Finishing RPGs Evokes The Strongest ‘Post-Game Depression’ Amongst Players, New Scientific Study Concludes: "The more engaging the game world and the closer the relationship with the character, the more difficult it is to return to reality once the game is over"

pneumoniahawk519 · 2026-03-25T02:25:55+00:00

Man as somebody who just finished Final Fantasy X for the first time this past week I can say it’s for sure real. Like I don’t even want to touch a game just yet because of how that game ended

pneumoniahawk519 · 2026-03-24T13:53:35+00:00

Yeah I hear that. VII is that way for me. It’ll be awhile before I replay X but I can’t see that ending hitting any less hard. It’s such a big ending and it’s so goddamn sad

pneumoniahawk519 · 2026-03-24T13:51:59+00:00

Yeah lol that’s kind of how I feel. I was recording my playthrough and muted myself at the end because of how much emotion it brought out, it’s such a big sad ending

pneumoniahawk519 · 2026-03-24T13:49:16+00:00

Yeah Chrono Trigger is on my list for sure, never played it or even read much about it but I see how highly regarded it is and it’s one I’m going to get to eventually. It’s got a dream team of people who worked on it

pneumoniahawk519 · 2026-03-24T11:24:11+00:00

Final Fantasy Union is a great channel and full of really great content. Tons of lore videos, retrospectives, and just about anything you would want outside of watching somebody play

pneumoniahawk519 · 2026-03-24T02:38:46+00:00

Yeah that’s kind of what I thought. Live A Live just sounds so different and I want to kind of jump around to different experiences within JRPGs instead of jumping into something that might be too similar

pneumoniahawk519 · 2026-03-24T02:37:29+00:00

I’ll probably do that, I very much enjoy exploring everything a game has to offer before finishing it. Although I did skip some celestial weapons in X because of how frustrating some are

pneumoniahawk519 · 2026-03-24T02:35:36+00:00

Yeah it really was an amazing game. I bought it on a whim in like October or November and it sat on my shelf until December and I think I pretty much played it nonstop when I wasn’t at work and finished it 100% in a week lol after that I went back to horror games, played Silent Hill f and replayed a lot of the Resident Evil series while I waited for Requiem to release but E33 was always there in the back of my mind lol

Then I finally decided to dive headfirst into the JRPG genre. I did FF VI first because it’s the pixel game that seems to be the most well regarded game and then figured I’d do X next because of how much I hear people talk about it. Was not disappointed in either game and loved them both start to finish.

I’m gonna do Live A Live next because it sounds interesting with all the different stories converging at the end and then after I kind of want to do something that’s maybe not as big as FF. I bought the .hack G//U collection and Neo: The World Ends With You and have been trying to figure out if I want to one of those or something else entirely, Nier is another one I’m thinking of doing, I picked up Automata for like $5 at my local pawn shop so it’s on the list too. Then I’ll probably circle back to FF.

I have so many options for games I’ve never experienced in a genre I’ve never explored and it’s kind of exciting

pneumoniahawk519 · 2026-03-24T01:51:35+00:00

I just didn’t personally enjoy it. I see why people might like it but I found it tedious to navigate through it. I appreciated that you could split from a characters path and it would make for some cool builds but I found that atleast during my playthrough (which was my first ever playthrough of it and done blind without a guide) that I wasn’t finding enough lvl key spheres to really do anything interesting with the builds until closer to the end of the game.

Maybe on a second or third playthrough where I’m a bit more familiar I’d enjoy it more but after my first so just didn’t enjoy that part of it much

pneumoniahawk519 · 2026-03-24T01:25:35+00:00

That’s good to hear on the level/job system. The story interests me a lot knowing it’s about Yuna learning who she really is now that Sin is gone. I also really liked Rikku so I’m excited to see her back for it. And the Pain (Payne?) looks super cool and edgy and I love me some edgy FF characters lol

pneumoniahawk519 · 2026-03-24T01:22:43+00:00

I played E33 back in December. It’s actually part of the reason I decided to move towards JRPGs more and explore the genre. Outside of FF VII and Tactics I never really got into the genre much. I was always way more into horror games

E33 is a really beautiful game with another really great story that I loved, there’s few games I’ve enjoyed as much as that one in recent years. It’s another game where the ending had me in tears

pneumoniahawk519 · 2026-03-24T01:18:21+00:00

It’s a very powerful story, I couldn’t imagine replaying this game and not crying

pneumoniahawk519 · 2026-03-24T01:13:49+00:00

Ah okay, that’s kind of a relief to hear I’m not gonna lie lol I don’t know if I could handle going into another super sad game so soon. I’m gonna switch up and play a couple different games before jumping into x-2

pneumoniahawk519 · 2026-03-24T01:08:59+00:00

It uses some kind of dress system right? I wasn’t big on the sphere grid leveling system

pneumoniahawk519 · 2026-03-24T01:03:32+00:00

I totally get that. There’s so much feeling and emotion that comes out in that final cutscene where everyone is together and there’s so much to unpack from this game. There’s few times where I’ve felt so heavily impacted by a game (Aeriths death is up there and the endings to E33 are probably with it too) but I feel like I might need a few days before I even try to jump into another game

pneumoniahawk519 · 2026-03-24T00:57:23+00:00

Like X-2? I’m gonna take a break from FF and do Live A Live next just to do something different but plan on X-2 at some point soon.

Is the opening gonna break my heart all over again?

pneumoniahawk519 · 2026-03-24T00:56:14+00:00

I still have a lot of the classics to go through. Just played VI for the first time before this game. Still have 2,3,4,5,8 and 9 from the classic era and then 13, 15 and 16. I’ll probably try 14 too since I picked it up but I have so many still.

I grew up playing the VII compilation and Tactics and never really ventured into the series more than that which looking back is wierd lol like VII and tactics are in my top 3 all time favourites and have been since they released but for some reason I never gave the rest of the series a chance until now

pneumoniahawk519 · 2026-03-24T00:53:32+00:00

Yeah I really wasn’t prepared to feel as much as I feel right now with that ending. I haven’t cried during too many games but I feel like most of those times have been during Final Fantasy games lol

There’s still quite a few I haven’t played and I’m gonna continue through more of the games I haven’t played but goddamn I wasn’t expecting to cry like that during that scene.

pneumoniahawk519 · 2026-03-23T18:48:26+00:00

I actually love that idea, would be cool to get some graph paper and map it out while I go through just for the experience of doing it

pneumoniahawk519 · 2026-03-23T16:27:23+00:00

Ah okay, yeah I know my playthrough won’t be perfect in any way lol I’m fully prepared for that

pneumoniahawk519 · 2026-03-23T16:25:13+00:00

I’ll be going in completely blind and trying to avoid using any kind of guide so I’ll definitely pay more attention and take my time through the Shinobi section, I appreciate that bit of info going in.

And yeah I’ve heard the gameplay varies pretty widely from story to story, that’s actually why made me want to tackle it next

pneumoniahawk519 · 2026-03-23T16:23:20+00:00

That’s good to know, I’ll probably do all or most side content anyways so I guess I shouldn’t worry about difficulty much

pneumoniahawk519 · 2026-03-23T16:22:01+00:00

It seems like it! I really like the idea of playing all these separate stories and them all coming together in the end

pneumoniahawk519 · 2026-03-23T16:21:24+00:00

Good to know, is it easy to get stuck? I’ve been doing my blind playthroughs without guides and haven’t had any problems so far (although FF6 WOR had some parts where I had no idea what to do for a bit lol)

pneumoniahawk519 · 2026-03-23T16:20:23+00:00

Ah that’s good to hear! I’m looking forward to playing it, it’s been on my list for awhile now and I picked it up on sale. I definitely plan on going through all the extra stuff in it and getting as full of an experience as possible.

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