@Irishdoom: I guess we'll agree to disagree, since I really never had that problem :D Had to experiment for about four or five hours in one game and in the end failing, but eventually the game clicked and I had a successful game running afterwards so I dunno. Maybe the restarting part bothered you?

@BBAlpert: No, I hadn't. But it's entirely dissimilar from, say, Mass Effect, which effectively lets you have massive character swings from game to game because the writing of the game isn't about role-playing a specific in-universe Commander Shepard, it's about creating your own Commander. I was under the impression that The Witcher 2 (and, by extension, TW1) were asking me to do the same.

Before playing Crusader Kings II I wish I had known that tutors can change your child's religion to theirs, because now my Emperor of Scandinavia is a Sunni Muslim who is a decedent of Mohammuds (brother? Uncle?). This sucks because my whole Kingdom is Catholic, and I'm surrounded by Christians who have now taken it upon themselves to rid poor Bjorn III from this world. Though it is cool to start fighting Jihads as a Swede.

@Little_Socrates said:

I agree that it does not convey how important the satellites are in XCOM. If you're playing on Normal or lower, you should basically just satellite rush to confirm your own victory. Bogus. That was one of my biggest examples of this phenomenon over the last few years.

My actual biggest issue of this type is that I wish I knew who Geralt was before you start The Witcher 2. I was under the impression I was creating my own character, and in doing so, I created a character who would have simply exited during Act 1, either by exiling himself or by killing himself, either one. And I stopped playing as a result. If I ever play The Witcher 2 again, it'll be after I familiarize myself with the state of its world and the character of Geralt, probably by reading The Last Wish.

Did you play The Witcher (1)?

Also, I played through the entirety of Maniac Mansion: Day of the Tentacle without realizing that you could quickly transfer items between characters by dragging the item onto the other character's portrait. I was just making trip after trip back and forth, to and from the Chron-o-john to manually ferry items between time periods. In other words, I was playing The Cave (sigh...)

@SirOptimusPrime: I'm certainly not asking to have my hand held, hell I came from a different era of difficulty. I remember the first time I "beat" Ghosts and Goblins only to find out I had to play through the WHOLE GAME again to beat it. And this was long before quick saves.

BUT...if ONE element can practically break your game, that's not good. Unless they give you some strong hints that you should pay close attention to it.

I probably would have had more fun with Skyrim if I knew ahead of time that magic doesn't get good until very deep into the game. I went a solid ten hours before realizing just how long it would take to make my magic stuff halfway effective, switched build directions with same character, and by that time I had a sort of jack of all trades character that sucked at everything. Wasn't particularly interested in playing a brand new character so I quit.

Also it would have been nice to know the PS3 version was busted at launch. I would have got the 360 instead.

@hidys said:

@Irishdoom said:

Knowing IS half the battle.

@Video_Game_King: I like the site you linked, but there was no page for XCom! Maybe I have some Wiki work to do. :)

So what is the other half?

@Video_Game_King said:

http://beforeiplay.com/index.php?title=Main_Page

Shit there goes my free time today.

I agree that it does not convey how important the satellites are in XCOM. If you're playing on Normal or lower, you should basically just satellite rush to confirm your own victory. Bogus. That was one of my biggest examples of this phenomenon over the last few years.

My actual biggest issue of this type is that I wish I knew who Geralt was before you start The Witcher 2. I was under the impression I was creating my own character, and in doing so, I created a character who would have simply exited during Act 1, either by exiling himself or by killing himself, either one. And I stopped playing as a result. If I ever play The Witcher 2 again, it'll be after I familiarize myself with the state of its world and the character of Geralt, probably by reading The Last Wish.

@hidys: I approve of your Avatar. Spice world.

I'd say I wish I knew how frustratingly addictive Super Meat Boy was before I started playing, but I regret nothing.

@Irishdoom said:

Knowing IS half the battle.

@Video_Game_King: I like the site you linked, but there was no page for XCom! Maybe I have some Wiki work to do. :)

So what is the other half?

I usually enjoy going into games completely blind. Discovering things gives me a mental boner.

@Video_Game_King said:

http://beforeiplay.com/index.php?title=Main_Page

Well I know what I'm doing for the rest of the day.

I don't think that's the game's fault. There should be a level of discovery in this kind of game for it to be entertaining or else the sole difficulty is in the execution of the mechanics which is, honestly, incredibly easy. Imagine if StarCraft was actually only about APM, or if competitive fighting games were only about combos? Lame, lame, lame. Understanding the mechanics and how they interweave should be part of the difficulty level to me, and I think XCOM did it without becoming obtrusive or unwieldy.

There are some games that just do fuck all to help the player out though, and in a terrible way. As much as I've grown to love Crusader Kings II, and slowly Europa Universalis, the in-game tutorial is only useful for learning the very very basics. Then again, if everything was spelled out for you I think it would end up boring as well... so yeah I guess I'm going to turn into the old man calling all of the new games too easy, right?

I think one of the biggest things I wished I had known before playing a game is that in Dead Space 1, enemies drop ammo for only the weapons you're carrying at the time. So while I was lugging around as many weapons as I could carry in an effort to conserve ammo (or at least always have some backups when my main gun ran empty), I was actually doing the exact opposite and screwing myself over.

@Video_Game_King said:

http://beforeiplay.com/index.php?title=Main_Page

That is amazing, thanks.

I did not know you could press start to skip cutscenes in Radiant Historia...maybe I might end up going back to it after all :o

BTW, Speaking of XCOMs, I wish I was aware of the oddities of the Terror From the Deep research tree before I started.

Knowing IS half the battle.

@Video_Game_King: I like the site you linked, but there was no page for XCom! Maybe I have some Wiki work to do. :)

http://beforeiplay.com/index.php?title=Main_Page

I played XCom most of the day yesterday, having been about 7 hours in at that point. I had gone through the long tutorial-ish part, and was well into the main game, at least 2 months in.

And I was seriously screwing things up on the Macro side. People have been praising XCom for it's elegant combination of the micro (combat) and the macro (running the base.) Yes, there is a balance between the two, but they actually do a poor job of teaching you how to run the base - even though they have this long, "training wheels" beginning to the game. They problem is that there are many elements to account for, and if you screw up on ONE element early, it can kill you.

And it was killing me. Shortly after I started playing yesterday 3 countries pulled out of Xcom, my finances were crippled, and I had no idea what to do. Why is that? The game didn't tell me how important Satellites were early. They were just one of many aspects floating around, but after my version of XCom started crumbling, I did a little research and learned just how important they were in the early game.

So, in summary, I wish I knew how important satellites were before I started playing XCom.

I realize this probably happens to a lot of us, so what's your "wish you knew?"