Returning to a game to finally conquer it

My favorite series in games is The Legend of Zelda. I've replayed OOT, MM, and WW many times. My favorite thing to do in games is to conquer a Zelda by collecting everything. It kills me that I haven't 100% some of the other Zeldas. Just yesterday I've returned to Twilight Princess in hopes of finally getting all of those heart pieces. I'm shocked of how little I remember of this game, I'm not even sure what all the items do. Maybe one day I'll fight through the motion controls in Skyward Sword to finish it too. Replaying Wind Waker HD was so easy for me a few months ago, but it's a struggle returning to these games on Wii. But I know under that crust is the sweet filling that is the Zelda formula I love so much.

I have other "white whale" games I've returned to repeatedly over my life in attempts to 100% them, but never have. Super Mario World is a prime example. Anyone else do this?

Truthful answer is probably Dragon Age: Origins. Took a short break during a hectic time and am wondering if I can return to it and know what I'm doing,

@i_stay_puft: I had a similar relationship to Dragon Age: Origins for a while. I must have played it for 40-60 hours, but I felt like I was just getting started. I a handful of different characters, and I even bought the game a second time after trading in my first copy. I think I've reached a point where I can let that one go.

I love Alundra on the PS1 and must have racked up quite a lot of time over the last near 20 years, but for whatever reason, I've just never finished it. I'll get 10 or so hours in and then just kind of fall off and leave it so long that I feel compelled to start from scratch. I actually did this again about 6 months ago. I've played the game that many times and it's been a short enough time since I last played that if I were to pick it up again, I wouldn't feel the need to start over, so maybe I should get on that.

There are a few sitting on my shelf I only started but never dove into.

However a few exist to persistently remind me I never finished them. FF8 was one I invested something around 30 hours before getting stuck on a boss and abandoning it.

The Saboteur was a game I loved playing but in a quest to get 100% I burned out on the game after weeks of playing. I should really go back and knock that one off.

I have a super chronic problem of never finishing games. I don't think I have ever completed a game 100% either. If I had to choose a game that haunts me the most though, I would say FF7. I always get to the last boss and can never manage to beat it. I guess I need to go get knights of the round or something.

Currently I am going back to beat Final Fantasy Tactics A2: Grimoire of the Rift.

Dark Souls.

I got stuck in Anor Londo and abandoned the game for a year and half. I came back at it with a vengeance and managed to beat it a couple of months before Dark Souls 2 came out.

I got up to the final boss on FF7 on the ps2 but never beat him either, bought it on steam on sale so I'll attempt it some day.

I recently went back to some of the games I never managed to beat from my childhood, King's Keep on the zx spectrum, Life & Death.

Majora's Mask was one for me. I was playing it at the same time I was playing Ocarina of Time, and the two have very different save systems. After conquering a part of the game that was admittedly awesome to play through, but required hours of tedium to get up to it, I turned off the game and breathed a sigh of relief. I then realized seconds later what I had done. The entirety of what I had just played through was gone. It took me a long time to go back to the game and finish it.

Years ago when it first came out I played up till the very end of Kingdom hearts, but unded up gifting my Ps2 to a cousin before I thought to finish it. So, about a year ago I went back and played the Hd remake and finally completed it. I have a long list of Jrpgs I'd also like to go back and finish, but will more than likely never get to. Lost Odyssey and Final Fantasy 13 are among them. Those two being the only games I came even close to finishing, but burnt out on before wrapping them up.

Mega Man 4 was one of the first games I ever owned and I beat it for the first time only two years ago. I remember getting my ass handed to me by the second-to-last form of Dr. Wily after the boss rush and being completely demoralized as a kid. I loathed boss rushes for the longest time but I'm over it.

Mega Buster only, abusing weaknesses is lame.

I misread the title as "Returning a game to finally conquer it" and came in to say that I temporarily took that approach with Dark Souls. I got it on Steam, so I couldn't really return it, but I had gotten so fed up with the last boss that I decided the only way to win was...

I have since gone back and beaten the game, but taking some time off from that game really helped.

@i_stay_puft: It might bore you to death first.

Vagrant Story; put it down for 6 months or so and picked it up and suddenly had an epiphany and figured out how all the complicated systems worked. Granted the last boss still took around 15 tries but that was a point of maturation for me in general; post Vagrant Story I became extremely competent at pretty much every game.

If you're talking about platinuming a game I've never done that. But it took me three goes over about two years to beat Far Cry 2. It's such a good game and yet such a pain in the ass in many respects. But once I got on that final push, the game just clicked for me and I finished it.

Beating a game, then coming back way later to squeeze 100% out of it? Definitely did that with both Vagrant Story and Chrono Cross. Did new game+ in Vagrant Story years after beating it, and really learning all the systems and conquering the secret bonus dungeon really made me love that game even more.

Took that even further with KotOR over the years. Played through on Mac, then PC, as lightside, then darkside, then lightside with a crap-ton of fan-made content added. Such a cool game.

That stupid-ass 'Hardcore Risette Fan' achievement on P4:G is my white whale. I've played the game to completion five times to see all the endings, but that's the one thing keeping me from a platinum trophy.

FFXII is mine, I guess. In my first playthrough, I got to the final boss and put it down for some reason. I came back to it months later, only to discover that I did not have enough levels to beat the final boss. I've tried playing XII twice since then, and both times I've bailed far short of that mark.

Happens to me with RPG's mostly. I've played Demon's Souls off and on for the past year or so. I beat Dragon Age but have never completed Awakening. Probably the most ridiculous thing I ever did was stop playing Beyond Good and Evil during the last boss fight. Something just came up in the middle of the battle and I had to shut it off. Didn't feel like redoing the first half of it so I just never finished the game. I bought the HD version on PS3 thinking I would play through it again but never got to it.

I was leveled enough in XII for the last boss but died when I was at the last 10% or so of the boss. Was sooooo frustrated and pissed how much time I wasted (was at around 20 minutes or so) that I just said "Fuck it! I'm watching this ending on youtube because I am not doing that again!"

Was the only time I've ever done this. Tried to go back and play XII but gave up due to time commitments fell short as well. I'd honestly play it again I could play it on my Vita if they ever do it.

@zirilius: I also understand that the "international edition" was superior for some reasons which I've forgotten, so I'd like to see that brought over to a newer system before I try again.

I powered my way to the final boss of Final Fantasy 13, despite hating every single moment of it only because I've finished every other Final Fantasy game before it and I didn't want to be beaten.

I took a break for a while to play some Call of Duty or something and then my PS3 got the yellow light of death. Ended up never getting that PS3 fixed and my end game save is still sitting on that hardrive, probably forever now, waiting for me to finish that final boss. I still think about fixing that PS3 and finishing it sometimes.

I recently started up my old Skyrim save again. I have put in over 500 hours, played through two characters (lost a save) that have beaten every guild and city quest. My problem is that I have never actually made it through the main quest.

It took me 5 years to beat Persona 3. First I put about 20 hours into FES in 2009 directly after beating Persona 4 before losing interest. When the PSP version of the game came out it 2010, I decided to give it another shot. About 80 hours in to the game I stopped mostly due to other games coming out and didn't return to the game until this year when a friend of mine who I was watching play through the game reached the point where I had left off all those years back. I picked up the game for a third time on my Vita and finally finished the damn thing. Funny thing is I dove straight into a New Game Plus to play as the Female Main Character and beat the game again within the month.

The Witcher and Vampire the masquerade bloodlines. I played about 50 hours of the Witcher thought I was getting to the end, got to the castle with the big bad and then was teleported away...found out there are a couple of chapters after that.

Then with Vampire...I love it but every time I go to play it I play it up until you go to the first new city or whatever, the part after the sarcophagus, and then I take a break. Then never go back again...

Dark Souls. I just need one more miracle to get my platinum, but would have to replay the game to get it. Not a big deal, but it was enough to completely take the wind out of my sails. That alone made me no longer give a shit about achievements, but I still think about it sometimes. I could be in the middle of a conversation and then...

Mostly RPG's of varying size. Chrono Trigger and FF6 I have yet to beat. Chrono Trigger I got really close to about two years ago. Bravely Default got in danger of being put in my "started but not finished" pile, but I just picked it back up.

@steadyingmeat said:

I did this too. First played the game in 2008, bought it on launch day. Played the hell out of it, beat it, and had a few leftover achievements. About 3 years later I finally got the last achievement I needed, the one for finding every single openable chest/environmental container/etc. It was a crazy achievement. I actually think this is the best RPG ever created.

As of right now though...

@stryker1121: @galacticpunt

Not necessarily 100%'ing a game. Just a game that you feel like you aren't done with, and might come back to it multiple times over years, or even decades.

I'll sometimes refer to Super Mario World as my "white whale." It's a game I've had most of my life and never even gotten to King Koopa (or Bowser, whatever he was called back then). As a kid I restarted games all the time when I couldn't get past a certain point, and some older kids beat a bunch of levels on my save that I never thought I earned. Years later I continued beating more levels, bought an old issue of Nintendo Power with some tips. I'm sure I could beat it pretty quickly if I put my nose to the ground and go whole hog, but at this point it's just a diversion that I chip away at on occasion. I hope to conquer that game before I die... or the save battery in the cart.... although I do have it on Wii U, so I'm covered.

@xyzygy: Oh, no, I never beat LO. It's just been that one game (right up there with DQ VIII) that has been gnawing at me ever since I stopped playing it. I'd really like to get back to it soon, but playing games on my really old 360 sounds like a pretty bad idea. It would really bum me out if another one dies on me in the middle of a long RPG again. Dammit, why the hell isn't this game on PS3. I even vaguely recall hearing that it was supposed to come to PS3 at some point, but whatever I guess.

Both Demon's Souls and Dark Souls. I got Demon's Souls when it first came out, got to the tower knight and then gave up. For Dark Souls, I got up to the capra demon, and got frustrated and walked away. I came back to Dark Souls about a year later and plowed through it. After that I returned to Demon's Souls and beat it. Those were the only 2 games where I actually felt like a quiter for not finishing them.

Bioshock infinite

Battlefield 3

And many other games

My tv broke i got only one tv in the house

NO monitor

Its in repair for a month worst luck ever

For me it's FFX. It was the first real RPG of any kind I had played and I just fell in love with the game. I spent hours on that game, I just had never seen anything like it, it was as close to a revelatory game experience as I have ever had. However, as it was my first RPG I had no fucking idea what I was doing, and I just hit a wall with the last Seymore boss fight. I didn't even know to try and grind my way past him. I had to quit the game. I tried to go back and finish the game a few years after, but my discovery of Bioware games and the fact I had named the Aeons after Yu Gi Oh monsters took the wind out my sails, I couldn't finish the game.

However, I now have the the game on my vita and I will forfil the promise I made myself. I will finish FFX.

GOD HAND was this for me, got it back when it was new on PS2 and loved it but couldn't beat the final boss. Picked it up on PSN and beat it the next day.