are you trying to say i should have played the demo first?

i did play the demo several months ago, but i don't remember there being any of this "find and destroy 16 drug dens etc..." around every corner.

anyway i only paid 6 bucks for the game.

Strangely enough, i gave up on FF VII back when it came out right before fighting sephiroth, for no real reason, just stopped... and its been bugging me for years that i never beat it. Just last night, i bought FF VII on the PSN for $10 and plan on getting through it this time and finally seeing the ending

It's got to be really tough to get me to give up.

I love hard games and hate easy ones. Loved Devil May Cry 1. DMC3 - I got to one of the earlier bosses. Agni and Rudra (Ice and Fire guys). Tried to do the fight about 20 times. Never could beat it. Put the game down and never got back to it. Played and liked DMC4 but I still haven't gone back to 3.

I'm also a Dragon Quest fanboy. I bought DQ7 (PS1) on release date. Played like 92 hours of it. The last boss kicked my butt about a dozen times before I decided I'd need to level up or something. Never got back to finishing it. I hate level grinding. Still have the save on my virtual PS1 card on my PS3. Not like the ending would matter much now anyway since I barely remember the story.

Did something similiar with Star Ocean 3. I got through 80 hours of the game to the point where you can run around and do optional quests. Continuing without the sidequests was difficult (difficulty level of the main storyline was pretty high without doing any of them). Then my first daughter was born. Never did get around to finishing it up.

Normally this is what happens with me. I put it down after too much frustration and never get around to coming back to it. I don't mean to give up.

Indeed. Stranglehold was one of those demos that actually gives you a 100% accurate representation of the full game.

I've given up on relatively few games in recent years, but I've also played fewer games in that time. I'll really only give up on a game if it's too hard or just not that interesting. Most recently, I gave up on Littlebigplanet because there's just not much of a game there. It's incredibly charming and cute, but the gameplay itself is really shallow. I gave up on Devil May Cry 4 for similar reasons, though there was a bit of the "too hard" element to it as well. I originally gave up on Bioshock because the Normal difficulty was way too hard for me. But I eventually went back to it and played through on Easy and I'm really glad I did.

The only game I've played in recent years that I can think of that doesn't fit into the "too hard" or "too boring" categories is Wind Waker. I had to stop playing because of finals and I just lost all momentum I had for playing the game. I tried to go back to it a couple of times, but I couldn't remember what I was supposed to be doing and I sure as hell wasn't going to start over from the beginning, so I never finished the game. Not even sure how far I'd made it into the game to be honest, so I may have actually gotten bored with it before the end. I'll never know.

This is what usually happens to me. I get to the point of a JRPG where the world opens up and the sidequests materialize, and you need to start grinding to continue... so I play a bit then stop. When I come back to it, I totally forget what the heck was going on, what quests I was halfway done with, what the battle system is like, etc.

I agree about FFVIII... being forced to spam unskippable summons really turned me off that game.

I'm playing Secret of Monkey Island now and I can't figure out how I ever finished these games without the internet. Point and click games (like the Telltale ones) are so much easier and more logical now, but going back to SoMI you realize how hard and completely obtuse these games used to be. No wonder they died off.

I never quit when or if a game gets boring. There's a good chance that the boring part is just preparing you for something good. I do however give up when it becomes to hard. I'm very competitive and I like to win so when I keep getting my butt handed to me I lose interest. The only time a game should be hard is when you face mid-level bosses, high-level bosses and the final boss. I shouldn't have to spend to much time on a puzzle or a dumb room full of traps.

I generally quit if the game is repetitive or frustating AND the story isn't engaging.

Recently, I almost gave Devil May Cry 4 back to the friend I borrowed it from since it was incredibly tedious. If things hadn't gotten interesting at the halfway point, I'd have quit. stuck through with it and enjoyed the remainder of the story, but was angry with the "backtrack" to the beginning gameplay. Very uninspired.

I quit FFVII because the story did nothing for me, which made the numerous turned based battles unbearable. I made it through part of the second disc, then sold it.

That second mission did suck. The rest of the game was pure carnage though. I actually loved the game and thought it captured the over-the-top nature of its film predecessor, "Hard Boiled."

The multiplayer is a blast, but no one plays sadly.

No offense to any Devil May Cry fans but the first one is the best one IMO. Part 2 was boring, 3 was too hard and 4... *sigh* 4.

Lately I've been giving up on games because I'm stuck on a particular Boss or Mid-Level Boss. It sucks because since the 360 came out, I've been finishing more games. So having to stop due to getting stuck reminds me of the old days of not finishing games.

I feel the same exact way (although there was a re-released special edition of #3 that tweaked the difficulty, among other things, which made it the best in the series), and FWIW, #2 actually started life as a completely different game, and at the last second, Capcom decided to plug Dante into it and forced it into a DMC game.

Oh man, I just got ToV, don't tell me that.

I quit when I get bored and I feel like I've gotten my money's worth. Sometimes I keep the game to try again later, sometimes I admit to myself I'm never going to finish it and I sell/trade it (if I don't lose a lot of money on it).

There's a fine line between challenging and frustrating in games.

As much as I like RPGs and JRPGs, I don't like some of the now-standard mechanics of them.
Save points - Let me save (almost) anywhere, this prevents me from playing sometimes.
Back and forth mazes - like the candle lighting one in Eternal Sonata
Mindless grinding required - If you're going to require grinding, battles and advancing need to be fun
Replaceable characters - when I played Blue Dragon, it seemed like any character could be any class. Same with Suikoden Tactics
Characters that are *too* restrained. I know that's sort of a dichotomy, but that balance can be found.

Sometimes going back later can make it easier the second time, sometimes it's still frustrating.

I remember hearing about that but by that time I had already given up on it. If I get my hands on a PS2 again I might give it another go.

I never knew that. Interesting.

DMC1 was fun. DMC2 was a very bad game. I loved DMC3 and wished I'd never traded it it to get the SE. The SE was too easy for me. Oh and Agni and Rudra are the easiest bosses ever. DMC4 was okay but it was really just a prettier, easier, DMC3 with some retarded backtracking tossed in. I hope that doesn't happen again if there is ever to be a DMC5.

I stop playing games if they're not fun. And that goes for so hard it's work, so easy I'm just going through the motions, or so tedious I'm only playing because I paid money for it.

The SE had a bunch of difficulty settings - it had one setting easier than the initial release, two the same, and one mode that were harder.

The SE was actually the Japanese release of DMC3. The American regular release had its dificulty boosted. Basically, American Normal = Japanese Hard, American Hard = Japanese Extreme, etc.

So you actually lost the hardest difficulty setting in the SE release. It was made easier to placate those that criticized the difficulty of the American release.

No, you're wrong.

The initial DM3 was released in Japan in 2/05, and in the US in 3/05.
Then the special edition was released in the US in 1/06 and then in Japan in 2/06.
The first Japanese release may have been easier, but why would they release the SE in Japan if it was just the earlier Japanese release?

Besides a whole slew of new game modes, features and extras that were never in the first Japanese release, the SE had the following difficulty modes:
- easy
- normal
- hard
- very hard
- devil may die

"easy" and "normal" were made easier than in the first release, "hard" was equivalent to the normal in the first release and "very hard" was new.

Although, you had to beat "normal" to open "hard", and then beat "hard" to open "very hard". But there was a code to open all of them from the start.

Stuck at the ferris wheel in COD 4 on Veteran. I've seen people beat it on youtube but can't bring myself to go back to it.

I love that one, I pop the game in just to play that level.

I have NEVER given up on a game. Now there are a lot of games over the years I have not "finished" but I am just taking a break from them for now. I will get back to them....eventually.

I spent the weekend playing Oblivion. Now there is a game design that is pure fun, not frustration. If I get stuck in an area, I go work on another quest or just roam around. Always something to do and explore, and I can save anywhere, anytime.

I wasn't talking about the new game modes (like the extra Jester boss). That's why it got re-released in Japan. My memory of the difficulty was that it was dumbed down. I just know it bored me real quick and I ended up dumping the game. Both versions can be easily found for around $10 so maybe I'll pick it up again.

Do recall trying some amped up difficulty mode that wasn't in the original release. It was some "one hit and your dead" sort of deal, if I recall correctly. That's actually too difficult for my tastes. I'm not a masochist. I just like my games to be tough enough to be challenging but not so tough that I'm feeling constant rage rather than enjoyment and a sense of accomplishment.