Most devastating loss of a save file

[Ando85]

I've done this topic before years ago and it always gets good amount of responses so here we go.

Little brothers overwrite your save files, save files get corrupted, and memory cards get lost.
What save file have you lost that was the most devastating to your time and effort on a game?

 

[Liquidprid3]

Sonic Adventure 2 file. I almost had all of the medals, and I deleted it by accident. No save file was corrupted, I was just an idiot.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

hmm...don't know if I can remember the most devastating, but one that recently happened last year:

I was doing some cleaning on my computer (formatting my backup drives and such) , so I transferred a bunch of my game stuff to my flash drive for safe keeping...(or so I thought)

my brother removed it without first ejecting it (he's young, and he didn't want it to break with it sticking out, which is smart I'll grant him that) and with that, I lost all my xcom EU saves, and I was about 2 missions out from the end...

was not a happy camper, all my soldiers were one shot KO'd by a fellow human.

 

[OneCatch]

What save file have you lost that was the most devastating to your time and effort on a game?

Back in the days of the Gamecube I had one of those 64mb save chips (64mb ones were gratuitously excessive at that time).
It had all my savegames on it (for about 15 different games), and it died. 12 year old me was quite devastated because losing progress was almost a completely new concept - I'd had an N64 previously where progress was saved on the cartridge (and miraculously never had any problems) and the PC was reliable.

I've probably lost more playtime since (my first Morrowind character was about level 80 and had god-only-knows how many hours into it when I lost it due to dead harddrive, lost a bunch of Total War full campaigns that were almost complete). But I was at least hardened to the possibility of it happening then!

 

[Leemaster777]

I actually had a pretty devastating one last week.

I started a new game on the Kingdom Hearts HD Remix, in an attempt to get several trophies (not changing your armor, beating on beginner mode, no continues, and beating the game in under 15 hours).

By the time I got to Wonderland and went to save, I realized in horror that I had accidentally saved over my original save file. My 100% complete save file (except for Gummi Missions). Whelp, that's over 50 hours of gameplay down the drain. Not looking forward to having to gather ALL those synth components to create the Ultima Weapon again (especially those damn Sniperwilds).

 

[Treeberry]

When I was a kid I had the 'fun' version of Pokemon Crystal (although mine was a bit more coherent than the ones I've seen online). I was so desperate to have Pokemon Crystal that I kept going despite the fact that my saves had a 1/3 chance of mysteriously vanishing. Sure, it was a bootleg game but I was a kid and my parents were clueless about that sort of thing. Every time it deleted itself was devastating because nobody would listen to me about my dodgy copy and it was a choice between Dodgy Pokemon Crystal or Dodgy Oracles or Crappy License Game or Dodgy 100 in 1.

Speaking of the dodgy Oracles games...

 

[Weaver]

For me it was my 100% completion Batman: Arkham Asylum run.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

My cousin was playing Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction and saved his damn progress of a single day over my own save, the one I had been "working on" the entire holidays and had practically completed - I was just missing the very last mission. Way to go cuz. And this other time I saved my Riku game over my completed Sora game in Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories, thinking they would just pile over. Nope. Completely erased it. So much for being tidy.

In any case my first experience taught me to keep different memory cards for my games and when my cousin visited.

 

[SweetShark]

Yep.......in my PS2 console.....
Somehow I manage to loose the save file [I don't remember how] of the game "Rogue Galaxy".....
Man, it was a glorious......

EDIT:
Btw, I never finished the game.

 

[sky14kemea]

Harvest Moon, surprisingly.

I had about 5 years of hard work. I had the biggest house I could upgrade to, a wife, a kid who was learning to walk, and a ton of money from both animals and crops. I also had one of the elves water everything for me so I only ever had to harvest.

And then I was a dumb butt and I accidentally saved over it by hitting the wrong button. It hit me really hard.

I've not been able to play the game for very long ever since. All that time and effort, gone...

 

[Redd the Sock]

My first playstation memory card:

Final fantasy 7
Final fantasy 8
Final fantasy tactics
Xenogears
Parsite eve
Brave Fencer Mushashi

and some other stuff. I cried.

 

[PFCboom]

I had a totally bad-ass team on Pokemon Blue, with a totally awesome Blastoise. Then I lent it to a friend of my brother's named Drew. He started a new file, got a Bulbasaur, and gave it some stupid nickname that I can't even remember.
It didn't take long before we all figured out that Drew was not a good kid. I get the feeling he's either high as a kite right now, or on the streets. Sucks to be him.

 

[T_ConX]

My Wii died before I could transfer my stuff over to a WiiU. This lost me save data for all my Wii games, the saddest loses being:

XenoBlade - 70 hour game clear data
Twilight Princess - 100%
Skyward Sword - I was about three dungeons in
Smash Bros Brawl - ALL DOSE TROPHIES!

Oh, and then there's that time a lent a friend my Pokemon Gold card for two days and he overwrote my save. I lost a lvl100 Houndoom.

 

[SnakeTrousers]

Every time my Max Payne 3 save file got deleted, which was more than a few.

If you don't have a save file, you have to watch a six minute cutscene before you can even get to the start screen.

 

[Cloned31]

Final Fantasy 6 literally might have cried on this one. Stupid GBA cartridge moved while in the slot of the GBA and corrupted my save file. Literally I had the same depressed look on my face for the entire day.

 

[crispskittlez]

My MGS4 save was corrupted immediately before the final battle against Ocelot. I wouldn't consider it nearly as devastating as a lot of the posts above me, but I was definitely annoyed because it was literally right before the end of the game.

 

[the December King]

It's not exactly the same thing, but I installed the original Neverwinter Nights (2002) improperly onto my C drive years ago. I played the game for about an hour, but I didn't really like it, and accessed the uninstall option and waited patiently... as the uninstaller deleted my C drive.

 

[gibboss28]

Pokemon Blue.

I nearly had all 150 pokemon, just needed to level and evolve a few to get to that golden number. I stop for the night and save it. I switch on my Gameboy in the morning...and the save file is missing. As in...there is New Game. There is Option. There is no Continue. It was sad day indeed.

 

[solemnwar]

It's not exactly the same thing, but I installed the original Neverwinter Nights (2002) improperly onto my C drive years ago. I played the game for about an hour, but I didn't really like it, and accessed the uninstall option and waited patiently... as the uninstaller deleted my C drive.

I sucked in a breath reading the last sentence there. Oh my god that must have been horrible.

OT: My sister saved over my Unreal Gold save file. Which reeaaaally pissed me off as I'd gotten very far, with no cheats... and I used to cheats to get myself quickly back to where I was. Unfortunately, once you've used cheats, it's really hard to not use them (*looks at Skyrim*), at least for me, so I never finished the game "properly". Although I did TRY to do the finale battle without cheating. God that was hard. Unreal II is piss-easy in comparison.

 

[Jack Nief]

A long time ago, I had RPG Maker. I got into it for a while. My last project on it was something I put all my effort into. And I accidentally overwrote the Game Data with an empty Save Data file. I lost everything. That's a pretty massive blow to a 14-year-old kid.

Most recently was actually about a year or so ago. My PS3 system dies. Horribly. It was right after I got PS+ too, and the only game which had its save data uploaded was Harmony of Despair. My most devastating losses:

Saints Row 2. I had a full, legitimate 100% completion file, every mission completed, every diversion item gained, every activity done, every spraytag hit, every CD collected. What was weird was it somehow picked up a Cheats Enabled asterisk after a while.... but no cheat was flagged as on, and the game still autosaved after completing missions/activities and I still had my No Fall Damage, stuff which doesn't stick around during cheat-enabled games, and attemtping to turn on cheats gave me a warning. Losing that save made me die a little inside.

My Final Fantasy XIII-2 100% save. All fragments found, all endings completed, 5-starred the Final Boss... Oh sure, I was pissed for a while, but my most recent playing of the game got me back to that and beyond, and is now a Platinum Completion Save, which took a long damn time to get.

Lastly, my library of Soul Calibur III Create-A-Souls. I had over 100 characters. 10 Virtual Memory Cards full of these characters. What really sucks is even if I managed to save these, I can't use them, my new console isn't Backwards Compatible.

It's not exactly the same thing, but I installed the original Neverwinter Nights (2002) improperly onto my C drive years ago. I played the game for about an hour, but I didn't really like it, and accessed the uninstall option and waited patiently... as the uninstaller deleted my C drive.

I remember Pool of Radiance did that too. Fortunately I wasn't a victim, but holy CRAP that must have sucked.