The two games I regretted purchasing were Alan Wake (stupid broken controls made it neigh unplayable and it was by far not as scary as advertised, but rather boring) and Divinity 2 - Ego Draconis. The utterly stupid ending ruined the entire game (OK, there were some bad parts before that, lots of little flaws that add up - but it was the ending that killed the game for good)

I have that mod. I have no excuse. I don't know why I put it down. Why did it take you 6 years?

Sid Meier's Civilization: Beyond Earth

Yea, they got me on that one. Never again firaxis/2k, never again.

I honestly can't think of a game I got that I regretted but I always research on a game before I get it.

This is literally every Armored Core game. If you can get into it, it's fantastic, but for me the biggest problem was that with all the time you would put into building the ultimate mech, it seemed like the missions were either too difficult or too uninteresting. Add to that the limited number, and it really kills your motivation to learn the game's systems.

Despite that, I have a soft spot for it as one of the enduring mech series on consoles and would only ever ask it to improve in its playable content over its customization. Maybe better teach the customization systems, as Steel Lancer Arena International did (or tried to), but don't simplify them. That's the game's greatest strength mechanically speaking, with the entire aesthetic and heavy feel of the mechs being the bonus.

You need to play the exppack for the ending.
Yeah, this. Bought at launch too /facepalm...

Luckily I got it for cheaper at GMG

Master of Orion 3

I've made a few bad purchases but the one that always stands out for me is Serious Sam 2, which I bought on launch day without having ever tried the series before. Whoops, turns out I don't like it. I think it was the first $60 game I ever bought, to, which was weird, because this was well before games were supposed to cost that much. Why was it that expensive?

I'm just going to join the anti-Spirit Tracks train (hah!), but yes, I liked Phantom Hourglass well enough. But it's a good game, not a great game. If you have any other traditional Zelda left to play, you could do better. It's nothing to do with the touch controls, those worked fine (controlling Zelda in ST is even a nice addition). It was the overworld: not just the controls but the lack of interesting places to visit.

Here are some stories...

The Simpsons Skateboarding - I was a dumb kid that loved the Simpsons but to be fair, I only saw reviews on Amazon when I purchased it in 2004 and most of them just blasted the graphics and nothing else. The gameplay though, was atrocious and terribly unplayable. Instead of copying the Tony Hawk games to make a decent Simpsons clone of that series, it tried something different and the game was mangled as a result. You have to hold forward to accelerate on your board and there is very room for error when attempting tricks.

Raiden Legacy - Easily my worst GOG purchase, not to say it was GOG's fault but the fault of Dotemu for making a horrible emulated package of the first Raiden and Raiden Fighters series. At this point I am pretty much playing them on MAME and have my eyes on nabbing The Raiden Project and Raiden Fighters Aces to play these games legitimately. The games have this ridiculous frameskip issue that makes the games really hard to play, which is weird when lag in shooters like this are actually a good thing but here it just makes it hard to do anything. I also do not like the lack of a free play option, which to me should be included alongside a limited credit mode for games like these. They were designed to eat your pocket change back in those times and not everyone can get the skill to master these pretty challenging games.

007 Nightfire for the GBA and PC - This one is another dumb youngster story, got the PC version back in the day but found that the game ran like crap on my PC at the time and couldn't properly play it. Being disappointed, I used money I got for Christmas to get the GBA version which I thought would be decent since it looked a bit like Doom, and I love Doom. One of the worst GBA first person shooters with really bad graphics that make it hard to see what you are doing which really screw you in the stealth sequences, and the controls just do not work with the GBA's limited buttons. I played the PC version much later after getting a computer that could run it and well... good thing I did not play that game when I got it new because it was pretty bare bones compared to the console version that I ended up getting some time earlier. It lacks the Bond coolness that it should have gotten.

Team Fortress 2 - I got this before it went free to play and... I just couldn't get into it, I can't describe why though. The team based gameplay is great, the game looks amazing even by today's standards and it has a lot of charm to it. I just couldn't bring myself to really play it enough to get good at it. I regret purchasing it since I never really liked it enough to play it and that saddens me since it always intrigued me when I saw the news about it.

Left 4 Dead - I bought this after getting the second game gifted to me which was some time before they ported No Mercy to the second game. I got the first game thinking that Valve was just porting No Mercy as a fun little bonus to go with The Sacrifice... then some time later I saw that all the first games campaigns were ported to the second game and I felt that I wasted money on something I abandoned for, in my opinion at least, much superior versions of the first game's campaigns.

Gothic 3. It seemed like something I would enjoy based on the videos. The gameplay was very clunky though, which wasn't obvious from videos. The delay from button press to action was long and the animations couldn't be interrupted, which made combat torture. I couldn't take it for more than about half an hour and just gave up.

My biggest gaming regret is "buying" Front Mission Evolved PC & that rates higher than "Astro rock" which the disc was blank Space hulk CD which never was playable on any of my puters

couldnt do the last mission and i have a bit of a patience problem ( ie i dont have very much patience )

so i just played the main missions and ignored the last one untill recently

last mission sucks ass

This thread is the surprise (to me) hit of the week!

I bought Syberia for $20 way back when Syberia 2 was being released and bough Syberia 2 for $40 before having played the first one. I was fooled and hoping for another TLJ masterpiece, silly me.

I also bought GW2 collector's edition because I had spent so much time in GW 4v4 matches I thought it would just get better. DER.

Star Wars: The Old Republic. WORST. "GAME." PURCHASE. EVER.

The Broken Sword series. I bought them all on a bundle sale once, repeatedly have tried to get into them and the first game is just SO fecking boring.

ohyeah! SW:TOR was sooo horrible and I was so furious with how horrible it was (I played to lvl 46 of a jedi sentinel) I talked and talked to the parties involved (amazon, bethesda, and my CC company) until I got a refund of my collector's edition as well as a refund for 6months I had already paid for. YEAH! I was pretty sure it was the CC company that put the pressure on EA to give me a mostly full refund. Amazon was great the whole time.