My first playthrough of Mass Effect I had no idea there was a second level of my ship. I totally missed all of the crew member backstory dialogue and relationship building, which is pretty essential to the game… the second playthrough was much better once I found the elevator!!
That seems kind of ridiculous that they technically make it all optional.
I just beat BOTW for the first time and never figured out what to do with Korok Seeds. Missed out on the extra weapon/shield inventory slots the whole game!
Storytime: It’s 1997, I play a game that my uncle shows me on his Playstation 1. There’s tons of reading and a weird fighting system but it seems really awesome and has some amazing FMV scenes. He tells me I’m too young to play it and won’t let me borrow it to keep playing… So I go to blockbuster and rent it for a few days.
I remember the back of the instruction booklet showing off one of those memory cards and saying “try beating the game without one” which is exactly what I tried to do, because I didn’t have a memory card! Then my mum turned the game off when I was at school one day and we had to take the game back to blockbuster after a couple of days. Damn I lost all my progress!
ADAMANT that I would play this game I got my own copy after swapping for it at my local game store and got my own memory card. Finally I could save my game and not worry about losing my progress. The game continues to challenge me a ton and I don’t really understand how the systems work but I’m 10 years old and having fun so who cares.
I figure out that I can buy grenades from the shops and I use that as my main attack for awhile… at least until I get to the big city with the gun on it. Buying and using healing items is such a pain all the time though but thankfully money isn’t hard to get.
Fast forward further into the story and one of my characters has to go one on one with another dude, this is like that other fight with the guy and his dog when I didn’t have 3 characters that could throw grenades and heal! I can’t beat this dude with the gun on his arm with just 1 guy!
… Then after failing over and over again, I finally figure out what putting “Restore” on his weapon does… then I figure out what putting “Fire” on it does…
Suddenly the FF7 materia system clicks into place in my brain and about 15 hours after the tutorial teaching you how to do it I figure out how to play the game.
Still my number 1 game of all time to this day. And I never forgot how much trouble Dyne gave me that first time playing through the game.
tl;dr I didn’t understand how the FF7 materia system worked until about 15~ hours into the game and was using grenades and potions for all fighting and healing for a loooong time.
You beat the materia keeper without using materia!?
Materia Keeper is further into the game after Nibelheim. Dyne is after you go to Golden Saucer for the first time and get sent to the prison at the bottom of it in the desert.
I played through all of mirrors edge when it first came out (10 years ago?) without realizing you could pick up a gun.
To be fair, that game really isn’t about shooting or even taking out enemies. Taking their gun only slows you down!
I should go play that again. It’s got a great atmosphere (and soundtrack)
Doesn’t Mirrors Edge have a forced tutorial at the beginning and it literally requires you to pick up a gun at some point? 🤔
This is the right way to play the game, IMO. There’s even an achievement for it.
I played through all of Tears of the Kingdom without making a hover bike.
My first time through Final Fantasy 8, I was a bit too young to grasp all the concepts. I missed the memo on the fact that you had to craft gear based on finding the weapon magazines so I ended up playing through the whole game with everyone using their base weapons.
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How can you be under leveled? Isn’t Alduin level scaled?
Yes and no.
Everything still has a minimum level. Alduin being the final boss is still pretty high level at his lowest level. Same with the Dragon Priests. Those dudes are almost impossible when you’re less than level 10.
If you just did the MQ and nothing else, even if you kill everything in your path during the dungeons, you’ll barely have leveled. You won’t level at if you just run through everything!
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Black & White
It has a mechanic where you bless a stone, then throw it across the map, and you get to build and influence an area around the rock. Basically it is the only sane way to expand.
I did not know. I spent painstaking hours slowly growing my village trying to get its area of influence to spread into where I needed to go.
You can also throw that annoying immortal guy who somehow allows you to use your powers around wherever he is
Oh man, it’s time to give this game a replay one of these days.
Let’s go man. Can’t wait to get stuck at that tree puzzle again.
Oh my god I never learnt this! That would’ve made the final level so much easier
I may have misunderstood, though. This is my vague memory of a friend trying to explain to me how I was supposed to have played the game after I gave up and uninstalled it long ago.
If you use your godhand to place a boulder in the midst of one of the villages worshiping you, the villagers will start praying and dancing and chanting and whatnot around the boulder. After a long enough time with the villagers charging the bolder, it would radiate with your divine presence. At this point, it is a ready “artifact”.
Artifacts don’t expand you influence zone directly, but they do a really good job of getting non-believer villagers to start worshiping you, which does extend your influence in a major way.
Ahh, thank you!
Not me, but my wife got all the way to the end of Journey to the Savage Planet before discovering there is a skill tree you can invest in 😂
Dwarf Fortress.
Enough said lmao
Resident Evil Director’s Cut on PS1. I was fairly young and not very good at the “survival” aspect of the survival horror. I tried to kill everything I encountered and consumed copious amounts of ammo and herbs doing so. I reached a place where I had a single ink ribbon left, no ammo, health on the red, and confused on where I needed to go next. And I had to go do homework. So I used my last ribbon and saved.
I discovered next time I played that the way forward was through a tight corridor I missed filled with zombies who could now one-shot me. I tried and tried and literally was unable to get through. First time I ever learned the word “soft-locked” as my brother wheezed it out while laughing. Good times!
I also played that game by killing everything I saw; I just happened to also stumble into the fact that if you aim down while using the knife, it can one shot anything you hit. So it was easy af. lol
Haha whaaaat. After all this time, I had no idea that was a thing. Any enemy? Not bosses though, right?
The regular zombies and the dogs. Not the bosses. At least, I don’t remember… I saved my ammo for them, but that could have just been because I wanted to shoot them lol
I played a substantial amount of Zelda TotK without the paraglider which made quite a few adventures a lot more treacherous, some borderline impossible, and some actually impossible. 😂
Wow, that’s awful lol. I explored a little and very quickly encountered a shrine where I figured out there must have been a paraglider cause it needed it (that might have been purposefully placed?).
But also, no paraglider means no map. I can’t imagine going for too long without progressing the story till you can reveal the map!
Heck, it felt like it was taking too long to give me the photo mode feature. I knew it had to be there, but I was expecting to get it much sooner and didn’t like missing opportunities to take photos for the compendium.
I don’t know if this really counts, but I kind of self sabatoge myself with almost any game that has skill points that aren’t easily resettable. I’m so indecisive into what to place them into that I end up holding onto the points without using them. So I miss out on power up skills, spells, all sorts of things depending on the game.
I think the worst game I’ve ever played regarding skill progression is Oblivion.
Honestly, that game’s levelling is completely busted. Basically your class has a couple major and minor skills. You gain skill levels automatically by using them, and when you got enough levels in your class skills, you are supposed to rest and gain a character level.
Almost everything in Oblivion is levelled to match your character’s level. Gaining a level only serves three purposes : gaining a very small amount of health, gaining a few points in two stats depending on which skills you’ve used … And most of all spawning more, stronger enemies.
Lots of skills in Oblivion are not directly (or absolutely not at all) combat-related. Lots of default classes come with quite a few of them as major or minor skills. And those that don’t come with several damage-related and several defence-related skills.
Progressing in non-combat skills, or in too many at once in a “master of none” fashion, will make your game impossible. “Playing well” requires knowing and exploiting this by blocking your level up until you’ve maxed the right skill. Or even having some of your favourite skills not class skills at all.
This is really not my idea of fun character progression.
And you can make Acrobatics a class skill for super fuck you hard mode. I didn’t know this as a 13 year old playing Oblivion, and I thought “levels good” and wondered why I couldn’t get into the game for years until I learned about this little “quirk” of the leveling system.
Oh yeah, acrobatics and athletics, the two skills that go up every time you jump and run. Good ways to fuck your progression both.
Also the social skills, Mercantile and Speechcraft.
I played through Doom Eternal on Ultra Violence, basically without the Flamethrower (for armor) or Grenades. I just constantly forgot they even existed, so I never used them.
Some fights were a total pain, but it wasn’t that bad. I still want to play through the game again, eventually, and hopefully this time with all the tools you have at your disposal.
I got through all of Breath of the Wild without cooking anything. I knew the feature was there, but I don’t remember ever being taught how to use it and ultimately decided I’d just armour my way around it.
Okay… this is impressive
Lol, I managed to get off the starting island without cooking or coldproof armor. I escorted a torch up to the shrine and found out twenty hours after that you’re supposed to cook a coldproof meal to get the clothes that protect you.
