Exo-Primal. Seriously it is really, really fun. But the tutorial is awful. It’s so slow-paced and then it takes a few hours of playing to really have the game show you what it is. By hour 7 or so though i was hooked and it’s just kept delivering.
Does anyone remember Driver on the, I think, PS1? I mean the tutorial wasn’t awful because it’s irrelevant but because it’s notoriously difficult to beat.
I didn’t find it difficult so much as frustrating when I would do what it asked, but it wouldn’t register until I did it like 10 times.
Elite Dangerous had a similar tutorial where you had to run through a checklist of things to complete it and move on to the main game. When I first got it back in beta, it was not optional and it also wasn’t clear on how to do some of the shit it asked you to do, forcing you to check the controls constantly. It’s an optional thing now, and there is also the option of running through the lift off check list every single time you launch your ship. Pointless and tedious, but adds some immersion.
Guild Wars 2 falls into this category for me. Being from the boom of MMORPGs I’m not sure if the deva figured everyone would just get it kr what. The game has a lot of odd choices in places and it does a poor job explaining those choices or even pointing them out.
The Darkness was pretty decent with tutorials, except for one particular part that involved moving a giant bell out of the way. A friend of mine who was watching me play at the time finally ended up telling me how to do it, because up to that point in the game - and this is a pretty far part into it, not like towards the beginning where tutorials usually happen - this mechanic was never mentioned or used at all. Even in the sequence of moving the bell (I assume to learn the skill??? idk), there are no prompts given to tell you how. It was the only frustrating part for me in an otherwise really cool and fun game.
Voices of the Void. Even though it does talk about the basics of the game, it really didn’t make the important aspects of these basics that aren’t known from other games clear at all.
It’s a demo, however, so that’s excusable, even if the tutorial was actually reworked too… I dunno why you need to launch it in order to get into the game though. :D
Dragon’s Dogma, at least if you’re trying to play as a mage. How do I target my spells? How do I even switch to the new spells I bought? That was a trip to the wiki and then r/DragonsDogma for me.
Diablo 2. The extent of which you’re given instruction is “here’s a stick, go whack stuff.”
Stat points? Better hope that you get it right the first time - you get three resets per character (unless you get a Token of Absolution which is a super late game item). Hell, before a certain patch this wasn’t even a thing. Do it right the first time or you’re restarting.
Same goes for skill points. Wanna put one point into everything, try it out before committing? Well those are now wasted points. Stats and skills get reset at the same time though, so you’re not entirely screwed.
Rune words! The game tells you literally nothing about rune words and yet no build is complete without them. You get three runes that make up a rune word in Act 5 if you complete an optional quest. You’re not told what to do with them, or that they must be in the right order (which the game does not provide), or that they must go in a normal, non-magic shield with exactly three sockets. Or that if you imbue the item after building the rune word you lose the rune word’s effects. Put them in the wrong order? Bricked it - you cannot remove gems or runes from sockets. Or you can, but it destroys the socketed gems/runes. And you can only do so using…
Cube recipes. You get a cube, you use it a few times in the game. You’re never told that it can be used to upgrade items, combine gems and runes, repair gear, craft items, or take you to the secret cow level.
If you never did extensive research on Diablo 2 before and while playing, you would be playing maybe a quarter of the actual game.
I am so glad I read this, because I've been thinking about trying out Diablo 2 lol. Looks like when I finally get around to it, I'll be doing a lot of research.
Cliff Empire. I’m still on the tutorial technically, I think. There was one part where I had to produce 250 extra power (250 kW I think?), and even though I had used up all the available space pretty effectively, I never got above ~120. So, I went ahead and started building a nuclear reactor… which only got me to ~170. I eventually passed that step somehow. I think it was because there were more people? Anyway, after that I clicked through all the steps I passed (about 20 of them) before I was producing anything close to 250 ‘power’ and I’m pretty sure I missed something; because my reactor caught on fire and exploded. Turns out the fire fighting drones never got water, because apparently I have to set it’s delivery priority manually… ¯_(ツ)_/¯
So I rage quit, and here I am complaining about it. Beautiful game though.
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