Back in January, I was playing through Trails in the Sky. Because an RPG is such a massive undertaking, I was using a very complete walkthrough as reference, because I wanted to get everything I could, experience everything the game could offer and make the best and most informed decisions possible (though a JRPG like Trails doesn’t really offer much in decisions possibilities, usually). The point is really not having to take that massive undertaking again after spending so much time in it and coming out as satisfied as possible.

Then I reached the beginning of chapter 3 and simply stopped playing.

A few months later I got back into it, kind of full force, but I made a mistake and missed something , coming to the realization that I would have to rethread some 3 or 4 hours of gameplay to fix the mistake. So my gaming came to a halt once more.

Meanwhile, I finally began playing seriously The Witcher 2, a game I have owned since preorder (thanks to a code dropped on the forums by Wishingwell and someone else, I don’t remember who, that assembled the code pieces and dropped in another forum – I think it belonged to bansama, maybe – where I saw and got it), but had never had the guts to play it through. I played through the prologue, then I decided to get a save online that matched my choices in The Witcher 1 and played through the prologue again, but I didn’t do much after that. I was following a walkthrough too, though.

Finally, shortly after the release, I began playing Pillars of Eternity, without a walkthrough, and played it through extremely quickly, sinking 60 hours total into it to finish it (that was really unexpected even for me), but I came out in the end unsatisfied with many of the choices I made throughout the game.

The point I want to make is that walkthroughs help me enjoy RPGs much more, but I think I’m a bit tired of having to keep alt+tabing into them constantly and following them through. So I’m in this situation where the very things that are improving my experience are also degrading it and in the end, I’m not playing my games through.

Has anyone else here experienced the same problem or something similar?

Well, you brought up a number of views (which unfortunately, I haven't got the attention span for), so let me give you my take on the general subject.

I tend to be a completionist when it comes to RPGing, so I do use the walkthroughs, but mostly for the purpose of figuring out "where do I go next" or "I'm having trouble figuring something out on my own" or "ok, I think I finished this area, but let me double-check" and most importantly to me "character building" so I don't end up with a crappy build.

That said, I feel like RPGs have (for the most part) become increasingly dense due to the widespread use of walkthroughs. What may have once been challenging & lengthy to a gamer is now a short & easy game...due to walkthroughs being so readily available.

Well, I'm not a completionist, but I like explore the degree of freedom I can have. If I really like a game, I will try a lot of "options". But a walkthrough is almost a "last resort" option for me, something I use if I cannot devise a solution and am really interested to see what comes next. And sometimes just a "post action" reading. Otherwise I try to avoid them.

I only use walkthroughs if I get stuck and can't figure something out, or if I'm choosing which way to take a character and it's not immediately obvious what each choice will lead to (Seiken Densetsu 3 on the SNES is the one that comes to mind where I would make sure each time my character's changed class I was going for the abilities and stats I wanted)

I kind of find it's not worth bothering playing if I just follow a walkthrough straight (and I have in the past) as it takes a lot of the fun and suspense out of it, particularly if you are constantly stopping to read what to do next.

Regarding RPGs, I think that designing them so that walkthroughs are needed is a design mistake.

In particular, I consider permanent missables to be a mistake on the part of the game designer. At best, it makes the developers look careless; at worst, when it is clearly intentional, it feels like the developers were malicious.

In particular, the play style of plowing through the story to the end, and then doing all the sidequests, is something that ought to be possible.

About the only game that did a missable right is, surprisingly, Wizardry 4. In that case, missing the item means you can't continue the game (a softlock situation), *but* the game warns you about the point of no return and gives a very strong clue (read, tells you) that there is an item you will need and likely don't have that you need to get. (Given that Wizardry 4 is made with expert players in mind, the developers could safely assume that players would keep a save before the point of no return, especially with the game offering 8 (!) character slots.)

Of course, Wizardry 4 is not the sort of game an average person would be able to beat without looking up some clues, but not *everything* in the game is obscure.

The "problem" isn't walkthroughs. The "problem" is that RPG's, in general, have just gotten "too damn big."

I don't find this as problem in older games. A lot of newer games have missables, which are extremely easy to miss. Final Fantasy X is one big example of that, you can miss THE BEST Blitzball shot, which greatly helps in grinding Blitzball and it is super easy to miss it. It is super easy to miss best goalie and then have unbeatable opposition team with him. It is super easy to deny yourself easy access to 4-slot gear merchant in FF X.

FF XII - there are 4 containers, once opened - you are denied Zodiac Spear, one of the best weapons in the game. Thankfully, you still have super low chance to get it from uncommon container spawn in one of the harder dungeons.

After playing such games, the first thing I do right after installing game - I search perfect game walkthroughs, because I don't want to find out in middle of game that I screwed something in some way.

Walksthroughs are lame. You should jump into the game and live with your decisions. Reading those walkthroughs are whats destroying your interest in those games.

I'm not a completionist. I find it to be against the very idea of roleplaying, it's meta and it's artificial. I want to play as my character. Do what he would do (or at least what I would do being him, if that makes sense). I don't want to act on some meta knowledge from a walkthrough to go somewhere and do something that I could not possibly know about otherwise. If I discover some places or secrets or sub-plots or whatever on my own, that's awesome. If I do that just to check off something from a list someone else made for me, that's not fun, and it's not roleplaying. It's busywork. It's doing chores. And fuck that. I'll only use a walkthrough if I'm hopelessly stuck on the main quest, and it's either that or giving up on the game entirely.

Persona 3 and 4 (moreso with the original release of 3) I used a guide for the social links because it was possible to max out all the links in a single playthrough. You needed to have all your links maxed in order to see the true ending, with the status carrying over on NG+. So playing without a guide you would probably need to play twice. Thing is, it's 80 hours for the first playthrough and probably 60 hours for the NG+ (lots of non-combat content that's just as time consuming on NG+). Persona 3 had almost no margin for error, whereas Persona 4 did have enough free time that when I got off guide while doing Golden I was still able to recover.

New RPGs hardly need them at all. DOS era RPGs however?? Many of them were designed with a Cluebook being a integral part of the experience, so much so that they were advertised in the very box the game came in. SSI games especially were masters of this. And sure, the games could be completed without them, but not without alot of dedication and time, and honestly, the Cluebooks from games of that era are often fantastic reads outside of the walkthroughs that add alot of flavor to the games. But for something like Skyrim or Fallout 3, the idea of a Cluebook seems ridiculous. Walkthroughs are a different matter. But many people obviously love them, there is a massively popular website that makes it's living by putting any number of them in one place for each game that has ever existed.

due to quest markers in recent games, walkthroughs are not required and the games need to very enjoyable, but back in the snes days, serious back tracking and now way of knowing what to do make walkthrough is a must and also in most jrpg with random encounter, exploration is not delight but chore, so walkthrough comes handy

I find I mostly use walkthroughs to find special items that would be a pain to possibly find otherwise.

Zelda for instance (I consider it an RPG although I'm sure others do not), I will normally play without a walkthrough. But I will go online to find where the hearts are. Since they will usually be in obscure places. Shoot an arrow in the tree or whatever.

Having said that, if I find myself stuck in a spot and I feel like I have looked everywhere, I might go online to seek out a hint or something.

In the case of Trails in the Sky, what I missed was a book. You collect the many volumes of it to exchange for the strongest weapon for one of the main characters in the final chapter. The game is pretty linear and straightforward, but a walk through helps to max out Bracer Points and find things like these books. I actually ignored when the walk through told me to go get the damned book because I thought I'd be able to go get it later. I wasn't.

Whether I use a walk through for a game or not and how much I use it, varies immensely, but I've found myself overwhelmed in the case of Trails in the Sky.

In the case of The Witcher 2, I probably was overdoing it by a large margin, but I still haven't found strength to go back and continue the game. I will, eventually.

Normally, I tend to rely more on walk throughs when games have branching paths and multiple resolutions to each problem where the one I may take may not be the one I would take if I had better knowledge of the situations.