Genshin Impact.

Yeah, I know, F2P doesn't count as "buying". But I've spent in the game, and I regret it, because now I can't stop playing it. And it's not even because of the "sunk cost fallacy" thing. It's legitimately a decent base game, and at least half the regular content updates during the year are decent.

Last edited by cybik on 11 June 2023 at 7:27 pm UTC

Artifact

Fall Guys is prolly the one with the most regret. It was the one time I caved in to FOMO and bought it at full price, only to not be able to play it anymore mere days later with the addition of EAC. Now it's not played as much back then, since matchmaking takes much longer.

Halo 4 for me. Such a let-down.

I would say "Ghostwire Tokyo" because a week after I bought it they added Denuvo to it. Too much playtime to refund it at that point as well. And of course, it's in the Humble Choice now, so I literally wasted my money by not being more patient and got shitty crapware bundled with it as the shittiest present ever.

Amnesia Rebirth - easily the worst Amnesia game made by Frictional

Super ultra deluxe whatever edition of Paradox' Surviving Mars for like 100ish bux, played like 3 hours bcs it is really boring.

Couple here:

Imperator: Rome, even though I love the theme and idea of it and some of the mechanics, it's pretty much one of the games Paradox admitted was a bit of a flop and they stopped updating.

Rust, because the creator turned into an asshole. :p That one actually got the 'hide this game from my library' options ticked in Steam.

Ion Fury, again, studio/creator issues, though I'd backed it well before that happened.

In recent years, none, because of refunds. There are games I've never finished because they've switched gears mid game (e.g. substituting ramped up difficulty for content) but I won't call it a failure if I thorougly enjoyed part of the game. A recent example for that is The Callisto Protocol.

However, in the past there have been games I have spent a lot of money on, purchasing DLC content that I never got to see because I just can't or won't play the game. I regret wasting that money.

Battlefield games from EA
Jedi: Fallen Order

Another game I regret buying, but it's my fault, is Hitman 2. I bought all the content for it and couldn't so much as complete the first mission. I would say the reason I gave up on it so soon was because it was too rigid in how you approach things. Assassinations don't go like that, you need to plan your infiltration, but you also need to be able to improvise.

Terminator Resistance. Mad Max. Deus Ex Mankind Divided. These are other games I regretted buying, that I didn't want to claw back because they were Linux ports.

Actually there is one very recent example that fits here. This is probably the angriest regret for buying a game. Tiny Tina's Wonderlands!

Substituting repetitive, tedious grinding for content. There really isn't much to that game and the DLC isn't even new story missions, but tedious encounters. I literally have thousands of hours into the Borderlands franchise and I was finished with this one in 44 hours (that's doing everything, including the DLC encounters twice but the loot was just repetitive so there was no point in grinding those anymore either). There's no second playthrough with your character, they took away "True" and "Ultimate" modes of replaying characters. All the shit I did, stats, gear, money... all for nothing because the character is done. That's what was motivating me to endure the tedium... "second playthrough soon!", and at that point I didn't know they took it away. The game is just not interesting enough for me to want to play a new character.

I regret buying Tiny Tina's Wonderlands. That's my answer here.

Last edited by Grogan on 11 June 2023 at 8:42 pm UTC

The Witcher 2. I really liked the rhythm-based fighting mechanic in the first part and that you could use potions during combat. The second part turned fighting into a rolling around simulator and introduced a save&reload to use a potion before a fight starts mechanic. And the difficulty curve is all over the place. Such a disappointment.