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Games with missable features that are essential

in Bayonetta you have to buy Bat Within from the shop. I don't think you'd miss it unless you somehow never looked through the shop, but it's possible

This is an infuriating staple of most of his games. Same thing happens in W101 and Viewtiful Joe where there is at least one great part of your character's toolbox that sits on the shelf of the in game store until you happen to pick it up.
 
I was surprised how much stuff that seemed pretty fucking improtant to me you had to unlock with points in Wonderful 101. I think you had to unlock evade, time stop, guard and some other stuff.
 
Er...what? I think there are other options that make sense that don't work, but certainly getting a 'perfect' suicide run isn't anything unintuitive.

I also think it shouldn't be possible and you should have to lose some folks (so that it's not like "Hey here's the 'good' way to do it) but that's just me.

If you want to save the entire crew you need to do the suicide mission the exact moment the option is given which means:

-Not doing Legion's loyalty mission (at a point where they're introducing them and the game is giving you incentives to do them)
-By virtue of not doing his loyality mission, you need to have Legion on your team at all times during the final mission (yet the game suggests he's ideal for the hacking segment)
-To ensure no one dies, you have to bench all the strongest characters so they stay in skirmish, meaning you might have to do the final missions without fan fave squad mates like Garrus or Grunt.

And yes, you're right, there SHOULDN'T be a "save everyone" option, but the fact that there is feels like you get cheated, precisely cause the "save everyone" method is unintituive and is like "hah! your crewmen died cause you weren't good enough, but you see here, there is an achievement that says it's possible to save them all!"
 
Tiptoe walking in Eternal darkness.

You can play the entire game not knowing it's a thing you can do, until the one room in the final level where you have to use it to not die.

Lol fuck my roommate and I just beat this game on Wednesday yeah fuck that room we were stuck there for so long
 
Xenoblade

I didn't know you could redirect your party members until my 2nd playthrough. That made a certain boss fight near the end much easier.
I'm referring to the Lorithia fight and calling my allies towards me to get them out of the poisoned water.
 
The cassette tapes in Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain.
Important story bits are told through them and someone can choose to skip them entirely.
 
Lots of features in Xenoblade chronicles it would seem. In my time in the OTs we've had people not understand one or more of the following that while not all are totally essential combined they help make the game enjoyable:
-Gem crafting in general (though I loved finding out things like Mega Heat for myself and feeling like I had mastered the system)
-^by extension in general weapon with 3 empty gem slots and armour with gem slots are usually better than a stat boost (though this really only becomes true after the midgame when gem levels get high enough for serious effects, mega heat being easier to achieve plus it being possible to hit the boost caps with a few)
-You can switch skill trees (learning how skill link works also helps)
-Leveling up arts (to reduce cooldown and boost damage)
-Auto attacks require you stand next to an enemy to work

-You can't dodge enemy hits by moving away
-You can fast travel to any area of the game you don't have to fast travel to area entrance, walk to previous area etc to backtrack
-You can savescum loot chests. Be careful as enemies can respawn.
-In battle party orders (they can move towards you or go all out which makes them more aggressive with art use)
-Physical and ether (magic) based arts are indicated by a vertical and horizontal lines, respectively. A late game area has enemies extremely resistant to physical hits (including it's boss). Well it wouldn't be Monolithsoft if there wasn't a certain boss battle that acts as a roadblock...
-You don't have to play as Shulk. Live a little, hear all the unique party post battle banter (e.g. "can't spell rainbow without Ryen, baby")
-You don't need to bring Sharla (your healer) to every battle. She can make battles take longer with her slow auto attacks, cool off mechanic and smaller art palette (due to the healing arts you'll probably have on her) which by extension mean you need more healing.


I bolded the most important ones. While they seem obvious I don't think they are things the game ever told you to do. It's not missable in the way the OP talks about. Let me think there...

Eien no Filena (fairly bad Japan only SNES RPG) has an obscure secret in the first town only documented in Japanese. There some hidden sprint shows (make character move a lot faster on the map) accessed by looking at four statues in a specific order (spoilers
you're not coming back here after the start of the game well it's a JRPG isn't it
). I suppose you could live without them like you can live without using a thief in FFV (who has a built in sprint shoes effect...this stacks with the dash in the ports).
 
a whole lot of MGSV's story is miss-able, from unlockable cutscenes and tapes to the worldbuilding in-mission dialogue you will only hear if u do all the side ops. which makes it extra funny when people complain about a lack of story. only 20% of Steam users have completed the Truth ending.

Yeah, came here for this. Not truly "essential" but certainly a big chunk of the story is missable.
 
FFIV DS augment system. Essential for late game anyway.

Is it possible to beat 4DS without augments? I made it to the tower with the crazy fire beasts and had to restart the game because it was so hard.

It's especially frustrating how you have to give augments to throwaway characters to get their good augments. Good luck getting the best skills without a guide.
 
Sort of related, but I beat the entire first act of Resident Evil 4 before I realized that you could run. I thought the forced walking was a really challenging design.
 
FFIV DS augment system. Essential for late game anyway.

This so much

Its even worse after level 71, as the characters stop getting fixed stats from leveling, and instead use your current equipped augments to determine what you will get

Also on FFIV DS, Slow.
 
Nah, you can beat the whole regular game without touching an augment. The moon face...yeah, you might want to know how to do Augments for but it is essentially a NG+ super boss.
Think we have different definitions for essential. Sure, I made it all the way to the final dungeon before quitting but I wouldn't recommend it.
 
obviously if something is truly essential it isn't missable.

Oh OP, I envy you.

90's point and click adventure games: "Hey you're missing the wrench from chapter 2, the twig from chapter 5, and the quantum computer from chapter 14, guess you can't beat the game!"
 
-You can fast travel to any area of the game you don't have to fast travel to area entrance, walk to previous area etc to backtrack

Oh, I'm surprised to see this mentioned. I had that exact problem early on when playing the game. I felt like a huge idiot when I realized you could just fast travel anywhere at any time. I wouldn't have thought that'd be a common enough problem to mention.

Speaking of Xenoblade, Xenoblade Chronicles X has so many things going on that aren't really explained in game that I would suggest anyone who plans to play it to look at a guide for how a lot of the systems work. I think even the e-manual has a bunch of necessary information. That game felt a lot more fair after I learned about Soul Voices.
 
I got pretty damn far into Bloodborne before finally learning how to parry... As in, I did every area except the dlc before it became too much.

People say this is why Father Gascoigne is the 1st/2nd boss, and they'd be right. But the thing is I'm pretty certain if I hadn't forced myself to practice until I got it right I'd have gone through the entire game without intentionally parrying once... Replaying on BL4 now and it's ridiculous how essential parrying actually is to enjoying Bloodborne's combat.
I completed the whole game and dlc without ever felt using parry. 2 handed the whole way for me.
 
If you want to save the entire crew you need to do the suicide mission the exact moment the option is given which means:

-Not doing Legion's loyalty mission (at a point where they're introducing them and the game is giving you incentives to do them)
-By virtue of not doing his loyality mission, you need to have Legion on your team at all times during the final mission (yet the game suggests he's ideal for the hacking segment)
-To ensure no one dies, you have to bench all the strongest characters so they stay in skirmish, meaning you might have to do the final missions without fan fave squad mates like Garrus or Grunt.

And yes, you're right, there SHOULDN'T be a "save everyone" option, but the fact that there is feels like you get cheated, precisely cause the "save everyone" method is unintituive and is like "hah! your crewmen died cause you weren't good enough, but you see here, there is an achievement that says it's possible to save them all!"

You can do two missions before going through the relay, it's quite possible to do all of them.

The most "unintuitive" part of the suciide mission is that you have to ignore what Miranda says because she keeps saying she's the best at everything but she's usually not.
 
Why on Earth did thy make that game SO hard?? I wound up beating the GBA release instead because it was so crazy difficult if I rememeber correctly.
That version was not really meant for first timers. They even included a lot of things to subvert the expectations of people who played a lot of the other versions of FFIV, where some actions had the exact opposite outcome of what they did in the original.
 
That version was not really meant for first timers. They even included a lot of things to subvert the expectations of people who played a lot of the other versions of FFIV, where some actions had the exact opposite outcome of what they did in the original.
That's why I loved that version so much. Felt like I had to pay super close attention to elemental properties, timing my attacks and who to attack, and most importantly buffs and rebuffs. "Slow" was the biggest lifesaver of all. Bosses felt like actual challenges. Going from that to the PSP release was kind of a drag difficulty-wise.
 
A friend spent 4h on Bloodborne before I checked his game and realised he didn't understand there was a level up system by using the doll -- so there's that I guess.
 
The old Kings Quest games, as well as many older point and click games, had items you needed to continue the story be entirely missable. Once you missed them, you first had to understand that you weren't progressing the story and then start over.

I do wish old game mechanics and systems were more prevalent nowadays, but I could do without that.
 
Speaking of Bayonetta - dodge offset.

You can fumble your way through the default difficulty without ever understanding how it works, but it's absolutely essential to pulling off combos in the heat of combat and using it blows the game wide open for the kind of stylish action it was made for.
 
Deadly Preminiton fast travel walkie talkie and unlimited ammo guns. For every clunky flaw the game mechanics has, these side quest items help you bypass all the annoying shit. Very essential to make what supposed to be a tedious game into something very special and memorable.
 
There's an auto battle feature?!
Yup. IIRC you punched in all the moves like you normally do and then pressed the button for Auto Combat (dunno which one that was, been a while since I last played BD). The game would then repeat that series of moves in all battles until you disable it. Let me tell you, grinding money and job points at 200% encounter rate, 4x speed and with auto battle was the most delightful grinding experience I've ever had. Literally did not look at the screen, just ran in circles pressing A occasionally while watching TV :D
 
The first time I played Kingdom Hearts I didn't know you could equip moves like Dodge roll until the 3rd level boss.

I felt really dumb until I saw someone else go through the same thing

The parry/block in Metal Gear Rising. Seems a lot of people don't know about it and either played mostly or entirely without it, or bailed around the time of the Bladewolf fight.


*slowly raises hand*
 
The items for the celestial weapons in FFX. You could get them initially only during the brief time you spend in each temple to get the summon, and then they were locked away until you fight a superboss before each temple in the postgame. Which required lots of grinding and fleshing out the sphere grid.
The celestial weapons were not *essential*, but they made the game a lot easier towards the end.
 
what makes this things essentiel?
if you can beat the game, you don't need them.

any examples were you actually couldn't beat the game?
 
i got to the first big city (deling?) in FFVIII without knowing that you could junction

the mindblowing revelation when my friend showed me, wew
 
The items for the celestial weapons in FFX. You could get them initially only during the brief time you spend in each temple to get the summon, and then they were locked away until you fight a superboss before each temple in the postgame. Which required lots of grinding and fleshing out the sphere grid.
The celestial weapons were not *essential*, but they made the game a lot easier towards the end.
Yeah, the dark aeons were the reason I never felt like I was missing anything not playing the international/remaster version.
 
Sort of related, but I beat the entire first act of Resident Evil 4 before I realized that you could run. I thought the forced walking was a really challenging design.


There's a surprising number of people that have beaten RE4 entirely without know there's a run button.
 
I seem to recall Dead Island having this entire advanced melee system that changes the entire game (for the better) and it is off in the options bu default
 
The items for the celestial weapons in FFX. You could get them initially only during the brief time you spend in each temple to get the summon, and then they were locked away until you fight a superboss before each temple in the postgame. Which required lots of grinding and fleshing out the sphere grid.
The celestial weapons were not *essential*, but they made the game a lot easier towards the end.

They are nothing even near essential. The celestial weapons allow you to take down the final bosses in a few hits. Easier is an understatement. They exist for the optional side missions and not the main story. There is no challenge using celestials on main story elements.

[completed FFX HD 2 days ago]
 
If memory serves, you can miss the walkie-talkie (the game's equivalent of a radio which alerts you to the presence of enemies) in Silent Hill: Downpour. Quite an essential item that you can completely miss if you don't explore the first area of the forest enough!
 
If you want to save the entire crew you need to do the suicide mission the exact moment the option is given which means:

-Not doing Legion's loyalty mission (at a point where they're introducing them and the game is giving you incentives to do them)
-By virtue of not doing his loyality mission, you need to have Legion on your team at all times during the final mission (yet the game suggests he's ideal for the hacking segment)

Actually, the game gives you enough time to do exactly two missions before crewmembers start being lost. This is so that you can do both Legion's loyalty mission as well as bring him along on Tali's.
 
In Treasure's N64 game Mischief Makers, you could dash by either double tapping the D-pad in the direction you want to dash or by pressing the C-Button in the direction you want to go. However doing with the D-pad makes you dash faster but like only one random NPC mentions that to you at one point in the game and later there's a challenge you have to win by continuously dashing and if you didn't know about that it's impossible to win it and continue the game.
 
Looking at a few different second hand copies of Resident Evil 2 over the years it seems that very few people took the Claire disc out of the box. So less people got to playthrough Claire A / Leon B than you would think.

Even worse to think about is that the majority of people that bought the game on PSN do not even know that you can switch discs.
 
The old Kings Quest games, as well as many older point and click games, had items you needed to continue the story be entirely missable. Once you missed them, you first had to understand that you weren't progressing the story and then start over.

I do wish old game mechanics and systems were more prevalent nowadays, but I could do without that.

God damn King's Quest V.

"Don't eat the pie! You have to throw it at a yeti a couple of hours later in the game." That makes perfect sense...
 
Not sure if this counts, but on my first playthrough of DA2 I managed to never recruit pirate lady(can't remind her name), somehow missing her in the bar. She's essential to the Qunari arc and without her the story doesn't feel complete. The Qunari's appearance in the city makes a lot more sense with pirate lady' story line included.
 
Devil Triggers

Didnt know Onimusha or Devil May Cry had it until the end of both games when I accidentally turned it on.
 
Isn't this taught early in the game? I feel like this isn't misable so much as it can be ignored/forgotten...

It isn't taught really. You basically have to figure out how it works on your own and if you can't get that down you could go thru the whole game without using your gun because they do fuck all damage otherwise.
 
Oh OP, I envy you.

90's point and click adventure games: "Hey you're missing the wrench from chapter 2, the twig from chapter 5, and the quantum computer from chapter 14, guess you can't beat the game!"

Or how about "You missed a clue or weren't in the right place at the right time, guess you can't beat the game!" Looking at you, Dark Seed and Gabriel Knight...
 
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