Even though longevity and replayability are important qualities for any game, it’s very possible for even very good games to overstay their welcome. Sometimes it’s a personal issue with the player where, for whatever reason they just can’t bring themselves to continue. Other times, it’s an issue with the game’s design. You could be chasing a quest or an ending, and due to some bottleneck outside of your control you just throw your hands up and call it quits. And sometimes, you’ve just played too much and there’s nothing left to do.

I think the 3rd condition is the most common reason for calling it quits and putting a game down. You’ve either finished the story, done all the sidequests or even got the platinum trophy and there really is nothing left to do but to move on. As for the first condition, sometimes we get distracted, other times we’re just not in the right headspace for a given game. I remember putting off Bloodborne for a good long time, only trying it in earnest after finishing Elden Ring. It just happens sometimes, right?

Then there’s the second condition. The one where you like the game and even still enjoy playing it, but it gets to a point where you’re ready to snap and just quit outright whether you finish what you’re trying to do in it or not. I had a taste of that in games like Persona 5 Royal, Destiny 2 and a few others over the years. Some I hung on in, others I didn’t. The most recent case for me is, unfortunately, Hades II.

Now, I love Hades II. I had a blast completing the story and learning how to make broken builds with pretty much every weapon. I love the characters. I love the artwork and music. I love the challenge. What I don’t love, however, is the RNG conversation system that very often obstructs bond progress with the game’s minor characters. It wasn’t a big deal while I was still running through the story, but now that I’m trying to get the full ending and clean up character bonds, it’s proving to be a supremely frustrating system.

It’d be one thing if getting a certain dialog was just a matter of fulfilling its prerequisites (even though those are often cryptic and hard to decipher). But, you also have to contend with both the game’s priority system and RNG on top of it. Add on even more RNG for whether the conditions to meet those prerequisites show up and whether some characters will even appear in a run, and you’ve got the potential for a lot of wheel-spinning before you can get the dialog you need.

Keep in mind also that you have to constantly be grinding currency and materials so that you have enough to buy or craft the rare items you need in order to progress the bonds once you’re finally able to. Oh, and crafting them also takes time! I mean, my goodness! This is as much of a time waster as some of the nastier stuff in the Destiny games! 

It took me my entire playtime with Hades II to get Dora’s questline done! It took that same amount of time just to trigger Arachne’s quest! It’s taking even longer to finish Moros’ bond so that I can advance the Fate’s questline, and freaking Icarus’ bond is feeling downright impossible! 

I’ve done so many runs on the surface, followed all the advice I could find, farmed conditions so that I could meet the prerequisites and Hades II is still, time after time, wasting my time with banter that leads nowhere! I was gonna have him be Melinoe’s romance, but you know what? To heck with it! Moros’ bond is finally almost finished. Guess this story is just gonna default to him.

It’s impressive that Hades II has something like 40,000 lines of unique, voiced dialog, it really is, and I commend Supergiant for putting in that kind of effort. But my goodness, whatever possessed them to take the worst aspect of Hades (this RNG dialog system) and take it even further is beyond me! I am going to get the Fates ending, I’m too stubborn not to. But I’m done fighting dialog RNG to finish the other character bonds and unlock the rest of the weapon aspects. Nope. That’s it. I’m done!

I had a blast with Hades II, but now I feel like I’m being held hostage by RNG. And that just plain isn’t fun, no matter how good the game is otherwise.

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Have you ever felt like a game was purposefully wasting your time? What game was it? Did you stick it out or throw up your hands and call it quits eventually?

Image is a screenshot captured by Hatmonster