I didn’t realize metal gear rising had a block/parry mechanic. The tutorial talks about countering enemy blows with your own barrage of attacks so I figured I just had to stagger them and steal health regularly. Monsoon is the first fight with no minions to heal off of, so I got stuck and finally checked online.

Xenoblade Chronicles 2. I was almost done with the game before I realized you leveled up in camps and inns. Game went from really hard to pushover easy in 5 minutes.

I played Valhiem early in its launch for like two weeks on my own server. Once I finally got my friends to join they were dismayed as to why I had dozens of broken copper pick axes in storage boxes.

I had no idea you could repair things and kept mining barely more copper than was needed to make a copper pickaxe.

The game got a lot easier after that.

I beat the original dark souls without realizing there were different weight thresholds for rolling. I fat rolled the entire game. Also didn’t realize boosting vigor was important for hp. I did 99% strength/stamina and only as much dex as required to weild my weapons.

When I was a kid, I used to “play” Operation Flashpoint. I remember being too dumb to realise that the mouse was used to move the camera so it was basically me moving around with arrow keys and strafing to see a little to the left and right.

I changed my control scheme in rocket league like 1k hours in. Really needed the ability to boost while jumping among other things. It was a totally brutal transition, but I’m glad I did it.

Path of exile. Had no idea about builds and tried to just play casually lol

2nd character went a lot more smoothly

One of the first computer games I’ve ever played is StarCraft. For context, the game is about human battle with aliens similar to Starship Troopers. The game story has three acts, each from different point of views. It is supposed to start from human pov, and then alien pov, and lastly another alien species. However due to English being my second language, I somehow started with the alien pov first. So my first impression of the game is that I play as a disgusting xenomorph alien species battling mankind. It’s not until later that I realized I missed an entire human chapter of the game.

I am pretty sure in Witcher 3 I missed like half of the combat features - flasks, signs, rolling lol.

Not me, but a friend’s mom, this was back in 97-98 and I had been playing the Diablo demo for hours and knew the mechanics quite good and the two first levels.

So I visited my friend and his mom had bought the game and was playing a lot, and she was quite deep down, I think like 15 levels down… that’s when I asked why she hasn’t placed here last level up points… Turns out, she hadn’t placed any point at all 😱🤔🤣.

Played far too much of Prey before realizing you can boost in zero G. I was wondering why people praised those sections so much when they were agonizingly slow.

Bloodborne… totally ignored that the gun is there to parry attacks and stun enemies on my first playthrough attempt

As an 8 year old without much of a guide at all, I was a very proud Magician on MapleStory… one who dealt violence with her trusty magic wands and staves… physically.

I didn’t understand what skills and hotkeys were until several years down the line when reading comprehension and life experience improved.

Not a game but some of the stories here remind me of the time I discovered I could draw stuff on the screen with Omicron Basic on my Atari ST and I painstakingly entered every square by hand dozens of times to make squares move across the screen…until days later I discovered the magic of the for loop. I must have been maybe 10 or so at the time.

I started playing Pokémon Red before I even knew how to read. I had no idea how to save and just assumed I would find a save point eventually like a bunch of other games. I have no idea how many times I dejectedly had to turn off the GameBoy halfway through Mt. Moon. I was convinced the save spot had to be on the other side.