In Hollow Knight I didn't learn the stab down feature and by the time I found that out I couldn't go back to learn it.

I think a lot of the reason Dark Souls has a reputation as a super hard game is that it doesn't do anything to explain how weapon scaling works

Half Life. Final boss fight. Not enough ammo and I couldn't be bothered to go several hours of saves back to replay and conserve ammo.

In Legend of Dragoon I hit a wall on a Disc 2 boss and was stuck for months. After I took a break and came back I realized you could change your equipment--I'd never upgraded anything equipped and was using all of the starting equipped weapons and armor. This was not my first RPG, nor was I young enough to use age as an excuse.

My first experience with Dark Souls 1 was a real test of patience. I hadn't realized how helpful the roll mechanic was. So there I was, from the start to the finish of the game, either blocking attacks with a shield, or just tanking them.

Once I got to Anor Londo, I remember kitting myself out in the Giants Armor, with a paired Giants Shield, and a Black Knight Sword that had been carrying me through the rest of the game. I was at something like 99.8% equip load, just enough that if I equipped a longbow, it put me in the over-encumbered slow walk.

And that's how I beat the game. Just tanking everything that came my way. I got up to Quelaag in NG+ before I had to call it quits.

During the run, the rooftop Gargoyles gave me enough grief that I had to put the game down for a couple weeks. Had I decided to just give up then, I imagine my opinion of the Souls-like genre would be quite different today.

In Elden Ring, my first every playthrough, I got the Baldichin's Blessing basically immediately and played through the entire game with that nerf. It wasn't that bad though! Powerstance halberds for the win.

In the Final Fantasy Legend (or "Makaitoushi SaGa" as it was called in Japan), I somehow managed to make it to the game's final boss without realizing the shops in the game sold more than three items per shop.

The game's shopping interface presented you with a list of items, three at a time, but there was no indication on the screen that the list was scrollable, so I thought that the list presented were all they sold. That meant I missed out on about 75% of the items in the game, including a few that turned out to be kind of important for the last boss fight.

Of course, I couldn't beat the last boss, and the only way to escape the last boss's lair was to use an item that was sold in late game stores, but was buried in the list of items, so I had to start the game again from the top.

Good user experience design is important in games.

In the original XCOM my brother and I didn't realise you needed to collect and research everything. We thought it was like a horde-survival game, however it could infact be completed. Learning this years after starting to play was one of my best gaming experiences - I came back to my parents for the weekend just to blow my brother's mind!

Deus Ex: Human Revolution. I got to this part in the game where I absolutely could not beat a boss. Consulted IGN and learned that the only way to defeat her was to have some ability that was only gained at some prior point. Unfortunately I didn't have any save points prior to that, so the only way I would be able to defeat that boss would be to completely restart. I just kind of noped the game after that.

The latest dumb one for me was Sonic Frontiers.

As a Soulsborne veteran who's beat Malenia, I can admit I just never really got all that good at parrying and mostly avoid it. So when I saw Sonic Frontiers had a parry option move, I just kinda filed it away in the back of my mind and never did it, despite the fact that timing is inconsequential in that game and you will parry as long as you're holding the buttons to do so when the hit lands. I kludged my way forward all the way through to the third boss where it was mandatory and learned my mistake.

OK game, better than a lot lately, but still a 5/10 at best.

I played Mass Effect 3 all the way to just before the final mission using only level 1 weapons. When I was doing my final walk through of the ship I went down to the hangar and encountered a terminal I hadn’t seen that let me upgrade my weapons. I had like 700,000 credits and upgraded everything right then and there.

In the game bug fables I missed that there was a badge shop in one of the starting areas. I played through most of the game without using any of those badges. You don't need them, but it's nice to have options

Dead Space 2. There was an ability to slow/freeze time which I thought was silly and OP so I didn't put any points into it. Later on there's a boss that requires the ability to freeze time. The stupid thing is is it wasn't even a fight, you just had to run away through a locked door but you needed the time ability to open it before it gets you which is impossible to do without frickin freezing time.

I never finished it.

Star Ocean 2! I didn't realize I didn't have to find a save point, that I could just save on the world map, until like 90% through the game cause I noticed when I was in the menu screen that save was lit up like it was useable. Oops.

Also, the first time I played, I didn't use the feature that empowers your stats on FFVIII, cause I didn't bother to read the directions. Got caught on a late game boss fight and gave up until years later when I finally read the directions and had so much fun save scumming and exploiting renewing magic draw points. (Basic memory from like 15 years ago so I could have some details wrong, but you get the point)

In the SSX series you can use one of the analog sticks to move along the rail instead of just falling off like a moron(me)

I got hard stuck on one of the seymour fights on Mt. Gagazet and couldn't be fucked to grind out enough levels to brute force it so that's still where my save file is stuck at some 20 years later.

Not necessarily a feature but I went into Forager blind and was playing on a shitty linux laptop through wine, leading to me playing at half speed for about 12 hours before I eventually opened the game in a window on accident and discovered that the game was meant to run at 60 fps and my laptop just couldn't handle running it at that speed in fullscreen