A while ago now, I wrote about my journey with completionism in games, trying to unpick why I (or anyone, for that matter) feel the compulsive need to complete everything there is in a game. Games are a unique medium in that they encourage a sense of completion, of seeing everything. There are a myriad of reasons to do so – whether it be a desire from the developers to make you spend money in their game (something at least I never do), or from an earnest desire to make everything enjoyable and thoroughly immersive.

I come to this topic again at just over the halfway point of Yakuza 0‘s Completion List requirements. It is most certainly this game and its approach to completion that preoccupies me currently in my spare time. The game is chock full of minigames galore that, if I were playing purely for “enjoyment’s” sake, I would not approach in the same way. Even that approach is coloured by the terminology I use. Completionism is not necessarily enjoyment – at least, not the way I normally understand it in games. Enjoyment is certainly not had in the moment-to-moment of some of these minigames. I plan to write about, or make a video about, the Cabaret Club minigame at some point, which I absolutely adore.

Yet it is the sense of conquest that appeals in some regard: the knowledge that you have personally challenged yourself and scaled a mountain. It is by no means an impressive accomplishment – the old argument of “why aren’t you doing something productive with your time” is a pretty common phrase that pops into my head when I have to restart some infuriating minigame again – but one that, nonetheless, I derive some important satisfaction from!

The disco minigame in 0 is probably my favourite example of this. Last night, I spent a not inconsiderable amount of time learning the intricacies of the two songs I had left to beat on Hard difficulty: Queen of the Passion and I’m gonna make her mine, the former which was sufficiently brutal as to make me almost swear off the platinum trophy entirely.

Yet beating the song was enough to make me feel fondly about the time I spent battling against the intricacies of the very difficult minigame. You can see my attempt at I’m gonna make her mine here, and I hope you can appreciate the difficulty level present! I had to get a score of 7000+ to get the three stars.

But why is that? Why is it that I was so pleased with it when it was done, but so frustrated with it while it was underway? I feel like it is slightly different than a frustrating work project, or something else that is more “mandatory” – video games are meant to be a form of entertainment, regardless of how horrifying or abstract I like them a lot of the time. So I should just be able to put this stuff down, yeah?

What is the compulsion to complete such things? I am trying to think of the worst thing I’ve ever actually forced myself to complete. I am thinking by the end of it, Yakuza 0 might be the nastiest completion mountain I have ever climbed. I might still have to go with the dreadful The Amazing Spider-Man 2 video game, which was a dreadful waste of my time, because by the end there was no enjoyment. In fact, I wouldn’t even say it brought a sense of relief or satisfaction, because there was no “challenge aspect”. Which might be why I feel so strongly about Yakuza 0, because at least when I mantle a challenge in that game, I feel like I’ve actually had to struggle against something and earn it.

Mastery of a game system can come very easily for some things, and some players, yet it can be much more difficult in other scenarios. It all depends on the player where they give up, and for what reason, if a game is too difficult. It is different from a person saying in regards to a book or a film, for instance, “oh, just keep going – it gets better soon!” if the person cannot beat the segment of the game in question because it is just too difficult.

This is somewhat alleviated by Yakuza 0‘s most difficult challenges being side-quests, and thus the main story is all you need to play in order to get and “complete” the game. Because that’s the other point, too, isn’t it – some people (not myself, evidently) are happy enough to finish the story of a game and move on. And okay, sometimes that actually is me. Amnesia: Rebirth and Lamentum are two examples that spring readily to mind. I was not even motivated in the slightest to replay the game from the beginning and see the other endings, or anything I might have missed – because I just didn’t enjoy the game enough.

For me, a game has to be enjoyable enough to stick with. To mark a game as a “completionist-worthy” game is a badge of honour in some sense. As I age, I find myself struggling to get into games that are complex right from the get-go. This means I am actually drifting away from the complex strategy games and immense role-playing games that defined much of my teenage years’ playing in particular. Instead, I find I am much more interested in getting into systems that start easier to understand, but are still deeply rewarding to engage with on a deeper level.

I thus interface with a specific new set of video games that will probably stick with me the rest of my life as my chosen genres: platformers, fighting games, horror games, and maybe if I am lucky, a rare role-playing game that has a focused enough gameplay rhythm, or is otherwise exceptional in some way that merits me playing it. I just find I don’t have the time to invest in even completing the story of a behemoth video game like Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous, which howlongtobeat attests is 54 hours of my time – if I was just to speed through the game’s main story. But anyone who has played a cRPG knows that the joy of it is, in a sense, total completion. Immersing oneself in a rich, diverse world, and getting to know all the characters intimately.

So in some sense, I am coming to understand that the long-form video game is no longer the default. Yes, I have already spent about seventy hours on Yakuza 0, and I expect to spend another seventy finishing off the rest of what I have to finish, but the systems in that game are, by and large, rewarding and engaging to learn and master. In addition, it’s all tied together by a richness, an earnestness – and the fact that I was hooked early by great gameplay (and, a common factor in many of the games I like, a great soundtrack). I just don’t have the time to invest particularly into games with a long learning period. Instead, I’d rather a game I can get into in comparatively short time but still enjoy for long periods. This is a strange combination, I know – but it’s fortunate I have the entire Yakuza series ahead of me. Will I finish Kiwami 100% on stream? I’m not sure yet… we’ll see how I feel later. However, I do know one thing: the game’s soundtrack will keep me going for much longer than should be considered reasonable…