I played Nine Sols recently and it had a transformative effect on my gaming experience. I’ve found myself no longer getting mad at fairly structured games and deeply enjoying the personal refinement of my skill set in pursuit of a goal. Suddenly this shift in perspective has allowed me to see difficulty in a new light and truly savor the victory that comes after significant effort. With this new perspective, I decided to try the game that had made me hesitate the most with its reputation for difficulty: Sekiro
Its been truly eye opening to realize that my nervousness has only kept me from a good time. Or maybe I just wasn’t ready for it…
Following that trend, I started Celeste for the first time even though I never play pure platformers, and it has blown my socks off. Do I suck? You bet your ass I do. But I know it’s from a lack of detailed platforming, and developing that skill has been very fun and satisfying.
Now, I’d love to hear from others. What games made you regret waiting so long to try them?
I had the opportunity to buy Xenoblade 1 on the Wii back when the Wii was still pretty new. I hadn’t heard of the game or Operation Rainfall and I certainly didn’t know how hard it was to actually find it in stock on a shelf, and I got something else instead. Much, much later, I picked it up on Switch, having heard something about it a couple years prior and remembering that I had seen it for the Wii that one time. The gameplay was weirdly addictive, the first act has a solid hook, and the back half of the game getting increasingly into wtf territory is exactly the kind of thing I like narratives doing.