Nioh. You can transform into demon mode and I didn’t know until I played the sequel. It’s a soulslike so I played it exactly how I play Dark Souls which made me completely lose out on the unique and in-depth systems the game has to offer.
You can transform into demon mode and I didn’t know until I played the sequel
You didn’t miss that, that mechanic doesn’t exist in the first game. In Nioh 1, you can briefly power up your weapon. Nioh 2 removed that and introduced the demon transformation instead (and yokai cores, which also don’t exist in N1).
I know, that’s what I meant because it’s tied to the demons you equip, I used them solely as stat boosts.
Hammerwatch. You can reach the end of the game and be unable to proceed if you didn’t collect specific things. I believe it was wooden boards.
Dwarf Fortress.
Enough said lmao
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.
I played through all of mirrors edge when it first came out (10 years ago?) without realizing you could pick up a gun.
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.
In Legend of Dragoon I hit a wall on a Disc 2 boss and was stuck for months. After I took a break and came back I realized you could change your equipment–I’d never upgraded anything equipped and was using all of the starting equipped weapons and armor. This was not my first RPG, nor was I young enough to use age as an excuse.
I missed the dodging and flurry-rush shrine in BoTW. Beat Ganon without ever learning. Finally went back much later and was like “wow, this game is so much easier now!”
Yeah, it wasn’t until my second time starting the game that I took in any of the combat tutorials
I finished botw with 250 hours game play and currently on totk and cannot dodge, parry or flurry rush to save my life.
