My Top 7 Games of 2024 That I Didn’t Finish

Completing a game isn’t everything.

Over the years, I have had many games that I really liked or even loved that I didn’t finish. Sometimes, the game was just a bit too long, and I felt fine calling it quits after 50-60 hours. Occasionally, a game is awesome but doesn’t have difficulty settings, and I don’t have the patience to toil away at a tough boss for days. There are even times when I just outright wasn’t into a game anymore, but I loved it for dozens of hours, so I still have a favorable view of that game.

In 2022 and 2023, I had games in my top 3 that I didn’t even beat (Baldur’s Gate 3 and Elden Ring). I think those games are amazing accomplishments in so many ways, but various issues stopped me from going all the way with them. That still doesn’t take anything away from them.

2024 was no different for me. Despite completing around 35 games to this point, I still had at least 12 games by my count that I did not get to the finish line on. Some of those I abandoned after a few hours because they just weren’t for me. But the ones I am going to highlight today are games I legitimately enjoyed, at least for a while. But for one reason or another, it wasn’t meant to be. Here are my top 7 games of 2024 that I did not finish. Hopefully, I don’t abandon any of the games I am playing this month now that I’ve made this list!

7. Call of Duty: Black Ops 6

I’m so old that I was playing games when the campaign was THE selling point of the Call of Duty series. Exploring World War 2 from several different countries’ perspectives was a really unique and interesting twist back then. But honestly, I never felt as sucked into those campaigns as I did other FPS franchises. Despite that, I still continued to play the games yearly because they were fun enough, and eventually, the multiplayer became essential for any shooter fan.

Fast forward to today, and I almost never play any of the Call of Duty games. It has probably been a decade since my last campaign. But with it being “free” on Xbox Game Pass, it seemed like a good chance to try. For the most part, I was finding the campaign to be solid enough. There was political intrigue in the story. The sound design and animations around the shooting are as excellent as you’d hope. And there’s a nice variety of stealth, shooting, and set piece moments that I liked.

A few things bugged me, though. The stealth still feels way too half-baked in these games. You don’t have a lot of options, and I felt like I was doing some cheesy things to get by. It’s cinematic, but I don’t find it fun. I also really wasn’t into the mini open world level that the game has. I just feel like these games thrive off pacing, and that level didn’t have it. In the end, that level is mostly the reason I stopped. While it was fine, I just wasn’t into it. If this came out earlier in the year, I might have powered through. But being so close to year’s end, I felt compelled to move on and play other games that have more of a shot for my Game of the Year considerations. This seems like a solid game for those who are into these, but for someone out of the loop, I’m not sure if it’s anything special.

6. Steamworld Heist 2

Steamworld Heist is now the second Steamworld Heist game that I haven’t finished! There are a lot of elements of these games that I like (Steamworld games are pretty much always pretty good quality), but a few too many annoyances held me back from finishing, much like last time.

Steamworld Heist 2 is a very cool mix of tactics and action combat. This is a 2D turn-based strategy game. But when you attack, you actually have to aim your slightly shaky gun in order to hit foes. I’m not sure if there is any game quite like it out there. It’s a nice mix of strategy and light action gameplay.

While everything is rock solid, I slowly got annoyed with some of the trial and error nature of the combat. The big thing is that certain areas of the map aren’t revealed until you walk into them. It seemed like way too often I wasn’t really where I wanted to be when I went into these areas. You also have to waste a turn getting into these closed off areas, which is kind of dumb. Enemies and traps can also spawn randomly in inconvenient places that left me at a disadvantage. I like the gameplay, but some small tweaks would have made me like it even more.

The game also has some small exploration sections on the sea in between battles. These feature a kind of clunky auto-battler type combat system that I didn’t particularly enjoy. There is a lot of good stuff here, but there were just enough annoyances where I did not feel like playing it anymore.

5. Lil’ Guardsman

Lil’ Guardsman is a game where you play as a kid, who randomly ends up having the job of deciding who to let in or kick out of a fantasy town. Think Papers, Please, but more quirky and funny.

In terms of story, characters, and writing, this game knocks it out of the park. It’s one of the funniest games I have played this year. It is consistently very clever. And the voice acting’s quality really surprised me with this being a smaller indie game.

Gameplay wise, though, a few things just started to bug me the more I played. The game gives you various tools that help you evaluate each person who comes up to your checkpoint. You can only bring a certain allotment of each of these tools each day. And figuring out the right tools to bring is complete luck. There were a lot of times I couldn’t get the best results because I didn’t have the right equipment. I never could have picked the right things every day without a guide.

There are also elements of choice in the game, but at least to where I got, those choices rarely seemed to matter significantly.

I still really liked my time with the game. If I did a “funniest games of the year” category, it would easily be in my top 5. But those few issues just irked me a little too much, so I put it down.

4. Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess

Kunitsu-Gami is a reverse tower defense game with action elements. It is also filled with joy and dripping with Japanese culture. It is not quite like anything I have ever played. All of these disparate elements come together in really cohesive ways that I didn’t always expect.

There is some fun strategy involved with commanding your units and fighting off enemy waves, and while I wouldn’t call the action elements good, they work fine since they aren’t necessarily the centerpiece of the game. The level design is also quite smart. They mix things up with different gimmicks and boss fights as you go that don’t let you get comfortable. My one big issue was that the strategy interface during battles was super clunky. Moving units around the map was never as easy as I would like. But I was still having a lot of fun with it.

As much as I like the core gameplay, a lot of my issues with the game stemmed from things outside of battle. One of the main ways you can level up your character and soldiers is with a village building mechanic after each battle. This mechanic is pure busy work and has nothing interesting about it. You can also complete challenges in each battle to gain more resources that let you level up. But replaying levels is not fun as they are super long, and if you don’t fulfill some specific conditions, you won’t get anything extra anyway.

I reached a level in the game that had me a bit stumped as for what to do. I figured I could do some challenges and get a bit stronger, then I’d be OK. Then I realized how awful it is to grind for resources in this game. That kind of stopped me in my tracks. Despite that, I still think this is a game worth checking out. Especially on Game Pass.

3. Bo: Path of the Teal Lotus

This is the only game on the list I actually wrote a full review for. This is because I got 75% of the way through it, and then a bug stopped my progress. By that point, I really didn’t want to wait multiple weeks for the fix and then try and pick it up again.

Path of the Teal Lotus is a Metroidvania built around a pogo mechanic (you can jump after every time you hit something, even in mid-air). It also has lovely Okami-esque graphics. The game has some really strong core gameplay mechanics. It’s really fun to use that pogo mechanic to stay in the air for long periods of time. The platforming and combat segments are built really well around that.

My biggest issue with the game came down to insane boss fights that take forever to beat. Worse, there is no health bar for the bosses. It is not fun to be five minutes into a boss fight and have no idea how far away you are from beating it. That alone made me somewhat relieved when I couldn’t go any further, as I was kind of dreading what the last few boss fights might look like. The Metroidvania mechanics of exploration weren’t the greatest either. But honestly, this was still a really strong video game. If not for the bug, I likely would have finished this game. But I also wonder if getting to the end might have made me like it less depending on how those last few bosses went.

2. The Legend of Heroes: Trails Through Daybreak

Daybreak was my first exposure to the Legend of Heroes series. And there are many ways in which it blew me away.

When we get to my end of year awards, Daybreak will likely be on my lists for combat, music, and best character, despite the fact that I didn’t finish it (I believe I got about 33-40% of the way through it). That battle system, in particular, is really the highlight. Daybreak has a really smart turn-based system that lets you max out your strategy in every battle. There are also action elements that allow you to get a head start before the turn-based fighting starts (think Metaphor, but Daybreak actually did it first). I loved this battle system, with my only complaint being that dungeons were just packed with big monsters that take a bit too long to take down.

In addition, the music is about as good as it gets for a game with a relatively small budget. Daybreak also has one of my favorite characters of the year in Van Arkride. There is a lot to like here.

But I have had several starts and stops with this game. For as much as I like it, the pacing can be atrocious at times. There are long stretches where nothing of value is going on. And there are a few too many tropey moments that make me cringe at times.

Despite that, the game has a lot of heart. It’s just easy to put down for a while during a slow stretch. The sequel to this game releases in America next year, and I still would like to try and go back and finish this game during a slower game release time. Maybe this upcoming January will be my chance to do so.

1. Persona 3 Reload

All of the ingredients were there for me to love Persona 3 Reload. But then, I screwed up.

Despite knowing Reload was on the way, I got too tempted by Persona 3 Portable showing up on Xbox Game Pass last year and decided to play it. I actually didn’t finish that game, but I did log something like 40-50 hours into it.

So when I booted up Persona 3 Reload earlier this year, I marveled at some of the smart tweaks the game made to that original game. There are a lot of strong upgrades that deserve to be commended, and made it a much more enjoyable experience than Persona 3 Portable.

But in the end, after just experiencing this story and roughly similar combat, it got old for me. While Reload is definitely a better experience than the original, there are still some elements that aren’t as strong as I’d like.

Namely, Tartarus has not evolved as much as I’d hoped. Tartarus is the big randomly generated dungeon that Persona 3 revolved around. And unfortunately, the guts of that remain mostly the same. The generic dungeon design gets a bit old after a while. I think everything around the dungeon is good enough where I would normally still beat the game, but after just experiencing it recently, it just didn’t work for me.

While I don’t plan on trying this game again anytime soon, I’m still relatively confident that I will pick it back up again in a few years. This is a well-made game that deserves to be played by any fan of this series. I’m just not quite ready yet.