Some games require a learning curve, maybe even all games. But this one took the cake for me. 2nd Place was Bloodborne, which to a souls newb (way back in 2015) was a bit of a struggle at first. I loved the combat, graphics, sound design, world atmosphere, but I got my ass handed to me. And after 10 hours of determination it finally clicked. And then I grinded on and beat the game after about 30 more hours of play.

The same thing happened to me with NMS 8 years later. I'm a late adopter, and admittedly not a pro-gamer. So I thought, everyone is saying this game kicks ass in 2023 and I gave it a try. When I booted up the game I could tell immediately people were on to something. But it didn't quite CLICK yet. I spent 11 damn hours on my first NORMAL playthrough. Started a CREATIVE playthrough and did 4 hours of that. Tried RELAX and SURVIVAL but didn't like either of them after only a short time.

I put in about 15 hours total between about a half dozen unsuccessful playthroughs, and then I went back to CUSTOM and I did some serious picking and choosing between gameplay elements. Basically I made travel, currencies, resource gathering, technology research a breeze while making survival elements and combat ultra hard. It is the perfect balance of challenge and gameplay feel (progression) for me. And that's the irony of it all.

I was told from the beginning to "play how you want to", but because I'm a person that learns best from repeated demonstration, it really did take a long while of learning the mechanics for it to all sink in. It was really frustrating at times because I thought this was not the game I believed it was. But it really IS. The CUSTOM playthrough with these adjusted settings lasted 5 hours which put me up to a total of 20 hours played.

This is the save file I'll keep going on and there is no need for the others. It finally clicks. Looking forward to completing the story and seeing the rest of this game has to offer. I really think Hello Games should be commended for not only fixing this game, making it everything it should have been on launch and much more. What a breath of fresh air in the age of paywalled content and microtransactions.