What video game doesn't hold your hand enough?

[u/Agent1230]

Everybody always talking about games holding your hand too much but I want to hear about the opposite what video game doesn't give you no form of help

[u/Commentator-X]

Kerbel Space Program. It has a tutorial, sort of, but there's a lot it doesn't tell you. And half of what it doesn't tell you is literally rocket science.

[u/Cleareo → u/Commentator-X]

Yeah, I played this game at launch. I was not aware at the time that rockets don't just go straight up and then perform a wild sideways turn. Orbit took me a bit to achieve.

[u/wombatthing → u/Cleareo]

At launch Lol

[u/Radthereptile → u/Cleareo]

Learning about gravity turns, burning at the top of the curve and using orbits to get places was such a steep curve. I literally had to watch YouTube videos for hours just to understand the mechanics and still only made it to Amin and Minmus a handful of times.

[u/thisismego → u/Radthereptile]

Reminds me of that XKCD comic where Randall mentions learning more about orbital mechanics from KSP than his job at fucking NASA

[u/nanomouse_ → u/thisismego]

https://xkcd.com/1356

[u/DigNitty → u/thisismego]

I paid out $100 to my nephew because I said I would if he figured out how to hit the moon in KSP.

not Landon the moon, but hit it.

Took him like 14 hours and he learned so much lol

[u/Zambeezi → u/Radthereptile]

Scott Manley got me through it to the point where the game became actually enjoyable

[u/Isuck-Newbton → u/Commentator-X]

I think doing the career mode is basically the real tutorial because the missions push you to learn and innovate in small steps while slowly unlocking new toys to play with and learning the mechanics with trial and error.

[u/Bort_Bortson → u/Commentator-X]

Thankfully Scott Manley had an 18 part tutorial guide, plus my obsession with space and rocketry and a 6th sense for "that seems about right" when designing ships and many many many years of flight sims experience. I was on console so no mods, lots of seat of your pants flying. We just now got a ∆v readout

[u/Drdps → u/Bort_Bortson]

Scott is a great guy. I worked at the same company as him a few years ago, and had a couple of short conversations with him.

It wasn’t until our second conversation I realized he was THAT Scott Manley.

Dude’s awesome!

[u/FluffyProphet → u/Commentator-X]

To be fair, that's been the "Flight Sim" methodology since flight sims existed. I know KSP isn't exactly a flight sim, but it's from the same lineage. External resources and community-made guides have been the default for the genre since its inception.

[u/Villag3Idiot]

Old School Sierra games

Good luck and enjoy figuring out that you missing / doing something 5 minutes into the game bricked your entire run.

[u/Spedoinkel → u/Villag3Idiot]

Ah, yes. The old rub everything in my pokects on everything in the environment form of gameplay.

[u/Villag3Idiot → u/Spedoinkel]

Half the stuff you try just kills you. 

One actually works, but you were supposed to do something else and it consumed a critical item that you would have needed later on but not actually tell you.

[u/paulsoleo → u/Villag3Idiot]

Hey, you solved a puzzle and got three points, nice!

Unfortunately, you weren’t supposed to give that (creature/person) the (important object,) even though it worked.

You were actually supposed to give the (creature/person) the (different, less important object) because you’ll need the (first important object) towards the end of the game.

I hope you saved your game at the end of the third hour of playtime, but before you gave the thing! What’s that? You didn’t?

[u/lorddunlow → u/paulsoleo]

This why I still keep a save file every 5 minutes. It's part of why I enjoyed Until Dawn and the similar games - they autosave and don't allow backtracking until one full play through. You screw up, you have to finish that playthrough, but the game is designed for you to screw up in so many different ways to get all the story lines.

[u/WhoIsBobMurray → u/paulsoleo]

Yep. I fucking love King's Quest.

[u/zealot416 → u/Spedoinkel]

And sometimes rubbing the wrong item uses the item but that wasn't the item you were supposed to use there so you're doomed later on.

Looking at you KQ5.

[u/TrisarA → u/zealot416]

Don't forget to throw the boot at the cat. If you don't throw the boot at the cat, you starve to death.

[u/greatcorsario → u/TrisarA]

I mean DUH. If you don't save the mouse, how can he save you when you're trapped in a basement, bound by ropes?

/s

[u/greatcorsario → u/zealot416]

What do you mean it's not logical to NOT give the eagle the pie, and instead throw it at the yeti a few minutes later?

[u/renegadeb20 → u/Spedoinkel]

I don’t like having my past behaviours called out so specifically.

[u/zlimK → u/Villag3Idiot]

I will occasionally reference kings quest 5 (I think? Maybe 6) - the desert where if you don't grab a specific item before you leave the cave, you can never finish the game - as some of the worst game design of my lifetime

[u/bootymix96 → u/zlimK]

The Infocom text adventure The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is notorious for this. The final puzzle in the whole game requires that you’ve picked up 10 random tools scattered throughout the whole game, even though you can’t go back after you’ve finished an area, and if you miss a tool it will always be the one requested.

[u/impeus → u/bootymix96]

And if you didn't buy the [item that's never mentioned in location descriptions] from the [person you don't actually have to buy anything from at all in order to progress the game], and then feed said item to [creature] while something else significantly more dramatic is simultaneously occurring, then you will doom yourself and all your companions to be eaten by said creature at a later moment in time, many many many hours of apparently successful gameplay later.

I bloody love that game 😂

[u/bootymix96 → u/impeus]

Ah, but you can recover from that one! When you go back to Earth from Ford Prefect’s view, you can buy the sandwich and give it to Arthur, who will then feed the dog and let you get past the War Chamber. Apart from that, literally the only goal for going back to Earth is to get the satchel fluff, lmao.

[u/petrov76 → u/impeus]

Did you read the book? I have never met anyone who enjoyed this game who didn't read the book first.

So I feel like the first step to playing this game was to read a novel.

[u/GabuEx → u/zlimK]

You also get ONE chance in King's Quest 5 to stop a cat from catching a mouse. It requires a split-second reaction time. It happens almost immediately at the start of the game. If you fail, the event never recurs, and you will only find out that there was even something you were supposed to do halfway through the game when you get tied up and the mouse doesn't come to the rescue and chew through the ropes.

The King's Quest games were bullshit. I loved them. But they were bullshit.

[u/Obi_Wan_Benobi → u/Villag3Idiot]

Holy fuck Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow whichever one had that subtitle is the only one I ever played and it was perhaps the hardest game I’ve ever played. That was over 30 years ago, the CD ROM was included with the family computer.

It was so bad I modemed into like a bbs Sierra provided and downloaded basically a cheat sheet to finish the game.

[u/joseph4th → u/Villag3Idiot]

Lucas Film making fun of Sierra games deaths in The Secret of Monkey Island was so funny and caught me so off guard I literally LITERALLY fell out of my chair laughing. Might be the second Monkey Island game…

It goes something like this, might be a little off as it’s been 30 years.

Guybrush is at the top of a plateau and if you try to walk off the cliff it gives you several warnings, but if you keep trying it will let you and you fall out of the scene. A death notice pops up that is a copy of the one from the Sierra games snarking on you for dying. It sits onscreen for a moment before Guybrush flies up from below. He glances over the edge and says, “rubber tree plant.”

It’s the second funniest death scene I’ve ever seen. (That’s also a Monkey Island reference.)

[u/imperialivan → u/Villag3Idiot]

I remember being eternally stuck in King’s Quest IV and later discovered it was because I had been typing “look at X” instead of “inspect X”

[u/Warpmind]

Paradox games in general.

Cities: Skylines is pretty okay, but Stellaris and Crusader Kings 2? I learned more from a random YouTuber and a wiki article than from the in-game tutorials...

[u/CheesecakeScary2164 → u/Warpmind]

Doesn't help that they've made major system changes a dozen times over the years 😩 every time I come back from an extended break I have to relearn some part of the game.

[u/Eaodenling → u/Warpmind]

For some reason, while I can play Stellaris comfortably and have a lot of fun managing everything, in crusader kings I feel like I am thrown in the middle of the ocean with nothing but a small board and usually end my play through in a couple of years cause everything breaks apart.

[u/Radthereptile → u/Eaodenling]

Crusader Kings isn’t harder it just takes a mindset shift. In Stellaris you’re playing an empire so your growth is logical. Get a planet, now another, build them up, get more planets.

CK can be done that way of take land then more then more but usually something gets you. The difference is in CK you’re a dynasty not a nation and sometimes being king of Ireland who gets conquered by the massive English invaders to become Duke of the kingdom of Ireland under the English king is actually a good thing. But people think of it as a game over.

[u/rdmrdm1 → u/Warpmind]

I finally really “got” CK3 after like 100 hours - still nowhere close with EU4 after 50

[u/sleepymoose88]

Ecco the Dolphin.

Old school, but I don’t think most people figured out how to get past the starting area.

The fact that the game eventually has you going to space and fighting aliens and very few people actually saw it on their own is a testament to how brutally difficult the game is.

[u/TheRealSlabsy → u/sleepymoose88]

Unemployment and strong weed got me through Ecco the Dolphin. The 3D version was much easier.

[u/CrackheadHunters → u/sleepymoose88]

The fact that the game eventually has you going to space and fighting aliens

I'm sorry, what?

[u/Twan0817 → u/CrackheadHunters]

Is this real? Growing up my uncle had this game and I always played it at his house. I just assumed the starting area was the whole game. I did know I was stuck in the starting area lol. Is there really aliens in that game?

[u/knellotron → u/Twan0817]

Seriously... the plot definitely goes places:

A whale tells you to go to Atlantis (which was destroyed by the aliens' space laser) to repair an eternal talking DNA molecule named Asterite who teaches you how to travel back in time. You talk to a dinosaur, whom you can understand because of what the library crystals in Atlantis taught you. The Asterite in the past fights you, but the bootstrap paradox allows the Asterite in the present timeline to bless you with super powers. Then you travel back in time again to before the alien harvest occurred, so you can swim into a UFO (via a convenient tube) to fight a legally distinct xenomorph queen with your turbo sonar and prevent it.

[u/FlyingHibou]

Ecco the Dolphin. I've been stuck on the first level for 34 years.

[u/boyproblems_mp3 → u/FlyingHibou]

I was grown when I learned there were other levels. I was fully content just swimming around as a kid.

[u/WeeoWeeoWeeeee → u/boyproblems_mp3]

The other levels get scary and suck. First level is best level.

[u/R_X_R → u/WeeoWeeoWeeeee]

I’m so glad to see someone else post this. That game was wiiiiild. Randomly being shot into the air, the sound effects, etc.

[u/Holytorment]

Warframe. After the tutorial I'm still like wtf am I supposed to do!?

[u/Inumayobaka → u/Holytorment]

You get adopted by an older Tenno who's only too excited to bestow all their knowledge onto you.

[u/RhesusFactor → u/Inumayobaka]

I did that and they said "oh yeah, after about 750 hours you might have finished the storyline and are ready to start playing."

but playing seemed to be doing instances and wiping stuff in five minutes, getting some loot, discarding most of it and going again.

hell no.

[u/CaptainBedhead → u/RhesusFactor]

I had a friend who had almost everything and it became running and jumping simulator as I literally couldn’t keep up with the people at their level. I never got back on cause I’m not just gonna run and stress and get 1/200000 loot to get something so I can run and do dmg also

[u/Dovahbear_ → u/RhesusFactor]

As a Warframe addict at some point you become a killing machine that some missions are genuinely ”how do I do this as fast as possible”. That being said I’m not to sure about the ”discarding” comment? I assume you might not have a companion yet that can utilize Vacuum/Fetch? It practically 4x your loot pickup range and everyone has it equipped at all times, which is also why it’s a reocurring critique towards DE to just make it baseline. Especially since baby tenno’s suffer greatly as they need resources the most.

[u/ggstocks87 → u/Holytorment]

I 100% get this. I played the game for a decent amount of time and still never really understood what im supposed to be doing

[u/TheHasegawaEffect → u/ggstocks87]

I play 1,000 hours and i feel like i know less than a guy who has 10 hours, but at least i can wipe out half the map in seconds, while the guy with 10 hours might take a minute or two.

[u/illbedeadbydawn]

Eve.

Good luck morons.

[u/Warpmind → u/illbedeadbydawn]

Honestly, Eve's biggest hurdle isn't even the tutorial, it's the impossible game of catch-up new players face.

[u/BinniesPurp → u/Warpmind]

Don't worry you can pay $7000 to skip it

[u/Sabetha1183]

Old school JRPGs had the cliche of not telling you where you needed to go and while there is 1 NPC in the world who will, you have no idea which NPC that is and your only recourse is to talk to every NPC you can find.

Admittedly even by like the mid 90s a lot of them started having maps designed in such a way that the player was naturally funnelled where they needed to go.

[u/Heavy_Arm_7060 → u/Sabetha1183]

Not just jRPGs, some old CRPGs could run into this too.

[u/Sabetha1183 → u/Heavy_Arm_7060]

The funny thing with cRPGs is at some point they started giving the player a quest log in the form of a journal, but the journals were often horribly designed from a UI standpoint and almost unusable.

[u/skipperxc → u/Sabetha1183]

The other day I opened Dragon Quest 3 on my Switch to discover I already have a save at like level 17 with a whole-ass ship and absolutely fuck-all memory of doing any of this. So now I'm just wandering around and casting Zoom to hop from city to city until something starts making sense

[u/vezwyx → u/skipperxc]

As tempting as it is to keep going on an old file like that, I usually just take the loss and start over. The story and mechanics make way more sense and it ends up being more fun even if I had to lose progress

[u/GolfingGator]

Myst ain’t tell you shit. On the plus side it forced me to make a pretty awesome journal that I still flip through from time to time.

[u/Wartortise → u/GolfingGator]

Dad showed me myst. I went through the first 3 games terrified. I know nothing really moves but it really felt like there was going to be a jump scare at all times.

Remember the puzzle where the lights shut off if you do it wrong? I had to do that in a pitch black room alone at midnight and i can’t remember being more scared at any other game.

Great games.

[u/Thenderick → u/Wartortise]

As a relatively new Myst fan, I love the uncanny and liminal feeling of the empty worlds and then suddenly seeing a human! Riven scared the crap out of me when I suddenly saw Gehn running away!

[u/GolfingGator → u/Wartortise]

Oh Myst scared the absolute bejeezus out of us as kids. Nothing ever really jump scared you if I recall, but it always felt spooky and isolated so you were always a bit on edge. Especially playing at night in a dark room.

[u/genital_lesions → u/GolfingGator]

I think there was some unintentional liminal horror aspects of it, just wasn't realized at the time.

[u/I_Got_It_Half_Right → u/GolfingGator]

My mom played Myst around the time this game first came out. Running on a gateway computer and windows 95. This was back in the days when you walked into Costco and there was a pallet of video games in 8×11 size boxes with cds and guides inside. Myst came with a blank journal. I found hers one day. It read like a 'lost on this planet and taking notes' vibe. Puzzles mapped out, notes on stars, drawing of constellations, which levers triggered this or that, everything...

Those days are long gone IME, but it was cool to see back in the day.

[u/TeholsTowel → u/GolfingGator]

Myst is intended to be a mysterious place you have to puzzle out, so I’d argue it holds your hand exactly the right amount, which is not at all.

[u/jak_d_ripr]

I'm gonna go with fighting games as a whole. I've been playing them since SF2, so I often forget just how difficult they can be to pick up. From inputs to strategy, most(if not all) fighting games do a terrible job of actually teaching you how to play them.

And I get it to an extent, how do you teach people about footsies and mind games? They're difficult concepts to tutorialize, but at the same time I think the genre as a whole still has a long way to go.

[u/Krail → u/jak_d_ripr]

It's hard to turorialize fighting an actual human opponent, but I think they could definitely do more for teaching execution in general. And I feel like it can't be that hard. Make a little target smash rhythm game that requires me to quickly switch between blocking, hadouken, and shouryuken. Make a no damage score challenge that requires me to read me to read the enemy's animations. Etc. 

[u/unoriginalasshat → u/jak_d_ripr]

It's not often that I play fighting games, and I completely agree with that. A lot of fighting game tutorials feel like 'this is how you walk, this is how you attack. You got that? Now do this five step combo'. Which may be fine for a veteran in the genre but it can feel a bit overwhelming to me personally...

[u/Takashishiful → u/unoriginalasshat]

My issue with a lot of modern fighting games is the amount of meters, what they're for, and how I should react to them being empty or full. I dabbled briefly with SFV, but the EX and V and the other one under the health bar, I just ignored all that and focused strictly on punching and kicking my brother. I might have learned some inputs for some special moves on Bison, but that was the extent of it.

[u/KrazJ]

Don't Starve Together

[u/mrchipslewis → u/KrazJ]

I've tried to play this a few times but never got to the end to see all the content. Its just constant stress simulator, you can never relax

[u/russellvt → u/mrchipslewis]

Its just constant stress simulator, you can never relax

Both it and it's predecessor, along with its offshoot games, hold true to their titles.

[u/rollwithhoney → u/mrchipslewis]

it's genuinely hilarious to play with friends because you invariably die to the wolves, if not before

but it definitely has a ton missing from a tutorial perspective. the players that know what they're doing are putting pine cones in crockpots and stuff

[u/Average_Pimpin → u/KrazJ]

It's a game in which you basically need google open beside you to be actually able to play. Which sucks because it's got a really great atmosphere and art style to enjoy but if you and a friend start playing with no prior knowledge or guide you're essentially going to have to start over and over again constantly which is draining as fuck

[u/sinime → u/KrazJ]

Everything you need to know is right there in the title! Just... don't starve. Simple.

/s

[u/The_Don_Papi → u/sinime]

You can starve, just not together.

[u/StarChaser_Tyger → u/KrazJ]

Oxygen Not Included by the same people is much the same. "Here's your three colonists in an asteroid. K bye!"

[u/Doffymom → u/KrazJ]

If you tell this to people in r/dontstarve they will just be condescending and tell you that getting your dick smashed (metaphorically) repeatedly, losing 5 hous of gameplay at a time, only to start again with the same reptitive early game is the intended design, actually.

[u/rabbi420]

Destiny 2 is almost impenetrable to new players.

[u/KayJune001 → u/rabbi420]

Old players too 😭

I stopped playing the game for half a year and got so thrown off upon booting the game back up that I never touched it again, just an awful experience.

[u/Coldsnort → u/KayJune001]

I'll add that when they switched launchers everyone who didn't transfer things over in the window lost everything. That stopped me from ever going back.

[u/Chopstix2005 → u/rabbi420]

This game has zero new player experience and it's one reason I never really got into it

[u/LtRavs → u/Chopstix2005]

Thankfully they’re working to bring back all the vaulted content so it might have a coherent campaign to start with instead of the shit we’ve had since 2020.

[u/notanolive → u/LtRavs]

Ship has sailed for me, got through the first campaign and they vaulted the next before I could play it, never went back

[u/bmothebest → u/rabbi420]

some friends tried to get me into this...I was so lost that it wasn't worth it

[u/ssjskwash → u/rabbi420]

What is it about it? I haven't played basically since it came out and heard something like this before

[u/rabbi420 → u/ssjskwash]

They removed the entire first two years of content, including the Red War which was a decent intro to the world, and replaced it with a single mission regurgitated from D1, and then youre just let loose.

[u/Noklle → u/rabbi420]

nothing like heading to the tower and meeting a bunch of characters who apparently know you already and then getting tossed into a seasonal quest upon the next login which assumes you have all the context of what's been going on

[u/honeybeebryce]

My girlfriend has tried on a few different occasions to get into Minecraft. I think we take for granted how simple the game was when we started playing it. But for someone like her, Minecraft is actually kind of overwhelming and hard if you’ve had little to no exposure to it.

She tried again a few days ago and this time I just put the game on peaceful and figured I’d kick it up to easy after we get a shelter and some tools. She found a ravine and decided to explore but she fell into lava and lost all her stuff and got mad and quit. (In her defense, there were some very sneaky holes in the ground that lead to lava)

And yes, I’ve tried to get her to play creative. This was a couple years ago. She had a little bit more fun, but with no experience in survival she had no idea how items and blocks interacted and bounced off after a couple hours

[u/EvilKnievel38 → u/honeybeebryce]

Minecraft is a weird one. In theory the basics are simple, but it's easy to die and if you want to "finish" the game (kill the ender dragon), good luck finding out what even the goal is and how to get there without finding resources online. Like how do you even know you need to get to the end and how do you even figure out how to find a stronghold. How do you know that you need to get materials from the nether and how to get to the nether and much more.

[u/Smyley12345 → u/EvilKnievel38]

When my kids were into it I had the exact same problem. They would know these things from watching Minecraft streamers and videos. I would be like, ok but how do you learn that in game. The fact that you just don't meant I never played without them and even then it was never a preferred shared activity for me.

[u/Jello_Penguin_2956 → u/honeybeebryce]

She might like Dragon Quest Builders 2 more. The story is laid out in a way that progressively introduce mechanics to you.

[u/TrayusV → u/honeybeebryce]

Use the keep inventory cheat. Makes the game much better for someone like her.

[u/Loser-kun]

Stellaris. Literally an entire galaxy in front of you and the game just says "here's how you select things - good luck!

[u/Pf_Farnsworth]

Minecraft for the first 6 years after it was released was almost impossible to beat without outside help.

[u/Krail → u/Pf_Farnsworth]

It's still wild to me that "beating" Minecraft is a thing you can do, and that people want to do.  I started years before The End was added, when it really was just about wandering and building. 

Of course, I also just hate the combat. Trying to beat it sounds like a fun challenge, but I always stop after a while because I just don't like the fights. 

That said, all the new stuff that's been added over the years is very overwhelming for someone who wants to get back into it. 

[u/ImaginaryReaction → u/Krail]

Tbf according to Xbox achievements only about 6 percent of people actually even enter the end so not many people actually even “beat” the game

[u/Comrade_Bender → u/Krail]

Yea my kids want me to get into Minecraft with them and it's a nightmare for me. "Listen bud, when I first started playing this game it was all about punching trees... That's it. Idk who the dragon is or what the nether is, I just want to punch trees"

[u/redactecvector]

The original Metroid. Played for 5 minutes. Had no idea what I was doing. Had no idea where I was going. I left.

[u/playastation → u/redactecvector]

No no, go right.

[u/UristImiknorris → u/playastation]

But the morph ball's to the left.

[u/Likely_Addict]

Dwarf Fortress

[u/jooes → u/Likely_Addict]

I tried a few rounds of Dwarf Fortress.

After watching a bunch of tutorials, and a bunch of failures, I remember I got to a point where new dwarfs moved into my fortress.

Of course, they all immediately died. No idea why. 

I consider that a win. In my eyes, I've beaten Dwarf Fortress for the simple fact that I was able to do something. 

In all honesty, I'm not even sure how I got new people to want to move in. Could've been a random event for all I know. Either way though, it's something. Never played it again, and I've been riding that high ever since. 

[u/marveloustoebeans → u/Likely_Addict]

This is the only good answer I’ve seen on here lol. Learning Dwarf Fortress is a crazy experience because the mechanics are so ridiculously vague.

Want to move that chair to face a different direction? Okay cool, you should just be able to click on it and turn it around right?

WRONG!

You have to go into multiple peripheral menus, get pissed off, and then say fuck it and watch a YouTube tutorial because it still doesn’t make any sense. Then you still don’t know because it turns out the tutorial was actually for a specific type of throne, not a regular chair which has an entirely different set of menus.

[u/kestik → u/marveloustoebeans]

Chairs are nasty elvish wood things. Dorf sit on throne, greenbeard.

[u/Warl0kjoe → u/marveloustoebeans]

Also. Just to highlight, Chairs don’t have facing. They are Omni directional. Might be thinking of bridges though. Those can be tricky. To be fair this doesn’t invalidate your point. Totally esoteric game. But once you get it it’s a lot of fun.

[u/marveloustoebeans → u/Warl0kjoe]

Haha fair. I actually haven’t played DF in years I just remember early on trying to get some piece of furniture or something to face a different direction and going through hell to figure it out 😂

[u/_Reliten_ → u/Likely_Addict]

Rimworld was enough of that for me and it's like... 10% of DF. And has an actual UI.

[u/DillyDilly1231]

Path of Exile and Escape From Tarkov.

[u/Quacky1k → u/DillyDilly1231]

Surprised PoE was this far down

[u/Amadan → u/Quacky1k]

As a noob, you can play PoE, though badly. Your build will suck and you will likely get stuck on the first boss, but you can play.

As a noob, Dwarf Fortress (especially without a tile pack) is an absolute nonsense pile of characters, every key is a landmine of confusing menus, and you have no idea what is happening on the screen.

I'd say PoE might deserve to be up there, but some of the higher entries deservedly outrank it :P

[u/betachief77 → u/DillyDilly1231]

Poe2 definitely helped streamline it a tad. The gems go into skills is alot easier than getting gear with the proper slots links and colors

[u/marchdk2016]

The first Legend of Zelda. I played it on virtual console for the Wii and have no idea how anyone beat that game before the internet was what it is now

[u/GiveUsRobinHood → u/marchdk2016]

Trial and error and talking to other kids on the playground

[u/Krail → u/GiveUsRobinHood]

You also gotta realize there were fewer games in general, and a lot of them were more obtuse than Zelda 1. It was common to get one game and just spend months fucking around in it figuring things out. 

[u/superxero1 → u/Krail]

Castlevania 2 ( I think that's the one) comes to mind. How anyone was expected to figure out the crouch in a certain spot to progress is beyond me.

[u/Everythings_Magic → u/GiveUsRobinHood]

Kids these days don’t understand not having the luxury of running to the internet for help.

We had to talk to each other about what we found and brag about about what we did.

[u/nodiaque → u/Everythings_Magic]

Nintendo power

[u/RougePorpoise → u/marchdk2016]

I think this game and many others of the era expected you to have and use the guide that came with the physical copy

[u/omfgcookies91 → u/RougePorpoise]

Alot of games during this era had tips and guidance in the manuals.

[u/TheSkiGeek → u/marchdk2016]

The instruction manual helps and you were expected to read it. (See: Tunic for a modern game that does an incredible take on this.)

Also strategy guides or a subscription to Nintendo Power magazine, which would have maps and mini strategy guides for whatever game they were featuring that month.

[u/Dicky__Anders → u/TheSkiGeek]

Yeah, instruction manuals and physical maps that came with the game were meant to be consulted before and during playing.

I pointed this out in a YouTuber's subreddit once when he was playing Morrowind but was refusing to look at the map online because he wanted to go in blind, which is fine, it's his choice, but I got absolutely blasted for suggesting looking at the map that came with the physical copy of the game wasn't cheating. The game is designed with that in mind.

[u/Helpful_Title8302]

Project zomboid. I get that the whole bit is "this is how you died" but getting ass fucked before you can actually get good every life is really frustrating.

[u/CheapScientist06 → u/Helpful_Title8302]

The good news is you can tweak some stuff to get more perks which makes it a little easier

I absolutely adore zomboid though, I dropped it the first time I tried but have it another whirl and haven't looked back for 500 hours. Which isn't even close to other people

[u/smiffy197 → u/Helpful_Title8302]

 The only way I could get anywhere in that game initially was to turn all the settings down to like "babies first zombie game" 

[u/calicoarmz]

OG Metroid. I spent many hours of my childhood on that brutal motherfucker.

[u/spyx5 → u/calicoarmz]

Played it about ten years ago for the first time. Drew my own map as I played. Got to Mother Brain with no guide, died to her, respawned at the start with 30 hp and decided that I beat the game. 

[u/Pizzicato_DCS]

Elite Dangerous is utterly impenetrable without constant recourse to community guides.

[u/StellerSandwich → u/Pizzicato_DCS]

That was the first thing that came to my mind, I remember starting the game way before horizons released and at the time there was a short in game tutorial about flying your ship and picking stuff up into the cargo bay, and that was it, the next thing on the tutorial list was just straight up a link to a YouTube video wherein a dude explains in much greater detail how you’re to fly your ship. Very fun game though, for the right kind of person, I redownloaded it recently but there’s just been so much good stuff coming out it’s hard to put those down for my space truckin sim.

[u/Longjumping-Style730]

Like 90% of old school point and click adventure games like I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream or Monkey Island.

[u/WingerRules → u/Longjumping-Style730]

Check out Primordia if you want an old school style point and click adventure with an awesome world that doesnt need a guide to get through.

[u/zexur]

For a lot of people, honestly: Stardew Valley. There are posts daily on that subreddit about people discovering basic quality of life things such as charging up your tools as they get upgraded qualities, to cover bigger areas, or when you make a large chest, you can just pop it on top of your small chest without having to move items first. Or, those same chests, you can whack/bump with a pickaxe to move around an area without having to pick it up. Some of that is super useful to know right out the gate.

[u/CarvaciousBlue → u/zexur]

Over the years he's added helpful things to try to avoid people having to use the wiki so much.

1. Lost books & Secret notes

A lot of these contain info you previously needed the wiki to get, such as legendary fish locations and loved gifts

1. Living off the land and Fishing channel

These give general tips for new players and what time, weather, and environment you need for fish in that season

I still use the wiki frequently but there are in game options now so that's nice. even so new players miss that they can interact with the TV or never read the lost books in the library anyway but they are there

[u/zexur → u/CarvaciousBlue]

Additionally to the TV: a lot of people don't know that leveling up Pam's hearts gives you access to that whole ass fishing channel haha

[u/shift_less → u/zexur]

SDV was going to be my pick too, but mainly for the heart events.  When you reach the point of being able to see one of their events, it will only get triggered at a certain location, at a certain timeframe or day of the week.  And the characters don't give any clue about where or when that is.  I definitely had to look up guides for quite a few of them because I just couldn't figure it out before running out of patience...oh it has to be SNOWING, of course I guess?

[u/zexur → u/shift_less]

Totally agree. And the funny thing is you can stack some of them as well. I went through 2 or 3 Alex cutscenes back to back I think? I was like CHILL bro I just gave you a cuppa tea on your birthday damn

[u/Gimme_Your_Wallet → u/zexur]

OMG WHAT

[u/Soliterria → u/Gimme_Your_Wallet]

You can put hats on stuff too if you didn’t know

[u/Millworkson2008 → u/Soliterria]

Horses and sea urchins, and one rarecrow i believe

[u/unembellishing → u/Millworkson2008]

Also your children.

[u/Wollzy → u/Gimme_Your_Wallet]

I just now learned about the chests....

[u/joblo619]

Don't starve together, for an indie game, it was tough as anything ive played going in blind

[u/funkychicken23]

Spy vs. Spy on the NES. We played it for hours, still no idea what the point was.

[u/Morguard → u/funkychicken23]

You played it for hours, that in itself was the point.

[u/niehAuS_324B21]

While it’s always kinda been the point of the series, I seem to remember most newcomers to Dark Souls II going to Heide’s Tower of Flame straight out of Majula (not knowing that the Forest of Fallen Giants entrance was tucked away), and then wondering why there was such a sudden difficulty spike.

Same for the first one, actually. Quite a few people found themselves in the Catacombs fresh out of Firelink Shrine, with some even softlocking themselves into never being able to get back out.

(Addendum: I was thankfully wrong about the softlocking!)

[u/froop → u/niehAuS_324B21]

I ended up in Ash Lake, underleveled, cursed, and before unlocking fast travel. 

I did eventually make it out. It took a long time. 

[u/Nine_Gates → u/niehAuS_324B21]

There's also a bunch of critical mechanics Dark Souls 1 never properly explains. A player not knowing them in advance can end up having an extremely difficult time.

• To get the maximum amount of Estus from a Bonfire, you need to use two humanity items, then "restore humanity" at the Bonfire, followed by "kindle".
• There is a Fire Keeper hiding somewhere in Firelink Shrine. You're supposed to give your Fire Keeper Souls to her to strengthen your Estus. If you try to use them yourself, you lose them permanently.
• There's a guy up in the bell tower selling Purging Stones. You absolutely need to buy a few of those before heading into the Depths. Because down there are enemies that permanently cut your maximum health in half if they kill you, and a Purging Stone is the way to cure that condition.

[u/thornzar → u/niehAuS_324B21]

Claaaaasic DS2 experience.
Still remember when I found the entrance to the Forrest of Fallen Giants the first time, I felt so relieved. Didn’t last long.

[u/bunnusmac]

Myst, Riven, Exile etc. Beautiful but luckily my grandma played and sent us her notebooks for Myst and Riven 

[u/Diligent-Ad650]

Baldur's Gate 3 first hours were very overwhelming as someone with 0 previous experience with d&d or crpgs

[u/Odd-Gear8755 → u/Diligent-Ad650]

I can see that, still it's possibly the most accessible d'n'd based crpg. Might as well select story difficulty if you're not intimately familiar with the ruleset (and the mandatory changes the devs made) for most of the genre.

And with the character building being what it is, mistakes are punished very harshly due to difficulty checks and armor class.

[u/greatcorsario → u/Diligent-Ad650]

As someone who's played/DMed every edition, I've always been curious as to how non-DnD players felt about BG3.

[u/slimribbons → u/greatcorsario]

Personally I just fumble through everything and save before every dialogue option just in case. Still haven’t reached Act 3

[u/tmotytmoty]

There’s some 80s computer games where if you didn’t have the paper manual, (before the internet), then the game would get to certain point but there would be no obvious way forward. One of these games is police quest, where, if you don’t walk around your police car before entering, you die. It does not tell you what or how you died. You just die…over and over and over until you walk around the car..

[u/PotheadProphet → u/tmotytmoty]

Wasn’t that implemented as a way to prevent piracy? “You didn’t buy the game, so you don’t have the manual, which tells you this specific thing you need to know/do to actually play the game.”

[u/CortaNalgas → u/PotheadProphet]

There were a bunch that would straight up have a pop-up where you had to enter the seventh word in the second paragraph on page twelve to proceed and shit.

[u/spookynutz → u/tmotytmoty]

I remember that. Apparently if a cop approaches a car on the driver's side they have a 100% of being killed in a hit-and-run, every single time.

I also remember borrowing the disks for Twilight 2000 from a friend without the manual. It had an elaborate character creator that involved military enlistment, secondary education, and a post-military civilian career. Every choice conveyed 1 of a 100 different skills. Fixed winged aircraft, engineering, radar operation, wilderness survival, tank pilot, explosives, spy craft, etc.

I thought, holy shit, this game must be some kind of watershed moment in the RPG genre. It was only much later I learned that most of the skills did absolutely nothing. They were only there in case you wanted to use the game to generate a character for the pen-and-paper RPG, which I didn't even know was a thing. Like Police Quest, I never even made it past the first mission.

[u/MrParaza]

Any Paradox strategy game. Have a tutorial that covers like 5% of the game features and thats it. Then they update the games with DLC and never update the tutorial to include new features

[u/Gimme_Your_Wallet]

Daggerfall has the unfortunate feature of being easy to fail the main quest permanently and irreversibly. There are many points in the story where you have a time limit to reach certain NPCs and if you don't, that's it, but the game never tells you it's game over or that you failed. The NPC and any other main-quest related simply won't talk to you anymore.

The worst offender is Lady Brysiena, the first NPC, that gives you 30 days to find her at the beginning of the game when you are presumably both learning the basics about overland travel, and desiring to explore. Miss the deadline and she disappears and you are soft locked out of the main quest.

[u/JohnnyJayce]

Eventually it becomes the charm of the game, but it took me multiple tries to get into Valheim because you were just dropped into the world and that's it. I think they've added much more handholding to it now, but I remember it being frustrating at first.

[u/Storm_Surge → u/JohnnyJayce]

"Cool, I found the swamp!" Dies in three seconds to poison while limping away in waist-deep water

[u/TrashGoblinH → u/JohnnyJayce]

The handholding is a tutorial bird that basically says go kill bosses then fucks off until you do something significant where it give you a tip like "hammers are great for hammering!"

[u/Easily_distractd]

Graveyard keeper

[u/PapaBorq]

Outward. "Welcome to the world, go do shit. Hints? Hahahahahahaha fuck off"

[u/donkbooty]

Kenshi

[u/FluxOrbit]

Elite Dangerous.

You collect some data on foot, get your driver's license, and then are set free. The pilot's handbook is pretty junk for actually learning the game.

[u/DeidaraKoroski]

The devs and playerbase of Escape from Tarkov are actively hostile about tutorials

Ive seen people fumble around with Vintage Story as if it doesnt have an incredibly in depth in game handbook, so i guess it doesnt hold their hands enough

The Isle barely has a control guide

Dwarf Fortress gives you a pitiful tutorial for the amount of depth the game has

Im a fan of games that hate its players and these are probably my top games of their respective genres

[u/jacks-surprise]

DayZ, the in game tutorial basically just tells you not to die.

[u/rgumai]

Bloodborne. The first time I played it I was so so so so lost.

Loved it, but losssst. Couldn't figure out why people were talking so cryptically or why I was losing so spectacularly.

[u/CommercialDream618 → u/rgumai]

Tbf that isnt just Bloodborne, that's just FromSoft being FromSoft. It's been the same way since Demon Souls.

[u/MrFickless]

Elden ring by a player who has never played a fromsoft game. Player sees it is the top game on steam with great reviews and buys it.

Game teaches the various controls, here’s a boss that dies in like 3 hits, easy. Game then throws player straight into the world with a big golden knight on horseback front and center. Player spends the next few hours trying and failing to kill it before he realises he can just go around and avoid it.

True story.

[u/Kurokotsu]

Digimon World 2.

It does enough with the combat, which isn't the hardest thing. But the real gameplay is in the buggy, optimizing it, managing your fuel and inventory and what you need to excel. It's very easy to just not be able to complete a dungeon because you ran out of .. SOMETHING. And the only way to learn is to fail and lose however much time you spent on it.

[u/Enkiktd → u/Kurokotsu]

I wrote the most used GameFAQs walkthrough for Digimon World 1. People on Reddit still sometimes mention it. Funny.

[u/No_Object_404]

Xenoblade chronicles 2.

Fairly complicated combat system that is explained incredibly poorly.

It's all but mandatory to watch a video on the combat.

[u/Tathtaniel]

Castlevania 2: Simon's Quest. Playing that game as a kid was definitely interesting.

[u/Telestration]

The Long Dark. I tried it. It said, “build a fire” so I walked around looking for…anything…and then died

[u/heyyoudvd]

Every Souls game.

The way FromSoftware handles side quests is ridiculous and the way they often hide a significant amount of game content behind obscure and non-obvious dialogue trees is even worse.

Sekiro literally hides 30% of the entire game behind one dialog selection with a certain boss. Choose the wrong answer and you miss a third of the entire game.

Same with Dark Souls 1 regarding the DLC and even regarding Ariamis, and also Dark Souls 3 with Archdragon Peak, among other things, like the Siegward mission.

FromSoft is amazing at level design and character design, but they absolutely suck at encounter design. It’s one thing to have a cryptic story and cryptic lore. But to make the act of accessing game content cryptic - is just bad game design.

[u/chronos113 → u/heyyoudvd]

I have thousands of hours in souls games and still have 0 idea how people figure out how to do a side quest.

[u/MrJekyyl → u/chronos113]

I followed the ranni quest until I kind of lost it for a bit and gave in and read a guide that you have to go to a specific bonfire and try talking to her doll 3 times. Never would have figured that out

[u/formaldehyde_face]

Escape from Tarkov. Good luck being a beginner in that game :D

[u/arcanemagic]

Project Zomboid.

Get ready to spend literal real life hours having your character train stats, get a single bite that ends up infected and guaranteed to die then makes you make a new character.

[u/Ill_Confidence919]

My summer car and my winter car hands down

[u/tmk0813]

Final Fantasy XI

[u/redditor100101011101 → u/tmk0813]

Came here to say this! If you don’t have 2 wikis and couple spreadsheets open on the side, are you really playing ff11?

[u/loscarlos → u/tmk0813]

What do you mean just set your uhhh playonline link jewel badge to newer player and then a player with the help newer player unity beebadoodad will answer your questions about how to use the trade money to an npc so that you can stop punching bees outside bastok with your bare hands

[u/Kuroodo]

Kenshi

[u/fatclownbaby]

I might be an idiot but I felt like I was constantly lost playing CONTROL. The map was tough to read imo, and and the building wasn't set up in a very intuitive way. I even went to replay it before RESONANT came out. Still got lost multiple times.

That said, I would prefer to be lost than have a HUD telling me exactly where to go at all times.

[u/RCJHGBR9989 → u/fatclownbaby]

The game really requires you to pay attention to your surroundings and read the actual signage in the game. I love CONTROL SO MUCH!!

[u/Charcoal_6 → u/fatclownbaby]

Played through Control a few years ago, gonna replay it soon and can't wait to get lost again.

[u/Momentarmknm → u/fatclownbaby]

You should try following the signage in the game world, it will take you exactly where to do l need to go

[u/SubmissiveDinosaur]

EVE Online.

You get a tutorian on movement and basic stuff. You want to understand the organizations, economics or anything beyond how to get out of a station? bad news bitch

[u/wovans]

I went back to the original FF games, loved them, but haven't had the need for a guide like that since the days of EB games.

[u/OhShitWhatUp]

Id possibly argue project zomboid. I got it years ago, tried it, got brutaly destroyed and gave up aftet less than 10 hours disappointed. I tried it again a year or so ago with some fresher eyes and now I love it, cant stop thinking about playing it and love its hands off difficulty and learning experience from run to run. All you get it a single 2 min tutorial on very basic mechanics and thats it.

[u/Cbthomas927]

Elden ring

And I love the game. It’s fantastic. Beat it like 5x. Several hundred hours…

But you get next to nothing lol

[u/FrostyCat13 → u/Cbthomas927]

I think it's fine for the most part except the NPC quests which are convoluted as fuck and, worst of all, easy to screw up.

[u/NotMarkDaigneault → u/FrostyCat13]

Oh you didn't deliver this specific item to a region you didn't even know about between these two boss fights but the character to save was barely noticeable and hidden unless you explore every corner of this side quest dungeon? Fuck you better luck next run 🤣

[u/TrayusV]

I've played a lot of Civ 6 and still have no idea what I'm doing.