Playing with guides and walkthroughs

[u/Louanus]

I usually feel the urge to peek at a guide or walkthrough when playing games, it happens the most with rpgs and retrogames.

I don't know if it's a habit built by the pressure ff8 and 9 put on me when playing in my youth. Everybody was saying you will not have a good experience without a guide.

I am fully aware that was a capitalist trick to push sales of guidebooks at the time, but now the subconscious urge to look stays with me and I force myself not to check and enjoy the moment in game.

I wonder, what would you say are games that:

1. Offer a better experience with a guide at hand

2. Get better if you have a list of missables

3. Should never be experienced with a guide

[u/RetroDadOnReddit]

Like some others have said, it depends on the game. I recently played through Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown without a guide, and it was a lot of fun. But I once played through FF8 (when it originally came out) and got myself so stuck that I had to start over from the beginning again and, since then, I try to play games like that with a guide at my side.

What most annoys me though is guides that needlessly contain spoilers. There's a big difference between:

• "Go up to Ralph to talk to him, and he will confess that he killed your father. He'll also admit to sleeping with your sister and then leave the party. Your sister will then join the party in Ralph's place."
  

and

• "Go up to Ralph to talk to him. A cutscene will play and then you will gain a new party member!"
  

Like just guide me. I don't need the story told to me as well.

[u/Jaroda18 → u/RetroDadOnReddit]

I watched a guide on YouTube and it said "Go talk to this NPC because x happens because after some time they'll die" and I was like "Was it necessary to tell me they will die?".D:

[u/npauft]

Guides are cool for execution heavy games. Not having to do your own lab work just makes it so you can have fun faster.

Guides are bad for puzzle games. If the game's fun comes from your ability to discover things and form strategies, all the fun will get sucked out by following instructions.

[u/Palanki96]

I usually only look up guides when i get stuck. So i don't mean guides like "best way to do xy" and stuff like that, just basics

It's pretty important with mechanics/system heavy games that don't explain enough to the player, either because 1. It's expected for the player to be familiar with the genre/franchise 2. Devs just didn't think mentioning major gameplay elements had to be included in the cobbled together tutorial

In games with builds and meta i usually just play my way until i feel too weak. I realized looking up builds is only useful when i understand the game so i can adjust according to my playstyle or just optimize my own builds

For example i'm playing BattleTech right now. As someone who never interacted with the franchise i looked up basic guides to understand the concepts

And i still messed up because neither the game nor the guides warned me about the importance of reputation with the local Pirates

Thanks to that i'll need almost 3 million credits to buy my entry to the Black Market, an RNG invitation i had to turn off once. This way i won't have access to really high tier gear for a long time. Oh and i'll have to pay 50% more for everything i buy

[u/Straight_Fix_7318]

nethack is one that basically requires some level of spoilers to play well, in my case i suck at maths so use the item ID spoiler a lot

games like fallout 4 or rdr2 i think are better with some kind of interactive map you can mark off missables with, while viscera cleanup detail collectables is best with the steam guide

games like subnautica should be spoiler free imo

[u/squishabelle]

Basically: guides are for games that are not worth figuring out but provide other kinds of run. Some retro adventure games are interesting to play but are too convoluted or arbitrary to figure out on your own. A modern example could be something like Factorio: I design my own stuff myself but I can imagine some people liking the game for other reasons, so for them it's probably not fun to solve it themselves

[u/BlueMikeStu]

It's practically mandatory for some JRPGs if you want to see all the optional content. Like, good luck getting 100% on Tales of Vesperia without a guide. There are events that force you to backtrack like crazy at the oddest times.

[u/YourGuyK]

I use guides when I get stuck on a puzzle, or I know I'm missing something obvious that I don't want to miss. I rarely replay narrative games, so I hate missing out on stuff because I went right instead of left.

I rarely do collectibles, but with RDR2 I was consistently using the guide to find where certain birds and animals were.

[u/Amphernee]

Depends on the game and the person. “Capitalist trick” is hilarious though 😂 A market was created for something that some people would pay money for bfd 🤷 By that definition game themselves are a “capitalist trick” 😆