As a stupid 7/8 year old I couldn't figure out how to catch pokemon on red/blue. I just figured that if I kept playing the game I'd eventually acquire pokemon(similar to the anime). I wound up playing the entire game with a charizard and nothing else.
It was brutal. Imagine my surprise when my friend showed me his team of 6 pokemon.
I think I may have gotten the Lapras as a gift? Or maybe it was a magikarp as a gift. I honestly can't remember, but I distinctly remember only having Charizard in the Elite 4.
I started playing Pokémon Red before I even knew how to read. I had no idea how to save and just assumed I would find a save point eventually like a bunch of other games. I have no idea how many times I dejectedly had to turn off the GameBoy halfway through Mt. Moon. I was convinced the save spot had to be on the other side.
I played Valhiem early in its launch for like two weeks on my own server. Once I finally got my friends to join they were dismayed as to why I had dozens of broken copper pick axes in storage boxes.
I had no idea you could repair things and kept mining barely more copper than was needed to make a copper pickaxe.
When I was a kid, I used to "play" Operation Flashpoint. I remember being too dumb to realise that the mouse was used to move the camera so it was basically me moving around with arrow keys and strafing to see a little to the left and right.
Ah yes, the transition point when video games moved to assuming people have a mouse. A similar thing happened to a lot of people when games assumed you have a soundcard.
I beat the original dark souls without realizing there were different weight thresholds for rolling. I fat rolled the entire game. Also didn't realize boosting vigor was important for hp. I did 99% strength/stamina and only as much dex as required to weild my weapons.
Xenoblade Chronicles 2. I was almost done with the game before I realized you leveled up in camps and inns. Game went from really hard to pushover easy in 5 minutes.
Really? I didn’t do it on purpose because I knew it’d fuck up my fun with the game. And I was right. Friends told me it was too easy for them and meanwhile I was micromanaging everything.
This had the neat effect that, once I had the perfect setup, I even finished the superbosses easily.
One of the first computer games I've ever played is StarCraft. For context, the game is about human battle with aliens similar to Starship Troopers. The game story has three acts, each from different point of views. It is supposed to start from human pov, and then alien pov, and lastly another alien species.
However due to English being my second language, I somehow started with the alien pov first. So my first impression of the game is that I play as a disgusting xenomorph alien species battling mankind. It's not until later that I realized I missed an entire human chapter of the game.
I played through a fair amount of Sniper Elite 2 before a friend saw some of my gameplay footage and was like "Damn dude, you don't even zoom your scope in?"
I played through more than half of Red Dead Redemption 2 before I accidentally discovered there was a thing called dead eye for shooting. For some reason the game just assumes that you know the concept exist, since it isn't featured in the early tutorial missions.
Not me, but a friend's mom, this was back in 97-98 and I had been playing the Diablo demo for hours and knew the mechanics quite good and the two first levels.
So I visited my friend and his mom had bought the game and was playing a lot, and she was quite deep down, I think like 15 levels down.. that's when I asked why she hasn't placed here last level up points.... Turns out, she hadn't placed any point at all 😱🤔🤣.
This is fairly recent, but I was playing through a good chunk of Zelda TotK after the training area without the glider. I thought going towards the castle was supposed to be towards the end, so I wound up crawling up the great plateau to the old temple of time hoping to find it.
I was trying to play without spoilers, but luckily a friend set me in the right direction
The glider placement was a lot less obvious in TOTK for sure.
Similarly, I was completely ignorant about what the chasms were for until 2 days in when my friend casually drops that she's been exploring [redacted because spoiler markdown isn't working for me] and I went "Wait, there's a WHAT?"
I'd missed a pretty critical side quest and I probably wouldn't have noticed if my friend hadn't told me.
Times like these are when our inclination to ignore quests for later really bites us in the behind...
When I finally decided to drop down and discovered the old mine with everything else that place has to offer (trying not to spoil), I was a bit pissed for not exploring earlier.
It also took me waaaay to long to realize the maps are "connected" and so are shrines/lightroots...
Just randomly noticed it after probably 50 hours in-game
In LOZ: Breath of the Wild, I didn't think to check if you could use the Sheikah Slate on Eventide Isle (where they take away all your items and clothes). I'm proud to say I beat that challenge with ZERO tools!
In totk I wanted to explore as early as possible so I didn't know the glider was still in the game until I got to a tower without it. I just figured with all the new travel options they figured it wasn't needed anymore
When I first got Pokémon Red, as a kid, I didn't know you were meant to use Flash to see in I think it was Mt.Moon? I just kept wandering around in the dark thinking it's a puzzle or something. Didn't find out about Flash until I think my third play through, when someone told me or I read it in a guide (I forget which).
Fun fact. You could talk to Pikachu when in the cave and he would burst some electricity for a short period so you could see the map for a little bit. Can make navigation a bit easier but still tedious.
Same here. But I can now recall the layout of the cave, items and trainers included, from memory anytime I want. A useless skill to have, but I’m sure it’ll come in handy someday.
Played far too much of Prey before realizing you can boost in zero G. I was wondering why people praised those sections so much when they were agonizingly slow.
I still don't understand how to play XCOM correctly and I have at least 50 hours in it. Just losing over and over again. Even Crusader Kings I win occasionally.
I don't quite recall what I did but on my first ever play through of final fantasy 7 I messed up in a way that would never allow me to breed chocoboos, or at least getting the one that allows you to get to the island where you can get knights of the round. I've finished the game without ever knowing what that summon looked like and it annoyed me greatly. I've replayed it years later and used guides to make sure I wouldn't miss out this time
Honestly, by now I've come to hate games where you can't figure out how to play them from the game itself. It seems like nowadays you can't play without a whole community figuring out what's currently the meta way to play.
That's the reason I couldn't get into PoE. I've seen many critics about Diablo 3 & 4 being too easy and forgivable, but I'm not 16 anymore and I want to enjoy games without having to absorb a whole wiki beforehand. I even played Torchlight 2 with a respec mod because I don't have time to fail a build.
As an 8 year old without much of a guide at all, I was a very proud Magician on MapleStory... one who dealt violence with her trusty magic wands and staves... physically.
I didn't understand what skills and hotkeys were until several years down the line when reading comprehension and life experience improved.
Not a game but some of the stories here remind me of the time I discovered I could draw stuff on the screen with Omicron Basic on my Atari ST and I painstakingly entered every square by hand dozens of times to make squares move across the screen...until days later I discovered the magic of the for loop. I must have been maybe 10 or so at the time.
I was playing ESO for some time, finding antiquities by simply trying to find the excavation site by sight. Little did I know that there was a collectible that you can equip that point to its exact location.
I played Just shapes and beats without knowing how to activate the boost thingy. After failing the tutorial and playing the party mode, I saw that the other people did the boost and I just searched and felt pretty dumb after realizing you can boost.
I changed my control scheme in rocket league like 1k hours in. Really needed the ability to boost while jumping among other things. It was a totally brutal transition, but I'm glad I did it.
There's this game called Arc Rise Fantasia for the Wii that's mechanically interesting with the worst English dub known to the English. I got far enough to where something happens to half the party and they're no longer usable. I had really only been leveling those characters and soft locked myself into a really hard boss fight. I was praying for a force-lose boss but all I got was the game over screen.
I didn't realize metal gear rising had a block/parry mechanic. The tutorial talks about countering enemy blows with your own barrage of attacks so I figured I just had to stagger them and steal health regularly. Monsoon is the first fight with no minions to heal off of, so I got stuck and finally checked online.
Temple Run. Didn't know there were power ups. Currently playing Nier Automata and I'm certain I'll finish that game and realize I've fucked something up.
Hahaha, this reminds me of my first play through of final fantasy 7 where I didn't quite understand you could change/upgrade weapons on your characters and I've went very far in what is essentially hard mode at some point, doing significantly less damage than I could.
I was a kid with poor reading comprehension I guess
Oh my first play through of FF7 I somehow managed to arrive at Demon Gate completely underpowered. I had no way to beat him because I simply hadn't levelled high enough or got enough good gear. It wasn't until lockdown that I actually went back and finished the whole game.
Recently played through entirety of the dragon age games on Gamepass. Was pretty excited to finally do this as it had been on my 'list of games to play' for years...
Rushed through and I think I missed a companion in at least two of the games. Maybe all three. Couldn't tell you who offhand, bit was pretty upset when I read about them later and they seemed cool.