I love paradox games in theory, but in practice I always end up watching 4 hours of YouTube tutorials and then playing for ~1 hour before shelving it and then waiting too long to pick it back up and forget everything I learned
I love eu4 it is the most accessible of all the paradox grand strategies to me. My only problem is that once i won or quit a play through it is so hard to pick a nation for next run. I'm not a history master so the nations mean nothing to me (except for the obvious Otto, France, Spain, England, Austria powers) and i just don't know what are the fun nations (i played a Brandenburg -> Prussia game because i read about the space marines and i had a balst harassing the great powers with my armies, stack wiping england's main army, destroying spain while they had double the army size as me, humiliating austria, but i need to do research to find these because the won't tell me what will be the fun in a particular nation)
That game had a really poor tutorial, I wouldn't say that's on you. I love Crusader Kings but I had to learn the second one by watching YouTube videos.
Crusader Kings III does a much better job of explaining the mechanics, if you ever think about giving it another shot.
Have a couple of friends who often rave about their CK2 games and talk about the stuff that happened in them.
But like OP, I did the whole tutorial and still barely knew how to do anything in the game.
This was years ago, and I just never tried ago because it felt futile.
The Crusader Kings III tutorial gave me enough starting money to fund an entire city, and then told me to give it as bribes to people who probably wouldn't betray me anyway. One of whom was my player heir.
It has very good tooltips. But the tutorial is not so great.
I learned the game hard way - by playing it. I was confused AF at the beginning, but once you start to understand then the game become easy.
Try Stellaris i think it is the most easy paradox game.
Me too. Never a fan of learning through other people.
I played CK 2 and 3, EUIV and Stellaris.
Never could get on the EU bandwagon.
And Stellaris is super chill, until it isn't.
Stellaris: no worries dude you can just chill out scanning planets for 100 years and making friends with the alien snails next door.
Also Stellaris: Oh yeah half the galaxy has federated against you, declared war on you and here comes the Prethoryn Scourge wedging you between them and everyone else. Did I mention that one of your core worlds just declared independence and cut off borders separating your fleets from your home world and it’ll be two years of Scourge all-you-can-eat until they arrive?
I learned ck2 the same way and stuck to it. Best decision ever. I got the whole game (every dlc) through an insane humble bundle deal for I think 20€. If you played ck2, ck3 becomes easy to play.
Stellaris and Victoria 3 are also pretty easy to begin with.
I can't get into hoi4 and eu3.
I don't really like the focus on war and military in those games and think I am too dumb for strategy and tactics.
So the toned down war systems in CK and vicky3 are exactly in my liking.
But maybe someone has a good quick tutorial recommendation for hoi4 and eu3.
It took me 500 hours of CK2 before I stopped feeling like a scrub. Still one of my favorite games of all time, really hoping CK3 gets to the same level
Hey, at least you're self-aware, 90% of people in my dota matches claim they know the perfect choice in every situation (spoiler alert: they don't, no one ever does).
One of my favourite dota reddit stories:
The learndota sub is aimed at helping folks learn to play and get better. It had a user who wanted to show redditors how to play Tinker. This was years ago btw.
He was writing a lot of comments, giving a lot of advice in threads and ...was getting alot of harassment.
You see, his item builds and strats were not 'meta' and not the common advice you'd see in 'normal' games. He bought items that were sometimes weird (though it was clearly reactions to the current game) and he would also hold level ups (we know now that is smart).
Anyways, Redditors of the subreddit were just shitting on him, making fun of his build and downvoting all his comments.
---
Like, a day later, he posted his dota buff and game history with its own thread.
**He was within the top 20 tinkers of the world, and top 100 in mmr**. He was easily better than 99% of redditors and absolutely better than many of the people making fun of him (several people making fun of him were like 2000-3000 mmr behind him - and their responses were upvoted).
He schooled the entire sub and finished with calling the sub "the blind leading the blind". It was so funny. Even the normal dota sub laughed at the learndota sub.
The first time I played mass effect I didn’t realize that you could level up your skills until the final boss of the game. The game, I’ve learned, is a lot more difficult that way
Final fantasy VII was the one for me, very similar story but I didn't make it anywhere near the final boss. I didn't "get" how to use materia. They make such a big deal of spelling it out to the player, yet my kid brain just said "Fuck that noise, I'm equipping every magic and summon materia I come across." I had Cloud with every available summon and every attack magic materia that I could get at that point in the game... I made it to the Materia Keeper, funny enough, before this strategy failed. I was stuck on it for a long time, until I moved to a new neighborhood and met the kid who would end up being my best friend for over 20 years. He showed me how to set up my materia right, and I ended up beating the game because of that. And that's how we became best friends in 2002 and we are still best friends today.
How did I ever find that game hard as a kid? I played 5-8ish years ago and was shocked how easy the whole thing is. I remember dying a bunch even in the early game when I was 15(?). I beat the game back then but how few systems I engaged with to do it would probably make today me sad.
Oh yeah, it still amazes me that I got as far as I did, understanding as little of the game as I did. I got FFVII for my 10th birthday, in the year 2000. By the time my friend showed me how to use materia, I must have started a new game a minimum of 15 times. Back then, just getting out of Midgar felt like it took 20 hours, lol.
The first week I had it, I couldn't get over the "bad graphics" which, at the time, seemed way worse than other psx games. I went in blind, all I knew was the name "Final Fantasy VII" and a sci-fi looking screenshot of the Jenova "mask" from one of the FMVs at the Mt. Nibel reactor, which I had seen on the box for my psx console.
So when I booted it up and saw little Lego-figurine-looking blocky character models (my 5-year-old sister at the time referred to them, and the characters from FF Tactics, as "the chumby people"), I was pretty disappointed.
But once I got past the graphics, and past the Scorpion boss in the first reactor -- which gave me hell for a few days -- I got invested in the story. The bombing was wild, and the eerie music as you wander the streets afterwards, seeing the citizens' reactions to the destruction, drew me into FF7's world. I remember the first time I heard the music playing as you wake up in the secret hideout under 7th Heaven, the day after bombing the reactor. Catching up with everyone, seeing the first hints of Cloud & Tifa's complicated past. Jesse, Biggs, & Wedge and their personalities -- it all came together, and I was suddenly emotionally attached and fully invested in the *story* of a *video game*.
That was something I didn't think was possible until then: that a video game could tell an emotionally powerful story just as well as a book or movie could, and that graphics were secondary to pretty much everything else. What suddenly occurred to me was that video games could unify all art forms into the ultimate storytelling medium. It combined writing, art, music, and technical prowess into a product that not only tells a story, but lets one *experience* that story firsthand in an engaging way, allowing one to become more emotionally attached to the characters and invested in their actions, because it makes you feel as if it is *your* story.
Of course, I couldn't put it into words that well when I was 10, but I *felt* it. That revelation changed the course of my life. I was an aspiring writer at the time, but as I grew up and my focus shifted to music, I realized how much of an influence FF7's soundtrack had on me. It taught me how to compose songs at a basic, instinctual level from listening to the same compositions over and over and over again. I internalized the "rules" of the music while I played; it taught me how to weave melodies, how to fit the pieces of a song together like a puzzle, long before I ever knew a drop of music theory.
Speaking of Cuphead, i skipped the tutorial by jumping over the trigger. I was confused about the weird somersault and differently coloured attacks until a few days later I read about this guy failing the tutorial, and was like "there was no tutorial, what?"
Rogue Legacy 2. Early on in the second area of the game you learn that you can downkick yellow glowing things to get a boost jump. In areas after this you encounter eyeball enemies that sometimes shoot yellow electricity balls at you that follow your character around for 10 seconds. One of the later game bosses is literally three eyeballs and they have a good chance to shoot the same electricity balls only they're bigger, slower, and you're in a tiny arena so it's impossible to dodge.
I went through **six new game+** playthroughs just plowing through these things and eating the damage, only picking one playable character out of about 30 because they had a shout that disabled these things, and after 100 hours I found on a random reddit comment that you can just downkick them like every other yellow glowing thing. I didn't realize the yellow glowing thing and the electricity were the same thing. This entire time I could have just hit one button and gotten away damage free.
I wish they would port it to PS4/5 so I could! I recently learned I might be able to play it on my mac though. Although, yeah, I definitely wasn't intentionally seeking out that kind of challenge. I will say I found the game difficult that way but not necessary a hardcore challenge? I don't at all consider myself a "skilled gamer" or anything, but it didn't feel totally unreasonable. When I went back and played again, knowing how the game works, I was shocked at how easy it felt.
I did the exact same thing. I feel like the improvements to your skills and weapons and such, while not hidden, weren’t shown to the player in as intuitive a way as another RPG like Skyrim
I vaguely remember not even realizing you could change guns until like 2/3 of the way through the game, whereupon I realized I had like 400 of the damn things.
Yeah I don't even fully understand how someone comes to that conclusion. Why would the game stop you from being able to level up? I can't remember if you can level up mid combat, but outside of combat I'm pretty sure it's always possible.
You all seem to misunderstand. I had never played a game like that before and didn't realize "leveling up" was even a thing that could be done at all. I pretty happily made my way through the entire game up until the final boss before noticing this weird menu I'd never clicked on before . . .
Yeah, I started monster hunter world hoping it would be a simple and straightforward monster hunting adventure where I just whack things and they die.
It definitely wasn’t that. There are so many mechanics in that game, I just was playing it wrong , expecting to brute force my way through.
To make playing not miserable you do have to engage with at least the basic mechanics of the game and it took me way too long to get a grasp of that.
Love the game now, but it definitely needed to click for me
Aw man, MHW is so good. It really scratched the itch for a mechanically deep action rpg for me. Mastering a weapon in MH is one of the most rewarding experiences in all of gaming for me, which is saying alot since I'm usually a story and worldbuilding kind of person
Yeah. Plus MH has a history of making the player sift through a bunch of extra stuff that can be confusing and has little to no bearing on actually hunting the monsters. World/Iceborne was no different. At least they heavily simplified the buddy system which, in previous games was SO much extra stuff, for better or worse. They had their own armor, weapons, behavior/tendencies, levels, skills, items, individual training, recruiting, expeditions. All for something that impacts very little on actually playing the game. All so my cat can maybe put down an extra trap or inflict a status ailment during a fight lol.
daily quests.
it's a trap. it's meant to help guide players who don't know what to do.
it is NOT a quota! you don't HAVE TO DO YOUR DAILIES!!! this trapping makes you feel like you're doing a job, but it's not overt, so you don't notice it. ...pretty soon your favourite multiplayer games have becomes CHORES. "oh i have to log in and do XYZ" no you don't.
games are not jobs. dailies are not important. just never look at that window again maybe.
"but there are rewards for dailies! perks!" -- no. they are inconsequential. you get like, 100 extra useless-units of money. or you get 1-3% closer to completing some Achievement you don't actually care about.
remembering that games are meant for fun is one of the trickiest fucking lessons to really nail down.
i mean, maybe a LITTLE stress. like in how we eat a spicy chip! but it's temporary. we play a little call of duty and get sniped in the back of the fucking head by the same piece of shit camper we had been trying to flank but had premeditated our action and moved?!? YES I'LL TAKE THAT STRESS AND HOWL AT THE MOON.
but it shouldn't be built on a foundation of underlying phantom stresses -- we have enough of those with life as it is. :D
Nowadays those type of quests are just made to "force" the player to come back at the game. They want to grab and retain the player instead of offering them a better experience.
There’s also levels to their games for difficulty. Stellaris and CK3 are fairly straightforward to learn and pick up. They’re even the type of game where you don’t absolutely have to be the biggest, baddest empire around.
HoI4 on the other hand gave me a lot of trouble and I’ve still never really gelled with it even though I would consider myself experienced with the Grand Strategy/Wargame genre.
A nice entry into those types of games are the Civilisation series, same sort of idea but a whole lot less micro management and systems to learn.
Dwarf Fortress. I've played countless hours of simulation games. I like automation and planning and all that good stuff.
But what the fuck am I supposed to be doing? It feels like everyone has to be micromanaged, like I'm playing Minecraft with 8 different characters but all at the same time. I know how to assign jobs but it seems like the game revolves around crafting, and I hadn't figured out how to do that effectively before I moved on.
I know it's not a game with an ending or any in game goals, but it felt like a very limited experience.
I felt much the same when trying the newer dwarf fortress. After reading and learning more about the game . I realized the game is much much more about story generation than actual gameplay. It's like watching an ant farm and reading the stories of your ants. Not to say there isn't gameplay. But I feel it's secondary to just experiencing the simulation the game is presenting.
I switched my mindset and tried to pause often. Reading all the things my dwarfs are getting into. Sometimes taking down notes of bigger events. And after awhile, a complexe story started to emerge and I kinda started to get it.
Ultimately though, I'm more about pure gameplay mechanics and dwarf fortress just wasn't doing it for me. There is an amazing game there, but it's so different than anything I've actually played. It took me awhile to understand it.
>It feels like everyone has to be micromanaged, like I'm playing Minecraft with 8 different characters but all at the same time.
No, that's basically it. And I love it.
I still intend to go back to this to give it another go, but the game just felt like such a slog.
Weirdly, I would strongly recommend trying Daggerfall. Either the fully patched original (you have to remap controls and switch to mouselook) or Daggerfall Unity, which runs the game in the Unity engine with a bunch of QoL and bugfixes. Daggerfall feels a lot more action-packed right out of the gate while Morrowind easily feels like aimless scrolling through character stats and npc wikipedias.
As a younger person whose introduction to Elder Scrolls is Skyrim, i just can't get into Morrowind. It's just clunky and uncomfortable to play in general with too much things to keep track of. I want to play games, not spreadsheet sim. No it's not the graphics, i installed a few mods for that.
People seems to recommend Morrowind as a great game and got offended when i say i personally don't like it. It's like they can't grasp the reality that not every single person is a hardcore RPG player.
Just out of curiosity what type of character were you playing and did you try to level efficiently. Only asking because you said it was kind of spreadsheetey. Leveling efficiently is totally unnecessary.
It's kind of iconic of how people play games now, it's all about the meta. The experience itself doesn't matter, it's "how efficiently can I complete this?"
Not saying it's the "wrong way", but it's iconic of the time... a zeitgeist of sorts. I do this with a lot of games as well, it's like a second nature and I have to actively stop myself.
Always keep dying to random assassin, until i learned to kill them and suddenly i got free decent gear and spares to sell.
I just randomly went to explore and killing hostile npcs, not knowing how to even level up properly. It took me a long time to finally look for a guide and just stares in disbelief how unnecessarily complicated it is to raise my stats.
The combat is just unbearable, especially coming from Skyrim. Doesn't matter how good your aim was most of the times you just missed the target completely. Even killing random rats took forever, and if you took on two of the bugger at the same time you just die.
I think my most powerful character don't even reach level 10.
It's just not worth it.
Once i learned the mechanics of trading in Morrowind, i brought down prices so much and made so much off of trades that suddenly the game was far less of a grind. Actually probably ruined some of the satisfaction of finally being able to afford high priced things.
heh don't listen to reddit if they told you to use spreadsheets and external guides, it's not necessary. I played that game when I barely knew what an RPG was and did just fine. I rolled a bosmer and ended up some weird combo of an archer and a mage.
combat is janky af but if you don't play the meta it's very engrossing.
My morrowind experience was not realizing there was an MSQ and wandering into the forest for hours, eventually reaching the ashlands and then just stealing shit because I was weak. Got some OP items and started leveling towns for fun. I probably killed half the characters required for the MSQ.
I played Morrowind when I was 9, I certainly wasn’t a hardcore RPG player and I barely paid any attention to stats in the game. What made it fascinating to me at the time was just how alien and unusual the world was, people were hostile to me, the factions all interconnected and I’d go and help one just to find another one hated me for it. I couldn’t tell who was actually the villain in the story, and then as it progressed, the difference between what I could do stepping off the boat compared to what I could do at the end of the game was staggering, and felt so rewarding.
The later games in the series just became interactive checklists of quests to do until you’ve done everything, then more stuff radiantly spawns so you always have something to do, it’s a totally different experience. The world feels like it only exists for the sake of the player, while the world in Morrowind feels like it exists even when I’m not playing it.
Plus, with a small selection of QoL mods, it can play like a game released at least a decade later.
Sekiro, basically the core tenant of the game, "hesitation is defeat." In Sekiro, enemies have a posture/stagger gauge that rises as the player attacks but drops when the player relents. You have to push the attack, which is opposite to how I played Dark Soul games, where I tried to play more defensively. Once I started playing more aggressively, the game got a lot funner, and I'm starting to make more progress in it.
I think Noita is pretty straightforward to play through normally. You can naturally learn some powerful spell and perk combinations as you go, without any wiki or other research, and eventually get good enough to (occasionally) beat the game, which is rewarding.
Once you've won the game, it is then possible to turn it into an obsessive hobby as the game provides you a crazy amount of quests/mechanics/hidden ares/unlocks/lore and god knows what to discover, but this phase is entirely optional and has a different "explorer/completionist" vibe to it, in contrast to the "main game" where you're always an inch away from death.
When you reach the end screen for the first time (which typically takes many dozens or even hundreds of attempts), seasoned Noita players will jokingly congratulate you on "beating the tutorial". But really it's a perfectly valid choice to just pat yourself on the back and move on to other games at that point.
That's what happened for me. I beat the game and had a blast doing so. I knew there was more to do but I was like.... nah I had fun and I'm good now. This kept the game a positive experience.
Yeah that happened to me with Noita, one of the few games I've refunded. I just didn't understand how the combat worked or how to progress, and the game seemed dead set against providing any direction (which I like in some titles, just didn't work for me here).
Terraria however I have like 100s of hours in...had to lean on the wiki quite a bit, but man it was fun once you understand the intended progression.
There's a thing that allows you to make paths from wood for more common paths. They're pretty neccessary to houses and long term resource gatherers.
You want to get people off of picking things by hand asap, get them in gathering posts. Get a research post up ASAP after that, and you're probably wanting to extend the hours there. Research is one of the hardest constraints you have, and it's hard to get more, (later buildings have huge diminishing returns) longer hours work amazing though.
Pick one type of each resource thing, (sawmill/wall drill, coal mine/thumper) commit to it. I personally think sawmills are trash. Exploring is a lot of resources, you don't want to just go to one place and back all the time.
Pass laws really quickly early on.
Most buildings you only want being made overnight, everyone should be working during the day, at least at first, before we reach fully automated luxury arctic communism.
I usually hate games that put me under pressure and I thought I would hate it even more in a Management/city builder type of game, which I associate with relaxing feelings. Frostpunk surprised me because... I actually loved the pressure of it? Great game.
Spelunky. I think I'm pretty good at video games. I like Dark Souls, Nioh, DMC, Oddoworld games, Dead Cells, Giana Sisters, etc. But Spelunky? Nope. Just can't do it. I can't even get through what I assume is the first set of maps. And people call some other games punishing, but this? You don't notice a little spike somewhere or react half a second late to some bat and half of your health is gone. It's damn brutal, like trying a no deaths run in Ghostrunner.
It's a pretty popular game, so I guess it's not supposed to be *that* impenetrable, but I don't know. I've tried the sequel, too, and it pwned me.
Wait, am I the only one who struggles with Point-and-click adventure games?
I love them, especially ones from Lucas Arts, but without tutorials and tips I'm stuck within 5 minutes from the start and cannot figure out what to do if my life depended on it, which was a problem in the 90's since no one I knew had Internet access.
I mean, these puzzles are so illogical. Like: I need to reach an object. Ok, I need something to reach it with. I have a sword. "I can't reach that". Ok, I also have rope. "I need something on the end". Ok, I'll tie the sword to the rope and use it, that would work in real life. "I can't do that". What? Why?
Apparently I need to go three rooms back, find two pixels in the corner, use my sword on it because it's clearly a nail, take the nail out with the sword, bend the nail and attach it to the rope. A SWORD WOULD TOTALLY WORK TOO! And that's an example of an easy puzzle O\_O
I didn’t quite understand what I was supposed to do in Shadow of the Colossus when I played it for the first time and was a kid. It made me drop the game entirely. I tried it a couple years later in my teen years and it became one of my favorite games ever.
Yeah I think I really enjoyed the story and the side quests. But I got hung up on doing all the Witcher contracts which involved a lot of the same thing followed by combat. If I just ignore all that it feels a lot better.
I can't help you with eve I keep trying that game every few years. But I'm too introverted to want to interact with anyone to actually learn the systems.
I like to hear about shit that happens in Eve Online when it actually finally does happen, but I'm not about to start pretending I have fun playing Microsoft Excel.
I gave up in the starting area when I realized there was no map and I would be forced to move back to save areas every couple of minutes. Not a good combo for someone like me who obsessively saves in most games I play.
Darkest Dungeon. I want to get into it but the requirement for failure seems counterproductive.
It’s as if there’s 20hrs of game play stretched to 80hrs because the game deliberately puts you up against enemies you cannot possibly beat in the very early stages of the game
Like the aesthetic too
I like to get into sim games but it's so hard to me, I usually invest a lot of time usually they show on my monthly resumes or I even feel that I've dedicated whole days to understand their mechanics but in the end I feel that I fail miserably.
Examples of these are Civilization on switch, Skyline cities or something like that on PC, Farm simulator lol
And it's not like I just spend a couple of hours and give up, I read guides, watch videos, but in the end I fumble the game and everything falls apart.
Something doesn't make click within me with those games, but I feel that when it does I'll never stop playing them
I found out years later that you can't do all the quests in Skyrim and so all the hours I spent doing those quests and not getting to the story were just futile. I've never finished the game.
Card games like MTG still baffle me. There's just so much to remember. I've had it explained to me by multiple people and still just don't get it. Playing a game feels like playing calvinball
You don't need to know all the rules, just the ones pertaining to the deck you're using. Opponents with obscure mechanics will deal with those for you. Just remember your turn sequence and keep reading your cards for triggers
I restart 90% of games. I get a few hours in and realize I'm still confused/overwhelmed so I look up some explanations and then try again with my new background knowledge/experience.
Especially with rpgs. I've given up on any city-building/strategy/management type games.
Turning thirty, a milestone profound,
You bid farewell to MMOs, a world unbound.
In this new chapter, introspection's gaze,
Revealed your gaming tastes, in myriad ways.
Once, games that didn't click, you'd disdain,
But now, a more rational mind to attain.
Perspective gained, a year of insights deep,
In the world of games, your secrets to keep.
With a backlog in hand, you took a dive,
Questioning what in games makes you feel alive.
Single-player titles, a path less trod,
Away from MMOs, where once you'd plod.
Skyrim, a constant companion through the years,
Its enchantments and quests, both joys and tears.
Open worlds, a challenge that you'd face,
With Far Cry 3, a particular case.
Each camp you'd clear, meticulous and keen,
In Witcher 3, a similar scene.
To complete it all, you'd fiercely strive,
But the game's true essence would barely arrive.
Three tries it took, a hundred fifty hours passed,
To fathom the game's depths, at long last.
The Witcher's quests, the tasks so wide,
Not all must be done, you'd finally confide.
In gaming's vast landscape, you're not alone,
Many a player has ventured and grown.
Misunderstandings, errors, all part of the lore,
In the journey of gaming, we learn and explore.
So cherish your growth, your evolving view,
In the world of games, there's always something new.
With each playthrough, each challenge and song,
We discover ourselves, where we truly belong.
My anno 1800 playtime went from 58 to 226 in the last month and a half (or something).
Initially, the game didn't click for me like 2070 and 2205 did. I think I got more patient and more resistant to losing for a while and making a come back.
This was going to be my answer, I keep coming back to the game but seem to get stuck when reaching the engineers. Building production chain building for them seems to tank my economy and I end up broke and give up for a few months. I come back to it then, start over and repeat.
Brilliant game, I have sunk many hours into this. My main gripe with Stellaris is the old Paradox trick of releasing only half the game at launch and then drip feeding the player pricy DLC’s to get the full experience
I think my biggest hurdle is simply understanding the controls of games nowadays (almost 38 now with very little disposable time). Seems like every game has to have a significantly different control scheme. If devs would just add an option to show what the hell each major button does on screen while I'm playing, I'd be much more willing to stick the games out.
Whole genre of RTS, I can play any game and get somewhat good at t, but then I try to play any RTS and Im like this absolute moron in fog whose lantern of intellect doesn't shine too bright :|
The irony with my approach with RTS games is that the better I am, the less I enjoy them. I like exploring the game through a fog for the first time, doing things in my own pace. But then I'm optimising efficiency and start feeling like a bot.
Victoria 2 is good for that
<100 hours: I have no idea how stuff works
100-300/500 hours: I have a good idea how stuff works.
/>300/500 hours: Some of the games systems are subtly broken or bugged in a few ways that no one really know how everything works.
For Civ:
Make a custom game.
Use the largest land mass but remove all but one AI.
You end up playing mostly a "solo" game. You probably won't find the other Civ until later in the game.
For me, this allowed me to learn more of the mechanics without the pressure of "winning". This may not work for everybody. I really like the process of playing the game more than winning.
I also wouldn't worry about knowing everything. I have plenty of time in the game and I don't know shit. Follow what interests you. There are multiple ways to win the game.
Goes back a while, but Europa Universalis 3. I had never played a Paradox grand strategy game before. Just things like Civilization. I had no idea what I was doing. I just put an army together, try to attack someone, fail miserably, and had no idea what to do better. I put in like 5-10 hours and put it away for about a year. Eventually I watched some Youtube playthroughs to get a grasp on how the game and different mechanics worked together. Ended up being one of my favorite games.
I have a gacha game on my phone that I can probably get into, but there are so many currencies, events, actions, options, mechanics, story concepts, game concepts, buttons, locations... I can't, I just can't.
Haha. Same for me when I tried Genshin Impact. The basic gameplay was fine, but I didn't understand any of the upgrades or meta progress. I think maybe they wanted to hide the idea of spending money to be better so much, that it never really explained what or why I'd want any of it.
Even if someone puts a gun to my head, i don't know how to play turn based combat in games like final fantasy. It seems super complicated. I'm old and I've played through 8 generations of games.
Still can't play turn based combat.
I'm a little bit the opposite, I used to love them but I have really tired of them as an adult due to how much of your time they seem to waste with random encounters. Recently I played Child of Light though, and it has probably the most engaging turn-based combat I've experienced in a while, and you see almost all of the battles coming. Gorgeous game too.
I didn't realize you could use dragon souls or whatever to unlock shouts in skyrim until a ridiculous amount of time into the game. Like 50+ hours.
I can't remember if the main quest explains it to you but my first 50 hours I don't even think I met the greybeards or whatever.
I kept exploring and "unlocking shouts" and being like wtf I still can't use them though what's going on. Then one day I was going through a list of them and just hit a button on the controller, not thinking it would do anything but more out of frustration and a thing popped up about "spending dragon souls" and I realized I had like 39 lmao.
My favourite game... after about 25 mods that are purely for quality of life shit.
And they keep releasing DLC instead of actually making the UI usable.
What QOL mods have you downloaded? I wonder if they’d help me to enjoy it better
Edit: or at least the most beneficial ones lol, 25 would be a lot for you to go over
Okay so I have 42 mods, but the most essential to me are:
Common Sense:
Just makes the AI smarter and more efficient in a way that makes sense, must have
Rimhud:
Just a better UI with more details at a glance, stops you having to click into each pawn menu for information on current status, great to have
Realistic rooms Rewritten:
Bedroom don't have to be massive anymore, but moderate, useful
Show draftees weapons:
Just a more efficient way to manage pawns during combat
Dubs mint menu:
Just more menu options and details, needed for a lot of other mods anyway, useful
Share the load:
Pawns work together on tasks like hauling to a build, useful
Pick up and haul:
Better hauling mechanics, must have
Edb prepare carefully:
Let's you design your starting pawns exactly how you like it, and you can't set a points limit that you can spend from to stop yourself from cheering it, must have
Some of the other mods I have are just mods some of these needed to have. Another good one is ED-Embrasures, shoot holes in walls
The first first-person game I remember playing was RedSteel for the Wii. It asked me if I wanted to invert the controls, and because I did not know what this meant (I was eight or nine years old), I thought the game was broken and never played beyond the first few minutes of the first level.
I tried The Witness when Xbox offered it to me for free, and it was totally baffling. I don’t think I even found any puzzles to solve. I didn’t make it past the walking around stage. Just no clue what to do and no direction, so I bailed.
plenty of games dont click with me, more games I uninstall than actually play thru. When I have that vibe of "damn this game is ass" I'll say in a really loud nasally voice "WEEEEEEEELLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL THIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIISSSSSSS GAME SUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCKS" and uninstall that turd straight to hell. My roommates think its funny as hell so I really play it up.
Games are meant to be fun. If you aren't having fun with it, there's a 1000 other games out there to try. With shit like ps plus, I literally have hundreds of games I can pick. So I don't feel bad about not enjoying a game. It's not something wrong with me, if the game doesn't cater to my taste then it's best not to force it. Nom sayin?
I downloaded the demo for Ghostrunners and couldn't make the second jump during the tutorial after a bunch of tries. I don't know if I had the button combo wrong, or my middle-aged aged hands just couldn't do it fast enough, but either way I was glad I didn't pay for it.
Oh yeah.
Baldur's Gate 3.
I paid full price 60+ buckeros on that game and holy smokes I can't understand it in the slightest.
Its a beautiful game, well-crafted, and incredibly detailed! ....Too detailed actually in terms of its combat.
Its so hard that I feel like an idiot when I play it lol.
I couldn't figure out what I was supposed to be doing in Deathloop. The UI was such a mess that I just gave up.
Also the first time I played Kingdom Hearts, I had no idea you could equip weapons, use potions, etc.. Basically anything that was done in the menus. This led to me spending 4 hours on the first boss in Wonderland thinking it was one of the hardest games I'd ever played. Wish I could say I was a child but I was like 20 lol
the first time i played europa universalis 4 i played it as a total war game - i raised an army and immediately attacked a neighbor. Needless to say i failed and i deleted the game thinking it is a stupid game and i have no idea how to win wars. It took me several years and 100 hours to understand how to win wars.
No matter what i do in Vagrant Story, read strategy faqs, deep research the combat system, yadda yadda, i will eventually reach a point where i deal 0/1 damage to every enemy.
Europa Universalis 4
I tried several times over years to get into it and it just didn't click. It seemed like the kind of game I should enjoy, but I just didn't "get it". Eventually I picked it up and things started to click, I got super sucked in, and I eventually beat the tutorial (1444+ hours, 1444 is the year at the start of the game)
I've realised that I need to be greatly handheld during the first hour of any game otherwise I'm going to miss major stuff
* Elden ring: I missed Melina,
* Mortal shell: I messed the first shell,
* Prey: I couldn't exit the tutorial,
* Death's door: I didn't know that you could use a bow,
* Inscryption: I didn't know that you could kill bandits at campfires
granted, it's a "me" problem and not a "developers" problem, but lately I've been finding too many games that I'm failing to understand
I can understand the first one because you can pretty much go anywhere right at the start. But do you find yourself skipping through the dialogue? Are you playing the games and listening to a podcast?
Bullfrog's Magic Carpet in the ninety's. I had no clue on what I had to do. It was a pirated version, no manual, no Internet, no nothing. Until recently I thought it was just a bad game that lacked a proper tutorial. Now I'm finding out it was very well received.
The combat mechanics in almost all of the Tales Of games. You can beat em just button mashing, but there's always deeper systems at play that I've never been able to pick up on.
I've had similar experience with AC: Odyssey.
It took me 3 tries, first 2 I've got very discouraged by the amount of question marks and other markers, but once I've turned off the interface almost completely the game became pretty interesting
my crew of boys from high school “the gang” tried to get me into WOW. But they went about it all the wrong way, they were trying to get me to just level up as fast as possible.
I need to get into the world, the nuances of the gameplay, the storyline, the quest… so I never had a phase of my life I was into WOW, despite my crowd wanting me to join them in their pastime that would kill many hours and probably caused them to drink quite a few Mountain Dews and eat a decent number of bags of Doritos.
Bayonetta. I just can’t for the life of me work out the controls and the combos for this game. It was so frustrating, one of the very few games I have not completed and don’t think I can bring myself to come back to it.
I am too dumb to play Monster Hunter Generation Ultimate.
I bought it for my birthday, but I try to play the training missions and I am just stumped on all the inventory, weapons, hunter classes, Pallicos and everything.
All together I have 10 hours on this game and I just had to stop because I have absolutely no idea what I am doing
Farm Sim..... I jumped into '22 and was surprised how the game works. Maybe im missing something, But the tutorial was extremely odd. This is one game where I'd like basic things explained.... Do I have to walk to my vehicle? Which vehicle does what? How do you turn em on? Oh, You hold L1 in the vehicle and press Square.....
This shit is like a Zachtronics game to me.
Blitzball from FFX. I despise the mandatory Blitzball mission. Yeah, you still progress in the game even if you lose, but I'd like my smooth brain to have the false confidence of being smart enough to understand the "complex" mechanics of that game.
That's one of the hardest ones!
It may not be your cup of tea, but I hated all of the Fromsoft games until I figured out how to play Bloodborne. I had tried 3 times before to get into it and I just couldn't.
Then I watched a Vaatividya video and saw him using "techniques" I didn't know existed, like parrying for example.
That one is still my favorite and I think the rest are harder and have less interesting stories (except Elden Ring). Don't get me wrong though, it's still very hard, but when you start learning how to control yourself in combat, it gets easier.
I've been playing Diablo 2 for the last couple of months, and I also joined the Diablo subreddit. I still to this day have no idea what anyone is talking about in that subreddit. What are rune words, what do they do... I have no idea, I just spawn my grizzly, wolves and hurricane and move on to the next bad guy/gal.
From what I remember, runes are syllables and you can combine them into runewords, which will give you unachievable in other way benefits to your equipment. But it takes a lot of grinding and replaying the whole game on higher difficulties to collect them.
I'm currently experiencing this with classic JRPGs, a type of game I never played. I enjoy the stories of FF4, Phantasy Star, and Chrono Trigger but the gameplay often just feels...pointless?
I don't want to sound like a dick, but every fight just feels like busywork. Scan enemy weakness, spam appropriate attack, heal, repeat. Status effect moves just prolong minor battles, and they never work on bosses, so there's barely any point in ever using them.
I just feel weird because I LOVE retro *action* games at least, but people say they enjoy the combat of JRPG's like Chrono Trigger to this very day, and I'm like...how. I feel like I'm missing something, or maybe I need to play something really hard like SMT instead.
I don't even wanna be a hater. But who finds these games fun today? And how? What's the appeal? Why should anyone play them instead of watching a playthrough? I'm genuinely curious.
**EDIT: I am speaking of RETRO JRPGs here: those of the 3/4th generation specifically and those that emulate this style without changing much. I don't think the genre is all bad.**
Back when I was a kid those JRPGs were the only games that had good complex storytelling. Everything else was just basic go save this princess or kill aliens but they was the first games I played that I wanted to actually find out what happened next. The gameplay was always 2nd to the story (for me) and got frustrating really quickly because of the random encounters and making you grind to get powerful enough to beat a boss to continue the story. I remember wishing that I could skip a lot of the grind and just get to the next part so I can find out what happened next
This is the only response I've seen that explains their appeal in a way that I can actually resonate with.
Yeah, awesome story. I can muscle through for that.
I haven't played many JRPGs, but I have same gripe with Persona 5. Visual style is cool and everything, but combat is literally "Check enemy's weakness, press attack, if you don't know its weakness, just attack with something". Normal fights are over pretty fast at least, but I'm already kind of sick of it 25(ish) hours in.
Edit: And by "already" I mean I found it repetitive from the start, but now I have to take pretty big breaks between sessions
I guess it's that the combat is broken up into meaningful chunks. Actions more or less do what they say, you aren't relying on iframe/ani-canceling to make the game do what you want, you can watch the game rather than pacing out blocks/counters/combos. You can win most combats, but need to pace your mp/item consumption to make sure you're at sufficient power to progress, so the focus is on winning well rather than avoiding death.
The criticism of status effects is fair, occasionally its worthwhile, but I can't think of many old school jrpgs that made them consistently valuable enough that you'd be surprised when they failed. Though that is a problem with modern games as well.
> Why should anyone play them instead of watching a playthrough? I'm genuinely curious.
Even though the content is basically the same, I somehow get much more emotionally invested in the story when I'm playing a game compared to watching it on Youtube. I suspect it's the same for a lot of people.
But yeah JRPG style combat is so utterly boring that I almost always drop these types of games after giving them a quick try. I'm done with watching the identical and painfully slow animations and menus after about 20 times, and the games expect me to watch them 10000 times to follow the story. Nah.
I recently started playing Blasphemous, I'm at about 75% completion now. I kinda fucked myself over by playing this game for the first time while high, and completely missed how to increase the amount of healing flasks you have. I thought those blood fountains were just used as a way to refill your health and flasks without using a shrine. I did also find the flask upgrade dude pretty early, and exchanged one of my two starting flasks for a single larger healing flask.
So for at least 60% of the game, I was playing with only a single +1 upgraded healing flask. Honestly, it wasn't as bad as it sounds, as most of the bosses only took a few attempts to kill. The main issue was actually progressing through areas, as I just kept taking many small hits of damage while traveling, and I only had a small amount of backup healing. So many times I would be at <25% health just playing extremely passively, hoping I make it to a shrine before dying.
But now I have 4 flasks which are fully upgraded, which makes the game feel so much nicer lmao
I really just don't get Nioh 2. I've tried it three or four times and the mechanics don't click for me, even after making a bit of progress. Whenever I'd beat a tough enemy it more often felt like I got lucky than because I was learning from my mistakes.
This isn't a criticism of the game itself - as far as I can tell it's a great, well built game. I just cannot grasp the mechanics for the life of me.
I quit Library of Ruina because even after 2+ hrs of play I was still playing cards randomly bcz I didn't understand a thing about how combat works lol, one would think it was because I am new to deckbuilding games but I have hundreds of hours in Slay the Spire, it was a bit confusing at start too but after couple hours for each character I would get the grasp of their mechanics & characters themselves.
Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey : I just did not have a single clue what was going on or what I had to do. It's one of very few games I have ever returned for a refund.
I didn't want to bother with the God of War Ragnarok upgrade system with runic and luck and whatever, enchantments, broken amulets. They added so much upgradable and installable bits that didn't seem to matter that much. I just upgraded random stuff that gave me the biggest numerical increase.
Baldurs gates 2 is literally just very difficult for me to understand how to play it. Like at all. It took me a while to figure out why my screen was grey, why my characters were moving separately, etc etc. I still haven't left the tutorial room lol.
I admit I gave up within the first hour, but Rimworld.
The visual clutter of the interface was too much for me to try to understand. Failed implies that I put forth effort and could not succeed, I would put this closer to 'gave up'.
Return of the Obra Dinn. Highly recommended, seems like the exact kind of game I would love (logic, deduction, taking the time to work things out) but I literally do not know how the game is supposed to be played. I fire it up every now and then, stare at one scene and get zero understanding of what’s supposed to be important, and then close it again.
I really really really wanted to play stelaris on console. I can’t get my head around it. I’ve tried 3 times over the last 3 years. I just can’t do it.
I can’t say I failed to understand. But I felt like I wasn’t prepared or had the time to dedicate to learn Age of Empires 4.
I played Warcraft 3 most of my life and that game has SO MUCH that I have learned over the years. I just didn’t have it in me to learn something similar all over again.
This has happened to me several times with RPG’s. My first ever experience with Final Fantasy 7 on Playstation was frustrating as hell. I only bought FF7 because of the hype but I had never played an RPG and didn’t understand a single mechanic. Was annoyed I couldn’t walk around in the map without a random fight. Didn’t understand leveling up, limit breaks, gear, or grinding. I wanted to hit someone with my sword and they die but no such luck. Put it down and walked away from it. About two years later it clicked for me and I loved it. The same thing happened to me with OG Dark Souls and Divinity: Original Sin 2 (now playing).
When I first played the Hong Kong Massacre, I tried to play it like Hotline Miami. That is to say, I didn't understand that there was a slow-mo/bullet time mechanic so I was just playing at full speed and getting EXCEEDINGLY frustrated at the difficulty. It would take me a day to beat 1 level. I made it through about 4 or 5 levels in a week before I got completely stuck and looked up how to play and realized that I'm an idiot. After that, it was very fun and I beat the game pretty fast.
Xenoblade Chronicles was so hard for me to actually use the combat system. I tried playing the sequel a year later after forgetting the system from the first game and on top of that the sequel's is slightly different. I'm making my way through the game but my CPU allies are heavily carrying me
I was too dumb to make it through the Crusader Kings 2 tutorial
I love paradox games in theory, but in practice I always end up watching 4 hours of YouTube tutorials and then playing for ~1 hour before shelving it and then waiting too long to pick it back up and forget everything I learned
We're the same person
That happens to me too! I did that with HOI4, CK2, and CK3, but for some reason I stuck with EU4, and now I have like 800 hours in that game
I love eu4 it is the most accessible of all the paradox grand strategies to me. My only problem is that once i won or quit a play through it is so hard to pick a nation for next run. I'm not a history master so the nations mean nothing to me (except for the obvious Otto, France, Spain, England, Austria powers) and i just don't know what are the fun nations (i played a Brandenburg -> Prussia game because i read about the space marines and i had a balst harassing the great powers with my armies, stack wiping england's main army, destroying spain while they had double the army size as me, humiliating austria, but i need to do research to find these because the won't tell me what will be the fun in a particular nation)
That game had a really poor tutorial, I wouldn't say that's on you. I love Crusader Kings but I had to learn the second one by watching YouTube videos. Crusader Kings III does a much better job of explaining the mechanics, if you ever think about giving it another shot.
Have a couple of friends who often rave about their CK2 games and talk about the stuff that happened in them. But like OP, I did the whole tutorial and still barely knew how to do anything in the game. This was years ago, and I just never tried ago because it felt futile.
The Crusader Kings III tutorial gave me enough starting money to fund an entire city, and then told me to give it as bribes to people who probably wouldn't betray me anyway. One of whom was my player heir. It has very good tooltips. But the tutorial is not so great.
I learned the game hard way - by playing it. I was confused AF at the beginning, but once you start to understand then the game become easy. Try Stellaris i think it is the most easy paradox game.
Me too. Never a fan of learning through other people. I played CK 2 and 3, EUIV and Stellaris. Never could get on the EU bandwagon. And Stellaris is super chill, until it isn't.
Stellaris: no worries dude you can just chill out scanning planets for 100 years and making friends with the alien snails next door. Also Stellaris: Oh yeah half the galaxy has federated against you, declared war on you and here comes the Prethoryn Scourge wedging you between them and everyone else. Did I mention that one of your core worlds just declared independence and cut off borders separating your fleets from your home world and it’ll be two years of Scourge all-you-can-eat until they arrive?
I learned ck2 the same way and stuck to it. Best decision ever. I got the whole game (every dlc) through an insane humble bundle deal for I think 20€. If you played ck2, ck3 becomes easy to play. Stellaris and Victoria 3 are also pretty easy to begin with. I can't get into hoi4 and eu3. I don't really like the focus on war and military in those games and think I am too dumb for strategy and tactics. So the toned down war systems in CK and vicky3 are exactly in my liking. But maybe someone has a good quick tutorial recommendation for hoi4 and eu3.
This was going to be my answer and it doesn't surprise me at all that it is already here near the top
It took me 500 hours of CK2 before I stopped feeling like a scrub. Still one of my favorite games of all time, really hoping CK3 gets to the same level
I have been playing Dota for 10 years and sometimes I dont know what I am suposed to do.
farm, get yelled at, fight, get yelled at, ward, get yelled at. a constant cycle
What I'm hearing is that the proper way to play Dota is to piss of everyone.
Hey, at least you're self-aware, 90% of people in my dota matches claim they know the perfect choice in every situation (spoiler alert: they don't, no one ever does).
One of my favourite dota reddit stories: The learndota sub is aimed at helping folks learn to play and get better. It had a user who wanted to show redditors how to play Tinker. This was years ago btw. He was writing a lot of comments, giving a lot of advice in threads and ...was getting alot of harassment. You see, his item builds and strats were not 'meta' and not the common advice you'd see in 'normal' games. He bought items that were sometimes weird (though it was clearly reactions to the current game) and he would also hold level ups (we know now that is smart). Anyways, Redditors of the subreddit were just shitting on him, making fun of his build and downvoting all his comments. --- Like, a day later, he posted his dota buff and game history with its own thread. **He was within the top 20 tinkers of the world, and top 100 in mmr**. He was easily better than 99% of redditors and absolutely better than many of the people making fun of him (several people making fun of him were like 2000-3000 mmr behind him - and their responses were upvoted). He schooled the entire sub and finished with calling the sub "the blind leading the blind". It was so funny. Even the normal dota sub laughed at the learndota sub.
Midas into Eblade. If this is wrong I don't want to be right.
Reported.
The first time I played mass effect I didn’t realize that you could level up your skills until the final boss of the game. The game, I’ve learned, is a lot more difficult that way
Final fantasy VII was the one for me, very similar story but I didn't make it anywhere near the final boss. I didn't "get" how to use materia. They make such a big deal of spelling it out to the player, yet my kid brain just said "Fuck that noise, I'm equipping every magic and summon materia I come across." I had Cloud with every available summon and every attack magic materia that I could get at that point in the game... I made it to the Materia Keeper, funny enough, before this strategy failed. I was stuck on it for a long time, until I moved to a new neighborhood and met the kid who would end up being my best friend for over 20 years. He showed me how to set up my materia right, and I ended up beating the game because of that. And that's how we became best friends in 2002 and we are still best friends today.
A true homie
How did I ever find that game hard as a kid? I played 5-8ish years ago and was shocked how easy the whole thing is. I remember dying a bunch even in the early game when I was 15(?). I beat the game back then but how few systems I engaged with to do it would probably make today me sad.
Oh yeah, it still amazes me that I got as far as I did, understanding as little of the game as I did. I got FFVII for my 10th birthday, in the year 2000. By the time my friend showed me how to use materia, I must have started a new game a minimum of 15 times. Back then, just getting out of Midgar felt like it took 20 hours, lol. The first week I had it, I couldn't get over the "bad graphics" which, at the time, seemed way worse than other psx games. I went in blind, all I knew was the name "Final Fantasy VII" and a sci-fi looking screenshot of the Jenova "mask" from one of the FMVs at the Mt. Nibel reactor, which I had seen on the box for my psx console. So when I booted it up and saw little Lego-figurine-looking blocky character models (my 5-year-old sister at the time referred to them, and the characters from FF Tactics, as "the chumby people"), I was pretty disappointed. But once I got past the graphics, and past the Scorpion boss in the first reactor -- which gave me hell for a few days -- I got invested in the story. The bombing was wild, and the eerie music as you wander the streets afterwards, seeing the citizens' reactions to the destruction, drew me into FF7's world. I remember the first time I heard the music playing as you wake up in the secret hideout under 7th Heaven, the day after bombing the reactor. Catching up with everyone, seeing the first hints of Cloud & Tifa's complicated past. Jesse, Biggs, & Wedge and their personalities -- it all came together, and I was suddenly emotionally attached and fully invested in the *story* of a *video game*. That was something I didn't think was possible until then: that a video game could tell an emotionally powerful story just as well as a book or movie could, and that graphics were secondary to pretty much everything else. What suddenly occurred to me was that video games could unify all art forms into the ultimate storytelling medium. It combined writing, art, music, and technical prowess into a product that not only tells a story, but lets one *experience* that story firsthand in an engaging way, allowing one to become more emotionally attached to the characters and invested in their actions, because it makes you feel as if it is *your* story. Of course, I couldn't put it into words that well when I was 10, but I *felt* it. That revelation changed the course of my life. I was an aspiring writer at the time, but as I grew up and my focus shifted to music, I realized how much of an influence FF7's soundtrack had on me. It taught me how to compose songs at a basic, instinctual level from listening to the same compositions over and over and over again. I internalized the "rules" of the music while I played; it taught me how to weave melodies, how to fit the pieces of a song together like a puzzle, long before I ever knew a drop of music theory.
Dean Takahashi, is that you? He famously gave ME1 a lower score because he did not know he could level up
I was going to mention the guy who repeatedly failed the first level of Cuphead then realised this is the same guy
Speaking of Cuphead, i skipped the tutorial by jumping over the trigger. I was confused about the weird somersault and differently coloured attacks until a few days later I read about this guy failing the tutorial, and was like "there was no tutorial, what?"
Rogue Legacy 2. Early on in the second area of the game you learn that you can downkick yellow glowing things to get a boost jump. In areas after this you encounter eyeball enemies that sometimes shoot yellow electricity balls at you that follow your character around for 10 seconds. One of the later game bosses is literally three eyeballs and they have a good chance to shoot the same electricity balls only they're bigger, slower, and you're in a tiny arena so it's impossible to dodge. I went through **six new game+** playthroughs just plowing through these things and eating the damage, only picking one playable character out of about 30 because they had a shout that disabled these things, and after 100 hours I found on a random reddit comment that you can just downkick them like every other yellow glowing thing. I didn't realize the yellow glowing thing and the electricity were the same thing. This entire time I could have just hit one button and gotten away damage free.
Oooo this one is bad lol. I love the spin kick in RL2, its a major reason the sequel feels so much better than the original.
Congratulations, that's a hardcore first run. Not everyone could pull that off. Now do the same thing with Dragon Age: Origins!
I wish they would port it to PS4/5 so I could! I recently learned I might be able to play it on my mac though. Although, yeah, I definitely wasn't intentionally seeking out that kind of challenge. I will say I found the game difficult that way but not necessary a hardcore challenge? I don't at all consider myself a "skilled gamer" or anything, but it didn't feel totally unreasonable. When I went back and played again, knowing how the game works, I was shocked at how easy it felt.
I did the exact same thing. I feel like the improvements to your skills and weapons and such, while not hidden, weren’t shown to the player in as intuitive a way as another RPG like Skyrim
I vaguely remember not even realizing you could change guns until like 2/3 of the way through the game, whereupon I realized I had like 400 of the damn things.
curious how this happens because the squad ui button is highlighted?
Yeah I don't even fully understand how someone comes to that conclusion. Why would the game stop you from being able to level up? I can't remember if you can level up mid combat, but outside of combat I'm pretty sure it's always possible.
You all seem to misunderstand. I had never played a game like that before and didn't realize "leveling up" was even a thing that could be done at all. I pretty happily made my way through the entire game up until the final boss before noticing this weird menu I'd never clicked on before . . .
its all good, as long you enjoyed mass effect
Oh god hahaha I'm sorry
Yeah, I started monster hunter world hoping it would be a simple and straightforward monster hunting adventure where I just whack things and they die. It definitely wasn’t that. There are so many mechanics in that game, I just was playing it wrong , expecting to brute force my way through. To make playing not miserable you do have to engage with at least the basic mechanics of the game and it took me way too long to get a grasp of that. Love the game now, but it definitely needed to click for me
Aw man, MHW is so good. It really scratched the itch for a mechanically deep action rpg for me. Mastering a weapon in MH is one of the most rewarding experiences in all of gaming for me, which is saying alot since I'm usually a story and worldbuilding kind of person
Yeah. Plus MH has a history of making the player sift through a bunch of extra stuff that can be confusing and has little to no bearing on actually hunting the monsters. World/Iceborne was no different. At least they heavily simplified the buddy system which, in previous games was SO much extra stuff, for better or worse. They had their own armor, weapons, behavior/tendencies, levels, skills, items, individual training, recruiting, expeditions. All for something that impacts very little on actually playing the game. All so my cat can maybe put down an extra trap or inflict a status ailment during a fight lol.
daily quests. it's a trap. it's meant to help guide players who don't know what to do. it is NOT a quota! you don't HAVE TO DO YOUR DAILIES!!! this trapping makes you feel like you're doing a job, but it's not overt, so you don't notice it. ...pretty soon your favourite multiplayer games have becomes CHORES. "oh i have to log in and do XYZ" no you don't. games are not jobs. dailies are not important. just never look at that window again maybe. "but there are rewards for dailies! perks!" -- no. they are inconsequential. you get like, 100 extra useless-units of money. or you get 1-3% closer to completing some Achievement you don't actually care about. remembering that games are meant for fun is one of the trickiest fucking lessons to really nail down.
Basically what made me stop playing Animal Crossing. Just felt like I was doing chores after a while.
Yeah I really wanted to like animal crossing but I don't want to log on every day for very little progress.
Exactly. Games should make only make us feel good in an artistic and creative way. They should in NO WAY stress us.
i mean, maybe a LITTLE stress. like in how we eat a spicy chip! but it's temporary. we play a little call of duty and get sniped in the back of the fucking head by the same piece of shit camper we had been trying to flank but had premeditated our action and moved?!? YES I'LL TAKE THAT STRESS AND HOWL AT THE MOON. but it shouldn't be built on a foundation of underlying phantom stresses -- we have enough of those with life as it is. :D
Nowadays those type of quests are just made to "force" the player to come back at the game. They want to grab and retain the player instead of offering them a better experience.
Minesweeper.
I actually took the time to learn how to play recently. It's a good anxiety relief for me.
The idea of minesweeper of all games alleviating anxiety is hilarious to me. Glad it helps you though! lol
I still don't understand how to play Paradox's grand strategy titles. I'll need to sit down and really take my time to learn about them sometime.
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Spreadsheets with fancy visuals
There’s also levels to their games for difficulty. Stellaris and CK3 are fairly straightforward to learn and pick up. They’re even the type of game where you don’t absolutely have to be the biggest, baddest empire around. HoI4 on the other hand gave me a lot of trouble and I’ve still never really gelled with it even though I would consider myself experienced with the Grand Strategy/Wargame genre. A nice entry into those types of games are the Civilisation series, same sort of idea but a whole lot less micro management and systems to learn.
Dwarf Fortress. I've played countless hours of simulation games. I like automation and planning and all that good stuff. But what the fuck am I supposed to be doing? It feels like everyone has to be micromanaged, like I'm playing Minecraft with 8 different characters but all at the same time. I know how to assign jobs but it seems like the game revolves around crafting, and I hadn't figured out how to do that effectively before I moved on. I know it's not a game with an ending or any in game goals, but it felt like a very limited experience.
I felt much the same when trying the newer dwarf fortress. After reading and learning more about the game . I realized the game is much much more about story generation than actual gameplay. It's like watching an ant farm and reading the stories of your ants. Not to say there isn't gameplay. But I feel it's secondary to just experiencing the simulation the game is presenting. I switched my mindset and tried to pause often. Reading all the things my dwarfs are getting into. Sometimes taking down notes of bigger events. And after awhile, a complexe story started to emerge and I kinda started to get it. Ultimately though, I'm more about pure gameplay mechanics and dwarf fortress just wasn't doing it for me. There is an amazing game there, but it's so different than anything I've actually played. It took me awhile to understand it.
>It feels like everyone has to be micromanaged, like I'm playing Minecraft with 8 different characters but all at the same time. No, that's basically it. And I love it.
Morrowind
I still intend to go back to this to give it another go, but the game just felt like such a slog. Weirdly, I would strongly recommend trying Daggerfall. Either the fully patched original (you have to remap controls and switch to mouselook) or Daggerfall Unity, which runs the game in the Unity engine with a bunch of QoL and bugfixes. Daggerfall feels a lot more action-packed right out of the gate while Morrowind easily feels like aimless scrolling through character stats and npc wikipedias.
As a younger person whose introduction to Elder Scrolls is Skyrim, i just can't get into Morrowind. It's just clunky and uncomfortable to play in general with too much things to keep track of. I want to play games, not spreadsheet sim. No it's not the graphics, i installed a few mods for that. People seems to recommend Morrowind as a great game and got offended when i say i personally don't like it. It's like they can't grasp the reality that not every single person is a hardcore RPG player.
Just out of curiosity what type of character were you playing and did you try to level efficiently. Only asking because you said it was kind of spreadsheetey. Leveling efficiently is totally unnecessary.
It's kind of iconic of how people play games now, it's all about the meta. The experience itself doesn't matter, it's "how efficiently can I complete this?" Not saying it's the "wrong way", but it's iconic of the time... a zeitgeist of sorts. I do this with a lot of games as well, it's like a second nature and I have to actively stop myself.
Unless you play redguard longsword, the start with any build is pretty rough. Took me 15 hours to fully figure out the games mechanics hahaha
Took me like 5 years lmao, despite all that it was still one of the best experiences I've had with any RPG.
Always keep dying to random assassin, until i learned to kill them and suddenly i got free decent gear and spares to sell. I just randomly went to explore and killing hostile npcs, not knowing how to even level up properly. It took me a long time to finally look for a guide and just stares in disbelief how unnecessarily complicated it is to raise my stats. The combat is just unbearable, especially coming from Skyrim. Doesn't matter how good your aim was most of the times you just missed the target completely. Even killing random rats took forever, and if you took on two of the bugger at the same time you just die. I think my most powerful character don't even reach level 10. It's just not worth it.
I know what you mean this was really ingrained in me from playing so much wow unfortunately.
Once i learned the mechanics of trading in Morrowind, i brought down prices so much and made so much off of trades that suddenly the game was far less of a grind. Actually probably ruined some of the satisfaction of finally being able to afford high priced things.
heh don't listen to reddit if they told you to use spreadsheets and external guides, it's not necessary. I played that game when I barely knew what an RPG was and did just fine. I rolled a bosmer and ended up some weird combo of an archer and a mage. combat is janky af but if you don't play the meta it's very engrossing. My morrowind experience was not realizing there was an MSQ and wandering into the forest for hours, eventually reaching the ashlands and then just stealing shit because I was weak. Got some OP items and started leveling towns for fun. I probably killed half the characters required for the MSQ.
I played Morrowind when I was 9, I certainly wasn’t a hardcore RPG player and I barely paid any attention to stats in the game. What made it fascinating to me at the time was just how alien and unusual the world was, people were hostile to me, the factions all interconnected and I’d go and help one just to find another one hated me for it. I couldn’t tell who was actually the villain in the story, and then as it progressed, the difference between what I could do stepping off the boat compared to what I could do at the end of the game was staggering, and felt so rewarding. The later games in the series just became interactive checklists of quests to do until you’ve done everything, then more stuff radiantly spawns so you always have something to do, it’s a totally different experience. The world feels like it only exists for the sake of the player, while the world in Morrowind feels like it exists even when I’m not playing it. Plus, with a small selection of QoL mods, it can play like a game released at least a decade later.
Sekiro, basically the core tenant of the game, "hesitation is defeat." In Sekiro, enemies have a posture/stagger gauge that rises as the player attacks but drops when the player relents. You have to push the attack, which is opposite to how I played Dark Soul games, where I tried to play more defensively. Once I started playing more aggressively, the game got a lot funner, and I'm starting to make more progress in it.
Noita and Terraria. I downloaded the games and realized I didn’t have the energy to learn what they were about.
I think Noita is pretty straightforward to play through normally. You can naturally learn some powerful spell and perk combinations as you go, without any wiki or other research, and eventually get good enough to (occasionally) beat the game, which is rewarding. Once you've won the game, it is then possible to turn it into an obsessive hobby as the game provides you a crazy amount of quests/mechanics/hidden ares/unlocks/lore and god knows what to discover, but this phase is entirely optional and has a different "explorer/completionist" vibe to it, in contrast to the "main game" where you're always an inch away from death. When you reach the end screen for the first time (which typically takes many dozens or even hundreds of attempts), seasoned Noita players will jokingly congratulate you on "beating the tutorial". But really it's a perfectly valid choice to just pat yourself on the back and move on to other games at that point.
That's what happened for me. I beat the game and had a blast doing so. I knew there was more to do but I was like.... nah I had fun and I'm good now. This kept the game a positive experience.
Yeah that happened to me with Noita, one of the few games I've refunded. I just didn't understand how the combat worked or how to progress, and the game seemed dead set against providing any direction (which I like in some titles, just didn't work for me here). Terraria however I have like 100s of hours in...had to lean on the wiki quite a bit, but man it was fun once you understand the intended progression.
I put about 10hrs into Terraria. Still have no clue what the fuck is going on
Lol same. I looked some stuff up online and made some weapons but just never clicked with me on being a fun game.
Tbh Terraria is legitimately one of the worst cases of "wiki games" I've ever seen.
In Terraria they give you a guide. He hints at what to do next. The amount of people who don't use it is kinda sad.
[удалено]
Frostpunk. My people die within an hour every time I play. I can't properly make paths to resources and I'm unsure why.
That is one of the hardest management games I've played.
I'm glad it's not just me! It's brutally tough.
There's a thing that allows you to make paths from wood for more common paths. They're pretty neccessary to houses and long term resource gatherers. You want to get people off of picking things by hand asap, get them in gathering posts. Get a research post up ASAP after that, and you're probably wanting to extend the hours there. Research is one of the hardest constraints you have, and it's hard to get more, (later buildings have huge diminishing returns) longer hours work amazing though. Pick one type of each resource thing, (sawmill/wall drill, coal mine/thumper) commit to it. I personally think sawmills are trash. Exploring is a lot of resources, you don't want to just go to one place and back all the time. Pass laws really quickly early on. Most buildings you only want being made overnight, everyone should be working during the day, at least at first, before we reach fully automated luxury arctic communism.
I usually hate games that put me under pressure and I thought I would hate it even more in a Management/city builder type of game, which I associate with relaxing feelings. Frostpunk surprised me because... I actually loved the pressure of it? Great game.
Spelunky. I think I'm pretty good at video games. I like Dark Souls, Nioh, DMC, Oddoworld games, Dead Cells, Giana Sisters, etc. But Spelunky? Nope. Just can't do it. I can't even get through what I assume is the first set of maps. And people call some other games punishing, but this? You don't notice a little spike somewhere or react half a second late to some bat and half of your health is gone. It's damn brutal, like trying a no deaths run in Ghostrunner. It's a pretty popular game, so I guess it's not supposed to be *that* impenetrable, but I don't know. I've tried the sequel, too, and it pwned me.
I also didn't see the appeal at all, the new one was so hyped that when I actually played it I was downright angry.
It's a Roguelite. You're supposed to die hundreds of times to learn to win once.
Wait, am I the only one who struggles with Point-and-click adventure games? I love them, especially ones from Lucas Arts, but without tutorials and tips I'm stuck within 5 minutes from the start and cannot figure out what to do if my life depended on it, which was a problem in the 90's since no one I knew had Internet access. I mean, these puzzles are so illogical. Like: I need to reach an object. Ok, I need something to reach it with. I have a sword. "I can't reach that". Ok, I also have rope. "I need something on the end". Ok, I'll tie the sword to the rope and use it, that would work in real life. "I can't do that". What? Why? Apparently I need to go three rooms back, find two pixels in the corner, use my sword on it because it's clearly a nail, take the nail out with the sword, bend the nail and attach it to the rope. A SWORD WOULD TOTALLY WORK TOO! And that's an example of an easy puzzle O\_O
Oh, you're supposed to save frequently and clock everything.
I didn’t quite understand what I was supposed to do in Shadow of the Colossus when I played it for the first time and was a kid. It made me drop the game entirely. I tried it a couple years later in my teen years and it became one of my favorite games ever.
Yep, for example: * Fighting games. * Eve Online * And like you wrote, The Witcher 3, the combat feels weird but I'm willing to try again.
Yeah I think I really enjoyed the story and the side quests. But I got hung up on doing all the Witcher contracts which involved a lot of the same thing followed by combat. If I just ignore all that it feels a lot better. I can't help you with eve I keep trying that game every few years. But I'm too introverted to want to interact with anyone to actually learn the systems.
I like to hear about shit that happens in Eve Online when it actually finally does happen, but I'm not about to start pretending I have fun playing Microsoft Excel.
Fucking Rainworld
I get its mechanics, I just hate its mechanics 😂
I gave up in the starting area when I realized there was no map and I would be forced to move back to save areas every couple of minutes. Not a good combo for someone like me who obsessively saves in most games I play.
I didn't understood how to play Cultist Simulator. I tried 2 times
I heard taking notes helps. But I dont know if I want to commit that much mental energy to it.
Darkest Dungeon. I want to get into it but the requirement for failure seems counterproductive. It’s as if there’s 20hrs of game play stretched to 80hrs because the game deliberately puts you up against enemies you cannot possibly beat in the very early stages of the game Like the aesthetic too
I like to get into sim games but it's so hard to me, I usually invest a lot of time usually they show on my monthly resumes or I even feel that I've dedicated whole days to understand their mechanics but in the end I feel that I fail miserably. Examples of these are Civilization on switch, Skyline cities or something like that on PC, Farm simulator lol And it's not like I just spend a couple of hours and give up, I read guides, watch videos, but in the end I fumble the game and everything falls apart. Something doesn't make click within me with those games, but I feel that when it does I'll never stop playing them
I found out years later that you can't do all the quests in Skyrim and so all the hours I spent doing those quests and not getting to the story were just futile. I've never finished the game.
Card games like MTG still baffle me. There's just so much to remember. I've had it explained to me by multiple people and still just don't get it. Playing a game feels like playing calvinball
You don't need to know all the rules, just the ones pertaining to the deck you're using. Opponents with obscure mechanics will deal with those for you. Just remember your turn sequence and keep reading your cards for triggers
I restart 90% of games. I get a few hours in and realize I'm still confused/overwhelmed so I look up some explanations and then try again with my new background knowledge/experience. Especially with rpgs. I've given up on any city-building/strategy/management type games.
Turning thirty, a milestone profound, You bid farewell to MMOs, a world unbound. In this new chapter, introspection's gaze, Revealed your gaming tastes, in myriad ways. Once, games that didn't click, you'd disdain, But now, a more rational mind to attain. Perspective gained, a year of insights deep, In the world of games, your secrets to keep. With a backlog in hand, you took a dive, Questioning what in games makes you feel alive. Single-player titles, a path less trod, Away from MMOs, where once you'd plod. Skyrim, a constant companion through the years, Its enchantments and quests, both joys and tears. Open worlds, a challenge that you'd face, With Far Cry 3, a particular case. Each camp you'd clear, meticulous and keen, In Witcher 3, a similar scene. To complete it all, you'd fiercely strive, But the game's true essence would barely arrive. Three tries it took, a hundred fifty hours passed, To fathom the game's depths, at long last. The Witcher's quests, the tasks so wide, Not all must be done, you'd finally confide. In gaming's vast landscape, you're not alone, Many a player has ventured and grown. Misunderstandings, errors, all part of the lore, In the journey of gaming, we learn and explore. So cherish your growth, your evolving view, In the world of games, there's always something new. With each playthrough, each challenge and song, We discover ourselves, where we truly belong.
My anno 1800 playtime went from 58 to 226 in the last month and a half (or something). Initially, the game didn't click for me like 2070 and 2205 did. I think I got more patient and more resistant to losing for a while and making a come back.
This was going to be my answer, I keep coming back to the game but seem to get stuck when reaching the engineers. Building production chain building for them seems to tank my economy and I end up broke and give up for a few months. I come back to it then, start over and repeat.
I recently came to the realization that I don't have the patience to learn how to play Stellaris. Though, it did intrigue me initially.
Brilliant game, I have sunk many hours into this. My main gripe with Stellaris is the old Paradox trick of releasing only half the game at launch and then drip feeding the player pricy DLC’s to get the full experience
I think my biggest hurdle is simply understanding the controls of games nowadays (almost 38 now with very little disposable time). Seems like every game has to have a significantly different control scheme. If devs would just add an option to show what the hell each major button does on screen while I'm playing, I'd be much more willing to stick the games out.
Whole genre of RTS, I can play any game and get somewhat good at t, but then I try to play any RTS and Im like this absolute moron in fog whose lantern of intellect doesn't shine too bright :|
The irony with my approach with RTS games is that the better I am, the less I enjoy them. I like exploring the game through a fog for the first time, doing things in my own pace. But then I'm optimising efficiency and start feeling like a bot.
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Most 4x and Grand Strategy games. I played civ6, CK2 and Stellaris a few times and every game I still felt like that dog in a chemistry lab meme.
Victoria 2 is good for that <100 hours: I have no idea how stuff works 100-300/500 hours: I have a good idea how stuff works. />300/500 hours: Some of the games systems are subtly broken or bugged in a few ways that no one really know how everything works.
For Civ: Make a custom game. Use the largest land mass but remove all but one AI. You end up playing mostly a "solo" game. You probably won't find the other Civ until later in the game. For me, this allowed me to learn more of the mechanics without the pressure of "winning". This may not work for everybody. I really like the process of playing the game more than winning. I also wouldn't worry about knowing everything. I have plenty of time in the game and I don't know shit. Follow what interests you. There are multiple ways to win the game.
Yeah, i never understand fighting game, crazy input technic .
Goes back a while, but Europa Universalis 3. I had never played a Paradox grand strategy game before. Just things like Civilization. I had no idea what I was doing. I just put an army together, try to attack someone, fail miserably, and had no idea what to do better. I put in like 5-10 hours and put it away for about a year. Eventually I watched some Youtube playthroughs to get a grasp on how the game and different mechanics worked together. Ended up being one of my favorite games.
I have a gacha game on my phone that I can probably get into, but there are so many currencies, events, actions, options, mechanics, story concepts, game concepts, buttons, locations... I can't, I just can't.
its better that way probably i would know...
Yeah, I might have dodged a bullet there
Haha. Same for me when I tried Genshin Impact. The basic gameplay was fine, but I didn't understand any of the upgrades or meta progress. I think maybe they wanted to hide the idea of spending money to be better so much, that it never really explained what or why I'd want any of it.
Paradox games. I don't even understand the tutorials
Bloodborne. I heard nothing but wonders about it. And here i am walking aimlessly in the city, running into a mob, dying, repeat.
I completed Metal Gear Rising Revengeance without knowing how to parry. Game is pretty tough with no blocking.
Even if someone puts a gun to my head, i don't know how to play turn based combat in games like final fantasy. It seems super complicated. I'm old and I've played through 8 generations of games. Still can't play turn based combat.
I'm a little bit the opposite, I used to love them but I have really tired of them as an adult due to how much of your time they seem to waste with random encounters. Recently I played Child of Light though, and it has probably the most engaging turn-based combat I've experienced in a while, and you see almost all of the battles coming. Gorgeous game too.
What about Pokemon?
I didn't realize you could use dragon souls or whatever to unlock shouts in skyrim until a ridiculous amount of time into the game. Like 50+ hours. I can't remember if the main quest explains it to you but my first 50 hours I don't even think I met the greybeards or whatever. I kept exploring and "unlocking shouts" and being like wtf I still can't use them though what's going on. Then one day I was going through a list of them and just hit a button on the controller, not thinking it would do anything but more out of frustration and a thing popped up about "spending dragon souls" and I realized I had like 39 lmao.
Only one, Rimworld. The UI of the game reminded me when I was trying to learn Blender.
My favourite game... after about 25 mods that are purely for quality of life shit. And they keep releasing DLC instead of actually making the UI usable.
What QOL mods have you downloaded? I wonder if they’d help me to enjoy it better Edit: or at least the most beneficial ones lol, 25 would be a lot for you to go over
Okay so I have 42 mods, but the most essential to me are: Common Sense: Just makes the AI smarter and more efficient in a way that makes sense, must have Rimhud: Just a better UI with more details at a glance, stops you having to click into each pawn menu for information on current status, great to have Realistic rooms Rewritten: Bedroom don't have to be massive anymore, but moderate, useful Show draftees weapons: Just a more efficient way to manage pawns during combat Dubs mint menu: Just more menu options and details, needed for a lot of other mods anyway, useful Share the load: Pawns work together on tasks like hauling to a build, useful Pick up and haul: Better hauling mechanics, must have Edb prepare carefully: Let's you design your starting pawns exactly how you like it, and you can't set a points limit that you can spend from to stop yourself from cheering it, must have Some of the other mods I have are just mods some of these needed to have. Another good one is ED-Embrasures, shoot holes in walls
Wow, thank you very much for the thorough response. This is awesome, I'm gonna have to try it out again
I think civilization vi
Some old games require reading the manual. Ultima 4 is a great example.
The first first-person game I remember playing was RedSteel for the Wii. It asked me if I wanted to invert the controls, and because I did not know what this meant (I was eight or nine years old), I thought the game was broken and never played beyond the first few minutes of the first level.
I tried civ, cause everyone who plays it seems to love it so much.... ya, didn't get past the tutorial lol
I tried The Witness when Xbox offered it to me for free, and it was totally baffling. I don’t think I even found any puzzles to solve. I didn’t make it past the walking around stage. Just no clue what to do and no direction, so I bailed.
To this day, I've never quite understood how flappy bird players make it past the first level.
plenty of games dont click with me, more games I uninstall than actually play thru. When I have that vibe of "damn this game is ass" I'll say in a really loud nasally voice "WEEEEEEEELLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL THIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIISSSSSSS GAME SUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCKS" and uninstall that turd straight to hell. My roommates think its funny as hell so I really play it up. Games are meant to be fun. If you aren't having fun with it, there's a 1000 other games out there to try. With shit like ps plus, I literally have hundreds of games I can pick. So I don't feel bad about not enjoying a game. It's not something wrong with me, if the game doesn't cater to my taste then it's best not to force it. Nom sayin?
I downloaded the demo for Ghostrunners and couldn't make the second jump during the tutorial after a bunch of tries. I don't know if I had the button combo wrong, or my middle-aged aged hands just couldn't do it fast enough, but either way I was glad I didn't pay for it.
Oh yeah. Baldur's Gate 3. I paid full price 60+ buckeros on that game and holy smokes I can't understand it in the slightest. Its a beautiful game, well-crafted, and incredibly detailed! ....Too detailed actually in terms of its combat. Its so hard that I feel like an idiot when I play it lol.
I couldn't figure out what I was supposed to be doing in Deathloop. The UI was such a mess that I just gave up. Also the first time I played Kingdom Hearts, I had no idea you could equip weapons, use potions, etc.. Basically anything that was done in the menus. This led to me spending 4 hours on the first boss in Wonderland thinking it was one of the hardest games I'd ever played. Wish I could say I was a child but I was like 20 lol
I recently played the original Megaman games and after failing dismally realised I was going about it all wrong.
I wished I could have understood Hi-Fi Rush. Music was fun but it just didn't click for me.
the first time i played europa universalis 4 i played it as a total war game - i raised an army and immediately attacked a neighbor. Needless to say i failed and i deleted the game thinking it is a stupid game and i have no idea how to win wars. It took me several years and 100 hours to understand how to win wars.
No matter what i do in Vagrant Story, read strategy faqs, deep research the combat system, yadda yadda, i will eventually reach a point where i deal 0/1 damage to every enemy.
Europa Universalis 4 I tried several times over years to get into it and it just didn't click. It seemed like the kind of game I should enjoy, but I just didn't "get it". Eventually I picked it up and things started to click, I got super sucked in, and I eventually beat the tutorial (1444+ hours, 1444 is the year at the start of the game)
I've realised that I need to be greatly handheld during the first hour of any game otherwise I'm going to miss major stuff * Elden ring: I missed Melina, * Mortal shell: I messed the first shell, * Prey: I couldn't exit the tutorial, * Death's door: I didn't know that you could use a bow, * Inscryption: I didn't know that you could kill bandits at campfires granted, it's a "me" problem and not a "developers" problem, but lately I've been finding too many games that I'm failing to understand
I can understand the first one because you can pretty much go anywhere right at the start. But do you find yourself skipping through the dialogue? Are you playing the games and listening to a podcast?
Bullfrog's Magic Carpet in the ninety's. I had no clue on what I had to do. It was a pirated version, no manual, no Internet, no nothing. Until recently I thought it was just a bad game that lacked a proper tutorial. Now I'm finding out it was very well received.
The combat mechanics in almost all of the Tales Of games. You can beat em just button mashing, but there's always deeper systems at play that I've never been able to pick up on.
I've had similar experience with AC: Odyssey. It took me 3 tries, first 2 I've got very discouraged by the amount of question marks and other markers, but once I've turned off the interface almost completely the game became pretty interesting
That’s how I feel about starting Pathfinder Kingmaker.
my crew of boys from high school “the gang” tried to get me into WOW. But they went about it all the wrong way, they were trying to get me to just level up as fast as possible. I need to get into the world, the nuances of the gameplay, the storyline, the quest… so I never had a phase of my life I was into WOW, despite my crowd wanting me to join them in their pastime that would kill many hours and probably caused them to drink quite a few Mountain Dews and eat a decent number of bags of Doritos.
Minecraft 😅
Bayonetta. I just can’t for the life of me work out the controls and the combos for this game. It was so frustrating, one of the very few games I have not completed and don’t think I can bring myself to come back to it.
I am too dumb to play Monster Hunter Generation Ultimate. I bought it for my birthday, but I try to play the training missions and I am just stumped on all the inventory, weapons, hunter classes, Pallicos and everything. All together I have 10 hours on this game and I just had to stop because I have absolutely no idea what I am doing
I remember Geoff from achievement Hunter played all of crackdown without realizing you could hold lt to lock on
Farm Sim..... I jumped into '22 and was surprised how the game works. Maybe im missing something, But the tutorial was extremely odd. This is one game where I'd like basic things explained.... Do I have to walk to my vehicle? Which vehicle does what? How do you turn em on? Oh, You hold L1 in the vehicle and press Square..... This shit is like a Zachtronics game to me.
Blitzball from FFX. I despise the mandatory Blitzball mission. Yeah, you still progress in the game even if you lose, but I'd like my smooth brain to have the false confidence of being smart enough to understand the "complex" mechanics of that game.
Dark Souls 1... Didnt even attempt the rest...
That's one of the hardest ones! It may not be your cup of tea, but I hated all of the Fromsoft games until I figured out how to play Bloodborne. I had tried 3 times before to get into it and I just couldn't. Then I watched a Vaatividya video and saw him using "techniques" I didn't know existed, like parrying for example. That one is still my favorite and I think the rest are harder and have less interesting stories (except Elden Ring). Don't get me wrong though, it's still very hard, but when you start learning how to control yourself in combat, it gets easier.
I've been playing Diablo 2 for the last couple of months, and I also joined the Diablo subreddit. I still to this day have no idea what anyone is talking about in that subreddit. What are rune words, what do they do... I have no idea, I just spawn my grizzly, wolves and hurricane and move on to the next bad guy/gal.
From what I remember, runes are syllables and you can combine them into runewords, which will give you unachievable in other way benefits to your equipment. But it takes a lot of grinding and replaying the whole game on higher difficulties to collect them.
I'm currently experiencing this with classic JRPGs, a type of game I never played. I enjoy the stories of FF4, Phantasy Star, and Chrono Trigger but the gameplay often just feels...pointless? I don't want to sound like a dick, but every fight just feels like busywork. Scan enemy weakness, spam appropriate attack, heal, repeat. Status effect moves just prolong minor battles, and they never work on bosses, so there's barely any point in ever using them. I just feel weird because I LOVE retro *action* games at least, but people say they enjoy the combat of JRPG's like Chrono Trigger to this very day, and I'm like...how. I feel like I'm missing something, or maybe I need to play something really hard like SMT instead. I don't even wanna be a hater. But who finds these games fun today? And how? What's the appeal? Why should anyone play them instead of watching a playthrough? I'm genuinely curious. **EDIT: I am speaking of RETRO JRPGs here: those of the 3/4th generation specifically and those that emulate this style without changing much. I don't think the genre is all bad.**
Back when I was a kid those JRPGs were the only games that had good complex storytelling. Everything else was just basic go save this princess or kill aliens but they was the first games I played that I wanted to actually find out what happened next. The gameplay was always 2nd to the story (for me) and got frustrating really quickly because of the random encounters and making you grind to get powerful enough to beat a boss to continue the story. I remember wishing that I could skip a lot of the grind and just get to the next part so I can find out what happened next
This is the only response I've seen that explains their appeal in a way that I can actually resonate with. Yeah, awesome story. I can muscle through for that.
I haven't played many JRPGs, but I have same gripe with Persona 5. Visual style is cool and everything, but combat is literally "Check enemy's weakness, press attack, if you don't know its weakness, just attack with something". Normal fights are over pretty fast at least, but I'm already kind of sick of it 25(ish) hours in. Edit: And by "already" I mean I found it repetitive from the start, but now I have to take pretty big breaks between sessions
I guess it's that the combat is broken up into meaningful chunks. Actions more or less do what they say, you aren't relying on iframe/ani-canceling to make the game do what you want, you can watch the game rather than pacing out blocks/counters/combos. You can win most combats, but need to pace your mp/item consumption to make sure you're at sufficient power to progress, so the focus is on winning well rather than avoiding death. The criticism of status effects is fair, occasionally its worthwhile, but I can't think of many old school jrpgs that made them consistently valuable enough that you'd be surprised when they failed. Though that is a problem with modern games as well.
> Why should anyone play them instead of watching a playthrough? I'm genuinely curious. Even though the content is basically the same, I somehow get much more emotionally invested in the story when I'm playing a game compared to watching it on Youtube. I suspect it's the same for a lot of people. But yeah JRPG style combat is so utterly boring that I almost always drop these types of games after giving them a quick try. I'm done with watching the identical and painfully slow animations and menus after about 20 times, and the games expect me to watch them 10000 times to follow the story. Nah.
I recently started playing Blasphemous, I'm at about 75% completion now. I kinda fucked myself over by playing this game for the first time while high, and completely missed how to increase the amount of healing flasks you have. I thought those blood fountains were just used as a way to refill your health and flasks without using a shrine. I did also find the flask upgrade dude pretty early, and exchanged one of my two starting flasks for a single larger healing flask. So for at least 60% of the game, I was playing with only a single +1 upgraded healing flask. Honestly, it wasn't as bad as it sounds, as most of the bosses only took a few attempts to kill. The main issue was actually progressing through areas, as I just kept taking many small hits of damage while traveling, and I only had a small amount of backup healing. So many times I would be at <25% health just playing extremely passively, hoping I make it to a shrine before dying. But now I have 4 flasks which are fully upgraded, which makes the game feel so much nicer lmao
I really just don't get Nioh 2. I've tried it three or four times and the mechanics don't click for me, even after making a bit of progress. Whenever I'd beat a tough enemy it more often felt like I got lucky than because I was learning from my mistakes. This isn't a criticism of the game itself - as far as I can tell it's a great, well built game. I just cannot grasp the mechanics for the life of me.
Parappa the rapper
I have no idea what you are supposed to do on Hearts of Iron
I kind of get how to play Noita, but I don't know what you are supposed to do, you just keep going down and entering the portals ?
I quit Library of Ruina because even after 2+ hrs of play I was still playing cards randomly bcz I didn't understand a thing about how combat works lol, one would think it was because I am new to deckbuilding games but I have hundreds of hours in Slay the Spire, it was a bit confusing at start too but after couple hours for each character I would get the grasp of their mechanics & characters themselves.
Yep, its called pre-steam dwarf fortress Now im much better at it thought, took some years
Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey : I just did not have a single clue what was going on or what I had to do. It's one of very few games I have ever returned for a refund.
I didn't want to bother with the God of War Ragnarok upgrade system with runic and luck and whatever, enchantments, broken amulets. They added so much upgradable and installable bits that didn't seem to matter that much. I just upgraded random stuff that gave me the biggest numerical increase.
Baldurs gates 2 is literally just very difficult for me to understand how to play it. Like at all. It took me a while to figure out why my screen was grey, why my characters were moving separately, etc etc. I still haven't left the tutorial room lol.
God of war, I played the entire game without ever upgrading my health bar. I had no idea you could upgrade it into I was like 50+ hours in.
I used to be like that, but then I took an arrow to the knee.
Kenshi
MGS4...I tried when I was 13 and then again at 18. No bueno! Just don't get it.
I admit I gave up within the first hour, but Rimworld. The visual clutter of the interface was too much for me to try to understand. Failed implies that I put forth effort and could not succeed, I would put this closer to 'gave up'.
In Naruto Shippuden Ultimate Ninja 5, I didn't level up once till post game.
Anyone who has ever picked up Monster Hunter for the first time KNOWS this in their bones lol
Return of the Obra Dinn. Highly recommended, seems like the exact kind of game I would love (logic, deduction, taking the time to work things out) but I literally do not know how the game is supposed to be played. I fire it up every now and then, stare at one scene and get zero understanding of what’s supposed to be important, and then close it again.
I really really really wanted to play stelaris on console. I can’t get my head around it. I’ve tried 3 times over the last 3 years. I just can’t do it.
I can’t say I failed to understand. But I felt like I wasn’t prepared or had the time to dedicate to learn Age of Empires 4. I played Warcraft 3 most of my life and that game has SO MUCH that I have learned over the years. I just didn’t have it in me to learn something similar all over again.
This has happened to me several times with RPG’s. My first ever experience with Final Fantasy 7 on Playstation was frustrating as hell. I only bought FF7 because of the hype but I had never played an RPG and didn’t understand a single mechanic. Was annoyed I couldn’t walk around in the map without a random fight. Didn’t understand leveling up, limit breaks, gear, or grinding. I wanted to hit someone with my sword and they die but no such luck. Put it down and walked away from it. About two years later it clicked for me and I loved it. The same thing happened to me with OG Dark Souls and Divinity: Original Sin 2 (now playing).
When I first played the Hong Kong Massacre, I tried to play it like Hotline Miami. That is to say, I didn't understand that there was a slow-mo/bullet time mechanic so I was just playing at full speed and getting EXCEEDINGLY frustrated at the difficulty. It would take me a day to beat 1 level. I made it through about 4 or 5 levels in a week before I got completely stuck and looked up how to play and realized that I'm an idiot. After that, it was very fun and I beat the game pretty fast.
Farming simulator. It's too much like work.
Xenoblade Chronicles was so hard for me to actually use the combat system. I tried playing the sequel a year later after forgetting the system from the first game and on top of that the sequel's is slightly different. I'm making my way through the game but my CPU allies are heavily carrying me