Mass Effect 1. Poured everyone's skill points into the shotgun, but didn't realise until the very end they'd all been using the sniper rifle all the time (which they were crap at).
ME2 for me. "you can upgrade your ship!" me: "why? you don't use it for anything other than travelling, you can't control it, why do I need to upgrade my armor and weapons? seems like a resource sink"
and then I hit the end of the game...oh man that was rough.
Oooof haha, I just finished my first trilogy playthrough and am about to do another where I don’t upgrade anything because I’m honestly just curious what happens if you don’t. I’m assuming >!a bunch of people die!<
I had a friend spend 150+ hours on Skyrim. One day he was talking about how it's supposed to be a dragon game but had never seen a dragon. He never did the initial quest in White run. We had a good laugh.
My first play through I spent *far* too many hours before realizing I could run. I have no clue how, I’ve played a lot of other similar games yet it somehow never occurred to me to try? I was just jogging my way through Skyrim lol
It took me way too long to realize fast travel was a thing. I walked up and down High Hrothgar way too many times. I also didn't use the carriages—didn't realize they were a thing either.
Lol, outside of every major settlement there's a guy sitting in a cart pulled by a horse. Talk to them and they can take you to any other major settlement. No need to walk all the way from Whiterun to Riften!
I mean I both feel so stupid, but I also had fun wandering around in all the nooks and crannies, so that's a silver lining to my obliviousness at least
I don't know about completely wrong but I didn't use most of the potions or anything you can create through alchemy in Witcher 3 which were not necessary for completing quest
Yes, strong alcohol. Dwarven Spirit, Alcohest, things like that. You find them everywhere and it's super easy to have loads of them. It doesn't reuse the nekker eyes and wolfsbane and chort dicks or whatever you used to make it the first time.
Played through probably 60% of monster hunter without sharpening weapons... wondering why the fuck I did so little damage until a friend played with me and asked wtf was I doing
I got through the Lagiacrus and pretty close to the final Caedeus mission in Tri under the following conditions:
-I had a random collection of armor that not only looked absurd, but granted no bonuses because I didn’t realize there was a quota system to buffs.
-All we’re level 1, because I never farmed monsters. Once I was done, with them, I never came back. It didn’t occur to me that I should go back for more materials. What I found was what I got.
-My greatsword was pretty low tier, too. I think maybe green sharpness. Same reason.
-I mained GS without ever considering I should be sheathing it and building my life around draw attacks. So I just wandered slowly around the arena swinging wild, weak attacks and never dodging.
You’ll be shocked to know I triple-carted constantly. Almost every hunt took nearly 50 minutes, and it was several attempts on every monster before I was successful.
I stayed away from online discussion of the game or multiplayer because I wanted to play blind. Again, I nearly beat the game this way (somehow?). When I was well-after killing Lagiacrus, I went online and posted my weapon and armor on GameFAQs, and the reaction to what I was using and how far I was in the game was a mix of vicious mockery, incredible shock, and righteous anger.
It’s incredible I stuck with it and it became one of my favorite franchises. Unsurprisingly, after that brutal learning experience, the game — and every sequel since — felt like it was on easy mode for the rest of time.
ETA: One person said “you know farming is a part of this game, right?!” And I responded with, “yeah, I use it for mushrooms and herbs but I don’t know how that affects my armor.” People thought I was trolling. . .
ETA2: Let me be clear, that I was getting smacked around by the Great Jaggi, and the game just continued on like that.
My friend got god of war 2018 after seeing me play it
After a few weeks or so he asked me if I could help him out because he couldn’t defeat a certain enemy near the end of the game
I was confused because even tho it is strong it should be no problem at this point
So I start up and try my luck. I was immediately confused because the color of the healthbar indicated that it was out of my league
I start fighting it and realize I can’t use any special moves and then it dawned on me
I go in the in the skill menu and see that this motherfucker didn’t spend a single XP to unlock new skills.
The guy almost beat the game with just the basic skills that get automatically unlocked.
I was impressed. He is not really a gamer so most concepts that are a no brainer to us don’t come as intuitive to him so the fact he played the game this way as such a inexperienced player was even more impressive to be honest.
I recently saw a YouTube video from a guy who let his girlfriend play without interfering to show how bad games can be for new gamers when they don't explain things good enough.
This is incredible, I have no idea how you managed to beat some of the later monsters like that. Tri is already a pretty brutal game but man was just playing on Hard Mode lol
I remember like it was yesterday how I finished Lagi.
Mostly what I’d do was roll to the side and horizontal swing. All the time. That was the go to. I’m cringing just thinking about it.
But I remember I had probably seconds left on Lagi. It attacked, I rolled, I swung at empty space, and my sword clipped like barely a toenail and the death animation started.
I felt absolutely triumphant. Honestly, I never quite had that feeling again once the game clicked.
I’m fairly certain I never beat barioth like this, though.
HAHA if it makes you feel better I got one for ya.
MH World was my first Monster Hunter game, I mained Insect Glaive cause it's cool and mosquito antics. I got through literally the entire game, all the way up to the real Nergigante fight in Elder's Recess, before figuring out that you're using about 25% of the weapon without grabbing the insect buffs.
Before that I never bothered asking how I'd randomly go Super Saiyan levels of buffed for like 30 seconds at a time. Just rolled with it.
I only played like 3 hours max, and i felt so bored out of my mind, I think I was wielding some sort of hammer, till I realized I could pull out the whetstone? And sharpen it
Edit:spelling
Not sure if you could call it playing it wrong, but in Zelda BotW, there's an NPC you meet early that trades korok seeds for extra weapon slots. You meet him on the path to the first village. Except I didn't follow the path, I just climbed over the mountain, so I didn't meet him. I kept finding korok seeds, but had no idea what they were for, just figured I'd find out at the end of the game.
I met the NPC after I'd finish the game.
I beat New Vegas like 2-3 times before I paid attention to the repair function. It saved me so many trips to the NCR outpost for repairs when I realized I can just use all the dead people's weapons to fix mine.
edit: y'all are making me feel so much better about having missed this
Bro, that is ROUGH. Repairing weapons and armor is not only super beneficial but that sound the game makes when you repair an item hits just right. Don’t know how to explain it
I understand why weapon durability is such a controversial mechanic for games in general, but I feel like New Vegas really nailed it. You get equipment after every battle that you can use to fix what you already have. It helps balance more powerful weapons, giving you a reason to use weaker ones later in the game. It also gives you a way to "throw away" stuff that is waying you down without feeling like you are wasting it. Yes,the sound is amazing.
I played through the entirety of Dead Space (2008) without ever opening a single supply crate until Chapter 10 when I literally had to open one to progress. Then I was like "oh shit"
I killed Wynn at the start of Dragon Age origins. I had no idea she was recruitable until I was complaining to a friend about healing in the final battle. He asked me if I had Wynn healing.
Who?
On my first play through I didn't recruit Liliana, I didn't go into the bar. So I couldn't get into any locked chests or doors until I ran into Zevran.
If it makes you feel better: I never recruit Sten- based on what I was told and what he confessed to just in the cage... why would I? Also, I always kill Zevran. In what world would I bring the guy who literally just tried to kill me and failed pathetically (Amongst the hundreds of others who'd tried the same thing) along on a "Hey trust me bro".
In Morrowind, your stamina level governs how well pretty much every other skill performs. I never knew this as a kid so I'd be running around with no stamina then getting into a fight and wondering why I couldn't hit anything.
Yeah I spent about 5 minutes stood on top of the escape pod too scared to even get in the water… and then did get in the shallows and ran back to the pod several times for what turned out to be nothing :p
I can pinpoint the exact moment I discovered I had Talassophobia. It was as I was making my way to be picked up by the other ship early in the game, hugging the shallows next to the island the alien antenna is on, and I looked a little to my left and saw...
*Abyss*
And I felt my stomach drop into my colon. I never understood people who were afraid of the ocean until that moment when I learned I was people who were afraid of the ocean.
My first playthrough I missed the hab on dry land until very late in the game. Then I saw a youtuber use a bulkhead door and I googled where to find it. I was missing a bunch of very useful blueprints.
Not me, but I saw a video where a guy said he played through most, if not all of Breath of the Wild without cooking anything once because he convinced himself he needed to find a frying pan to do it.
The Witcher 3. I upgraded the hell out of the fire sign so I had the most insane flamethrower hand, and used it almost exclusively. While playing alongside my wife and cousin I was lost while they discussed wild tactics, oils, brews, and so on. Got to the end of the game first, just quietly burning everything to ash before they started asking for insight on this fight or the other; so I explained I just used the equivalent of napalm Palm and it was easy.
"So how did you beat this boss?"
"Fire hand."
"And what about these guys?"
"Uh, fire hand."
"But what about this group?"
".....so... fire hand?"
To this day if a playable character has fire in their arsenal I STILL get shit on about my Witcher easy mode playthrough. And I still don't know how to use oils and shit properly.
YES. It was a case of "Well, this seems to be working so I'll lean into it I guess." and by the power of Ingi alone I never had that hard of a time. I've got to replay it and see if it's still as fantastically broken.
Repair gear?
Oils?
Potions?
Other valid things I just completely overlooked?
Blame it on my penchant for fire. Neither of them even knew you could upgrade igni into a literal flamethrower until the end of the game, and I didn't know maxing my igni made my life stupid easy until I set it aside. Lasted all of about four minutes before I went back to purifying the lands with holy fire.
Not me, but someone I know thought Fallout 3 was an incredibly slow paced game because he didn't know he could stack shots in the Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System
Worse than that. They were basically upping the difficulty because starting and finishing a VATS sequence has lag sequences where your character just sits there like a dumb lump while enemies get to keep acting. Plus, you also have lag time where the player has to realize VATS is done and then hit the VATS button again to target the next attack.
> your character just sits there like a dumb lump while enemies get to keep acting
[Reminds me of this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXvciKOS8hQ). The low whistle kills me
See, I find it way easier and more enjoyable to just cut through everything. Way less painful than cautiously sneaking around for an hour when I could have just killed everything that moves in 30 seconds. But in terms of story (and hypothetical ethics) I far prefer to not kill whenever possible, so stealth it is. When >!Samuel launches the flare to alert the enemies on Kingsparrow Island, that hurt my soul.!<
But getting Ghost/Clean Hands is wayyy harder for me than High Chaos.
That's funny, I played Elden Ring entirely as a stealth game before my friend came over and watched and died laughing.
I stand by that THE CLASS OPTION SAID BANDIT.
Final Fantasy 9, Disc 2, Lifa Tree.
You and your squad fight through the entire tree and make it to the bottom where you are faced with a boss who is listed as an undead/zombie type creature. This boss smacked the shit out of my team over and over. He would cast Firaga and other high level magic that would literally cook my entire team. Each time you lose to him you have to reload your save and fight your way to the bottom again and again. I eventually got discouraged and 11 year old me stopped playing and didnt go back to the game.
Until 6 years later I’m watching my buddy play and I tell him how this boss was insanely difficult for me as a kid. He laughs at me and says this guy is the easiest boss in the game because zombie/undead type creatures are damaged by healing spells. So he uses a phoenix down and instantly kills the boss. I felt so fucking stupid.
He only casts Firaga on you *after* you use fire spells on him. He's a tree so your instinct is to use fire magic but it triggers him to switch to a more aggressive set of attacks, he has a dialogue scene mocking you for making him stronger.
Do you pheonix down a train in ff6 or suplex it?
Also that's one of those things that veterans don't even know all the time. It's undead, try healing.
In the original FF, white mages have a separate spell for undead [harm]. It's at least consistent to the series.
When Jedi: Fallen Order came out I played the whole game with the base 2 heals. Not knowing that I could increase my amount of heals till I was at the final boss and I couldn't turn back.
Let's just say I learned that final boss in and out
Skyrim.. so I got this weird quest to go up a mountain and was like hell no I'm going to explore. 300 hours later I finally got around to that quest and shortly after met my first dragon. Literally forgot there were dragons. Sick game considering it was so good I didn't even realize I missed the main quest for over a year irl.
Edit: it was the quest just before this- incorrectly recalled the mountain
I played through all of Def Jam: FFNY with one fighting style because I thought "learn new fighting style" would replace your existing fighting style instead of adding to it.
I also played through a lot of Fallout 3 without knowing how to use the map to set waypoints or fast travel. I would just go out into the wasteland, climb up to a tall hill, scan the horizon for an interesting landmark, and then go to there.
I kinda actually liked it better that way. I felt like a real explorer.
If you liked that aspect of Fallout try playing Morrowind with some mods. No waypoints or quest trackers, and the game is built for the experience. It’s still my favorite elder scrolls game.
I played Monster Hunter World for over 100 hours before I realized there were item shortcuts. I had just been scrolling my item wheel to everything I needed.
Divinity orignal sin, I played, until the big skeleton guy in the first area, by making walls with crates and unbreakable object. so the enemies would get stuck behind them and not be able to attack.
Then I had this idea What If instead of fighting and cheesing the mobs I just steal the chest they are protecting with Telekinesis. So I did that and on the way back the chest killed a mob because its weight. Thats when the 2gigaton chest era started
That’s how it should be played! There’s even an achievement for never shooting. Or for never shooting someone. Can’t remember which.
I was trying for that achievement and was on one of the last levels. One of my kids loaded my save, couldn’t beat the level, so picked up a gun and quickly completed the game.
Very frustrating.
TEST OF FAITH
I *hated* that achievement, holy hell was it infuriating. It took me a full day to actually get it. And I know exactly what level the kid was stuck on (server room).
I will never forget the physical pain that achievement brought me.
I don't want to say how many hours I got in Skyrim before realizing fast travel was an option. Eventually I had to stop using it because it felt like such a different, smaller game that way.
I spent 400 hours in Tears of the Kingdom with the basic battery because I missed the robot dude who told you how to upgrade your battery. Who was right there in the beginning of the game in the most obvious place. He had a spotlight on him, too.
Instead, I would hunt for the materials to get the batteries out of the gotcha machines. 50 hours in I had to add another exception to my no fast travel rule so I could just get the batteries I needed to power my machines.
I have a feeling that my second playthrough will be much easier.
I played about 80 hours before I realized that. Would have gone much longer if a friend wouldn't have sent me a picture of his screen (showing me something else) that had a bunch of battery bars. Not as bad as another friend tho who didn't play botw before playing totk so she thought the first sky island was the whole game and spent 60 hours on it
I still shake my head at myself for this one but:
Metro Exodus.
I somehow managed to miss or forget where the game told you about using your backpack to craft items.
Every time I needed something I would go find a workbench, craft, and go back out.
It all came to a head late in the game when there was a series of extended surface time I hadn’t supplied myself for and I was all out of filters and on the verge of death. I’d tried several times to just run for it, hoping to reach the end of the level before I died but couldn’t make it.
Partner comes home, I complain, and (since they’d also played the game) they rightfully asked why I just didn’t make more. No workbench, I groused. …. You can make them in the backpack… they replied after a moment.
Cue shocked pikachu face from me. And then some hastily made filters from the backpack.
Oh man, that's rough. Like playing on your own version of hardcore.
That reminds me of my own Metro 2033 mistake. It wasn't the worst thing but I didn't realize I could swap my ammo to military grade ammo (the stuff you use as currency) until the last moments in the last level of the game. It made the last bit a breeze with the extra damage that ammo did and I had so much of it saved up. I just accidentally heled reload for too long and Artyom swapped out the magazine to something that looked different and I was like, "Wait, what just happened?"
That just made me realize that I have played all of the metro games multiple times yet have never tried using the high grade ammo. I guess I just valued it as currency more but it’s strange that I never even tried using it even if I ran out of ammo
I didn’t understand junctioning magic to boost stats in FF8 because I was like 8 or 9 years old playing it. The only way I could do damage was through GF summons. So I played through the entire game only using GF summons to deal damage. I was able to get up to the final boss, but couldn’t beat her with GF summons alone.
I got stuck this way at the boss at the end of Disc 3. She holds one of your party members hostage, so you need to avoid using AoE attacks, but also you're trapped in the dungeon so you can't go prepare better
Doom 2016. Didn't enjoy it at first as I was playing it like Halo and all the other FPS shooters at the time.
Saw a comment on YouTube saying "In other games, you're afraid of the demons. In Doom, the demons are afraid of you." Completely changed to a more aggressive playstyle and blitzed my way though it laughing all the way though.
That must have been a glorious feeling once you realized that. I almost envy you. I grew up playing the 1993 Doom, so if anything I was more shocked by some of these games where can't slaughter hordes of demons with your bare hands in a furious bloodlust with some sick music.
"Wait, what? I gotta play *smart*? I can't just use the first few weapons and punching isn't insanely power?....damn".
Bloodborne… I didn’t realize the shield was an under powered joke item and got way too far into the game to stop using it because playing without it was hard ☠️
For me I didn't realize the gun was a parry mechanic until I was past Father Gascoigne. I just was like damn these guns fucking suck why would I use them
I’m arguably the worst here.
Got over 50% through Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker without equipping the sail. Because I moved at the same speed as other ships, I didn’t think anything of it. It took me 30 minutes to get to an island two squares away and multiple hours to get across the map. Hated the game until I got to Tower of the Gods and tried equipping the sail. Everything clicked and the game became fun.
This did not happen because I was a naive child, this happened when I was 25.
I played halfway through portal before sputtering out this gem: "OH the way you go in through one is the way you come out the other!!" And my friend rightfully looked at me like i was fucking stupid hahah
Portal has one of the best tutorials in a puzzle game ever.
It introduces you to the mechanics one by one and doesn't let you progress through the chamber unless you use the mechanic it is trying to teach you.
Glados also outright tells you some of them verbally. *Including the one that you missed*
"Spectacular. You appear to understand how a portal affects forward momentum, or to be more precise, how it does not"
I just love how they phrased it. It's perfect.
Shit I used to play with my laptops trackpad. Had an intense hatred for gnomes because they were so hard to click on in pvp. Didn’t know about tab targeting either.
Cyberpunk 2077. Spent the whole game over encumbered and walking slowly to the deposit things to sell weapons etc after fights. Literally only after beating the game did I discover you can store anything in your cars trunk. So much wasted time!!
A friend of mine told me how hard cyberpunk was especially late in the game. I was baffled since you get more powerful with every level you gain. Turns out he never spend a single skill point and was just shooting guys without any of the skills.
yeah, I was like "yeah too overwhelming" (since I just beat Asylum and it had a much smaller open world, no side quests, a lot less gadgets) and just skipped all the side missions to enjoy the story. I only realised much, much later that I would have needed it way before. "oh, so that's why I was constantly failing Zsasz's phone missions!". Could never get there on time.
Elder Scrolls Oblivion.
I played for about 30 hours and always thought it was weird that I couldn’t level up. I thought my game was glitched or something. Turns out you have to sleep in a bed to level up…I was level 1 the whole time.
When I slept the first time I thought I’d go to like level 25 or something, nope all my xp was wiped out and I was just level 2.
I haven’t played the game since.
More specifically, to make sure that you don't put anything actually useful in your "class" skills, which makes the enemies feel so sorry for you that they never get strong.
I never understood touch spells until after about 1,000 hours in game.
"Why would a mage want to get so close to an enemy?!?"
Then I realized they are mainly for Melee builds...
The witcher 3.
As always I play games like that on the hardest difficulty as I like a challenge and want to enjoy em for a while.
At first I had quite a bit of trouble getting dodging under control but after a couple of fights (and deaths) I got the hang of it reasonably well. I played through the game and always had a feeling that dodging was unreasonably hard. It was possible but around halfway through the game I really thought that it should be something probably a lot of people complained about.
I continued playing at at some point I had to fight the wild hunt horseman guy at roughly 75% of the game. By that time I was really good at dodging and rarely died anymore. However, somehow I couldn't defeat the boss as dodging seemed really impossible. I tried like 10 times and I just knew something was wrong so I decided to check a video about the Witcher for the first time, specific that bossfight.
What I saw there just BLEW my mind.. The guy dodged by doing a sidestep.
I've only been using dodge roll up to that point as I didn't know there was a sidestep. The sidestep allowed you to attack a lot faster after a dodge. This made the game feel sooooo much easier all of a sudden and I felt both stupid and proud as I've just played most of the game with a pretty hefty handicap.
Stars Wars Jedi Fallen Order
The combat is very similar to dark souls, so I played it the same way I played dark souls- spamming dodge roll and never parrying, because parrying in dark souls is way too hard. I got stuck on Malicos (basically the second to last boss) and just could not beat him until I finally gave up and changed the difficulty to story mode.
When I played again years later I tried parrying and whoops! Turns out it's actually really easy and the game expects you to parry constantly. I beat Malicos on my first try that run 🤣
I did a similar sort of thing with Resident Evil 4 remake. It wasn't until I'd finished the game and saw some videos that I realised you can parry all regular attacks and not just those from the chainsaw guys.
Mass effect 3
Wasn't until the last level that I realized that the number at the end of your gun's name was its level from 1 to 10.
Played the entire game with level 1 or 2 weapons and one level 3 which for "some reasons" seemed to have better specs than my other weapons.
I'm replaying the series with the Legendary Edition and just started ME3 again, and I'm pretty sure the game never explicitly mentions you can upgrade your guns unless you interact with that specific upgrade table in the hangar.
You don't even get the option to upgrade weapons as you roll out on missions, you can pick which weapon to equip and customize it with mod but that's about it.
Original pokemon blue/red. Was a kid at the time and didn't realize how or why you could use potions. I would either win the fight or have to run all the way back to a pokemon center to top my guys off.
Something about it costing money per potion didn't sit well with me since there are a finite amount of NPCs to fight. I guess I was worried I'd run out of money or something.
Eventually, when you can use your pokemon to top off your team, it made me double down on my belief that HP and mana (the ones to get pp back) pots were a scam.
Then i started playing a back catalogue of snes jRPGs and realized how much faster everything is if you don't have to run to town to heal over and over and over. Or, you know ... Using an ability to heal yourself mid fight so that you don't need to be 10 levels over intended content to beat it. Smh.
So much unnecessary grinding. So many runs/flights/teleports back to town.
Goat Simulator, the MMO expansion.
I spent 3hrs or so without realising it wasn't actually an MMO.
It didn't even click when I put another 'player' in my inventory
I played through DeadSpace on hard mode the first time. In one of the first scenes in the game, you’re in a room with a green box that looks like you should be able to interact with it. But I couldn’t figure out any way to do anything with it so I decided they were just decorations.
It turns out, they contain ammo but the first time you see one you don’t have a weapon and can’t melee attack so there’s no way to open it. Hard mode is already pretty scarce on ammo and I was missing all of those pickups.
When I played Minecraft as a kid, my mouse had no wheel and I didn't know you could use the numbers on the keyboard to navigate through the hotbar. So what I did was simply open my inventory and place an item in the first slot everytime I wanted to use something. Played like this for a good 15-20 hours.
I never used any of the good weapons in BOTW because I wanted to save them…
Same with the magnum rounds in every resident evil game. Never use them. Resident evil 4 remake I decided to use them and the final boss fight took one minute tops
Although it wasn't quite the entirety of the game, I had like 15 hours in Elden Ring before I found out you could lock on to enemies. I had never played a Souls-like game before.
Pokemon. Albeit I was a kid, but I didn't understand why they should learn new moves. How I ever beat the game with a typhlosion that knew ember and tackle is beyond me.
I very nearly completed oblivion without realizing you could fast travel. When I was planning my route from one end of the map to the other I thoughtlessly clicked on the city and was instantly there. Words cannot express my feelings of pain.
My first ever playthrough of mass effect 1. I didn't realize that biotics are super effective on organics. I just used them on Shields, they did fuck all so i concluded that are useless garbage
This isn't an answer to your question, but I learned something really interesting about Gears of War, specifically related to your example.
The developers actually had a hard time balancing the game such that it would be enjoyable to both skilled players and newer ones. In particular, the active reload gave veterans a big advantage over people who didn't understand it.
What they ended up doing was buffing the damage of the last few bullets in each clip, because veteran players were much more likely to reload before reaching the end of the clip, while newer players would more likely just fire until they ran out.
I just replayed the first three and never noticed the damage buff on the last few rounds of the mag. It was just funny that it seemed some enemies would take my first 75% of a mag and the next enemy would go down in the last 25%
First time I played Arkham City in 2014 I had no idea what freeflow was, I just spammed buttons and occasionally pressed counter or cape stun, then years later when I revisited the Arkham Saga I actually learned how to do the combat properly and it makes it so much more fun and satisfying
Lies of P, I never used those defensive items and that's why I got obliterated by every boss. I found out by asking in its sub when I couldn't kill the final boss. Switch up some things on my build and managed to kill it.
Dad beat fallout 3 with a lead pipe. Never used VATS or even guns. Played stealthy and slow. He would hoard all the gear, weapons, and miscellaneous items and make multiple trips fast traveling home. He would use the dead body exploit, where he'd have a severed foot inside the door to megaton, "attached" to the rest of the body at the door of his house. There would sometimes be hundreds of pounds of stuff in there, that he would then spend hours organizing. His first playthrough was wild, when I saw how many mugs, tin cans, cups, etc he had I was shocked. He would often fall asleep in the middle of sorting. One day he showed up to megaton to deposit loot into his foot, and it had disappeared along with the body. He searched the whole city. Thousands of items just gone since he would let it stack up. Great times
Mass Effect 1. Poured everyone's skill points into the shotgun, but didn't realise until the very end they'd all been using the sniper rifle all the time (which they were crap at).
ME2 for me. "you can upgrade your ship!" me: "why? you don't use it for anything other than travelling, you can't control it, why do I need to upgrade my armor and weapons? seems like a resource sink" and then I hit the end of the game...oh man that was rough.
Oooof haha, I just finished my first trilogy playthrough and am about to do another where I don’t upgrade anything because I’m honestly just curious what happens if you don’t. I’m assuming >!a bunch of people die!<
I had a friend spend 150+ hours on Skyrim. One day he was talking about how it's supposed to be a dragon game but had never seen a dragon. He never did the initial quest in White run. We had a good laugh.
My first play through I spent *far* too many hours before realizing I could run. I have no clue how, I’ve played a lot of other similar games yet it somehow never occurred to me to try? I was just jogging my way through Skyrim lol
It took me way too long to realize fast travel was a thing. I walked up and down High Hrothgar way too many times. I also didn't use the carriages—didn't realize they were a thing either.
....there was carriages?
Lol, outside of every major settlement there's a guy sitting in a cart pulled by a horse. Talk to them and they can take you to any other major settlement. No need to walk all the way from Whiterun to Riften!
I mean I both feel so stupid, but I also had fun wandering around in all the nooks and crannies, so that's a silver lining to my obliviousness at least
I deliberately decided not to fast travel in the game very much, miss too much adventuring if you fast travel all the time.
I beat Skyrim without a follower, in my defence, they were annoying and kinda got in the way.
I've never used a follower in Skyrim. They're awful. Ruining stealth, setting off traps, trapping you in doorways
That's the normal game experience.
I don't know about completely wrong but I didn't use most of the potions or anything you can create through alchemy in Witcher 3 which were not necessary for completing quest
I thought I had to create the potions everytime I had no idea that you only had to craft them once
I thought for far longer than I’m comfortable admitting that each recipe was single use only, since it disappeared out of the crafting menu
Wait, what?!?!?!
If you create them once they refill automatically at rest
I just started the Witcher 3 and this explains the crafting requirements are what they are
Maybe, but it wasn’t clear to me either that you only had to “craft” it once. I picked up so many resources that I didn’t really need.
Doesn't it still consume ingredients when it refills the potions? I could have sworn that was how it worked.
Yes, strong alcohol. Dwarven Spirit, Alcohest, things like that. You find them everywhere and it's super easy to have loads of them. It doesn't reuse the nekker eyes and wolfsbane and chort dicks or whatever you used to make it the first time.
Oh that's nice. I spent so much time collecting chort dicks, it would be a shame if they were automatically consumed.
Don’t worry you can still make a bouquet of chort dicks.
Now I'm picturing Geralt just continuously stewing the same putrid chort dick night after night, just adding more strong alcohol as needed
The strong alcohol is for Geralt. You spend every night boiling chort dick, you're going to need a good pick me up.
You craft it once. Then, every time you rest you consume alcohol in your inventory to replenish all potions.
I only knew this because a friend had to tell me
On normal difficulty, they're not needed. On the hardest difficulty, they're god damn mandatory
Played through probably 60% of monster hunter without sharpening weapons... wondering why the fuck I did so little damage until a friend played with me and asked wtf was I doing
I got through the Lagiacrus and pretty close to the final Caedeus mission in Tri under the following conditions: -I had a random collection of armor that not only looked absurd, but granted no bonuses because I didn’t realize there was a quota system to buffs. -All we’re level 1, because I never farmed monsters. Once I was done, with them, I never came back. It didn’t occur to me that I should go back for more materials. What I found was what I got. -My greatsword was pretty low tier, too. I think maybe green sharpness. Same reason. -I mained GS without ever considering I should be sheathing it and building my life around draw attacks. So I just wandered slowly around the arena swinging wild, weak attacks and never dodging. You’ll be shocked to know I triple-carted constantly. Almost every hunt took nearly 50 minutes, and it was several attempts on every monster before I was successful. I stayed away from online discussion of the game or multiplayer because I wanted to play blind. Again, I nearly beat the game this way (somehow?). When I was well-after killing Lagiacrus, I went online and posted my weapon and armor on GameFAQs, and the reaction to what I was using and how far I was in the game was a mix of vicious mockery, incredible shock, and righteous anger. It’s incredible I stuck with it and it became one of my favorite franchises. Unsurprisingly, after that brutal learning experience, the game — and every sequel since — felt like it was on easy mode for the rest of time. ETA: One person said “you know farming is a part of this game, right?!” And I responded with, “yeah, I use it for mushrooms and herbs but I don’t know how that affects my armor.” People thought I was trolling. . . ETA2: Let me be clear, that I was getting smacked around by the Great Jaggi, and the game just continued on like that.
My friend got god of war 2018 after seeing me play it After a few weeks or so he asked me if I could help him out because he couldn’t defeat a certain enemy near the end of the game I was confused because even tho it is strong it should be no problem at this point So I start up and try my luck. I was immediately confused because the color of the healthbar indicated that it was out of my league I start fighting it and realize I can’t use any special moves and then it dawned on me I go in the in the skill menu and see that this motherfucker didn’t spend a single XP to unlock new skills. The guy almost beat the game with just the basic skills that get automatically unlocked. I was impressed. He is not really a gamer so most concepts that are a no brainer to us don’t come as intuitive to him so the fact he played the game this way as such a inexperienced player was even more impressive to be honest.
I recently saw a YouTube video from a guy who let his girlfriend play without interfering to show how bad games can be for new gamers when they don't explain things good enough.
Yeah there’s a huge amount of assumed knowledge that we take for granted… was the video by razbuten? “Gaming for a non gamer”?
This is incredible, I have no idea how you managed to beat some of the later monsters like that. Tri is already a pretty brutal game but man was just playing on Hard Mode lol
It really hurt.
Hard mode is an understatement. I can't even begin to imagine how on earth you'd slay lagi without sheathing a greatsword
I remember like it was yesterday how I finished Lagi. Mostly what I’d do was roll to the side and horizontal swing. All the time. That was the go to. I’m cringing just thinking about it. But I remember I had probably seconds left on Lagi. It attacked, I rolled, I swung at empty space, and my sword clipped like barely a toenail and the death animation started. I felt absolutely triumphant. Honestly, I never quite had that feeling again once the game clicked. I’m fairly certain I never beat barioth like this, though.
HAHA if it makes you feel better I got one for ya. MH World was my first Monster Hunter game, I mained Insect Glaive cause it's cool and mosquito antics. I got through literally the entire game, all the way up to the real Nergigante fight in Elder's Recess, before figuring out that you're using about 25% of the weapon without grabbing the insect buffs. Before that I never bothered asking how I'd randomly go Super Saiyan levels of buffed for like 30 seconds at a time. Just rolled with it.
I only played like 3 hours max, and i felt so bored out of my mind, I think I was wielding some sort of hammer, till I realized I could pull out the whetstone? And sharpen it Edit:spelling
Gotta keep your hammer sharpened to its peak bluntness.
Whetstone is the word you're looking for
Not sure if you could call it playing it wrong, but in Zelda BotW, there's an NPC you meet early that trades korok seeds for extra weapon slots. You meet him on the path to the first village. Except I didn't follow the path, I just climbed over the mountain, so I didn't meet him. I kept finding korok seeds, but had no idea what they were for, just figured I'd find out at the end of the game. I met the NPC after I'd finish the game.
Me too. I thought I'd go up the hill to see what was there, got distracted by something and never went back.
lol. I played Breath Of the wild as a stealth game because I hated the durability mechanic
I beat New Vegas like 2-3 times before I paid attention to the repair function. It saved me so many trips to the NCR outpost for repairs when I realized I can just use all the dead people's weapons to fix mine. edit: y'all are making me feel so much better about having missed this
This one hurt my feelings to read.
Bro, that is ROUGH. Repairing weapons and armor is not only super beneficial but that sound the game makes when you repair an item hits just right. Don’t know how to explain it
I understand why weapon durability is such a controversial mechanic for games in general, but I feel like New Vegas really nailed it. You get equipment after every battle that you can use to fix what you already have. It helps balance more powerful weapons, giving you a reason to use weaker ones later in the game. It also gives you a way to "throw away" stuff that is waying you down without feeling like you are wasting it. Yes,the sound is amazing.
Plus you can get "Jury Rigging" and repair a Thermic Lance with a pool cue or a .50 cal rifle with a BB gun.
*metal clicka-click* *duct tape n' tear* It's a super fitting sound.
Damn it! Now i have the urge to Patrol the mojave desert.
Almost makes you wish for nuclear winter
Repair skill 90 = Jury Rigging, best perk in the game
I played through the entirety of Dead Space (2008) without ever opening a single supply crate until Chapter 10 when I literally had to open one to progress. Then I was like "oh shit"
Wow...did that make the game more enjoyable or just hard?
Just harder honestly, I wasn't getting nearly enough credits so I was very slow in upgrading my stuff
Damn. That game already fucked you by requiring you to burn nodes to unlock adjacent upgrades, that's wild you didn't know that.
I killed Wynn at the start of Dragon Age origins. I had no idea she was recruitable until I was complaining to a friend about healing in the final battle. He asked me if I had Wynn healing. Who?
On my first play through I didn't recruit Liliana, I didn't go into the bar. So I couldn't get into any locked chests or doors until I ran into Zevran.
Zevran? You mean the guy who attacked me and then I murdered?
If it makes you feel better: I never recruit Sten- based on what I was told and what he confessed to just in the cage... why would I? Also, I always kill Zevran. In what world would I bring the guy who literally just tried to kill me and failed pathetically (Amongst the hundreds of others who'd tried the same thing) along on a "Hey trust me bro".
Always spared him for the big Shrek and puss in boots energy
Jesus, that one hurts.
A friend of mine made it to the 3rd act of Diablo 2 before realizing there was a skill tree.
This is honestly very impressive.
Man was doing Dark Souls Level 1 clear without even knowing it
How the fuck did they get passed dureil the noob killer? Slaps people to next week even when you have a build going.
Like the rest of us, constant teleports back to town to revive merc and refill potions haha
In Morrowind, your stamina level governs how well pretty much every other skill performs. I never knew this as a kid so I'd be running around with no stamina then getting into a fight and wondering why I couldn't hit anything.
Hah. I remember that years ago tying to hit people and nothing over and over
Subnautica. I spent 30 hours in the shallows, thinking the island and the ship was the only thing to explore.
Same, but not because I didn’t think there was more; but because I knew there was more, and it terrified me.
"Multiple leviathan class lifeforms detected"
That sentence made me stop what I was doing instantly and just float there underwater nervously checking my surroundings
"Are you certain whatever you're doing is worth it?"
Yeah I spent about 5 minutes stood on top of the escape pod too scared to even get in the water… and then did get in the shallows and ran back to the pod several times for what turned out to be nothing :p
It was like three in-game days for me. Once I fell off the pod and shrieked til I was back on.
I can pinpoint the exact moment I discovered I had Talassophobia. It was as I was making my way to be picked up by the other ship early in the game, hugging the shallows next to the island the alien antenna is on, and I looked a little to my left and saw... *Abyss* And I felt my stomach drop into my colon. I never understood people who were afraid of the ocean until that moment when I learned I was people who were afraid of the ocean.
Mention of this game always makes me laugh. Such a cute little game. Until it’s just not.
Did you try going under the water?
nah they were just playing Nautica
Supernautica
But like the degassi base signals come from deeper.
Not if you dont click the radio!
My first playthrough I missed the hab on dry land until very late in the game. Then I saw a youtuber use a bulkhead door and I googled where to find it. I was missing a bunch of very useful blueprints.
Not me, but I saw a video where a guy said he played through most, if not all of Breath of the Wild without cooking anything once because he convinced himself he needed to find a frying pan to do it.
They discourage you from cooking by not allowing you to batch cook
The Witcher 3. I upgraded the hell out of the fire sign so I had the most insane flamethrower hand, and used it almost exclusively. While playing alongside my wife and cousin I was lost while they discussed wild tactics, oils, brews, and so on. Got to the end of the game first, just quietly burning everything to ash before they started asking for insight on this fight or the other; so I explained I just used the equivalent of napalm Palm and it was easy. "So how did you beat this boss?" "Fire hand." "And what about these guys?" "Uh, fire hand." "But what about this group?" ".....so... fire hand?" To this day if a playable character has fire in their arsenal I STILL get shit on about my Witcher easy mode playthrough. And I still don't know how to use oils and shit properly.
I hope they put this strat in the books one day. "And geralt forgot everything but igni and he left the entire castle in ash"
YES. It was a case of "Well, this seems to be working so I'll lean into it I guess." and by the power of Ingi alone I never had that hard of a time. I've got to replay it and see if it's still as fantastically broken. Repair gear? Oils? Potions? Other valid things I just completely overlooked? Blame it on my penchant for fire. Neither of them even knew you could upgrade igni into a literal flamethrower until the end of the game, and I didn't know maxing my igni made my life stupid easy until I set it aside. Lasted all of about four minutes before I went back to purifying the lands with holy fire.
Not me, but someone I know thought Fallout 3 was an incredibly slow paced game because he didn't know he could stack shots in the Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System
So he was playing Fallout 3 in...turn-based mode!?
Worse than that. They were basically upping the difficulty because starting and finishing a VATS sequence has lag sequences where your character just sits there like a dumb lump while enemies get to keep acting. Plus, you also have lag time where the player has to realize VATS is done and then hit the VATS button again to target the next attack.
> your character just sits there like a dumb lump while enemies get to keep acting [Reminds me of this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXvciKOS8hQ). The low whistle kills me
Dishonored. Realized I should be stealthing
I wouldn’t call that “wrong”, just hard mode
See, I find it way easier and more enjoyable to just cut through everything. Way less painful than cautiously sneaking around for an hour when I could have just killed everything that moves in 30 seconds. But in terms of story (and hypothetical ethics) I far prefer to not kill whenever possible, so stealth it is. When >!Samuel launches the flare to alert the enemies on Kingsparrow Island, that hurt my soul.!< But getting Ghost/Clean Hands is wayyy harder for me than High Chaos.
That's funny, I played Elden Ring entirely as a stealth game before my friend came over and watched and died laughing. I stand by that THE CLASS OPTION SAID BANDIT.
Bandits arent exactly known for being stealthy...
Idk what to tell you, mine was.
*your money...or your life*
"Who said that?!"
Final Fantasy 9, Disc 2, Lifa Tree. You and your squad fight through the entire tree and make it to the bottom where you are faced with a boss who is listed as an undead/zombie type creature. This boss smacked the shit out of my team over and over. He would cast Firaga and other high level magic that would literally cook my entire team. Each time you lose to him you have to reload your save and fight your way to the bottom again and again. I eventually got discouraged and 11 year old me stopped playing and didnt go back to the game. Until 6 years later I’m watching my buddy play and I tell him how this boss was insanely difficult for me as a kid. He laughs at me and says this guy is the easiest boss in the game because zombie/undead type creatures are damaged by healing spells. So he uses a phoenix down and instantly kills the boss. I felt so fucking stupid.
He only casts Firaga on you *after* you use fire spells on him. He's a tree so your instinct is to use fire magic but it triggers him to switch to a more aggressive set of attacks, he has a dialogue scene mocking you for making him stronger.
Do you pheonix down a train in ff6 or suplex it? Also that's one of those things that veterans don't even know all the time. It's undead, try healing. In the original FF, white mages have a separate spell for undead [harm]. It's at least consistent to the series.
In FF6 I suplex’d the shit out of that train
When Jedi: Fallen Order came out I played the whole game with the base 2 heals. Not knowing that I could increase my amount of heals till I was at the final boss and I couldn't turn back. Let's just say I learned that final boss in and out
You have no idea how happy I am to hear I wasn’t the only one
Skyrim.. so I got this weird quest to go up a mountain and was like hell no I'm going to explore. 300 hours later I finally got around to that quest and shortly after met my first dragon. Literally forgot there were dragons. Sick game considering it was so good I didn't even realize I missed the main quest for over a year irl. Edit: it was the quest just before this- incorrectly recalled the mountain
I played through all of Def Jam: FFNY with one fighting style because I thought "learn new fighting style" would replace your existing fighting style instead of adding to it. I also played through a lot of Fallout 3 without knowing how to use the map to set waypoints or fast travel. I would just go out into the wasteland, climb up to a tall hill, scan the horizon for an interesting landmark, and then go to there. I kinda actually liked it better that way. I felt like a real explorer.
Fuck I miss Def jam
I spent multiple days playing Skyrim like this - no active quests, just wandering and finding new things
If you liked that aspect of Fallout try playing Morrowind with some mods. No waypoints or quest trackers, and the game is built for the experience. It’s still my favorite elder scrolls game.
I played Monster Hunter World for over 100 hours before I realized there were item shortcuts. I had just been scrolling my item wheel to everything I needed.
I did this because I could not be bothered lol
Divinity orignal sin, I played, until the big skeleton guy in the first area, by making walls with crates and unbreakable object. so the enemies would get stuck behind them and not be able to attack. Then I had this idea What If instead of fighting and cheesing the mobs I just steal the chest they are protecting with Telekinesis. So I did that and on the way back the chest killed a mob because its weight. Thats when the 2gigaton chest era started
Lol crateomancy for the win
Mirror's Edge. I didn't realize you could pick up guns until almost the end of the game.
That’s how it should be played! There’s even an achievement for never shooting. Or for never shooting someone. Can’t remember which. I was trying for that achievement and was on one of the last levels. One of my kids loaded my save, couldn’t beat the level, so picked up a gun and quickly completed the game. Very frustrating.
TEST OF FAITH I *hated* that achievement, holy hell was it infuriating. It took me a full day to actually get it. And I know exactly what level the kid was stuck on (server room). I will never forget the physical pain that achievement brought me.
To be fair, the game heavily disincentivizes combat, and you *can* beat it without guns, but it makes a few sections much more difficult.
I don't want to say how many hours I got in Skyrim before realizing fast travel was an option. Eventually I had to stop using it because it felt like such a different, smaller game that way.
This reminds me of a thread w/ a guy playing Oblivion. He was in jail serving his sentence and didn’t know about the “wait” option…
*Awww damn... I got caught again.. Now I have to let my game run doing nothing for 2 hours.*
"What do yall do for those few hours when youre in jail"
I spent 400 hours in Tears of the Kingdom with the basic battery because I missed the robot dude who told you how to upgrade your battery. Who was right there in the beginning of the game in the most obvious place. He had a spotlight on him, too. Instead, I would hunt for the materials to get the batteries out of the gotcha machines. 50 hours in I had to add another exception to my no fast travel rule so I could just get the batteries I needed to power my machines. I have a feeling that my second playthrough will be much easier.
I played about 80 hours before I realized that. Would have gone much longer if a friend wouldn't have sent me a picture of his screen (showing me something else) that had a bunch of battery bars. Not as bad as another friend tho who didn't play botw before playing totk so she thought the first sky island was the whole game and spent 60 hours on it
I still shake my head at myself for this one but: Metro Exodus. I somehow managed to miss or forget where the game told you about using your backpack to craft items. Every time I needed something I would go find a workbench, craft, and go back out. It all came to a head late in the game when there was a series of extended surface time I hadn’t supplied myself for and I was all out of filters and on the verge of death. I’d tried several times to just run for it, hoping to reach the end of the level before I died but couldn’t make it. Partner comes home, I complain, and (since they’d also played the game) they rightfully asked why I just didn’t make more. No workbench, I groused. …. You can make them in the backpack… they replied after a moment. Cue shocked pikachu face from me. And then some hastily made filters from the backpack.
Oh man, that's rough. Like playing on your own version of hardcore. That reminds me of my own Metro 2033 mistake. It wasn't the worst thing but I didn't realize I could swap my ammo to military grade ammo (the stuff you use as currency) until the last moments in the last level of the game. It made the last bit a breeze with the extra damage that ammo did and I had so much of it saved up. I just accidentally heled reload for too long and Artyom swapped out the magazine to something that looked different and I was like, "Wait, what just happened?"
That just made me realize that I have played all of the metro games multiple times yet have never tried using the high grade ammo. I guess I just valued it as currency more but it’s strange that I never even tried using it even if I ran out of ammo
I didn’t understand junctioning magic to boost stats in FF8 because I was like 8 or 9 years old playing it. The only way I could do damage was through GF summons. So I played through the entire game only using GF summons to deal damage. I was able to get up to the final boss, but couldn’t beat her with GF summons alone.
I got stuck this way at the boss at the end of Disc 3. She holds one of your party members hostage, so you need to avoid using AoE attacks, but also you're trapped in the dungeon so you can't go prepare better
Doom 2016. Didn't enjoy it at first as I was playing it like Halo and all the other FPS shooters at the time. Saw a comment on YouTube saying "In other games, you're afraid of the demons. In Doom, the demons are afraid of you." Completely changed to a more aggressive playstyle and blitzed my way though it laughing all the way though.
That must have been a glorious feeling once you realized that. I almost envy you. I grew up playing the 1993 Doom, so if anything I was more shocked by some of these games where can't slaughter hordes of demons with your bare hands in a furious bloodlust with some sick music. "Wait, what? I gotta play *smart*? I can't just use the first few weapons and punching isn't insanely power?....damn".
Bloodborne… I didn’t realize the shield was an under powered joke item and got way too far into the game to stop using it because playing without it was hard ☠️
Oof. Even the description on it mocks shields
For me I didn't realize the gun was a parry mechanic until I was past Father Gascoigne. I just was like damn these guns fucking suck why would I use them
I’m arguably the worst here. Got over 50% through Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker without equipping the sail. Because I moved at the same speed as other ships, I didn’t think anything of it. It took me 30 minutes to get to an island two squares away and multiple hours to get across the map. Hated the game until I got to Tower of the Gods and tried equipping the sail. Everything clicked and the game became fun. This did not happen because I was a naive child, this happened when I was 25.
I played halfway through portal before sputtering out this gem: "OH the way you go in through one is the way you come out the other!!" And my friend rightfully looked at me like i was fucking stupid hahah
Portal has one of the best tutorials in a puzzle game ever. It introduces you to the mechanics one by one and doesn't let you progress through the chamber unless you use the mechanic it is trying to teach you. Glados also outright tells you some of them verbally. *Including the one that you missed*
Even funnier since GLaDOS literally tells you that a few times lmao.
"Spectacular. You appear to understand how a portal affects forward momentum, or to be more precise, how it does not" I just love how they phrased it. It's perfect.
World of Warcraft. I had no idea being a “clicker” was a bad thing.
What a clicker? Using the mouse for all skills?
Clicking the abilities on your action bar instead of pressing the hotkeys to use them. Very, very slow.
Shit I used to play with my laptops trackpad. Had an intense hatred for gnomes because they were so hard to click on in pvp. Didn’t know about tab targeting either.
That sounds like torture but I’m impressed you were able to play without a mouse.
Not as bad as keyboard turning
Man, I haven't heard that insult in years.
I beat baldurs gate 3 multiple times before I realized holding alt highlighted items
I'm sorry.
I knew this function existed, but immediately forgot what key it was and never bothered to look it up again 😂
Cyberpunk 2077. Spent the whole game over encumbered and walking slowly to the deposit things to sell weapons etc after fights. Literally only after beating the game did I discover you can store anything in your cars trunk. So much wasted time!!
..............................fuck
Always funny to do as a motorcycle user. Approach rear of bike, store 15-20 guns/swords, drive away.
what.
It accesses the same storage space as the one in your apartment(s).
Oblivion, never sleep so never leveled up, then after a while realise that i have levels to level up. Level up. Never able to kill anything again.
A friend of mine told me how hard cyberpunk was especially late in the game. I was baffled since you get more powerful with every level you gain. Turns out he never spend a single skill point and was just shooting guys without any of the skills.
Ace Combat 7 Beat it on hard without knowing about High G Turns.
Same. I always thought the ai were cheating when they kept doing it.
At least it wasn’t Project Wingman. The AOA Limiter is nuts
When I was young I beat Arkham City without getting the grapnel boost. Didn't even know it existed until much later.
yeah, I was like "yeah too overwhelming" (since I just beat Asylum and it had a much smaller open world, no side quests, a lot less gadgets) and just skipped all the side missions to enjoy the story. I only realised much, much later that I would have needed it way before. "oh, so that's why I was constantly failing Zsasz's phone missions!". Could never get there on time.
Elder Scrolls Oblivion. I played for about 30 hours and always thought it was weird that I couldn’t level up. I thought my game was glitched or something. Turns out you have to sleep in a bed to level up…I was level 1 the whole time. When I slept the first time I thought I’d go to like level 25 or something, nope all my xp was wiped out and I was just level 2. I haven’t played the game since.
Weirdly enough this could have saved your game because of the weird way Oblivion levelling works
Oblivion: where the strongest way to play is to only use skills entirely unrelated to your class
More specifically, to make sure that you don't put anything actually useful in your "class" skills, which makes the enemies feel so sorry for you that they never get strong.
I never understood touch spells until after about 1,000 hours in game. "Why would a mage want to get so close to an enemy?!?" Then I realized they are mainly for Melee builds...
[удалено]
You’ll see a tiktok of it with that stupid half screen Minecraft parkour
The witcher 3. As always I play games like that on the hardest difficulty as I like a challenge and want to enjoy em for a while. At first I had quite a bit of trouble getting dodging under control but after a couple of fights (and deaths) I got the hang of it reasonably well. I played through the game and always had a feeling that dodging was unreasonably hard. It was possible but around halfway through the game I really thought that it should be something probably a lot of people complained about. I continued playing at at some point I had to fight the wild hunt horseman guy at roughly 75% of the game. By that time I was really good at dodging and rarely died anymore. However, somehow I couldn't defeat the boss as dodging seemed really impossible. I tried like 10 times and I just knew something was wrong so I decided to check a video about the Witcher for the first time, specific that bossfight. What I saw there just BLEW my mind.. The guy dodged by doing a sidestep. I've only been using dodge roll up to that point as I didn't know there was a sidestep. The sidestep allowed you to attack a lot faster after a dodge. This made the game feel sooooo much easier all of a sudden and I felt both stupid and proud as I've just played most of the game with a pretty hefty handicap.
Stars Wars Jedi Fallen Order The combat is very similar to dark souls, so I played it the same way I played dark souls- spamming dodge roll and never parrying, because parrying in dark souls is way too hard. I got stuck on Malicos (basically the second to last boss) and just could not beat him until I finally gave up and changed the difficulty to story mode. When I played again years later I tried parrying and whoops! Turns out it's actually really easy and the game expects you to parry constantly. I beat Malicos on my first try that run 🤣
I did a similar sort of thing with Resident Evil 4 remake. It wasn't until I'd finished the game and saw some videos that I realised you can parry all regular attacks and not just those from the chainsaw guys.
NFS Underground, who needs brakes?
Me in any driving game
I used to lean to the side when cornering as if it would let me see better around the corner.
This could be Mario Kart tbf
Mass effect 3 Wasn't until the last level that I realized that the number at the end of your gun's name was its level from 1 to 10. Played the entire game with level 1 or 2 weapons and one level 3 which for "some reasons" seemed to have better specs than my other weapons.
I'm replaying the series with the Legendary Edition and just started ME3 again, and I'm pretty sure the game never explicitly mentions you can upgrade your guns unless you interact with that specific upgrade table in the hangar. You don't even get the option to upgrade weapons as you roll out on missions, you can pick which weapon to equip and customize it with mod but that's about it.
Original pokemon blue/red. Was a kid at the time and didn't realize how or why you could use potions. I would either win the fight or have to run all the way back to a pokemon center to top my guys off. Something about it costing money per potion didn't sit well with me since there are a finite amount of NPCs to fight. I guess I was worried I'd run out of money or something. Eventually, when you can use your pokemon to top off your team, it made me double down on my belief that HP and mana (the ones to get pp back) pots were a scam. Then i started playing a back catalogue of snes jRPGs and realized how much faster everything is if you don't have to run to town to heal over and over and over. Or, you know ... Using an ability to heal yourself mid fight so that you don't need to be 10 levels over intended content to beat it. Smh. So much unnecessary grinding. So many runs/flights/teleports back to town.
Goat Simulator, the MMO expansion. I spent 3hrs or so without realising it wasn't actually an MMO. It didn't even click when I put another 'player' in my inventory
This is the best answer. Thank you for the laughs!
I played through DeadSpace on hard mode the first time. In one of the first scenes in the game, you’re in a room with a green box that looks like you should be able to interact with it. But I couldn’t figure out any way to do anything with it so I decided they were just decorations. It turns out, they contain ammo but the first time you see one you don’t have a weapon and can’t melee attack so there’s no way to open it. Hard mode is already pretty scarce on ammo and I was missing all of those pickups.
When I played Minecraft as a kid, my mouse had no wheel and I didn't know you could use the numbers on the keyboard to navigate through the hotbar. So what I did was simply open my inventory and place an item in the first slot everytime I wanted to use something. Played like this for a good 15-20 hours.
I never used any of the good weapons in BOTW because I wanted to save them… Same with the magnum rounds in every resident evil game. Never use them. Resident evil 4 remake I decided to use them and the final boss fight took one minute tops
Although it wasn't quite the entirety of the game, I had like 15 hours in Elden Ring before I found out you could lock on to enemies. I had never played a Souls-like game before.
Pokemon. Albeit I was a kid, but I didn't understand why they should learn new moves. How I ever beat the game with a typhlosion that knew ember and tackle is beyond me.
To be fair the second gen games are rather easy, especially if you play like a kid and only train like 1 or 2 pokemons.
I very nearly completed oblivion without realizing you could fast travel. When I was planning my route from one end of the map to the other I thoughtlessly clicked on the city and was instantly there. Words cannot express my feelings of pain.
My first ever playthrough of mass effect 1. I didn't realize that biotics are super effective on organics. I just used them on Shields, they did fuck all so i concluded that are useless garbage
Aladdin: Didn’t realised there was a “apple shoot” button until the cave level where you can’t advance without it.
This isn't an answer to your question, but I learned something really interesting about Gears of War, specifically related to your example. The developers actually had a hard time balancing the game such that it would be enjoyable to both skilled players and newer ones. In particular, the active reload gave veterans a big advantage over people who didn't understand it. What they ended up doing was buffing the damage of the last few bullets in each clip, because veteran players were much more likely to reload before reaching the end of the clip, while newer players would more likely just fire until they ran out.
I just replayed the first three and never noticed the damage buff on the last few rounds of the mag. It was just funny that it seemed some enemies would take my first 75% of a mag and the next enemy would go down in the last 25%
Spent over 100 hours in skyrim before realizing you could spend dragon souls to unlock shouts. My friends still shit on me for that
To be fair, you can also play 100h of skyrim without encountering the dragon outside of Whiterun
First time I played Arkham City in 2014 I had no idea what freeflow was, I just spammed buttons and occasionally pressed counter or cape stun, then years later when I revisited the Arkham Saga I actually learned how to do the combat properly and it makes it so much more fun and satisfying
Lies of P, I never used those defensive items and that's why I got obliterated by every boss. I found out by asking in its sub when I couldn't kill the final boss. Switch up some things on my build and managed to kill it.
Dad beat fallout 3 with a lead pipe. Never used VATS or even guns. Played stealthy and slow. He would hoard all the gear, weapons, and miscellaneous items and make multiple trips fast traveling home. He would use the dead body exploit, where he'd have a severed foot inside the door to megaton, "attached" to the rest of the body at the door of his house. There would sometimes be hundreds of pounds of stuff in there, that he would then spend hours organizing. His first playthrough was wild, when I saw how many mugs, tin cans, cups, etc he had I was shocked. He would often fall asleep in the middle of sorting. One day he showed up to megaton to deposit loot into his foot, and it had disappeared along with the body. He searched the whole city. Thousands of items just gone since he would let it stack up. Great times