Kingdom Come: Deliverance (and its sequel). The story is compelling, the world is historical, there isn't any magic or fantasy to it - you just get better at combat and that raises your societal status. Some of the characters are amazingly well written.

Baldur's Gate III, takes a long time to get started.

Its towards the very end of act 2 when the game feels like you've finally finished the "tutorial" section and are ready to play for real.

They needed another 6 to 9 acts easy.

BG3, The Witcher 3, Final Fantasy 3. Wait do I have a 3 problem?

Outer Wilds. Such a great game. I won't post any spoilers but there were moments I actually held my breath. I had feelings I havent had in any other video game. It was bittersweet to finish. I still haven't done the DLC - I've been saving it for a good time.

RDR2

I never should have left Horseshoe Overlook.

Tomb Raider (2013). You finally fully upgrade all of your gear and get to use for what feels like ten minutes before the game ends. I tried wandering around finding bandits to murder, but they rarely spawned... :( Such a fun game though.

Subnautica. There wasn't really anything left to do, story-wise, but I wasn't ready to go.

The first RDR.

To the point that I still haven't beaten the second one, intentionally. I'll do so whenever RDR3 is on the horizon.

Prey 2017.

Such an underrated game on its own.

The ambient is so immersive to me, both indoors and outdoors, so many details, being able to interact with so many objects in so many ways, even the Looking Glass, I just wish it lasted much more... the ending was however quite disappointing in all aspects, especially from the story perspective and in the "I wanted more" perspective.

Bloodborne for sure. Everything about that game, minus the 30fps lock on PS4, is fantastic in my eyes.

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

"The Room" is always amazing, and it takes a few years between installments. Worth the wait, but I feel sorry for myself every time I finish am installment.

Half Life 2 episode 2

Rift Apart , other Tatchet and Clank games , etc

Honestly, Mario Odyssey was very disappointing to me. The "what if" they kept throwing around for the plot was the only thing keeping me going but at no point did I feel the same way I did with Galaxy or Sunshine. For them to then only give the ending they gave it was just a kick in the balls.

Skyrim. Yeah I know there's a ton to do and the real game is side quests and leveling up etc etc. But after I killed Alduin I kinda looked around and was like "wait is that the end of the main quest?" First game I ever had to google if I had beaten it.

Kingdom hearts 2. It was immersive and amazing from the start and idc how many times I replayed it I will never get that feeling back. The animation , the story and action was awesome back in the day.

I wish Unpacking had gone longer, but I’d be afraid it would either mean Sadie breaking up with her partner or packing up for her after she died. It was bad enough unpacking her in that jerk’s apartment.

Puyo Puyo Chronicle. It's by far the boldest and most creative experiment Sega has ever tried with the series. It introduces a new flagship variant mode called Skill Battle, but the real gimmick isn't the ruleset itself but the story mode built around it. Previous games just had visual novel-style cutscenes for a story mode, but this time around it's a full JRPG with dungeon crawling, sidequests, equipment, recruitable monsters, and more.

It's a brilliant concept, and I think it's the kind of bold new idea that was needed to breathe new life into a dying genre. Versus puzzles have fallen off hard compared to the genre's peak in the 90s - Panel de Pon had been dead for longer than it was ever alive, Dr. Mario and Puzzle Fighter had both been turned into mobile gacha spinoffs and then shut down, Puyo Puyo was pretty much the last surviving IP left at this point. And I think a large part of this decline can be attributed to a lack of innovation.

I think what the JRPG does best is just give players incentives to keep trying even though the game's learning curve is rather notorious - instead of giving up at the first wall they hit, they'll want to keep going for the next level up, next party member, next skill, next dungeon. Making it a JRPG ensures you're never truly stuck because you can always grind, and time spent grinding is time spent practicing. By the time players get to the end, hopefully they'll have learned the basics at least a little bit.

But while I love the ideas behind Chronicle, I do feel like those ideas are held back by how short the game is. There's a lot more they could've done to flesh it out. It's a game that left me wanting a sequel to iterate on and refine these ideas.

Sadly, that sequel never happened. Chronicle was the last main series game they ever released, and nearly a decade later all they've been doing since is rehashing the same terrible crossover four times. They did try to cram a butchered version of Skill Battle into said rehashes, but without the accompanying JRPG I feel that adaptation missed the point.

BRAZILIAN DRUG DEALER 3: I OPENED A PORTAL TO HELL IN THE FAVELA TRYING TO REVIVE MIT AIA I NEED TO CLOSE IT (link)

If you love old early 3d boomer shooters, deep-fried memes, and brazil, you will thoroughly enjoy this one. Looks like a string of trippy community maps some rando would patch together, but it's actually well-made and executes the shitposting perfectly. It runs on quakespasm (source port for quake), and is pretty much a total conversion mod for quake.

Probably not the type of game you were expecting, but it's really short and there are very few things like it. It's cheap and can run on basically anything. Would recommend

I have two. First is Portal2. I had so much fun in that game. The second is Half-Life: Alyx. That is the game that taught me how immersive a VR game could be. I particularly enjoyed one part where I was in a pitch black tunnel with only a narrow flashlight beam to try and spot the head-crab that I could hear somewhere nearby in the darkness. But the whole game was a fantastic experience.

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided.

All the way through it felt like there was more coming until there wasn't, it just fizzled out.

Elden Ring.

Like... That's it? only 1153 hours before I got bored? Where's the rest of the game, Micheal?

The DLC left more questions than answers. Tons of huge monuments and you get to them expecting maybe a cool item, but then it's just a plaque with a single sentence like "Merangue the Wise ate a muffin here" but then nothing anywhere even tells you who the fuck Merangue the Wise is or why eating a muffin is significant.

This is what I want more of. Fuck the boss fights, I just wanna learn about all the randos named once and never heard of again.

Mirror's Edge. The ending scene in the game with the helicopter, I thought I was only halfway through, until I saw the credits roll in. I was like "WTF? THAT'S IT? THAT'S HOW IT ENDS??"

Then I played Mirror's Edge Catalyst, which I think perfectly carries on from that horribly fumbled ending, but the gameplay just feels too overengineered to be enjoyable, they ruined the fighting mechanics, and the part that hurts me the most is that a majority of the original art direction was lost, it just feels like it was trying to blend in with all the Cyberpunk 2077 clones.

In both cases I'm sure it's because of EA

Both "Dishonored" games

I am reluctant to re-visit Half-Life 2 and its episodes. Simply because they were great games for their time and overall classics. I just remember in Episode 2, looking back longingly at the devastated City 17 when you launched the rocket in episode 1. How much reflection I did about the series I completed and the episodes I would complete after.

It was an experience going through those games all the way the first round, recalling all of the hype, the memes, the talks and so much build up. Revisiting it now for me would just be rewriting those memories over.

The Messenger is another. Really loved that game for what it was. It had so much charm to it.

superhot, i think, haven't played it in a while

Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

But not like you think. I was fairly early in the game, and I was just treasure hunting in the castle to get some good gear before I continued on (good swords and bows that respawn regularly but break over time). Also, if you've never played it, the game is not entirely linear, you have four main powers you can gain from fighting and freeing four spirits in different zones, as well as shrines for additional powers and health. But you could spawn at the beginning of the game, do the initial questline to get the paraglider, and then go straight to the castle to fight the BBEG. And you'd die, but you could try!

So I was treasure hunting and I accidentally fell down a hole and ended up fighting the final boss. And then won. And then had to reset to the previous save before falling in. I spent the rest of the game thinking "I don't actually need this to win, it's all for overkill." And it was. So much overkill. It really wasn't fair at all. The separate storylines were really good and worth doing anyway, though. Beating the game was just kind of a fight tacked on to the end of a fantastic story.

Titanfall 2. Such a well-crafted and deftlessly-executed story that lasted just a few hours. I really wish they had poured effort into making it the exceptional single-player experience it could have been instead of just another arena game.

Horizon: Forbidden West because the story,music, voice acting, and gameplay really pulled me in. I felt a lot of emotions that I hadn't felt in a long time because of this game. When it ended I felt like I was losing something dear to me lol

Baldurs Gate 3 left me wishing for more, but that is entirely because the third act was so damn rushed compared to the rest of the game.

Deathloop

I first played Deathloop on Gamepass and loved it even though I rushed through it (one of the negatives of GP is rushing through games so you "get your money's worth"). When it came back to GP, I convinced my friend to play it, and ended up going through it a second time (though, again, hurriedly). I bought it on Steam at full price and gave it to my kid's S.O. as a gift, but didn't start playing.... Until a couple weeks later when I canceled Gamepass and picked it up on Steam for $8. Been going through it for the 3rd time now, taking my time and exploring it all. Still enjoying it immensely, and still getting sucked into the lore!

GTA IV

It was strange - I'm not much of a gamer anyway, but I'd never felt that way before after finishing a game. I really fell in love with NYC, even though it's not at all the kind of place I'd want to live in.

Still, I had this sad, melancholic feeling hanging around for probably a week after.

Last of Us, both Part 1 and 2, were incredibly bittersweet endings. Was happy to see the stories conclude, but loved the games so much I definitely wanted more.

Elden Ring and Dark Souls 3 probably fit the category too. Not bittersweet endings really, but the games were so much fun I didn't want them to end.

Weirdly enough : Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous. It's an absurdly long game, each run lasting for more than 75 hours, but it ends like half an hour after your unlock the last level for your characters and you basically never get to experience playing as a true late-game party. I never played the DLCs though, so maybe that's no longer true

Just beat Simon in Clair Obscur last night actually. It was an awesome fight the whole way through, but eventually I made it through. The sad part is there's truly nothing left, it was as hard a fight as it could possibly be. Now I need a new game.