Anybody have any games they really liked on a first play through and then fell out of love with it later on? I’m going through it right now with the city builder game Workers and Resources. I’ve got 26 hours in it on Steam. Most of those hours came years ago when I first tried the game. I had a good grasp of it then naturally hopped off it when something else caught my eye. Every time I try it now I just can’t get past how janky it is. It truly is Eurojank the city builder game.
My biggest issue is relearning the build order. Set up a village, import some power, setup water, build a bus depot. I think I’ve got all the boxes checked off for what I’m supposed to do but nothing happens. Busses take no workers to the coal plant. Everything is still on warning that I’m missing resources. Then I get into the weeds and can’t find what’s wrong. I give up. This is the last few times I tried the game. I’m prone to jumping off a game if it’s too complex but knowing I used to have this one down and it’s all different now has me really souring on it.
That’s the shame of it. I know I liked the game at one point but there’s been too much time between first seriously getting to know the game and it’s systems and now. It’s the probably the only city builder I’ve ever played that’s not a pick up and play type game. This is my genre of choice going back to SC2000. This one stings.
Anybody else have anything like this happen to them?


NieR: Automata. This game was definitely not something that I would normally pick up but it kept showing up on “must-play” lists so I figured I would give it a shot when it was marked down like 70%. The initial impression from the intro/tutorial was pretty underwhelming due in large part to the confusing change in gameplay from top down shooter to side-view to normal 3rd person but once I got through that I found the setting and presentation of the game really compelling. I was even reading about the lead developer and searching for other projects to potentially pick up once I finished this one. That lasted for about 10 hours or so…spoiler ahead but I figured out how to hide the text if you haven’t played this and are considering it.
spoiler
Once I got to the Friendly Robot village there was a subtle change and that kinda snowballed into something far weirder. The talking robots with their bizarre personalities (child robots, WTF?!) and all of the strange requests felt like such a break in the general tone that I just found myself less and less interested in finding out “what happens next”. The difficulty curve was pretty good and there are a ton of areas to explore but I suddenly realized that I just didn’t care anymore…
Obviously this is a bit of an unpopular opinion based on the super high scores it gets and others stuck it out for multiple replays to see the “good” endings but I just couldn’t convince myself to even finish it the first time. YMMV.