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.
That poor charizard only knew HMs.
How did you get to Cinnabar Island? That poor Charizard!!
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.
And the old man part in Veridian city never clicked? Haha
I was a very, very stupid kid
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.
When I first played I didn’t know what Pokemon centers were. Everytime I needed to heal I ran all the way back to Mom’s house in palette town
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.
The game got a lot easier after that.
I’m surprised you lasted that first two weeks
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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.
Didn’t realize holding dodge would make me sprint in Elden Ring for like ten hours! oof
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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.
Went from hating antiquities to being a level 10 when I found that out.
Also having too many Sixth House tables, but hey, every apartment has one now?
Finding by sight sounds funny though!
Until you spend 30 minutes trying to find a digging site that you’ve walked by for 10 times already before you saw it in the corner of your eye / screen.
Bloodborne… totally ignored that the gun is there to parry attacks and stun enemies on my first playthrough attempt
oh damn, that’s one of the most important gameplay elements!
Though I remember Bloodborne being super obtuse about teaching mechanics
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…
I also ignored them for way too long.
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-gameThe game even gives you hints that the connection is there on the loading screens 😁
If you follow the side quest introducing that area, I think there’s an NPC that mentioned that tidbit. Though, my friend didn’t remember that until I brought it up too, so you may have just not encountered it.
Skyrim. Was well into the game and was walking everywhere instead of using fast travel.
That’s just dedication, right on!
Bruh… I’ve never used fast travel. I think I should start doing that.
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.
To this day RL is the only game I play with a claw grip for exactly this reason lol.
What did you map your boost and jump to?
I think by default boost is circle (PlayStation) and B (xbox) and jump is x (PlayStation) and A (xbox). I believe roll/slide is mapped to square (PlayStation) and x (xbox). I changed boost to square/x and the roll button to l1/lb. I kept jump the same. It makes it much easier to jump/boost/roll/accelerate all at the same time.
I still have jump on ps:x or Xbox:a, and mapped boost to rb/r1. Then drift and air roll on lb/l1
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.
I played Total War: Warhammer a distressingly long time before I found out you could pause
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.
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).
I did the same thing with Yellow!
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.
I didn’t realise the dot puzzles in Ruby/Sapphire were Braille. Spent weeks trying to reverse engineer a cypher.
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.
Path of exile. Had no idea about builds and tried to just play casually lol
2nd character went a lot more smoothly
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.
PoE is absolutely brutal, in so many ways. For me it’s one of the charms. But man once you figure out builds the game changes.
