Tabletop, DnD, board games, and minecraft. Also Animal Crossing.
3rd International Volunteer Brigade (Hexbear gaming discord)
Rules
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
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I love the dwarf city! I love the question of who you should support, because there isn't a good answer.
I just played thru as a city elf, which was fantastic. Just being a lithe babe with a big ass sword chopping down everyone. First time I also decided against diplomacy whenever I could (and my opponents were humans).
It’s awesome! It’s as close to going John brown mode as a game has allowed me as of yet.
If you decide to get the dlc, it has tons of dwarf content. So if that’s a factor in your decision, the fact you also enjoy the dwarf politics would lead me to recommend either of the dwarf origins for a completion run.
Oh I've played thru the game tons of times already (with dlc) I was just asking because it's a bit old and it's rare I get to talk with someone about it. Shale rocks
Shale is so cool, I really liked how her personal quest involved figuring out her identity. First game to introduce identity related concepts that I played.
What are your thoughts on how the dlc with Morrigan handled the ritual ending? I was legit upset the sequel didn’t follow up at all.
Yeah I was really surprised about that on my latest play through! I had completely forgotten it, and it's handled very gracefully. I also love Sten, who feels like ND representation.
I actually just had a discussion about Morrigan just recently, but we didn't really touch on the dlc. She felt like some writers OC self-insert in a way and I feel like the dlc really cemented that. I think there wasn't really a way to follow up on her story while still trying to do the "your choices matter" shtick that they want to do, so it makes sense it was kind of dropped.
Oh shit you had zebran in that run. Lowkey a character that helped me figure some stuff out, also very well written in terms of enjoyment.
Yeah when I played it as a teen I hated stupid sexy Zevran, why did the Devs insist on putting him in my face and making him so suave? So annoying! God why is he just everywhere! Wish he wasn't so stupid sexy, so I could use him as a rogue! Ugh!
Recent playthrough made me remember some things about my young self lol.
In hindsight, BioWare games had me coping hard. I just wanna be friends! Oh no, I keep accidentally romancing a dude.
Reminds me of that Bo Burnham bit:
Don't you just hate it when you're blowing a guy and he turns out to be gay?
Lol
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 too
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.
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.
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'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.
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 rarely 100% anything but I had fun playing all of dredge.
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
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!
AssCreed Rogue works a little bit better since it feels like the maps are a bit smaller.
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.
