Games that require guides to beat

Pic. Fucking. Related.

Game is awesome. Plays well, is loaded with content. Essentially Metroid on steroids, but god damn are there some puzzles that are crytic as fuck.

I pride myself on playing games without using walkthroughs, and yet I definitely needed to lean quite heavily on a guide on more than one occasion. There are at least 5 times in this game that I was thoroughly stumped and spent several hours trying to crack the next piece of the game without success, only to find the solution was maddeningly obtuse (as in, I would never have gotten it even after thousands of hours).

I wonder what the world record is of a totally blind playthrough of this game with zero external assistance. I severely doubt it's below 100 hours.

I completed Zelda without a guide, if that counts. Milon's Shitty Asshole however…

You have to write things down. I'm pretty proud of myself I made it all the way to "eden" without looking shit up, but I just couldn't beat that area without one at that point. Great game tho.

for actually beating the game

Debatable. There is the big fuck you in following the professor when he falls down the hole locking you out of the good booster. And the second one going back to the graveyard for the mushroom thing. Nothing else seemed too bad.

About the same, let's see if I remember


I did use the wiki to discover items and locations, but not necessarily how to get to them. Still took me about 44 hours. I remember I restarted at some point and ended up at about 12-14 hours for my first full playthrough.


First play on blind was on hard, 10 hours or so, didn't complete Wind Temple or Hell (even on normal)

Good effort man, that's probably past the halfway point (and the game as you know is fucking huge).

Skipping the professor to somehow magically make a completely unrelated item appear in a future area is pretty dumb and locks you out of the final stage, best boss fight and best ending if you don't do it. Finding the mushroom should be easy if you notice there's a door in the graveyard and come back later when you can reach it.

Nope. You can open it very early, and even by stumbling around, get there with only 2 or 3 bosses killed at most if you're in there blind.

I'd say you have a few major checkpoints in the run:

I'd say depending on when you go there, probably 1/5th to 1/4th of the way done the game, MAYBE 1/3rd.

This game is easy and short as hell

You found hell all by yourself? Pretty impressive.

I've spent like 2x48 hours because I made two attempts with very little guidance, one for both games. And I still don't have any recollection of eden despite killing at least 4 if not 5 bosses.

What?

...

Yeah, I guess you're right. Maybe my memory of when you encounter Eden is skewed since I leaned on a guide for latter parts of the game, so what was 1/3 to 1/4 of the game took me 1/2 to get to in terms of pure play time.

Speedruns of the game clock in around the 1 hour 45 minute mark (compared to say super metroid which is around 45 minutes). This is insane but also incredibly misleading. Virtually the entire run is comprised of solving puzzles and picking up items multiple times every minute, with optimised warping and boss fights.

This in and of itself is pretty standard, but the misleading part is due to the fact that the puzzle density and difficulty in La Mulana is much, much higher than in Super Metroid. So 5 minutes of the La Mulana speedrun contains enough "content" that the average player would need several hours of time to get through. In Super Metroid, 5 minutes of content might take a player 20 - 30 minutes to complete, since the bulk of it will be combat or movement, but without much puzzle solving (and most of the puzzles in Metroid are essentially "what new areas does this item unlock?", with very obvious visual cues)

La-Mulana is a horrible game with awful controls, its fanbase is mostly composed of Souls tier tryhards.

It's literally in a save hut though


Remember the room in the Temple of Moonlight with the 4 treasure chests? That opens the path deeper into Eden. Otherwise it's just the one screen. Eden is used to access the Gate of Illusion

I've literally never heard of that comparison made before. I've heard people bitch about the movement physics, but that was before they got used to them. All the levels are designed around said limited movements, and 90% of the rooms are accesible via single jumps rather than wall jumps or double jumps

It purposely controls like ass to simulate the old games it's inspired by, wooow. I can make a shit game that plays like a dated turd from the 80s and get away with it if I claim thar my game is nostalgic and niche.

You decided to skip the professor knowing it would spawn an unrelated thing that after a series of events gives you access to that area? I just don't have that kind of foresight.

It was originally on the MSX, so…


I managed to jump the hole and skip him entirely, yes

No it wasn't, Usas and Golvellius were which are the titles that the developer of La-Mulana played as a kid and inspired his game.

The one part I needed a guide for was the hell temple. Everything else is pretty fair, aside from the fact that no-read faggots are screwed by the mantras. Also that one health orb.

It's a good game, I think the issue I had with the game is that while it played well, it didn't keep me hooked. I felt no real reason to put time and effort into this game when there are plenty of other challenging, fulfilling games I could play which require less effort.

But I do plan on revisiting it at some point

There's no way you thought about doing that on your own and successfully jumped the gap on first try.

I gave this game to a friend and he couldn't finish it, but enjoyed it a lot. He told me the worst trap for new players was the "hard mode" tablet, because he read it, noted the warning, then had to stop playing for a week so he read it again while wandering around looking for an objective, then he didn't even realize it was hard mode, he thought it was just a jump scare. He asked for help b/c Elmac.Bahamut seemed impossible and I eventually figured it out & told him.
Easy to see how that kind of thing is infuriating, but I still love this game.

I usually lose gamer pride by dropping games, but these two were exceptions.

Recettear has a great anti-cap story & morals but it's definitely hard to finish.

OH BOY I SURE DO LOVE INTERNET AND POWER PLANTS

I just started that game two weeks ago and found myself with a feeling of joy I hadn't felt in a long time, then I got to that part. I tried redoing it, and finally just looked up a guide. I almost dropped the game right there. I can get shitty endings, but that was just pure horseshit. How in the fuck are you supposed to know that?

It's highly unlikely, but it's possible. What less likely is that he found the tow rope, took Curly, drained her, and thought to pick her back off the bed. There are a lot of steps you need to do to access the true ending of the game, and it is very unlikely a person would do them all, unassisted, on their first run of the game.

Goddamn Codes. If only I coud remember

...

Recettear doesn't need a guide to beat it, hell you can win half the game just by doing the same thing over and over: go buy weapons when they're cheap, sell them when price normalizes.

yeah, Zork is pretty hard is you're not used to text adventures

The biggest problem is the game tricking you by giving you an in game thing to keep track of text. But its actually very limited, the game actually requires you to have a notebook irl and take notes and draw maps and weird things you see.


Also this, a very bad design choice.
Not only it doesn't tell you it's hard mode and affects the entire game(I only noticed it after checkin the steam achievment, long after saving and progressing a lot) but it can be triggered whenever, resulting in stuff like playing half the game in normal mode and the other half in hard.
This combined with a game where you're encouraged to explore every nook and cranny and do everything in your reach to try and advance, was real bullshit. Sooner or later a player that is playing blind and refuses to look up where to go will try to read it as it will seem to be the only thing they didn't do yet.


To add to the thread 100% on bomberman needed some whack ass bomb tricks, some I'd never figure out by myself. Even after knowing the tricks, executing them was nightmarish.

Nigger are you retarded

Oh god, those fucking bomb tricks. It's bad enough that the only indication you get that they exist is the normal credits. I can't imagine what going for the golden armor is like. Just getting the real ending was enough for me.

Yeah, until the debt gets so high that you can't pay it off until you figure out how to get to new zones with more expensive shit.

I managed to skip booster on my first try, because I didn't see him fall.
Curly did die on me, though, so I had to play through again to get Hell.

Monster Hunter in general, especially as a bow user. You can "beat" the game without a guide, but drop rates, monster elemental weaknesses, etc are all something you either need a guide for or to spend hundreds of hours yourself manually cataloging it. When a single set can take literally dozens of hours of grinding to get, it's essentially not doable without a guide unless you want to double the time you're spending on it. It would be largely alleviated if there was some cue the game gave you to tell you that the element you were using was strong against the monster.

really? I beat it only once, and in the second half I didn't even go to dungeons any more since I considered it a waste of time. I simply bought cheap and sold high.

Most insanely cryptic puzzles in a platformer ever?

I think the official English translation of Simon's Quest still takes that cake.

Oh yeah, fucking stabbing the random wall for that doll?
At that point I was in several years(looked at when I had notes made: 2011-2013-2015)
I get that it's supposed to emulate how old MSX games would screw you though.

I just said "fuck it, I want to beat the game already", and started using a guide.
It hurt because I was already pretty far. The remake seems a lot less sadistic.

Just over 33 hours for me. I filled almost an entire notebook with notes and drawings to figure everything out. I was one step away from doing that thing you see on 80s cop movies with the map and the pins and the strings of yarn linking everything and shit.
Best blind playthrough vidya experience of my life, bar none. I really hope they don't fuck up the sequel.

Did someone say guide?

Even with a guide, this shit is impenetrable.

Not for the game itself but for the crafting system.

Of course it is, don't be That Guy while capitalism wrecks the planet, kid.

Everything is there, that's the point of the adventure. However, driving the wedges at the end of the game does require you to read the manual to understand that the zones all fit in a 4x5 grid when you mirror some of the rooms. That's the only puzzle I find to be absolutely unfair in that game because it doesn't provide that information to you anywhere in game, only in the manual.

I lost a 40 hour 100% savefile because I was having trouble with Mr. Young and got excited and beat him AND the next boss during the bases, and forgot to talk to the Duke of Ghor a third time

This has to be bait. No one can be this much of a fucking idiot to the point that they project their political ideology on a game about a little girl and what is essentially a over-exaggerated lemonade stand.

The only cryptic parts of Simon's quest are the parts with the blue and the red crystals, especially the red crystal. Everything else is pretty straight forward.


I felt deep shame for having to use a guide but then after seeing some of the puzzles I felt much less so. I love pixel hunt games and I love hard as shit platformers but when you put the two together chances are I'm going to use a guide. Especially when I saw how bullshit a few of the puzzles were.

Oh yeah, how's La Mulana 2 coming by the way?

Apparently their last update was in January or something, and they said they were hard at work still. Something about the platform difference between Playism and Kickstarter makes it difficult to relay news to everyone

...

I'm just picking it up, what do you mean lost your save? Just like, saved over something you shouldn't have or an error or what?

I never played Wizardry or anything like that but pic related for me.

The Dark Spire is a cakewalk compared to Wizardry lmao.

You aren't, but the stages and final boss you wouldn't get otherwise are well worth it.

by being en route to the shitty ending and going in the save point at the end and reading the doc's journal entry in the save hut and replaying the game

I do wish there was a mimiga mask version of hell though.

Was gonna torrent the gog versions of 1-3. I know there are those snes versions but they're not translated or don't work properly or something. They seem intimidating though.

Didn't Aeon Genesis translate that trilogy pack? If it didn't there's always the NES and DOS versions. The series really peaks at 6 onwards though, you can just start there.

Bump

Is this game worth playing with a guide? I tried playing it a few times but found myself lost and confused and ended up quiting after a few hours.


Actually a friend recommended it to me calling it a '2d Dark Souls game', but it doesn't make any sense to call it that.

Did you beat your friend with a sack of oranges, because you should have.

A guide spoils a lot. I would advise to try to play it without one unless you get completely stuck or unless you have limited time.
You at least got past Guidance Gate didn't you?

Has the stupid fight against Psycho Mantis that requires you to plug your controller into the 4th slot. How the fuck are you supposed to figure that out. I think the same goes for the original Playstation version but I'm not entirely sure

The second or third boss fight (the tornado guy) requires you to do some weird stance in a certain location otherwise you die. There's literally no prior indication that you're supposed to do this, you literally just have to know. And it's the only time you have to do it IIRC.

That's how you beat Fujin? I always just ran at the end of the platform, I think.

Water temple a SHIT

Yeah I got past that part, I just never was really into metroidvania games so it didn't really click with me. I'll probably play it again and I'll suddenly get it and love it, I'm just slow.


I'll make sure to do that, user.

That's what I did too.

Now that's a unique anti-piracy measure

getting every journal entry in one playthrough also requires a guide; fucking cactus will only write down notes on your last adventure

Aeon Genesis did indeed translate the Legacy of Llylgamyn trilogy cart for SNES
in fact there was already an English mode that just needed some grammar touchups, making the translation a cinch and the majority of actual work being to set it to English by default.

in the PS1 original, you had to plug it in to port 2
if you flounder in the fight long enough, Campbell will give you a call and the two of you figure it out. I imagine the same holds true for the GC version

it IS possible to beat Psycho Mantis without the controller trick, but it's a complete pain in the ass

He reads your inputs so he can dodge your attacks, and when he gets low on life, it's pretty much frame-perfect input cheese against you

To my knowledge I-III on the SFC saw fan-translation, and V either has a fan retranslation and/or restoration patch to remove the censorship the official release had.

There's a secondary way to break his concentration so even if you don't do the controller trick you still have another option.

Dang bro how new r u? If you can't change controllers you shoot the masks off the statues and then his power also goes away. There's no way you're over 18 and didn't know that.

actually there are plenty of ways to not know that even if you're in your 30s. To start with, everybody KNEW the port switching trick because of magazines. Furthermore, any time you heard about how to beat him without it you'd get some shit about "shooting the mirrors". At least 2 magazines and the majority of the internet will feed you that one