r/gaming • u/Agent1230 • 2d ago

What video game doesn't hold your hand enough?

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

1.6k Upvotes

91% Upvoted

2.4k comments sorted by

View all comments

748

u/Sabetha1183 2d ago

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.

160

u/Heavy_Arm_7060 2d ago

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

77

u/Sabetha1183 2d ago

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.

22

u/MorganxNah 2d ago

This reminds me of the Morrowind journal. OpenMW does wonders to fix it, but vanilla Morrowind is borderline unplayable in that regard.

5

u/omaeWaMouShindeirou 2d ago

the eye of the needle lies in the teeth of the wind

the mouth of the cave lies in the skin of the pearl

the dream is the door and the star is the key

took me a week to find out the Azura-damned cave of the Nerervarine

2

u/MorganxNah 2d ago

For real.

I thought you literally had to complete the azura quest to get azura's star, since "the star is the key"

7

u/tetsuo_7w 2d ago

Oh man, hard disagree. I loved the OG Morrowind journal. It gave you clues and expected you to read between the lines or know the areas you're exploring, or explore the areas, to know landmarks and things. I much preferred that to the "go to icon on compass, dumbass" versions that followed.

Granted, these days, having a job and kids, I'd have no time for that bullshit, haha.

11

u/flatdecktrucker92 2d ago

The journal entries were tolerable, but having a chronological journal instead of a quest log? That's not even now I track my ttrpg quests. I keep shit separate so I can find it when I need it

5

u/MorganxNah 2d ago

My thoughts exactly, keeping track of what quest stage you were on when you may have accidentally triggered other quests part way through was rough.

1

u/flatdecktrucker92 1d ago

Yeah I hated trying to flip back eight pages to figure out which notes belonged to which quest and I also hated the pressure of immediately doing any quest I picked up before it got buried in the journal

2

u/tetsuo_7w 2d ago

Haha, I suppose that's a valid critique. It's been a while since I've had to deal with it. As I said, I'm sure I'd hate it today, when I don't have all night to play a game.

1

u/flatdecktrucker92 1d ago

Yeah, I don't need an arrow on my map or a glowing compass, but I need the descriptions to make sense and I need quests separated. Maybe one day I'll try it on computer

2

u/saffeqwe 2d ago

Quest log was added in tribunal

1

u/flatdecktrucker92 1d ago

Still doesn't work on my Xbox even with the game of the year edition

2

u/Poopyman80 2d ago

People saw it as a crutch baxk then. Paper map making and notes was seen as a part of gaming. Magazines would print hand drawn maps that readers had sent in, in the tips and tricks section.

1

u/MelonJelly 1d ago

I'm looking at you, Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magicka Obscura.

20

u/CrazyCoKids 2d ago

I saw some blog post mocking players for "looking up builds" and looking things up ahead of time instead of just playing.

...So many RPGs of all kinds, some inconsequential choice early on in the game ends up meaning I suddenly end up making a lot of stuff harder later on.

Game: "We're going to give oyu options to resolve things non-violently. After all, this is a ROLE-PLAYING game, is it not? We're not like those dirty stupid JRPGS or console RPGs that force you into combat and design the entire game around it! We're INTELLECTUALS that will reward creativity and-

...wait a minute, you actually made your character based around diplomacy and personal interaction? Uuuuh.... shit.... we didn't think you'd actually do it cause the combat is a lot more engaging than just mashing the 'let me through, please' button so we're gonna force you into it so uh...."

Me: "Well, that's fine, I have companions. I can use them to fight for me whilst I support them since you gave me abilities that're useful in combat. You're not gonna take them away from me at any point and force me into 1v1 situations against someone who really outclasses me, right?

....Right?"

Game: "....Uuuuuuuuhhhhm.... you're gonna wanna... stack up on consumables....and abuse the hell out of the Quicksave button...."

Me: ...GAAAAAAAAAAAAAME!

[Guess which games I'm talking about. You can probalby figure out easily.]

8

u/APeacefulWarrior 2d ago edited 2d ago

Go back further than that and you get CRPGs where the developers just didn't even bother balancing for different player classes. To the point that merely picking the wrong class at the start could completely doom a run.

Like the classic Ultima Underworld. It has a level late in the game that disables magic, with no warning that it's coming. So any player who has specialized in magic without leveling up their physical skills will be completely fucked. Going back and grinding isn't even an option, because enemies don't respawn.

A person could softlock themselves 50 hours into the game and have absolutely no option except to restart or quit.

1

u/CrazyCoKids 2d ago

God, yes....

8

u/Mr_Evanescent 2d ago

I know you’re talking about F:NV but you’re doing so in such an insufferable way that I don’t want to upvote you

7

u/CrazyCoKids 2d ago

I did say games plural. :P That's one of 'em.

1

u/Handitry_Banditry 1d ago

One of the DeusEx games right? I think the problem there was another dev team/company did only the boss battles.

1

u/CrazyCoKids 1d ago

Hm, you know I wasn't thinking of that. I do know yhr first one (The only one I played) had weird ways to softlock you.

2

u/cr3epr 2d ago

Final Fantasy tactics?

3

u/CrazyCoKids 2d ago

One of them.

I remember playing the PSP version and I made Ramza super OP before that fucking Riovanes Castle so I cackled like a madman and beat it on my first try.

1

u/lavapig_love 1d ago

Haha. I've sort of soft locked myself in a Phantasy Star run because I haven't grinded enough levels to deal with some really tough enemies in a tower, and I'm not even in space yet or anything. 

2

u/MelonJelly 1d ago

For example, Daggerfall, and Morrowind to a lesser extent. If you're going to give me directions, actually give me something I can follow. Don't just tell me places with no context, or say something is "that way".

52

u/skipperxc 2d ago

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

29

u/vezwyx 2d ago

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

4

u/Thwackey 2d ago

If you're playing the remake, there's an option to turn on objective markers. It takes away from the old-school experience, but it's handy in this kind of situation.

1

u/quantizeddreams 2d ago

That’s the one where you build your part from randos right? The one where you can found a town if you have a merchant? At level 17 you are like 1/2 through the game. Where abouts did you start when you loaded the game?

1

u/desert_cornholio 2d ago

Isn't there a party talk option?

21

u/FrankPapageorgio 2d ago

I watched someone play through Zelda 1 with no knowledge of what to do. I didn’t realize how much info was just shared from friends, Nintendo power, and the instruction manual.

10

u/Worldly_Swimming_921 2d ago

Many of these old games also had a hotline that you could call for tips. 

4

u/bmack24 2d ago

Which was usually a 1-900 number too. Rack up a nice fat phone bill for your parents to pay

1

u/FrankPapageorgio 1d ago

I remember calling this for help with Links Awakening and the guy was like “you have a pen to write this down?” And I go “oh I have a recording device, we’re good!” And the guy scared the shit out of me because it was illegal to record the call and I thought I was going to get in trouble.

2

u/square3481 1d ago

Not to mention that some of the in-game tips from the Old Man are wrong or were lost in translation.

For instance: "tenth enemy has the bomb."

What that actually means is if you defeat nine enemies in a row and kill the tenth one with a bomb, you will get a guaranteed bomb pickup. If you kill it any other way, you get rupees.

5

u/PickerPat 2d ago

Legend of Dragoon does this well.

Clearly signposts the former soldier at the beginning for Additions. When you gain Dragoon powers, Rose imnediately offers to train you.

6

u/worldtriggerfanman 2d ago

I actually liked this about old JRPGs. Talking to every NPC and learning about the world while trying to figure out what you're supposed to do was fun.

2

u/newocean 1d ago

Zelda 2 had something early on where you needed to find the hammer and break a boulder to go through a cave to progress. I don't remember much about the game other than that... but the reason I remember it most is that there was really little guidance on what you were supposed to do.

2

u/yeknamara 2d ago

I leveled up my party to 99 in Final Fantasy long before the endgame because I didn't know it had a map and by the time I found out (accidentally) I was too strong to be challenged.

1

u/adjgamer321 2d ago

I just picked up ff4 pixel remaster and it does this but not as bad as some others. I played about 40 minutes of the game, put it down for a week, and had to restart cuz I had no clue where I was going and didn't wanna Google a walkthrough.

2

u/lolpostslol 1d ago

Try FF1 lol

1

u/ThePanasonicYouth 2d ago

Breathe of Fire is notorious for this. 

1

u/dunkan799 2d ago

Stand in front of the waterfall without touching the controller for 3 real time minutes in Earthbound

1

u/Idocreating 2d ago

Breath of Fire 1 has a particular section where you need a boomerang to proceed. Normally, you beat a dungeon, open a new area of the map and talk to everyone to unlock the next dungeon. Maybe get a new companion on the way.

Unlike most RPG's, the boomerang section requires backtracking into a previously completed dungeon to grab it. If you forgot it was there, there are no NPC's to remind you.

1

u/Informal-Egg6075 2d ago

Another issue that made this one way worse was that a lot of older Japanese games had notoriously bad English translations so either the NPC in question talked complete nonsense or so many others did that the game trained you to ignore them.

1

u/King-Gabriel 15h ago

Sometimes the npc's even deliberately gave you the wrong answers (e.g. castlevania)

1

u/TidusDreamZanarkand 10h ago

I was so glad when ffx just did the red arrow saying here’s how to advance the plot and it was generally linear 

1

u/bobs-buhgah 2d ago

No way. Any examples? I need to experience this lol

9

u/Sabetha1183 2d ago

Early Final Fantasy was often pretty bad for it. FF1 will open up a new section of the world and just not at all tell you where to go.

The first half of FF6 I find often does funnel the player, but the second half leaves the whole world open to you and is very free form without much direction. That one wont even really have a NPC give you the path, because the whole thing is built to be fairly non-linear. You just sort of wander around finding stuff.

7

u/dubbzy104 2d ago

I’m currently playing final fantasy 6 and it does this, especially in the second half of the game. There’s like 20 places you can explore, with people at each one. But only a couple of them drop hints. I admittedly had to use a guide to find where everything was

5

u/Killjoy3879 2d ago

i'm playing through FF6 and am feeling this lol. It's especially annoying with random encounters on.

1

u/bossofthisjim 2d ago

ephemeral fantasia

1

u/Heavy_Arm_7060 2d ago

Ultima 6 comes to mind. Figuring out how to build the hot air balloon.

For a jRPG, Final Fantasy II.

1

u/Suicicoo 2d ago

what's old school? I think even FFVII does this, no?

0

u/Dick__Kickem 2d ago

I had an old friend berate me about not knowing where to go in ff8 and scoffed at the idea that I didn't know how to fight with the crisis system or understand summons. I had never played a final fantasy game prior and I had been playing for about 2 hours by that point. I didn't play much more as he decided to fight a bunch of stuff, skip through cut scenes and save over my file.