I've recently tried to get a friend of mine into Devil Daggers so we could get some competitive score chasing going, however the game didn't really gel with him considering the game didn't explain anything to him. When you press start on Devil Daggers, you are thrown right into the game, there are no tutorials, and literally nothing is explained to you in-game, aside from looking up the controls in the option menu. Rather, I'm sure this lack of explanation was meant to encourage players to watch replays in order to learn strategies and techniques, and band together as a community in order to unravel the game, on top of maintaining the harsh atmosphere of the game.
Now this got me thinking, is it an inherent negative if games explain absolutely nothing to you and expect you to put some effort in on your part to learn the game?
User-made guides can be used to speed up the learning process, but you can also just figure out things through experimentation and trial 'n error. After all, someone had to discover something on his own before talking about it in a guide. Alternatively, a game can teach you about the basics, but barely elaborates about advanced techniques necessary for high-level play much like Platinum games, so casuals can have fun playing on their own level while hardcore players need to work for their own fun.
A recently released game, Nex Machina, is much like that. From the outset it's obvious that it's a twin-stick shooter and that you have to move, shoot and not get hit, but the human chaining system is something you have to figure out on your own or by watching replays, which is even further encouraged by the many hidden secrets which encourage you to look up replays so you can incorporate them in your own route. But even if this is the case, the lack of explanation and communication of ideas to the players could be perceived as a negative in some eyes.
Do you suppose this has more to do with the challenge curve of a game, where at first you can mess around without dying as you practice the basics, but as you progress you're slowly expected to use the mechanics to your full advantage? I can imagine repeatedly dying in the first sixty seconds not being too fun for some people.
Not everyone is used to working for games in order to get some fun out of it, personally I don't mind investing time to git gud. But do you feel that not explaining shit at all in-game or being encouraged to look up outside information by the developers (e.g. replays) makes a challenge curve of a game worse, or does hating on this make you a filthy casual who needs to git gud?