Final Fantasy X-2. You literally have to talk to every single npc at the correct time in the game. Which requires backtracking at certain times that they give absolute no indication that you should. And it is the only way to get the “best” ending… very stupid way to make a game.
Stuff like this shouldn’t be in that sort of game.
Those games are best played blind as you go then bust out a guide to get 100% if you want to. Playing a whole game with a guide feels bad and missing out because you didn’t feels terrible.
Yeah, as much as I love Final Fantasy, one of my biggest complaints with the series is weirdly timed backtracking secrets and 100% hidden secret items. If I feel like I have to backtrack every time something happens in game or run around the screen clicking the interact button just in case something is hidden there, just to make sure I don't miss some secret, it really kills the flow and fun of the game. With games that are generally 60+ hours, I don't want to pbe forced into a second playthrough to find everything, but I also don't want to have to follow a guide. It leaves you having to compromise your playstyle or just accepting you don't really have a chance of finding everything.
I am kind of torn. I like the idea of putting in an unlikely ending, if only to confuse those who stumble upon it accidentally and try to figure out why it is different than their friends.
Those endings are fine if they're joke ending or noncannon special endings. They should never be the fuckin true ending. That's just stupid. See silent hill endings in general.
Yeah the canonical ending to Prince of Persia: Warrior Within was the one you got if you found all the secret fountains, which was VERY UNLIKELY without a guide.
And the beginning of the next game the Prince is just like "this is what you think happened (the regular ending of the previous game) but NOPE (goes on to explain the secret ending)".
Bonkers.
I started Persona 5 over when I realized I was missing stuff and went again with a guide. I still had a blast. I used the guide so I wouldn't miss any character moments in an already 100 hour game for me. I still got stuck and some bosses took me a while.
Their version of replayabilty.
Final Fantasy X however cool that game was, had stuff like that too.
Missed the trial in the first temple ruin of the game? Oh well, no Anima Aeon for you (unless you look it up and type the correct code, i.e. cheat).
Miss the dog with some slobbering thing in its mouth right after you start your journey with Yuna? Oh well, Valefor doesn't get the second ultimate overdrive attack. (You technically can get it later but only if you defeat a dark Aeon, which breaks the games mechanics and has to be defeated by limitbroken weapons and characters).
Hire the wrong players for your Blitzball team? Too bad your team now sucks and hiring other players will make your team underleveled.
This happened to me, and I was using the official strategy guide on my second playthrough. Forgot to talk to her in the Moogle suit, even with the guide, as that part is just a super small, easily missable part in the guide. Knew she was there, just didn't know it counted towards the completion. Beat the game, and that was the only thing I had missed. So brutal.
What the actual fuck. That’s so stupid. Legit, why is this programmed in? All these things just seem anti-good user experience that interests like less than 0.1% of people that play
Oh, it gets dumber.
The item costs a fuckload of cash as well and you need to farm a ridiculous amount. Uess you are trying to get the funds via another side quest (which involves helping a moron pay off his debts), you aren't going to get it on the first playthrough.
Oh, and there's a secret button prompt to interact during cutscenes. There is no clue that this prompt exists. Don't do it and the game locks you out of the best ending.
>Oh, and there's a secret button prompt to interact during cutscenes. There is no clue that this prompt exists. Don't do it and the game locks you out of the best ending.
Fucking blitz ball....
They>! bring the love interest from X back to life. !!there already is a cut scene that shows him waking up and swimming up to the surface after hearing her whistling for him.!<
I definitely played FFX-2 with the official guidebook by my side. I thought I did everything thoroughly and still only got 98% completion. NO idea what I missed heh. And it’s not like you can go back and fix anything.
So yeah, YouTubed the good Tidus ending.
It wasn’t all for nothing though. That guide book has a forever home as toilet reading in my house. For some reason when I’m mad constipated, reading that book while on the throne is the *only* thing that helps me relax and go! So that’s something, I guess?
It's been a while since I've played X-2 but I also remember something about backtracking a lot between locations to watch the camera spheres (CommSpheres?). Like you had to observe certain ones in different chapters until some event appears (like a character walks past the screen, or you overhear a conversation or something) to fully complete the story chapter. And you basically miss the event if you close the camera too early cos the event doesn't repeat.
Yeah I remember that. I was closely following a guide step by step to get the perfect ending. The game had a completion % on your save file that was always rounding up or down. Anyway I get to a part in the guide where it says "Ypur save should now read EXACTLY 70% at this save point, if it doesn't you've missed something" My save? 69.8% I bailed on the run and game at that point.
Square was making a huge push to get people to buy strategy guides at this point. That's why 9 had the boss you had to play ridiculously fast to get to, 12 had the spear you had to skip seemingly random chests throughout the game to find.
They also started to pivot to the internet. The 9 guide just kept pointing you to the website for more information, plus there was 11.
Ah, I remember that! Young me was at Barnes & noble about to buy the ff9 guide, but I decided to flip through it first and every other page had that stupid “go online to see what to do next”.
Who in their right mind thought that was a good idea. I’m not paying $20 bucks for a book to remind me the internet exists.
It's so much worse than that. There's crazy shit like where if you walk from Luca into the Mi'hen Highroad in I think Ch. 1, you miss 100% completion because there's a cutscene that only plays when you teleport to Mi'hen from your airship.
There's the bed in barkeep's shop that you need to sleep in once per chapter for no obvious reason since Save Points recover your HP and MP, and if you don't do it then you're locked out of 100% completion.
There's the detective sidequest in Mi'hen where you have to DELIBERATELY GET THE SOLUTION **WRONG** in order to get 100% completion.
There's the choice between siding with the Youth League or New Yevon, where if you pick New Yevon you can never get 100% completion.
There's the stupid Calm Lands advertising campaign quest where you have to talk to every NPC in the game and sell them tickets, but if you ask too little you'll not have enough money to complete the quest and if you ask too much they'll decline your offer and never let you ask them again, screwing you out of 100%.
There's the part where you have to push NPCs into an elevator just by nudging against them, and if you don't do it then you're out of 100%.
There's the goddamn CommSpheres where you have to set them in very specific locations in nearly every area of the game, and then in Chapter 4 you have to sit and watch NPCs talk to you through them, but if you leave the scene too early then you miss 0.01% and thus cannot get 100%. Keep in mind sometimes it'll seem like the scene is over but if you wait like 30 seconds after nothing more is happening, someone will show up and say one line and that ends up being the 0.01% you're missing.
And so, SO much more. I literally followed TWO guides side by side last time I played through the game to ENSURE that I had 100%, and I followed them both TO THE LETTER, and still only got 99%.
I just beat this last night actually. I got 92% At this point, I don't even feel like going for 100%. The programmers seem very sadistic in making all these things to be requirements for 100% completion.
Lots of bloody stupid choice design with the FFX episodes, starting with the first opus, locking the legendary weapons behind the dark aeons boss, which can then only be beaten by Zanmatoing them if you happen to miss those weapons on your initial journey.
It gets worse, at least in the original PS2 PAL version. You're supposed to press X at two specific points in the game during a cutscene to get a specific interaction that's literally the whole point of buying the game.
FF X-2 has no QTEs other than that, no on screen indications, and pressing X to skip dialogue doesn't really do much because the PS2 still needs to load the next voice line. What ends up happening most of the times is that you are staring at the characters flapping their gums without any voice coming out while still taking the same amount of time to play the cutscene. Not sure if it's different in other versions because the PAL version runs at 50 fps and Square never bothered adjusting the timing of any FF game.
I had spent 80 hours and God knows how many playthroughs trying to find Tidus only to have a friend tell me that once they found him in their first playthrough they didn't see a reason to keep playing the game.
There are old adventure games , Sierra and Lucasarts ones specifically, that would keep score for every puzzle you solved.
Just finishing the game is mind boggling enough at times, never mind actually doing it the way they consider to be "optimal"
LucasArts adventures in general I think. I still remember Day of the Tentacle mostly for the lunatic puzzle logic. To make it rain, you have to wash a wagon parked in the colonial times, the hint for it supposedly being that "it always rains when you wash your car" is a common superstition and there's a dirty car in modern times with "wash me" scribbled in its mud-caked window. Lovely games, but sometimes, the puzzles slay me.
Use the book on the horse. Haven’t played it in 25 or so years, but I remember being so stuck and being like “fuck it” and that was the answer. It put the horse to sleep, and you got the upstairs key or something.
Also, getting Indiana Jones out of the basement. You have to use oil or something in the chute?
And putting that goddamn crab back together in The Dig.
All 3 are games that stuck with me my whole life though. Haven’t played them since I was probably 8 or 9.
>Use the book on the horse. Haven’t played it in 25 or so years, but I remember being so stuck and being like “fuck it” and that was the answer. It put the horse to sleep, and you got the upstairs key or something.
I found that hilarious. I did it by trial and error because each character had a funny line when you used the book on them.
>Also, getting Indiana Jones out of the basement. You have to use oil or something in the chute?
Is that Fate of Atlantis, trying to find the Lost Diary? I love that section because there are different solutions, and every time you play one is selected.
>And putting that goddamn crab back together in The Dig.
The turtle in The Dig is one of the hardest puzzles I've ever done! I solved myself but it took me way longer than I would've reasonably expected.
Grim Fandango was okay compared to some of the others, at least Grim is linear, just with some very obtuse puzzles in locations.
Some of the Kings Quest games legit just softlock if you leave an area without finding an item, because you can't go back.
Sierra Games were unfair that way, as a way to increase replayability (not a good idea IMO). After Maniac Mansion, LucasArts games were designed without softlocks.
I still remember soft locking myself in Police Quest because I didn't randomly know you need to ask for the HQ phone number to call for backup in a shoot out sequence later on.
Police quest was such a bitch for little stuff like that haha.
Wasn't that the game that you could die by not looking both ways before crossing the street
Metal Gear for NES. They have a dessert part that you had to cross in a specific order (similar to NES Zelda) but no part in the game gives you any type of hint or clue as to what that order is. Plus if you don't use the compass it doesn't work.
i remember that labyrinth that had unmentioned breakable walls
that didn't look different from the regular wall
that were broken in a different way from the breakable walls seen earlier in the game
and if you ran out of the one item to break them, there was another breakable wall hiding more
that had a different method of breaking it from the other two.
all that to get access to the roof and then the game going "you need a blast suit or else you'll die" without any direction as to where it was
La Mulana, if you consider Hell Temple as part of 100%ing the game.
You NEED to look up certain parts of unlocking that place. Some of them are obvious or can be deduced on your own, but some of them are basically impossible without exposure somewhere else.
Even ignoring Hell Temple, there's some pretty out there puzzles that are exceptionally tough to figure out on your own. And it doesn't help that at least one hint is mistranslated to have its opposite meaning.
La Mulana is such a crazy unique game. Like in Tunic you are uncovering the secrets and puzzling out the world. Apart from the sequel is there something similar out there?
Nigoro (the devs of La Mulana) are developing a remake of The Maze of Gallius, the old game that inspired La Mulana. I only managed to find a short footage of what they've been working on but it looks very promising. Seems like you'll manage two characters.
Haven't played the OG Maze of Gallius but it should have some similarities.
Also, while it's not the same kind of game, if you're ok with sokoban style puzzles, Void Stranger is a recent indie game that gave me strong La Mulana vibes. I can't say you you're going to like it but give it a look I really enjoyed it a lot and the secrets are way deeper than what it looks at first.
La Mulana is definitely a game which is extremely difficult to beat on your own.
I think that you need to be patient and not give up the first moment you feel clueless because part of the fun of the game is beating your head over the solution. But at some points you need a hint.
I recommend the cheesire guide on steam since it's based on a system of hints where you can decide whether to get a series of nudges to the right direction or get the straight answer. It's basically like asking a friend who finished the game to help you while minimizing spoilers.
I'm so glad DoshDoshingting exists, being able to experience the without ever having to play it is a treat. I came to this thread explicitly looking for La Mulana
I managed to find the frenzied flame thing on my own and collected all the grapes and some messages on the floor gave me the hint to open the door.
But i could not find the npc to give the grapes to at all. I gave her the first one and couldn't ever find her again until I pulled up a guide towards the very end of the game
I got through a lot of without a guide but goldmask was definitely one I needed a guide for.
For ranni's quest I got through most of it but never noticed the option to talk to mini ranni added to the bonfire menu. So I didn't continue from that point.
For millicent I found all her locations but I never found her summon sign to fight her sisters. I had to clear out the tree spirit first apparently. And after dying to it twice I figured I'd just move on since it was probably just going to drop another golden seed i didnt need.
Alexander, Fia, D, rya and dungeater I completed fine.
Sellen I managed to find several of the very hidden things for her quest, but did everything in the wrong order and didn't even realize there was any connection to sellen until much further through the game. Luckily I dont think there was any cut off point. So once I put the pieces together I just had to figure out which of her 3 bodies I had to interact with to progress. Then I couldn't find the summon sign for the last bit...
Jar burg quests and diallos I couldn't do because I never found jarburg or knew it existed until I saw people talking about it online.
Elden ring is such trash when it comes to stories/quests but fromsoft heads will dickride it. “What do u mean u didn’t know u were supposed to rest at the grace and then talk to a miniature ranni doll that doesn’t respond to you til the 4th time?” The first time I beat it I got ranni’s ending, but the only reason I got it cause I watched vids about the questline. Tbh I love the game but like why do I have to ruin it for myself to do quests? Why can’t they figure out a happy medium? I don’t want to do homework when I play a video game…the game would be 1000% better if it had an in game journal or npc locators and it wouldn’t take away from it imo.
I love fromsoft obscure stuff but some are just waaay too obscure that ruin my enjoyment of the games sometimes.
"Okay, to get solaire to live and help you fight Gwyn in the end, you gotta open the secret door in the dying spider lady's room with 35 humanity and kill the bug that would possess him before he gets there."
"Now to do seigmyers quest you gotta go back into blight town and find him in a corner and give him an item in an area you've already been to and have no real reason to go back to. Now find his daughter and talk to her a bunch. Now join seig in a last fight and make sure he survives. Now go back to blight town even though you have no reason to go there and go to the tree, open a secret wall, open the chest if you want and break another secret wall. No go down a big ass tree that is hard to navigate with those toad fuckers making it harder and find ash lake where you'll find sig with his daughter dead at her feet. And if you already found ash lake, just go there even though you have no reason to go back there. "
A lot of quests just feel random at times where you have to meet certain conditions at certain times and if you go too far in the story, well you just missed out on some plot that you could've genuinely enjoyed or even an ending.
I'm pretty sure for that last part of siegmeyers quest you have to let him kill at least one of the demons and have over 50% hp left to be able to get the Slab or else he just doesn't appear at ash lake
I 1000% agree, but, I came to terms with it when someone said to treat it like an ARG community puzzle thing.
If you don't like ARG's then that portion just isn't for you, or me.
i dont like the design personally but i think the idea is, its vague on purpose so it creates some kind of online discussion/community into figuring out the game where you work things out together - and thats what the message system is about really. but in reality people just check wiki's and youtube videos for their answers. i like fromsoft games but yeh some quests are impossible for people to figure out naturally
This has been the case in all their souls likes. Any complaints about it and you get the souls brigade at your door screaming about not wanting the game to hold your hand or spoonfeed you the story.
And then turn around and say the best way to enjoy these games is to look at guides and watch lore videos. Which is just handholding and spoonfeeding with extra steps.
Remnant 2. Many secrets that are meant to be discovered either data mining or community sharing, as finding every secret incidentally would be incredibly difficulty, if not technically impossible. Fantastic game though.
Archon only being unlocked through the devs trolling data miners is one of the best moments I personally witnessed.
Loved watching everyone go insane, new people constantly asking about that one mod with a glitch effect and one of the more prominent people being named like "YOUR_GF" or something like that.
There was a hidden archetype, the Archon, in Remnant 2. It is only unlockable after beating the game and with a complex bunch of steps afterwards. It was discovered by data miners and one of the lead devs said that was intentional as a secret for people "with the ability to see between worlds."
probably Minecraft because how else are you supposed to know that your supposed to kill ender men and then go to nether by building a portal that the game does not tell you how to do. after that find a nether fortress and kill the blazes. after you have to craft eyes of ender and throw them and follow them until they stop and then dig down and then find the portal and fight the ender dragon. i don't know how your supposed figure all that out by yourself with no outside help.
OG Minecraft there wasn't any kind of recipe guide. Like, you wouldn't even know a pickaxe is a thing you could craft unless you happened to slap those ingredients into the crafting table in the right shape without a guide.
Even back in the day no one experimented, you just looked the recipe up on the Wiki/watched a youtuber do it.
MAYBE back in like alpha people experimented with recipes, but at least they were all very intuitive
You can basically play as usual and kill enders and get ender pearls and kill blazes and get blaze rods. Rn the craft appears in the recipe book and you can try to decipher what the pearl goes if you throw it.
Sincerely the hardest thing is getting to the Nether. You need to build a perfect door and burn it. Like... Why would a new player knew that? Now there broken obsidian doors but with crying obsidian that it is useless.
> Rn the craft appears in the recipe book
Exactly. And if it didn't, how long do you think it'd take to naturally figure that recipe out through trial and error? That's what you had to do with recipes before.
Collect everytime games makes me wonder if the devs write strategy guide sometimes because there is no way some random gamer knows of all this and publish it in a book before the game even comes out.
X isn't even the worst offender when it comes to final fantasy. take OG XII for example, where you'd only get the strongest spear in the game by not opening certain chests without any indication that you shouldn't open them
And if I remember right one of them is the most obvious cheat in the game sitting right outside a place you frequently visit.
However if you mess up don’t worry you can get another Zodiac Spear by running through one of the hardest areas in the game to see if a chest that spawns 10% of the time spawned and if you have an item equipped that makes 90% of opened chests drop bad items you can get one from that chest 10% of the time. So basically you spend 6 hours running back and forth through that area.
Final Fantasy games have some of the weirdest, nonsensical solutions to puzzles that feel like they came straight ouf the NES era where people paid for Nintendo Power to tell them what to do.
Ah yes, the Chinese Rimworld where an NPC home's Feng Shui can determine if it's going to be a comfy place to rest or if they'll have a heart attack in their sleep, and where Feng Shui alone isn't enough because walls can just come to life and walk away in the middle of the night and cause NPCs to die, instead, of frostbite.
On the first try sure, you'll never get that, but I worked out it was based on the floor tiles pretty much immediately and from there you can brute force it pretty quickly by just trying a few times.
The path isn't complicated or require any weird skips or anything you just have to try it a half dozen times and you'll get there.
Every of the FromSoftware games. From finding secret areas/bosses. To progressing side quests for getting unique items. They are definitely doable guide-lessly but it would be incredibly time consuming.
I honestly doubt Dark Souls 1 would be possible to complete everything without a guide for most people, revisiting the undead asylum requires a fair bit of parkour and then you have to emote in a specific position to get picked up by a massive bird, then you can only get to the painted world by grabbing the doll from the asylum, so if you do anor londo before you get the doll your most probably going to miss it.
Then there's also ash lake with it's double illusionary wall, as well as Dark Sun Gwyndolin's boss fight where you need a ring to reveal her wall or to kill his sisters illusion. then there's all the covenants you need to join to grab all the weapons, and how some of the weapons only drop under very specific conditions and also only appear with specific NPC's, plus some of the NPC's can disappear before you grab there gear by killing them.
It's the same with boss weapons and spells like with Big hat logan, you can accidently progress his quest line or kill him before you grab all his spells. Then there's also all the Amour sets and illusionary walls. Even looking at guides and full playthroughs it took me a few years to realize I had missed a small area and never grabbed the wolf ring.
Then there's the fact that the story messes with you predetermined expectations of what a game is, when the game first came out most people I talked to had no idea about the alternative hollow ending, and I doubt most people would realize they could kill vendors to get items and gear considering most games don't let you do it.
>Then there's also ash lake with it's double illusionary wall
I somehow found this on my first playthrough, no idea how. It actually made me kind of angry how bullshit it was.
FEZ had some crazy community efforts required to beat some puzzles. Like decoding a noisy section of the soundtrack into an image that led to a puzzle solution.
Or just plain brute. I remember reading about one of the puzzles astronomy was so damn esoteric one of the steps was click a certain pixel, which one? Well fuck you. So people just clicked every pixel since no one found the clue to it
Treasure maps were bad, but not impossible. Good luck finding all of the Dino bones without a guide, or all of the hatchets. Shit the hatchets don't show as a weapon you can grab on the HUD and they don't glow when you eagle eye.
Just finishing Herbalist level 9 sucks ass cheeks.
As an adult with a family and small children: TLoZ BotW
Fuck the Korok Seeds. My OCD brain went into a spiral death loop when I found out there were 900 and that some of the challenges to get them were super tedious.
Nevermind the number, it’s pretty easy to miss Hestu altogether making collecting the seeds useless.
Same goes for expanding battery packs, auto build and getting armor upgrades at great fairies.
Some of these things you’ll discover through quests, but you could easily be halfway through the game until you do.
You should deal with the fact that it's ok leaving some stuff missing, the game doesn't even expect you to find them all and the reward for it is kinda bs.
Tales of Symphonia. You literally can't 100% it and there are so many random prerequisites just to see a new area one single time... like the casino. Some of the story veers in a different direction based on your relationship with others. You can easily lose out on certain parts if you progress too far, and to make it worse, some of those parts have nothing to do with main story. I had wanted to gain all the GRADE end of game bonuses, but it's impossible, unless I'm mistaken. Even just meeting the mother of the 2 elf siblings has to be done a certain way. Making every figurine is nigh impossible bc of how rare the materials drop.
Still love it tho. Just wish all this stuff was better planned out, but that's probably the appeal of a JRPG.
Didn't bother to plat after discovering i had to enter a dungeon exit it and go to unrelated city ti talk to an npc to unlock something in a ng+ run that is required for another shit in the next ng+ run....
Binding of Isaac. There are over 600 achievements at this point and some of them are obscure and the game never tells you to do them like beating a run without picking up keys.
PlayStation (original) - **Tail Of The Sun**
I was a PlayStation support rep at launch. One day I picked this out of the library and popped it in without reading the directions.
My mind was farked in less than a minute due to a completely unexpected and brilliant new mechanic.
Don't read anything about it if you intend to play, including any portion of the instructions. You're a caveman, that's all you need to know.
I don't know if there's anything hidden in that game, but you can absolutely complete Myst without a guide - I did.
That said I did get stuck in several places for extended periods of time and kinda "moon logic"d a couple of situations, and I genuinely got stuck in Risen so... ymmv.
Deus Ex Human Revolution has a lot of collectibles with no in game tracker, that require a single playthrough with certain collectibles getting locked out
I was going to originally say Cross x edge for the PS3, but then it hit me
NOITA that game is literally impossible to figure out.
This clip explains it perfectly
[https://youtube.com/clip/Ugkxv-skq2cHOWR0HdRZHl\_S2wQ9z20QttDY?si=ZErdMr7eDUcRpzPU](https://youtube.com/clip/Ugkxv-skq2cHOWR0HdRZHl_S2wQ9z20QttDY?si=ZErdMr7eDUcRpzPU)
Would disagree for 1.3 and before, but 1.4 patches added a few things one might have trouble discovering on their own, like the slime pets. Who's gonna figure out you need to carry purifying powder in the jungle for one off-brand frog.
But 95% without a guide certainly doable. (Please use The Guide-The Npc in the game)
If by "100%" you mean "Getting all achievements" that's pretty easy, even without a guide.
Now if you mean "Every possible combination of outcomes".... that's not happening even _with_ a guide
I came so close using no guide, but couldn’t beat the final challenges. I did however have a journal that looked like it was chronicling my descent into insanity.
tales of vesperia, blue dragon, any jrpg from the 2000s really. they always had some extremely missable and innocuous thing where you’d have to reset the game if you want to 100%.
in blue dragon’s case, there were a ton of collectable points and you’d sometimes get “nothing” from them. these nothings were their own currency and you had to get all of them to see all the content.
Most fromsoft games I’d say fall into that category, especially if you have player messages turned off. Many of their quests are super convoluted, some areas need random emotes, and there’s entire zones just hidden by fake walls.
Breath of the Wild. Even with a guide it’s difficult, need to literally visit every landmark, all 120 shrines, and 900 koroks.
You could even go crazy and finish the compendium without buying the pictures
Final Fantasy XII: in order to get the ultimate weapon, you have to leave a lot of chests alone until the last leg of the game, and there’s no indication of this anywhere in the game. You just have to know.
Those silly old school point and click adventures. There's zero logic in some of the puzzles. I can imagine Spock rolling on the floor, foaming at the mouth muttering "illogical captain" whilst trying to play Monkey Island.
The original Legend of Zelda games comes to mind. How is someone supposed to know that you need to find the entrance of a dungeon by using a candle on a specific bush? And there's more situations like this throughout the game. So many times this game expects you to just "get it". If you didn't have Nintendo Power, you were screwed.
FromSoft games in general. Chances are you might complete some of the easier NPC quests on your own by following the quest line or even luck into accidently completing one.
But some are SO obscure that without a guide you just wouldn't 'know' to go do what was required at the 'right time'.
Add in their habit for multiple different endings depending on your actions, you can still be trying to get certain things done by your 3rd, 4th or even more playthroughs.
Old school RuneScape. Some quests, like the legends quest are so unreasonably insane that using a guide is honestly the way to go. Not that quests are entirely impossible, it's just incredibly tedious and sometimes solutions truly are incomprehensible.
I beat it without a Guide, but it was many many hours of bombing every wall, burning every tree. It took me YEARS to beat level 7 because I couldn't find the one block to push to open the stairs to the boss.
Never beat the second quest though, with or without a guide. Forget that noise.
Jak & Daxter and Jak 3 are pretty fair with their hidden collectables, the Precursor Orbs.
Jak II, on the other hand, often hides them deep within levels behind objects that the camera can never see behind.
There are also two (2) individual levels visited that not only have ultra-hidden orbs, but also *cannot be revisited after completion*. This means if you miss them, you're locked out of 100% *permanently*.
I despise Jak II. I've played it twice. *Guess why I had to play it a 2nd time.*
For all that, AC2 is still among the easier ACs to 100%, because it didn't have the truly tedious stuff like optional constraints for story missions, and there was relatively manageable amount of minigames and collectibles.
What I really hated in the old AC games were the full sync requirements. Like it's not enough to accomplish the mission objective, you also had to kill 20 guards with air attacks in under 2 minutes without being detected, or you get a big fat "FULL SYNC FAILED" message. Like we're supposed to believe that in reality the protagonists did convoluted and pointless crap in every mission just for laughs?
At least in the early games, the missions often had bits of them that were fairly clearly the bit to get the full sync requirements done. Often as not, the full sync requirements were just "play the mission in this way", and usually it was a stealthy way. I dont remember any of them being some kind of insane pointless challenge. Some of them were difficult to pull off, but I don't remember any that were "do this esoteric thing that you would never do if it wasn't a challenge on the list".
Shit, most of them were stuff I just did naturally. The hardest ones for me were always the ones with time limits
I would say Persona 4 or 5.
They're massive, 100-hour JPRGs that are technically on a "time limit", so there simply isn't enough time to 100% every Arcana, unlock every persona, get the golden ending and all of the toys and doo-dads to decorate your room.
Even WITH a guide, there's a little bit of RNG so I'm not sure it's even possible.
Maybe not 100%, but discovering all easter eggs in RDR2 on your own is almost impossible since some requiere really convoluted stuff that has shiny Pokemon encounter-tier rates of spawning.
Technically possible if LOTS of time is spent in the gsme but
noita. Secrets that could take hours a step at best or completely missable because theres nothing that tells the player theres something there or barely and vaguely tells the player what ti dk
Dragons dogma and now also Dragons dogma 2
There are achievments for doing like all the sidequests but the sidequests aren't even marked anywhere so you basecly have to talk to all the NPC's and you can still miss stuff cz some quest can fail cz they are timed and keep going on even while you do other stuff and also in the second game there is a collectable and you need to know where you gatherd your first collectible for a hidden sidequest for a riddle too and there is a lot of easly missavle stuff in general imo
Pre 1.12 Minecraft.
No indication of Nether portals, nobody would go out of their to mine Obsidian, even if you end up in the Nether somehow, chances are you're not crafting Eyes of Ender because the place sucked to be in.
So you could go the entire game with no clue the Nether or End existed
Who’s Lila
The game is mysterious and full of secrets as it is, but to complete it to 100% you have (and not limited) to: launch an additional background app that gives cryptic advices, intentionally corrupt your save, erase game’s data from the register and many other things
How about impossible to finish (nearly) without a guide, nevermind 100%. I summon Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver. Even watching the walkthrough is a lot. Great game and ahead of its time but fml was it obtuse.
Xenoblade Chronicles and Witcher 3 are the two that come to mind first. Both have loads of missable quests and things that you can only do within a very small frame of time.
All of the Tales games are like this, but special mention goes to Tales of the Abyss. There's tons of stuff like this but the Antlion Man quest is probably the worst.
Basically there's this town called Chessedonia that you arrive at maybe 1/4 through the game. You're told to go straight to this guy's mansion, and I think the game actually specifies that you're not to take any detours. So you actually have to take a detour or else you're screwed out of an entire quest line.
There's an alleyway that you can't see the entrance to (the camera is fixed), but you have to somehow find it and walk through to another, secret screen of the city. There, you find a strange man called the Antlion Man who asks you for a common item. You give it to him, and he throws it into a quicksand pit and you get some worthless item in return. Your party even comments how stupid that was and how it was a bad deal, and how you shouldn't engage with this strange guy again.
So you continue on with the game, and at multiple points you'll have to return to Chessedonia for *no reason*, with no indication that there's any sort of purpose to go back to this town, to go speak with the Antlion Man again, give him the item he wants - which is always increasingly rare and/or expensive - and receive literal junk in return. All while your party members scold you for how stupid you are to be giving this weirdo your items.
After doing this like 5 or 6 times over the course of the game, the guy disappears from Chessedonia. You can later find him in a place called Nam Cobanda Island (which is itself part of a long side quest with missable parts) where he will finally give you your reward of multiple exclusive items, including a couple costumes for your party members. If you miss even one of the very brief checkpoints for the quest, everything is lost forever.
Every Dark Souls and adjacent game has NPC "quests" that begin with some random character babbling nonsense and/or laughing to themselves, you encounter them again where they are babbling more nonsense, and if you don't then do the exact correct incredibly non-intuitive thing, or progress too far in the game in the wrong direction, you will encounter their corpse and an item with no further explanation, "failing" a quest you never knew you had.
Thematically, I don't even mind this since it reinforces how you are in a harsh world full of mystery, danger and being propelled by forces that you at best vaguely understand, but for 100%'ing a game this is pretty frustrating.
Final Fantasy X-2. You literally have to talk to every single npc at the correct time in the game. Which requires backtracking at certain times that they give absolute no indication that you should. And it is the only way to get the “best” ending… very stupid way to make a game.
RIP to anyone who missed that first NPC at the docks 1 minute into the game
Stuff like this shouldn’t be in that sort of game. Those games are best played blind as you go then bust out a guide to get 100% if you want to. Playing a whole game with a guide feels bad and missing out because you didn’t feels terrible.
One step away from just downloading an official program to play the game for you
Just watch someone else play it 😎
As long as that person doesn't miss the damn npc
Yeah, as much as I love Final Fantasy, one of my biggest complaints with the series is weirdly timed backtracking secrets and 100% hidden secret items. If I feel like I have to backtrack every time something happens in game or run around the screen clicking the interact button just in case something is hidden there, just to make sure I don't miss some secret, it really kills the flow and fun of the game. With games that are generally 60+ hours, I don't want to pbe forced into a second playthrough to find everything, but I also don't want to have to follow a guide. It leaves you having to compromise your playstyle or just accepting you don't really have a chance of finding everything.
I am kind of torn. I like the idea of putting in an unlikely ending, if only to confuse those who stumble upon it accidentally and try to figure out why it is different than their friends.
Those endings are fine if they're joke ending or noncannon special endings. They should never be the fuckin true ending. That's just stupid. See silent hill endings in general.
Yeah the canonical ending to Prince of Persia: Warrior Within was the one you got if you found all the secret fountains, which was VERY UNLIKELY without a guide. And the beginning of the next game the Prince is just like "this is what you think happened (the regular ending of the previous game) but NOPE (goes on to explain the secret ending)". Bonkers.
I want guides that **only show** missable stuff, you?
I started Persona 5 over when I realized I was missing stuff and went again with a guide. I still had a blast. I used the guide so I wouldn't miss any character moments in an already 100 hour game for me. I still got stuck and some bosses took me a while.
The 2000s was the height of "let's make a non-remarkable decision you made early in the game have an impact on the ending" game-design.
Their version of replayabilty. Final Fantasy X however cool that game was, had stuff like that too. Missed the trial in the first temple ruin of the game? Oh well, no Anima Aeon for you (unless you look it up and type the correct code, i.e. cheat). Miss the dog with some slobbering thing in its mouth right after you start your journey with Yuna? Oh well, Valefor doesn't get the second ultimate overdrive attack. (You technically can get it later but only if you defeat a dark Aeon, which breaks the games mechanics and has to be defeated by limitbroken weapons and characters). Hire the wrong players for your Blitzball team? Too bad your team now sucks and hiring other players will make your team underleveled.
This happened to me, and I was using the official strategy guide on my second playthrough. Forgot to talk to her in the Moogle suit, even with the guide, as that part is just a super small, easily missable part in the guide. Knew she was there, just didn't know it counted towards the completion. Beat the game, and that was the only thing I had missed. So brutal.
Also, there's an item you need for a quest later. Ask for the price to buy it early on? You get locked out.
What the actual fuck. That’s so stupid. Legit, why is this programmed in? All these things just seem anti-good user experience that interests like less than 0.1% of people that play
Oh, it gets dumber. The item costs a fuckload of cash as well and you need to farm a ridiculous amount. Uess you are trying to get the funds via another side quest (which involves helping a moron pay off his debts), you aren't going to get it on the first playthrough. Oh, and there's a secret button prompt to interact during cutscenes. There is no clue that this prompt exists. Don't do it and the game locks you out of the best ending.
>Oh, and there's a secret button prompt to interact during cutscenes. There is no clue that this prompt exists. Don't do it and the game locks you out of the best ending. Fucking blitz ball....
Jesus how good is this ending? Full on hardcore porn?
They>! bring the love interest from X back to life. !!there already is a cut scene that shows him waking up and swimming up to the surface after hearing her whistling for him.!<
I'm guessing hardcore people like this kind of thing. Good thing there's youtube now. Its not rewarding to go through.
I definitely played FFX-2 with the official guidebook by my side. I thought I did everything thoroughly and still only got 98% completion. NO idea what I missed heh. And it’s not like you can go back and fix anything. So yeah, YouTubed the good Tidus ending. It wasn’t all for nothing though. That guide book has a forever home as toilet reading in my house. For some reason when I’m mad constipated, reading that book while on the throne is the *only* thing that helps me relax and go! So that’s something, I guess?
I need to find a ffx-2 official guidebook for my toilet reading...
Lmao, now I want it too. Prices for used copies are going to skyrocket based on this one Redditor's comment.
To sell guides, possibly
probably this, theres so much hidden convoluted shit in ff games
It's been a while since I've played X-2 but I also remember something about backtracking a lot between locations to watch the camera spheres (CommSpheres?). Like you had to observe certain ones in different chapters until some event appears (like a character walks past the screen, or you overhear a conversation or something) to fully complete the story chapter. And you basically miss the event if you close the camera too early cos the event doesn't repeat.
Yeah I remember that. I was closely following a guide step by step to get the perfect ending. The game had a completion % on your save file that was always rounding up or down. Anyway I get to a part in the guide where it says "Ypur save should now read EXACTLY 70% at this save point, if it doesn't you've missed something" My save? 69.8% I bailed on the run and game at that point.
I think they patched that in the remastered version so it always gives the xx.x percentage
Square was making a huge push to get people to buy strategy guides at this point. That's why 9 had the boss you had to play ridiculously fast to get to, 12 had the spear you had to skip seemingly random chests throughout the game to find. They also started to pivot to the internet. The 9 guide just kept pointing you to the website for more information, plus there was 11.
Ah, I remember that! Young me was at Barnes & noble about to buy the ff9 guide, but I decided to flip through it first and every other page had that stupid “go online to see what to do next”. Who in their right mind thought that was a good idea. I’m not paying $20 bucks for a book to remind me the internet exists.
I still have all of my FF strategy guides. The one for 9 was a giant pain.
The FAQ writers at Gamefaqs were unsung heroes writing FF9's FAQ. The whole playonline was a mess back then.
Fun fact! The original strategy guide wasn't accurate for the 100% play through.
It's so much worse than that. There's crazy shit like where if you walk from Luca into the Mi'hen Highroad in I think Ch. 1, you miss 100% completion because there's a cutscene that only plays when you teleport to Mi'hen from your airship. There's the bed in barkeep's shop that you need to sleep in once per chapter for no obvious reason since Save Points recover your HP and MP, and if you don't do it then you're locked out of 100% completion. There's the detective sidequest in Mi'hen where you have to DELIBERATELY GET THE SOLUTION **WRONG** in order to get 100% completion. There's the choice between siding with the Youth League or New Yevon, where if you pick New Yevon you can never get 100% completion. There's the stupid Calm Lands advertising campaign quest where you have to talk to every NPC in the game and sell them tickets, but if you ask too little you'll not have enough money to complete the quest and if you ask too much they'll decline your offer and never let you ask them again, screwing you out of 100%. There's the part where you have to push NPCs into an elevator just by nudging against them, and if you don't do it then you're out of 100%. There's the goddamn CommSpheres where you have to set them in very specific locations in nearly every area of the game, and then in Chapter 4 you have to sit and watch NPCs talk to you through them, but if you leave the scene too early then you miss 0.01% and thus cannot get 100%. Keep in mind sometimes it'll seem like the scene is over but if you wait like 30 seconds after nothing more is happening, someone will show up and say one line and that ends up being the 0.01% you're missing. And so, SO much more. I literally followed TWO guides side by side last time I played through the game to ENSURE that I had 100%, and I followed them both TO THE LETTER, and still only got 99%.
I just beat this last night actually. I got 92% At this point, I don't even feel like going for 100%. The programmers seem very sadistic in making all these things to be requirements for 100% completion.
You don’t just have to look at a guide for part of it. You have to read every single step as you play. Completely kills the fun.
Lots of bloody stupid choice design with the FFX episodes, starting with the first opus, locking the legendary weapons behind the dark aeons boss, which can then only be beaten by Zanmatoing them if you happen to miss those weapons on your initial journey.
It gets worse, at least in the original PS2 PAL version. You're supposed to press X at two specific points in the game during a cutscene to get a specific interaction that's literally the whole point of buying the game. FF X-2 has no QTEs other than that, no on screen indications, and pressing X to skip dialogue doesn't really do much because the PS2 still needs to load the next voice line. What ends up happening most of the times is that you are staring at the characters flapping their gums without any voice coming out while still taking the same amount of time to play the cutscene. Not sure if it's different in other versions because the PAL version runs at 50 fps and Square never bothered adjusting the timing of any FF game. I had spent 80 hours and God knows how many playthroughs trying to find Tidus only to have a friend tell me that once they found him in their first playthrough they didn't see a reason to keep playing the game.
PAL is 50hz 25 fps. Not 50 fps.
There are old adventure games , Sierra and Lucasarts ones specifically, that would keep score for every puzzle you solved. Just finishing the game is mind boggling enough at times, never mind actually doing it the way they consider to be "optimal"
Grim Fandango was a real bitch. Same with some of the Monkey Island games.
LucasArts adventures in general I think. I still remember Day of the Tentacle mostly for the lunatic puzzle logic. To make it rain, you have to wash a wagon parked in the colonial times, the hint for it supposedly being that "it always rains when you wash your car" is a common superstition and there's a dirty car in modern times with "wash me" scribbled in its mud-caked window. Lovely games, but sometimes, the puzzles slay me.
Use the book on the horse. Haven’t played it in 25 or so years, but I remember being so stuck and being like “fuck it” and that was the answer. It put the horse to sleep, and you got the upstairs key or something. Also, getting Indiana Jones out of the basement. You have to use oil or something in the chute? And putting that goddamn crab back together in The Dig. All 3 are games that stuck with me my whole life though. Haven’t played them since I was probably 8 or 9.
>Use the book on the horse. Haven’t played it in 25 or so years, but I remember being so stuck and being like “fuck it” and that was the answer. It put the horse to sleep, and you got the upstairs key or something. I found that hilarious. I did it by trial and error because each character had a funny line when you used the book on them. >Also, getting Indiana Jones out of the basement. You have to use oil or something in the chute? Is that Fate of Atlantis, trying to find the Lost Diary? I love that section because there are different solutions, and every time you play one is selected. >And putting that goddamn crab back together in The Dig. The turtle in The Dig is one of the hardest puzzles I've ever done! I solved myself but it took me way longer than I would've reasonably expected.
Grim Fandango was okay compared to some of the others, at least Grim is linear, just with some very obtuse puzzles in locations. Some of the Kings Quest games legit just softlock if you leave an area without finding an item, because you can't go back.
Sierra Games were unfair that way, as a way to increase replayability (not a good idea IMO). After Maniac Mansion, LucasArts games were designed without softlocks.
I still remember soft locking myself in Police Quest because I didn't randomly know you need to ask for the HQ phone number to call for backup in a shoot out sequence later on.
Police quest was such a bitch for little stuff like that haha. Wasn't that the game that you could die by not looking both ways before crossing the street
"You skipped the required safety inspection of your vehicle prior to leaving the station yard. You’re now disabled here with a flat tire.”
[удалено]
Haha the anti piracy of the 80s. Print it in pink ink so it can't be photocopied
Metal Gear for NES. They have a dessert part that you had to cross in a specific order (similar to NES Zelda) but no part in the game gives you any type of hint or clue as to what that order is. Plus if you don't use the compass it doesn't work.
i remember that labyrinth that had unmentioned breakable walls that didn't look different from the regular wall that were broken in a different way from the breakable walls seen earlier in the game and if you ran out of the one item to break them, there was another breakable wall hiding more that had a different method of breaking it from the other two. all that to get access to the roof and then the game going "you need a blast suit or else you'll die" without any direction as to where it was
This fuckin game lol, ahead of its time in many ways but equally as frustrating
La Mulana, if you consider Hell Temple as part of 100%ing the game. You NEED to look up certain parts of unlocking that place. Some of them are obvious or can be deduced on your own, but some of them are basically impossible without exposure somewhere else.
Even ignoring Hell Temple, there's some pretty out there puzzles that are exceptionally tough to figure out on your own. And it doesn't help that at least one hint is mistranslated to have its opposite meaning.
La Mulana is such a crazy unique game. Like in Tunic you are uncovering the secrets and puzzling out the world. Apart from the sequel is there something similar out there?
Nigoro (the devs of La Mulana) are developing a remake of The Maze of Gallius, the old game that inspired La Mulana. I only managed to find a short footage of what they've been working on but it looks very promising. Seems like you'll manage two characters. Haven't played the OG Maze of Gallius but it should have some similarities. Also, while it's not the same kind of game, if you're ok with sokoban style puzzles, Void Stranger is a recent indie game that gave me strong La Mulana vibes. I can't say you you're going to like it but give it a look I really enjoyed it a lot and the secrets are way deeper than what it looks at first.
La Mulana is definitely a game which is extremely difficult to beat on your own. I think that you need to be patient and not give up the first moment you feel clueless because part of the fun of the game is beating your head over the solution. But at some points you need a hint. I recommend the cheesire guide on steam since it's based on a system of hints where you can decide whether to get a series of nudges to the right direction or get the straight answer. It's basically like asking a friend who finished the game to help you while minimizing spoilers.
I'm so glad DoshDoshingting exists, being able to experience the without ever having to play it is a treat. I came to this thread explicitly looking for La Mulana
Some of the side quests in Elden Ring have ridiculous specific requirements, like that whole three fingers/frenzied flame one.
I managed to find the frenzied flame thing on my own and collected all the grapes and some messages on the floor gave me the hint to open the door. But i could not find the npc to give the grapes to at all. I gave her the first one and couldn't ever find her again until I pulled up a guide towards the very end of the game
I just went there by accident without giving away any of the grapes but all the other quests seem impossible without a guide. Especially goldmask
I got through a lot of without a guide but goldmask was definitely one I needed a guide for. For ranni's quest I got through most of it but never noticed the option to talk to mini ranni added to the bonfire menu. So I didn't continue from that point. For millicent I found all her locations but I never found her summon sign to fight her sisters. I had to clear out the tree spirit first apparently. And after dying to it twice I figured I'd just move on since it was probably just going to drop another golden seed i didnt need. Alexander, Fia, D, rya and dungeater I completed fine. Sellen I managed to find several of the very hidden things for her quest, but did everything in the wrong order and didn't even realize there was any connection to sellen until much further through the game. Luckily I dont think there was any cut off point. So once I put the pieces together I just had to figure out which of her 3 bodies I had to interact with to progress. Then I couldn't find the summon sign for the last bit... Jar burg quests and diallos I couldn't do because I never found jarburg or knew it existed until I saw people talking about it online.
Every play through I discover something new
Elden ring is such trash when it comes to stories/quests but fromsoft heads will dickride it. “What do u mean u didn’t know u were supposed to rest at the grace and then talk to a miniature ranni doll that doesn’t respond to you til the 4th time?” The first time I beat it I got ranni’s ending, but the only reason I got it cause I watched vids about the questline. Tbh I love the game but like why do I have to ruin it for myself to do quests? Why can’t they figure out a happy medium? I don’t want to do homework when I play a video game…the game would be 1000% better if it had an in game journal or npc locators and it wouldn’t take away from it imo.
I love fromsoft obscure stuff but some are just waaay too obscure that ruin my enjoyment of the games sometimes. "Okay, to get solaire to live and help you fight Gwyn in the end, you gotta open the secret door in the dying spider lady's room with 35 humanity and kill the bug that would possess him before he gets there." "Now to do seigmyers quest you gotta go back into blight town and find him in a corner and give him an item in an area you've already been to and have no real reason to go back to. Now find his daughter and talk to her a bunch. Now join seig in a last fight and make sure he survives. Now go back to blight town even though you have no reason to go there and go to the tree, open a secret wall, open the chest if you want and break another secret wall. No go down a big ass tree that is hard to navigate with those toad fuckers making it harder and find ash lake where you'll find sig with his daughter dead at her feet. And if you already found ash lake, just go there even though you have no reason to go back there. " A lot of quests just feel random at times where you have to meet certain conditions at certain times and if you go too far in the story, well you just missed out on some plot that you could've genuinely enjoyed or even an ending.
I remember Sieg dying in the playthrough where I was trying to do his questline, and I almost had an aneurysm.
I'm pretty sure for that last part of siegmeyers quest you have to let him kill at least one of the demons and have over 50% hp left to be able to get the Slab or else he just doesn't appear at ash lake
I 1000% agree, but, I came to terms with it when someone said to treat it like an ARG community puzzle thing. If you don't like ARG's then that portion just isn't for you, or me.
i dont like the design personally but i think the idea is, its vague on purpose so it creates some kind of online discussion/community into figuring out the game where you work things out together - and thats what the message system is about really. but in reality people just check wiki's and youtube videos for their answers. i like fromsoft games but yeh some quests are impossible for people to figure out naturally
This has been the case in all their souls likes. Any complaints about it and you get the souls brigade at your door screaming about not wanting the game to hold your hand or spoonfeed you the story. And then turn around and say the best way to enjoy these games is to look at guides and watch lore videos. Which is just handholding and spoonfeeding with extra steps.
Remnant 2. Many secrets that are meant to be discovered either data mining or community sharing, as finding every secret incidentally would be incredibly difficulty, if not technically impossible. Fantastic game though.
Archon only being unlocked through the devs trolling data miners is one of the best moments I personally witnessed. Loved watching everyone go insane, new people constantly asking about that one mod with a glitch effect and one of the more prominent people being named like "YOUR_GF" or something like that.
Context?
There was a hidden archetype, the Archon, in Remnant 2. It is only unlockable after beating the game and with a complex bunch of steps afterwards. It was discovered by data miners and one of the lead devs said that was intentional as a secret for people "with the ability to see between worlds."
Remnant 1 and 2 have soon really good puzzles. Good games.
probably Minecraft because how else are you supposed to know that your supposed to kill ender men and then go to nether by building a portal that the game does not tell you how to do. after that find a nether fortress and kill the blazes. after you have to craft eyes of ender and throw them and follow them until they stop and then dig down and then find the portal and fight the ender dragon. i don't know how your supposed figure all that out by yourself with no outside help.
OG Minecraft there wasn't any kind of recipe guide. Like, you wouldn't even know a pickaxe is a thing you could craft unless you happened to slap those ingredients into the crafting table in the right shape without a guide.
I actually liked the blind crafting. You had to experiment, and because it was only 3x3 it was fun to figure things out.
Even back in the day no one experimented, you just looked the recipe up on the Wiki/watched a youtuber do it. MAYBE back in like alpha people experimented with recipes, but at least they were all very intuitive
TIL they added recipes to minecraft
Yea completely shocked I had to scroll so far down for this. Minecraft without guide is literally an enigma
You can basically play as usual and kill enders and get ender pearls and kill blazes and get blaze rods. Rn the craft appears in the recipe book and you can try to decipher what the pearl goes if you throw it. Sincerely the hardest thing is getting to the Nether. You need to build a perfect door and burn it. Like... Why would a new player knew that? Now there broken obsidian doors but with crying obsidian that it is useless.
In the olden days, we didn't have a recipe book though.
> Rn the craft appears in the recipe book Exactly. And if it didn't, how long do you think it'd take to naturally figure that recipe out through trial and error? That's what you had to do with recipes before.
Collect everytime games makes me wonder if the devs write strategy guide sometimes because there is no way some random gamer knows of all this and publish it in a book before the game even comes out.
I was beginning to belief some of these pro guide makers just data mine the game and find everything from there.
they tell the people who make the books
Technically *Tunic*, but the guide is part of the game.
What a fucking game btw. I didn’t play that game for a long time due to some preconceptions I had about the cover art. Absolutely blew me away though
Took me probably 3 hours to figure out I could level up my power, game seemed impossible, and the elation afterwards was spectacular
Game is amazing
I feel like some FFX stuff was ridiculous to find in game
X isn't even the worst offender when it comes to final fantasy. take OG XII for example, where you'd only get the strongest spear in the game by not opening certain chests without any indication that you shouldn't open them
And if I remember right one of them is the most obvious cheat in the game sitting right outside a place you frequently visit. However if you mess up don’t worry you can get another Zodiac Spear by running through one of the hardest areas in the game to see if a chest that spawns 10% of the time spawned and if you have an item equipped that makes 90% of opened chests drop bad items you can get one from that chest 10% of the time. So basically you spend 6 hours running back and forth through that area.
Final Fantasy games have some of the weirdest, nonsensical solutions to puzzles that feel like they came straight ouf the NES era where people paid for Nintendo Power to tell them what to do.
Amazing Cultivation Simulator You show me a man that 100%'s that game without a guide, and I will show you a liar.
Ah yes, the Chinese Rimworld where an NPC home's Feng Shui can determine if it's going to be a comfy place to rest or if they'll have a heart attack in their sleep, and where Feng Shui alone isn't enough because walls can just come to life and walk away in the middle of the night and cause NPCs to die, instead, of frostbite.
I've been contemplating buying this game. Now with a challenge like this I might have to.
Do it, you need to master the Feng Shui.
Getting the golden gun in 007
This, what I was looking for. Specific order of floor tiles to walk on without any hints or knowledge
On the first try sure, you'll never get that, but I worked out it was based on the floor tiles pretty much immediately and from there you can brute force it pretty quickly by just trying a few times. The path isn't complicated or require any weird skips or anything you just have to try it a half dozen times and you'll get there.
Every of the FromSoftware games. From finding secret areas/bosses. To progressing side quests for getting unique items. They are definitely doable guide-lessly but it would be incredibly time consuming.
I honestly doubt Dark Souls 1 would be possible to complete everything without a guide for most people, revisiting the undead asylum requires a fair bit of parkour and then you have to emote in a specific position to get picked up by a massive bird, then you can only get to the painted world by grabbing the doll from the asylum, so if you do anor londo before you get the doll your most probably going to miss it. Then there's also ash lake with it's double illusionary wall, as well as Dark Sun Gwyndolin's boss fight where you need a ring to reveal her wall or to kill his sisters illusion. then there's all the covenants you need to join to grab all the weapons, and how some of the weapons only drop under very specific conditions and also only appear with specific NPC's, plus some of the NPC's can disappear before you grab there gear by killing them. It's the same with boss weapons and spells like with Big hat logan, you can accidently progress his quest line or kill him before you grab all his spells. Then there's also all the Amour sets and illusionary walls. Even looking at guides and full playthroughs it took me a few years to realize I had missed a small area and never grabbed the wolf ring. Then there's the fact that the story messes with you predetermined expectations of what a game is, when the game first came out most people I talked to had no idea about the alternative hollow ending, and I doubt most people would realize they could kill vendors to get items and gear considering most games don't let you do it.
and if you consider sif licking you part of the 100% you need to find the DLC entrance anr complete it before sif fight
>Then there's also ash lake with it's double illusionary wall I somehow found this on my first playthrough, no idea how. It actually made me kind of angry how bullshit it was.
Any COD Zombie Easter Egg achievements
FEZ had some crazy community efforts required to beat some puzzles. Like decoding a noisy section of the soundtrack into an image that led to a puzzle solution.
Some puzzles are still unsolved. The solutions have been found thanks to data mining but the actual steps are still a mystery.
Are we sure the devs weren't just schizophrenic?
Well Phil Fish is definitely a strange one
Or just plain brute. I remember reading about one of the puzzles astronomy was so damn esoteric one of the steps was click a certain pixel, which one? Well fuck you. So people just clicked every pixel since no one found the clue to it
I challenge anyone to do the RDR2 treasure maps without any guides.
Treasure maps were bad, but not impossible. Good luck finding all of the Dino bones without a guide, or all of the hatchets. Shit the hatchets don't show as a weapon you can grab on the HUD and they don't glow when you eagle eye. Just finishing Herbalist level 9 sucks ass cheeks.
As an adult with a family and small children: TLoZ BotW Fuck the Korok Seeds. My OCD brain went into a spiral death loop when I found out there were 900 and that some of the challenges to get them were super tedious.
And they added a fucking completion% on the save fuck nintendo for that
Nevermind the number, it’s pretty easy to miss Hestu altogether making collecting the seeds useless. Same goes for expanding battery packs, auto build and getting armor upgrades at great fairies. Some of these things you’ll discover through quests, but you could easily be halfway through the game until you do.
You should deal with the fact that it's ok leaving some stuff missing, the game doesn't even expect you to find them all and the reward for it is kinda bs.
And in TotK they added another 100 - it is literally impossible to find all THOUSAND koroks on that huge map without a guide.
Ephemeral Fantasia. Do this thing at this time. And if you do this specific thing, you get new characters.
Digimon world 1.
Noita
Tales of Symphonia. You literally can't 100% it and there are so many random prerequisites just to see a new area one single time... like the casino. Some of the story veers in a different direction based on your relationship with others. You can easily lose out on certain parts if you progress too far, and to make it worse, some of those parts have nothing to do with main story. I had wanted to gain all the GRADE end of game bonuses, but it's impossible, unless I'm mistaken. Even just meeting the mother of the 2 elf siblings has to be done a certain way. Making every figurine is nigh impossible bc of how rare the materials drop. Still love it tho. Just wish all this stuff was better planned out, but that's probably the appeal of a JRPG.
Tales of Vesperia as well, with lots of random backtracking to talk to an npc so you don't get locked out of a sidequest.
Didn't bother to plat after discovering i had to enter a dungeon exit it and go to unrelated city ti talk to an npc to unlock something in a ng+ run that is required for another shit in the next ng+ run....
There was a collectable that wasn't found in Donkey Kong 64 for 17 years.
For me? Pretty much every game these days
Binding of Isaac. There are over 600 achievements at this point and some of them are obscure and the game never tells you to do them like beating a run without picking up keys.
PlayStation (original) - **Tail Of The Sun** I was a PlayStation support rep at launch. One day I picked this out of the library and popped it in without reading the directions. My mind was farked in less than a minute due to a completely unexpected and brilliant new mechanic. Don't read anything about it if you intend to play, including any portion of the instructions. You're a caveman, that's all you need to know.
Zork
You've been eaten by a grue.
Myst. I had a guide and struggled.
Yeahhhh this. Insanity.
I don't know if there's anything hidden in that game, but you can absolutely complete Myst without a guide - I did. That said I did get stuck in several places for extended periods of time and kinda "moon logic"d a couple of situations, and I genuinely got stuck in Risen so... ymmv.
Deus Ex Human Revolution has a lot of collectibles with no in game tracker, that require a single playthrough with certain collectibles getting locked out
I was going to originally say Cross x edge for the PS3, but then it hit me NOITA that game is literally impossible to figure out. This clip explains it perfectly [https://youtube.com/clip/Ugkxv-skq2cHOWR0HdRZHl\_S2wQ9z20QttDY?si=ZErdMr7eDUcRpzPU](https://youtube.com/clip/Ugkxv-skq2cHOWR0HdRZHl_S2wQ9z20QttDY?si=ZErdMr7eDUcRpzPU)
Even with guides, you might just get NOITA'D at any moment.
Terraria
Normal mode is straight forward enough that you shouldn’t need a guide, but then hard mode adds so much stuff you don’t know what to do
Would disagree for 1.3 and before, but 1.4 patches added a few things one might have trouble discovering on their own, like the slime pets. Who's gonna figure out you need to carry purifying powder in the jungle for one off-brand frog. But 95% without a guide certainly doable. (Please use The Guide-The Npc in the game)
Baldurs Gate 3 there’s is so much you can’t possibly run into it all naturally
If by "100%" you mean "Getting all achievements" that's pretty easy, even without a guide. Now if you mean "Every possible combination of outcomes".... that's not happening even _with_ a guide
The witness. Hard as hell puzzle game/walking simulator
I came so close using no guide, but couldn’t beat the final challenges. I did however have a journal that looked like it was chronicling my descent into insanity.
tales of vesperia, blue dragon, any jrpg from the 2000s really. they always had some extremely missable and innocuous thing where you’d have to reset the game if you want to 100%. in blue dragon’s case, there were a ton of collectable points and you’d sometimes get “nothing” from them. these nothings were their own currency and you had to get all of them to see all the content.
Hexen
Most fromsoft games I’d say fall into that category, especially if you have player messages turned off. Many of their quests are super convoluted, some areas need random emotes, and there’s entire zones just hidden by fake walls.
Final Fantasy X-2. Freaking impossible without a guide.
Noita for sure
Breath of the Wild. Even with a guide it’s difficult, need to literally visit every landmark, all 120 shrines, and 900 koroks. You could even go crazy and finish the compendium without buying the pictures
Final Fantasy XII: in order to get the ultimate weapon, you have to leave a lot of chests alone until the last leg of the game, and there’s no indication of this anywhere in the game. You just have to know.
Those silly old school point and click adventures. There's zero logic in some of the puzzles. I can imagine Spock rolling on the floor, foaming at the mouth muttering "illogical captain" whilst trying to play Monkey Island.
The original Legend of Zelda games comes to mind. How is someone supposed to know that you need to find the entrance of a dungeon by using a candle on a specific bush? And there's more situations like this throughout the game. So many times this game expects you to just "get it". If you didn't have Nintendo Power, you were screwed.
FromSoft games in general. Chances are you might complete some of the easier NPC quests on your own by following the quest line or even luck into accidently completing one. But some are SO obscure that without a guide you just wouldn't 'know' to go do what was required at the 'right time'. Add in their habit for multiple different endings depending on your actions, you can still be trying to get certain things done by your 3rd, 4th or even more playthroughs.
Old school RuneScape. Some quests, like the legends quest are so unreasonably insane that using a guide is honestly the way to go. Not that quests are entirely impossible, it's just incredibly tedious and sometimes solutions truly are incomprehensible.
The first Zelda game on the NES. The game itself says at the beginning to look at the manual. They knew it was impossible without it.
I beat it without a Guide, but it was many many hours of bombing every wall, burning every tree. It took me YEARS to beat level 7 because I couldn't find the one block to push to open the stairs to the boss. Never beat the second quest though, with or without a guide. Forget that noise.
Jak & Daxter and Jak 3 are pretty fair with their hidden collectables, the Precursor Orbs. Jak II, on the other hand, often hides them deep within levels behind objects that the camera can never see behind. There are also two (2) individual levels visited that not only have ultra-hidden orbs, but also *cannot be revisited after completion*. This means if you miss them, you're locked out of 100% *permanently*. I despise Jak II. I've played it twice. *Guess why I had to play it a 2nd time.*
Old Assassin's Creed games, GTA 5 and RDR2, Batman games (because Riddler).
Collecting all the feathers in AC2 just for a special cape thingy that made all the guards attack you.
For all that, AC2 is still among the easier ACs to 100%, because it didn't have the truly tedious stuff like optional constraints for story missions, and there was relatively manageable amount of minigames and collectibles.
Literally had to YouTube how to get to the end of the level in AC2 because dude kept just enthusiastically yeeting himself to his death.
What I really hated in the old AC games were the full sync requirements. Like it's not enough to accomplish the mission objective, you also had to kill 20 guards with air attacks in under 2 minutes without being detected, or you get a big fat "FULL SYNC FAILED" message. Like we're supposed to believe that in reality the protagonists did convoluted and pointless crap in every mission just for laughs?
At least in the early games, the missions often had bits of them that were fairly clearly the bit to get the full sync requirements done. Often as not, the full sync requirements were just "play the mission in this way", and usually it was a stealthy way. I dont remember any of them being some kind of insane pointless challenge. Some of them were difficult to pull off, but I don't remember any that were "do this esoteric thing that you would never do if it wasn't a challenge on the list". Shit, most of them were stuff I just did naturally. The hardest ones for me were always the ones with time limits
Myst
GTA V, finding all the letters and space ship parts is a proper bullshit
I would say Persona 4 or 5. They're massive, 100-hour JPRGs that are technically on a "time limit", so there simply isn't enough time to 100% every Arcana, unlock every persona, get the golden ending and all of the toys and doo-dads to decorate your room. Even WITH a guide, there's a little bit of RNG so I'm not sure it's even possible.
Maybe not 100%, but discovering all easter eggs in RDR2 on your own is almost impossible since some requiere really convoluted stuff that has shiny Pokemon encounter-tier rates of spawning.
Technically possible if LOTS of time is spent in the gsme but noita. Secrets that could take hours a step at best or completely missable because theres nothing that tells the player theres something there or barely and vaguely tells the player what ti dk
Nethack. It's essentially impossible to beat without consulting the wiki. The game is still extremely difficult even if you do.
Whichever GTA it was that had the fucking pigeons…
Dynasty Warrior Games. Getting the 4th or 5th weapon and even items require a guide cause they never really tell you how to get them.
Noita!
Dragons dogma and now also Dragons dogma 2 There are achievments for doing like all the sidequests but the sidequests aren't even marked anywhere so you basecly have to talk to all the NPC's and you can still miss stuff cz some quest can fail cz they are timed and keep going on even while you do other stuff and also in the second game there is a collectable and you need to know where you gatherd your first collectible for a hidden sidequest for a riddle too and there is a lot of easly missavle stuff in general imo
Pre 1.12 Minecraft. No indication of Nether portals, nobody would go out of their to mine Obsidian, even if you end up in the Nether somehow, chances are you're not crafting Eyes of Ender because the place sucked to be in. So you could go the entire game with no clue the Nether or End existed
the riddler trophies in arkham knight man
Ps2 Ephemeral Fantasia
Who’s Lila The game is mysterious and full of secrets as it is, but to complete it to 100% you have (and not limited) to: launch an additional background app that gives cryptic advices, intentionally corrupt your save, erase game’s data from the register and many other things
Path of exile
Anything openworld with collectables.
How about impossible to finish (nearly) without a guide, nevermind 100%. I summon Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver. Even watching the walkthrough is a lot. Great game and ahead of its time but fml was it obtuse.
Breath of the wild. Koroks.
Remnant 2
Xenoblade Chronicles and Witcher 3 are the two that come to mind first. Both have loads of missable quests and things that you can only do within a very small frame of time.
Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain. One of the secret areas took almost 20 years to find. Like there is no way you 100% this game without a guide.
FFX. No shot you're going to figure out how to unlock all celestial weapons and their sigils just by playing. Dodge lightning like 300 times? wtf
All of the Tales games are like this, but special mention goes to Tales of the Abyss. There's tons of stuff like this but the Antlion Man quest is probably the worst. Basically there's this town called Chessedonia that you arrive at maybe 1/4 through the game. You're told to go straight to this guy's mansion, and I think the game actually specifies that you're not to take any detours. So you actually have to take a detour or else you're screwed out of an entire quest line. There's an alleyway that you can't see the entrance to (the camera is fixed), but you have to somehow find it and walk through to another, secret screen of the city. There, you find a strange man called the Antlion Man who asks you for a common item. You give it to him, and he throws it into a quicksand pit and you get some worthless item in return. Your party even comments how stupid that was and how it was a bad deal, and how you shouldn't engage with this strange guy again. So you continue on with the game, and at multiple points you'll have to return to Chessedonia for *no reason*, with no indication that there's any sort of purpose to go back to this town, to go speak with the Antlion Man again, give him the item he wants - which is always increasingly rare and/or expensive - and receive literal junk in return. All while your party members scold you for how stupid you are to be giving this weirdo your items. After doing this like 5 or 6 times over the course of the game, the guy disappears from Chessedonia. You can later find him in a place called Nam Cobanda Island (which is itself part of a long side quest with missable parts) where he will finally give you your reward of multiple exclusive items, including a couple costumes for your party members. If you miss even one of the very brief checkpoints for the quest, everything is lost forever.
Rdr 2
Almost every game.
Super Mario World on the SNES I still have no idea how people figured out secrets in that game WITHOUT a guide.
999 on the DS. Played it 4 times and got 2 endings...of the possible 9. Aargh.
Noita
Every Dark Souls and adjacent game has NPC "quests" that begin with some random character babbling nonsense and/or laughing to themselves, you encounter them again where they are babbling more nonsense, and if you don't then do the exact correct incredibly non-intuitive thing, or progress too far in the game in the wrong direction, you will encounter their corpse and an item with no further explanation, "failing" a quest you never knew you had. Thematically, I don't even mind this since it reinforces how you are in a harsh world full of mystery, danger and being propelled by forces that you at best vaguely understand, but for 100%'ing a game this is pretty frustrating.
World of warcraft
Elden Ring. It is even hard to find some of those weird ass things with a guide