It’s not necessarily a bad thing for a game to stress you out. Think of it this way: would you prefer to feel nothing at all, or slight comfort, over feeling like you’re totally immersed in a challenging, stressful experience? Everyone’s answer will be different, but there’s definitely a large niche out there for players who enjoy being pushed and challenged in healthy ways during their gaming.
5 Open-World Games You’ll Play for Hours Without Realizing
These five open-world games can be so absorbing that a quick session can turn into hours.
Tough enemies, difficult and complex systems, impossible-feeling bosses, and worlds that blend survival with RPGs, these open-world games should be your next stop if you don’t mind getting mentally overwhelmed in a good way. They’re highly stressful, yes, but you won’t find games that are quite as rewarding as the following ones.
Gothic 2
Old But Gold With A Hefty Dose Of Challenge
The Gothic games have always been known for being quite brutal and not exactly beginner-friendly. Gothic 2 continues in the same vein, sporting a world that is immediately hostile and unforgiving towards you, a mere nobody in the beginning, faced with enemies that have zero scaling. It expects you to adapt to the environment, instead of throwing you a friendly bone like many modern games would in order to slowly initiate you. Are the enemies too demanding? Too bad, come back when you’ve improved. That, on top of a world map that doesn’t feature precise quest markers and forces you to remember where to go and what your latest progress was, already makes it an exhausting experience if you’re not used to the way games were once made—without any handholding.
To add to this, the leveling can feel pretty slow and punishing. Make the wrong pick with your stats, and it will suck for a long time until you can level again. On the flip side, leveling feels actually rewarding and significant. However, it’s games like Gothic 2 that make grinding them out so rewarding, because it’s not just your character getting stronger, but you as the player getting smarter, too. It’s a real-life learning experience, and like anything that presents a challenge, you have to be ready to fail and make a fool out of yourself in combat first before you can master anything.
Pathologic 2
You Are The Town’s Only Hope
Pathologic 2 is a mentally gruelling experience thanks to its setting as well as the gameplay. If you’ve ever (for some awful reason) wondered what it would feel like to be a plague doctor tending to a whole town fighting for its last, rattling breath of survival, this is the game for you. Its atmosphere is incredibly dark and oppressive, and you feel constantly powerless as you try to make decisions for the betterment of the characters around you. Unfortunately, almost no choice ever feels truly good. With each one comes a sacrifice, which will wear you down emotionally.
8 Best Open-World Games That Are Punishing But Fair, Ranked
These excellent open-world video games can dish out some serious challenges, straddling the line between punishing and fair.
That said, no game does this as well as Pathologic 2, while also throwing in other concerns like your own survival. Yes, on top of the mental load you’ll deal with, you also need to manage your hunger and thirst, as well as gather resources. You’re the one person who can help others, but would you put your own survival before that of someone else? With a time limit on the game, you will become desperate, and it’ll push your decision-making skills and resilience to their limits. Despite that, it’s easily one of the most thrilling and immersive survival game experiences out there, and does a fantastic job at conveying the dread of an antagonist you can’t physically fight with your fists. It’s very much a worthwhile game to suffer through.
Outward
A Highly Punishing Survival RPG
Preparation is always key to success, and Outward will teach that lesson to you by force if it has to. Most of us gamers have been spoiled with instant dopamine experiences and fast-paced games where running in is the way to go, but Outward fights that notion by teaching you that slowing down is the best, safest path forward. Like with Gothic 2, you start from zero and build yourself up to a hero, and that path is pretty long and arduous, riddled with tough enemies in a medieval fantasy world, Aurai, that is cruel, uncompromising, and, oh, devoid of any fast traveling, so get ready to walk a lot and ensure your own safety while you do.
Small mistakes in Outward can quickly spiral out of hand. Die, and you’ll be set back significantly, with injuries to slow you down, which limits your combat capabilities, which makes you a weak target to almost anything and everything in the world. Forget to sleep and hydrate, and you’ll face the consequences of fatigue. You can even contract illnesses, and don’t even think about underestimating some of the game’s enemies. If one catches you off-guard, that’s “GGs” immediately, so you’re always forced to be on your toes, to plan, to think ahead. The reason why this still works brilliantly and why Outward is a must-experience is that, like Gothic, it’s a learning process for the player. You’re not just watching your character become overpowered, but learning through your own mistakes what works and what doesn’t. Nothing is handed out to you for free, so when you do conquer that dungeon and defeat that boss that gave you a hard time, it’s exhilarating. Even better if you’re suffering through it with friends.
Kenshi
A Gritty Survival Experience Like No Other
Very similar to the punishing vibes of the Gothic games and Outward, we have Kenshi. This is a game you’ll either hate or love for how open-ended it is. Sure, it lets you decide who you’d like to be, but the world doesn’t make it easy for you at all. At the start, you’re an absolute nobody, and you won’t hold your own in any combat. Chances are, you’ll die and bleed out in the wilderness, or get enslaved. Expect to be kicked in the guts over and over again, as the game tests your patience and seeks to demotivate you, without throwing you a bone or providing any guidance on where to go or what to do. When you experience setbacks like failure in battle, the consequences are pretty hefty, and you’ll usually have to recover for a long time to regain your health, and possibly even lose a limb for good.
Best Open-World Games That Are Hard To Put Down
A well-designed open world can keep players hooked for countless hours, sucking them into an immersive world they don’t want to leave.
All the while, life in the world of Kenshi goes on. It’s a bit of a simulation in the sense that everything in the game works on its own, with towns getting raided and the different in-game factions clashing against one another, whether you’re there or not. You’re constantly trying to claw yourself out of a hole at the start, and it’s where a lot of players tend to give up. However, there’s a good reason why Kenshi is so incredibly well-loved by many, and that’s the freedom of writing your own epic journey. No great story is ever without setbacks, and given how open the world is and how you can basically go anywhere, talk to anyone, interact with everything, it can be so rewarding to see your character and, later on, your whole squad evolve into something tangible after countless heart-wrenching failures.
Elden Ring
The Lands Between Are Relentless Against The Tarnished
I won’t lie, Elden Ring might be the tamest game on this list in terms of how punishing and mentally exhausting it feels, but it still deserves a shoutout for being an open-world RPG and Soulslike. In typical Soulslike fashion and FromSoftware style, you can expect to be spit out into the world without too much guidance. Yes, there’s a short tutorial dungeon, but as soon as you walk to our first outside Grace in Limgrave, you’re met with the Tree Sentinel—your official, warm welcome to the world of Elden Ring.
The Lands Between are full of smaller and bigger dungeons, POIs, and roaming enemies with their quirks that will drive you crazy. Even small, inconsequential enemies will feel annoying and tough in the beginning with your limited combat knowledge, gear, and low stats, forcing you to play like a coward and farm for experience. That said, in Soulslike style, the bosses are also equally unfair. They are often much bigger than you, sporting attacks that can stun you, grab you, or lock you into a combo of multiple smaller strikes if you’re not ready with your dodge. You’re always slightly on your guard in Elden Ring’s world, waiting for the next weird enemy with their own unfair gimmick, whether it’s a roaming Crucible Knight or a giant troll, or even Malenia in her boss chamber. With all that said, like any Soulslike, the sense of reward after defeating a boss you’ve been stuck on for hours is simply unparalleled. Your characters grow in power with each kill as you earn Runes to upgrade your gear and stats, and better weapons and armor. While there are builds and playstyles that can trivialize a lot of the game’s challenge, it’s still a Soulslike at its core, and remains unapologetically stressful yet highly rewarding for those not entirely well-versed in the genre.
Open-World Games That Punish You for Playing on Autopilot
Get lazy and distracted or try to rush through these open-world games, and they’ll swiftly send your character to the death screen.
