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I played Pokemon games against other kids in battles, and I also never saw merit in the status effects. If it didn’t deal damage, it was just a waste of a move.
Now, my experience is solely from the original Red/Blue generation so maybe they’ve gotten a bit more complex, but the first games were shallow af.
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I forced my way through that cave in Blue/Red that was completely pitch black. I don’t know why I didn’t get HM Flash (I was a dumb kid). I remember listening intenselywith headphones to the noises that would be made from running into walls, along with counting each press of the d-pad so I could sorta figure out where I was. Still got lost often. I don’t know how many poor Zubats I murdered in that cave trying to get through it. Nor do I remember how long it took me to get to the other side.
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Honestly, most status moves aren’t worth it in normal, AI battles because the pokemon AI is so bad.
Sword dance and nasty plot are the exception. Use that once or twice and you can usually sweep the entire opponent team with one hits. They’re also fantastic in the raid features that the last 2 generations have had. A big meta in SV raids was belly drum + drain punch (which would easily heal the damage belly drum dealt). It’s practically impossible to win 6+ star raids without status moves. Some of them are so brutally hard that you have to go for cheese strategies.
Sleep Powder is the only one IMO. 75% hit rate and an expected 2+ turns of effect means it’s a good gamble vs a stronger opponent, plus it’s practical for catching Pokemon.
Well, that and Gen 1 Toxic + Leech Seed is pretty fun…
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I did this exactly, I went through like half then realized that you learn new abilities by equipping weapons and using their ability 10 times.
In the game bug fables I missed that there was a badge shop in one of the starting areas. I played through most of the game without using any of those badges. You don’t need them, but it’s nice to have options
In Breath of the Wild, I never learned how to cook in the starting area. I completely bypassed the intended path up to the cold area and somehow climbed up the other side, and then just froze my ass off while eating a bunch of apples. I made it out of the starting area and I think I beat two of the divine beasts before I finally looked up how to cook. I knew the game had cooking, but I thought there would be some kind of cooking menu when you walk up to a cooking pot, I didn’t realize you had to just hold items and then drop them in.
Doing the hermit’s cooking tutorial fully actually makes that Great Plateau mountain even easier, because not only you’d learn how cooking works but he’d also give you the warm doublet right away.
Most of the mountain (all? except maybe a small area around the summit) is only level 1-cold, so the doublet is enough even without cooking.
YES! This is actually how I finally learned how to cook. There was another cold area I was trying to get into, and looked up where to get warm clothing, and it said something like “You should already have the warm doublet from completing the hermit’s cooking tutorial.” and I was like “the what?”
I did that, but I was eating whole chillis in the first area rather than cooking with them.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
The latest dumb one for me was Sonic Frontiers.
As a Soulsborne veteran who’s beat Malenia, I can admit I just never really got all that good at parrying and mostly avoid it. So when I saw Sonic Frontiers had a parry option move, I just kinda filed it away in the back of my mind and never did it, despite the fact that timing is inconsequential in that game and you will parry as long as you’re holding the buttons to do so when the hit lands. I kludged my way forward all the way through to the third boss where it was mandatory and learned my mistake.
OK game, better than a lot lately, but still a 5/10 at best.
Turns out in Elden Ring, you’re supposed to go left when you leave the initial starting area so you can pick up the ability of teleportation to bonfires.
Well, imagine my surprise learning that from friends 10 play hours later after going right and opening up a teleporting treasure chest to some crystal cave…
I never got past the first boss on the horse.
Somewhat hilariously, that boss is supposed to teach you a key lesson of Elden Ring’s design and gameplay philosophy:
- Not everything is meant to be beaten immediately, sometimes you should skip things that are too strong and come back later.
Considering the design philosophy of Elden Ring, you were probably supposed to do that rather than going left.
that’s wild that it doesn’t just give you the bonfire teleportation when you reach any bonfire. didn’t realize it had to be that bonfire in particular
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
Dwarf Fortress.
Enough said lmao
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!
I heard that Skyrim had a story which was hundreds of hours long. Therefore, when I played it I only played the main story missions and ignored all the side quests and locations.
I was horribly underleveled for the final boss and had to cheese it and I only realised I had played the game completely wrong when the credits rolled and there were no more story quests to do…
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!
Oh… I’m not sure but I had a really hard time beating him… maybe I just sucked.
Just before you fight Alduin there’s some dude you have to beat up if I remember correctly, I think Tsun guarding the bridge to the Hall of Valor? I remember him just one-shotting me so I had to crawl into some terrain he couldn’t hit me from and I just very slowly killed him with a bow and arrow when I had absolutely no proficiency in archery.
On my first play through, I completely misunderstood Mass Effect and basically played it like a standard shooter. Hardly used power, didn’t talk to anyone and more or less just went from main mission to main mission.
The amount of stuff I missed out on, in retrospect, is staggering. I’m so glad I gave this game another try because I really did not understand what all the fuss was about.
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.
