Games

X4 Foundations... This sucks people life: you start a game when the sun goes to sleep, one second later the sun wake up 😅

Path of Exile.

I'd say I'm a fairly mid-tier player, get better with each season I play, the breadth of mechanics and depth of complexity is mind breaking. I've only played like 2000 hours though, I'll get it all figured out eventually... Right?

lol the problem with Destiny is they turned it into a treadmill and stopped putting the work into character and level design.

Elden Ring can easily take more than 100 hours on your first playthrough, and different builds significantly change your play style.

BG3, similar deal. Subsequent playthroughs are probably going to be accelerated, but there are a bunch of different story choices you can make that feel different, the party members have their own story lines, there's a special custom character called Dark Urge that's intended for a later playthrough that has it's own twist, and you can change the strategy of encounters a lot with different party constructions.

Rimworld calls itself a story generator because you're going to fail and have people die and whatever, but every game plays out different, there are a good couple scenarios, and there's expansions and mods you can add on top of that for variety.

Just the first couple that come to mind. I'm not near 1000 hours on any of them, but they all have a lot of content.

Stellaris

Mine are:

Any Fallout or Elder Scrolls

Diablo 2 or 3

Stardew Valley

Borderlands 2

And I never consider it a real game, but I do sink the most hours in Hearthstone. I've been playing it almost daily for the past ten years.

Huh, there's only like, 4 of these games for me total. TF2's still a bot-blighted hellscape as far as I know, my skyrim install is broken and the process of fixing it or just re-installing it will require a few days off, WoW is dead to me, and I don't really play warframe any more... so I guess Warframe wins by doing absolutely nothing!

nothing will ever top my smash bros melee hours. I could start now and I simply wouldn't be able to do it even if I picked the game I already have the next most hours in. I am also entirely unlikely to add any hours to melee, but it still wouldn't be feasible.

Regarding the question itself, Starbound and Minecraft. Maybe Final Fantasy XII if I was to play it multiple times, as I take at the very least 100+ hours to finished it, and 250+ if I'm not in a hurry.

But regarding gaming fatigue, perhaps it could be a symptom of playing too much of only a handful of game styles? If you wouldn't mind, may I suggest to check some smaller games in length and scope, specially indies? Those tend to be rather diverse in their scopes and executions.

Why do they have to be 1000 hours? If you’re getting gaming fatigue you’re not going to fix that by sticking to the same genres you always play. Go onto Steam/gog/eshop/etc during the Black Friday sales next week and buy a big pile of 40 hour games for $3 each

(Mine is FFXIV, to answer your question)

Caves of Qud has nearly infinite replay value with all the random generations + mods. You can do nearly anything you set your mind to. Same with Project Ozone 3 (Minecraft mod). If you like goal orientated games that are multiplayer try Space Station 13. That shit is nuts, and I mean 13 not the 14 on Steam it doesnt have half of what the old one does. But the launcher is about to go out for 13 so get it while you can.

I found that Two Worlds had a lot of fuck around potential. You can infinitely combine weapons that are duplicates to strengthen them. I once killed every NPC in the entire game and used the resurrection spell on them so everyone was completely loyal to me even monsters.

If you can still find it. There was this online Pokémon game that was somehow realistic. You controlled your character typed ccommands for your Pokémon. And they were always alongside you when out of their ball. It was hardcore as shit. I got my cheeks clapped multiple tines trying to run to a different village by gangs of mankeys and caterpies. Nintendo is just drooling on the floor not doing this officially. It took forever to level, it was an extreme challenge to find stuff to evolve your Pokémon. Ugh I hope thats still out there somewhere.

A less spoken one nowadays that is also very fun is still the original Morrowind. Absolutely mind blowing how expansive that game is to this day. It is still just as legendary as it was back then even if it is a little dated. I actually come to like it when a game isn't guiding me on what to do in an RPG. It feels more immersive when I'm supposed to know what a Guar looks like.

Tetris.

I've only got a few. Several of them don't really track hours, but I know I've put over 1000 into them. Games like Super Smash Bros. (Melee, Brawl, and 4) and Rock Band 2.

Other than those, the only one I've measurably put 1000 hours into is Skullgirls, but Guilty Gear Strive will likely get there in a few years. Skullgirls is a game with so much depth that I can't imagine ever getting bored of it. If anything, I'd just lose motivation because I can't see the path to improving, but I'll definitely never see every permutation of strategies you can employ by combining characters together. Guilty Gear Strive has so many creative ways to use its expanded Roman Cancel system that any Evo highlight reel is full of creative ways out of situations that you've never seen before.

Monster Hunter

Rocket League cracked that for me, crazy ceiling on that game.

Crusader Kings III is gonna crack it eventually…

You should try Brighter Shores.

The original RuneScape developers and owners (i.e. Andrew Gower and his brothers) are back with a new game, at a new company, with an industry shattering $5.99/mo subscription price for all content.

No micro transactions, no pay to win, no outrageous DLC pricing, no bull shit ... just a fun game with many similarities to OSRS but also modernizations, formula improvements, and lessons learned.