Games so nostalgic that they would be emotionally exhausting to revisit?

Kind of like a counter-thread to 'Games you can't quit'.

The #1 by far for me is The Legend of Dragoon. That game consumed close to a year of my life when I was younger, I had one other friend that was playing it at the same time and we would talk about it at school every single day for months.

Basically what I'm getting at is this game meant so much to me at that time that I can't even imagine revisiting it as I feel like the nostalgia(4 discs of it!) would hit so hard that it makes me depressed just thinking about it.

I understand where your're coming from I always go back to F.E.A.R. and Crysis and Max Payne 1 and 2 it depresses the shit out of my that there are no AAA PC exclusives or PC as lead platform at least. Where stuck with graphic downgrades horrible FOV on the gun models no quick save or quick load. Missing old gaming PC features that have been taken away for no good reason it really pisses me off. PC gaming has devolve in someways I'm disgusted in the gaming industry and it depresses me that it has come to this.

Warhammer Online and, to some extent, World of Warcraft.

I put 7- 8 years of my life in both (and I'm, in a way, still doing it) - Warhammer virtually had to shut down in December 2013, in order to make me stop playing it. There was simply no other way to separate us <3

There are emu servers, but I am still afraid to return to it - a mixture of fear of both addiction and nostalgic paralysis, I guess!?

Quake 3

When I was 18 my father passed away, I spent every night the entire summer venting my anger in quake 3 multiplayer in order to be a functioning human being during the day. I can't look at that game anymore without having all those feelings wash over me.

I was in WoW when that happened, maybe I'll return someday. I actually never thought about the reason I left!?

I promised myself I'll do couple things with my life that I know would make him happy, I delayed these for too long.

The Original Shenmue, My marriage was breaking down, and they game with its slow pacing and emotional hooks means its real hard to go back to for me.

I made the mistake of playing through Braid right after a 4-year relationship ended.

I had to hide it in a category in Steam with other games I'll never play again. Didn't even like looking at the title. Still haven't touched it.

The Last of Us would be emotionally exhausting to revisit. I just reread your title though and I wouldn't say it's for nostalgic purposes.

Ragnarok Online for me. I played that game, well mostly the free beta, in a period of my life when I was at my absolute loneliest, so playing it now would just bring back some shitty feelings of nostalgia.

This is a great question. I generally associate Final Fantasy games with very specific eras and situations of my life and certain music and moments in those games remind me of people who are not in my life anymore and that can be hard, but for the most part there's a lot to take in while playing a game and I can separate those memories when I'm replaying them. It's more so when I listen to the music on its own that I'll have an involuntary nostalgic reaction.

I feel like I haven't got anything that I associate quite as strongly with traumatic events as the people who've posted before, but Raptor: Call of the Shadows is something I played so much as a kid that any enjoyment I might still get from the gameplay is overwhelmed by the sensation of lost youth.

I think the closest I can think of is Bio Menace, but it's not that it's emotionally draining to revisit so much as it is just an easy reminder of a rough period in my life. I was in various residential treatment facilities throughout my teens, and for a good stretch of time, the only game I had access to was the shareware episode of Bio Menace that was, for some reason, installed on the house computer. I was already nostalgic for that game at the time (around 2001/2002), so I played it a lot.

Now, whenever I revisit it, those feelings of unchecked teen angst exacerbated by mental illness and unusual circumstances come rushing back. Not necessarily in a bad way, just in a deeply self-reflective way.

Funny thing is, that same RTF later gave me some amazing memories, and games I played at that time give me far fuzzier feelings now. Wrestlemania 2000, Twisted Metal 3 and 4 (yes, the "bad" ones), etc. Crazy how much can change in a few months. Then I was transferred to another RTF, and... let's just say I have a hard time going back to Yoshi's Island. No nostalgia involved at all there, just bad times set to the soundtrack of Baby Mario's wails.