I've made a few threads recently lamenting the price of game releases, and while price -- even in this economy -- isn't always my main determinant of game pick-ups, it is a major factor. Anyway...

... have you ever played a game that you felt was so fun that it was worth more than you paid?

Or have you played a game that was so expansive -- or packed with so much gameplay -- that you felt you underpaid for the experience?

Would love to hear what you think!

AAA... AA... indie... whatever you want to list.

But please keep in mind I'm not looking just for large or long games... I'm looking first for games that you loved in relation to the price you paid, albeit if you loved them and they're large or long experiences then all the better!

PS. I know I've felt this way a few times over the years but will have to think on the titles a bit. Will add them once my mind reboots. ;)

PSS. Yes, I know my wording set me up for jokes... but I'm tired and can take a joke. ;)

On the top of my mind the most fun I've had from games based on price:

1. Dragon's Dogma Dark Arisen - (It just has all the ticks. Masterworks all, you can't go wrong.)
1. Monster Hunter series, but specially, 'Freedom Unite' & 'Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate' - (The most fun and possibly the games I've most played in hours.)
1. Mount & Blade: Warband (Its sandbox world and strategy thinking is just amazing. Probably my second most played game in this list.)
1. Terraria (Had fun with friends and alone. Exploration and 'grinding' is just fun here.)
2. The Elder Scrolls Skyrim (It has most of it. Modding communiy merit.)
2. The Elder Scrolls Daggerfall (Has almost all of it. Even today. Mods are the way to go though for its age.)
3. Devil May Cry 1 (As a Hack'n'Slash, its the foundation of everything associated with the genre. The closest to perfection of for the time it came out.)
3. Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance (Most ticks in that genre. Its together with DMC for its nice mechanics.)
4. Metal Gear Solid V The Phantom Pain (The culmination of stealth gameplay based on exploration and multiple approaches problem solving. Together with MGS3, Tenchu and Shinobido series, the best stealth games imo.) [You can probably add Ghost of Tsushima here too, but I've never played it.]
5. Grim Dawn (The culmination of ARPG genre and the best singleplayer experience we have right now of the genre to me.)
6. Batman Arkham Asylum / City (Being a super hero. And more specifically, Batman. The dream of many kids of late 80s, 90s and 00s. Well, these games. Simply that. Fun 'stealth brawler'.)

7. Honorable mentions (Not necessarily in order of preference):
Dragon Age: Origins, Fallout: New Vegas, Hollow Knight, Black, Insurgency (first one), Dishonoured, Bioshock, FlatOut 2, Blur, Gran Turismo series, Need for Speed (older titles), Dread Templar, Dust: An Elysian Tail, Sundered: Elderitch Edition, Shovel Knight, The Messenger, Hard Reset, Immortal Redneck, Kingdoms of Amalur, Star Wars: Battlefrond 2, Star Wars: Jedi Academy, Legrand Legacy, Oriental Empires, Banished, Prince of Persia, Assasin's Creed 1-2, Cyber Hook, Children of Morta, Serious Sam 1-2, Tomb Raider series, Torchlight, Venetica, Beyond Good and Evil...

...this is just from the top of my mind. You know that the older we get as gamers, the more games we play and we start to forget the older games we've played. :P

https://www.gog.com/en/game/broforce

nuff said.

Seeing as the cost of any individual digital copy is negligible and there's no real limit or scarcity, I'll never say that in truth any non-free game, or any other sort of digital content, may be worth more than its price.

Now if the question may also be which games stand out as offering more value for money than most others, by comparison, things are different. But then I need to ask if this strictly refers to games I (legally) purchased and felt that way about, considering the price paid then, or it can be taken generally, games I'd feel fit in that category considering the price they can typically be purchased for now, here, taking a typical sale price into account.
And does legal freeware count, at least as a separate category?

I've gotten over a hundred hours each of Diablo 2, and Morrowind and Skyrim. Assuming i paid $20 for each, i'd say that went pretty well.

Course my other go-to games, include Rebel Galaxy, and WindForge and Ring Runner, each of which i probably put another 40 hours into each, and are also i paid under $10 each.

So it's hard to say. Quality playtime and filler/grind are two different things. You can make Breath of Fire a 1000 hour game by lowering the rewards and XP to minuscule, or if you drop the grind it's like a 4 hour game, though i'd think 10 hours would be the right length for the SNES title.

You should be having fun i would say 75% of the time at least (unless you enjoy slow grindy or annoyingly difficult games), and i would probably put 25 cents per hour up to $20. That what you will from that.

There's several games I've gotten hundreds of hours of fun from, of which I paid nothing for. Thanks, Free & Open source, community!

Also, I think I wrung a lot from Civ IV, Re-Volt, Stardew Valley, The Space Empire Series, Operation: Inner Space, and probably several others.

That's a tough one. I presume that

a) we're talking about how much the game normally costs, even if we happened to get it for free as a gift/giveaway

and

b) we're talking about current prices, not how much it might have cost back in the day (if talking about older games).

In which case it woul be hard to beat Disciples 2 Gold. Even it's full (current) price is relatively low, it's one of the best games ever made in my opinion, and it includes 3 expansions, making for a lot, a looooooot of play time. And that's just the campaigns, there are also single scenarios... unless you have crazy amounts of free time and devote it all to playing, it can be months worth of fun.

There's also SWAT 4, one of the best FPSes ever as far as I'm concerned, and it's immensly replyable. And I was never even determined enough to beat it all on the highest difficulty. Someone more skilled/stubborn could have even more fun with it.

Psychonauts is an absolute steal for it's current price (and I don't even mean the discount) just for how absolutely brilliant it is. Won't last as long as the two tiles above, but if one could measure sheer amount of "fun per second" it might just win (except for that awful final circus level).

Honorable mention goes to Billy Master was Right, a great free point & click. It's quite short, but if like me you love point & clicks and 80s movies like Monster Squad, Three o'Clock High and The 'Burbs you'll likely have a whale of a time with it.

If we don't count free games:

Then I'd say Elminage Gothic. It's only $10 when not on sale (and sometimes, like now, gets big discounts on top of that), and comes with 75 levels of hardcore dungeon crawling fun.

There's also the Might & Magic 1-6 collection, and I remember the Ultima Collection being quite good (though on GOG the games are somewhat split up; what you want is the 4+5+6 set here, as those are probably the best in the series; 1 and 3 aren't for everyone, 2 is by some considered among the worst in the series, and 7+ aren't that good).

I've never bought a new release (probably because I share your lamentation on their price) so I can't comment on those but after many years away from gaming, I bought The Witcher last year and it is officially the best $1.49 AUD I have spent in my life. Not a big call, I know. But I am prepared to stand by it, nonetheless!
Years ago, I picked up FIFA 06 from a clearance bin. I didn't really like playing the games of soccer themselves but weirdly, I got addicted to playing the manager mode so I got more than my money's worth out of that.

Final Fantasy 14 Free Trial.

Base Game + 2 Expansions (No time limit).

No contest.

Long RPGs like Witcher series, Elder Scrolls series, Divinity series, Fallout series, Dragon Age Origins, Dragon's Dogma, Pillars of Eternity, Jade Empire, etc.

All of the ARPGs from this thread - https://www.gog.com/forum/general/looking_for_top_down_random_map_looter_arpgs_like_diablo_or_torchlight - in particular, Torchlight 2 and Grim Dawn.

JRPGs - Legend of Heroes series, Yakuza series, Ys series, Battle Chasers

Managerial sandbox games like Terraria, Stardew Valley, Factorio, Parkitect, etc.

Roguelites/likes - Slay the Spire, Monster Train, Binding of Issac, etc.

RTT - Everything by Mimimi (Shadow Tactics, Desparados 3, Shadow Gambit)

Visual novels - Higurashi and Umineko are like 100 hours each and aren't centred around sex

no particular order:
Civilization (just one more turn)
Subnautica (not the standalone addon)
Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous
Total War - Rome II
Star Wars - Tie-Fighter
The Secret of Monkey Island
Worms

British Bulldog (the real world game)

Unreal Tournament games. With a massive stash of community made maps and incredible AI which is capable of at least basic navigation on basically any random map even without custom bot paths, I probably played several thousands of hours across the games in total. Never gets old.

Grim Dawn - just fun to run random builds. Have probably over 1K hours in total. The only drawback is that there is little to no point in playing once you max out a character, but you can always roll a new one.

The I of the Dragon - love the game and the 3 dragons you can play as are very different.

Summoner - a surprisngly vast and pretty complex RPG. One of the best Volition games to be honest.

Sacred 2 - definitely in my top 5 ARPGs. A massive hand-crafted world.

Deathtrap - an unusual tower defense game set in the world of Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing. Currently dirt cheap.

Borderlands - played them all and in all of them, you can sink an ungodly amount of hours. My favorite is the Pre-Sequel followed by 1. Really would like this series to drop on GOG.

Postal 2 can be on-sale for $1 and offers endless "choose your violence" fun with excellent biting satire of the year 2003.

If free games aren't considered, then Fallout 4 (GOTY if possible) when it's on sale.