Games that took you ages (real time) to complete

[Hopeless Wombat]

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAA let's not talk about this...

[Grimsayer]

I remember playing FFVIII when I was 10 or 11 and getting stuck on the part in the story where you had to find the white seed ship.
I was just floating around the world map for a good month before I found it tucked away in a little bay that I had sailed straight past so many times.
On topic tho, the game I spent the most amount of time on would be Jak X: Combat racing on PS2 because I had an Issue where my save file would get corrupted 3/4 of the way through (happened 4 times).
After a year of that I just did a marathon session and completed it in one sitting.

[Hingadingadurgen]

as i get older i feel like even spending a 100h in a game is considerable dedication, i'm honestly not sure if it's because games are shorter/easier or if i'm better at them than i was.... or even if i just am less patient and can't last as long in them because of that.

"Winning" a game definitely changed meaning for me though that i can say for sure, it used to be "reach credits" or "reach max level" but now it's more like "unlock as many achievements and explore as much as possible can"+"reach credits" I take much more time on sidequests now than i did.

Game that took me the longest to beat if i ignore games that i just gave up on (like silver surfer on the 'Family game' famicom ripoff i had ) and roguelikes (like binding of isaac etc) because i can't really tell 'when they end' ... oof irono... recently Divinity original sin 2, 400 hours + ( buuut i played much more than just one fast rush through into the credits) with semi casual playtime, this means it gave me more than a month easily.
or oblivion and skyrim, each claiming a few months of my life.

However if you take games that i haven't played regularly at all with i'd say it's gonna be games i keep going back to like gran turismo 4 on the ps2. that game has claimed a few months in playtime or years if you count with all the pauses i've taken.

[isturbo1984]

Nice! Congrats on the years-long endeavor. I think I might have you beat though. Mega Man X. Rented it, never beat it. Got it for Christmas, ironically, the following year. Got to the end multiple time, but could never beat Sigma's final form for some reason. Finally beat the damn thing a few years ago almost 20 years later.

[Dub-Z]

I've put some stuff off for years too. Maybe just get distracted, or even get something day 1 and inexplicably not play it til the next year or so. Dumb gamer backlog habits.

I think I got Final Fantasy X in early 2002 and stopped around the snowy mountains, kinda felt meh about it, but came back to it maybe between 2005-2007 and loved it. After I'd played through FFX-2 even. I think I also didn't see past Disc 1 of Final Fantasy IX until 2007 too. Wow.

I've put hundreds of hours into Fallout 3 and Fallout 4, but I've never actually beaten either of them. I just try playing the way I want, doing all kinds of sidequests and completionist style play, or trying out mods when I had my laptop until I burn out. I even consider Fallout 3 my favorite one and one of my favorite more modern games despite never seeing the end or following the main quest beyond Lamplight Caverns.

[Calen]

Prince of Persia Sands of Time. Took me about 2 years. About half way through the game I got to this water level where you had to jump from a pole then onto a bar to reach a switch that opened the next level. For some reason I didn't realized I could jump onto the pole, so for 2 years I was just running around that level trying to figure out how to get to the switch. TMW you really you just wasted so much time because you're an idiot.