What's a game you don't like that you can't stop playing?

Fortune-Street-Logo.jpg

I can't remember where I first heard of Fortune Street, but I was hooked immediately by the premise. It's a Monopoly-style board game where you buy up property, and try to dominate each section of the board by owning all the shops there. You even charge people if they land on your space, and can make the rent go up by pumping money into a property. The one real difference here is that stocks play a major role. If you buy a lot of stock in your district before investing money into it, your stock price will go through the roof. Alternatively, if you can buy stocks in a competitor's district before they invest, they have to decide between helping both of you or abandoning that district. Or, if one player has all their money tied up in stocks, you can buy out property from under them, tanking that district's stock price and ruining them. I'm a huge Mario Party fan and this basically sounded like a grown-up version of it, with some of the randomness reduced and more strategy involved.

It didn't exactly work out like I hoped. I could only find one friend who was willing to trade Mario- and Dragon Quest-themed stocks with me, so we decided to try the single-player mode. That began a nearly decade-long quest to conquer one of the most frustrating games I've ever played. The deck is stacked against the player hard in Fortune Street, to the point where I’m convinced that the AI flat out cheats. That may sound like sour grapes, but it’s hard not to think after you’ve seen Bianca make a boneheaded trade to Mario to hand him the win, or Bowser Jr. bumble through Dragonlord’s district, handing him thousands of dollars, while deftly sidestepping every trap you have set for him. When you’re in a race with the AI, suddenly you’ll be rolling all ones, while they’re rolling eights. I wouldn’t believe it if I hadn’t experienced it, and I know there’s no point in a developer rigging the game against their players, but I’ll always be convinced that’s the truth.

But that only steeled us further. We were the underdog, virtuous warriors fighting to beat an unjust system. Like any cheater, we couldn’t let the game get away with what it was doing. It took a long time, and it was exhausting work, but it’s oddly one of the most satisfying notches in my gaming belt.

Games are weird like that. Due to their interactive nature, they challenge us directly in ways that other media can’t. If the insult is personal enough, you can get drawn into a ludicrous grudge with a children’s game. I’ve been thinking a lot about my Fortune Street experience lately, so I wanted to pose the question to the GBAtemp community: do you guys have any games like this? Ones that you know are bad, but for whatever reason, you just need to force yourself to beat anyway?
 

KokoseiJ

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Grand Theft Auto Online.

Game is full of bugs, modders everywhere, dull contents, userbase is toxic and rockstar is absolutely shit at managing their games. You eventually end up grinding something since the inflation is enormous. All of my friends hate that game.

But even so, I join the game time to time out of nowhere and drive cars around for some minutes. as every other games by them do, GTAO also has something that keeps making me go back to that game.
 

chaoskagami

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I'm going to go ahead and state a controversial opinion here, since I played a game lately that gave me this exact feeling: Persona 5 Royal.

Persona 5 was long enough as-is. They made it even longer.

Worse yet, at around Okumura it begins to get incredibly unbalanced gameplay-wise if you play on any of the middle difficulty settings: only Safety and Merciless are remotely tolerable starting at around there, because otherwise the game becomes a baton pass DPT check bullshit simulator. Safety is okay because enemies are wimps. Merciless is okay because the exploit multiplier is 3x instead of 2x. It's not "deep" or "strategic" like people in reviews seem to pretend, it's a pain in the fucking ass and worse than the original Persona 5 for it. Don't even get me started on the final final boss. That battle is just crap. They stacked too fucking many gimmicks in that battle, and there's a roughly 1/6 chance a given turn will go horribly awry (unavoidable boss recovery, near-dead party and unable to heal, etc.) People also seem to cite Palaces being shorter or something, but that's not really the case unless you deliberately ignore the will seeds (and the completionist in me won't allow that)

On top of all the mechanical problems: the original conclusion to Persona 5 was fine. I also feel like the plot changes actually detracted from the feeling of that last part. Kasumi adds approximately nothing to the plot. She's boring and I could see the uno reverse coming from a mile away. Akechi is still Akechi, which is to say a piece of shit. Maruki is uncompelling. It feels like they tried to shoehorn him in, but it doesn't really work and weakens the whole game. None of the characters are significantly improved by the extra content, they're still as shallow as ever.

All in all, the whole time I was playing I just wanted it to be over once I got past the 40hr mark. It should have been DLC.
 
Last edited by chaoskagami,

Panzerfaust

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Fire Emblem three House

IDK why this Harry Potter spin off has such high ratings. I painfully finished the campaign with the blue guy. The more I progressed, the more I wanted to stop playing this crap.

Somehow I enjoyed the previous entries more. Even finished Awakening twice
 
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Ishzark

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I had a hard time finishing Shadow of the Tomb Raider - the first "young Tomb Raider" game was awesome af, the second one also got me playing for hours straight but the last one was so bad I even considered not finishing it in the first place(and even after I finished it I'm still asking myself why I hate myself this much)

also had a bad time with Octopath Traveler - don't know why but I just couldn't get into it
 

1B51004

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Paper Mario Sticker Star. I had it as a kid and I liked it a lot. Now that I'm older, I knew there were better games so I rejected it. But I somehow kept on coming back to it!
Now I lost it behind my TV and I have no idea where it is. I feel as though a small, forgotten-about part of my heart is gone.
 
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Deleted member 514389

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I'm going to go ahead and state a controversial opinion here, since I played a game lately that gave me this exact feeling: Persona 5 Royal. ... It should have been DLC.
Finally someone says it like it is.

Yup. Yup and Yup.
That, and many other reasons make me prefer Strikers.
PS5 is just waaaaay to long.
Even watching a friend play it made me die a lil inside.
Oh and also: F##k Morgana.
You'd be right to call that one a 'Racoon' by any way.
 
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ChaosEternal

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Old school Runescape.
Started at 16 y/o and now Im 36.
There are some parts that are Melancholic
Then there are more parts where you want to smash your fist through the monitor.
I was going to be upset if nobody mentioned OSRS, lol. Hell, one of the subreddit's main running jokes is that the game is miserable to play but we're all too addicted to stop!
 

DS1

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I'm going to go ahead and state a controversial opinion here, since I played a game lately that gave me this exact feeling: Persona 5 Royal.

Persona 5 was long enough as-is. They made it even longer.

Worse yet, at around Okumura it begins to get incredibly unbalanced gameplay-wise if you play on any of the middle difficulty settings: only Safety and Merciless are remotely tolerable starting at around there, because otherwise the game becomes a baton pass DPT check bullshit simulator. Safety is okay because enemies are wimps. Merciless is okay because the exploit multiplier is 3x instead of 2x. It's not "deep" or "strategic" like people in reviews seem to pretend, it's a pain in the fucking ass and worse than the original Persona 5 for it. Don't even get me started on the final final boss. That battle is just crap. They stacked too fucking many gimmicks in that battle, and there's a roughly 1/6 chance a given turn will go horribly awry (unavoidable boss recovery, near-dead party and unable to heal, etc.) People also seem to cite Palaces being shorter or something, but that's not really the case unless you deliberately ignore the will seeds (and the completionist in me won't allow that)

On top of all the mechanical problems: the original conclusion to Persona 5 was fine. I also feel like the plot changes actually detracted from the feeling of that last part. Kasumi adds approximately nothing to the plot. She's boring and I could see the uno reverse coming from a mile away. Akechi is still Akechi, which is to say a piece of shit. Maruki is uncompelling. It feels like they tried to shoehorn him in, but it doesn't really work and weakens the whole game. None of the characters are significantly improved by the extra content, they're still as shallow as ever.

All in all, the whole time I was playing I just wanted it to be over once I got past the 40hr mark. It should have been DLC.

Yeah, as much as I loved and anticipated that game, the extra stuff just felt like a “side story” and didn’t add anything to the original. Same deal with Catherine Full Body, outside of general improvements (different modes, more songs in the jukebox), the shoehorned plot stuff was lazy.
 

relauby

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why fortune street
it's awesome, like monopoly on steroids but without the monotony

Multiplayer might be great, I can definitely see the format working, but the single player just didn't click at all with me.

I'm going to go ahead and state a controversial opinion here, since I played a game lately that gave me this exact feeling: Persona 5 Royal.

Persona 5 was long enough as-is. They made it even longer.

Worse yet, at around Okumura it begins to get incredibly unbalanced gameplay-wise if you play on any of the middle difficulty settings: only Safety and Merciless are remotely tolerable starting at around there, because otherwise the game becomes a baton pass DPT check bullshit simulator. Safety is okay because enemies are wimps. Merciless is okay because the exploit multiplier is 3x instead of 2x. It's not "deep" or "strategic" like people in reviews seem to pretend, it's a pain in the fucking ass and worse than the original Persona 5 for it. Don't even get me started on the final final boss. That battle is just crap. They stacked too fucking many gimmicks in that battle, and there's a roughly 1/6 chance a given turn will go horribly awry (unavoidable boss recovery, near-dead party and unable to heal, etc.) People also seem to cite Palaces being shorter or something, but that's not really the case unless you deliberately ignore the will seeds (and the completionist in me won't allow that)

On top of all the mechanical problems: the original conclusion to Persona 5 was fine. I also feel like the plot changes actually detracted from the feeling of that last part. Kasumi adds approximately nothing to the plot. She's boring and I could see the uno reverse coming from a mile away. Akechi is still Akechi, which is to say a piece of shit. Maruki is uncompelling. It feels like they tried to shoehorn him in, but it doesn't really work and weakens the whole game. None of the characters are significantly improved by the extra content, they're still as shallow as ever.

All in all, the whole time I was playing I just wanted it to be over once I got past the 40hr mark. It should have been DLC.

I was actually the same with Persona 5, but I was fed up with the story instead of the gameplay. I thought the combat was fun and that's really what kept me going.
 

Taleweaver

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Two come to mind.

The first is n't so much 'a' collectible card game. It's THE collectible card game that made ccg a thing. I'm talking about magic :the gathering.
Oh, I've quit in the end. But I honestly don't even want to track just how much money I've spent on cardboard cards with fancy pictures on it.
Thing is : I liked the deck building aspect. The creativity you can use. The hidden combos.
... That almost inevitable either do what you want after which you build something else, or someone just flat out countered it.

The other one I've played not to long after reading up on toxic gameplay design. That is : skinner boxes and the illusion of progress. And man... That game is one big red flag. And even though I knew it, I feel for it and played for hours. Assuming you can call it 'playing'.
It's called ad-venture capitalist. The game is watching numbers go up. No, I'm not kidding. You start by picking apples to gain a bit of money, then you hire managers who do this for you. Then you hire directors who hire managers who pick apples. Then you make companies that... And so on. The game has just enough illusion of choice to make it seem like you actually earn the millions, billions, gaming's and... You get the picture. The game also continues counting when you choose the game, so even though I haven't played in years, I'm probably virtually richer than anyone else on earth combined.
 

Baoulettes

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For me : Assassin Creed Valhalla.
For me that a good game but I so much hate it.
First :Bug. Bugs every where. Like I was on a cliff, and all of sudden I was unable to move or open menu. I just had to alt +F4.
Second difficulty, where it is?
I continue to play it cause I was challenged to complete it and I kind of like the ambience, when it does not bug that a cool game.
but damn I rage more on bug and crash than IA killing, most of my death are when I think I could land without issue but I was stupid to think it.
 

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