It’s sunk cost fallacy, skinner box loops and more. It starts out fun, somewhat enjoyable. Then eventually it turns into a slog, and grind and you lose sight of why you even find it fun to begin with.
By then you’d be hundreds or thousands of hours in, and you end up commenting about your crappy experience here, I guess.
Inkbound is… disappointing.
I played the demo and it was pretty solid. It’s an isometric, turn based strategy roguelike, with multiplayer support and some competitive features. I was initially planning to buy it on release.
But the price at launch was a bit higher than it would be for a no-brainer purchase, and playing requires constant online connectivity, despite supporting singleplayer play, AND came with a cosmetic battlepass out the gate.
I found it ridiculous that the game couldn’t even support offline play before pushing a battlepass. Cosmetic only or no, this game is missing important functions and ultimately put me off getting a paid PC game that hasn’t even gotten it’s shit together before shilling their microtransactions. Smh.
I quite enjoyed the Horizon series! I found the world building and enemy design really kept my interest, even if the game follows the Ubisoft formula (though I admittedly do not play that many open world games, and thus lack that jadedness).
Now I’m partway into Forbidden West after a half year break post Zero Dawn, and my partner’s just finished ZD. I can’t state how much I enjoy shooting components off enemies without getting trampled into the ground, like shooting apples off a tree.
I enjoy top down stealth games, and haven’t seen this game get discussed much, but it was pretty fun - Serial Cleaner (and sequel, Serial CleanerS)
You play a guy who cleans up murder scenes for an unknown serial killer, all the while evading guards and other security measures. It’s a pretty fun experience, and I do recommend giving it a go if that’s your kind of thing.
There’s also the Marvelous Miss Take, a game where you play a woman on a mission to perform a series of heists. Also a top down stealth game, you get to use some gadgets to distract guards while you sneak past and to your goal.
Both are older indie games, but enjoyable for at least one playthrough.