10 Video Games That Punish You For Being Curious
2. EVE Online - Play PERFECTLY Or Lose Everything
To this day, I don't think I have played an MMO more unforgiving than EVE Online.
The ignorant will walk into EVE thinking it'll be the spaceship RPG of their dreams; EVE is super-complex and allows for some unique career choices, but it quickly spirals out of control and soon you'll have three Microsoft Excel spreadsheets open just to keep track of everything. Whether you're playing as a cop, or a smuggler, or even just a transport ship... be prepared to invest a lot of your time into the game.
This is not No Man's Sky, Chorus or even Elite Dangerous. Everything you do in EVE Online must be carefully considered, to a degree where you might consider it more akin to micromanagement sim mixed with Chess than a simple space exploration game.
If you do decide you want to take your maiden voyage off to a planet far, far away, you will almost certainly die from pirates, flying into a controlled space (so, shot down by police or vigilantes) or just basic resource depletion.
Anything that looks even remotely interesting is likely heavily regulated by in-game laws, or wants to explode you into a million bits.
Given that the EVE in EVE Online stands for "Everyone versus everyone", that might not be a huge surprise.