How was I supposed to know THAT?! moments in gaming

[Hawkingbird]

I’m currently playing through Castlevania: Circe of the Moon and has a decent amount of guide dang it. Some of enemies that have rare card drops won’t appear unless you kill a specific boss and those enemies appear in rooms you have no reason to return to. Card combinations can be like this. The card’s effect isn’t immediately obvious and the game won’t tell until you stumble upon it.

[Calcal]

It’s one thing to do that when you only have less than 10 objects to move around. between 2-3 rooms. That’s just my opinion. This game had you moving objects and dealing with objects that were moving on their own and and every room looked very similar so that made things confusing. Go back and play it again or watch a speedrun. The puzzles in this game were harder than the puzzles in The God of War series. GOW’s puzzles spanned very large areas, but you could always tell what needed to be done since every area looked different.

You mean the puzzle where you have to move about 8 ice blocks to stay on about 4 switches? Then the next room its just bigger except you need to form them in a way to make a path to jump across? And once I use a guide for it that area is completely optional and just gives more magic. I still haven’t finished Alundra mostly cause PS1 memory cards have a tendency to crash.

[Zero]

Speaking of Super Mario, I never discovered Soda Lake until years later. I was playing one of the bridge stages for fun and I saw (no pun intended) a way to possibly go undernearth the goal post. Just needed a cape and a yoshi to vault from. After many failed attempts (the stage wasn’t really equipped to carry a yoshi around) I finally got it. I discovered an enemy I only saw in the credits…

Torpedo Ted right?

I found everything in Super Mario World with no outside help.

Since they give a completion persentage on evey World, I would just play every level over and over, looking over every nook and cranny for secret exits. It was a lot of work, but the game was so much fun I didn’t mind at all…and when you do figure it out, especially some of the harder ones, its a great accomplishment.

In Breath of Fire III where you had to cross the dessert. You had to walk in the direction of specific constellations in the sky to leave. On top of that your max HP would go down randomly and if you went to rest it wouldn’t go back to normal. Only resting at an inn would fix your HP. In the game they tell you bring a canteen with you, but no one gives you one. It happens to be on a barrel outside of a campsite. I never noticed due to whenever you say on the world map you start at a campsite and the only thing to interact with up until that point is the other characters.

That part had one of my favorite video game moments: when Nina got sick and you had to find out how to to save her.

Spoiler

I felt bad having to kill my mule. After the amount of time spent navigating that desert, I grew attached to him.

[OmNiExiZt]

Can’t really compare GoW with Alundra now can you?
These kind of puzzles are the ones you should expect in pretty much every rpg, especially from that era.
If you have played several psx rpg’s you should be familiar with this.

Nah, not really. I was just using GoW as an example. But look at this. In GoW, you walk into this huge room of shit, you wander around and things just click. In Alundra, there wasn’t anything there to point out that you were making progress. So until the puzzle is solved, you don’t know what the hell is going on.

You mean the puzzle where you have to move about 8 ice blocks to stay on about 4 switches? Then the next room its just bigger except you need to form them in a way to make a path to jump across? And once I use a guide for it that area is completely optional and just gives more magic. I still haven’t finished Alundra mostly cause PS1 memory cards have a tendency to crash.

Haven’t played Alundra in ages so I’m not sure what part your talking about.

[Missing_Person]

When I play through RPGs I have a tendency to pamper my magic users. So when I played through FF7 I dumped all of my magic sources into Aeris. ‘Sources’ were one time use items that permanently upped one of your stats. There were only a limited number in the game, so you had to be very careful how you used them.

Needless to say when she died and didn’t come back I was pretty pissed. How are you going to put a limited number of one use items in the game and then permanently take away one of your characters? Very poor design.

Square in general tends to have things in their games that there’s no real way you could ever figure out on your own without some kind of guide. And as much fun as some of their older games are, I still find that pretty frustrating. I mean, who really figured out how to get a golden chocobo without using a guide?

Another along the same line was this: Final Fantasy VIII. Tried to create a super party? Well, we’re going to give you your final party via roulette. Even better is that you can’t even get certain stat junctions with certain GFs, which literally PROMOTES creating a super party and just balance out the GFs until you can junction everything.

I created a super-party anyway, and just betrayed any character that showed up on the final battle that wasn’t part of it, since the game replaces them.

[EDDUR]

You mean the puzzle where you have to move about 8 ice blocks to stay on about 4 switches? Then the next room its just bigger except you need to form them in a way to make a path to jump across? And once I use a guide for it that area is completely optional and just gives more magic. I still haven’t finished Alundra mostly cause PS1 memory cards have a tendency to crash.

That ice block puzzle probably gave me the hardest time of all. I was so glad when i heard the sound of a door opening.
Awesome game though i’m not so keen on trying Alundra 2 for some reason.

[Ika_Zuchi_No_Kami]

That peace of shit Mario game where Luigi had to find Mario. I swear, Mario couldn’t be found because he wasn’t he the fucking game. Nigga was the fucking hide & seek champion or some shit. I was young at the time and was just beginning to understand games as a kid. As a kid… that shit was terrible:sweat:

[SixMachine]

Recently, I didn’t know how to get to “Pip” in a certain quest in Dragon’s Dogma…he’s a little kid that you have to chase around to tell him something; some corrupt business guy wants to evict his family, basically. Anyway, the map showed that “Pip” was in a barn, but he wasn’t there… then I realize this little bastard somehow is on top of the building…and of course there is no ladder to get up there. I’m still not even sure if this was supposed to happen or if it’s a glitch. I then realized that a certain ice magic spell can create a stepping stone to get to a higher place… you still can’t jump directly up there from it though, so I cast the spell next to the building that was next to that barn, then I used “levitate” skill to float over to the rooftop of the barn. I think this is more satisfying though when you figure out something in a game on your own. Of course, this isn’t on the level of “uhhhh?” as that thing in Simon’s Quest with the crouching.

Haha that sounds so crafty. I was an assassin so it took me 2 seconds just to double jump to Pip. Though Dragon’s Dogma I wish it told you when some quests become unavailable. Sometimes you have a quest then it disappears because you did some other quest first.

[TheBirdLives]

As a follow up to my earlier MGS post, how about when you had to backtrack through about half the game to go and find the sniper rifle to pwn that Sniper Wolf bitch.

[M.D]

Torpedo Ted right?

yea.

[roninwarrior24]

Just about everything in Phantasy Star 1 and 2. Good luck with those games; you’re gonna need it.

World Tendency in Demon’s Souls.

Saving Solaire in Dark Souls. Meeting Kaathe. Getting into the Warrior of Sunlight covenant. Among other things.

Then again, the fact that the Souls games have some cryptic stuff that you have to think about or plan ahead for is refreshing in a gen where just about every game has a built-in strategy guide in it.

[Poltergust]

I’m surprised that the pixel hunts in Metroid: Other M haven’t been mentioned yet. In one instance, you’re looking at a corpse, but the game wants you to do a 180 and examine the blood trail that leads behind a truck. -_-

[Lost_Dog]

That one part in Carnival Night in Sonic 3. Me and my bro could never get past it. Wasn’t until many years later when youtube was created I randomly searched a Sonic 3 playthrough and it showed how to get past that part.

[Noble_Cactus]

I was just reminded of unlocking Saojin in Martial Masters. Of course it’d come naturally after sitting in an arcade for x amount of time, but how you were supposed to know that would happen or if you just played the game on an emulator I do not know.

It involves leaving the machine on for a whole month and having people put 99 credits into it. Very odd requirement.

[Saitsu]

As a follow up to my earlier MGS post, how about when you had to backtrack through about half the game to go and find the sniper rifle to pwn that Sniper Wolf bitch.

Pretty sure someone tells you to do that in a Codec conversation.

[Hawkingbird]

The boss fight against Vamp in MGS4. I had spammed the fuck out codec to get anything useful out Octacon.

[Abbachio]

Pretty sure someone tells you to do that in a Codec conversation.

I think it’s Campbell who tells you to go back to the armoury.

[Saitsu]

I think it’s Campbell who tells you to go back to the armoury.

Yeah, makes sense. I figured it out when I was like, 12, and there’s no way I would’ve without some help from the Codec. My Snake still has scars from the asswhooping the wolves gave me because I was too stupid to use the Hankerchief.

[Abbachio]

Yeah, makes sense. I figured it out when I was like, 12, and there’s no way I would’ve without some help from the Codec. My Snake still has scars from the asswhooping the wolves gave me because I was too stupid to use the Hankerchief.

NOT THE WOLVES! yeah I didn’t know about the handkerchief or the dog pee box when I first played it. I died so many times

[PozerWolf]

The boss fight against Vamp in MGS4. I had spammed the fuck out codec to get anything useful out Octacon.

Wait, what?

About the fight

Spoiler

By this point of the game, it’s clear that literally almost everything crazy is control by Nanomachines. I remember first fighting him, beating him, and when he gets back up the characters were all like “HOW DO WE STOP HIM?!” and of course I was like “Well no shit Nanomachines are controlling him” and gave the shot. Same goes for the final robot chic you fight.