There are some games i do regret buying.
Mostly games i liked when i was young but now, i wonder why i have them.

One of my last games i kind of regret was Stasis Bone Totem. I really have a hard time to get into it.
The first game, named just Stasis, was actually kind of cool but the new one is so much different.
So i stopped playing it.

There are some other games where the title was interesting and due the fact that they were on sale, i bought them.
Another one was sunless sea. Never got into the title.

So it's not so much that the games are bad but i just didn't got into the UI or the game itself.

I am wondering if someone else has the same feeling about some games.

Share, if you like.

Pretty much always, I guess?

But the first and last game I preordered was Amnesia: The Dark Descent. I really didn't like it at all.

God of War 3, the set pieces were amazing but other than that I think I hated every aspect of it lol, and I bought it at launch so that was 70 bucks down the drain for a super short and dissapointing finale

Nowadays I don't really impulse buy, I make sure I know what I'm getting

Control immediately comes to mind. I love Max Payne and Alan Wake so much, I thought it's a given I'll love Remedy's next game too. Instead I got the dullest possible thing, with boring combat, blandest protagonist imaginable, tedious crafting... just crap. I got it on sale and I still feel dirty and cheated like I paid to have sex with a monkey.

I sure do!

I regret buying "Skyrim: Anniversary Edition" on GOG, which I bought based on the false premise that all mods made for Skyrim would work with the GOG version, even though the many of the best mods don't (except for when the mod makers made a GOG-specific version of their mods, which most of them never have done and never will do).

And the GOG store page's trailer make it sound as if all mods will work with the GOG version with highly misleading statements like, "explore a decade's worth of content," which the customers/players cannot actually do with the GOG version, since the GOG version uses a different version number than the Steam version does, which causes tons of that content to be totally incompatible with the GOG version.

What a ripoff that was!

I also regret buying "Shing!" on GOG even though I only paid $2.99 USD for it IIRC, since the Steam version has Online Coop and the GOG version only has Offline Local Coop, and the game is designed around gimmick bosses that require multiple players working together in order to take them down properly. Therefore, GOG customers are in for a frustrating rough ride trying to beat gimmick bosses by themselves on their own, whereas Steam customers of the game instead have smooth sailing and an enjoyable gameplay experience whilst they play the game with Online Coop as it was designed for.

I also regret buying "Slain: Back from Hell" since that game is way overly difficult and highly aggravating to play, and the checkpoint system, with way too spread out checkpoints, just compounds the aggravation.

I also regret buying both "Outlast" games, since I hate the trial and error "gameplay" of those games, which caused me to have to repeat every section of the game multiple times in a row, the doing of which destroyed any possible enjoyment or horror elements that I might otherwise have received from them.

I also regret buying "Gibbous - A Cthulhu Adventure." I generally hate point & click adventure games because their "puzzles" have no logic and therefore make for extremely unenjoyable gameplay experiences. I thought "Gibbous" might be different based on the rave reviews and based upon it being more modern. But no, it wasn't.

I played the game until I got stuck on a puzzle where you have to cast a spell by forming obscure words, in the exact correct order, based upon browsing through dozens of books at the same time.

After being stuck on that puzzle for several hours, I looked up the solution online. That confirmed my thought that this puzzle had no reasonable chance for any average person to solve it based upon logic alone, since there is nothing at all logical or reasonable about it. That's when I uninstalled that trash game and lamented the fact that I had paid any money for it (even though I only paid $4.99 USD, or something like that, for it, IIRC).

In general, there are a lot of games I would have felt ripped off if I bought them on GOG, but I usually stay attuned to all the drawbacks of GOG releases before I buy anything on GOG, and therefore the only reason why I don't feel ripped off at having bought those games on GOG, is because I saw the ripoff coming before it happened to me, and therefore didn't buy it.

I.e. the Warhammer: Space Marine game that is missing DLCs and the multiplayer modes; the Dawn of War games that are missing Crossplay with Steam, the fast-paced cooking games that are also missing Crossplay with Steam and therefore not worth buying on GOG, likewise with Streets of Rage 4 that is missing Crossplay with Steam; the countless games that have Achievements on Steam but no Achievements on GOG, etc., etc.

For me it was Rome 2 Total War, big dissapointment, compared to Rome 1 TW or Medieval 2 TW. Gameplay was boring and battles were unsatisfying and graphics were ugly, hard to distinguish betwean units, units not responding to commands and overal unit roaster was meh

I regret having purchased many games on Steam, all those years ago. I used to be a bit of a tool, I'm sorry to say.

Funny, it's also the one puzzle I got stuck on in that game, but my reaction upon looking up the answer was "damn, how have I not realised this, it's so obvious!" :D But then again, I love point & clicks. Anyway, other than that one all the puzzles in Gibbous made perfect sense to me, and the whole game was absolutely wonderful - the graphics, the writing, characters... one of the best point & clicks in recent times.

Yeah, lots. I've even publicly gone on about why for some of them.

Fez - Because Phil Fish couldn't just log off.

Ancient Domains Of Mystery - Bounced off the UI which was entrenched in 20 years of technical debt.

Banished - I was hoping for medieval Caesar III or SimCity, but instead got a mass survivalist sim with untrained monkeys.

Any Bit Trip Game that isn't Runner 1 - Hey, turns out that playing Rhythm Pong isn't really a good idea for someone like me.

Braid - This game was pretentious fluff and the author was fully huffing their own supply.

Call to Power 2 - It's a lesser Civ game with a worse interface and then Civ IV came out anyways.

Constructor - This was not the game I was expecting and it has the pesky problem of being steeped in a culture I never was a part of.

Anything published by Activision-Blizzard - I wouldn't even know where to start.

House Flipper - With this game's delisting, I'm now left with an incomplete game and most of the actual features I wanted were DLC locked. Plus, it didn't run so hot anyways.

HuniePop - This was already an immature & sketchy purchase I'd made in an earlier phase of my life, but seeing what the devs did on Double Date felt extra gross.

Locomotion, Chris Sawyer's - It's a worse Transport Tycoon, which is impressive given the massive span of time between the two.

Parkitect - It's a worse Roller Coaster Tycoon that runs like absolute butt due to being built on a poorly optimized Unity core. It's also about as visually charming as a doctor's waiting office.

Special Shoutout to my Hidden Collection:

A.D. 2044 - I think this was a giveaway and I still feel scammed. A baffling adventure game with none of the charm.

Another World: 20th Anniversary Edition - It's just Another World for the nth time, and I don't even like this genre of elitist cinematic platformers.

Block'hood - It's not the Simtower spiritual successor I was hoping for and is far too artsty-fartsy.

Daggerfall Unity - GOG Cut - I'm ringing the bells of shame, because GOG doesn't know how to respect free licences, and besides the point, this version is several times out of date and several times larger than the original game. D.R.E.A.M. is an ugly if valiant attempt to drag Daggerfall into 2003, graphically.

Earthworm Jim & 2 - Without going too deep into the weeds, Doug TenNepal just isn't a human I want to associate with.

Eschalon: Book I & II - I didn't realize that you could make a solo character game feel so damn slow paced but the gait of the PC has never been more a slog.

Factorio - I cannot state why per the bylaws of the forum.

Forager - The "Single Dev" lied about being a single dev, and buried those who helped. Then they threw a hissy fit and abandoned the game.

Luftrausers - Not only is the theming a bit skeevy in retrospect, bur we were shafted on this one, seeing as it has a game breaking progression bug that was never patched.

Retro City Rampage DX - This game has aged, and not in a particularly good way. The way it was pandering to a bygone era has itself now become a bygone era.

Sid Meier’s Railroads! - It ain't Railroad Tycoon 4. Simple as.

Slime Rancher - The game is cloying saccharine and 90% of the exploration is pointless.

Starbound - I can't explain easily. Here's a 48 minute video.

To The Moon - Kick the slide projectionist to advance the story. Not actually a game.

Windforge - Alas, a stillborn game! It underperformed after barely making it to release and was below mid!

I have the following games with the "Disappointing" tag in my collection so far:

Metal Gear
The Immortal
Mable & The Wood
Moonlighter
TANGLEWOOD
Feudal Alloy
Desert Child
Disney The Lion King
Dungeon Souls
Reigns
Okhlos Omega
Starbound
Serpent in the Staglands
STAR WARS Republic Commando
Astebreed Definitive Edition
Mr. Bree+
Reus
Shattered Haven
Twinsen's Little big Adventure Classic
Evolva
Earthworm Jim
Police Quest - In Pursuit of The Death Angel
Incoming

I cannot state for certain that the games listed are horrible, just that I played them for at least an hour and I couldn't get engaged in them.

However, given that I've played hundreds of games that I enjoyed to counterbalance this, that none of those games were horribly broken (just bland) and that I'm not broke, I consider them simply mild disappointments and the acceptable risk that comes with giving unknown games a chance without having to research them for hours before purchase (which is a fair tradeoff for me).

The question sounds more like "which games you didn't like that much after buying them", but that doesn't necessarily, or even usually, mean I regret buying the game. I just think "oh well, not my cup of tea but maybe I will like it later in my life...".

Games which I've really regretted buying have been e.g. buying the game on Steam and then it appeared on GOG (so I bought it on GOG as well, making the Steam version usually redundant), or buying a base game and expensive DLCs one by one, and then the game is re-released as a complete package with all content included and a much better price....

...but I mention a couple of games that I REALLY regretted buying:

1. Omerta: City of Gangsters

I bought the base version on GOG, and then DLCs one by one... and then they released the Gold Edition, and I couldn't buy the missing DLCs one by one anymore. I recall I ended up buying content again I had bought already. I just felt really ripped off. There are some other games where I've gotten a similar feeling, like Mechwarrior 5, Kingdom Come: Deliverance etc... They have taught me usually to wait out until the full edition is released.

2. Gunship (on Commodore Amiga 500)

This was a floppy disk game with several layers of copy protection:

a) I recall you had to recognize some silhouettes or such from the manual when you started the game.

b) On top of that, you had to look up some code language stuff from the manual when you had completed the mission and wanted to land to your homebase.

c) On top of that, there was an actual copy protection on the floppy disk to make it impossible to make backup copies of the game (a special modified boot sector on the disk or something like that)

And the real killer was that the game also required you to keep that original game disk write protection disabled because it used that same disk to save your game progress (completed missions etc.).

Since the write protection was disabled and the disk had a modified boot sector, a simple boot sector virus, which were quite common on Commodore Amiga those days, would write over the game disc boot sector, rendering the whole game broken. So I lost the game I had bought due to Microprose's inane copy protection schemes + for them being so stupid as not to allow using a separate save game disk.

I didn't feel bad at all pirating the game later so that I could play the game I had bought. I was a kid and it was lots of money to me.

Not that you care, but IMO you made several very good points, almost all of the "problems" you mentioned are valid gripes, IMO.

But on this I have some questions. Is that okay?

My questions would be, are there any games that offer crossplay between gog and steam? And how does that work exactly? In other words, is it entirely gog's fault that some games won't crossplay with Steam players or does Steam deserve half of the blame because as I read these points it sounds like you're saying it's all on gog. And I don't understand how that's possible. In order for such crossplay to occur, don't BOTH companies have to agree?

However, no matter the reason (whether it's all on gog or not) your point about not purchasing because of this is absolutely valid, and IMO, the absolute right response, so good on you, I wish more consumers would withhold purchases on stuff for such valid concerns as yours. If more did it, then perhaps there would be fewer valid concerns to deal with.

Have a good one mate. I do like your passion, that's for sure.

Pretentious? Yeah, I guess. Still, I liked the graphics and the gameplay a lot. And the author? No idea who he is, what it was he said, did or huffed and I couldn't care less. It's free, how can you regret buying it? Oh, who cares? The games are great. Peak 90s cartoonish platformers. They're games, you play them and have fun, you're not having dinner with the dev.

Yes, but I've had them refunded. Except one: The Witcher 3.

Since CDPR is now using it to further their pro-DRM stancecs. And they refused to refund me for it. It's not even a game I expect I'd like if I were to get around to playing it. Not that I could get a complete experience now.

I've bought games that turned out not to be what I'd hoped or that they sucked, but that is a bit different than actual regret.

EDIT: I'm sure I could think of others, but that one is rather salient. There are the crowdfunded games that eventually turned into Steamsclusives despite promising otherwise. Or even never delivered. And here I thought I liked you. :|
(Control is great. I'm sorry you had a lapse in tasteful judgment.)

I'm sorry, but it's just terrible. The protagonist is a piece of cardboard with no reaction to anything, making everything that happens feel dull and lifeless. In fact, the whole game is so far divorced from any recognisable reality that with a main character utterly incapable of serving as any kind of human refrence, it was quite impossible for me to get invested in what was going on. The enemy is a featureless, impersonal abstraction, and not in a good, creepy way, but just in a boring, pedestrian way, and with a silly name to boot. There is only gun, and no matter how you modify it, it always feels like a peashooter. You spend the whole game (or at least as far as I got) in an office building. And I don't care how weird and warped it is, it's still dull to spend hours and hours running around and backtracking in a damn office building. And the crafting, always a tedious chore in any game, here feels especially rewarding when I get to collect abstract icons with meaningless names as resources.

But I guess I am indeed in a minority here. My review of Control is probably the most downvoted I ever posted on GOG, so much so in fact it made me stop reviewing games here.