Patient Gamers

I used to get myself into traps like that a lot, "I need to get that impossible achievement", "I need to play only at the highest difficulty", "I need to get 200% completion".

At the end of the day video games are just toys, play them as you like and if you're not enjoying it just do something else instead. After I realized that games are fun again.

This ghost achievement in particular is a very hard challenge run, the kind of thing you go for after you finished the game and want more with an extra twist, trying to force it on your first time playing is guaranteed to be frustrating

I usually just play the game without worrying much about achievements

I've ruined games for myself by starting over repeatedly to get some achievement I don't even enjoy trying to get, not having fun, and never finishing the game. (I do the same thing with higher difficulties.)

I wish there was an option to just disable all achievements in games - it would help me enjoy games a lot more. You're probably thinking "If he doesn't like achievements, why doesn't he just ignore them?" but I can't.

The worst is actually a sandbox game I play that tracks achievements per-save. (It'll tell you that you failed the achievement in that save even if you already got it in a different one.) There's an achievement that requires doing something boring for several hours as soon as you start the game, or otherwise you can't get it on that save. So of course I feel compelled to do that boring thing every single time I want to start a new save.

I savescummed nethack as a kid, telling myself I was learning how to play. Then one day I decided to play on an online server where that wasn't a possibility. There is nothing like the feeling of achieving a goal the legit way. I learned soooo much more during those many perma-death runs than I ever did by save-scumming, and I'm actually proud of those ascensions.

I had a ton of fun with dishonored but my favorite playatyle was basically complete idiot good guy. Self imposed rules of no killing and unable to sneak. Basically a lot of just trying to run away from an entire building full of alerted guards. It was super hard, I never finished that play through, but it was a lot of stupid fun.

To give a different perspective: I save scummed the hell out of the original Deus Ex to not get detected and do one hit nonlethal takedowns just to get Paul's approval and Ana's distain. Was fun.

I had a similar experience with Dishonored. I got ghost on a few missions since low chaos is more akin to my natural play style, but found it to be more enjoyable to set my own "rules" for my playthrough. It's also a game that's worth a second playthrough just to experience the opposite side of the spectrum. Super fun game any direction you choose, but you'll miss a lot of cool aspects by limiting yourself to one extreme or the other.

I played through Dishonored for the first time this year and completed all the achievements but for the "Ghost" achievement I actually followed a speed run guide that was actually really crazy to see what is possible to do and then do it with save scumming first time I would then try to do it without save scumming sometimes just to see actually managed to do it for some missions was really fun.

cries in Clean Hands

I absolutely love playing stealth in games that let me take that option. My preferred route in the Dishonored series is low chaos/ghost because of how challenging it can be, but I always reload saves to get though them because I like to experiment to see what works (and what doesn't), and also because I honestly just suck at getting things to go the way I want them to sometimes.

However, even though low chaos is apparently canon, I would like to point out that a stealth high chaos run where you murder every last guard/thug/weeper from the shadows can be sublime. Shadow Kill helps immensely here because when they dissolve into ash there are no bodies to hide (though half of the fun for me is finding out-of-the-way hiding places for everyone I've choked out and/or murdered).

And while it doesn't have nearly as much replayability because it ditches the chaos system entirely, Death Of The Outsider is loads of fun simply because you can literally do whatever you want, without having to worry so much about the consequences.

I'm also of those weird people who really likes the second game, too... maybe even more than the original, though they're both basically equal to me. Really don't understand the hate that one gets from some fans.

You can never kill the mind goblins, but you can put them to sleep. Dishonored is such a goblin heavy game that yeah, just giving up and not playing by its rules makes it waaay better. Apparently, you can even kill a few dudes and get the low chaos ending just fine?

Another game that kinda gets me in the same way is Celeste - those strawberries, aargh

I‘m also an achievement hunter and I found the low chaos Ghost run immensly satisfying and actually not too difficult. It just felt like it‘s the right way to experience the game. What soured me a bit was the challenge DLC. That one was lame as hell. The base game and story DLCs were great.

I like to save scum. Part of redoing a section over and over again is to overcome a difficult trial. The feeling of success is the reward for me, but we also become better for it.

I used to prefer low-chaos runs but I like to blast through like Rambo these days since that's where the challenge is.

I'm struggling to imagine any time I've ruined am experience with save-scumming other than the present popular game Lethal Company. The fun is experiencing the cycle with others and I'm not beholden to my ships accessories. One of my crew had me do it and I'll never do it again.

Ultimately: do what you want to do and makes you happy and comfortable :)

This is one of my favorite games. I prefer to decimate every enemy I can find and allow others to find the corpses.