Gaming

Minecraft. Back when I started playing, it wouldn't even tell you what recipes existed, yet gave you a 2x2/3x3 grid with hundreds of types of items/blocks to figure it out yourself.

Still one of my favorite games though.

Warframe explains very little of its systems, and what it explains is generally poorly done. Upgrading and optimizing your abilities, acquiring proper mods and frames, how the levelling system actually works, generally anything that isn't "shoot at enemy until it dies" needs to be taught by another player or read upon.

All Paradox Interactive games ever created 😂
The worst I had was Hearts Of Iron IV. I played a 2h tutorial only to not understand a single thing the real game threw at me afterwards...

The game that comes to mind is Dark Souls. They teach you the bare bones of the controls and that's it.

Nothing about where to go, what stats to level up, ways to defeat specific enemies, what spells/elemental attacks to use, etc.

I had to Google a lot of things in the beginning.

Kerbal Space Program.

Basically "do rocket science without instructions".

I can't believe no one said Crusader Kings 2 nor Dwarf Fortress yet. The tutorial in CK II is so bad, it somehow makes thing more confusing, it is much better to just start a game in an easy location like Ireland and learn the game by yourself.

Dwarf Fortress has a tutorial nowadays, but I started playing it many years ago when you had no choice but to alt-tab to the wiki and figure out things on your own.

I don't have an exact answer, but there are a lot of games that you need the wiki up on your second monitor for. Their tutorials teach you the basic controls, but nothing about what you're supposed to do or anything like that.

I feel it's kinda lazy on the developer's side and leave it to the community to do their job. You see a 5-10 min video on youtube explaining everything, yet the developer couldn't do that?

2 of my favorites of all time. Final Fantasy VIII and Morrowind.

Final Fantasy VIII, to my knowledge, never once tells you that enemy levels scale. This wouldn't be a problem if you never grinded fights (for exp, AP, items, etc). I think the intention was that you would never need to grind so you never would (the game is actually super easy). But people do grind, and you can level up very quickly if you want to.

Morrowind just drops you into the world, for better or worse. There are some prompts to familiarize you to menus. But that's it. Most of the basic functions are self explainable. Except fatigue. Fatigue affects everything you do. And you won't realize that it's the reason whatever you're trying to do isn't working. Most players get frustrated and quit because they can't hit anything with their weapon, not realizing it's because their stamina bar is drained.

Mario & Luigi: Dream Team Bros, because the tutorials never stop. Even 20 hours into the game, it will explain which button to press in exhausting detail every single time. Gave up the game due to this.

On the opposite side, ΔV: Rings of Saturn. The tutorial does a really bad job of explaining the (very unusual) controls of the game. Worse, you can accidentally leave the area during the tutorial, which cancels the tutorial altogether so you have to restart the game. That happened to me twice. Third time was the charm though, and I did enjoy the game afterwards.

Hollow Knight is an excellent game with no tutorial whatsoever.

When you start a new game the ways you aren’t supposed to go are guarded by armored bugs you can’t kill, or a large guard who can one hit you. This teaches the player that generally if it’s bigger than you it will kill you.

After wandering aimlessly enough, because the game does not show you where to go, the only way to proceed is by challenging the False Knight boss, who is much bigger than you.

Sunset Overdrive.

Tutorial: Go from point A to point B.

Dies.
Dies.
Dies.

Failed to tell you the game operates under "ground is lava" rules. You are to go from point A to point B without touching the ground.

So many I can't even narrow down a specific one. Many new titles have tutorials that go over generic bullshit like how to move and aim and then don't tell you how to do anything that's actually unique to the game itself. I hate that shit.

Really hate having a tutorial objective of "put the goober in the jibjab" but then it doesn't explain what the fuck either of those things are, and it's not obvious by just looking at the situation.

Oh, The Ascent did this. Tells you to hack something early on; does not tell you how this is achieved. Everything up to that point was walk up to thing and press A/X. To hack you have to HOLD A/X. But it doesn't say that. I had to look it up online. Which is stupid.

Dark Souls also. But... It's hard to be mad at that one, since being vague is literally purposeful game design with those. 🤷🏻‍♂️

Baldurs gate has almost no tutorial for non-gamers, there is SO much assumed you know.

Most if not all game prior to like 2000 didn’t give you tutorials. I guess they were in the booklet that came with the game so not in the game.

Super Mario Bros on NES starting point is the best. Simple and allowed people to die repeatedly to learn what the game is about.

Dwarf Fortress (before the Steam edition.) There was no in-game tutorial. I found a 2 hour long fanmade tutorial on Youtube, and even after that I had to learn a lot of stuff from the wiki.

Elite: Dangerous (pre-Horizons DLC). They teach you how to fly forward and maybe auto-dock.

Can't believe it's not in here yet, but Monster Hunter. I find the eventual understanding of the gameplay loop to not actually be as complex as I thought it'd be, but getting a good overview of all what you want to do and use isn't really possible even in the latest entries, just specific information about specific mechanics.

Diablo 2. The extent of which you're given instruction is "here's a stick, go whack stuff."

Stat points? Better hope that you get it right the first time - you get three resets per character (unless you get a Token of Absolution which is a super late game item). Hell, before a certain patch this wasn't even a thing. Do it right the first time or you're restarting.

Same goes for skill points. Wanna put one point into everything, try it out before committing? Well those are now wasted points. Stats and skills get reset at the same time though, so you're not entirely screwed.

Rune words! The game tells you literally nothing about rune words and yet no build is complete without them. You get three runes that make up a rune word in Act 5 if you complete an optional quest. You're not told what to do with them, or that they must be in the right order (which the game does not provide), or that they must go in a normal, non-magic shield with exactly three sockets. Or that if you imbue the item after building the rune word you lose the rune word's effects. Put them in the wrong order? Bricked it - you cannot remove gems or runes from sockets. Or you can, but it destroys the socketed gems/runes. And you can only do so using....

Cube recipes. You get a cube, you use it a few times in the game. You're never told that it can be used to upgrade items, combine gems and runes, repair gear, craft items, or take you to the secret cow level.

If you never did extensive research on Diablo 2 before and while playing, you would be playing maybe a quarter of the actual game.

Escape from Tarkov

The worst one I can remember is Final Fantasy 8.

But also the UI was so complicated and bad that it made me hate the game.

Fallout 2. That Game has the Opposite of a Tutorial. It does Not explain anything and throws you immediately into a Dungeon where you are supposed to solve it with specific skills. Can be really annoying If you have the wrong skills. It was literally tacked onto the Game because the Publisher demanded it. Love the Game, but the Temple of Trials ist one of the worst Things in the entire Series.

Pretty much any of the souls games or something like Viewtiful Joe

Does anyone remember Driver on the, I think, PS1? I mean the tutorial wasn't awful because it's irrelevant but because it's notoriously difficult to beat.

Life

If you've never played Fear and Hunger, it's really easy to assume that there's no tutorial. At the very start of the game, a pack of angry dogs appears and mauls you to death. If you go through the front door, the pack of angry dogs follows you and mauls you to death. You can escape from the dogs in battle, but they'll keep chasing you on the overworld until they maul you to death.

The lesson the game wants to teach you is "Hey, don't stick around and fight enemies that will maul you to death", and "Hey, you should actually check out the side passages instead of the obvious way forward" because the dogs will not maul you to death if you dip into the side passage in the very first area. The game has a lot of such side passages that you need to look for later on that will save you so much grief, but you have no way but to intuit that this is something to look for in the first place after being mauled to death by dogs a few times.

It's not awful but, I'm playing Xenoblade Chronicles 3 now, 10 hours in and the game is still introducing new mechanics. This is undoubtedly the longest tutorial I've ever done.

Witcher 3. Just huge walls of text, teaching you the most intricate details of some mechanics, and not enough for others.

Anybody who hasn't seen Steel Battalion should go watch a video of a first play through.

They really assume the player is going to read (have) the manual for that game and have a series dig at you if you don't.