Guide Dang It / Strategy

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• In Advance Wars, in the original game the Final Battle against the Big Bad Sturm consists of a 3-on-1 match. The 1st CO is always Andy, but the 2nd and 3rd are seemingly randomized between the other CO's encountered. That is, until you read an online guide and find out the formula for getting the CO's you want. The Blue Moon CO depends on who you used in that first fork in the road at the beginning of the game, Max Strikes; if you used Andy, Max shows up to help at the end, unless you completed "Olaf's Navy!" by rout, in which case it's Olaf, whereas if you used Max, it's Grit. The 3rd CO depends on what you did in Green Earth and Yellow Comet; if you completed the three Missions against Sonja (which had requirements to unlock by themselves), Kanbei is your 3rd helper. In the Green Earth Missions, using Andy for all of them nets you Drake in the third position, while using Sami for all of them gets you Eagle (as well as the bonus Mission Rivals), both of whom override Kanbei. Doing none of these things results in Sami in the third position. The map is winnable regardless of who your combination is, but certain players do better with certain CO's, and the CO's start with different and sometimes better stuff (for example, Kanbei begins with several tanks and other heavy units while Eagle starts with an air squadron).
  • The side missions that unlock Neotanks (in Black Hole Rising) and Black Boats, Black Bombs, and Piperunners (in Dual Strike) are mild cases of this. You have to capture particular cities in particular missions to advance to these secret levels. It's not too bad, since the game does tell you which levels these special cities are in... but you're still not told which cities have the maps in them, so you have to hope that you find it before killing off all the enemy units.
• Agarest Senki as a whole is just insane to complete without a guide. Good luck finding the right answers to properly raise the affections of the three heroines of the generation you are on without looking at the wiki. Or better yet, try unlocking the True Ending without a guide. It will absolutely tear your hair off.
  • Unlocking CGs is also a hard deal in this game because you have to be in a specific karma level, and you also need to have your heroine in a specific affection level just to even get those CGs.
  • Recruting the fifth generation characters as a whole are a Guide Dang It! by themselves.
    • Recruiting one character who by all rights betrayed you is pretty damn hard if you didn't know that you're not supposed to kill him but instead save him. Nowhere does the conversation or the game tell you to not kill Vashtor. You didn't get him? Say goodbye to your True Ending.
    • Having Dyshana in your party (not as a tag along member) requires you to be in Neutral at the start of the fifth generation. That means you need to end the fourth generation at the neutral phase. Nowhere does the game tell you that you need to be in that karma level to even recruit her.
    • Recruiting Beatrice in your party requires you to save Nastassja back in the third generation. Although this one is easier than the rest, EXCEPT this is also the generation that has That One Boss so you may end up level grinding and not knowing that you're not supposed to level grind on points.
    • Getting Murmina in your party has you go to take the longest route of the three routes you are presented. There are three routes to choose from and you need to have less than 25 turns to reach her. Take more than that and she dies from her injuries.
• Bahamut Senki, an obscure Megadrive game, normally falls somewhere between an Excuse Plot and No Plot? No Problem!; most of the time, when you beat the game, you just get a tactical summary. However, there is a "true" ending. How anyone was supposed to get it without a guide is anyone's guess, but in order to do it you must: Play as a specific character, in a specific scenario; go through a scripted sequence where your advisor automatically defeats one of your enemy leaders (who has to survive up to this point); avoid having most of the remaining enemies lose before turn 40; agree to use your advisor as a hero; have that hero lose a fight, directly, to a specific enemy leader (not their troops; they have to reach the enemy leader, fight them 1v1, and then lose, even though said hero is Purposely Overpowered and is unlikely to lose 1v1 unless you are intentionally trying to); defeat every remaining opponent except one in particular (a different one from the above); and, finally, invade the last enemy's location with just your main character and nobody else. There are no hints to any of this whatsoever.
• Battalion Wars 2 — in the mission Enemies Undone, if you didn't bother with the Xylvanians (most likely because they can't doing anything to you once you jump to the HQ) but wiped out all of the other enemies, you still won't get 100% in Power because you missed 8 infantry. Tip: they're all Xylvanians. However, a search reveals only 7 Grunts — still one short of the 100% in Power. It seems you get the 8th one by blowing up the 3 digging machines by shooting the explosive canisters near them, something suggested in-game by Vlad responding to that by warning Frontier's commander that this helps invite Xylvania to retaliate one day with their full wrath. What makes this more fun is that in other missions, some enemies won't necessarily count for Power at all, but you have to destroy all of the enemies that do count for Power if you want 100% in it.
  • Turns out to involve a Luck-Based Mission. But there is a more brutal Guide Dang It, which even badly hits a non-completionist player, in the first Battalion Wars: the Y button's use in commanded units' AI. Units in Follow mode will be far from active in attacking as opposed to in Wait mode where they will actively attack enemy units. However, using the Y button to specify a location for (a) unit(s) to move to will have the unit(s) attack anything that they get near enough actively. The game never suggesting about this may be part of why X-Day is regarded as a Scrappy Level (directing the units to inside the Artillery's range would stop the units from being hammered and have them attack the infantry support), and this causes a massive difficulty gap for Road to Xylvania as well, due to the AA Vets otherwise refusing to actively attack the respawning four Gunships.
• The C64 game Castle of Terror was legendary for this. Every nook and cranny needed to be thoroughly examined to move forward in the game, and even then the crucial object you needed to pick up was often not actually mentioned. Unsurprising, given that the game's creator has confirmed that it is quite literally Unwinnable By Design.
• In Colobot, there is a level where you have no bots and no supplies, yet you are ordered to destroy all the giant ants in the area. For some reason, during this one level the ants actually run away from you when you approach, which you need to take advantage of in order to lead them into killing themselves with mines. Considering that every other time, ants just shoot at you when you get close, there is no reason to expect this to happen.
• In Command & Conquer: Generals, the last scenario of the Chinese campaign gives the enemy a superweapon that will screw you over every five minutes. Turns out, it won't fire if you have less than $5000. But of course this fact isn't mentioned in your briefing or anything.
  • Even worse, $5000 is the exact amount needed to build your superweapon, which was just unlocked in the mission prior. This does not mean you can not ever use the superweapon, since if you rush up the tech tree and start building as many nukes as you possibly can, then you'll be fine as long as you do not have $5000 when then enemy's superweapon is ready to fire.
• Command & Conquer: Red Alert: The second-last Soviet mission requires the player to capture the Chronosphere within the Allied base and prevent its subsequent destruction. Except capturing the Chronosphere produces the comically frustrating "Objective Reached. Mission Failed." voiceover, presumably due to a bug. The only way to progress is through a roundabout solution that essentially requires you to capture an Allied Barracks and then use your combined units to kill all of them.^note This is because the level is a Fission Mailed - in the following cutscene, your character is blamed for the failure (only for Natasha to shift the blame to Kukov, getting him killed).
• Company of Heroes and the Dawn of War series leave mentioning many things out of the game, to varying degrees of obviousness. For Company of Heroes, there's the 'Elite Armour' for certain infantry and for certain infantry to gain — it makes them be harder to hit and take less damage from most bullets, but causes them to always be hit by sniper fire and take more damage from flames. One would have a hard time realizing what infantry have this and what it does without looking into the Meta Game. In addition, while the supporting instructor/officer for the campaign usually suggests useful strategies e.g. place guns here and build infantry to defend, occasionally you need to disobey the instructor and e.g. spam armor instead. Retreating in Dawn of War 2 is similar — doing so makes units run away back to their base, gradually getting faster and taking less damage from ranged attacks, but now taking extra from melee. There is no indication anywhere why your units run through tons of ranged fire and survive, but get torn a new arse from melee attacks while retreating. And many units not made for melee get torn apart from melee units almost as fast anyway, so you'd also have a hard time to figure it out without going to the Meta Game also.
• While Disgaea: Hour of Darkness lets you know that there are Multiple Endings, nowhere in the included material will they tell you what factors affect these endings. This could lead to a great deal of frustration when you finally check GameFAQs and realize that the one accidental ally kill you made (easier to do than it sounds, with no non-ending-related repercussions whatsoever) disqualifies you from getting the canon ending. Or for that matter, that having an obscenely high number of ally kills at certain points in the game can earn you an early bad ending. In the DS version, there is at least an indication that the game keeps track of ally kills, but no indication of why.
  • Makai Kingdom is a little more merciful. If you get a different ending, it does have the decency to tell you what you did to get it, so at least you can avoid that one.
    • Assuming of course it isn't a level you NEED to beat. Some endings refuse to let you start the game over until you beat it (kill too many allies and you'll get one like this), and some refuse to let you continue if you lose, even if it gets an ending. Is this your first playthrough through the game? Better get grinding or suffer an unwinnable battle forever.
    • Having Laharl as your leader when you fight Baal controlling Zetta's body gives you a bad ending. The guide dang it comes in the ending itself. Once you win the battle with anyone else as a leader, you permanently unlock Zetta and thus cannot play the level again, even with subsequent playthroughs.
  • Speaking of Disgaea, to find Etna's Journal in the PS2 version, you had to flip two switches there were no indication existed, then examine a random corner with no indication that there was anything special about it — although all you miss out on by not finding it is a different perspective on the story and a rare item towards the end of the game. The remakes each make it a bit easier to discover, along with making it unlock an alternate storyline once you complete the game — in the PSP version, a Prinny is added near the corner you have to examine, commenting that there's a draft. The DS version also has the Prinny, and further adds notification balloons when you're near something you can interact with, making it easier to stumble across the switches by chance.
  • The requirements for unlocking the Dark World maps in Disgaea 2 range from the simple things like not taking damage, to bizarre ones like spending 30 turns on a particular map, or defeating all of the enemies with tower attacks. You're not given even the slightest hint about what the requirement for each level is.
    • On Disgaea 2, the endings are completely confusing to unlock. The default ending is the easiest, by far, but the Bad Ending requires 50 ally kills which is highly unlikely as that is a rather excessive number for it, and the Worst Ending requires 99 ally kills with Rozalin in that number, an even less likely scenario (especially if you never use Rozalin). Assuming you get the Worst ending by being that bad at the game, you're immediately thrust without option into a boss fight against Rozalin, who has returned to her true Overlord Zenon form, a boss fight over 1500 levels higher than the final boss himself. The Tink ending is by far the worst and most ridiculous: get Tink up to level 2000 and have him kill the final boss. Not only is level 2000 waaaaaay over the final boss's head, but Tink is easily one of the absolute worst units the game has to offer.
  • Good luck getting to the Land of Carnage in Disgaea 4 on your own. The Promotionhell Tickets and the X-Dimension were one thing, but you need to get a very specific set of ship parts in order to get there. Parts that can only be found by torturing specific monsters for specific locations.
  • Disgaea D2 has some serious issues with unlocking the endings. A long list of endings will be available at the end of the game, but you'll likely notice that you barely have any. The truth is, the game has 3 endings for the final boss, and nearly a bad ending for every boss fight you die to. Given a player is more likely to abandon back to the castle and level up rather than pointlessly let a game over play, it's highly likely that a player would never know to purposefully die against many of the games bosses, worse yet the player has to do a new game+ every time is happens. The final boss endings are no better. The default is easy, kill the final boss, but the other two are annoying. One requires dying against the final form of the final boss, the other requires Etna having zero likability with Sicily, Laharl, and Flonne, and then choosing "Yes" at a prompt that doesn't appear if this condition hasn't been met.
  • Most of Disgaea 5's endings require the same ridiculous ally kill requirement that Disgaea 2 does as well, coupled with dying to specific bosses like D2.
• Dungeon Keeper 2 has 'elite' creatures, which are uniquely named, more powerful versions of the standard creatures, and summoning them relies on varying degrees of Guide Dang It. For the most part, summoning them requires building the room that normally attracts that kind of creature, but then putting another room's tiles in the corners, for example. However, the elite Dark Angel's layout takes the cake — a 5x5 Temple surrounded by four other different rooms in a very specific configuration. It should be added that a normal player will have no idea that the elite creatures exist in the first place, and even the player-written FAQ on elite creature summoning layouts lampshades that they had no idea how Bullfrog expected anyone to work it out by themselves.
• Empire at War: The game never tells you that smugglers don't expire on corrupted worlds.
• When a mission is completed in Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, you often get an item that doesn't go into your regular inventory, but can be taken along on a mission, and boosts your entire party's stats in some way. Some missions force you to bring along these items before you can even begin (for example, you'll need to bring along the black thread and magic cloth if your mission is to make a hat for a black mage). Unfortunately, you quickly get more of these items than you can hold, and, while some of them are never used to complete a mission, quite a few of them are used hundreds of missions after you've gotten them. If you delete one of the latter items, they're lost.
  • This is especially infuriating with the black thread item as you are able to get 3 of them over the course of the game. Since you may well have 2 or 3 of them in your inventory at the same time, you may think that it is one of the items you can get many multiples of and when you next reach maximum item capacity you might think that discarding an item you have multiple of would be safe. The problem is, each of the three black threads is required to complete three separate missions. And this is one of few items you can get multiples of, nevermind being one of even fewer items that you can only get limited multiples of. Argh!
  • Secret characters come with their race's Ultima attack mastered and join at above-average levels. To have a 1 in 5 chance of recruiting them, you must either complete a certain mission or complete any mission while voluntarily bringing a certain mission item, depending on their race. The characters or methods to recruit them aren't mentioned, and the mission items needed to recruit them have no other use. The Nu Mou character is unobtainable if he doesn't offer to join after his non-repeatable quest is complete; the Viera character's quest is repeatable but she's lost if you flee any mission leading to her recruitment quest.
  • The sequel makes things a bit better by having such items part of the loot system which is also used for Item Crafting and never lost forever. However, there are other instances of Guide Dang It: For instance, a series of quests where you need to provide the right person for a non-combat job, with very vague hints provided which race/class can do it. The worst case is "Wanted:Caretaker" which can only be done by a Viera White Mage — all the others require a specific class/set of classes OR a specific race, but that one requires both.
    • Then again, the random nature of the loot can really screw you over. A Thief and an Enemy Scan will make things much easier for you. Except the game's not going to tell you what you're missing for a specific piece of loot, so knowing exactly what you can steal is pointless unless you get a guide to consult on what is used to make what.
    • There is, however, one item that is lost permanently unless you look up a guide or are lucky. The quest to make the moogle bard Hurdy revolves around you taking two different loot items that only appear that once, and make him a Shining Lute. Except one of those items (the Strawood) is also needed to make a Brilliant Theorbo, another weapon for Hurdy... which can also complete the quest. If you make the Shining Lute, chances are you'll find another one later in the game if you want to complete all the sidequests... but no such thing happens for a Brilliant Theorbo. So you're stuck with the Bard and Beastmaster classes being unable to be mastered; not really important for Hurdy (Soul Etude heals and restores status, but there's plenty of other choices), but the Beastmaster skills can be needed to get an Ahriman to use the Blue Magick you need to learn.
  • FFT's PSP remake had the "Agria's Birthday" sidequest. you have to have Agrias and Mustadio in your party, which most people will...but you also have to have kept the two generic knights that joined with Agrias, and THEN go to a certain city during a certain month...WHILE you have at least a half a million gil in your inventory. Screw this up and you miss out on a redonkulously powerful accessory.
  • Even in regular FFT for the PS1, character class progression is a complete Guide Dang It. Classes have levels in other classes as requirements and you are not told the requirements, so there's no way to know what they are except by luck or using a guide.
  • Good luck getting most of the secret characters without a guide. Worse, in order to get the one weapon that lets Cloud use his special abilities requires going to one specific random battle map, with a character that has the move-find item ability equipped, and sending that character to stand on one unidentified spot, to find the weapon.
    • Carrying out the long quest chain that leads to getting Cloud (and several other powerful party members) is a massive Guide Dang It. The quest chain requires you to return to an out-of-the-way city you'd have no reason to go to and then to go to another random city, hear a rumor in the tavern, then head to the nearby city. That's just to get things started.
    • And accessing the Bonus Dungeon requires you to go to a different remote town, completely unprompted. Figuring out how to proceed on each floor, let alone obtain several permanently missable items, is a whole bucket of Guide Dang It!.
• Fire Emblem:
  • While it's taken for granted now, nothing in the games themselves has ever explained how a unit's stats increase when they level up, except for the occasional vague comment about "differing potential". The fact that stat gains are only generally biased by character and completely at the mercy of the Random Number God is never stated, let alone specific growth rates. Later games also have a unit's current class affect their growth rates in various ways, which is also never proper explained. If you didn't look this up and were used to other RPGs with their more consistent progression, it would be a complete mystery why the same unit can be a war god one playthrough, and a liability the next.
  • Path of Radiance
    • To convince a certain character (Shinon, Chapter 18) to rejoin your crew late in the game, you have to have one inconsequential character (Rolf, a character whose lone prior interaction was a blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameo near the beginning of the game) talk to him, then have the Ike defeat him (and it must be Ike), especially because the series is noted for the fact that character death is permanent the vast, vast majority of the time.
    • Another good example is Ilyana. A lonely little thunder mage in the top left corner of the map, with no indicator, prior battle conversation, base conversation, or anything to hint at her arrival. You have to talk to her with Ike.
    • The only way to get one of the best units in the game (Stefan, Chapter 15) is to send one of two very powerful characters (Lethe or Mordecai) to a specific space in the corner of a field way out of the way. The only hint to this is an Info conversation that hints to 'vague figures walking in the dunes to the north-east'. How many people discovered that one without a guide?
    • A Motive Rant for the Big Bad is hidden in a similar way. Said rant is obtained by letting him attack Reyson, a unit who can not harm him, (only 6 characters can harm him, only 3 of whom you can have at once) and will die quickly and permanently (as he can't take hits from normal foes...). Best part? If you know about this, you will have already have seen the dialog, meaning there is no reason for you to do it.
    • There is also a Knight Ring that allows the user to use leftover movement after an action (like Cavaliers and Paladins for instance) that can be obtained from Naesala on Chapter 19. You have to talk to him with either Janaff or Ulki, then let Naesala talk to Reyson. Simple enough: unless you plan to fight Naesala, you will do this. If you want the Knight Ring, though, you can't kill any of the Ravens scattered across the stage that could possibly attack.
    • The Bands in general (Fighter, Soldier, Sword, etc.) that can be obtained in the second playthrough. They influence equipped characters' growths very slightly depending on which one. For instance, the Fighter Band gives you +5% to HP and Strength. However, anyone who doesn't know this will sell each and every one for the 2000 gold they're worth. Similarly, there's the Knight Ward, which can only be equipped by "knight"-type classes and raises Defence and Resistance slightly. What the game doesn't tell you is that it also raises the holder's Speed growth by 30%, a bigger effect than any of the Bands.
    • Rexaura, the best light magic tome in the game is held by a Bishop on the final chapter. Get him to at least half health by the end of the turn, he'll use an elixir, unequip his weapon, and you can steal it off him. Again, who figured this out? Indeed, since you cannot sell equipment after this chapter, the only reason you'd want to use Rexaura is if you trained Rhys (the only character who can use light magic)... and the priest with Rexaura is right next to the final boss, whom Rhys can't damage.
    • Fixed Growth Mode as a whole is one. After beating the game once, you can choose between "fixed" and "random" growth modes when starting a new file. The game doesn't indicate that "random" is the default mode, while "fixed" uses a complex stat-points system similar to Effort Values in the Pokémon games. Killing certain enemy classes and even equipping certain weapons will make you more inclined towards gaining points in certain stats. Nothing in the game hints at how this works. Fixed Growth Mode isn't in any other game in the series, so good luck finding documentation on it.
  • Unlocking the super-secret, spoileriffic ending sequences for Radiant Dawn involves a convoluted series of events throughout the course of the story (And a New Game Plus) that nobody would ever do without actually knowing what would come from it. This even includes bringing in a maxed out Support Bond, transferred from the previous game.
    • Related to the above are the secret characters. First you have to be on a second run for either of them, and while one is super easy to pick up (there's a new option that appears on a 2nd run in a key scene related to that character; picking it makes the character join later), the other is this trope to a T. (You have to use a blatantly OP character in the short window you have with said character, okay fine. Then you have to have Ike fight a round with THE BLACK FREAKING KNIGHT HIMSELF in a stage where it's way too early to even consider such a thing. That's not all: BOTH Ike and BK have to survive that fight. If you hammered BK and he actually died there? Other secret character is unobtainable. After all of that, if you did it right, you'll get the other character... on the LAST STAGE OF THE GAME.) Did we mention that both of these secret characters are your only dark magic users in the entire game?
    • Played for Laughs with Oliver. There are absolutely no hints that he's recruitable, he's the only boss in the entire duology that you can recruit on the battlefield, and players of Path of Radiance will likely already have a major chip on their shoulder for having to slog through four levels of swamp to "kill" him in that game and assume he just needs to be killed for good this time. His join condition is consistent with his characterization, though the game makes no suggestions to try it: Move Rafiel into his range, and Oliver will go over and talk to him automatically. His Heel–Face Turn is so inexplicable that Ike snarks about it, and he goes on to become The Friend Nobody Likes. Even the endgame bosses express extreme confusion at him being in your army.
  • The desert chapters present in Mystery of the Emblem, its remake, and all of the GBA games and both Tellius games (that are already annoying because you are fighting on sand, lowering your units' movements) have hidden items that can only be obtained by having units wait on a range of squares. The chances of doing so vary from game to game- in Mystery and its remake, it is 100% for everybody. In 6-9, only thieves have a 100% chance, and other units must rely on Skill or Luck (depending on the game). In Radiant Dawn, not only do thieves lose their guarantee, but hidden items discovery is also influenced by biorhythms — and hidden items are everywhere (and some are really valuable, like Beastfoe, the Brave Bow, and the Rescue staff). New Mystery also has hidden items outside of the desert, but all tiles are marked (though the spaces are accessible only by certain classes and also indicate reinforcements will appear, so the fact they all hide valuable items is its own Guide Dang It).
    • The desert chapter in 6 also has one item that can only be found by one specific character. While you won't be in danger of not fielding that character since she joins that very chapter, she's also got some of the worst base stats in any game, and the chapter is more than halfway through.
  • Genealogy of the Holy War has the Hero Axe. You get it by sending Lex, equipped with an Iron Axe (When the much better Steel Axe is also available) to a certain off-path square. How the hell does anyone guess any of this?!
    • In order to get the very powerful Forseti Tome, you have to have Lewyn enter Silesia Castle after it's been seized.
  • Thracia 776 has a hearty collection of tough-to-recruit characters. Xavier is probably the worst (rescue the 8 civilians and have each of them talk to a specific enemy that they're paired with to turn them into an allied NPC, then talk to Xavier — note that while those 8 enemies won't attack the civilians, other enemies will, and enemies who have turned into allies will battle those who have yet to do so, potentially killing them before they can be turned), but Misha isn't much better (talk to her with a specific unit, then use a Sleep staff on her to force her to dismount, allowing you to "capture" her, and hold on to her for the rest of the chapter). Or Ilios, who can only be recruited if a unit wasn't recruited some five chapters earlier. Or Salem, who also needs to be captured and held onto.
  • Binding Blade has something along the lines of this for the recruitment of a certain Paladin, who is considered to be one of the best pre-promoted characters. You have to drop one of your defenseless characters (Either a bard or a dancer, both incapable of attacking) next to a swarming mob of enemies. (6 to 8 cavaliers around the paladin you're trying to recruit) While the storylines of the characters hint the bard can accomplish this (the paladin being an Etrurian general, and the bard is the supposedly dead prince of Etruria, who had merely faked his death) you can only have either the bard or the dancer in your party, and the only connection between the general and the dancer is a cutscene where it's revealed that she's the adopted daughter — not of him, but of a different Etrurian general.
    • Binding Blade also had the path to Ilia vs. the path to Sacae, which is based on the levels of certain non-essential characters, as well as the slightly non-intuitive methods used to enter the Gaiden Chapters in which the legendary weapons are found. These range from the easy (Chapter 8x has no turn requirement, only that Lilina survives the chapter) to the arcane (Chapter 20x, the last chapter of the Ilia/Sacae split requires you to complete chapter 20 in 25 turns while recruiting the unit that can be obtained there and all earlier characters related to that character must also still be alive and recruited) to the absolutely infuriating (Chapter 16x requires an enemy unit that can't be recruited during the chapter to survive Chapter 16; said enemy will automatically join you at the start of 16x and must be used in said Gaiden Chapter.) And you must have all eight legendary weapons, unbroken - minus the Holy Maiden staff, which you're allowed to break - plus keep a certain unit alive, in order for the game to continue past Chapter 22. And then, if said character dies after Chapter 22 and/or someone besides Roy (equipped specifically with the Binding Blade) defeats the final boss, you'll miss one small scene in the final ending. Granted, the latter is easy to do since the Binding Blade is near-guaranteed to kill the boss in two rounds tops, but the former can still be annoying.
  • Getting some of the bonus chapters in Blazing Sword can be incredibly frustrating.
    • How to get the special double-Gaiden chapter 19xx in Blazing Sword? Simple. First you must play through Lyn mode and get the bard Nils up to Level 7, a feat that is guaranteed impossible to happen if you aren't specifically planning for it. Then advance to Hector mode, unlock chapter 19x, and kill Kishuna, an enemy unit who does not attack back in any way. Doesn't sound too hard. Except when you realize that you only have one turn to take him down, he has 50HP (higher than anyone else you are likely to have encountered), and can dodge nearly every attack you throw at him. It's incredibly difficult to take him down without RNG abuse. Of course, most would agree that the story revealed in 19xx is completely and utterly worth it.
    • The Gaiden chapter "Genesis" (22x in Eliwood mode, 23x in Hector mode) has the requirement of needing to obtain 700 points of experience in the regular chapter, "Living Legend", as well as having had recruited the character Hawkeye. Many players are already using very high level units, probably promoted as the two chapters allowing arena abuse in 16x or 17x "The Port of Badon" and 20 or 21, "A New Resolve" are played through previously, making this obscure requirement that's key to unlocking the full story of Nergal and Kishuna quite difficult. The presence of Pent, who cannot be recruited during the chapter doesn't help, as he will absolutely tear through the entirety of the enemy force himself unless rescued by a flying unit, which is quite risky because there are archers everywhere and flying units are weak to bows.
  • While the Support system in Blazing Sword is generally simple, there are a few notable cases of this trope. Pent and Louise already start out with a A support, but they still have "support conversations", so-to-speak, that are considered part of the support library. To get these, you have to move them next to each other and select the "talk" option during specific chapters. Miss one of these? You can't get the later ones. This first occurs in Chapter 27 and the second in the penultimate chapter. It's the last one that most players miss though: you have to have them talk during the Final Chapter... but only during the second half. Most players would assume that if they didn't have a conversation in the first half of the chapter, they wouldn't have one at all. Nope. The other case also involves the second half of the final chapter: it's actually counted as a separate chapter for support purposes, and this is the only reason A Supports with Renault are even possible. So you're going to need to know this if you want to complete his support log.
  • Sacred Stones has secret shops, which otherwise sell rare promotion and stat-boosting items, in Chapter 16, "Ruled by Madness", and Chapter 14A/14B, "Queen of White Dunes"/"Father and Son" (only one of which is available, depending on the route chosen). They're unmarked on the battlefield or world map, no hint is given that they even exist, and they can't be accessed again until you've beaten the game. To make matters worse, the Member Card, which is needed to access them, is only held by Rennac. It's easy for him to escape without joining the party on the one mission where he can be recruited.
    • Speaking of Rennac, then there's the matter of recruiting him with your main lord vs. recruiting him with L'Arachel. Having Ephraim or Eirika speak to him will cost you a whopping 9,980 gold, while L'Arachel can recruit him for free. (While there is a chest full of gold in the level, the game doesn't warn you that Rennac demands a fee from your lord until after you speak to him, and since there's a Secret Shop in the level... most players would want to spend their gold on that, instead.)
    • Cormag, the only character able to promote into Wyvern Lord, can be a huge pain in the butt to recruit at times. In Eirika's route, if the cast defeats the enemy units too quickly, the player will simply never get to see him arrive and be recruited by Eirika. On Ephraim's path, he is on the map right away in the chapter he can be recruited in on Ephraim's path, but he can't be recruited by Ephraim. He must be talked to with either his mentor Duessel (who must be recruited first) or his potential girlfriend Tana who begins the stage at the other side of the map and can be targeted by boats that double as ballistas.
  • Thracia 776 has Chapter 12x. Specifically, there are a bunch of Dancers on the map, and if the player lets them escape and doesn't kill any of them, another will show up on turn 25 with a Knight Proof. The players only have about three turns to steal it from her before she makes her escape. And then five turns after that, if that Dancer did not die, yet another one will appear, this one with a Warp staff. It's completely arbitrary and there is no way of knowing how this will happen. It doesn't help that the map has darkness that makes it impossible to see them if the characters not close enough.
    • The chapter itself can be trivialized by warping over one of a few characters to talk to the boss, who then joins the party, causing all the other enemies to leave. Incidentally, this brings up another Guide Dang It; Lara, a Thief obtained on in the game, has a hidden class change that can only be obtained by having her talk to the boss. While it's obvious that she can talk to him (if she's brought for the mission), the class change bit is only vaguely hinted at. This class change is also the only way one can get a Dancer unit in this game. Most other Fire Emblem games have a character of that class automatically join the party.
  • Fire Emblem: Awakening:
    • Prince Chrom must be married to either of his prospect girlfriends (Sumia, Sully, Maribelle, the Female Avatar, Olivia, or even a NPC Villager woman) by the end of the first arc. Many people have found themselves getting him hitched to a Female Avatar by complete accident. Or marrying him to said Female Avatar through their supports, which some decry for their polemic writing and OOC behavior. Or have him "steal" a girl they were planning on marrying themselves. Or missing out on hitching him to Olivia, who joins the cast at the very last stage of said first arc. While it does make sense in-story (Emmeryn has just died a couple chapters prior, which makes her younger brother and heir Chrom next in line to the throne, plus the current arc's clearly coming to a close), Chrom is still the only forced and timed marriage in the game, so 1) it can very easily catch players off-guard on their first run, and 2) the players pretty much have to plan ahead for it with any of his prospective wives.
    • Even more basic, a little ways into the game, the players first get an item that allows them to change a character's class. It doesn't give you any hints about why anyone would want to do this, which (if any) stats and abilities carry over from the original class to the new one, etc. These items are single-use-only and very limited, so experimentation is not encouraged. (They can be freely bought later, but only at the shops on very specific levels, and not for quite a while after the first one is obtained.)
    • Oh boy. The Paralogue to recruit Gangrel, the villain from the first arc of the game. Chrom has to talk to him three times in order to recruit him! He will also move and attack so the players might accidentally kill him before even getting the chance to talk to him once! Some of the other Spotpass Paralogue characters fall into this too. Walhart will only join if the player had Chrom fight him at least once during the chapter. And one actually has to defeat him in battle to recruit him, something that most players would avoid for a recruitable character. Yen'fay is the only recruitable character in the entire game who can't be recruited with Chrom: the players have to talk to him with his sister Say'ri. So the player forgot to deploy her or had her die on Classic mode? He's lost.
  • Fates has some examples:
    • In Birthright, Kaze will, by default, die at the end of Chapter 15, and they must have an "A" support with the Avatar to prevent this. There is a small Interface Spoiler giving you a hint, but a player can easily miss this, especially if this is their first playthrough.^* Said Interface Spoiler is the fact that, if Kaze is "S" supported to anyone (even the Avatar), Midori's paralogue will not have unlocked when other "S"-supported characters had theirs unlocked. There is also no indication that one absolutely needs this particular character to be at an "A" support by this particular point, and while it would make sense, this only makes sense once it's done and in hindsight.
    • In Revelation, recruiting Benny and Charlotte can be confusing. They will only join if spoken to by Elise. While she does make a comment at the beginning of the chapter implying this, most other recruits are either done by Corrin or still give you the option of having them join at the end of the map as long as they survived. Not so here, where Benny and Charlotte won't join even if they lived if you missed having Elise speak to them. What makes it extra annoying is that they're on opposite sides of the map, so Elise has a lot of running back and forth to do.
    • The optional characters recruited through upgrading "My Castle" fall into this. These characters require the players to a) be at a particular point in the story on a path where they survive, and b) have a specific structure upgraded to level three. There is pretty much no indication that one needs these particular structures upgraded to level three.
    • And even then, there's still a couple of oddities with the My Castle recruits. For instance, some characters join after different chapters between routes, even if the players had their respective equipment upgraded earlier; Yukimura won't join in Revelation even if the item that caused him to join in Birthright is upgraded; and, finally, one structure in particular belongs to a character that will not join in Revelation (Izana, who falls victim to a Plotline Death), so the players may not think to upgrade it... only, it now causes another character to join instead (Hayato's adoptive father Fuga, who doesn't join at all on either of the other two routes), even if some players may think to ignore it on this route.
    • Nina's paralogue has a win objective being "Rout the enemy before she escapes". Most would expect this to be to kill all enemies on-stage except for her. The problem comes from the fact that she is an enemy — and the stage doesn't end even if she's boxed her into a corner so she can't possibly move. The players actually have to beat her in battle, and the game drops a strong hint that she became lost.
    • Chapter 21 of Birthright features a stage gimmick that isn't explained. The players have to use dragon veins to either open up a shortcut or flood the area full of lava. The problem is that the method to tell which will do which isn't explained, and the player has to take a look at where the veins are to tell which will do which (underneath a glowing orb on the nearby statue). Furthermore, the game doesn't say that one can can try again after a few turns, and since reusable dragon veins are rare, a first-time player can easily think they've made the map unwinnable (without fliers).
    • Benny and Ryoma's sons, Ignatius and Shiro, are also somewhat confusing as well — only due to the fact that the end of their paralogues still play as normal even if they died during the stage. Fortunately a player can figure this out by themselves though simple logic (He dies during the chapter, and doesn't join? Oh, that must be why he's not in there), but this does not exactly explain why they didn't join under those circumstances. Shiro is particularly vexing, since he's an aggressive green unit that starts in the middle of a sand-filled map; he will die before the second turn unless you're quick with a rescue staff.
  • In both Fire Emblem Gaiden and its remake, Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia, nothing in the game tells the players which characters learn which spells, which can be a problem when deciding which class to promote Villagers to. Out of the starting Villagers, Kliff is the best fit for the Mage class due to getting the most spells, and Faye from Echoes learns a unique White Magic spell called Anew that acts as the game's only equivalent of the Dancer class. (Though some consider it Awesome, but Impractical, as each Anew cast takes away a hefty chunk of the girl's HP.) If Faye's promoted to anything other than Cleric, the player will need to use a rare (and DLC-exclusive) Pitchfork to remedy this. In Kliff's case, the only hints at his natural aptitude for magic come from an easily missed comment by Alm^note (checking the wall of Mycen's house has Alm notice a burn mark that was caused by Kliff practicing magic) and his epilogue^note which states that his son becomes a talented mage, and there's no hints to Faye's unique spell at all. Additionally, some Mercenaries get unique spells if the players loop them back to Villager and then into Mage, like Saber being the only male to get the Seraphim spell.
    • The fact that Mercenaries can eventually loop back into Villagers is a mild case. While the game does tell you this, it's only after you manage to get a Dread Fighter (the Mercenary line's final promotion) up to level 10, and it's the only class line in the game that can do this.
  • Fire Emblem: Three Houses:
    • Spell lists return from Gaiden/Echoes. While a unit's aptitude for Faith and Reason at least hint at who has more or fewer spells, who gets what is far from straightforward, and some of the most desirable spells are hard to come by. For instance, the ever-useful Bolting can only be learned by three characters: one is available on every route but heavily slanted toward Faith magic, the second can't be recruited by every house and isn't naturally inclined toward magic at all, and the third, while proficient in reason magic, is DLC.
    • Similar to Kaze in Birthright, though admittedly not as bad here, the Blue Lions path can also potentially kill off a playable character if the player does not meet certain requirements. In this case, Dedue will be killed off post-timeskip if his paralogue was not played. Granted, unlike some other paralogues (see below), Dedue’s paralogue does not have any unlock requirements, and most players likely played it anyway, even without knowing that playing it is required to keep him alive, but even if the player does meet the requirements, Dimitri will still say that he was killed off at the end of Chapter 13, and Dedue will still be unavailable for a bit, leading players to believe that they did something wrong until he shows up alive and well in the middle of Chapter 16.
    • Certain paralogues can be a nightmare to unlock. In particular, any that activate after the Time Skip but involve students from two different houses, as the "outsider" student has to be poached before said Time Skip, otherwise the game progresses without a hint the paralogue even exists. By far the worst is Caspar and Mercedes's, which not only runs into the timeskip problem, but is completely unavailable to the Black Eagles even if you meet all the other conditions. If you come at it from the Blue Lions, Caspar's significance to the chapter isn't revealed until it starts. And what makes this one particularly vexing is it contains vital information for a character arc, specifically, the Death Knight's identity and Mercedes's childhood.
    • Gardening in the Greenhouse is far more complex than most players would generally think. Yields can be increased by improving your method of cultivation but it can also be increased or decreased by the altering the number of seeds or by mixing different combination of seeds. That seems straightforward enough but there are some mixed seed combinations that grant a yield of 3 for seeds that can't reach it by themselves i.e. some combinations give better yields than using just the same type. Also, each seed has three predicted yield levels (the higher the yield level, the better quality of items) that happen to be split into two halves in which the lower half increases the chance of receiving "lower quality" items such as Weeds or Dried Vegetables while the upper half increases increases the chance of receiving "higher quality" items like flowers or fruits and vegetables used in dishes. Meanwhile, observant players will probably have noticed that planting certain seeds gives the chance of yielding certain items. For example, planting Red Flower Seeds can give you Roses while planting Green Flower Seeds can you give Pitcher Plants. These can actually be soft-reset should you get an undesirable yield. However, stat booster items like Fruit of Life, Speed Carrots, etc. cannot be soft-reset once you have planted the seeds. These are also tied to growing certain seeds. The game pretty much tells you none of this.
    • There are some C-Supports that can only be seen pre-timeskip. If you try to unlock the support during Part 2, you'll get a message saying, "It's too late to deepen this bond." This locks out an entire chain of supports in that file so the only way you'll see those supports is in a new game. In addition to this, many supports only occur past certain points in the story, mainly after the timeskip, and trying to access the support will give the message, "This bond needs more time to develop", which some players may interpret as just needing more support points. Some of the delayed supports make logical sense depending on the context of said support (for example, Leonie being upset over Jeralt's death), but you won't really know that until you get there.
    • Some of the supports are only available on specific routes or under specific circumstances, to the point where browsing the support library in the game's main menu before playing the game will likely lead to less spoilers and more confusion. For example, Gilbert is formally associated with the Church of Seiros, but unlike the rest of the knights he is only available on the Blue Lions route (not even recruiting his daughter Annette will get him to join another house, which frustratingly leaves Annette's Hero Relic unobtainable on other routes). Ingrid and Seteth can support on any route, but their A+ rank can only be obtained on Blue Lions and won't even show up on the menu if you're leading another house. Rhea's entire support chain is only available pre-timeskip (in contrast to all other supports, which have their A — and sometimes even B — ranks locked off until Part II); to make matters worse, her C and B ranks become unavailable after certain plot events, and her S rank can only be unlocked on the Silver Snow route.
  • Even the ROM hacks have moments like this. Case in point, The Last Promise (a Blazing Sword hack with a totally original plot and cast of characters) has finding the Emblem Lance, which requires Corben to visit a small house in chapter 2. This is a curveball because anyone who's played a FE game on the Gameboy Advance would expect only bigger houses and villages to give items. What's worse is that unlike any other small house, you can only visit it once before it's locked out for the other characters, and the item is different for each person! If Siegfried, Shon or Tamiko visit the house, you have lost the lance. And getting all the Emblem weapons will unlock a sidequest near the end of the game, but fortunately none of them are as hard to find as the lance.
    • Then in Chapter 5, there is a sidequest unlocked by finding a Talisman. You'd think the Talisman would be in a chest or in some enemy's inventory, but instead, it's hidden from view...in a locked room that, other than one mook, is totally empty. Players would probably just ignore it if they didn't know there was a hidden item there.
• Front Mission 3 has two completely different story arcs. How do you choose between one or the other? You choose to either go or not go with a character to a location. This happens right after the games first mission. The kicker? The arc you choose also decides your ending, as one arc leads to the bad ending, and the other leads to the good one.
• Game Boy Wars 3 has a few medals as this. Granted, the game gives you no hints as to how to obtain any of them, but these are the ones that definitely fall into the trope:
  • The Honorable Wounded Prize — lose a battle in Campaign. This is clearly a case of Do Well, But Not Perfect.
  • The Excellence Prize — clear all 45 Campaign maps in 54 battles. For starters, this automatically qualifies it as Permanently Missable Content. This is actually intended to keep players from Level Grinding on early maps and having a bunch of promoted units to work with — not that it will help much on the harder levels. However, it's particularly bad because in order to unlock certain maps without repeating others, you must clear certain maps slowly. Which maps you'd have to clear quickly or slowly is its own Guide Dang It too.
  • The 2 Engineer Medals — you must build certain terrain a certain number of times. This terrain must count as man-made and strengthening properties does not count toward this.
  • The All Unit Medal — you know how bad a Guide Dang It this is when even the maintainer of Game Boy Wars Network hasn't obtained it and must only even know of its existence due to hacking on somebody's part. It is possibly done by building all 51 units due to cheat search results, but can't be sure with a Japan-only Revenue Enhancing Device being required for the mercenary units.
  • Possibly the Reaper Medal (deny White Moon from surrendering 10 times).
• Genjuu Ryodan does not leave any hints that some units can be obtained only from castle capture instead of killing all enemies.
• In Kartia: The Word of Fate, getting the mighty Pair rune. It's only mentioned in the Japanese guide to the game, but to create the mightiest Phantoms and spells — your party can only use silk runes at Stage 15 (including for item crafting and altering terrain) and you can only attack the dragons there with physical attacks or Phantoms. Only then can the Pair rune show up. This led to MANY players in NA and EU at their wits' end trying to create the Fynus phantom.
• In King of Dragon Pass, the only way your tribe can gain more land is by conquering it. Fair enough. But the option that lets you do that is also the only place in the entire game where it's mentioned such a thing is possible. And that option is only given after starting a raid on a tribe exactly adjacent to your own. The vast majority of tribes do not fit this criteria, so even though raiding is mandatory players have a tiny chance of discovering it.
• The third-to-last mission of Lego Rock Raiders, Back to Basics, has Slimy Slugs respawn endless until you either complete or fail the level, which of course makes your mission of collecting forty-five energy crystal nigh-impossible. What the game doesn't tell you is that the slugs don't start spawning until you've collected about eleven crystals, which means all you have to do is disable the "collect crystals" priority before you get too many, wait until you find a large collection of crystals in one area, build a Tool Store next to them and turning the crystal collection back on.
  • In the whole game, Chief only tells you three times about the monsters in that mission, the other times leaving them to be a nasty surprise. Oh, and one of those three times is a blatant lie.
• The Kingdoms expansion to Medieval II: Total War contains one of these in the Teutonic campaign. If you play as Denmark, you can form the Union of Kalamar which gives you access to three unique units as well as control of a large chunk of the map. How do you get this? Capture five cities that are listed at the beginning of the game, then kill the Norwegian King without accidentally taking over Norway. Sounds easy? Sure, if you're familiar with the location of medieval cities in the Baltic Sea. The five cities are mentioned once and you aren't given their locations. Three of them are relatively easy to find (they're right next to your starting location), one is on a island, and the last is tucked away across the map next to one of your enemies starting cities. Simply assassinating the king typically doesn't work due to the increased security and he's smart enough to not leave his citadel of doom. So, what you effectively need to do is attack the citadel, kill the king, and then retreat in order to ensure you don't accidental destroy Norway.
• The Variable Sword in Mega Man Battle Network looks like a regular Sword with 160 power. However, by inputting button combinations that the game gives only a few of the less useful ones over the ingame BBS, Variable Sword can change its shape. It still has only 160 power, but can hit 4 times against anything (and only in the 3rd game). Even Neo Variable Sword (added in 4), with 220 power (with one combination hitting twice), isn't great either, and even worse, Neo Variable Sword's button combinations (which again, are never told by the game to the player) are different from the regular Variable Sword.
  • The gutspunch family of chips can apparently be fired as a rocket rather than a punch with their own button combination — and by their own I mean "each one has its own". Considering that without this they were effectively a sword that knocked people backwards, only some of the combonations are given on the ingame BBS. More importantly, in all of the games finding boss rematches (and thus the mega-class chips) for non-allied bosses, because after beating them a "ghost" appears in a specific unmarked unhinted-at dead end in if you're lucky the general region you explored just before beating him, which does not appear on the map and is virtually always in a dead end meaning the only way to find them without a map is to systematically walk into every single dead end of every internet area blindly. And after that further rematches against further-powered-up bosses for further-powered-up chips become random encounters (ugh) on a different map. Forget the "secret areas", mystery data and hidden jack-in points; it'd take a masochist just to find all the rematches without a guide. Some jobs also require you to go to rather nonsensical areas to complete them, like the memorable occasion of finding an escaped penguin hiding in your bathroom in the sixth game.
  • Mega Man Star Force has invisible ghost bosses as well, but in the second game they're visible until you beat them and they become random enemy encounters. But enough about that — the biggest Guide Dang It EVER occurs to a translation error: At one point a character says, "You can have a Recover150", but you don't get a Recover150. He actually WANTS a Recover150. Thanks, Crapcom.
  • Secret Chips. Most of the Mega Man Battle Network games had them (the first one didn't). In the sixth game, it's possible to get "Secret Complete" by having a friend get all of their exclusive chips, then trade Libraries. That's the easiest game to get secret chips in. The fifth game has this as well, but also has two chips that can only be obtained by linking up with a completely unrelated game (Boktai 2), trading the points obtained by doing so at the Boktai Trader (you get points in Boktai as well that can be traded for armor), and hoping you get the chips you want (which you need to trade 50 points at once to even have a CHANCE of getting). The Crossover itself is mentioned in the instructions for both games, though, so it's still fairly easy to figure out. Game 4 requires you to defeat a bunch of opponents in the Free Space, which can only be filled with the necessary type of opponents by linking up with another game. Even then, you only get the chip of the LAST opponent you face, which is determined pretty much at random, and each Navi has three levels of chip they can drop, depending on how strong or weak the game considers them to be (not that the criteria for "strength" or "weakness" is well-known). Even this can be discovered without too much difficulty, though. In addition, there's the Z-Saver [sic]. Unless you or a friend are fans of Mega Man Zero, you wouldn't know that Zero 3 has the chip. Worse, if you happened to buy it used, it's entirely possible to not have it in the cart anymore.
    • What you'll have the most difficulty finding are the Secret Chips in games 3 and 2 (though they weren't yet referred to as such). This required getting a certain number of completion stars, then battling with a friend on multiplayer, with a random chance of the victor drawing a Secret Chip from nowhere instead of getting a chip from their opponent. You could actually tilt the odds in your favor if you knew how to, and if you're looking up how to get the Secret Chips in the first place, you might as well look this up too.
    • There's one more "Super Secret Chip" in Mega Man Battle Network 2. To obtain it, you must first get 100% completion, including obtaining all 10 Secret Chips, then save and return to the title screen. With your 5 shiny, multi-colored completion stars, you then have to hover the cursor over New Game and input a button combination that turns the letters orange. If you start an orange New Game, you'll be playing in Hard Mode, where the enemies deal 1.5x the damage to you, and have 1.5x the health. To make sure you don't just trade for chips from the later part of the game, the multiplayer modes are disabled (which also prevents you from getting the Secret Chips if you somehow clear enough of the game). If you manage to get through this ridiculously hard game (less ridiculously so the farther through the game you get), you're awarded with a "Congratulations" screen and the Super Secret Chip known as Sanctuary...which appears in your NORMAL file...which you've already 100% completed...
    • Then there's the chips that CANNOT be obtained legitimately without going to a special event held way back when, God knows where. These included the four elemental Gospel chips, which could be used to form the Game-Breaker Program Advance known as Dark Messiah (P.A. number 31/30 in the P.A. Library). This only-usable-by-cheating P.A. is then referenced in game 6 with its perfectly legal Dark Messiah NEO...
  • Mega Man Battle Network 3 is rather unkind to those without a guide. If you manage to clear the game, then obtain all the Standard-class chips (including the ridiculously hard-to-find Virus chips) and Mega-class chips (including those only obtainable by trading with the other version), you can then unlock battles with the Omega Navis (which drop V5 chips, which are Giga-class)...by inputting a certain button sequence on the title screen. You then have to actually find the Omega Navis, and actually fighting them requires beating up a few waves of Omega-level viruses first, all in a row, which will likely leave you weakened for the upcoming boss battle. Did I mention that one of the Program Advances (needed for the P.A. Complete star) requires using one of three of these V5 chips, alongside two other chips that are quite pathetic on their own?
    • Not to mention how several of the chips in that game could only be obtained by 1. defeating a virus, 2. with a Busting Rank of S, 3. in under 5 seconds, 4. while in a Custom Style (no using, say, HeatGuts Style), 5. without using the Mega Buster or any chips that freeze time. This is referred to as a "Special Custom Drop," and while most viruses just drop their usual chips in rare, hard-to-find codes, some viruses dropped completely different chips (BodyBurn becomes Burner, LavaCannon becomes Volcano). Worse yet, replace "under 5 seconds" with "under 20 seconds," and you've got the requirements to obtain any Navi's V4 chip. Couple this with how difficult Navi ghosts can be to find, especially in that game (which has special conditions for several of the ghosts, like having a specific program equipped, or being low on health), and you'll definitely be shouting "GUIDE DANG IT!" before long. Oh, and if your friend with the other version can't do well enough against the Navi exclusive to that version, you can kiss your 100% completion goodbye.
    • The Virus Breeder sidequest is located in a spot in Scilab that you're unlikely to think about checking back frequently until you initiate it. Once you do, you get to find several fixed virus battles scattered about the net to collect their data for the breeder. The in-game BBS hints at the locations for a couple of them, but for the rest, you're on your own. Also, getting the virus to the breeder lets you collect special chips related to them, which count towards library completion.
    • On the topic of finding viruses, certain third-tier viruses (which, again, become necessary for library completion) can't be found unless you head to a specific area with a specific Encounter Bait program installed. Said areas have a tendency to be the least likely place you'd search for that sort of virus. Again, the in-game BBS only provides you with a vague hint.
    • In the plotline for Mega Man Battle Network 3, one of the clues to find a magical MacGuffin to complete the game is "one of many birds". Easy, in a game with a zoo area, and many birdlike enemies to battle. Unfortunately, the many birds refer to the paper cranes around a sick patient's hospital room. All references to which have been stripped out of the English version.
    • Worse still, there's a later sidequest where the translators flat out left one of the clues in Japanese. See the full quest here.
  • Mega Man Battle Network 6 has "rare" viruses that show up randomly in specific areas. For instance, RareBombCorn shows up in JudgeTree3. If a rare virus is defeated, you can then use that virus in a fun little virus battle mini-game. Just try and collect all the viruses without a guide.
    • Oh, and the rare viruses also drop rare chips (or rare chip codes) at their highest busting rank (ReflecMet * chips, for example). Since it's pretty difficult to beat most of them in the absurdly short time required (without specifically preparing for it) and there's no explicit information saying the drops are any different...
  • The very first Battle Network game had the plotline quest for the Undernet memos. The first one is pretty much handed to you, but the only hint you're given on the other two is that you need to find "a young beautiful lady and an old man". Never mind how vague this is (and might imply that the young lady and the old man would be found together, which they are not), the lady is in a school in Dentown that you probably didn't know existed until this quest. To rub salt in the wounds, once you've found her, she won't give you the memo unless you've filled out enough of the Library. Hope you've been diligent on S-ranking battles! Fortunately, the old man isn't as hard to find after that.
• Myth: The Fallen Lords:
  • During level 5 "Flight from Covenant", after the initial battle, your army will proceed straight forward following a road, until a massive enemy army (which can be beaten only on the easiest levels) will attack you. The intended way is to take an alternate route on the north through the swamps, which completely avoids the enemy army, although you meet some explosive wights wandering around. There is no hint that you should avoid this encounter, instead of treating it as another wave of enemies, and go through the muddy waters of the swamp, particularly considering that game objectives state that you should flee eastwards towards a tunnel and not northwards.
  • During level 13 "Seven Gates" your task is to kill a stray shade. It is possible that you will learn for the first time that his special ability is an explosive spell capable of killing all your army if your soldiers are too close on each other just before reloading a previous savegame.
  • There is a secret level that can be reached only by entering a specific isolated cave in level 17 "Sons of Myrgard", instead of completing the mission objectives and kill all the enemy. Which are likely to be completed right when you approach this cave, unless you already know of the level and avoid encounters.
  • In the final level, you will ultimately face Soulblighter guarding the Great Devoid, the hole where you must throw Balor's head. He is massively strong and resilient, and it's impossible to defeat him in a regular fight. Most players might try to split their few units, trying to distract him with some while a dwarf pursues the mission objectives, but he is so fast that he will quickly turn on him. The intended way to play in hindsight might be hinted by the presence of a journeyman, since storywise you were teleported directly from the ending of the previous mission, where you had no journeymen, so his appearance is functional against Soulblighter. Some players could remember that the journeyman's heal ability kills the undead, so he can be used to safely dispose of him with just one mandrake root. Obviously you should have spared one before the final encounter, but nothing tells you that, and if you had to use all you are screwed.
• Ogre Battle 64 is full of this. First off, the end of the game is based on your reputation, which is based on a complicated system that the game never tells you about. Second, in order to get many of the special characters and items you have to talk to people or go to certain shops at incredibly specific times, such as midnight on the last day of the month. Also the player's guide simply doesn't tell you how to get a handful of the characters in the game, despite the fact that they are, in a few cases, prominent figures in it, thus making it a Guide Dang It for a guide.
  • And then there's the original SNES Ogre Battle... Where does one begin? You often only get once chance to recruit the important NPCs, and the criteria for doing so are hopelessly vague and rarely alluded to in the game itself. This is made worse by the fact that the criteria often involve you having recruited another NPC, creating a knock-on effect whereby it's possible to miss out on almost every important character should you visit the towns in the wrong order on LEVEL THREE, without any indication of what the right order actually is. Getting the best ending also involves collecting all the Zodiac Stones, which are all randomly hidden and require you to have already gotten two obscure, difficult to obtain items — which can be lost, permanently, should you mess up getting them — before you can even begin the search. You also need to maintain high Charisma, Reputation and Alignment stats, which are — as in Ogre Battle 64 — related a system that the game doesn't explain to you. Have fun!
    • The game does explain — in game, even — how to get and maintain a good reputation: liberate towns with High ALI, High CHA characters. What it doesn't particularly tell you is how to boost ALI and CHA: delivering the killing blow to an enemy of higher level, preferably one of lower ALI. It alludes to it a little bit, but otherwise, you're on your own. The Canopus/Gilbert thing is All There in the Manual, by the way, as are some of the other various bits and pieces of getting the Zodiac Stones. Otherwise, there's a great deal of Permanently Missable Content in that game, in general.
  • The SNES Ogre Battle also had a rather unusual version of this, to get the worst ending in the game. It required having very high reputation to get a specific item, then almost immediately lowering your reputation to nothing so that a certain character would offer to join you if you gave him the item.
• The original Magic: The Gathering: Duels of the Planeswalkers has a puzzle that can only be solved by exploiting a bug that makes the A.I. Too Stupid To Live. The computer tends to use creature removal as soon as it has a target, even if there's no strategic reason to do so. You have to count on the A.I. using its Royal Assassin to kill a creature you've tapped for an ability (which accomplishes nothing) so it can't kill your biggest attacker during combat (which it needs to do to stay alive). You have no reason to think that it would react in this way unless you were aware of the bug.
• The Shining Series is full of examples of this;
  • Shining Force 1 also brings you Musashi and Hanzou. To recruit Hanzou, you must search a bush at the gateway to Runefaust. Note that the bush is slightly different from the other bushes in the area. THIS IS NOT THE CASE in the Japanese version, in that version there is nothing different about the bush. Musashi can be acquired by reading a small sign in Prompt. Gong is somewhat out of the way but can be found by accident. Yogurt is in the same location but through a hidden doorway. Domingo is also a tough one to get, requiring you to find an egg in a suit of armor and then track down an incubator several chapters later.
    • But wait, there's more! In the Game Boy Advance remake, the locations of Hanzou and Musashi are changed. By the time you realize this — upon trying the recruitment methods mentioned above — you have already missed out on them. Only by reading a guide specifically made for this version ahead of time can you reasonably get them on your first run, especially if you played the original. Musashi in particular has a very tiny recruitment window; you must leave town to engage in a battle, then retreat. If you continue to the next battle, he's (arbitrarily) lost. Well, until New Game Plus brings you back around, anyway. Even though you can still access the spot where he would have been recruited.
  • Leveling mechanics can also be a bit obtuse. In Shining Force 1, you were best served by not promoting your casters until they had hit level cap due to the way in which spells are acquired. Promoting resets their levels, and while not crippling stats, the spells are learned at specific levels regardless of that character's class. But in Shining Force 2, the game just assumes all characters were promoted right away at level 20 after promotion, regardless of how many levels were tagged on before promotion, so NOT promoting your casters right away slows down the rate of spells gained instead.
  • Shining Force II actually has a part where you are supposed to manually "use" an item to insert a slab into a tree. While this sounds easy, and the game makes it clear that this is your objective, it's actually somewhat confusing due to controls. While the player mostly uses the Genesis "C" button for most of the game to open the inventory screen, pressing "C" against this tree only opens a dialogue box. You must use the other button with a similar function, the "A" button against the tree, ensuring that you open your inventory and not "talk" to the tree. At no other point in the game are you forced to differentiate between the two buttons.
    • You need to do this at least two other times, actually: to acquire the Arm of Golem and the Force Sword, but both of them take place after the initial use of the slab.
  • Shining Force II has a unique item required to promote one of the character types hidden in a random spot in a castle. The only way one would legitimately find the thing would be to manually search (through a menu!) every tile in the game.
  • Shining Force III saw you play over three chapters, each a different game, with interchangeable characters. Items are traded between them allowing access to characters, bosses and enemies are recruitable depending on what you did to them in battle and then there is the whole finding hidden characters throughout the game; one of which is found by buying a random egg and hatching it much later in the game with a chicken that appears at some arbitrary moment in your HQ. Oh and some hidden characters you find will disappear only to re-appear in other chapters.
    • One of the worse examples of this is Spiral; an extremely powerful enemy who was once a boss but in the second to last battle of Scenario 1 stands halfway through the map. The only way to get her as a playable character in Scenario 2 is to avoid killing her; rushing all your people past her while she's attempting to kill them and then reorganizing your group to face the final group of powerful enemies. In another case if you kill a seemingly unimportant baby dragon in Scenario 1 you'll have to face its mother in Scenario 2 and you'll miss out on gaining your own dragon follower.
• Star Control II has a mild version of this in general, due to the universe going on without the player — indeed, there's a time limit to winning the game — combined with the time-and-fuel-consuming need to gather resources in order to complete the game at all and the fact that many star systems are not worth mining. At least it's mild enough that one can play some "probe" games before trying to take a serious stab at actually winning...
  • The free remake/port, The Ur-Quan Masters, suffers from a specialised form of this trope because clues given in the original PC version are missing. For example, because UQM uses the dialogue from the 3DO version, it's missing two key lines of dialogue from the PC version (one about the time limit, the other about where to find a particular race's homeworld).
  • Also, one optional but important quest asks you to track down a unique life form on an unknown planet orbiting an unknown star in a game universe of hundreds of stars, with only an obscure clue about the constellation to help you find it. The solution was much more obvious if you owned the original PC release because the game came with a printed map. It has to do with the shape of the constellation.
    • Note that there is actually a way to get the coordinates in-game: if you try to get Fwiffo to tell you the coordinates of the Spathi homeworld by threatening him, he will lie and send you to the planet where the creature can be found. However, the player has absolutely no reason to do so, since Fwiffo has already told you how to find his homeworld, so it's still a considerable Guide Dang It.
• StarCraft has a small (but nasty) case of this in the second mission of Zerg campaign. You are supposed to move the cocoon to destination, but at no place is it mentioned how to move it. You have to pick it up with the drone, but nobody tells you.
  • The objective of the Protoss Civil War mission "Return to Aiur" is "Destroy the heart of the Conclave". Unlike all other missions with similar objectives, this doesn't mean "destroy their entire base", you just need to destroy their Nexus to win.
  • Completing The Reckoning in Brood War in under 25 minutes unlocks a bonus level. The only hint that you're missing something is Zeratul's disappearance from the rest of the campaign. This is a rare case of Guide Dang It! interfering with the story, as the bonus level provides the backdrop for Zeratul's story in Starcraft II.
  • Unlocking the secret mission in StarCraft II's Terran campaign requires you to destroy an unmarked building in the mission "Media Blitz". Nothing in the game suggests that there's a secret mission, or that there's something hidden in "Media Blitz". And even "unmarked" undersells the obscurity; the only hint of the building's location is a conspicuously unused patch of an otherwise busy map, and the building itself is neutral, meaning your units won't destroy it unless given an attack order directly on it. The only hints to do this are that the building's unique, ostentatiously colored the same as the mission's enemy faction, and veteran players may recognize it as a vital tech building from the first game that's absent from this one.
• The requirements to get the various secret items and mechs in the Super Robot Wars games are insane. For example, take a look at this page detailing how to get the secrets in Original Generation 2and ponder how one's supposed to meet these without either clairvoyance, hacking the game, or enough luck that if you had used this luck on something more important than a video game you'd likely have won the lottery... twice.
  • One of the best examples is thus: It's possible to unlock five items, three of which are among the best equippable parts in the game, one of which is a highly versatile melee weapon, and one of which is one of the most powerful melee weapons in the entire game. The opportunity to do comes on Mission 15, which is about a third/quarter way through the game, making this secret very much a Disc-One Nuke. All you have to do is take out three enemies instead of running away like the mission objective says you should. Sound easy? The three enemies are end-game-level bosses, they do not have reduced stats, and you have a total of four units for the entire mission. It's possible, even fairly simple once you figure out the trick, but most players won't realize that when faced with three enemies capable of one-shotting anyone they choose and told to head for the hills.
    • On the other hand, it does make sense to reward players for beating a supposedly Hopeless Boss Fight. Suppose it depends on whether or not the player considers the possibility. Whether or not the trick to wining is easy to deduce though...
    • The Trick is easy to figure out...if you played the previous game, and recognise that you're standing in the same location as the final battle of the first game, which has the same Geo Effects as last time.
  • This has been going on since Super Robot Wars 3 where it's actually possible to pass up Quess Paraya since she's only in one stage, on a certain square and only Amuro can find her.
  • In 2nd Super Robot Wars: Original Generation, the Free Electron Cannon is a powerful sub-weapon for Real Robot units that can equip other weapons. However, obtaining one is this trope as it can only be obtained by a character who hasn't been plot relevant for the past few games, have him aced before a certain scenario, and then have him kill a certain amount of enemies and the boss of said scenario. Before the guide came out, many players thought that the sub weapon can only be obtained in Special Mode.
• New players to Sword of the Stars may be confused by the Randomised Tech Tree. It's almost impossible to have all the random techs available for research in any one game, meaning that one may not figure out all the routes to a certain tech or all the techs that branch off from one until many games' worth of experience (or consulting the wiki) later. The aversion of Interface Spoiler only makes it worse by preventing you from seeing the links.
• Tactics Ogre does this. The Chaos Frame works in a very odd way that requires a guide to find out...or even explain. But the results are obvious. If Denim lets Kachua die and becomes the new ruler of Valeria, the Chaos Frame affects the ending directly. Either he's assassinated or Valeria gets taken over eventually.
  • But even more obscure is if you want all four elemental Shamans. You have to know to go through the chaos or neutral route to even get two of the sisters by chapter four (And did you pick the chapter where you have to save Seleye, as opposed to her being absent from the battlefield? God help you) and you are put against one of them named Shelley as a low-physical-defense enemy in chapter 4. While you are told in-game that you don't have to kill Shelley, it's still easy to do so by accident, especially if you are overleveled. But even if you do reduce her to about 20 health and she runs away...wait where is she? You got a tantalizing hint that she'll be playable! Well you have to go to Baramus, have Olivia, then enter training, then make it stormy somehow, then exit training, and then an event plays where she's recruited. Of course, this part is never specified in the game, how on earth would you discover this by accident?
  • The remake also adds some more Guide Dang It! moments:
    • Want to recruit Ravness? It makes sense that you have to pick the lawful choice at the end of Chapter one as she is murdered on chaotic. Except if you pick Lawful, she turns hostile in the next battle. Enemies will attack her too, and you essentially have to go through the next battle keeping her alive while she's trying to kill you. Then you have to check the Warren Report in the following chapter to find she is being executed. Finish this map, but she still doesn't join - but you keep her alive. What makes her actually join is to recruit Jeunan (Who at least joins automatically), but you have to deploy him in a very specific story battle and, for no apparent reason, wait for him to finish his conversation. This will unlock a map in which you can save Ravness once again. As Jeunan has no visible connections to her, anyone who says they unlocked this without a guide is lying.
    • Ozma on the other hand is more straightforward. On the lawful route, you're given a very big hint that something is up with her, and that she's possibly associated with Hobyrim. (Whereas other routes don't have her meet Hobyrim until it's too late). You then have to check the Warren Report that says "Dissent in the Dark Knights" - when very few characters actually are recruited this way. Then you have a battle where you must spare her but defeat Volaq (And this is a rather difficult battle too) and pick an option before she joins. Also Hobyrim has to like you, but that part is easy. Compared to Ravness, a player can at least stumble into this.
    • Cressida on the other hand? Good luck finding this out as she is tied to the Chaos Frame. Specifically? You have to be well liked by the Galgastani people. Good luck getting them to like you since you have to slaughter them by the dozens to even get to that point. It's implied that Cressida, Ozma, and possibly even Ravness are secret characters, but you have to do some very specific steps that are not alluded to until it's either too late or still too vague.
• There actually is a Real Life example of Guide Dang It! in the Game of Kings; many non-professional players are unaware of a maneuver called En Passant (Gratuitous French for "In Passing"), where if a player's pawn is in position to take an opponent's pawn if it moves forward, and their opponent makes use of the pawn's ability to move two spaces on its first move, the pawn positioned to capture may move as if the defensive pawn had only gone forward one space, taking the opposing pawn and more than likely giving it a straight shot to the last row. (The opportunity to do so must be taken immediately or it is forfeited.) It's in almost every manual and guide out there, but no casual players ever really bother to read those, or if they do they soon forget about it.
• Warcraft III: It's not mentioned anywhere in the game or even the manual, but units with Hover-type movement (such as the Sorceress and Banshee) don't trigger Goblin landmines.
• Warriors Of The Nile never tells you that right-clicking after moving a character will undo that move. This is one of several areas the sequel improves upon.
• Valkyria Chronicles has unlocking the Optional Party Members. While Musaad (start a New Game Plus) and Audry (get 10 medals) could be reasonably stumbled upon without a guide, Lynn and Emile both require you to unlock a specific character's hidden potential, then let them be KO'd (thankfully not killed, you are allowed to rescue them with the medic. In case you're wondering, the characters are Karl and Oscar respectively.) and Knute requires you to enter the command room with 1,000,000 in cash on hand. All these conditions make perfect sense once you find out the unlockee's personality, Lynn is Karl's lover, Emile is Oscar's brother, and Knute is a Miser Advisor) which you won't know that until after you unlock them.
  • The two characters in question also consist of one of the worst members for one class and a squad member only mediocre at their actual role, but if you know all of their potentials in advance, they are potentially useful for a different role their class is normally weak at (so further example of Guide Dang It!). Without consulting a guide, it's fairly unlikely one of them will ever be taken and the other might get taken, but overshadowed by other members of the class more adept at their actual role.
• The game Vanguard Bandits has Multiple Endings based on pivotal decisive moments. One branch of endings was only possible to reach if Bastion was level 8 by the end of the third mission (in other words... the only one to fight in all the battles up to that point, pretty much). Less obscure was a path that showed up after finishing the game at least once, but it was still fairly easy to choose the wrong decision at this point and just continue on the normal branch. The game showed no real sign that these branches exist.
  • Even worse, if your team's morale is low, it's impossible to even beat the game without getting the bad ending where the hero ends up possessed by the Big Bad. The worst part about this Nonstandard Game Over (apart from being forced to kill your comrades) is that your only option once this happens is to restart the game from the beginning.
• Winter Voices has this, constantly. Due to the combat system being almost entirely defensive (the player only get skills that actually damage the enemies halfway through the game) any combat objective other than "get to this place" or "survive for x amount of turns" and have straightforward and simple terrain instantly becomes this. It doesn't help that after a certain point, most areas are littered with traps that lower your MP — so if you didn't pick Intuition as a main stat, you'll have to rely on Ven's Pyre and Introspection in order to build it up — and enemies that will almost always kill you instantly at point blank range being in tight, narrow spaces. This can be alleviated somewhat using some builds, but it's still one of the game's biggest problems. There's also the fact that Level Grinding is nonexistent, so if you want to gain more XP from combats you have to increase your Memory — which lowers your defense on a percentage.
• XCOM
  • XCOM Terror From The Deep: Its predecessor had rather simple and straightforward Tech Tree. Pick an artefact on a battlefield and study it to use it and reproduce it. Or a set of artefacts, like a gun and its clip, or a hull, an engine and a navigation panel of an UFO. Question prisoners to learn more about aliens — as much as their professions allow. When several subjects had to be studied to unlock something, the research reports told you what to do to proceed further. While making the tree more interesting (i.e interconnected) was welcome, some things were counter-intuitive to old players, and others can make the game unwinnable.
    • You cannot study aqua plastics no matter how many you collect. To study them you need a Deep One corpse, and samples of plastics aren't required. No explanation is given.
    • To study a vibro blade (that unlocks better vibro weapons) you, obviously, need a vibro blade and a Calcinite corpse in storage at the same base. The problem is that vibro blades tend to appear much later, when Calcinites are replaced by stronger enemies, and the player has no reason to store corpses after studying them. And facing Lobstermen without vibro weapons makes them much harder than even the supposed ultimate enemies. Again, no explanation.^note There's a workaround, which is even a bigger Guide Dang It!. Either allow aliens to find and attack your base or just wait for a terror mission and don't shoot the USO down. There's a chance for it to be a mixed-species mission with some Calcinites.
    • Similarly, to study a thermic lance you need a thermic lance and a Gill Man corpse. And to have studied a vibro blade, which at least makes sense.
    • To research ion armour, you need a living Deep One prisoner and to have studied all other prerequisites before finishing studying Deep One. In version 1 ion armour is a dead end, but in version 2 it becomes a prerequisite for submarines, making this a Game-Breaking Bug.
    • Interrogating a medic gives a report about a random alien species, and this could be Deep One. Some players report that studying Deep One becomes impossible, some say it can be done again.
    • In version 1 to unlock magnetic navigation, study a Lobsterman navigator at a base that has "magnetic navigation" item. Since those are likely to be captured together, this isn't much of a problem.
    • The most infamous Game-Breaking Bug: interrogating a Lobsterman commander unlocks T'leth and Leviathan, but interrogating a Tasoth commander unlocks only T'leth, and makes Leviathan inaccessible. In other words, you can research your ultimate goal, but can't design a ship to reach it.
    • Version 2 fixed this bug by making it impossible to study a Tasoth commander — which may lead to a wrong conclusion that some other prerequisite isn't met, an Empty Room Psych.
    • MC reader and sub construction are unlocked only if you have them in storage the moment when you finish researching all prerequisites. Sub construction is necessary to finish the game (another Game-Breaking Bug) and MC is highly recommended, but they are very likely to be present at every research base, waiting for the player to unlock them.
  • Grenades in XCOM: Enemy Unknown are treated by the game as items with charges, just like the Medikit or the Arc Thrower, but the game doesn't tell you that and it defies all logic, leading many players to hoard their Alien Grenades until the Foundry project makes them infinite. It's even worse in Enemy Within, that adds the costly Needle Grenades (takes Chryssalid corpses) and exceptionally expensive Ghost Grenades (cost almost as much as a plasma weapon).
• In Yu-Gi-Oh! Capsule Monster Coliseum, some monsters must meet certain conditions to be unlocked at Grandpa's shop, such as surrendering 20 times in Areas 2 or 3, or having less than 10 Wind monsters when you beat Area 1.
• In Yu-Gi-Oh! Monster Capsule GB, some paths in the RPG worlds that are required to progress are blocked off by walls. One tiny spot in a wall is breakable, and it's very hard to see or know that you have to examine it and break it down.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! The Falsebound Kingdom has several monsters that require you to go to an unmarked spot on the map and fight that monster(s) to get them to join you — there are rarely ever any clues as to where these spots are. Moisture Creature takes this a step further, as it is the only monster you get this way that moves.

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