Anyone Else Dislike/Avoid Endgame Content in RPGs?

As I've gotten older and my game preferences have gotten more refined, I also more aggressively avoid parts of certain games, especially endgame battles. Unless I'm really engaged with the story and/or the ending boss battle(s) only take a few times to beat, I'll just stop and move on to something else. I have plenty of games in my backlog that I don't want to keep banging my head against the ending of a game. Just this year I have gotten to the end battles of Ys VI, Ys Origins, Final Fantasy XV, Tomb Raider (2013), and Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon. Each one I ended up just watching the ending on Youtube and felt no regret for doing so. Anyone else do this or feel this way?

Post game sure..but like..just avoiding the normal endings of games?

I'll stop games in the middle sometimes if I'm not feeling it but very rarely will I stop if I'm already at the very end of something.

I actively disliked every game you listed (not saying they're bad by any means, just far far away from my taste) so I dont blame you. Based on the games you listed id bet its a symptom of extreme life force draining that only a JRPG can do. Those games stretch themselves out well past their welcome, and mar what would have otherwise been a novel experience in a gorgeous world. And tomb raider always just felt floaty to me. I find myself wanting to get like 75% through a game so I can actively engage with all its systems, and then after collecting everything I'll probably finish it just for the achievement. Stories in games are just so rote most of the time, and the "big finale" is usually more linear and laborious.

Right now I'm playing Ni No Kuni II, and I'm right at the final big battle. But after trying it a couple times I'm ready to say "OK, I'm good." It's a good game and I've played it for 60+ hours. It's just that drawn-out endgame battles is not what I play games for. That's just me.

This. It's very rare that the proper ending path of an RPG is any more arduous than the rest of the game, so not much reason to avoid it specifically. Post-game super bosses and junk, sure.

The only exception that comes to mind is Skyrim. By the time I finished all the sidequests I cared about I did not care at all about finishing the story. Didn't even bother Youtubing it. But that's more the story being uninteresting than a specific opposition to its end game.

Nah I cannot relate with that one bit.

The idea of playing 60 hours and then balking at making it to hour 61 or whatever to finish it off would be maddening.

Giant Bomb never ceases to discover the odd gaming habits of certain individuals.

...Though to be fair, I can say "Okay, I'm good" to, not the endings of, but to the entirety of the Ys games, most Final Fantasy games, and Ni No Kuni 1 and 2, 'cause I can't really say that most JRPGs are worth getting into in the first place.

You know I'm in a weird spot right now where I'm sort of less in the mood for really hard stuff, or trying stuff over and over again, so I'm at the end of a bunch of games and just have the final stretches to deal with, but of course they're all tough so I'm less motivated to play them. No idea why that is.

Now after writing all of this down I think it's more that I'm done with many of these JRPG stories and game mechanics by the end rather than the game endings themselves.

Not like this at all. I also thought you meant the post game grind. That I can see. I have a hard time finishing any game these days. Sometimes I want to come back(but who knows), maybe I don't like it anymore or I do but I just "got my fill". As for a game I'm actively playing and getting to the end to, I can't really imagine not beating it. The thing of doing a new game+ run or grinding for another 20 hours to do some sidequests might not happen but I will beat it if I'm already there and like enjoying my time enough.

I played all the way up to the last boss of Final Fantasy VII and quit without even trying once. I also read all but the final Harry Potter book, and watched all but the final episode of Chuck. Remember Chuck? Yeah.

I'm not sure why I'm like this.

I personally think all the videogames you listed are longer than their gameplay stays fun. Maybe you only reflect on that when reaching the end?

Or it also kinda sounds like you might be prone to giving up on a videogame as soon as it gets hard to impatiently move on to the next? and most games are a total cakewalk until the end nowadays.

Not trying to be a dick, I think its totally ok to enjoy videogames for something else than challenge. Videogames ARE a crazy amalgamation of storytelling, visual&sonic arts , maths, physics , interactive design, psychology, (role)playing, probably even more and everyone is free to enjoy any/all of these.

I rarely play a game with the intention of finishing it, I play as long as Im having fun , am learning something or had my fill.

For me the fun thing about playing a videogame specifically is the problem solving. As soon as we start repeating the problem ive just solved a couple of times with minimal change/ramp up, I start to feel like im going crazy and im out.(im always reminded of the teletubbies with those little kids screaming 'again again' at the end of every videoitem before replaying the same thing they just watched immediately) Unless the story or visuals or whatever else pull me through. Videogames are always the sum of their parts afterall.

(But I also dont think videogames necessarily have to be fun, just like irl, its not as if only the fun experience can be valueable.)

You should play a little game that could, called Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen

The endgame content there is pretty wild.

I feel like if I get that close to the end and it'll just take a fairly small fraction of the time I've already put in to see it through to the end, to not do so would make that time already invested somewhat wasted, which is kind of nonsense. I naturally feel compelled to finish it, even though I recognise that is 100% a perfect example of the sunk cost fallacy. Not sure I've ever bailed on a game due to difficulty. I did get bored of God Of War 3 once and totally dropped it, came back literally about five years later and started from the beginning again and eventually discovered that where I'd stopped playing the first time was about 20 minutes from the end. Whoops.

If you enjoyed your time up to that point and don't regret just watching the ending on youtube or something, then more power to you, you're probably spending more time actually playing games you enjoy.

I dislike how certain RPGs are completely broken when it comes to story boss fights. 7th Dragon III Code: VFD is a game i like a whole lot, but the boss fights, especially near the end are some top tier bullshit. I'm talking enemies applying multiple status effects to the entire party in one move then as soon as cleanse them, they're reapplied by the same attack next turn. I'm talking suddenly the boss gets to attack 3 times in a row because fuck you. I'm talking attacks to powerful that they will literally one-shot you if you don't block and even if you do, you'll be forced to heal the next 1-2 turns. I'm talking bosses specifically targeting the party member with the lowest HP over and over. That type of broken shit. There was another game I played recently that had the same problem but I'm drawing a blank.

Post-game fights are a different beast. That type of content is almost always supposed to be overly challenging, so I'm much more lenient there. Absurd, random difficulty spikes in the story though is the quickest way to get me turn me off your game if I'm not absolutely in love with other aspects of it to the point I'm willing to forgive a lot.

Actually, no, I lied. More than anything else, fuck "true endings." My god, this might be the worst thing Japan keeps doing. This...this shit right here will get me to drop your game in a heartbeat these days regardless of how much I like it. I mean, some games it's not a big deal because the true ending just means something along the lines of deciding between one of two choices at the very very end and either way you can just reload a save and call it a day.

Other games though just...okay...look at this shit from Cross Edge. Who in the fuck came up with this? I mean seriously. You can lock yourself out of the True Ending mere hours into that game because you didn't do this very specific thing at this very specific time. It's like a 70 hour rpg too. I was like 30-40 hours into that game when I found out about the true ending bullshit and I cut my loses right then and there.

I did stop at the final boss of Rogue Galaxy because of how frustrating it was. Especially compared to everything else in the game. The story had also really gone downhill by that point so a lot of my motivation was completely gone.

I often avoid finishing games not because of the difficulty but because I want to accomplish certain last things before I complete the story and those things are usually tedious. For example, I got it in my head that I wanted an Atlas for the last story mission of Battletech, but I've had a hell of a time finding a mission that would pony one up.

I can also get held up on ending-altering decisions that I'm ambivalent toward. Like in Fallout 4, I kind of thought all the options were bad, so I figured I'd think about it and come back to the decision later. Never did.