Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
I have fond memories of playing this on the original Xbox back in the day (in fact, it was the reason I bought the console), but never got very far into it. For some reason, I decided to play this last night and became very addicted... once I was done, I looked at the clock and it was nearly 4:00am 🤣.

I'll start with the stuff I don't like so far. The UI is a total mess, and the game was clearly developed for the Xbox with controller in mind, and then awkwardly ported to mouse and keyboard controls on the PC. There is so little information on screen at any time, even with the font size set to small, and it's just awkward to use. Controlling the party during combat is also a pain, since there's no tactical view and so you have to press TAB to cycle from one character to next to give orders. You do get used to it after a while, but it constantly feels like you're fighting the game just to control it.

I also dislike most of the companions. They constantly act like spoiled children, and the dialog makes no sense. At least they look pretty cool and are all unique in how they play.

Otherwise, though, I am really liking this game! So far, I'd rank it behind Baldur's Gate and Dragon Age: Origins, but ahead of everything else Bioware has done. It's a lot of fun building your character and party as the game progresses, and I like that you have multiple options to get through conflicts, based on the skills of your characters (even if the solutions are pretty much always obvious). The game still looks pretty good today, or at least it does once you get off the first planet.

Neverwinter Nights: Diamond Edition
I decided to give this game another chance. I've tried playing it so many times, starting back in 2002 when the game was first released and I bought into the hype. I hated it then because it felt like such a massive drop in quality from Baldur's Gate (only two characters in your party? No way to control your henchman besides basic commands?). I've tried revisiting the game since then many times, and I was able to sort of get into it from time to time when I played it for what it is.

Anyway, I have the EE but I decided to play the original DE because I wanted to try this one mod I found that lets you add more than one henchman to your party. It sort of works with EE, but limits you to a three-person party, and I wanted to hire three henchmen and see if it would somehow give me the feeling that I was playing an actual classic style RPG and not... err... whatever Neverwinter Nights is.

With the mod in place, I must admit that the game is a bit better. My biggest problem with this game is that, with only one henchman, you either need to put some levels into rogue to disarm traps, or you're stuck with the rogue henchman. Similarly, you either need to be a cleric or paladin, or choose the cleric henchman... or just play the game gulping potions all the time. I think it really limits the kinds of characters you can play, without the game becoming completely tedious. With the mod, you can have both the rogue and cleric in your party, so you can just make whatever kind of character you want. I went with a half-orc barbarian.

The mod does make the game REALLY easy. I don't mind this, because NWN is such a tedious experience otherwise, that I would simply never play this game without it. With the mod, it's kind of fun and feels a bit more like playing a classic RPG. There's still a lot of bad stuff, though. You have dozens of containers in every map, with many of them literally containing just a single arrow or gold piece. Nearly every single chest is locked, and unlocking anything requires you to just sit there and watch; there's nothing worse in a game that just making you wait for some timer, but the game is absolutely full of this. There are weird difficulty spikes, where a boss monster will just paralyze you or whatever, and there's nothing you can do but die. Total RNG. I suspect this is all here because the game was likely designed to be played multiplayer, with singleplayer just added on.

There's also a lot of good stuff, though, which becomes more noticeable when running a full party and not having to really deal with all the annoying stuff. The first act is pleasantly nonlinear, and even individual objectives often have multiple solutions. The henchmen all have interesting backstories, and its cool how you learn more about them as your character levels up. There are even skill checks in dialog, and passing these checks can bypass combat or even open up side quests. One very cool quest has you trying to get access to a tavern that's basically a meeting place for rogues, etc. and you have multiple options. You can get into a fight with some rogues and steal a outfit, find a key somewhere to get in the back door, or collect rogue currency by completing some minor quests. Good stuff.

The game of course uses the D&D mechanics, and these are almost always a pleasure at low levels. It's just very satisfying gaining even a single level or finding your first magic weapon or armor.

It's not a bad game, but I think Bioware made a huge mistake in limiting you to a single henchman in the original campaign. A four-person party is just so much more interesting, even if it does make the game a lot easier.

Started Doom Eternal finally. Beat the first level, including the hunt for collectibles.

It's every bit as garbage-y as everyone here says it is. The best thing about it is that it loads 10 times faster than Doom (2016) on the same hardware. They must have finally optimized some sh!t.

I thought I was the only one who didn't enjoy Doom Eternal. The graphics were excellent, but the gameplay didn't work for me at all. It felt more like an FPS puzzle game, where I had to figure out how to chain together my kills in the way the devs planned the level. The jungle gym stuff felt out of place in a Doom game, at least for me.

I don't know if the reviews were more mixed when it came out, but I only got around to playing it a few months ago, so my expectations were shaped by the Steam reviews, which are very positive. Oh well. I'm still getting a lot of fun out of Brutal Doom and there are a million boomer shooters that I can get for my Doom fix.

I felt exactly the same about Doom Eternal. All the jumping around really got under my skin, and I hated how over tutorialized it was. To the point of having a tutorial about specific weaknesses of specific enemies. Between the jumping puzzles, how specifically they expected you to take down enemies, and how much they leaned into constantly forcing you to alternate between flaming, sawing and glory killing opponents to manage your resources, I just was not feeling it at all.

Forced myself about halfway through the game, and just couldn't anymore. I wanted to like it so badly. Doom 2016 was impossibly good so far as game reboots by companies that have been Ship of Theseused in their entirety go. But it turns out, bafflingly, that they just got lucky.

Ensign Nemo wrote on 2023-09-15, 19:51:

I don't know if the reviews were more mixed when it came out, but I only got around to playing it a few months ago, so my expectations were shaped by the Steam reviews, which are very positive. Oh well. I'm still getting a lot of fun out of Brutal Doom and there are a million boomer shooters that I can get for my Doom fix.

I very much dislike it as well, but it seems to have quite a rabid fanbase. Funnily enough, I remember watching a video with Sandy Petersen (level designer on the original Doom, Doom 2 and Quake) reacting to Doom Eternal, and while he doesn't outright say he dislikes the game as a whole, he makes quite a few criticisms about certain aspects. The comments were full of Doom Eternal fans asking things like "Who is this dude?" and "He doesn't know what Doom is all about".

Personally I don't like almost anything about it: art direction (too cartoony), ridiculous and convoluted "story" (especially when compared to the extremely simple but effective "Marine vs. Hell" from the originals or even Doom 3) and most importantly game mechanics: constantly running out of ammo and having to switch weapons like a madman, enemies exploding as colorful loot pinatas, platforming, and most of all being an "arena" type shooter with waves of enemies instead of monsters being carefully placed in the levels - they really doubled down on this arena thing that was my main complaint about Doom 2016.

So it's definitely not my cup of tea, but I understand other people liking it. What doesn't make much sense to me is how this game is touted as the "true Doom experience", I really find very little in common between it and the originals: yes, it's a first person shooter with Imps, Cacodemons and Hell Knights, but the design philosophy is completely different! But I love Doom 3 almost as much as 1 & 2, so I'm probably some kind of heathen to the Doom Eternal fans.

I was a HUGE fan of Doom 2016 and Eternal did NOTHING for me either..

Same here. I played through a quarter of it, maybe a third. Until the end of the Doom Hunter boss map. Where you beat the first one-on-one in an arena, then two other backed up by other demons... in a bigger arena. By that point I was already forcing myself to play, but then I just lost the drive to continue. That was over one and a half year ago.

And yes, it has some incredibly rabid fans. Some says if you didn't enjoy it, "git gud" or you didn't make the effort to learn the mechanics. Well, I did, it wasn't because I felt it to be too difficult because I "played it wrong", yet I still didn't enjoy. Resource management felt a chore and the game felt over all very grindy.

As for a game I do enjoy,

While testing the T630 I got into the mood of playing some Supreme Commander. On my modern PC it doesn't have sound. Seems to be a common problem with no clear solution. Some works for some something else works for others, nothing I tried so far worked for me. It's a little bit too sluggish on the T630 so I just use my XP nostalgia PC.

I really like the scope/scale of this game. Huge maps, huge armies, the units have decent range of fire, area of effect, projectiles can miss, etc. Most RTS doesn't care about this. The maps are small, you have no room to build low density (as protection against weapons with huge area of effect) and the range of fire of your units tops out at what you can see fully zoomed out making mobile artillery basically an inferior version of tanks instead of its own thing.

newtmonkey wrote on 2023-09-15, 16:54:

Neverwinter Nights: Diamond Edition I decided to give this game another chance. I've tried playing it so many times, starting b […]
Show full quote

Neverwinter Nights: Diamond Edition
I decided to give this game another chance. I've tried playing it so many times, starting back in 2002 when the game was first released and I bought into the hype. I hated it then because it felt like such a massive drop in quality from Baldur's Gate (only two characters in your party? No way to control your henchman besides basic commands?). I've tried revisiting the game since then many times, and I was able to sort of get into it from time to time when I played it for what it is.

Anyway, I have the EE but I decided to play the original DE because I wanted to try this one mod I found that lets you add more than one henchman to your party. It sort of works with EE, but limits you to a three-person party, and I wanted to hire three henchmen and see if it would somehow give me the feeling that I was playing an actual classic style RPG and not... err... whatever Neverwinter Nights is.

With the mod in place, I must admit that the game is a bit better. My biggest problem with this game is that, with only one henchman, you either need to put some levels into rogue to disarm traps, or you're stuck with the rogue henchman. Similarly, you either need to be a cleric or paladin, or choose the cleric henchman... or just play the game gulping potions all the time. I think it really limits the kinds of characters you can play, without the game becoming completely tedious. With the mod, you can have both the rogue and cleric in your party, so you can just make whatever kind of character you want. I went with a half-orc barbarian.

The mod does make the game REALLY easy. I don't mind this, because NWN is such a tedious experience otherwise, that I would simply never play this game without it. With the mod, it's kind of fun and feels a bit more like playing a classic RPG. There's still a lot of bad stuff, though. You have dozens of containers in every map, with many of them literally containing just a single arrow or gold piece. Nearly every single chest is locked, and unlocking anything requires you to just sit there and watch; there's nothing worse in a game that just making you wait for some timer, but the game is absolutely full of this. There are weird difficulty spikes, where a boss monster will just paralyze you or whatever, and there's nothing you can do but die. Total RNG. I suspect this is all here because the game was likely designed to be played multiplayer, with singleplayer just added on.

There's also a lot of good stuff, though, which becomes more noticeable when running a full party and not having to really deal with all the annoying stuff. The first act is pleasantly nonlinear, and even individual objectives often have multiple solutions. The henchmen all have interesting backstories, and its cool how you learn more about them as your character levels up. There are even skill checks in dialog, and passing these checks can bypass combat or even open up side quests. One very cool quest has you trying to get access to a tavern that's basically a meeting place for rogues, etc. and you have multiple options. You can get into a fight with some rogues and steal a outfit, find a key somewhere to get in the back door, or collect rogue currency by completing some minor quests. Good stuff.

The game of course uses the D&D mechanics, and these are almost always a pleasure at low levels. It's just very satisfying gaining even a single level or finding your first magic weapon or armor.

It's not a bad game, but I think Bioware made a huge mistake in limiting you to a single henchman in the original campaign. A four-person party is just so much more interesting, even if it does make the game a lot easier.

Glad you shared your thoughts on this one, @newtmonkey

When I got into retro gaming back in 2015, this was an RPG that kept popping up on "all time best" lists. Reading about it and watching some YT videos of gameplay, it never appealed to me enough to try it, even though I did buy it on a steep discount. I appreciate your feedback. It kind of reinforces my initial thoughts. In some glorious future day, when I finish all the RPGs higher up the list, I may get to it. 😀

BTW, have you seen the Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord Remake? I'm not ready to bite, it's still Early Access and not enough QoL features yet for me. Hoping they give a more robust mapping and multiple saves at some point before final release.

I've been playing Metro:Exodus Enhanced lately. It adds some ray tracing, which surprisingly does little to hurt framerates on my RTX2060. Playing at 1080p, with Detail and Ray Tracing set to High and DLSS set to Quality, framerates rarely drop below 60. I think the lowest I've seen them dip is ~45. Very playable. It's probably been my favorite Metro game so far. I LOVE when you get out into the desert. Graphics are beautiful and it's such a nice change of pace to the typical snow/abandoned buildings/underground scenery of this series. The storyline is entertaining and the gameplay very fun. Highly recommended if you like this genre.

I also have been messing on my DOS PC a bit, preparing it for my next RPG. I don't know why, but for some reason I really crave playing a DOS RPG in the winter. Maybe it's because the extra heat generated by the PC and CRT are less bearable when it's hot. 🤣. But as the weather cools and winter approaches (I live in the midwest where snow and freezing temps are common), I'm play-testing several games, trying to decide which one to settle on: Ravenloft: Strahd's Possession, Darklands, Eye of the Beholder 2, and Dark Sun: Shattered Lands. I actually attempted a playthrough of Dark Sun about 5 years ago, but could not get into it. But it's still on my mind, so I think I will try it again, if not this time, then at some other point.

clueless1 wrote on 2023-09-16, 15:43:

I've been playing Metro:Exodus Enhanced lately. It adds some ray tracing, which surprisingly does little to hurt framerates on my RTX2060. Playing at 1080p, with Detail and Ray Tracing set to High and DLSS set to Quality, framerates rarely drop below 60. I think the lowest I've seen them dip is ~45. Very playable. It's probably been my favorite Metro game so far. I LOVE when you get out into the desert. Graphics are beautiful and it's such a nice change of pace to the typical snow/abandoned buildings/underground scenery of this series. The storyline is entertaining and the gameplay very fun. Highly recommended if you like this genre.

I also have been messing on my DOS PC a bit, preparing it for my next RPG. I don't know why, but for some reason I really crave playing a DOS RPG in the winter. Maybe it's because the extra heat generated by the PC and CRT are less bearable when it's hot. 🤣. But as the weather cools and winter approaches (I live in the midwest where snow and freezing temps are common), I'm play-testing several games, trying to decide which one to settle on: Ravenloft: Strahd's Possession, Darklands, Eye of the Beholder 2, and Dark Sun: Shattered Lands. I actually attempted a playthrough of Dark Sun about 5 years ago, but could not get into it. But it's still on my mind, so I think I will try it again, if not this time, then at some other point.

Do you have any tips on how to get into old style dungeon crawlers? Reading you reviews get me interested but I feel disoriented when I try to play one. Do you make maps? 😀

Joakim wrote on 2023-09-17, 17:35:

clueless1 wrote on 2023-09-16, 15:43:

I've been playing Metro:Exodus Enhanced lately. It adds some ray tracing, which surprisingly does little to hurt framerates on my RTX2060. Playing at 1080p, with Detail and Ray Tracing set to High and DLSS set to Quality, framerates rarely drop below 60. I think the lowest I've seen them dip is ~45. Very playable. It's probably been my favorite Metro game so far. I LOVE when you get out into the desert. Graphics are beautiful and it's such a nice change of pace to the typical snow/abandoned buildings/underground scenery of this series. The storyline is entertaining and the gameplay very fun. Highly recommended if you like this genre.

I also have been messing on my DOS PC a bit, preparing it for my next RPG. I don't know why, but for some reason I really crave playing a DOS RPG in the winter. Maybe it's because the extra heat generated by the PC and CRT are less bearable when it's hot. 🤣. But as the weather cools and winter approaches (I live in the midwest where snow and freezing temps are common), I'm play-testing several games, trying to decide which one to settle on: Ravenloft: Strahd's Possession, Darklands, Eye of the Beholder 2, and Dark Sun: Shattered Lands. I actually attempted a playthrough of Dark Sun about 5 years ago, but could not get into it. But it's still on my mind, so I think I will try it again, if not this time, then at some other point.

Do you have any tips on how to get into old style dungeon crawlers? Reading you reviews get me interested but I feel disoriented when I try to play one. Do you make maps? 😀

It helped a lot that I grew up on these games, so deep nostalgia. I started off replaying favorites from the early to mid 1990s, then as I've gotten through those, I started on ones I never played, or started to play but never finished. But I have stuck to games that have decent quality of life features like multiple save slots, maps, and decent inventory management. I definitely will NOT make maps. That's where I draw the line. 😀 To make things more fun, I lean heavily on cluebooks or online walkthroughs. I don't worry about such things, if it helps the experience be more fun and entertaining, then I use it. That's about all I can suggest, other than playing on original hardware. That definitely enhances the experience.

Joakim wrote on 2023-09-17, 17:35:

clueless1 wrote on 2023-09-16, 15:43:

I've been playing Metro:Exodus Enhanced lately. It adds some ray tracing, which surprisingly does little to hurt framerates on my RTX2060. Playing at 1080p, with Detail and Ray Tracing set to High and DLSS set to Quality, framerates rarely drop below 60. I think the lowest I've seen them dip is ~45. Very playable. It's probably been my favorite Metro game so far. I LOVE when you get out into the desert. Graphics are beautiful and it's such a nice change of pace to the typical snow/abandoned buildings/underground scenery of this series. The storyline is entertaining and the gameplay very fun. Highly recommended if you like this genre.

I also have been messing on my DOS PC a bit, preparing it for my next RPG. I don't know why, but for some reason I really crave playing a DOS RPG in the winter. Maybe it's because the extra heat generated by the PC and CRT are less bearable when it's hot. 🤣. But as the weather cools and winter approaches (I live in the midwest where snow and freezing temps are common), I'm play-testing several games, trying to decide which one to settle on: Ravenloft: Strahd's Possession, Darklands, Eye of the Beholder 2, and Dark Sun: Shattered Lands. I actually attempted a playthrough of Dark Sun about 5 years ago, but could not get into it. But it's still on my mind, so I think I will try it again, if not this time, then at some other point.

Do you have any tips on how to get into old style dungeon crawlers? Reading you reviews get me interested but I feel disoriented when I try to play one. Do you make maps? 😀

Graph paper is necessary for a lot of these old games. It's too easy to get lost otherwise. I sometimes struggle when I try to get into these old games as well. One problem is that I have a shorter attention span than I used to. As a kid, I didn't have many games, so I could stick with a really difficult game for a lot longer without getting frustrated. Now that I'm older, I have less time and a huge backlog, so I give up a lot earlier.

Outside of getting bored with it, there are usually a couple of reasons why I will give up on a game. First, if I take a long break, I find it difficult to get back into a game, especially if it's story heavy. My memory sucks, so I usually forget what was going on. I haven't really found a good approach to dealing with this, especially for retro games. If it's a modern game where the story is shown through cutscenes, you can sometimes find YouTube videos with just the cutscenes that you can watch to refresh your memory. That's not really an option for older games that provide the story through text. Maybe I should take notes while I play them.

The second reason for giving up is specific to RPGs or strategy games. I often give up if I realize that I didn't build my characters well enough to win or, similarly, didn't use a strategy that would let me win. I don't have the patience to start over and replay the same parts over again, especially if I already invested a lot of hours. To avoid this, I usually read a few strategy guides before playing the game. While this might seem like sacrilege to the purists, I still get enjoyment out of the game. Moreover, I try to come up with my own strategy based on a combination of what other people recommended, so I don't feel like I'm just copying a walkthrough. I just see this as my "boot camp". We don't send soldiers into the field without training, so I feel like this is my training before going to battle.

COD4 was on sale so I grabbed it, and have been playing it over the weekend. I think I'm about the finish the game soon. I never played a COD game before, and wanted to see what the whole fuss was about, seeing as this game lit the world on fire in XBOX 360 days. To be honest, I still don't get it. It has incredibly mediocre gameplay, a dumb plot and characters that I found myself not giving half a rat's ass about. I'm already feeling like this was a waste of time and money, but at least it's something to scratch off the list and stop people from going "*GASP* What, you haven't played Modern Warfare!?!"..

appiah4 wrote on 2023-09-17, 21:16:

COD4 was on sale so I grabbed it, and have been playing it over the weekend. I think I'm about the finish the game soon. I never played a COD game before, and wanted to see what the whole fuss was about, seeing as this game lit the world on fire in XBOX 360 days. To be honest, I still don't get it. It has incredibly mediocre gameplay, a dumb plot and characters that I found myself not giving half a rat's ass about. I'm already feeling like this was a waste of time and money, but at least it's something to scratch off the list and stop people from going "*GASP* What, you haven't played Modern Warfare!?!"..

I've never played a COD game and I don't care what anyone thinks. If single player campaign is good, then I'd enjoy it, but there's enough other games on my backlog that it's not a big deal to me. I do like military FPS games with a good single player campaign so I'm definitely open to playing the series sometime, just never the multiplayer aspect. My 19 yr old is into the series, so I've watched him play (both single and multi player) and they seem mildly interesting. Maybe some day...

I finally saddled back up in WarCraft II, and finished the 12th Orc Mission. I still aspire to wrap up at least the Orc campaign, but it's gotten rather rote and boring.

It's hard to put my finger on exactly why that is. Maybe it's just because I've played better RTS, like StarCraft or Dawn of War. Maybe it's just because the mission objectives are all rather samey. Go here, blow up everything. Except sometimes only a certain thing. And the first 4 or 5 missions are just extended tutorials really. Understandable given this could have been a lot of people's first RTS. But I just feel uninspired tackling each mission. Although the last one was a bit touch and go as I attempted to establish myself on a series of island, without getting wiped out by the enemy's massive navy immediately.

I'm marginally entertained by how resource constrained the missions are. I have to really try to make the most out of my units to capture the next gold mine away from the enemy and keep the war economy going. Also makes just researching every upgrade not necessarily the best idea. I have almost always completely stripped the map of all it's resources by the time I'm wrapping it up. Maybe I'm bored because I approach each map so slowly and methodically.

Playing the Battle.net edition actually on a P233, but I'm currently building a 486 DX2. Debating what the first game I should play to christen it will be. I'm kind of feeling an RPG. Maybe Eye of the Beholder?

appiah4 wrote on 2023-09-17, 21:16:

COD4 was on sale so I grabbed it, and have been playing it over the weekend. I think I'm about the finish the game soon. I never played a COD game before, and wanted to see what the whole fuss was about, seeing as this game lit the world on fire in XBOX 360 days. To be honest, I still don't get it. It has incredibly mediocre gameplay, a dumb plot and characters that I found myself not giving half a rat's ass about. I'm already feeling like this was a waste of time and money, but at least it's something to scratch off the list and stop people from going "*GASP* What, you haven't played Modern Warfare!?!"..

The "modern war Michael Bay blockbuster game" genre was not a thing before that, as well as the Skinner box unlock FPS multiplayer, so it all felt very new and fresh, even if the gameplay part was just the same Call Of Duty 2.

It really aged like milk and I believe people who praise it would have their nostalgia-vision shattered very quickly by a single play session.

clueless1 wrote on 2023-09-17, 21:38:

appiah4 wrote on 2023-09-17, 21:16:

COD4 was on sale so I grabbed it, and have been playing it over the weekend. I think I'm about the finish the game soon. I never played a COD game before, and wanted to see what the whole fuss was about, seeing as this game lit the world on fire in XBOX 360 days. To be honest, I still don't get it. It has incredibly mediocre gameplay, a dumb plot and characters that I found myself not giving half a rat's ass about. I'm already feeling like this was a waste of time and money, but at least it's something to scratch off the list and stop people from going "*GASP* What, you haven't played Modern Warfare!?!"..

I've never played a COD game and I don't care what anyone thinks. If single player campaign is good, then I'd enjoy it, but there's enough other games on my backlog that it's not a big deal to me. I do like military FPS games with a good single player campaign so I'm definitely open to playing the series sometime, just never the multiplayer aspect. My 19 yr old is into the series, so I've watched him play (both single and multi player) and they seem mildly interesting. Maybe some day...

To be honest, you shouldn't care what anyone else thinks about any game or other past time. We play games because they are fun. Why should we care what others think? Now, if you don't like the STALKER games, there's something wrong with you and deserved to be banned from gaming altogether (I kid of course)...

Just started the Yakuza series with Yakuza 0 on PC after 'upgrading' from an ancient 4th gen i7 to 9th gen.

What a gloriously over the top streets of rage - meets shenmue - meets the godfather mashup. It's ludicrous and brilliant in equal measure.

How have I never played this series before?

Ensign Nemo wrote on 2023-09-17, 18:51:

Outside of getting bored with it, there are usually a couple of reasons why I will give up on a game. First, if I take a long break, I find it difficult to get back into a game, especially if it's story heavy. My memory sucks, so I usually forget what was going on. I haven't really found a good approach to dealing with this, especially for retro games. If it's a modern game where the story is shown through cutscenes, you can sometimes find YouTube videos with just the cutscenes that you can watch to refresh your memory. That's not really an option for older games that provide the story through text. Maybe I should take notes while I play them.

The second reason for giving up is specific to RPGs or strategy games. I often give up if I realize that I didn't build my characters well enough to win or, similarly, didn't use a strategy that would let me win. I don't have the patience to start over and replay the same parts over again, especially if I already invested a lot of hours. To avoid this, I usually read a few strategy guides before playing the game. While this might seem like sacrilege to the purists, I still get enjoyment out of the game. Moreover, I try to come up with my own strategy based on a combination of what other people recommended, so I don't feel like I'm just copying a walkthrough. I just see this as my "boot camp". We don't send soldiers into the field without training, so I feel like this is my training before going to battle.

i give up for similar reasons but i'd add a couple

"it's good but i have had enough for now" - i played and really enjoyed Oblivion for a while, just went into it blind without thinking about character set up and so on, started doing side quests and joining guilds etc mostly ignoring the main quest. Then after numerous dungeon crawls and achieving most side missions and the guilds i just had enough, but in a nice positive way. i'll probably go back at some point to do the main quest line.

"illusion melts away" - lots of RPGs especially will slowly lose the illusion of setting and story and reveal the underlying mechanic such that you soon feel like you are playing the mechanic not the role play. This is more true of older RPGs in my view as they cannot maintain the illusion with lots of graphical and voice features