We've all played them. Backtracking, not knowing where to go. Going back and forth. Name some of these games from your memory. I'll start: Final Fantasy XIII-2, RE1
Morrowind, but in a good way
this post was submitted on 03 May 2025
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Any metroid game.
azrael's tear
Disco Elysium for me. Too many open directions. Too much player agency. I had no idea where I should go.
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The first 4 Tomb Raider games on PC/PS1
Digimon World on PS1, made worse by the fact that it's a tamagotchi roguelite RPG. I never played DW3, but I heard it can easily become a "where the fuck do I go now?" because of obtuse/asshole time sinking designs here and there
Most 90's and late 80's point and click games (Sam and Max, Full Throttle, Monkey Island, The Dig, Loom, Maniac Mansion, Day of the Tentacle, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, Zack McCraken and the Alien Mindbenders, Kings / Space quest, Dark Seed, Beneath a Steel Sky)
Dark Seed was old school hard and explained nothing. Gave up multiple times, wasn't playable for me. Sucked because I'm a huge fan of H.R. Giger.
All of fucking Bloodborne. Fast travel is great. Building into the narrative where you don’t tell the story directly? Fuck that.
Old DOOMs up till 64. Halo 1 was also very repetitive in its lookalike hallways and got me lost multiple times. I don't miss the get lost mechanics of these games. Especially in doom where the function of the many look alike chambers was unknown to me so the architecture made no sense.
I remember playing Assault on the Control Room on Halo 1 and one of the doors glitched and didn't unlock. I must have walked around those hallways for hours trying to work out where I was supposed to go
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The original Bard's Tale
Me and my best friend literally spent a month of near nightly playing trying to get through the first in-town dungeon
Daggerfall also fits the bill
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I'm sure I can think of several examples but recently I was replaying the original Darksiders and boy howdy did I get lost all the fkn time
Just started playing a simple isometric game called Tunic. It's cute, and you play as a little button mashing fox creature with a sword in a language that's gibberish as you find hidden paths in the isometric style. It's frustrating for being so simplistic, because the hidden paths are hidden. I kinda like it so far tho. Just simple, relaxing, chill music, and cute AF artwork.
Fantastic game. If you haven't been already, you can tilt the camera slightly to get a peek at some of the hidden paths.
Yeah with the lock on button? When I figured out that holding the dodge button let me sprint, it blew my mind haha
Absolutely adored that game! It's one of those that I wish I could replay without having remembers how I uncovered all the various secrets.
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A couple times in Linda Cubed Again. The game's next objectives are told to you by characters, or through the in-game voicemail system.
However, there is no "current quest" screen so if you take a break from the game, you can easily forget where you left off.
Also, it doesn't help that the game was only released in Japan (and fan translated only recently) so there's not a lot of walkthroughs you can follow.
This is an extremely specific situation in a game, but...
In World of Warcraft, back in the day, there was a dungeon in Outland, I believe it was Helfire Citadel. It wasn't particularly hard, but if you died, you were screwed. The way dungeon deaths worked was your spirit would spawn in a graveyard out in the regular world, and you would have to run your spirit ass back to the dungeon entrance to respawn. But finding the entrance to Helfire Citadel was so difficult I told the group if they don't rez me, they'd have to just kick me, because I'd never make it back in. It was awful.
There is a reason that as long as Hellfire Citadel has existed, the first Google auto complete suggestion is "Hellfire Citadel entrance."
Lots of the vanilla WoW instances was like that. Often the way to the entrance was populated by the same level elites as the dungeon so you had to run a gauntlet just to get in.
The Deadmines and Uldaman comes to mind. And since you spawned at the entrance you had to dodge and sneak past patrols avoided on the run. Gnomereagan and Maraudon and parts of Dire Maul was very maze like if my memory serves me right
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I remember there being a few points like that in Megaman Legends 1 and 2.
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Control had me wandering around.
That's one of the best games I've played with one of the worst map designs I've ever seen.
Surely that's the point though. Isn't the map design part of the Tower of Babel madness vibe?
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Myst, sometimes Max Payne, Doom 3, Tomb Raider
That's my experience with 99% of old school point and click games. At some point in every one it devolved into me running in circles and trying every item on every object.
I gave up on point and click games when the solution to a problem in Monkey Island 2 was to put a fucking dog in your pocket. Even the look Guybrush gives when he stuffs the dog in is like "bet you didn't think to do that initially huh..?'
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Jedi Fallen Order has no fast travel and the map sucks, do you often end up lost or backtracking.
Divinity Original Sin is also one that doesn't guide the player particularly well.
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