What five games have you put the most time into?

[Wist]

I want to know what games have proven so interesting, varied, gripping, rewarding, frustrating, whatever, that you've invested more time in them than most any other game. I'm not necessarily looking for lists of favorite games, though obviously there will probably be a substantial degree of overlap.

I don't keep close count of the number of hours I've put into any game, but I'm pretty confident my top five would be as follows:

1. StarCraft: Brood War - I played Brood War on a daily basis from 2002 to 2008. I competed on PGT and iCCup (wasn't any good, but I competed nonetheless), I made who knows how many custom maps and mods (and was actively involved in ScmDraft 2's beta testing), and I have six Battle Chests lying around for LAN parties (and because discs only last a few years when they're being spun for hours a day, every day).

2. Pokemon Yellow - This was my first video game, so even though I think the second generation is better than the first my love for Yellow is unconquerable. I beat the Elite Four over and over until I could consistently beat everyone without taking any damage even. Then I restarted the game and beat it again. Then I restarted the game and beat it again, again. A few years ago I replaced the save batteries in my generation I and II carts, and I still have my GameBoy Color sitting on my desk.

3. Resonance of Fate - It took me over 130 hours to beat Resonance of Fate (sans the post-game content). This game starts pitting you against multiple too tall to see the top of colossal level 72 Piledriver Giants when your characters reach... I don't know, maybe about level 30? It's fantastic! Skill customization is a bit limited compared to its spiritual predecessor, Valkyrie Profile: Silmeria (which I might like more if the characters were more engaging), but one can do

to one's guns and blow everything earned fighting gigantic, missile-happy robots on clothes (which, for some reason, is fun -- how about a few hundred interchangeable articles of clothing in the game instead of a single $5 rubbish DLC outfit?); suffice to say I made sure everyone was tastefully sunglassed at all times. At its core, Resonance of Fate is a compilation of fetch quests and "what the hell is this giant thing kill it!" missions, but the characters are hilarious and the game has a really quirky, attractive charm to it that keeps it fun. Only ten difficulty levels though.

4. Fire Emblem 7 - I've played this in English and Japanese multiple times. My favorite run was an Eliwood and Marcus run I managed to complete on a plane flight. I can't believe Fire Emblem 7 is approaching ten years old.

5. Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim - Too many bloody quests, I don't know why I keep torturing myself by playing this ridiculous, glitch ridden jumble of Scandinavian manliness. I have three characters going at the same time: Spock von Gorvenheim VI, a stealth archer assassin thief, Manfred von Magnus Manlius, an axe wielding heavy armor lord of vigorous bench pressing who hates pretty much everybody, and HASHIM, a necromancing sword flailing Arch-Mage conjurer. Maybe one day I'll bother to beat the main story with one of them.

Those are the five games I've put the most time into, what about you guys?

Stealth Resonance of Fate opening post over.

[shadowofchaos]

1. Kingdom Hearts II Final Mix+ - This was my first Japanese import game, and the game that got me into making Youtube videos. I got sucked into the memory hacking scene at Codemaster's Project and KH-Vids forums. I've sunk hours into this game coming up with ways to effectively beat bosses without reaction commands because Roxas would T-stance and have to take a hit if you hit the triangle button. It was a LONG while before they were able to come up with a way for Roxas to use "pseudo" reaction commands. Quite the time sink for me way back when. I was quite the fanboy of the series, but fell out of it. The only thing that got me back into it recently is Birth By Sleep Final Mix, which is all completely Mageknight404's fault.

2. Fire Emblem: The Blazing Sword - Not so much hours and hours of playing, but hours and hours of hacking and testing. Thanks to a certain dancer character, I was pretty much sucked into the ROM hacking community, and as you can see I'm still here. Mostly shenanigans with videos and such, but man... I'm glad about this. I wouldn't have been able to choose my current college major right now if it weren't for her.

3. Tales of Vesperia PS3 - The very reason I got a PS3. Getting this import game meant I took a gamble because of choosing a "this gen" console with the money I had simply on how appealing the game looked to me. And I wasn't about to get the Xbox360 "beta" version, also adding to the fact that no other Xbox360 games have any appeal to me other than Halo. Hours sunk into getting everything, including the PS3 exclusive stuff. And then there's the Japanese and English Mystic Arte Exhibition. That itself took hours of editing... but barring that, it was getting the right footage because I'm such a perfectionist with these things.

4. Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn - Let's face it, my opinion of this FE is pretty low, at least for the story. The animations and gameplay? Glorious upgrade from Path of Radiance. But that's not the reason. It's pretty much hacking again. I found a use for my USBGecko with this game, ending up acquainted with "Goldie" and her memory hacking shenanigans.

5. Blazblue Continuum Shift/Continuum Shift 2/Continuum Shift Extend - I didn't expect to end up being a fighting game fanatic after playing this game. I even have my own dual modded Arcade stick because of this. Sunk hours into learning characters for the Distortion Drives and Astral Heat Exhibitions too.

Honorable Mention: Final Fantasy X - I don't even know why I kept replaying the game. This was way back when. I just don't know. But I sank hours into it. Doing many playthroughs that are pretty much the same... but for some reason I enjoyed it. I don't know why.

Edited July 26, 2012 by shadowofchaos

[Integrity]

Oh, God. I don't even know. They're probably all MMORPGs.

So, uh, there's Guild Wars. I know I had 800 hours /played on my main (and only) PvE character when I stopped, plus however many PvP alts I threw around. That's almost definitely on the list.

I played Enemy Territory approximately all of the time for three years before that, so I bet that's there.

For the years immediately before that I played Dark Age of Camelot from 2001 to 2004. I also didn't have a social life or any friends (wow, just like now).

I know I beat one of the Ratchet and Clanks (3?) something to the tune of 15 times, so I must have put at least a few hours into that.

I'm going to take a leap and call Dawn of War: Dark Crusade the fifth. I know I have ~500 hours logged on it (via Xfire) and I didn't even run that all the time.

ALTERNATELY, ASK STEAM

STEAM SAYS

Empire: Total War - 183.1 hours

Killing Floor - 280.7 hours

Dawn of War 2: Retribution - 296.3 hours

Left 4 Dead 2 - 496.3 hours

Team Fortress 2 - 871.8 hours

uh apparently tf2 should have been on that list

[ZemZem]

1. The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker (GCN)

2. Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga (GBA)

3. Fire Emblem: The Blazing Sword (GBA)

4. Donkey Kong Country (SNES)

5. Pokemon Emerald (GBA)

Might put some more reasoning into this later.

[Integrity]

1. The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker (GCN)

I'd kiss you if you were a girl.

[Solanum Tuberosum]

1. League of Legends

Okay let's do some quick calculations.

About 2000 games of Normal Queue, about 300 or so custom matches, and somewhere in the realm of 180 ranked matches.

Assuming an average match length of 30 minutes, over 2480 games, that is already 1280 hours of raw game time. Not counting loading screens, not counting queue times, not counting time spent sitting in the client doing some theory shitt. Average game time also probably higher than 30minutes. Too much time yo.

2. RuneScape

idk like 60days in game time on two accounts so like 1400 hours not counting other accounts.

yeah moving on

3. Pokemon Series

Blue - 50hrs

Yellow - 75hrs

Gold - probably around 350~ish is where I remember

Crystal - 50hrs

Sapphire - 250hrs

Emerald - 550hrs

LeafGreen - 190hrs

Pearl - 150hrs

Platinum - 48hrs

White - 32hrs

Colosseum - 20hrs

XD - 30hrs

it goes on and on

4. Fire Emblem

its fun

5. Mario Kart

Spent like all of one summer playing this forsaken game, (its fun)

got up to like 9700 and then stopped playing and my friends dropped me down to like 7000. lol

if i like a game i play it a lot!! probably too much

Edited July 26, 2012 by Piemanmj

[Guy Starwind]

In no order.

FE7

Pokemon(Leafgreen)

Goldensun TLA

I'm sure some sort of Castlevania game

Solitare

[HongLei]

Idk what order, but I know there is FE Blazing Sword is in there, Pokemon Crystal, Tales of Symphonia, and the other two are most likely occupied by 2 other Pokemon games.

[Zanarkin]

Pokemon Platinum

Pokemon Heart Gold

Fire Emblem Radiant Dawn

Monster Hunter Tri

And the other one I'm not sure, but probably Mario Kart wii.

All of these have atleast 100 hours if not more. I know Platiunum had like 400 hours.. Breeding legally is a pain in the ass.

Edited July 27, 2012 by SlayerX

[Melonhead]

No order here..

Pokemon Platinum-Crud. I guess smashing all of the good pokemon from Every single game 'cept Silver was a good idea. Full team of Legit 100's? Oh yes. That took a while.. Last time I checked I had over 300 hours on that game.

Super Smash Bros. Brawl-Yeah.. Multiplayer was a blast. What else can I say?

Fire emblem Radiant dawn-One of only 2 FE games, but I enjoyed it so much. Sure the story isn't all that great, but it isn't horrible. Animations and replayability make this one a favorite for me.

Mario Kart Wii-I spend hours shaving off seconds on Moonlit Highway time trials. It's a bad habit of mine.

Skyim-So addicting, I don't realise that over 10 hours have passed while playing. Still not level 35.

[peener weener]

I have a friend who replays Pokemon Emerald and Wind Waker over and over and over. I think he might know everything to know about those games by now.

Srsly though

In no particular order:

Monster Hunter Freedom Unite and Tri. I probably put a good 200 hours into each. I didn't even reach G-rank in Freedom Unite.

The pokemans. I put ~200 hours in one of 'em, if I remember correctly. Two, maybe. I think they were Sapphire and Pearl. Good times, mon.

There are probably more that I'm forgetting here because they didn't have the utterly ridiculous numbers of the other two but Paper Mario, TTYD comes to mind. I played that game a shitton. It's probably one of my favorite games ever.

I also sunk a lot of time into Runescape when I was a kid. Eugh.

Aaaaand... Super Mario World. I never actually beat the game, I think. But I played it for countless hours anyway, and most of the time my dad played with me. I was like... five. It was great good times.

[Original Alear]

I'm gonna guess:

-Starcraft and Brood War if considered together

-Warcraft III and The Frozen Throne, whether considered separately or together

-Seiken Densetsu III

-Fire Emblem 7

-Super Smash Bros Brawl

And even if I had put 100 hrs into a steam game, it wouldn't be a good estimate since probably at least 1/2 of those hours and maybe even 9/10 of them would involve the game being minimized and me AFK.

Edited July 26, 2012 by L1049

[Ein]

I'd kiss you if you were a girl.

Kiss him anyway you pansy.

Let's see...

Super Mario World

Castlevania Symphony of the Night

Shin Megami Tensei series

Etrian Odyssey series

Yu-Gi-Oh! series

In no particular order because fuck if I know how long I've played games.

[StrategistPockystix]

I. Dragon's Dogma: I CAN'T STOP PLAYING IT.

II. Dragon Quest IX: Spent too much time maxing out skills lol

III. Dragon Age: Origins: Beat it multiple times with all the races and classes. . . yeah, never got old. . . 'cept for the bugs.

IV. Final Fantasy IX: Held up the best out of any FF game I've played (I practically replay it every 2 years or so), and in my opinion, is the best in the series.

V. any of the Disgaea games. I don't know why I tend to waste so much time in these games. . . but I do admit, they never really make me feel bad doing so lol

boy, I sure do like RPGs with Dragons lol

[General Horace]

in no order

dkc2

mgs3

fe7

ff2

and some other game that escapes my mind that is awesome

[Rehab]

I vaguely feel like I've listed this before here, but:

-SSBB:

don't actually know how much, but basically a whole summer online, then rather a lot for another year or so after.

-Skies of Arcadia:

One 300+ hour file, a 100+ hour file, finally a nearly 100 hour file that actually got everything.

-tf2:

over a thousand straight play hours on pc, roughly 1800 of being on the game hours counted on steam (not counting offline), played a fair amount on console (not nearly as much in comparison, total PC playtime was over like years)

-uh

I know I spent way more time than was prudent in Mercenaries: PoD, Wind Waker, Super Punch Out, San Andreas and probably a lot more, but nothing really stands out as much in a "oh god I spend a significant fraction of my life on this" way.

Edited July 27, 2012 by Rehab

[Wist]

Ah yeah, I had forgotten about the Super Smash Bros. series. I have no idea how much time I dumped into Melee because my memory card got corrupted at one point in the past.

I'm amazed that some of you have put three, four, five, eight, fourteen, eighteen~hundred hours into some games, though it's easier to understand for the multiplayer ones.

[Emeraldfox]

Only five, Wrist? Alright. In no particular order, mind you.

Pokemon White - With this game I got my first Pokemon(Leafeon) to level 100, I started to seriously train my Pokemon in this game as well. You know, for the Meta game.

Monster Hunter Tri - SO MUCH FUN. When I had normal internet I would hunt online a lot. Even now I still play it, speed hunting Gobul(my record is 4:59), catching Diablo over and over again, getting the offline armor. I might even attempt to hunt the monsters naked, but I'm not crazy.

Trickster Online - An MMO, I have been playing these a lot, but not as much as Trickster. Super fun game, the characters are awesome, the lore is great and MMOs are great if you have/make friends there. Although I don't do much leveling(only in the low 200s), I do hang out though. When I had normal internet.

Mario Kart Wii - Although I've spent a lot of time with the Mario Kart games as a whole, I think I've spent the most time with Wii. Online had something to do with it. Even though it became flooded with bikes, I remained with the standard kart. In a room full of bikes I would often place in the top four. Mixed, I usually won. I forgot my VR.

Touhou 12.8: Hisoutensoku - A lot of time playing online, practicing and watching my replays to see where I screwed up. First fighting game where I felt like a pro, although I like to think of myself as decent.

I'll throw in Samurai Shodown Anthology Collection. Despite not being very good(although no one would play me) at the game, it still became my favorite fighting game series. I spent a lot of time playing SS6 because of all the characters.

[Icon of Sin]

All I know is that Diablo 2 should be on top. I can't be bothered to list what I don't really count.

[Maji]

Too lazy to find how much hours at this current moment.

1.) Dragon Quest IX

2.) Star Ocean Til the End of Time

3.) Advance Wars (first GBA one)

4.) Valkyrie Profile

5.) Pokemon LeafGreen

1+5 are self-explanatory, so is 2 (Sphere 211), 3 is me mastering the shit out of the maps and 4 is me maxing out everyone. In the end, Freya, Brahms and Lorenta still were my reigning supreme dream-team.

[Kon]

I'm not sure of all the specific times, but my top five all consists of Pokémon games. I know I've spent at least 150 hours in Crystal, Red, and FireRed, coincidentally the only files I've gotten my starters up to level 100 (T.K. the Typhlosion, C.J Sr. the Charizard, and C.J Jr. the Charizard). There's I believe 250+ hours logged on Pearl, which is the one game I've never started over (started it in mid April I think in 2007), and I think my Black and Ruby files were pushing around 70-80 hours.

[Roosterofdoom]

1. Perosna 3

Played it all the way through 3 times now. At around 100+ hours a run, I've put a LOT of time in it.

2. Disgaea

I don't have my DS anymore, but I'm pretty sure I have one file on this game that's about 250 hours.

3. Minecraft

180 hours.

4. Pokemon series

Technically these should go at number one if I count all of them together. But I haven't gone over 100 hours in any of them except Gold maybe, so they go down here.

5. Shadow of the Colossus

In hours, FFX probably beats this. I put 120 into that game. But this game has to make the list because I've played it 9 times now. The only game that's come close to that is PoR, at 5.

My favorite game is not on this list. 2nd, 3rd, and 4th are, though.

Edited July 27, 2012 by Roosterofdoom

[Roosterofdoom]

Whoops. Double post.

Edited July 27, 2012 by Roosterofdoom

[Zanarkin]

Wow i just checked my nintendo channel records...

Fire emblem comes first with 1033 hours and 33 mins Played 330 times.

Monster Hunter Tri with 440 hours and 18 mins played 100 times

Mario Kart Wii with 365 hours and 17 mins played 173 times

That would leave my DS games the ones unregistered. My super smash bros has like 580 hours in there but a lot of it is mixed with my little brother's play time.

So I'd say, Platinum and Heart gold are the next 2 most played games.

[Lord Glenn]

I can't be completely positive, but this is what I think I've put the most time into (in no order).

• Grandia II - Arguably my favorite game that I own (being on the Dreamcast only adds to that, I think); I've cleared it like four or five times with each playthrough clocking in around forty hours (or more). I think my last run, when I was grinding for rare items in the Raul Hills Secret Area, clocked in above fifty hours, though I'd have to go check to be certain.
  
• Lunar 2: Eternal Blue Complete - I originally became interested in this game when my friend played it when I was visiting his house. He had borrowed Disc 1 from another friend of his and was very close to the disc change point. My cousin had the game, so I borrowed it from him and it became a staple around Christmas time when I was in high school. I started a new playthrough every year, though I still need to go back and see some of the stuff that I've missed (notably Lucia's "hidden" spells).
  
• Sonic 3 & Knuckles - Even though I'm now skilled enough to (potentially) have all seven Super Emeralds by the end of Mushroom Hill Zone, I've still managed to clear all eight save slots on my Genesis cartridges plus a couple more clears via emulator.
  
• Chrono Cross - Five playthroughs taking the good ending each time racked up a decent amount of clock time.
  
• Diablo II: Lord of Destruction - Need I say more? Even though I've never completed Hell difficulty (always played Single Player, so that makes it a bit more difficult), still logged tons of time into this.