"Okay... How was I supposed to figure that out?"

[SmallHatLogan]

-snip-

Well it wasn't supposed to be figured out entirely by each individual player. It was designed to be something for the community to work out together. And the community was actually doing a good job at solving the mystery until someone took a short cut and did a bit of datamining.

I do think patching it so you can't use seeds was a total dick move though.

Now if you want to argue whether developers should make content unlockable via community effort that's another discussion altogether.

 

[Lilikins]

-snip-

Well it wasn't supposed to be figured out entirely by each individual player. It was designed to be something for the community to work out together. And the community was actually doing a good job at solving the mystery until someone took a short cut and did a bit of datamining.

I do think patching it so you can't use seeds was a total dick move though.

Now if you want to argue whether developers should make content unlockable via community effort that's another discussion altogether.

Yeah I saw that entire 'event' on a reddit post, with all due respect they did get quite far in it all before it was datamined. To be fairly honest I wouldve rather had it found out via the puzzle pieces a bit later, wouldve made it a bit more exciting hehe.

My post was originally sorta, along the lines of me being stubborn and 'usually' atleast never checking online how to progress via walkthroughs and realizing that that wouldve been something the lines of Ermac in Mortal Kombat 1 haha. What was it again? when something flies past the moon do a double flawless victory and fatality on the pit level etc haha^^

 

[Thurston]

Way way back in the 1990's, one of the Gabriel Knight games, the werewolf one...

To get a zoo attendent to unlock a cage or something like that, you called him on the phone, and had a conversation with him.

What you ACTUALLY had to do, was go into your "recorded conversation" inventory, and splice up an earlier conversation with his supervisor, and prepare each line in advance to the questions he would ask. Holy hell.


I think that was the first time I remember looking up FAQs on the internet.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

I always look at wikis when I find Astrarium in Dragon Age: Inquisition, and I admit that with no shame. Sure, some of them are easy. I'll even say anything less than oh...10 stars is fairly easy, if time consuming. Greater than that? The ones that are dozens of stars big, with dozens of crossing, hatch-work, etc...to trial and error something like that for 20mins really breaks the game's already slow pace for me. I try to spend as little time in those puzzles as possible.

Also anything in Alien: Isolation, but I've ranted about that before. Not a huge fan, not a great game. Moving on.

I also remember looking things up for Outlast and South Park: Stick of truth. Can't remember what, but I know I did.

And just don't play Dark Souls. You won't walk away feeling accomplished. Its a game that doesn't want to be played, so we should oblige it.

 

[Someone Depressing]

I don't remember Quest for Glory 4 all that much, perhaps the least out of the seemingly neverending cascade of psuedo-fail and Sierra that the QFG games were, but I do remember a very very stupid thing that happens.

In the first 3 or in-game days, before you can get to the "open world" (read: more stupid puzzles and Monty Python jokes) you have to do a very specific series of actions. Firstly, you have to talk to a gargoyle-type creature in the inn... though accessing the inn itself is an ordeal due to the game's annoying day-night system. If you imported the character from previous games (like I did) then you might have the skills to break into your room, but that doesn't make it any less dumb.

You also have to go an equally annoying series of mini-game esque puzzles in order to meet the town's local mad scientist guy. These puzzles. So annoying. Uugh. I hate them. All of them.

The last one is more complicated, and perhaps the most contrived, and lasts the longest. If you don't do this, it bites you in the ass much later. There's another one that also occurs within it, involving a werewolf and pointy farming utensils. If you don't save him, the game becomes unwinnable.

Noticing a pattern here? "Go to this place, that you have no indication to go to, at this specific time, with this item, having had talked to this person about this here that you learn about over there, and then do the thing, which then gives you even more time-contrained bullshit tasks that don't advance the plot."

I attempted to do the start of this game around 20 or so times, because the game became outright unwinnable in so many situations. Even worse is that not even all of these are actually design decisions[[footnote]] ridiculous bullshit shit out of the Sierra gravedigging machine[[/footnote]] and more hilariously bad bugs, technical errors, and other batshit insane crap because making games that actually work is haaaaaaaaaaaaaaard.

Cue me screaming, having a breakdown, and then crying. I did end up beating the game, eventually, with Elrog the Flaming Drag Disco Queen. Took me 87 in-game days because of those God damn sidequests.

 

[SmallHatLogan]

I just remembered that one quest in Majora's Mask where you have to reunite Kafei and Anju. It's been a while since I've played the game so I don't remember how much direction you're given, but I do remember using a walkthrough for it. So many time sensitive events. What a pain in the arse.

Bring on Majora's Mask 3DS!

 

[Prince of Ales]

In Breath of Fire 3, there's a bit towards the end of the game where your main character is split up from the rest of the party, and you're stuck in this room with a dragon statue. You speak to this statue and it says something really obscure like "you need to meditate a bit longer" or something like that. So I spent hours running around this room clicking on every square in every order trying to get something to happen. What you're supposed to do is stand still doing nothing in front of this statue for like 30 seconds or something to simulate you "meditating" and then you talk to the same statue again and you're done. Needed a guide for that one, I won't be ashamed to admit.

On a slightly different note, sometimes RPGs use this a lot in their progression systems. First time I played the original Fallout, hadn't got a clue what anything in the progression system actually meant. And it's a pretty open system; you get to fine tune all of your stats and skills. Furthermore, there's things about that system (and with the game in question) that you couldn't possibly know about until you've played through the game at least once. For instance, you can pay for certain operations that increase your attributes by one, but not if they're already at the maximum of ten. So a well-informed player would always start the game with these attributes (or those they wanted to max) at nine. There's absolutely no way to know such a thing first time through unless you've read a guide. But is that such a bad thing? I played through Fallout several times. First time was the discovery, the next few times were me, this time with better knowledge, trying to break the system, basically. I enjoyed all of those playthroughs. I'm playing through Divnity: Original Sin at the moment, and the first thing I thought about it (other than the combat system reminding me a tiny bit of Fallout, of course, totally unrelated/related) was how the progression system wasn't entirely honest with you. You've no idea first time through what +1 Strength really means compared to +1 Intelligence. You don't know how important different spell schools are (you'll be putting points in them before you've ever seen a vendor who can sell you skills for them). That has it's own allure though. First time through, I'm just wanting to play the game, see the story, get through all the challenges. Second time through, I'm gonna break that fucker. I'm gonna make the hardest, most overpowered, stupidly godly party the world has every seen. It's like a second game within a game. Sometimes it can work.

 

[FPLOON]

I remember playing the game Geist for the first time and asking that same question once I reached this one later section where I had to find my stolen body...

Other than that, the proper method of doing the Devil's Arms sidequest in Tales of Symphonia (which involves doing something not only before you "initiate" said sidequest, but before you reached Tethe'alla for the first time), some of the main objectives of Ys 1 & 2 Chronicles, and both Zelda I and Zelda II in general[footnote]...despite beating the formal without a guide and giving up on the latter in general...[/footnote]...

 

[MirenBainesUSMC]

A more recent game --- the fight between Solid Snake and Vamp whom is seemingly immortal.

C'mon fess us. Whom really knew to do that thing you had to do in order to defeat him? I didn't. I was like.....wtf... well thanks Wiki..

 

[Pyrian]

In Breath of Fire 3, there's a bit towards the end of the game where your main character is split up from the rest of the party, and you're stuck in this room with a dragon statue. You speak to this statue and it says something really obscure like "you need to meditate a bit longer" or something like that. So I spent hours running around this room clicking on every square in every order trying to get something to happen. What you're supposed to do is stand still doing nothing in front of this statue for like 30 seconds or something to simulate you "meditating" and then you talk to the same statue again and you're done. Needed a guide for that one, I won't be ashamed to admit.

Not even a little? I mean... You didn't think to try doing exactly what the statue told you to do? XD As hints go, that sounds pretty straightforward.

Then there's "Path of the Eagle" in Legend of Grimrock II... Grrr... Or that "click" puzzle near the end.

 

[Envy Omicron]

A more recent game --- the fight between Solid Snake and Vamp whom is seemingly immortal.

C'mon fess us. Whom really knew to do that thing you had to do in order to defeat him? I didn't. I was like.....wtf... well thanks Wiki..

Yeah... I hadn't the slightest clue. I only knew what to do because my cousin who played MGS4 before me told me.

Back in the olden days I remember having to pay bus fare to go into town to read the Ocarina of Time guide to figure I needed to shoot the pictures of ghosts with fire arrows before they disappeared (I just thought it was a neat trick that when you got near them they vanished) - and I'd spent a helluva lot of time on Link to the Past before this.

It took me over an hour and a half to figure that out the first time through. I'm pretty sure that normal arrows work just fine. Although I was playing it at 3 in the morning...

 

[Callate]

The final Big Bad in Gun. He's wearing armor on his chest, so you can't hurt him by shooting him... in the head.

He throws dynamite at you, and you can shoot it out of the air. But being at point-blank range from blasts of his own dynamite doesn't hurt him either...

Unless the blasts light the geysers in the cave floor.

This is the first and only fight in the game that uses mechanics this convoluted to do damage.

 

[RedDeadFred]

Some of the jumping puzzles in GW2 seem like they'd be impossible to find without guides or blindly running into them by accident.

 

[Starbird]

I finished Dark Souls II for the first time today, and one particular thing stood out to me around the final hour of the game. There was one section where I had absolutely no idea where to go, and nothing in the game world seemed to even hint at anything.

Spoiler: Explained in greater detail, spoilered for those who fear spoilers (nothing severe)

Namely, after going to the Ancient Dragon and receiving the whateveritwas that allows you to enter the memories of the giants. At this point you have explored all mandatory locations in the game world, and there will be no new bonfire locations that further the story. No character says anything that even hints at what you're supposed to do, and not even the game's hint system can help you figure out what you're supposed to do next. The only hint you're given is that the new key allows you to visit "the memories of the withered". Dark Souls is known for being cryptic, but this was utterly impenetrable to me. Seeing as the entire world is basically withered in the game, it could have meant anything. Only after consulting a wiki did I find out what you're supposed to do with it, and then I went "Okay, that's bullshit".

How in the shit was I supposed to link some silver thingy to the long gone giants specifically? "Memories of the withered"... fucking everything's withered in that game!

In short, I received an item that I didn't know what it would do, at a place after which there will be no new places to go to, no characters revealed anything about it or my next step and the game's hint system can't provide info on this particular problem. What you're actually meant to do is to go back to a very early place you have no reason to go back to and then visit certain places that have been little more than set dressing and only then will the story advance. I do respect when a game expects me to figure things out for myself, but this was just nuts.

What examples of this phenomenon do you know? When were you so stuck in a game that you had to consult a wiki, and the answer was something that was basically impossible to figure out anyway? I think adventure games are particularly guilty of this happening.

Yeah I hate it when games do this. Castlevania: SOTN and most recently South Park: Stick Of Truth were obnoxious in this regard (oh and Divinity: OS but I think it was deliberate there).

Generally I just tab out and open Gamefaqs.

 

[suitepee7]

the Assassins's creed 2 ledge? Specifically, the one in Altair dream/memory sequence, where you have to do one specific type of jump that you never have to use at any other point. Never got through that without a walkthrough

 

[Queen Michael]

LucasArts adventure games have already been mentioned, so I'll go with something different. Disney's Dinosaurs. At one point a great wall of fire appeared in the way of where I was going. (No. Stop. I said great WALL of fire. Stop humming.) I had no idea how to make it go away. Eventually I decided to just kill myself to make it end. I ran towards the fire.

That's when the fire disappeared. You were supposed to run straight into a wall of fire.

 

[TakerFoxx]

I admit to being a victim of the infamous Barrel of Doom from Sonic 3 back when I had it on the Genesis. Goddamned thing screwed up my final playthrough before the console disappeared into...wherever it is that old consoles go. After reacquiring the game on Steam years later, it was very satisfying to finally bypass the damned thing.

Though funnily enough, I had gotten past it numerous times in the past. Damned if I know how. Maybe I had just stumbled into the solution by accident when I was younger and forgot how during that last time?