Fellow completionists: What are some games that are very fun especially as completionist games, where the extra goals you dont have to complete add to the experiance if you do? (also read body)
Fellow completionists: What are some games that are very fun especially as completionist games, where the extra goals you dont have to complete add to the experiance if you do? (also read body)
Games that I put in this category: The first spyro game (not sure about the later ones, havent played) and A Link Between Worlds are both very fun and rewarding to complete and never feel like a chore to do so.
One game that is very much NOT in this category, as is often said, is DK64 lol. But everyone says that. I've also heard people say Super Mario Oddessy is fun to beat but not fun to complete, same with BOTW because of the Koroks. People usually say this about SM Sunshine as well but I dont really mind it in this game.
Sidenote complain about the world: Sandbox games combined with my autistic obsessive compulsive need for completionism lead to me playing them with very frusterating habits lmao. No Man's Sky is the worst for me. I LOVE that game but god the respawning ROCKS ruin the experiance kind of. If the rocks stayed gone, I could use them to gradually explore the worlds I'm on in a completiony way. (Even knowing that like even a single planet is kind of impossible to fully explore let alone the entire fucking universe lol). But I cant!!!!!!
Sorry I need to shove that rant into everything. Completionist mindset also limits me with games like Terraria, Minecraft, and Starbound as well but not as badly because I at least can keep track of exploration in those (Or just dig deep pits in minecraft as I enjoy doing to waste time while I watch streams lol).
I also get myself caught in absurd goals that NOONE expects you to do and the game doesnt keep track of (no achievemnt for it or anything) sometimes like doing all coin runs in Mario 64 or marrying, seeing the 14 star event, and then divorcing every spouse in Stardew Valley lol. (I acutally havent started the second thing but it is sort of in my head as a goal).
This turned into a general rant about how my completionism effects me lmao but anyway thoughts.
Fallout 1 and 2
If you go around to all the settlements helping people, you get a different and better outcome for each of those places during the ending sequence of the game. Not sure what that looks like if you go around committing evil, cuz evil playthroughs are whack
Evil playthroughs in games with writing strong enough for you to care do suck, but the very completionist in me that Ive been talking about drives me to experiance everything a game has to offer lol
I'm growing to really enjoy appreciate the Soulslike approach to items and exploration rewards. I may never use 99% the items, but I want all of them because the descriptions are cool and it's always fun to get something unique. This is all reliant on stuff also being interesting, which the Souls games have managed for me at least.
Yeah the teaching lore through item descripttions thing is a fun feature.
Hades and Hades 2 have fun extra goals after you start consistently beating runs, but not so many that it takes a staggering amount of time or skill to seal the deal. 32 heat/vows are hard but not wickedly so. Chatting with the gods is consistently interesting as there is a lot of conversations to unlock.
Baldurs gate 2 and it's expansions are a lot of fun if you don't mind the dated game style. Exploring every nook and cranny in the game makes you far more powerful than if you just go through the main quest line. There is a lot of content and interesting stuff to see in that one.
there is a lot of conversations to unlock.
Unlocking conversations is my favorite type of completionism! I've been meaning to try Hades.
Like when I was a kid I'd play JPRGs but run from battles so I could get to the next town and just talk to people and that was like one line of dialog each! I love talking to people in games always have. So that sounds fun.
would you say hades 2 is in a place where its worth playing instead of waiting a bit for early access to end?
It's very good now but I'm sure the full release will be better
I had a lot of fun completing Celeste!
I felt extremely accomplished
when I finished the main story of the game with enough strawberries to get the 2nd best ending. 
So I planned to see if I could go back and get 'em all, and also work my way through the daunting b-sides. 
But when I found out there were still even far more difficult c-sides 
I am sad to admit, I kinda gave up hope of ever truly completing the game. 
C-Sides are usually easier than B-Sides IMO due to their short length.
Checked out the Steam Summer sale only to be quiet shocked I didnt already own Celeste lol. I havent played it on anything to be clear, Im just used to big names like that laready being in my library because Im addicted to collecting on steam.
Far Cry 3 is one of the only games I ever got to the end of and wanted more, so I went to the options and reset all the enemy bases so I could knife hunt them again.
Most games I play though don't really have game conditions I would even regard as "end" or "complete," or if they do I ignore them, like the rocket in Rimworld or Factorio. In Minecraft my self-appointed win condition is typically using whatever modpack I'm playing to make all materials completely infinite and post scarcity rather than exploration. I kinda resent when a modpack forces too much exploration, honestly.
Yeah I tend to cheat for post-scarcity with Minecraft these days too so I can just dig and/or build (but Im not good enough of a builder to build really). Or when I did multiplayer servers I let other people build the farms and do the end exploration.
I don't mean that I cheat for postscarcity, I mean that my main form of gameplay is to build vast caverns full of inscrutable blocks of machinery which generate infinite quantities of every item in the pack and grumble when I realize that one part of the block of machinery I need to build requires going to the end, or start editing config files if I realize that the modpack is arranged such that I would have to go to the end twice. I also always play with mobgriefing off and never play vanilla.
Yoshi's Island is way more fun to 100% than any other way to play it imo
Being that you are Hexbear user videogame, I will take this as the highest recommendation.
Maybe Death Stranding, but only if the game appeals to you. There was something satisfying to me completing all the missions and maxing out all of the delivery locations to get all the little stars on your uniform.
IDK, I did this in 2020 and it really worked for me then. Haven't touched the Director's Cut content, and I don't plan on it tbh
Metal Gear Solid 5 is the opposite and seems like a nightmare to do a completionist run.
I did a completionist run. My advice is to beat the game first, unlock all the cool gadgets and shit, and then do it. It's pretty fun that way
I still dont know how I'd feel about Death Stranding in practice. Like I look at it and I just cannot sus out how itd feel to play so I'm going to just have to try it some day.
I think I'd actually like completeing MGS5 but i know what you mean
I like Death Stranding but I think it would be better if it were even more of a walking simulator.
I liked death stranding a lot more than I expected to. Its really satisfying delivering boxes.
Yeah, I totally agree on Death Stranding being a difficult sell. The exploration and indirect cooperative play just really worked in a unique way for my tastes lol. I think it has come up as an EGS freebie before, so that (having it come up for free again) might be a way to get it for free without disabling the online components. I think the Director's Cut version has more elements to make it more MGSV-ey, but I never played that version so IDK for sure.
Binding of Isaac, if you like roguelikes! Unlocking all the achievements is the true goal of the game, and every time you unlock one, it adds something to the game (even if it’s just something small, like a possible item drop)
Ooo nice. Sometimes when I try Roguelikes I feel like its impossible to really experience everything which takes me out of it a lot. But I do really like Death Road to Canada in spite of that. The achievement unlocking being the goal sounds fun.
Normal Tunic:
100% Tunic:
Thank you for reminding me to grab this
A friend recomended me Tunic recently. I want to check it out, but the fact that its a Zeldalike thats more focused on combat than puzzles is a bit of a put off for me? Or at least I was told thats what its like lol. Im more into Zeldas for puzzles.
I don't think that's true, at least if you are going for completion it's really heavy on the puzzles.
Disco Elysium.
Dragon Age Origins (I will find all nugs)
Hollow knight? Though some of the challenges were awful difficult
Assassin's Creed black flag is sort of an inverse of what you're describing. Only the side content is good.
Sid Meier's pirates! Is great fun and there's a lot of side content there tooDisco Elysium.
Been wondering about this because I still havent tried it. About how many playthroughs would it take to experiance everything?
There's quests specific to political ideologies and failing doesn't mean you hit a dead end, but you'll probably feel like you've seen almost everything after 2-3 playthroughs. I used console to make my harry a 10 in everything on one playthrough, which was honestly quite funny
Hades is a joy to seek out new content in.
I am pretty sure I’ve seen literally 100% of dragon age origins, one of the best rpgs ever.
Roomed with a guy who owned Origins and I played all the uh... Origins. Barely got started with the main story though. But it was very fun and I'll get around to it.
Whats your favourite origin?
Damn, I had like five attempts at a follow up I deleted lol. Thanks for taking the effort.
It’s hard to go into without spoiling, but replaying as a leftist the city elf origin is very cathartic (starting out being oppressed and getting to right at least some of those wrongs). dwarven noble gets very much into power politics, the dwarf city gets very much into the dynamics of elective feudalism which can be interesting from a Marxist POV. The human noble ties most into the main story. Wood elf is kinda the vibe of “venturing forth into a hostile and alien society and seeing your people must be freed”. Mage ties the most into the trilogy, but I genuinely don’t recommend any of the other games.
If I had to choose a favorite, it was dwarf underclass. It has it all. I won’t spoil why because saying the dwarf act has major political drama is enough of a spoiler already.
Elden Ring platinum is easy except for one boss who is utter bullshit. You can save scum to get all endings in one playthrough and if I'm not wrong only there is only weapon you need to pick up that is missable.
Animal Well! There's some incredibly obscure and esoteric puzzles in that game. Many of them are completely optional, but they're so intriguing that I wanted to figure everything out anyway. I don't think I'm anywhere near "done" yet, even though I beat the last boss already. You can unlock the ability draw on the map as well, so you can keep track of things.
Also maybe Noita? Completing a run and beating the last boss is basically just the tutorial, that game goes deep. There is an in-game achievement tracker for completing some unbelievably convoluted puzzles and challenges.
I thought I hadnt heard of these but it turns out they were already wishlisted lol. Noita's actually got a good sale going right now so Ill pick it up. Thanks.
I'm not really an achievement hunter, but I did 100% Spiderman and Sunset Overdrive just because they were fun enough for me to want to do everything the games offered. Traveling around the map in both of those games is just so much fun.
Sunset Overdrive
Its on sale so I'm going to pick this up right now thanks!
While Mario Odyssey is a little tedious to 100%, the other Mario games are awesome for that. The secret levels and puzzles are usually the most interesting and challenging.
The other mainline 3D Mario games have 120 stars is a classic "easy" 100% to get. The Mario 3D Land games and New Super Mario Bros games usually have explicit stats on each level about how many secrets you've missed. Mario 3 and Mario World have more esoteric secrets, but everything is telegraphed if you pay attention to the levels.
I've heard that the Sunshine 100% is a bit tedious but I think I could manage it. Unfortunately with 64 I set up an arbitrarily difficult goal for myself of all coining every level lol. Not just the 100 coin star thats obvious, getin every unique coin. Thats the way my silly brain works.
Running Remnant 2 multiple times to unlock everything is always a good time
Especially unlocking the Archon archetype which took the playerbase data mining the game to figure out exactly how to do it
Hadn't heard of this game. I'll check it out.
Any chance you could set rules for yourself and try to just see credit screens or something? I sorta' get stuck in similar situations but to a much lesser degree. I was trying to beat all the 150 and 200cc ghosts for the MK8DX DLC tracks and gave up halfway through when I realized I wasn't enjoying it and was only doing it because of the completionist urge that's never benefited me.
I'm not sure I could with like the No Man' Sky example but I could maybe in some other games that arent sandbox open world stuff. But its a hard habit to break lol.
If you liked A Link Between Worlds then Zelda: Majora’s Mask would be a good pick I’d say. Fantastic game with excellent atmosphere that still holds up today, and it is heavily weighted towards side quests and stuff in the overworld rather than dungeons like other Zelda games. The game runs on a time based system so each character has a unique schedule, and while it is not necessary completing every character’s side stories is very rewarding.
Second pick since you liked Spyro would be A Hat in Time. It’s a level based 3D platformer with adorable characters and cell shaded graphics. It’s pretty short and not overly stuffed with collectibles. I think its maybe the only game I have ever gotten 100% achievements on because it’s so cute and fun to play, while not suffering from issues say DK64 has of having just too much stuff to collect.
When I played Majora's Mask as a kid, my slow ploding exploration style in games made the 3 day system difficult for me, but I think I could handle it today so I might set up an attempt to replay it soon. Im decently familiar with the Mask related sidequests because of PBG's collection series of those, but the dungeons are still mostly a mystery to me!
I've definitly been meaning to play A Hat in Time and the fact that its fun to 100% is good to know.
Totally get what you mean I struggled with it as a kid for the same reason. I never even played it properly until it came out on the Wii virtual console. I'd say its the type of game that is totally worth playing with a walkthrough just so you don't miss stuff, which also makes the time aspect pretty trivial. Not sure what your stance is on playing games with guides but I like it for the sort of game where it is easy to miss stuff, but I'm also not the sort that likes to replay games typically.
Cannot recommend A Hat in Time enough for any 3D platformer or overall cute game fans its just fantastic. Probably the only kickstarter sorta thing I have paid for and been super happy with.
Stardew Valley. You could argue the game's "story end' is completing the community center but there's literally a "Perfection" post game ending
Oh I've played a fair amount of SDV on multiplayer with friends. I do want to do a completionist run at some point on my own to do perfection. Though it bothers me that theres no in game modless way to see all the spouses 14 heart events :( . Ill probably be adding the polyamory mod just so I can do that. (or doing it hardway and marrying and then divorcing all of them just for the meaningless bragging rights lol)
Metal Gear Solid 4 was tremendous fun to replay and complete. Beating the game in various ways unlocks new gear (that's maybe a little broken) for your next playthrough.
It's a linear game, so I could see it getting repetitive for some people, but it kept me entertained.
I rarely 100% anything but I had fun playing all of dredge.
It's been a while but I remember enjoying filling out the Assassins Creed 4 map and doing all of the side quests.
I like when I can unlock the fast travel towers for a region and it will tell me where all of the side stuff is. Also love LotR: Shadow of War for similar reasons.
Yeah Recent Asscreed games seem to just have TOO MUCH open world stuff and exploration to really be fun but a smaller scale of that would probably be enjoyable to me. I haven't tried 4 but it is in my steam library. Thanks!
This is kind of where I landed on Odyssey. It has the bones of a decent Witcher 3 clone, but dear god it is tedious as fuck if you try to 100% the Steam/UPlay achievements. It's almost the No Man's Sky problem due to the sheer scope, even though it's not an infinite/procedurally generated world. Still, the initial exploration is pretty chill, especially if you get one of the women's choir ship's crews. Sometimes all you really need out of life is a gaggle of sirens or Ares cultists singing a song to remind you not to piss off Poseidon.
AssCreed Rogue works a little bit better since it feels like the maps are a bit smaller.
Do you like monster catching games? Cassette Beasts and Monster Sanctuary held me for a while. Also, Ni No Kuni to some extent.
Both of the modern Rayman games were pretty fun to collect everything for.
I'd suggest any Monster Hunter game but trying to get everything in some of those will literally take over 1000 hours
I do like monster catching games in theory, but when I played Pokemon X I got so caught up in the details (largely Pokemon aimie, lol) that I never finished the actual game lmao. I have Monster Sanctuary in my steam library already so I'll make a mental note to check that out. Cassete Beasts is wishlisted. I have the Rayman games as well.
Monster Hunter never really caught my interest personally.
Sidenote complain about the world: Sandbox games combined with my autistic obsessive compulsive need for completionism lead to me playing them with very frusterating habits lmao.
I feel this so hard. I really enjoyed Subnautica, but I think I spent more than half of my playtime farming a giant locker full of every single material because I thought I might need them later, but it turns out that you barely need anything to complete the game and there isn't an endgame to speak of. Whoops. It could have been justified if I were into basebuilding, I guess, but that's not my thing.
Another issue I run into is overoptimization--just figuring out the cheese strat or collecting so much that the game becomes trivial. I think that's why I enjoy Resident Evil so much, since survival horror games are designed for you to be a compulsive loot goblin and therefore don't fall apart even when you collect every last bit of ammo.
Speaking of Resident Evil: with Resident Evil: Village, I didn't get true 100% because I don't like the arcade submode The Mercenaries, but I had tons of fun doing a bunch of NG+ runs to max out all the weapons and get all the unlockable collectibles through the main campaign. I find the process of fighting through the first run with the intense experience of not knowing anything and then continuously getting more experienced and more powerful until you're sprinting through and headshotting enemies with your infinite ammo revolver on the highest difficulty by run six.
Others have mentioned SM64 and Super Mario Galaxy, and I'd also add Super Mario Wonder. The final secret level (unlocked after you complete everything else in the game) is a bit frustrating due to the sparse checkpoints, and there's one or two treasure hunt levels where I had to look up a location or two, but I appreciate that otherwise I could 100% the game just using my platform skill and natural loot goblin instincts. I did my whole run through on Ryujinx and it ran perfectly, too!
One that I wouldn't recommend for this is Control, even though I enjoyed the game and it's got a very cool atmosphere. They have this very unfortunate system where they offer four randomly generated generic missions (Kill X of Y enemy [in Z location] or get X kills with Y weapon/ability) and each mission awards a random selection from a tier and an equippable skill/weapon enhancement. You can see both the exact mission as well as the tier and category of reward before accepting a mission (of which you can have three active) and there's no penalty for dropping a mission. This led me to sitting at the assignment board endlessly regenerating missions until I would get a full loadout of missions with the highest tier rewards and reasonably achievable objectives, after which I'd go do those missions, rinse, and repeat. I would not be surprised if I spent twice as much time doing this than actually playing the game normally, and I sank a good 60+ hours into the game. Oh, the worst part is that the rewards aren't unique and there's unspecified variability within tiers (so a tier VI shotgun enhancement could be like +35% damage, but then you get a +36% damage enhancement and are like, "wait, how high does it go?"). And also, you can only see the broadest category type, so the odds are high that you'll get an enhancement that you don't even want. It's funny--I suspect the devs made the system flexible to avoid forcing people to do missions they don't want to, but it created a perfect trap for people like me.
This is a tough one for me. I used to platinum games on ps4 for fun but after I moved back to pc gaming I don't really go for achievements.
I tend to enjoy beating games in general. Especially harder games or at least games that are more obtuse and such. Going back to beat jrpgs on the nes and other emulation I've had a load of fun with. I also enjoy the grind which a lot of people tend to dislike I tend to 100% if I feel it is well implemented and doesnt feel like a chore then i'll go for it. Circle of the moon I 100% in recent memory. Several playthroughs to get the 100℅ depends on the game tbh.Pokemon, at least up to gen 6 anyway. Completing the Pokedex in each gen opened my eyes to the fact that gamefreak had built in a ton of little mini games in the form of Pokemon. Catching feebas for example is a whole fucking thing in Gen 3. A game within a game
God of war (PC) was the last one that I 100% and horizon zero dawn before that. Both were rewarding and didn't feel like a slog. I used to want to 100% everything also, but I've gradually moved to only doing as much completionist stuff as I can before i beat the main story. I'll delay doing main quests until I've finished everything else up to a point but if it starts feeling like a chore then I go back to the story and once that's done I'm usually over the game for a while.
Risk of Rain 2 is a third-person shooter roguelike (especially in co-op) with a very fun metaprogression where you get new characters, alternate moves for those characters, items, and variant modes by getting achievements. I deliberately went out of my way to do everything, when I normally wouldn't.
Vampire Survivors just worked for me, and I enjoyed continually playing through the game after "finishing" it to unlock all the secret characters and upgrades (though I did have to look up how to do a lot of them).
Old School Runescape. it's too long to "100%" though it has insane grinds, but it's fun once you get it.
Wario Land 4, up to and including unlocking the karaoke machine in Super-Hard mode.
I'm not even much of a completionist in general and even less so as I get older, but that's the rare game I still go back to and 100% every couple years because it's just a fucking fun couple of days. Love that game.
All three Dark Souls have very easy 100% achievements that boil down to seeing everything in the game more so than completing difficult challenges. There are one or two that are, admittedly, annoying. But it's not something stupid like "Finish the game in 10 hours!" or "kill every boss while staying level 1".
There are recognitions for finishing a playthrough without dying or using a bonfire in DS2, but that's for the crazy people. And aren't achievements in the traditional sense.
Brütal Legend