Big random factor in the loot so you can go long stretches without any interesting upgrades if you’re unlucky.
There’s a lot of time wasting - go here, now go back there, now go to this place
Leveling is weird and is a big factor in damage. If you’re too low level you can’t do anything except die. If you’re too high level you can’t lose. Sometimes you do too many side quests or not enough
The games typically start slow. You go a long while before you unlock your cool powers, or even the ability to equip four guns.
The writing is meh except for Handsome Jack. He’s a great villain.
There was a mega bundle of all the games before 3 for like $5. Look for that kind of sale.
I mean this is kind of true of all people everywhere. The marshmallow test has flaws but I think it’s still revealing. A lot of people are really bad at self control and delayed gratification.
I kind of feel like anyone who spends $20 on a video game skin shouldn’t be allowed to make any financial decisions for themselves. Like, it was a test and you failed.
Out of curiosity, what about games that update? Crawl gets a new release like every six months where they often make big changes. New gods, species, other changes (like when they removed food, or added shapeshifting talismans)
I guess it’s possible you are correct and like the bulk of people who have ever studied film, literature, and art more generally are wrong. That seems unlikely. More plausible is that it’s common for people to experience a given work multiple times and get different things out of it.
That’s not even accounting for the “Reading Lear as an old man hits differently than reading it when I was a teenager” factor. That is, who you are changes over time and that affects how you experience art.
I don’t think that’s especially common for roguelikes. I played a lot of crawl: stone soup and it was pretty common for folks to go for a win with every species, god, and class.
More broadly, games with different narrative choices (eg: Witcher 2 has two mutually exclusive middle acts).
And also more broadly, games with different mechanical choices (eg: many RPGs).
There’s also games where the process itself is fun (eg: Tetris).
Also, as many humans have imperfect memory, after enough time has passed a game may feel fresh playing it again. It may also land differently playing it at a new stage in life.