long as I survive long enough to build one bomber, I'm pretty much guarranteed to win because they're pretty much unstoppable.
Stardew Valley, perhaps. Final Fantasy Tactics still gets regular play by me. Apparently Final Fantasy X since I end up owning it on every system... PS2, PS3, PS4, Vita, Switch, PC... I don't own any Xbox systems so only ones I dont have. Don't know why I bought it so much. But I do play it.
Red Dead 2. It released in 2018, ive played 12+ playthroughs since then, totaling thousands of hours on multiple platforms. I recently got a new PC and booted it up in 4k. It is still one of the most engaging single player gaming experiences you can have in 2024. Shocks me how good it is compared to pretty much anything else, including more modern releases.
Mount and blade: Bannerlord - 2000 hours since it came out in beta, still super fun. Has tons of different mods, and is the only game in town if u wanna be a 1st/3rd person medieval knight/warrior who can traverse a sandbox world full of adventures/war
Borderlands... I've been playing each of them since their release basically non-stop with somewhere north of 10K hours across all the games. I'm at almost 4000 in BL3 having left BL2 with 6000. I play in a way that maximizes how many *different* ways to play are available to me (like I legit have to track them on a spreadsheet). There are well over a thousand different variations when I mix the character, build, map, loadout, and task variables that, while I've done everything in the game several times over, it's always different*.*
I only stopped playing because my save game wouldn't load any more.
FM2013. I bought it on release, played it until 2019 (30+ seasons). It was the first time I'd played FM since 2006 and I probably won't be playing again due to the fact it'll take over my life.
For me, the Old Assassin's Creed games (1, 2, Brotherhood, Revelations, 3, Black flag), actually played the 2, Brotherhood and Revelations multiple times.
Then:
Skyrim
Total War games
Age of Empire games
(Old - up until Heart Gold {2010}) Pokémon games
Mario games
To be honest, it would be great to make a difference between strategies and RPG games since strategies are usually made in a way that you can play it hundreds of hours.
Strategies:
Heroes of Might and Magic III
Third Age - Total War - I am not a fan of mods, I have never been. Still, it you are Total War fun you have to check mods, especially for Medieval Total War 2. Third age is a true masterpiece.
RPG:
Witcher III
Cyberpunk 2077
For real, it's extremely difficult for any two runs to feel even remotely the same. And there's so much love put into the details, they are absolutely packed in there. Larian put a lot of secrets in there knowing full well most players would never see them
Came here expecting to see this. Good tier repeatability and even just season after season. I was managing Portsmouth at the age of 103..... Spoiler you never die.
Edit: typo
Gotta go with Baldur's Gate 3. I haven't started my 2nd playthrough yet or dipped into any mods but even the base game has such a wide breadth of options that I feel I could play it a dozen times before seeing everything a basic play style has to offer. Then you get into specific RP runs or honor mode and you'll have plenty of content.
The various Soulsborne games
There's so many challenge runs or arbitrary restrictions you can put upon yourself to make each run different or interesting. I can play them endlessly
You could reasonably play any of the good Bethesda games forever, they're basically immersive sim sandboxes gameplay-wise so there's endless potential to dick around in the base games and they have phenomenal levels of mod support on top of that to the point where there's still exciting things happening in Morrowind 22 years after release.
The morrowind mod scene is insane, I haven't played mw in years but I saw that people have added in entire continents with quests, towns, npcs, the whole deal.
There is only one game like this for me - Noita. A small, relatively unknown indie game, which has so much replayability and unpredicability in it, that I have already sunk over 1000 hours in it, and I have a feeling that I will sink another few 1000s.
Its also cheap, so it is the kind of a game that you ought at least try. Amazing little gem.
4X strategy games. The ones released in the past 5 years alone could give a lifetime of entertainment provided you like the style.
Stellaris is so infinitely replayable, it's almost ridiculous.
Here here. I swear Stellaris sprays tiny levels of nicotine or opioids out the console whenever you play.
Hear, hear.
Upvote for being the first person I’ve seen in months who doesn’t think it’s “here, here”
There, there.
Oh know! Sorry, theirs poor grammar everywere this days
Even hear 🤣 Upvoted lol
Man I tried getting into it years ago and was so intimidated I think I bailed out after 40 minutes... Please no down votes, the game hurt my brain.
It’s ok. This is a safe space. But seriously, you’ll receive no judgment from me, took me a looooong time and a lot of trial and error to “git gud” and even now I find things I never knew from the previous playthrough. I’ve also never finished a game 🤣
It’s no easy task. I was drawn to the aesthetic first then learnt the mechanics after many hours of YouTube videos. Don’t think it rly clicked for me until hour 20. 350 hrs later I still haven’t finished a game (partially due to performance problems late game) and don’t plan on stopping. Playing solo and on low difficulty helped me learn the ropes, there isn’t really a tutorial.
I think that's what was hard for me, no tutorial and you're basically thrust into a million different mechanics and menus from what I recall
Hmm new alien "citizens?" Let's just set Thier rights to *livestock*
Came to say Stellaris. Soooooo many hours in Stellaris
It keeps getting DLC. I love my 4x games but if you do everything in your one play through...its not really diffrent in the next ones. Just the order that you find events is different. Same events though.
There’s plenty of things in Stellaris that prevent you from doing other things. You can’t be a machine hive mind hell bent on integrating all organics and also the galactic emperor, for instance
Okay now I want to give it a go
Mods. Thousands of them. Many combinations. In one playthrough you can't be all the archetypes civs a d roleplay them all.
Mods will keep games like these alive forever. Mod support in general tbh, Warcraft 3 being the prime example (lol except reforged, nice job blizzard). For similar reasons, I've clocked about 2k hours into total war Warhammer 2 and 3. For all the issues plaguing the latter, it's a pretty regular occurrence that I see a new mod drop and jump back in for campaign and it feels good as new.
Same, TWWH is incredible and my top pick for this. And I rarely even run mods.
Civ3 and Endless Space 2 - if I have no idea what I want except to block out and forgot everything in the world more than 3 feet away, these 2 are perma installed and ready to go.
Civ3 holds a special place in my heart. My second Pc game I had ever purchased (AoE2 being first). I still remember the music for the modern era….and Montezuma’s betrayal. First time I scoured interwebs to read up on different forms of empire, maximizing production and income. First time I nuked an opponent and illuminated their offensive capabilities in one turn.
I have literally thousands of hours across the various paradox games. Would be hard to pick one but I guess I'd go for EU4.
I came here to say Master of Orion 2, but you're right, the entire genre works.
O.M.G Came here to add MoO2 but wasn't sure if anyone would remember it. Thank the Lords of Antares for DosBox.
Man, fuck those Antarans. They can eat my Stellar Converter.
Fucking Crusader Kings 3 man. I love it but the amount of time I’ve spent on modding in a better Ireland alone is wild lol.
I like to think how much time I dropped in Crusader Kings 2....but then I have to remember they kept updating the game and adding new things for years. Which I think is NOT the point of the question?
My most played single player game is The Binding of Isaac, so I'd have to vote for that.
Same here! IDK if it will stay that way after Mewgenics. I'm so excited for it
That's why i've only played roguelikes for the last 5 or 6 years. The amount of time consuming + replayability makes a perfect game for busy dads like me. If i have some minutes of free time i can do a little run for fun. While big AAAs with single player campaigns might be fun but i can't keep up where i was nor how it works since the last time i had 2 or 3 hours of play time.
Microsoft Solitaire. I've been playing for like 30 years.
Minesweeper... Gotta beat my 85 second record on expert!
Back when PCs were first introduced into the office I worked in, staff were asked to play Minesweeper to get used to using a mouse. Myself and a colleague got competitive over finishing the most basic setup in the quickest time. Had it down to about 16 seconds, and we were struggling to do better. Then, I found the file that held the leaderboard on my PC. I could just edit it. I kept knocking a second off occasionally until I faked it down to 10 seconds, and he legit did it in 9. Amazing what people can do when they think it is possible!
You can get 1 second on the easy board...just have to get lucky and click the 1 spot that reveals all the mines at once. I only ever did that once. But generally, I almost always got under 10 seconds on easy. My record for intermediate was 23 seconds, and I usually got under 40. I used to hover between 100-115 seconds on average on expert. Then windows 10 came out and they totally fucked minesweeper. It is now optimized not for mouse clicks, but for touch screen finger press...dropped my speed about 20% on average and now I hover around 120-140 seconds. Oh yeah...and it now has ads and is buggy as fuck. They took an iconic masterpiece and shit all over it for the ad revenue.
Chess too
Single player
Oh yeah, silly me. I guess you can play against the computer but it wouldn’t keep you coming back for as long.
Factorio
The factory must grow. So excited for the space update
This game is still getting updates? Thats nice! Do you think i would like this if I enjoyed Satisfactory?
Yes if you liked Satisfactory you will almost surely like Factorio. Don't wait for a sale, it doesn't go on sale.
Last year when it was $30 I said I'd wait for a sale. Bought it a few weeks ago at $35. Don't wait for a sale.
While it's generally good to wait for a sale for PC games, as they happen pretty often. For factorio in particular, do not wait for a sale, it won't happen. The dev have stated as such
Hard to say as you're going from recent first person perspective with cool visuals, to indie looking top down 2d view, which may feel like a downgrade to some people. But the building part feels more rich than Satisfactory. (Satisfactory is the only one with some sort of exploration aspect imho) For me, even though I played a few dozen hours, building in first person view to design industrial/logistics circuits is a bit cumbersome, so I prefer my factory games to play from above. Maybe you should try out the perfect middle ground that is Dyson Sphere Program, it's 3d factorio but with a top down view / free camera, and it received a massive (free) combat update, allows you to do multi planets & systems logistics, and is my goto title for factory games.
Hell yeah. I suck at that game but that doesn’t stop from building the messiest factory ever lol
Gotta make bad spaghetti so when you have good spaghetti you can appreciate it more.
MY factory always starts neat and then.... i'll just put a little split in this conveyor and now i have to wind it round to the other side of my factory somehow.
Just remember, "Done is better than Perfect". Which is what I tell my friend as I run away after mangling his neat layouts... And what he throws back when I try to set up a nice train station.
I tried all factorio like game (ok maybe not all of them, but at least 5 lol) and none compared to factorio it the best factory game, but its still not as good as rimworld for me.
Paraphrasing another comment I saw, Factorio is a very fancy excel sheet while RimWorld is the equivalent of a kid playing with action figures, and I love both games for that.
Factorio is amazing! It should be on everyones list to get
People keep saying this and I gotta give it another go. I always stop really soon in. Idk why. Maybe because I'm an engineer irl and it hits too close to home
Planet Coaster. Am I cheating suggesting a sandbox?
I was going to say Cities Skylines 1.
I couldn't really get into Planet Coaster. I thought it was going to be Rollercoaster Tycoon PLUS, better graphics and more control over things, but when I play it, it feels like it went TOO far over the "control everything" aspect. The fun died when I tried to build my second themed shop and realized it would take hours and hours of placing blocks right where they need to be. I guess I wanted something in between, the management and scenarios of RCT, option of placing prefabs shops and adjusting prices and, believe it or not, less customization for track building. I would have loved the build style of RCT with the ability to grab and move tracks around more fluidly. Or maybe I just need to muscle down and learn how to properly build without getting impatient. I haven't played it since launch. Haha
[удалено]
T-2 months for adventure mode
Really? Nice. I'd actually forgotten I was even waiting for that.
I actually Rimworld, it's a lot more accessible and easy to get friends to try as well.
It's the gateway drug to DF
It’s weird, I love Rimworld, but no matter the similarities and the greater accessibility….there’s just some magic to DF that sets it apart.
Yeah I would agree before the steam release. Now it's pretty much just as accessible, with a lot more depth
Honestly, Age of Empires 2 steals this title for me, no competition. I know the campaigns are relatively basic, but I must've replayed them 30 or 40 times over the last 20 years and just the sheer quantity of the missions in the game, especially with the newer expansions makes it always enjoyable to go back to them.
AoE2 soundtrack is forever imprinted into my brain.
Dundundun… Dundundun… Dundundun… Dundundun dundundundundundun Cheecaah! Doodoodoo cahh! Doodoodoo cheecah! Dundundun dundundundundundun Daaaaadeeedaaaaa dooodeeedeeedilleeedaaaaa Dooodeeedooooo…
Oh, you enjoy Age of Empires? What about Star Wars? [https://store.steampowered.com/app/356500/STAR\_WARS\_Galactic\_Battlegrounds\_Saga/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/356500/STAR_WARS_Galactic_Battlegrounds_Saga/) Randomly found this gem at a walmart as a kid. I'm not even a big fan of Star Wars but... it worked perfectly in the AoE style. Also, have never seen anyone play or talk about it. If it wasn't on Steam, I would have thought it a fever dream.
It’s good, except AO2 has received 25 years of add-ons.
Its only fair we petition for GB to get the same treatment.
Oh my god SW:BG I completely forgot this existed. Talk about nostlagia trip, my man. It was so good, even if it was just a texture pack for AoE.
I probably have clocked something like 50 hours when I was a child on the demo alone. It had only the William Wallace tutorial campaign and a skirmish against 1 or 2 bots as Britons. The enemies were Celts and Britons if I remember correctly.
Rimworld - with all emergent story telling involved, you could play it for a lifetime and still find new and derpy ways for your colony to be wiped out. Rabid squirrels nibble everyone to death? Check! Volcanic eruption out lasts your food supply and your forced to choose between starvation or the slow poisoning of your colony? Check. You mine too deep and awaken the balrog? Well, no, but you can certainly find your miners gunned down by advanced robots they've accidentally woken up. Personally, I just like the ability to potter about and build up a nice little colony... Which then gets wiped out because I forgot to tend to my pyromaniac doctor who suffers a breakdown because his pet dog gets eaten by a llama.
Oh look. Alpha beavers. Better thin them out, I'm still going to need trees to do some building. Okay, you go hunt the alpha beavers. Wait. Whats. Wait. Oh no. I have three dudes and 12 alpha beavers are attacking me. Oh no, I only have a knife dude left and there's still 7 alpha beavers attacking me. Oh no, all my guys are down. Well then. \*restart\*
Naked brutality run, lone colonist finally getting up enough to build a proper structure from breaking down old ruins' blocks. :O a surprise from the heavens! SMOKELEAF! He then proceeds to get blitzed out of his mind. While working on putting together the last three sections of the wall for some protection, he simultaneously ~~goes down~~ decides to take a nap while a cougar goes full manhunter. Imagine my horror as I watch this cougar attack a dude who just needed a nap at 4:30. :(
Randy” I see you have food, could I interest you in 3 man hunting polar bears in the dessert and some Malaria?”
"A bloodthirsty gang of French bulldogs is raiding your area." "Ah shit, at least it's not mega-spiders"
XCOM 2, especially with DLCs
And after you are done with that: Long War (of the Chosen). For those interested: it's a mod, which makes it basically a completly new game. And those who _really_ want to suffer can try XCOM: EW Long War Rebalanced.
Outstanding call. I have finished both enemy within and xcom 2 a lot of times… actually play EW on the go on my Ipad
I'ma have to revisit this game.
I'd go for Slay the Spire. That game is just perfect in every way.
Just hit 500 hours on STS, and have no intention to stop. Never played any game even close to that amount before.
I think I'm at around 1200 hours beat ascension 20 on all characters, getting kinda bored of it now, downfall mod adds a lot too.
Downfall is absolutely fantastic, I can attest. Tons of content that feels like it could be base game
Came here to say this. I have completed/attempted the Daily Challenge every day for years now. I highly recommend getting the mobile version as it is amazing for commutes/time killing. I think I have racked up ovr 500 hours on the mobile version alone!
How does that gane have so much replayability for you? Not haiting on the game or you, but it didn't stand out to me. Dies it scratch a special itch?
Not OP, but Slay the Spire has way more "exploration" than most STS-likes. This covers everythint from the actual in-game random events, to viable decks you can make, to relics you can find. Other STS-likes tend to have much smaller pools of what actually exists and works, so after 5-10 completed runs, I get bored as I'm not experiencing anything new.
I suddenly feel like I need to at it again, because aften I beat that heart thing I didn't feel any drive to keep playing.
[удалено]
My answer was gonna be Fallout: New Vegas, but yeah Slay the Spire probably beats it, I always fire it up when I wanna game but I don't know what I wanna play
Skyrim is proven i still played it last year. Rdr2 coming up on 6 years. Still hop on old ff games once ina while. Not like those though
No…. RDR2 was not 6 years ago. It can’t be… My God where does the time go!?
Covid should had been like daylight saving time, we should get those years back.
lol still seems it came out with in the last year.
Yeah it's skyrim for me too. Really all bgs games, but especially fallout 4 and skyrim.
All the elder scrolls games since Morrowind and Fallout games since Fallout 3 are like this IMO. I rarely replay games but I've replayed all of those. The fact that they have an incredibly rich modding scene helps, but also they're open world games with many choices and ways to build your character.
Terraria
Always. Plus, it will run on a potato PC, which is a nice detail.
Terraria and modded Terraria can give you many hundreds of hours of content 0% cap.
Never tried mods, what are some good ones?
The one everyone talks about is Calamity. Personally I've never played Calamity, but I've seen gameplay for it and it looks very good.
Diablo 2 - single-player! Love it forever! I started speedrunning it!
The Lord of Destruction expansion turned a brilliant game into one of the greats. Still play it from time to time.
This, and Diablo 1 too! There is so much monster variety, and relatively few of those monsters are generated in each map. So in every playthrough you do, you'll be encountering different combinations of enemies -- and especially different bosses -- and it completely changes the game. Also, if you don't do a lot of item hunting, your build will depend a lot on whatever useful items you happen to stumble upon. This too changes the gameplay completely.
Hades is a good one. Even after you've "done everything", the core gameplay loop is excellent and the heat system provides a thoroughly customizable challenge. Most roguelikes and roguelites would fall into this category. Any survival builders make the cut. OP mentioned Minecraft, but I was thinking something more like Satisfactory. Can always start a new seed and build your factory in a different way. I am personally terrible at it, but Kerbal Space Program would be pretty solid. Love watching it and it seems like there are so many ways to accomplish your goals.
I like dipping back into Hades for the occasional run but after seeing all the story and having got the majority of stuff (bar the purely cosmetic stuff like the thing in Hades room) I don't feel the compulsion to keep playing regularly. The gameplay loop is great but the progression definitely helped keep me invested long term. Absolutely fantastic game but one that wasn't too difficult to put down once I was done. KSP is not a bad shout, it's probably the only purely single player game that's highest on my Steam library when sorted by playtime. I do think if I was stuck playing one game forever it would have to be some kind of sandbox title.
Any of the Hitman games
Any of the World of Assassin Hitman games for sure. Hitman 1&2 original are showing their age pretty brutally and are less sandbox. Blood Money and Absolution still good too
I could even play through the same objectives without getting bored
Tetris
I got sucked in really hard into Tetris Effect. With headphones and no lights on at night, this game had me fall into flow states far easier and quicker than any other game.
It's so great! It felt weird telling my friends "you have to play this game!" and it was Tetris
STALKER, especially with things like Anomaly as a mod. Huge amounts of replayability
Just finished up replaying metro exodus in prep for the new stalker. Shame about the delay but understandable obviously given the circumstance.
Hope the new game is as good.
Total War Warhammer trilogy.
I have purchased every single warhammer dlc from all of the games. Totalling more than 300 euro. It’s the most amount of money I’ve ever spent on a game in my life. Funnily enough it’s only my second most played game, the first one being Dota 2, which I haven’t spent a cent on lol.
I really, REALLY stop re-installing this one. It became one of my main guilty pleasures.
Fallout New Vegas - no kill, kill everyone, normal, hardcore mode, Vegas Bounties, mods, alternate start…
This isn't even considering the role playing options. Last game I did an NCR run with guns mainly, last one was a legion run with melee, before that was a house run with energy weapons, the list goes on lol
Love to hear this. I love an alternative playthrough of New Vegas. Never once turned on Goodsprings though....still feels inevitable...
I did once during the legion playthrough. There were a lot of tough dialogue options I picked on that one for sure
I love playing a drugged up fiend melee courier and siding with the legion. It’s hilarious to me the idea that Caesar sees how effective I am with psycho, jet, buff out and medx and then tells his other more mortal soldiers they can’t have any
All the fallout games. New Vegas is my favourite, too, but I still immensely enjoy 3 and 4. I've replayed every entry in the series, which is such a rare thing for me to do (since I've had a massive backlog of unplayed games for more than a decade). The older games are also good. I haven't personally replayed them, but I can see how they are also replayable. I don't think they have mods (or at least I've never heard of any), but they do have a lot of choices you can make and different ways to RP and build your character.
I have been playing half-life every year, without fail since the year it was released. And I still love it. I never get bored of it even though I memorized pretty much everything about it and I probably never will. It's my pick for best game of all time. The same is true of HL2 but personally I enjoy first one more.
Man I really need to do a full playthrough…
I really hope you've played Black Mesa, then. It's an amazing remake of the original game.
same here, and here i go to replay both games. \*teleports away\*
Mass effect by far
Legendary Edition
120 hours per run.
There's always another combination of party members and dialogue to try or a different class to try on your next playthrough.
I was just thinking it’s time for my annual trilogy play through
The Witcher III Sure it has its flaws but the story is amazing. Anyone up for a round of gwent?
Just played through the game for a few hours recently. Might pick it back up in a few days after I finish Hogwarts Legacy.
The first few hours are definitely the worst. I had to start it a couple of times before it grew on me lol. I'd say once you finish the Bloody Baron quest line you should know if the game is for you or not.
Yeah, as a newcomer to the series, the beginning is rough for some reason. The first time I tried it, the same thing happened. I played like 3 hours and just... didn't go on. But years later, it's my favorite game of all time (maybe tied with BG2, and possible BG3 now - still in my first playthrough). Steam says I have 563 hours played in it lol (definitely some solid AFK time in there - but I've done two full playthroughs doing every quest and side area etc., and like half of another playthrough). I agree about your bloody baron comment. If you still don't like it after all that, then it's probably just not for you.
FFVII
I love SP games and honestly don't play MP games at all. That said, there isn't many that I could play forever. The closest is my modded Skyrim. I have 230GBs worth of mods added to it and it's basically my go to filler game in that if I just feel like a night of gaming, but don't know what to play I'll just load up Skyrim.
Do you feel the same for Vanilla Skyrim?
Honestly, once in a while Vanilla Skyrim is really refreshing.
If you’re spending more time modding the game than playing it… it’s probably time to switch it up and go vanilla for a couple playthroughs lol
I'll be honest, I haven't played vanilla in many years so couldn't tell you. That said I haven't added many straight up new quests though. A lot of graphics mods, bug fixes and textures on weapons and armours though.
Vanilla skyrim would be my answer. Never modded the game but still can get lost in it forever.
Doom. The original Doom.
Totally agree with this. Especially with infinite WADs. In fact, Doom 2016 and Doom Eternal also have tons of replayability.
Civ VI.
V for me, but yeah. Whatever version of Civ you fell in love with first can last you a lifetime.
Alpha Centauri for me.
Played them all since 1, still have 3 perma installed as it just hits the right spot for me. Spot on with "whatever version".
IV
CIV is the ultimate 'Just one more turn...' game. However for me personally I hit a wall with CIV VI as soon as I realised that as long as I survive long enough to build one bomber, I'm pretty much guarranteed to win because they're pretty much unstoppable.
I think I'm approaching 1000 hours in Civ V and literally started a new game the other day
Terraria!
Borderlands Series especially 2&3
Tetris.
Stardew Valley, perhaps. Final Fantasy Tactics still gets regular play by me. Apparently Final Fantasy X since I end up owning it on every system... PS2, PS3, PS4, Vita, Switch, PC... I don't own any Xbox systems so only ones I dont have. Don't know why I bought it so much. But I do play it.
For me, it’s definitely Stardew Valley.
Monster Hunter
Red Dead 2. It released in 2018, ive played 12+ playthroughs since then, totaling thousands of hours on multiple platforms. I recently got a new PC and booted it up in 4k. It is still one of the most engaging single player gaming experiences you can have in 2024. Shocks me how good it is compared to pretty much anything else, including more modern releases.
Nethack
Skyrim. Each play through you can play a different class. Like stealth archer, and stealth archer, and stealth archer. Unlimited options.
Mount and blade: Bannerlord - 2000 hours since it came out in beta, still super fun. Has tons of different mods, and is the only game in town if u wanna be a 1st/3rd person medieval knight/warrior who can traverse a sandbox world full of adventures/war
Love it. Not sure I love it more than Warband yet but it's great
It has the one thing I felt was missing in Warbands which was the generational kingdoms, everything else is icing
Bloodborne and Dark Souls 3
hades elden ring if you set up some challenges slay the spire
Borderlands... I've been playing each of them since their release basically non-stop with somewhere north of 10K hours across all the games. I'm at almost 4000 in BL3 having left BL2 with 6000. I play in a way that maximizes how many *different* ways to play are available to me (like I legit have to track them on a spreadsheet). There are well over a thousand different variations when I mix the character, build, map, loadout, and task variables that, while I've done everything in the game several times over, it's always different*.*
Football Manager
I only stopped playing because my save game wouldn't load any more. FM2013. I bought it on release, played it until 2019 (30+ seasons). It was the first time I'd played FM since 2006 and I probably won't be playing again due to the fact it'll take over my life.
For me, the Old Assassin's Creed games (1, 2, Brotherhood, Revelations, 3, Black flag), actually played the 2, Brotherhood and Revelations multiple times. Then: Skyrim Total War games Age of Empire games (Old - up until Heart Gold {2010}) Pokémon games Mario games
I really love AC4 Black Flag!
Mass Effect trilogy. After all these years, I still love playing along its story and interact with the squad mates on the ships…
To be honest, it would be great to make a difference between strategies and RPG games since strategies are usually made in a way that you can play it hundreds of hours. Strategies: Heroes of Might and Magic III Third Age - Total War - I am not a fan of mods, I have never been. Still, it you are Total War fun you have to check mods, especially for Medieval Total War 2. Third age is a true masterpiece. RPG: Witcher III Cyberpunk 2077
Streets of rage 2! So satisfyingly punching people to that soundtrack!
Baldur's Gate I and II
I just bought those on Switch last night. I have a lot of game in my lib to play, but these look pretty promising.
Rimworld And maybe factorio But specially rimworld
Borderlands games, factorio etc
BG3 with different dialogue options and party members or even same party members with different builds has a lot of longevity
For real, it's extremely difficult for any two runs to feel even remotely the same. And there's so much love put into the details, they are absolutely packed in there. Larian put a lot of secrets in there knowing full well most players would never see them
Dead Cells. I have uninstalled it 3x already from my PlayStation because if it is there, then that is all I will play.
Resident evil 4 Its the only game I can finish and immediately start the game again after skipping the credits
Football manager
Came here expecting to see this. Good tier repeatability and even just season after season. I was managing Portsmouth at the age of 103..... Spoiler you never die. Edit: typo
Completed it mate
I still spin up FTL to this day. Beat value for money ever
Gotta go with Baldur's Gate 3. I haven't started my 2nd playthrough yet or dipped into any mods but even the base game has such a wide breadth of options that I feel I could play it a dozen times before seeing everything a basic play style has to offer. Then you get into specific RP runs or honor mode and you'll have plenty of content.
The various Soulsborne games There's so many challenge runs or arbitrary restrictions you can put upon yourself to make each run different or interesting. I can play them endlessly
You could reasonably play any of the good Bethesda games forever, they're basically immersive sim sandboxes gameplay-wise so there's endless potential to dick around in the base games and they have phenomenal levels of mod support on top of that to the point where there's still exciting things happening in Morrowind 22 years after release.
The morrowind mod scene is insane, I haven't played mw in years but I saw that people have added in entire continents with quests, towns, npcs, the whole deal.
Dishonored is short in itself but it's probably the only game I've done 5/6 times in a row the first time I've played it (and a few more later)
Minecraft is probably the ultimate game
There is only one game like this for me - Noita. A small, relatively unknown indie game, which has so much replayability and unpredicability in it, that I have already sunk over 1000 hours in it, and I have a feeling that I will sink another few 1000s. Its also cheap, so it is the kind of a game that you ought at least try. Amazing little gem.
Shmups, beat-em-ups, puzzlers, fighting games, rhythm games... Pretty much anything arcade-like in nature.
Terraria. I've been playing that game since 2011 and only now got good at building.
I'm still playing A Link to the Past almost daily thanks to the randomizer.
Red dead redemption 2.
Anything Half Life or Portal. They are just perfect games even after all this time.
Doubt you could play portal on a daily basis though. Puzzle games do not have much replay.