These days, playing a game without a guide is easy. Games have been designed to maximize the potential for fun and minimize any frustrations players might feel. That means no secret is impossible to find, and players aren't locked out of content because they can go back and get what they missed.
But older games didn't care as much about players' frustrations. Games weren't focus-tested into bland experiences. Instead, the developers designed their games figuring that careful players could find everything, and other gamers would just have to use a guide. For many classic games, getting the best endings is impossible without relying on a guide.
11 Good Luck Recruiting The Game's Best Characters
The Tactics Ogre Franchise
The Tactics Ogre games pretty much all require some kind of guide to get things done. There are specific characters that the player will likely miss because recruiting them is counter-intuitive and doesn't fit into the rest of the game's design.
At least one character is incredibly difficult to acquire just because her first appearance is as an enemy on a map where the player is instructed to kill everyone in the stage to progress. That's just one character. Acquiring many of Tactics Ogre's strongest characters is a matter of navigating similar shenanigans with no hints in sight.
10 This Link Adventure Doesn't Even Have A Real Map
The Legend of Zelda II
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The Adventures of Link is a difficult game to enjoy. The game doesn't even have a map, so good luck getting around in this game's world. However, there are other problems awaiting people who'd like to avoid using a guide. For example, one of the late game bosses is impossible to defeat without using the exactly correct spell on it.
Making it around in the game eventually becomes a chore, as most of its hints are frustratingly useless. Worse still, it's got one of the hardest dungeons in Zelda history with The Great Palace. Without some sort of strategy guide or YouTube open every second, most people will just give up on this game.
8 Getting The Good Ending Is Impossible Without A Guide
Suikoden II
If the first game wasn't enough of a challenge, beating Suikoden II without a guide almost guaranteed the the game's bad ending. To start with, the playthrough nearly needs to be a speedrun, as there's a specific character who can only be acquired by reaching a certain stage in 21 hours or less.
Far more problematic is that even with all the characters unlocked, including the army of squirrels, Suikoden II's best ending is still obscured. To save everyone at the end requires incredibly specific actions. Even with a strategy guide, it's easy to make mistakes in choosing character dialogue that also affect the best ending. Memorizing every correct choice is a requirement.
7 Players Need Hints To Defeat The Optional Bosses
Final Fantasy VII
Final Fantasy VII is beatable without a strategy guide but there are a ton of items everyone will miss if they don't have one on hand. Some optional bosses are also unbeatable without a guide. Defeating Emerald Weapon or Ruby Weapon is nearly impossible without some kind of advice on how they fight.
Major abilities in the game also require bizarrely unrelated rituals to unlock them. For example, the ultimate summon, Knights of the Round requires a complex Chocobo breeding strategy that simply isn't attainable without plenty of research. Acquiring the best limit breaks is even harder since some of them are time-sensitive for specific characters.
6 Maxing Out Social Links Is An Overwhelming Chore
Persona 3
Persona 3 marked a turning point for the Persona franchise. The game added more school elements and social links but it also wasn't concerned with respecting the player's time at all. As a result, it's entirely possible to miss some of the strongest fusions in the game by just skipping seemingly basic quests.
Meanwhile, social links are very important to the game and require very specific timing to max them out. Many of the social links have to be made within a month and have troublesome consequences if the player doesn't max them out. Again, the only way to find this out was via a guide.
5 Getting The Game's Best Weapons Requires A Checklist
Final Fantasy XII
Without a strategy guide, it's nearly impossible to find the Zodiac Spear, Final Fantasy XII's most powerful weapon. One of the keys to finding this game-changing item involves never opening four specific chests.
However, Final Fantasy XII doesn't point out these chests in any way. The Zodiac Spear isn't required to beat the game, but there are plenty of extra bosses in Final Fantasy XII that players will struggle against without the Zodiac Spear. Hiding this weapon behind extreme luck was almost like not including it in the game at all.
4 108 Characters Is Just Too Many For Players To Track Down
Suikoden
Suikoden was built with a guide in mind. Every game in the series has 108 recruitable characters. This is a PS1 game, so it's easy to miss the vast majority of them if the player isn't paying close attention.
Some of these Suikoden characters require very specific tasks, such as talking to a slow-speaking character and not speeding through any of his dialogue. Some characters can even die in battle if they aren't properly leveled, meaning the player will never fill out their roster. The only way to get the best ending is to refer to a guide as often as possible.
3 The Last Bosses Are Deceptively Powerful
Star Ocean II: The Second Story
Star Ocean II is the series' peak. Like many RPGs from the 1990s, it requires a guide if the player is going to finish the game properly. It's easy to miss entire characters if players don't complete their side quests and it's rare for the game to even mention that these quests exist.
The big issue, though, is that the max level is 99 in most RPGs. In Star Ocean, the max level is well over 200, but there's no way to know that without some kind of guide. The final bosses will wipe the players' characters out with ease if they're still stuck in the low 80s by the end of the game.
2 A Seventy Floor Side Dungeon Definitely Requires A Guide
Tales of Destiny
Tales of Destiny seems easy enough to beat without a guide as the story is straightforward. However, the game has several dungeons that have puzzles with literally zero hints on how to solve them, leaving the players to guess their way through.
For players who want to try and get 100% completion on the game, a different task awaits them. Tales of Destiny contains a bonus dungeon with over seventy floors. Each new level in the tower offers different challenges both inside and outside of battle. Knowing how to succeed at all of them is nearly impossible without a guide.
1 Players Can't Afford To Miss These Hyper-Specific Quests
Trails in the Sky, First Chapter
When people are getting into the Kiseki series, fans point to Trails in the Sky, First Chapter as the best place to begin. But playing any Falcom game without a guide or even multiple guides is a terrible idea. Players will miss entire side quests just by moving on to the next story beat.
Trails fans say to talk to everyone in the area, no matter how generic they look, after every minor story beat. Dialogue can easily change, and those characters can offer new advice and quests to help fill out Max Bracer Points. Obviously, a guide makes a huge difference here, since not many players want to grind through every NPC in the game.