I tend to agree. Just the other day I was writing about the game and how painful and slow my progress in it has become. I'm at mission 15 now, after the very hard mission 14: if I knew it was the last one, I would happily make a final push and give all I can to complete the game. But knowing there are 5 levels more after that one... it makes me shudder in fear, and lose my conviction. They could at least have tried to implement a difficulty selector, with the game as it is being labeled as "hard", I might suggest.
And yet, I love the game and I think it's one of the greats, I really do. A genuine classic. I really have to finish it one day.

Same for me... Unreal is one of the games I've enjoyed the most playing, from start to finish - and I liked the expansion, too, though obviously not on the same level. Definitely one of my favourite FPSs of all time. What can I say... to each his own.
BTW I can't remember how long it took me to reach the conclusion, but I think 15-20 hours should be pretty far into the game, certainly not a "small percentage of the way through". Thank you.

Yes, I think it's a great game to play the first 8-10 levels of, but it's not a good game to try to finish. By level 13/14, it becomes so difficult and unforgiving that making any progress becomes insanely slow and time-consuming. It's just not worth it and I think it will be a rare game that I will just give up on.

I might try the sequel at some point, or one of the later spiritual successors (e.g. Shadow Tactics, Desperados).

I'd mention Blood 2. Because that game starts overstaying its welcome after like 3 hours, but it's unfortunately not that short. Very true. It's quite obvious the maps were made to be an MMO (which was the game's original intent) and especially the first open world map drags on forever.

Also, no wonder you forgot the ending. Because when the villain only appears when you enter a new map, does something terrbily evil god knows where and then you don't hear or see him again for 10+ hours until you enter a new map, it makes the villain uttetly forgettable. Felt like the main storyline was just an afterthought.

I found it OK, although it has almost nothing to do with Unreal. The game's main handicap was carrying the Unreal name. It had some neat ideas and weapons, but I just can't get over it being called Unreal.

It is okay since it isn't that long – if I remember correctly. I only played it once when it was new.


The name Unreal is a problem, but now everything that uses the Unreal Engine is not related to Unreal at all. That's probably the reason why the wanted to get rid of the games a few years ago.


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The Dream Machine: Yes, it does feel like they completely lost it during the development. Episodic releases over such a long time-span can easily fall into that trap. I doubt that they had a complete script written when they started to model the first episode.

I don't use Galaxy or any other launchers, so that was just a rough "guesstimate" of my playtime. Also, this was several years ago. This is to say, that may not be very accurate.
However, I do tend to fart around exploring in games a lot, seemingly much more than the average player. And Unreal was from the era when first-person shooters still had lots of secrets, and a given game would often track how many you'd find and report the total at the end of each level, so I was trying to find as many as I reasonably could. I also seem to remember some of the levels being rather large, so I probably wasted time getting lost, forgetting where I had and hadn't already checked for secret areas, etc. So 15 to twenty hours still seems a reasonable guess. At any rate, I'm pretty sure I had completed no more than a few (admittedly large) levels by the time I ended up stopping for good. :)

The only two experiences I've had with what Breja describes as 'overstaying its welcome' would be Front Mission 3 and The Grand Theft Auto Series.

I agree with kai2's comment about open world games, and it applies to my main discomfort with the GTA series. Not to mention the social toilet bowl it aspires to be. It just stinks to needlessly sink so much time in a world not unlike the reality we sometimes find ourselves in without any real incentive to immerse myself in.

But for the most part Front Mission 3 had the most drawn out ending. Whereas I would've liked the game to be about an hour shorter. The final quarter of the game meant I had to tolerate it instead of enjoying the full experience. Not a bad ending at all, just one I would've preferred didn't lead me into a rabbit hole.