Video game lessons learned the hard way

Blasphemous:

• Perpetva does not count as a boss for the purposes of "Mediterranean Diet".
• Poison as a status effect is a thing in this game, and will kill you in a matter of seconds.
• Some enemies cannot be dodged through, or can only be dodged through at specific times.
• Jondo is where the game gets serious about its jumping puzzles.
• Until New Game Plus, Echoes of Salt is just a shortcut.

Ring Fit Adventure: The aerochute minigame is quite literally impossible.

Persona 5 Royal

• Contractual Boss Immunity is in full effect, even for miniboss versions of regular enemies.
• If you advance the Hierophant (Sojiro's) Confidant to the point where you have to do a Metaverse task to proceed, you can not continue the Hermit (Futaba) until you do.
• Items aren't Too Awesome to Use, they actually speed battles up by a lot!
• The game automatically registers the abilities for Personas for you the first time you obtain them, which is usually convenient. However, this can also apply to when you first obtain a Persona by chaining a fusion during a Fusion Alarm, which will often replace all of that Persona's skills and traits with ones geared for either a specific strategy or for further fusions. This also applies when getting DLC Personas for the first time this way, which can overwrite access to their Secret Art until you fuse another one the normal way.
• You're free to prioritize objectives however you want, but just know the longer you put off anything story-related the more frequent/strongly-worded the Continue Your Mission, Dammit! notifications will be.

Blasphemous:

• Once you get into the Mother of Mothers, the game decides it has to stop you getting any further at all costs.
• You need to get the Balls of Red and Blue Wax from a specific candle before you can upgrade them at the other two.
• Do not ignore the elemental-defense Rosary Beads. If you want to do anything in Mourning and Havoc, you need electricity defenses.
• Sometimes Gates of Travel are more convenient than using Prie Dieu warps.
• The Blue Rose Platform Hell segments are timed.
  • However, death just kicks you back to the start without inflicting Guilt.

The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening

You're overthinking the Shy Guy enemies in the bottle dungeon; you're not supposed to use the fact that they always move opposite from you to deftly maneuver them to some point on the map — you just kill them.

Sorry for the double post, but since it's been a while;

Link's Awakening:

Do not smash all the pots in the boss key room in the Face Temple; you need at least one to open the chest. Fail to do that, and you have to go the long away around to get the pots to reset.

And yes, I know you never needed to do that before. Well, now you do.

Edited by Dracoblade on Jan 19th 2023 at 12:53:07 PM

Pokémon Legends: Arceus: Don't just Leeroy Jenkins into the Avalugg fight with the team you have, especially if over half of them are severely underleveled. You WILL get curbstomped several times over.

Edited by ReikoKazama on Jun 22nd 2022 at 6:19:57 PM

Watch_Dogs

• It is entirely possible, if you hack a guard's gear to explode, that they will throw it right next to where you're hiding.
• Criminals are skittish. You'll fail the crime sidequests if they spot you.
• Use cover, but do not trust cover.

Blasphemous

• The Golden Ending path was balanced towards people who've played this game a lot longer than you have. It may not be a great idea to go for that ending on your first playthrough.

Triangle Strategy: That essential NPC that you have an objective to keep alive will be unaware of their own mortality and charge directly into danger. Body block them with your own units to prevent this.

Persona 5 Royal

• As party members level up, most skills unlocked are straight upgrades over previous ones (albeit with a steeper cost). The Boost passive skills are not this despite appearances, and there's a reason their descriptions specifically say that they stack with each other.
• As with most Confidants, the Tower (Shinya) will eventually require you to complete a Mementos request. Unlike the others that get delivered immediately upon informing the party, it takes a few days for Shinya to deliver the calling card to to its target. This means if you saved his Confidant for near the end of a playthrough...
• On a related note, you actually have far less daytime open during the third semester than you'd expect. A majority of those days you'll either be in the Palace, unlocking the third-tier Personas for all your party members, or hanging out with Yoshizawa (who's entire second half of her Confidant is locked to third semester).

Kirby's Dream Land 3

• Every stage has one Heart Star, obtained at the end if you made a character appearing on that stage happy. The devs made sure to strike a good balance between reasonable ones, Guide Dang It! ones, and Trial-and-Error Gameplay ones.
• Speaking of trial-and-error, the various ways Animal Friends can change your Copy Abilities run from "extremely useful" to "you'd take less damage if your controller was missing the Y button." Try not to forget what each combination does so that you don't make a level harder on yourself.

The percentage in Shantae and the Seven Sirens is a pickups and key items percentage - NOT progression based. Thus, if you have 99% when you go into the final dungeon, you will still only have 99% when you defeat the final boss.

....Fuck.

I usually end up only keeping the Amp version of the Boost skills, mostly because with only eight skill slots something has to get turfed by the end.

Thankfully you have a warp just before said final boss, and Definitive Mode made the statue/nugget hunt much less tedious.

Edited by Medinoc on Jun 28th 2022 at 9:37:57 PM

Dicey Dungeons:

• When playing as the Witch, you are not restricted to the maximum number of Prepared Spell slots during the battle. The Prepared Spells system refers to the number of spells you can use at the start of the fight, and you can temporarily add more spells to the other slots during it. All this time, I had been just replacing the spells in the same Prepared slots instead of using the other empty slots, so it's no wonder I struggled with clearing an episode with this character class.
• Never build up Shield or Armor when facing an enemy that only poisons you, as Poison pierces through them. Unless you're playing a Parallel Universe episode, where Armor blocks status effects instead of reducing all incoming damage except for Poison.
• Dice with 1s on them can still be split by the Lockpick/Hacksaw: they'll just be duplicated instead. This is useful when playing as the Thief if you're relying on using his Dagger for Spam Attacks, as it needs dice values of 3 or less.
• Dice with 6s on them can still have their values increased by Bump, Spanner/Battle Wrench, or Doppeldice/Doppeltwice: any value greater than 6 will spawn extra dice that would total that value (e. g. if a 6 is Bumped, it'll spawn a 6 and a 1 to total 7).

Edited by TroperNo9001 on Jul 2nd 2022 at 9:27:20 PM

Cuphead:

• Even with Smoke Bomb, you can't dash through Goopy le Grande.
• During flying levels, the left side of the screen is not safe to press up against.
• During the Root Pack fight, the onion is not a Background Boss.
• If you're going for max grade after a fight, it's not enough to build up the super cards; you need to land enhanced/super hits.

If a mobile game gives you a reward for following the developers on social media, don't actually follow them. Not because they don't deserve the support, but because usually just viewing their social media pages is enough to net you the reward.

Edited by Pogakure on Jul 4th 2022 at 9:34:01 AM

To collaborate that, I used to play a game based on One Piece that asked you to follow them on Twitter. I never did, because it turned out retweeting specific tweets from the account through the game was enough to give you the bonuses.

Apex Legends:

- If you're solo queuing, help your team but don't expect anything from them. You only can control your character in this game if you're solo queuing.

- Always takes jumpmaster. Always takes initiative if you want your team to follow you.

- If your teammates is down by recklessly attacking forward, just leave him be.

- ALWAYS PING, useful item? ping. enemy in far ahead? ping. where to go next? ping. Always express your gameplan to your teammates.

- Have a gameplan. The most important thing to consider. Be mindful of where to go next and how to secure the zone.

Edited by Agentnutty on Jul 4th 2022 at 9:59:20 AM

Monster Hunter: Rise: The Master Rank version of Magnamalo will often fire its tail "beam" twice in succession, with the second one being more accurate than the first.

Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes: Units equipped with healing spells can use them on the Orders map, but not on themselves (since the spell heals the caster along with surrounding allies). If you're in a tight spot and feel like you need to hold onto those healing potions, bring someone with Physic or Fortify just in case.

Monster Hunter: Rise Sunbreak

• As usual, lots of monsters in MR have the timings of their attacks changed compared to earlier ranks- some faster, some slower.
• AI partners have enough foresight to not attack a sleeping monster. However, they'll nonetheless rush out and attack monsters that are about to fall asleep instead of hiding with you out of sight.
• Garangolm's attacks are all easy to parry or dodge with obvious tells and huge windups, even if the attack itself is fast once it's in motion. Befitting the first of the Three Lords, it also hits like a fucking truck and inflicts statuses that make it easier for Garangolm to get those hits on you.
• Garangolm has a Desperation Attack. It's entirely possible to defeat it without seeing the attack (as I did on the first hunt), but be prepared to dive anyways (as I didn't on the second hunt).
• For the sidequest where you need to take a picture of Garongolm's arms "with an element attached" the game's not clear about what it wants. It wants you to take a picture of it while it's covering its arms, not when they're covered.
• Due to how Hopping Skewers work, don't be surprised if the topmost dango is the only one you don't get the skill for. That gamble's on you if you take it.

Edited by NesClassic on Jul 7th 2022 at 9:42:55 AM

The Upgrading Tree (game made in The Modding Tree): Entering a challenge resets all Upgrade Points AND doesn't give you the upgrades back. It's a pain to get a setup that works to get enough t and enter only to find out you don't have enough UP to win or just dumped them recklessly.

Monster Hunter: Rise: It doesn't matter where you are, Malzeno will find a way to hit you.

Joking aside, some of Malzeno's attacks have some surprising range, especially if they involve its wings. Be careful when trying to find a chance to heal.

Gloomhaven (Digital): The "Challenger" goal specifies "Never leave a hex adjacent to a monster" - even if you move to another hex adjacent to said monster, you still fail it.

Edited by Reflextion on Jul 8th 2022 at 8:28:41 AM

Dicey Dungeons Reunion: Bicep Curl alternates between the functions of Bump (dice value +1) and Nudge (dice value -1), and using a 1 when it's on Nudge mode will make it disappear. Now do you realize why Nudge requires a minimum dice value of 2?