Replay Value is Nonsense

The first game I finished was Paper Mario on N64. To put into perspective how many times I've finished it, I've done more complete playthroughs of Paper Mario on N64 than all of my other games combined. As in, all my Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, Metal Gear, Pokemon, Zelda, etc, together don't reach the amount of times I've finished Paper Mario.

me who has played borderlands 2 and spyro the dragon over 10 times

While I agree with a lot of this video, it juxtaposes strangely against the point I ALSO see and largely agree with in movie criticism.
That is, that a lot of modern blockbusters are being created to sell big in the theaters but without care about rewatchability. That they're big spectacles that draw you in at first but afterwards leave you not really caring about seeing it over and over again. You're just supposed to move on to the next big blockbuster.

This is a rather fascinating video the early parts were rambly but towards the end you made banger points.

It's funny how a game like Nier Automata made it a nessescity to replay it in order for you to get the "full story" but even after getting all 5 main endings, I still found the story of it to be the most dull and painfully average things ever. The voice acting and the whole "Yoko Taro game finally has good gameplay to carry stories" to be what got me through it. To this day, I have no desire to replay it again and would honestly rather watch the anime instead whenever the dub for the latter finally finishes or if it gets a season 2.

Meanwhile games like Twisted Metal Black and Halo 3 were good enough that I replayed them multiple times. TM Black's driver routes can be beaten in an hour especially if you use cheats and the game's gameplay felt so good and the stories for each driver are told so well and does a good job at contextualizing the narrative that I played through all the avaliable ones.

Halo 3 is probably the most mechanically rich Halo game ever with some great level design minus the Flood missions that I played it multiple times and now I feel like Heroic is the default difficulty where anyother Halo, I would rather play on Normal.

A lot of games I like I often replayed on Normal and just want to write reviews for or refresh my memories on them. I don't like replaying games too much or any media since the diminishing returns starts to eventually kick in. It's like listening to the same song on repeat, what was great the first time loses it's value the more you listen to it within close proxmity of each other.

Personally, I don't replay games since I prefer to get everything possible in one playthrough. If there's post game exclusive content - I skip reading/listening to all the story and just play at higher difficulties.

Even when recovering from surgeries and not feeling like a piece of shit for wasting my time, "replaying" games felt like such an unrealistic thing to consider, like maybe some game I loved that much I would want to play all over again, but I dunno who wants to regularly replay these 80 hour open world games?

I hate most of ng+
Because theres no progression at all

Quite the thought provoking video. It left me with a question: If there's so much alternative content that I start a new playthrough right after I finish the first one, am I even replaying it or is it just one playthrough that's longer than it appears at first glance?

I’ve played spider man (100%) 6 times and aside from new game plus there’s 0 replay value. I play the game over and over because I love the story, characters, and most importantly the gameplay.

I had two thoughts coming into this video and you nailed them both. 1. Replay value is personal (preference) 2. You can't evaluate replay value, since during each replay your conception has changed from or because of the former play-through.

I agree that replay value is a nonsense term, but chasing after it leads to design decisions which sometimes make the initial playthrough worse. I recently played through spiderman miles morales and was disappointed when the final skill in each of the skill trees was locked behind new game plus. I haven't replayed it yet, but i can't help but feel like the initial playthrough was incomplete (even if I did unlock everything available to me, which I didn't) because I had to replay the story to get access to certain mechanics which I felt should have been included in my first time playing.

My currently favorite Videogame I played through 15 times just becuse I like it. And Every playthrough I played it pretty much the same way.

The game has 3 endings and while I got the normal ending in my first playthrough and the golden ending in all my other playthroughs I will never go fore the bad ending.
I dont need to see everything a game has to offer.

While I don’t disagree that replay value is oversold and relied on as a marketing tactic, replayability should be an inevitable feature in a well crafted CRPG, especially if based on tabletop rulesets.

If you play a good CRPG with the approach of completionism, some of that replay value might dwindle. If you play these types of games like a tabletop game and don’t immediately explore every nook and cranny, or take every side quest on, there is generally a good reason to play again. Coming to mind are the recent Pathfinder games, Larian games, and some of the more obscure Obsidian stuff.

Playing immersive sims completely changed how I think and approach RPGs. I would argue the real problem is that the concept of RPG has been diluted beyond repair at this point - Action Adventure Base-Building Crafting Farming Apothecary RPG with 6 arcade mini games, a revolutionary new card and dice game. This is often how the replay value argument is sold, instead of quality, world building, story, choice, consequences.

Gotta replay the video, no replay value means its not as good as it could be. Gonna nerd a gc vasquez new game plus

Man, the Beatles sure knew how to record music with infinite replay value.
Or, you know, substitute that band with literally any other artist. Because 'replay value' becomes a completely useless concept when applied to experiencing music

I definitely disagree with you

Sure, the AAA game industry the scope of exploration like in every other aspect

But the value of experiencing a piece of media after the initial run can stand on it's own copare to the initial experience
It's the idea of the value of art beyond the surface

You also can't blame me for buying a game based a game based on the amount of time I to enjoy it, I'm not made of money and the more of the experience I get for the same price, the less the experience ends up costing overall

The best video games I’ve ever played I’ve often only played once. Alan Wake being an example.

Well, not agree with everything you said and I will agree with some. There are games that have lots of replay value. For example, some role playing games have level editors and you can design new adventures and play a different game again, other games have modding tools and you can alter the game too much and you can replay it, others have multiple endings or secret missions that open after you finish the game, others are proccedural generated each time you begin the game again, others they do not have linear story and others have multiple characters to choose with multiple difficulties that makes the game different in each dificulty. If you do not like a game, you do not purchase it at all. If you will not purchase it at all, you do not have it at all and you do not care about its replayability.