8 Video Games You Spent 100+ Hours In (And Still Haven't Finished)

Have a big slurp from my cat, Merg

Alright there, you little demons, Jules here from WhatCulture.com, back again with another episode of the awesomely named and awfully hosted

Use Your Own Adventure, the weekly medieval themed format where I, the crown Jules of WhatCulture.com, take a list chosen by you

yes, you, the person who legitimately has a hernia right now. I'm 36 and somehow I managed to get a hernia

It's quite painful and I'm on a lot of pain medication at the moment, So, kind of equaling out pretty well at the moment

But apologies if I sound a bit more slurred and dopey than usual, because, hey, it's early in the morning and I am medicated, brother

Yes, you get to decide what list I dole out to you each and every week

And this week we have none other to thank than... ...KCollier2192 for their suggestion of games that you've spent so, so many hours in

and still haven't even bloody finished. Now, truly, a game needs to be special

for most players to willingly sink in over 100 hours into it

or at the very least has to be bloody damn addictive. And while for most players 100 plus hours spent

will signify that a game is well worth the money, what about those games that even after so much time

you still haven't rolled the credits on? Because while we're going to be talking about a lot of games

that you technically can beat in way less than 100 hours, have you really truly experienced everything if you put in any less

Well, no is the answer. You haven't even scratched the surface. So let's have a chat about them

I'm Jules, this is WhatCulture.com, and these are eight video games that you've spent 100 plus hours in and still haven't finished

And you know the drill by now, pick your suggestions for next week's episode down in the comment section below

And with that, let's get on with it. That was meant to be, um, let's just go on with the list, shall we

Yep, let's do it. Bye. Number eight, The Elder Scrolls V, Skyrim

Now, obviously, there's going to be some people who finally behooved themselves to finish Skyrim in the 12 years since it first came out

but they're most certainly outliers amongst the more than 60 million people who own this game

But it's almost comical just how many of these players have actually gone and spent an entire life's worth of time in this game

and still haven't even completed the main campaign. There are literally entire Reddit threads of folks confessing that they're more than 1,000 hours into this thing

and yet haven't even once beaten a main story that is no longer than actually 30 hours in total

That is incredible and mad! But it's somehow totally understandable, because like most Bethesda games, Skyra is so, so much more than its campaign

which really feels like an added value proposition than the real reason to play the game

And if we're being honest, and yes, I rightly accept you stabbing me with your mythical spoons and forks

that you've used the alchemy and enchantment perks and abused them to turn them into world-enders

and you're gonna insert them right in my gut, the story isn't even that good. If we're being honest, if we're being honest, come on, it's just not that good

The real allure, of course, lies in drinking in this utterly mesmeric world

And that's without even considering how much depth that mods have added to this game

nor how many times so many of us have restarted Skyrim each time it's been ported to a new system

Or as the case with myself, where I start a new playthrough of Skyrim

I get so far in I do all of this stuff apart from the main campaign obviously and then I just go hey I leave this for a bit I come back to it and because it been like about I don know like a month or two away from playing it I like wait what was I doing here What was I doing around here

Uh, I can't really remember what's going on here. Better start again. Better start again and build the same sneak stealth archer build

Every time, Jules. Every time you have something wrong with you. Number seven, Yakuza 5

Now, it is wildly variable how much time it will take you to beat a Yakuza or Like a Dragon

game, because like, for example, if you just stick on the critical path of the man who raised his own name, you'd probably take about 10 hours. But then you can go into other games

and it's like 100 is barely scratching the surface. Case in point, Yakuza 5's monstrously

oversized campaign, which revolves around a stonking five playable characters and takes

about 40 hours just to mainline. Yet considering that large swathes of the core story are quite the

stamina-annihilating slog, you'll probably be tempted to peel off the critical path and indulge

the game's more entertaining side activities instead. And trust me, the side missions

like most Yakuza and Like a Dragon games, are incredible and weird. I absolutely fall in love

with them each and every time. When a new release pops its head over the horizon, I'm not even

bothered about the main story. I'm just like, what can I do this time around? Oh, karaoke

fantastic. Can I race those tiny little Matchbox Electric Scalectrics cars again? Yes, that was the

winner. That was true gold, baby. Less said about the live action women thing where you have the

Kleenex shot at the end of every visit or deposit, as the case should be. Trophy or not, nah, weird

Number six, Assassin's Creed Valhalla. Now you might notice that I've got the evil finger temple

of doom right here because I never said that spending a hundred hours in a game is always a

good thing. And case in point, when it came to Valhalla, ye gods, both new and old, this was a

long, long stay in this area. It overstayed its welcome many hours ago. You're just there like

oh man, what a joy it is to walk across such barren, open landscape and see nothing. Woo

Ubisoft, you spoil me. But anyone who pumped major time into the game or actually finished it will

appreciate that the main story is a 20-hour romp distented into a 60-hour chore packed with

relentless busy work and bloat. And if you throw in a, air quotes, healthy amount of side quests

and exploration, you're easily over the 100 hour mark before you roll credits on this thing

if you even do it at all. And again, there are tons of Reddit threads of players basically

coming together to try and motivate each other to finish the bloody thing. It's become a job for

them. That is incredibly sad. It's precisely this sort of exhausting experience that many

evidently got tired of, instead moving on to another game or ultimately never returning to it

Which is why the recent Assassin's Creed Mirage is such an oasis in a desert of content

because you can basically get through this with all of the side missions in around 30 hours

That is much more appealing. Thank you very much. And I don't say thanks to Ubisoft very often

Number five, Xenoblade Chronicles 2. Now, many fans were relieved that Xenoblade Chronicles 3 was noticeably shorter than its two predecessors

either of which would comfortably qualify for this entry. I mean, you're looking around 60 hours to beat the main stories of the first two games

but the inevitability of periodically going off the beaten track to explore and play side content ensures that both can become 100 plus hour time sinks But here the thing the 100 plus hour time sink when it comes to Xenoblade

Chronicles 2 is a bit of a weird one, because it's not just the incredibly bloated story and

tons of optional content, but the actual gameplay itself feels drawn out and elongated to the point

that you're just like, hurry the f*** up! XC2 definitely has its defenders of course, and it's

a terrifically entertaining game up to a point, albeit one that has a near sadistic lack of

respect for the player's time, which can make getting to the end, even with well over 100 hours

already in the bank, feel like a Herculean feat. Number 4, Red Dead Redemption 2. Oh, Red Dead

Redemption 2, how I love and hate how much time that I've spent in your meticulously crafted world

Now, this is most definitely a story-based game, but it is one that tells you, in no small terms

to just stop, smell the flowers, kill some wildlife, kill some locals

kill some wildlife and locals and throw them in front of a moving train. Then take a bath, because you're so greasy and grubby

Now, you almost certainly know by now what happens at the end of this game, but actually rolling the credits for yourself? Nah, that's just not going to happen, is it, anytime soon

because even if you rush through the story, you're looking at around 40 to 50 hours to beat both the main campaign and the lengthy epilogue

and this being a rockstar game and all, almost nobody is going to do that. I mean, if you take a peek at Red Dead Redemption 2's PS4 trophy data

you will find quite a worrying statistic that less than a quarter of the player base has actually managed to reach and beat the epilogue

That is a low number, which more than five years removed from its release suggests that the overwhelming majority of people

have just clocked in epic playtimes without actually concluding the story in full

Number three, Elden Ring. Okay, so let's set the record straight right now

Elden Ring is a huge game, and even if you are good and are able to go through every single

boss first time and absolutely batter them like Scottish cooking, you will clock in around

50 to 60 hours. It's a girthy boy. And the problem is with this game is that it's kind of dependent on your skill

Like many, I am not that good at these types of games, even though I am thoroughly addicted to the formula

So my playthrough of my first time around the sun was well into the 150 hour mark, and I definitely did not see everything

In fact, the only thing that I did see was the giant bosses' feet as they repeatedly crushed me to death

And no, I did not enjoy this experience, despite what my search history will tell you

But unlike basically every other game on this list, Elden Ring's low completion rate

despite colossal time investment from players en masse is as much to do with the richness of its

world and staggering amount of content on offer as just how damn challenging it is. I mean sure

Elden Ring is certainly easier than most prior From Software games by granting the player more

combat options and allowing them to return to challenging foes later on, but it's still

by any typical metric, a ball-bustingly difficult game. And trust me, you're going to want to go

through every single nook and cranny in this game because there's secrets galore, there's hidden

side quests, hidden weapons, armor, character, rewards aplenty, and of course, most of the time

it's just you go around the corner, it's like, oh, an instant death trap, or enemy that I'm totally unprepared for Sick And from software it just that like and you like oh you cheeky oh you cheeky devil What are you like What are you like Oh you 2 The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild

The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild is arguably the single most beloved video game

of the last decade, largely due to Nintendo reimagining Hyrule as an almost impossibly

wondrous open world. But you know what, this game is so much more than just about trying to beat Ganon, it is

and experience, so much so that you won't have to look very hard to find players who

are just like, I didn't want to finish this game, because it meant having to say goodbye

to the phenomenal world building that is right in front of me

And I'm kind of here for that. Numerous prominent outlets have posted articles from journalists and players alike who have

intentionally refused to fight Ganon because to battle and defeat him would bring this

still open adventure to an unambiguous close. Even accepting that completion rates for most big AAA games aren't great

it speaks to a game's truly special nature when players want to prolong it in perpetuity

keeping it alive forevermore. And number one, Persona 5 Royal. And so we close on Persona 5 Royal

a game that basically looks at your free time and goes, weren't planning on using that any time soon, were you, mate

Hope you haven't got any commitments there, pal, because you ain't going nowhere

getting through the critical path in the original persona 5 game was easily 100 hours which took

many by surprise for those who weren't familiar with the persona elongated format it never felt

like it overstayed its welcome it was a brilliant time but then persona 5 royal came along and was

just like hey lads what if we added about 20 to 30 extra hours on top of that yeah you like the

sound of that yeah you do you cheeky devil you and what if i put a secret ending in it right right

The secret ending that you can only get if you basically go against what the game wants to tell you all the way through

Yeah, stay with me, eh? And you get that at the end. Do you let us out of that

So that means two full playthroughs of 110, 120 hours each to see all of the endings

I'm in a prison of pleasure. Though Persona fans are certainly a dedicated bunch

there are a great many who have got well over 100 hours logged without reaching the original end

It's a brilliant game, no question, albeit one that demands an obscene amount of time from the player

even to just get through the mere core experience. But thankfully Persona 6 has been pushed all the way back to 2026 though, hooray

I'll have maybe finished it by then. Who am I kidding? I won't

So there we go my friends, those were 8 video games that you spent 100 plus hours in

and still haven't finished. I hope that you enjoyed that. And please let me know what you thought about it

down in the comments section below. And if you want to chat to me, you can do so by following me over on the social medias

that are shown right here, my friends. But before I go, I just want to say one thing

Hope you're treating yourself well. Hope you're treating yourself with that respect and love that you deserve

We all do as human beings and don't let anything or anyone else tell you otherwise

You are a massive legend. You deserve the bloody best, all right? So go out there and smash your life goals today

I believe in you and you need to believe in yourself as well. As always, I've been Jules. You have been awesome

Never forget that. I'll speak to you soon. Bye