I’m playing Don’t and as an agoraphobic anxiety prone depressed person I really felt I could get into the protagonist’s shoes but. Unlike me she actually WANTS to live. So she comes off like Shelly Duvall after 127 takes in The Shining. A terrified needy mess. And yes I have had an alprazolam dependency and withdrawal myself. I keep thinking. " I’d have chosen the quick death" and watching her fight to survive just feels wrong to me.
So what games do this to you?
Depends on what you meant by ‘stressing out’, but A Study in Steampunk definitely has me stressed out the first time I played it, specifically Grace’s death. I kept restarting the game, over and over again, using every stat combination I could think of, fearing that I failed a stat check somewhere, using every conversation option there is, fearing I failed some kind of relationship check, it drove me to near madness trying to save her, especially since at that time I felt as if I had failed Finch after his supposed ‘death’, after hundreds of tries I finally gave up and accepted that maybe I’m just not a good enough player to do it, nevermore have I felt so weak, so powerless to do anything, hell, it’s one of the few things that managed to make me despair and depressed, at that time, me and my MC becomes one, which is a testament to the quality of its writing I suppose. Imagine my anger and outrage when I learned that it is actually plot enforced and there’s actually no way to prevent it.
As a min/maxer, all of them.
There’s been a few of them.
The Samurai of Hyuga series stressed me out a little with the attunement stats, I for some reason kept messing my attunement up and kept replaying each game over, and over and over again until I got them perfect. If it were any other game I would have given up, but since it was SoH, the writing and the characters were just too brilliant for me to pass up.
The Wayhaven Chronicles stressed me out with the love triangle route the first time I played it. I didn’t think it would be that difficult, but again with the writing being amazing and me getting too attached to all the characters, I was sweating by the end with the self-imposed guilt and angst (and to think it was only the first book). A lot of TWC fans will agree with me, no doubt.
Choice of Rebels also stressed me out a little the first few times I played it, since I suck at micromanagement and even a single wrong choice could have devastating effects. I managed to make pretty much the entire band hate me, get Breden killed and finally get myself killed in my first playthrough. How convenient.
Dos2 and poe2 had me scouring the game guides because im such a stickler for good endings, only to have me slapped by the moral ambiguity of those supposed “good ends” that can vary for story and each character.
Yeah I gave up and went ham on any npc that dissed me instead. Its good to be chaotic sometimes.
Choice of the rebels, I refuse to believe that Breden poisoned our friends, even though all the evidence points to her, my stubbornness does not allow me to believe in her guilt, I hope that in the sequence, I and my stubbornness are right and there is another guilty. And recently Choice of Magics, I got 1 happy ending and in the other finals, I got rot, negation climax and an ending that a giant tortoise killed me.
Bloodborne
The game ‘Don’t take this risk’. I overestimated myself and thought I could handle it. I could not.
Both paths were upsetting but the route to the “good ending” made me anxious and sick to my stomach since it brought back to many memories. I finished the game 'cause I am a stubborn fool, then deleted it and called in sick for three days.
On a lighter note, there’s also Samurai of Hyuga 3, which I still haven’t finished. It has been a source of multiple rage-quits and many wasted hours.
One day SOH3. One day I’ll finish you.
For me it was in HeroFall after Jenny got shot and the heroes were all choosing sides and fighting one another and then Black Magic burst in fresh from a coma and was like “What!? Start something!” That did it for me.
I knew about that, the part that I say is plot enforced is the separation part, no matter what you do Grace will still leave you, one way or the other, so the net result is still zero to my eyes. Besides, which is worse? To hold her lifeless body in your embrace knowing full well that she loved you until the end, or to see her alive but to never be able to be with her again?
I prefer to respect her wishes and let her die. As you said at least when she died you were with her the entire time and she never stopped loving you. Instead of her being alive and believing you a monster and horrified of you. Also she may feel guilty and distraught the rest of her life knowing she’s only alive because you stole someone else’s.
The fight with Malthael in Diablo III: Reaper of Souls got me stressed out. It seemed to me like there was a huge jump in difficulty, compared to Diablo. But hey, maybe my build wasn’t as well made as I thought it was. The music did a really good job at making me fidget, though. Darnit 
You are right, Malthael is waaaaay more difficult than diablo^^
Necromancer with shatter bonespears and the infinite corpses buff. Melts any boss like butter
Samurai of hyuga 3. I hated how downgraded my bad ass rohirim felt. Compared to the previous books It felt forced. Almost wanted to throw my phone at the wall I can understand the authors writing. But dam. Not having the thing that I can’t spell properly right now was a bad idea.
As much as I love Samurai of Hyuga I felt this too. My ronin being pretty much rendered useless in the one thing she does well - fighting - was almost physically painful to me.
Even if I understand that was the author’s intention, it was still really hard to read.
For some reason, the one that still stresses me out almost 2 decades later was the Rock Boss from the original Mega Man back in the NES days. It definitely gave my reflexes and memory a workout at the time; but after mastering it there were few games I couldn’t tackle using the same skills.
For CoG/Hosted, I hate min/maxing, so I always end up with lowball “just-barely-enough-to-pass-stat-check” stats, so yeah. I stress myself out, though I don’t think these games have ever pushed anxiety buttons for me.
Choice of Robots probably stresses me out more every time I play, just because I learn new and exciting ways my rise to fame and fortune and robot sentience can go awry and I still have no idea how I end up in certain situations.
In Tin Star, I always end up right on the cusp of successfully shooting the bear in the eye before being mauled, so I stress right up to that scene, and then I’m fine. My main problem is that I take great pride in my legend score, so I rarely use checkpoints that are supposed to make this all less of a problem.
Outside of CoG… I actually cannot physically play A Night in the Woods despite having it recc’d to me by everyone I know, simply because it hits WAY too close to home for me. I’m from an aging, crumbling industrial/mining town in southwestern PA that could have inspired the game, and despite not dropping out, have a bunch in common with the story. Triggers my anxiety like nobody’s business (also it’s weird as heck to see someone actually get all the points of my small-town life right; in my opinion, usually there’s at least something off about the scenario–either too “everyone is super friendly and knows everyone else” or too… mean? I guess, and nobody really presents the stupid mundane but kinda weird bull you get up to, or the strange sort of “nothing changes but everything ages” feeling that is really uncomfortable but the whole town vibe, basically)
Angst I know. The mc couldn’t even handle a sword of all things. Romance was sorta underdeveloped too.
@Kaelyn It’s good I wasn’t alone in my agony. (’:
@Ozymandias Just added the necromancer actually, so I haven’t really tested it out yet. But I’ll take your word for it! 