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15 Video Games Everyone Calls Masterpieces but Never Finishes

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Ignacio Weil

Gaming - June 26th 2026, 15:30 GMT+2

Cropped The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt — 1. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (2015)

*The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt* has earned its spot in every “best RPGs ever” argument, but actually reaching the credits can feel like signing a long-term contract with every village notice board in Temeria. Geralt’s hunt for Ciri keeps getting interrupted by cursed barons, haunted wells, gwent debts, monster contracts, and side quests that somehow hit harder than most games’ finales. The result is brilliant, massive, and dangerously easy to abandon somewhere between Novigrad politics and Skellige boat trauma. | © CD Projekt Red

Baldurs Gate 3 — 2. Baldur’s Gate 3 (2023)

*Baldur’s Gate 3* turns choice paralysis into a full-contact sport, which is part of why players adore it and quietly restart it six times before Act 2. Every class, companion, dice roll, romance option, and terrible idea seems to open a new door, usually with a goblin, a moral crisis, or an exploding barrel behind it. Larian made one of the richest RPGs ever built, but finishing it requires surviving your own need to see what happens if you make “just one different choice.” | © Larian Studios

3. Red Dead Redemption 2 (2018)

*Red Dead Redemption 2* is praised like interactive prestige television, but it moves with the confidence of a cowboy who refuses to be rushed by modern life. Arthur Morgan’s story is devastating, beautifully acted, and constantly delayed by hunting trips, poker tables, camp chores, fishing detours, and the strange urge to ride slowly through every sunset. Rockstar built a world so convincing that players can spend weeks inside it and still avoid the emotional damage waiting at the end of the trail. | © Rockstar Games

ELDEN RING — 4. Elden Ring (2022)

*Elden Ring* doesn’t block progress so much as scatter it across a haunted continent and dare players to figure out which nightmare castle looks least illegal. Its freedom is intoxicating: one minute you’re following grace, the next you’re underground, poisoned, underleveled, and convinced that a giant hand spider has ruined your evening. FromSoftware created a landmark open-world RPG, but its scale, difficulty, and endless build possibilities mean many Tarnished become permanent residents of Limgrave. | © FromSoftware

5. Persona 5 Royal (2019)

*Persona 5 Royal* is stylish enough to make menu navigation look like a fashion crime in other RPGs, yet its sheer size can humble even dedicated players. Between palace infiltrations, school exams, confidant schedules, part-time jobs, fusions, hangouts, and the eternal pressure of not wasting a calendar day, the game demands commitment with a smile and a killer jazz soundtrack. It’s one of Atlus’ finest achievements, but finishing it means letting the Phantom Thieves move into your life for a very long season. | © Atlus

Cropped DEATH STRANDING — 6. Death Stranding Director’s Cut (2021)

*Death Stranding Director’s Cut* asks players to believe in walking, balance, loneliness, logistics, ghost babies, and the emotional power of a well-placed ladder, which is a lot to process before breakfast. Hideo Kojima’s strange delivery epic can be hypnotic once its rhythm clicks, turning every mountain path and ruined highway into a personal pilgrimage. For anyone expecting conventional action, though, the early hours can feel like a beautiful onboarding video for a job they never applied for. | © Kojima Productions

7. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (2011)

*The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim* may be one of the most replayed RPGs ever made, which is not the same thing as being one of the most finished. The main quest has dragons, prophecy, and world-ending stakes, yet players keep wandering off to join guilds, collect cheese wheels, install mods, buy houses, pick flowers, and become stealth archers against their own will. Bethesda’s fantasy sandbox became legendary because it never really ends, and that is exactly the problem. | © Bethesda Game Studios

8. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice (2019)

*Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice* is a masterpiece with no interest in being negotiated with, and that is where many honorable shinobi quietly vanish. Unlike other FromSoftware games, it offers little room to grind your way around the lesson: either you learn the blade, the posture system, and the rhythm of each duel, or Genichiro becomes your new landlord. Its combat is breathtaking once it clicks, but reaching that click can feel like trying to win an argument with a sword. | © FromSoftware

9. Disco Elysium (2019)

*Disco Elysium* replaces traditional combat with politics, addiction, philosophy, shame, karaoke, and the loudest inner monologue in detective fiction. That makes it one of the smartest RPGs ever written, but also a game that punishes distracted playing harder than any boss fight. Solving the murder in Revachol means reading closely, sitting with uncomfortable ideas, and letting a catastrophic cop rebuild himself one disastrous conversation at a time. Many players admire it from a safe distance, which feels oddly appropriate. | © ZA/UM

Nier Automata — 10. NieR: Automata (2017)

*NieR: Automata* famously hides its real emotional payload behind repeated routes, shifting perspectives, fake endings, and the quiet realization that the first credits are not the finish line. PlatinumGames gives it razor-sharp action, but Yoko Taro’s structure asks for trust long after most players assume they’ve seen the point. Those who stop early still experience a great sci-fi action RPG; those who continue discover why fans talk about it like it rewired something in their chest. | © Square Enix / PlatinumGames

11. Hollow Knight (2017)

*Hollow Knight* looks delicate from a distance, then drops players into Hallownest and lets the map slowly become a beautiful underground tax audit. Team Cherry’s metroidvania is elegant, melancholy, and packed with secrets, but its tough bosses, hidden routes, sparse guidance, and late-game challenges can turn curiosity into a full excavation career. Every new area feels hand-carved and hostile in equal measure, which is thrilling until you realize you’ve been lost for an entire evening. | © Team Cherry

Dragon Age Inquisition — 12. Dragon Age: Inquisition (2014)

*Dragon Age: Inquisition* has dragons, court intrigue, religious panic, messy companions, and one of BioWare’s biggest worlds, but it also has the Hinterlands, where momentum goes to retire. Players begin with noble intentions, then spend hours closing rifts, collecting shards, helping villagers, gathering herbs, and wondering whether the actual Inquisition filed a missing-person report for them. The game shines when its politics and characters take center stage, but its open-zone structure can bury the drama under heroic errands. | © BioWare

FINAL FANTASY VII REBIRTH — 13. Final Fantasy VII Rebirth (2024)

*Final Fantasy VII Rebirth* is generous in the way only a blockbuster RPG can be: huge zones, party banter, Queen’s Blood, protorelics, chocobo activities, combat challenges, emotional callbacks, and enough minigames to make the Gold Saucer look restrained. Its middle-chapter ambition is part of the thrill, especially for players who know the original story’s shadow is always nearby. Still, finishing Cloud’s road trip requires resisting every shiny distraction Square Enix lovingly placed between one heartbreak and the next. | © Square Enix

Final Fantasy XVI 2023 cropped processed by imagy — 14. Final Fantasy XVI (2023)

*Final Fantasy XVI* delivers operatic fantasy with the volume turned all the way up, especially when its Eikon battles start treating the screen like a collapsing cathedral. Clive’s journey is more direct than many modern RPGs, but the dense lore, heavy tone, long cinematic stretches, and uneven side-quest pacing can slow down players who came for constant spectacle. When it hits, it hits with absurd force; when it pauses, it asks for patience between all the fire, politics, and misery. | © Square Enix

Cropped tears of the kingdom — 15. The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (2023)

*The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom* gives players a main quest, then immediately hands them physics powers and trusts them not to build a cursed flying lawn chair for three hours. Nintendo’s Hyrule is so packed with caves, sky islands, shrine puzzles, Zonai experiments, and accidental engineering disasters that finishing the story can feel almost rude. Saving the kingdom matters, obviously, but so does testing whether a bridge made of logs and bad judgment can cross a canyon. | © Nintendo

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Being called a masterpiece doesn’t mean a game is easy to love all the way to the credits. Some of the greatest video games ever made are also exhausting, punishing, painfully long, or so emotionally heavy that players quietly abandon them halfway through and swear they’ll “get back to it someday.” From massive RPGs to brutal classics, these are the acclaimed games everyone respects, recommends, and maybe never actually finishes.

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Being called a masterpiece doesn’t mean a game is easy to love all the way to the credits. Some of the greatest video games ever made are also exhausting, punishing, painfully long, or so emotionally heavy that players quietly abandon them halfway through and swear they’ll “get back to it someday.” From massive RPGs to brutal classics, these are the acclaimed games everyone respects, recommends, and maybe never actually finishes.