I Don't Replay Games

A week or two ago I saw a Bluesky post where someone stated that they exclusively play male Shepherd in Mass Effect. Now, for this person, it was used as a comedic way to state that they are the most cis guy to ever cis guy. As a registered Non-Binary I was surprised, as I also have exclusively played through the Mass Effect trilogy as male Shepherd. Except in my case, I have only played through Mass Effect once and don’t really plan on doing it again. 

I have, in my life, replayed exactly four games all the way through (For the purposes of this I am not counting roguelikes or games like Total War or Civ which are literally meant to be replayed as different factions and all that). The four are as follows: Dragon Age: Inquisition, Skyrim, Persona 5: Royal, and Fire Emblem: Three Houses. I also had an intended playthrough of Hollow Knight but I got to deep nest before I wanted to and put the game down and didn’t come back. Maybe I will some day. Regardless, in my experience of the online gaming community, it seems like this particular practice is less than common.

Oftentimes I see people talking about comfort games, or how often they have replayed one or two games. I’ve seen people talk about having hundreds upon hundreds of hours in just one game, or how many different builds they have tried in Baldur’s Gate 3. Meanwhile, the only two games I have over 200 hours in on steam are Risk of Rain 2 and Warframe. A Roguelike and an MMO. If we go beyond Steam we get Persona 5 Royal, Skyrim, and Runescape. (We don’t need to talk about how much Runescape I’ve played. It’s a lot. Great game.) You get the picture: I really don’t replay games much at all.

Seeing this has led me to wonder: why don’t I? Why am I not like seemingly all of these other people who can find joy in playing one game over and over and over again? In examining this I have noticed two primary reasons: 

1. My style of playing does not super encourage or necessitate replaying
2. I don’t have time

In regards to the first part, I play a lot of games with lots of extra challenges, collectibles, or general open world shenanigans. Because of this, I have developed a completionist attitude towards games, in which I want to do everything in the game in one run through. I want to experience the game in the fullness of its experience, not through piecemeal or missing things that would be super fun to do. However, a problem with this style of gaming is that, especially when there’s an experience based leveling system, you can end up being vastly overleveled compared to the enemies you are fighting. (You can read more about that in my article The Superboss Problem.)

Once this effect is in full swing, playing the game becomes less a thing of playing and more of just a slow, inexorable march towards beating the game. I’m just checking boxes until I reach the final boss, at which point I will whoop their ass, watch the credits roll, and close the game, grateful to be done and able to move on to another game (I do generally only play one game at a time which also contributes to all of this.) In a word, it becomes monotonous. By that point I’ve solved the game, there is no challenge anymore, every combat goes the same, and now it’s just a matter of crossing the finish line. It’s part of the reason I like soulslike games: They don’t stop punching you in the face no matter how good you get, so the challenge never leaves. 

Of course, one could argue I just shouldn’t play so completionist-y and that way I can both prevent that monotony and leave myself something to do on the next run through. To which I say: I mean yeah, but I like completing the game. I want to be the ultimate form of my character when I win. I want to beat Calamity Ganon in the classic Link outfit, or to fight Baldur after I have freed all the Valkyrie. It’s my power fantasy: that I can become the ultimate form of myself through hard work and dedication. Plus, for me, that’s how the story should go. The protagonist should accomplish everything, have all of the friends and all of the backup, and then save the world with the powers they have gained. It just…feels right. 

In essence, I am fully draining the game before I move on to the next thing. I am taking everything I can from it, wringing it of every possible story beat and character moment I can, and then moving on, completely satiated. At no point have I ever finished a game and been like “Damn, I need to play this again right now.” I’m happy to be done, happy to have experienced it, and happy to move on. It’s like with movies; I don’t finish a movie and immediately decide to rewatch it. Except The Tragedy of Macbeth with Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand. That shit ripped. Also kind of Sinners. Which also ripped.

But really, the main reason I don’t replay games is quite simple. There’s too many games and I have too little time. My backlog is like 170 something games long right now, and new games are coming out all the time. If I’m spending my time replaying a game I already own, how the hell am I supposed to play a different game I’ve never played before? That math just doesn’t work out. So, naturally, I have to move on when I beat a game and play something new.

Even when I do replay games, there’s usually years in between when I do so. I originally played Skyrim back in 2011, didn’t touch it again til a partial replay in 2020ish, and then a full replay (now with the DLC included) in 2025. I played Persona 5 Royal for the first time in 2021, and didn’t touch it again til 2026. Inquisition is the only one I replayed pretty shortly after playing it the first time, which was helped by the fact that I was 14 and owned a lot less games at the time. 

There are times where I understand replaying a game more. I replayed Skyrim because I didn’t have the DLC the first time around. I replayed Persona 5 Royal because, due to the time limitations of the game, there were a lot of things that I didn’t get to do the first time. Fire Emblem: Three Houses basically requires you to play it multiple times as it has a fully branching storyline. In all of these, I was getting something entirely new on my replay, something I couldn’t get the first time. But to finish a game that I did everything in, that at most has maybe a few different romantic scenes to see, or maybe a slightly different playstyle, and immediately want to play it again? It just isn’t for me. 

I want to be clear, I do think there’s a lot of merit to replaying games. You can often gain a much deeper understanding and appreciation for a game by playing it again, digging deeper into the mechanics, and re-experiencing the story, whether through the same lens or a completely new one. I’ll re-read books or re-watch movies all the time. It’s just, a book might take me a day or two to read, a week if it’s especially large or I’m especially busy. A movie is usually one to two hours. A game? We could be talking 40, 50, even 100 hours, which can be days and days and days of concentrated playing time. It’s a commitment! One I just can’t get myself to make most of the time. (I generally don’t rewatch TV for the same reason. Honestly I don’t watch TV much at all. Critical Role takes up a lot of time.)

Time is valuable, and I only have so much of it. Personally, I want to experience everything. I want every story, every new thing, every game, every book, every movie, everything. I have a lot of respect for the people who are putting 400, 500, even 1000 hours into a single game, but it just isn’t how I roll (Except Runescape. Runescape is special). Maybe I don’t get as deep an understanding of one singular thing, but I think there’s something beautiful in being able to see the commonalities between the many games I play and stories I experience. It’s fun to see all the different ways people twist the same gameplay mechanics into new and exciting forms, and that’s something I could never do if I just spent all my time on always replaying a few games. I don’t know if there’s any larger or more important point to be made here really. I just thought it was fascinating how many people approach games with this method of endless replaying. It’s cool! Just couldn’t be me.