Worst Cases of Guide Dang It You've Experienced.

The Treatment Center in Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward was ungodly. Everything else went smoothly, but that stupid board game was ridiculous. The description reads "digits," when you're supposed to use letters in your estimation as well.

And for the record, I solved the Q Room without a walkthrough, after a few days of plugging away at it. But that Treatment Center was just frustrating.

Golden Eye 1997, that damn Egyptian level.

"Allah may guide their bullets, but Jesus helps those who aim down the sights."

@Sabbo: I should have included that tidbit, but then it would diminish the emphasis of the red herring. If you play the game, the real clue would be visible.

Back on guide dang its. Playing the master quest version of Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time on the game cube, in the fire temple, there is a room where a torch is high up on the wall. When I first saw it, I tried to use Din's Fire, but got nowhere. I thought to myself, "Go get the fire arrows." I did and completed the puzzle. Second time playing on the 3DS, I realized I could have just shot an arrow through a lit torch.

edited 3rd Mar '14 8:38:48 PM by OrionAurora

We are all made of star stuff. Very, very weird star stuff.

I used the fire arrows for that as well, but I was already playing the game horribly out of order anyway.

Oh, and regarding the puzzle, you could have described the entire scene/scenario rather than just the puzzle.

edited 4th Mar '14 1:31:25 AM by Sabbo

I was stuck in the Forest Temple for a long time because I didn't know you could hookshot the treasure chests.

The Protomen enhanced my life.

I needed a guide to get past the first part of the first area of the A Series Of Unfortunate Events game. Because the lighting wasn't turned up high enough and I couldn't see where the door out was. Yes, really.

Looking for some stories?

In the Mining Facility of Skyward Sword, I eventually had to look up a let's play to see how you were supposed to pull that damn out of reach lever. Apparently you have to run towards it for Link to reach enough momentum and reach it.

edited 14th Sep '14 3:42:02 AM by Druplesnubb

The whole "Oh poo, I don't have a sniper rifle" thing in the confrontation with Sniper Wolf in Metal Gear Solid. It took me ages to find out that I had to do an ungodly amount of time back-tracking.

You ruined my childhood, Carnival Night Zone!

What makes a good man turn neutral? Lust for gold? Power? Or were you just born with a heart full of neutrality?

I recall my brother and I weren't aware we were looking for a Hookshot to begin with for quite a while.

What was the hard part of the Water Temple exactly? I think it was having to notice that the pad behind the entrance to the center column rises with the water, so you have to think of going down where it was to swim through the hole it leaves behind.

Most of the sidequests in Dragon's Quest IX. Half the sidequests (mostly the ones available to you before you gain the ability to change you classes and sail around the world) follow the "NPC tells you what they want and where to get it" pattern, so they're easy to figure out, and often times are only frustrating because they may or may not rely on RNG.

However, after you're allowed to change classes, most of the sidequests you encounter start getting increasingly vague in what they actually want, making a guide more or less necessary. Especially when a quest requires you to use Alchemy (which can be a Guide Dang It! in itself if you aren't willing to wait until you've found all the recipes) to solve it. I remember one of the (somewhat mid-game) quests called to wear something "fancy". You're not given anymore information, so you're stuck scrounging around in your inventory in the hopes that you have a decent set of "fancy" gear to wear, and (at least for me) you usually don't at that point.^note Supposedly there are multiple combinations of gear that will satisfy the quest requirements, but apparently I've never had the right combination, even with stuff that I thought would work well together.

Supposedly, the developers realized that gamers regularly perused guides while gaming, so they created many of the sidequests with that in mind. And it shows.

I remember reaching the second or third level of English Country Tune and getting completely stuck. I still don't know how to pass it.

"I'll show you all of Paris, I'll take you on a tour, we'll go up and up and up so high they'll long for an encore!"

Licia/shaded woods in dark souls.

That right there is why they need to make the dialogue system in Souls not so freakin idiotic to where you have to keep initiating the dialogue over and over.

It was never a good design decision and that particular instance is concrete proof why.

Pokemon Conquest - pretty much every aspect of that game requires a guide if you want the best results, there's no realistic way you can accidentally work out perfect links, where they are, who you should have on your team, etc. And that's even aside from the really awkward stuff like how to evolve Warlords...

My name is Addy. Please call me that instead of my username.

Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass.

The map puzzle (and it's 4th wall breaking solution) in the Temple of the Ocean King (iirc)

Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword.

How to stop Ghirahim from constantly grabbing Link's sword (got to the 2nd fight without knowing how...)

Avatar by Pastel Mistress: http://pastelmistress.deviantart.com/

Doesn't he tell you how, in red letters of significance, if he manages to steal your sword?

I have a message from another time...

Myst: The mazerunner puzzle in the Selenetic Age (if you haven't already visited the Mechanical Age, anyway). I once went through that puzzle on a computer without any sound and got completely stuck.

Riven: The Marble puzzle (required if you want to get to the endgame). I always need to use a video walkthrough in order to properly solve it.

Too easy.

The Elder Scrolls V Skyrim and its Unusual Gem quest. Tried my hand at finding them all before I resorted to a guide; found 17 and by that time I forgot where I had found most of them. Cue many hours of fruitless backtracking.

Heh, in what was probably a once-in-a-lifetime inversion of the trope, when I was playing co-op with my sister on our newly-purchased Halo2 game we decided to hunt for glitches/easter eggs and she found the I Would Have Been Your Daddy skull entirely by accident.

edited 15th Sep '14 9:59:01 AM by carbon-mantis