Your Least Satisfying Gaming Victory

[tseroff]

The final boss of Deus Ex: HR when you have full hacking capabilities is so easy that it's not fun. At all. Walk up, hack, walk back, wait a few seconds, done.

All of that game's boss fights are sub-par, but that isn't challenging at all. It gave an otherwise excellent game a bit of a sour climax.

Edit: Not exactly ninja'd, but the above post is kind of perfect

 

[sagitel]

skyrim. i hate the main story line's ending ... now that im thinking i hate all of the story line's ending the original game! its just ... nothing! no fucking animation no fucking winning thingy nothing at all.

the dragon age: origins. my character was a mage. in the last level i had been killed, violated, raped by darkspawns,killed and killed again, and flewn with 1% of my health left at least a 100 times in each and every part and level of the game, so i expected the last boss to be some kind of really strong dragon, killing my whole party many times. but no. i lost all of my party except the main character early in battle but then i just hitted the dragon while it attacked the soldiers coming. it didn't even attack me!!!

 

[COMaestro]

I'm going to have to go with Resistance 2 I think. And I figure it has been long enough since this game was released that you will have played it if you wanted to, so spoilers, HO!

Hale dies! After all the crap he goes through in the game he finally succumbs to the Chimera virus or whatever it is (mostly due to his own insistance on not going to base for medicine) and is shot in the head by his teammate. Overall, Resistance 2 did not seem as good as the first one, but the ending just sucked. I have never cared for endings where you are rewarded for all your hard work by watching the character you have controlled the whole game die.

So I'd also probably have to put Red Dead Redemption in here. And even some of the endings to Castlevania 2: Simon's Quest. And Shadow of the Colossus deserves an honorable mention.

 

[Klara Vlerick]

Fable II, the last battle was over way too fast.

 

[The_Waspman]

Rage.

There wasn't even a final boss battle. Just a bunch of the same aliens I'd been wiping out handily for the past half hour or so.

So. Much. This. I'm sure I'm not the only person who played this and thought 'right, thats all the mooks out of the way, now here comes the bo... end credits? Wait, what the fuck!?

Ditto Darksiders 2. Considering how many three stage events there are through the game (everything, ALWAYS, three fucking times) I was expecting to have to kill the final boss three times, have him go through like, three evolutions or something. But no. Possibly the easiest boss fight in the game, where without even trying I kill him first time, and I actually said, out loud (to myself) 'Is that it!?'

 

[Racecarlock]

Mafia II. I was thinking "Oh sweet. Time for one last showdown with the cops and possible leo himself", but then the camera pans up and the credits start and I'm like "What the fuck!?"

There is no middle finger big enough. I drove to at least 9 different gas stations to sell stamps, I cleaned virtual prison toilets, I chaperoned drunk people around at least twice, I color matched cigarette boxes, and this is what I get? Fuck you mafia II, I'm going to go play something that knows it's a game and not a melodrama with random chores thrown in.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

Fable 2 Final boss.

He was talking too much and I just shot him once and he was done...anti-climatic if you as me.

Yes it was rather anti-climactic, but I still found it immensely satisfying.

 

[Xathos]

The final boss of Xenosaga episode 1. By that time I had done most of the sidequests, and had obtained the super robot summon Erde Kaiser. Erde Kaiser deals 9999 hit no matter what (I believe). The final boss starts off with ???? HP, until eventually numbers start showing up. So I hit the boss till I saw he had like 9000 HP left and used Erde Kaiser. Beat him quite easily.

Always felt kind of awkward about that fight. If I were to ever go back and do that series for whatever reason, I would try to fight the final boss without it, just to make up for what I did.

 

[Genixma]

Final Fantasy VII. After a seriously strange fight with Bizarro Sephiroth, i reached the final boss, used Knights of the Round, the copy attack ability (i forget what its called) and i think Clouds final Limit Break and the boss died! I was disgusted, only later i realised i was supposed to face him without leaving the crater and grabbing all the disk 3 content, without that it might have been a tough fight but seriously, a final boss should never, ever die that easy.

A similar experience. Majora's Mask. The lead up was awesome and the entire game is just so grand I play it to this day. But the final boss fight. Yeeesh. Once you gain that Fierce Deity Mask before the final boss it's pretty much GG.

 

[MDSnowman]

My first time through Final Fantasy X I made sure to grab everything. Every ultimate weapon, every ultimate limit break, every aeon... all of it. Played more than fifty games of Blitzball (the reason I will NEVER play that game again... ugh)

I went into the Omega cave expecting the game to tear me a new rectum. I was so keyed up I didn't notice how easily I was slipping past the trash in there. When I finally reached Omega I unleashed the move I'd been saving for him the whole time... Three Sister's Delta Attack. Expecting the attack to buy me enough time to burn him down with everyone else's best limit breaks.

The sisters did over 80,000 points of damage, Omega pooped himself and died.

I sullenly wandered off to the end of the game and beat it while barely trying.

 

[Tilted_Logic]

Incredibly obvious answer: ME3, pre extended cut. I cured the genophage, united the Quarians and the Geth, beat the Reapers... and all I got was a blue beam of light.

More interesting answer: This one game of Journey, although the term "victory" doesn't quite fit since the game doesn't offer much in the way of adversity. Nonetheless, I spent the whole game guiding some random person through the desert, showing them all the secrets and the glyphs then somehow managed to become separated from them during that final triumphant ascent. I waited for ages on the last ledge, but they never turned up. Walking into the light on my own just wasn't the same.

However, afterwards the person sent me a message over PSN saying thanks. That made up for it.

Up until your last sentence, I could have sworn that was me.
Found someone early on in the journey and we went through everything together... Until the very last point at which we somehow got separated during the rush. Waited at the top, glided back up and down searching but to no avail. Was very disheartening to complete them game without them... But at the same time, I think it says something about Journey that it makes you feel such a strong bond with someone you only share a brief existence with.

Also, I too was going to state ME3 as my least satisfying, but merely because it was the most stark and recent that came to mind. There are quite a few other minor ones...

Spoiler: Borderlands 2 minor spoiler

Wilhelm... I had expected him to be a challenge and found myself extremely disappointed after all the warnings surrounding him. I have yet to do him on a secondary playthrough though, so perhaps I will be more satisfied with the fight at a later date.

But truly, I'm not sure what I would deem my least satisfying in the history of my gaming days. Perhaps the thousands of hours I dedicated to my shaman in WoW; the gearing, research, the hours spent wiping on bosses... to finally become part of something that I could be semi-proud of. Guild was top of the server, we pushed through hard modes, taking server first titles left and right...

But then I just lost interest in the game. 2 expansions later and my Outlands and WotLK glory days are but dust. None of it means anything now. None of it really meant anything in the grand scope of things, and as I've matured I realize just how much of my youth I wasted on something that truly.... didn't matter..

 

[Yopaz]

I just finished a campaign in Battle For Westnoth and I was severely disappointed. It lasted three rounds and it just felt too easy after all the hard battles leading up to it.

 

[sageoftruth]

Any emulator old emulator game that I beat through excessive save scumming. Nothing robs you of your feeling of triumph like save scumming.

 

[doomspore98]

My first super mutant behemoth in fallout 3 glitched out on the texture and let me shoot him with an assault rifle until he died.

 

[TheMadDoctorsCat]

So I've been playing Trials Evolution. For those who don't know, it is a game that gets painfully difficult after a while, to the point where you'll ask yourself multiple times why the hell you're even still playing. I finally finished a ten minute long track called "Gigatrack," got myself a tidy gold medal. And I look at my time spent and I just felt... empty. There was no joy, no shame, hardly any emotion at all. I had achieved momentary victory... but at what cost? Hours of my time, my very life's essence, and in the end, it was no victory. I had fought tooth and nail, but there was no satisfaction... only inevitable emptiness.

So, Escapists, what of you? What wins of yours have been short-lived, petty? Mutually assured? Astound us with your tales of unsatisfying, or outright undeserved, gaming victories. The multiplayer games where you steamroll a bunch of newbs and feel that, in the end, no-one won. Those games of Left 4 Dead where the last member of your team crawls over the finish line and stares back at the corpses of their fallen comrades and, instead of elation or joy, just sighs in defeat. Those games of XCOM where... those games of XCOM.

Regale us with your least satisfying gaming victories!

Getting sixteen "perfect" victories in a row in "Super Street Fighter 2" on the Sega Megadrive. No saves, no continues. If you so much as take a single jab's worth of damage or block a special attack, you're done and have to start again. Took me several months using Vega. After finally completing this feat, which had taken SO long and SO much work, I end up wondering what the heck I'd just done with my life.

 

[Purple_Kuja]

Buddha in Fate/Extra. The Lancer 2 bosses ago was so difficult for me that I spent hours on the one fight. The enlightened one was much easier by comparison, plus the plot that happened before and after the fight left a bitter taste in my mouth

 

[redisforever]

I once made a guy resign fifteen minutes into a game of AOE2.



By building a wall.

I can beat that. I was playing Company of Heroes: Online, 1v1 match. Guy apologizes right at the start for having a crappy connection, and eventually disappears. Normally, when someone drops out of a game, the AI takes over. It didn't. His troops just stood there, doing nothing. If I quit, that would mean I lost the game, and I didn't want that. So I went over with one riflemen squad and basically executed every soldier he had, and blew up every building he had. Man, that was a shitty round...

 

[Glic2003]

I would have to say Duke Nukem Forever. The whole game was just such rubbish I was constantly asking myself, "why am I playing this? Oh well, I'll just see it through to the end." Then I get to the end and the ending is basically nonexistant.

 

[Brendan Stepladder]

I just beat Bass GS in Megaman Battle Network 3. When I was a kid, I could never muster the skills to even beat the regular game, and wondered what monstrous entity Bass's final form must have been like. I faced him today, and clobbered him easily. I was sorely disappointed.

 

[AsurasEyes]

Every enemy in Dark Souls. That game was agonizing to play. The difficulty was fine. The lack of a tutorial was fine. The whole attacking and defending thing was fine. It's just that when you hit an enemy, they seem to say, "oh, I'm dead" and lightly fall over. I have a goddamn claymore you asshole! I'm using a weapon that can cut through seven men with one swing, why the fuck don't you get thrown to the ground in a spray of gore and mangled meat?!