Strategy Guides...do you use them?

Yeah, this question has been asked in the past, but I really hate rising old, dead threads that need to RIP.

I was playing Dragon Age Inquisition today and now that I'm about half way through the game I'm starting to think I really &$^#@ up my game due to hasty, half-thought-out choices that I made and now it's getting a bit more complex with all these huge decisions.
Sigh...

I feel like I'm playing a chess game and I'm juggling pieces, throwing them in the air, scattering them around, and balancing them on my head.

I may have ruined my game, but the alternative is following a guide that basically babies me through the whole game so all my chess pieces are carefully moved with great precision and thought.

One might say "Just use a guide when you need it." - is that really possible? Once your hand is held and everything works out great and you are hailed as the champion of Ferelden and confetti flies through the air, can you reeeeally put the guide down
and try to think things out on your own and risk having all your companions disapprove of your choice and instantaneously going from a hero to a zero? Sure you can keep going back to an earlier save in a desperate attempt to make everyone happy...

In Dragon Age Origins, you can have a few possible endings and some are terrible and everything is dependent on choices you made. My ending was the worst of the very very worst and I sat in disbelief at how my choices has led to THAT.

Another game that comes to mind is Mass Effect Two when my poor choices lead to an empty ship and my friend laughing at me because he obviously enjoys my pain.

I have a verrrry bad feeling I'm heading in that direction with Inquisition. Maybe I have Bad Ending PTSD.

Well, anyway....guides or no guides? What are your thoughts?

:)

 

Greetings, and Black Ops III Question

Why do you need a strategy guide for COD? lol

 

Limited Edition Strategy Guide

if you were still curious

http://www.gamestop.com/strategy-guides/call-of-duty-black-ops-2-limited-edition-official-strategy-guide/101872?ref=recpdp&cross=831232

 

Even with a game like Dragon Age, I only use a guide when I need it. Which isn't very often. Sure, the end result may not work out exactly as I wanted, but that's half the fun of having the option of choices. As long as I can do every quest and obtain every
item then nothing else necessary. I can alter any choices I made in subsequent playthroughs and see if it turns out any better.

 

On play-through number one I try to avoid all spoilers, and I've never purchased a guide before. But if there's a big decision to be made that could change the landscape of the game, and the game is being vague about the consequences of my choices, I'll
hit the Internet and see what each choice actually does to the game. Especially if it's open world and I have to do stuff in it after the end credits have rolled.

Or if I get stuck and I've run out of random head-to-wall strategies, I'll Google the title of the game, a swear word, and the names of the section, and characters involved. You know when a game has been designed badly in places when your vaguely annoyed
search gets a wall of gamers all asking how to get past the same section. Heh.

I won't use a guide for character builds either. I'll have a character wear weak armour for the entire game just for the way it looks, and have stats at a disadvantage if it means the character is somewhat consistent. Some people would rather be covered
from head-to-foot in clunky mismatched weirdness, with maxed skill points in everything... may as well play an action game. To each their... pwnage.

I lost Tali on both first runs of Mass Effect 2 and 3. With 2 I did everything right, and I replayed it right after I finished the game, with no changes, and she didn't die the second time! With ME3 I must have been confused about which mission would progress,
so I essentially missed Tali's loyalty quest...

... and she topped herself, with me going, "Nonononono, what? Wait, whhaaaaaat!? Noooo! What are you, is she gonna?" - and I'm not gonna lie, I blubbed a lil dammit... then I contemplated reloading for about ten minutes, but I figured I wouldn't erase the
impact the game had had on me by reloading, and I went on without her.

Soo yeah. I'll use a guide to grab collectibles after completing a game, and I'll check the consequences of choices rarely, and if I get stuck - and I'm pretty patient and I like being challenged so I mean really, this is stupid, stuck - I'll be online looking
it up.

But I couldn't go step-by-step with a guide. There's no fun in that. =]

 

I'll use a guide if I am stuck and am beginning to get seriously annoyed with my lack of progress.

Now I'll always try for a while to get past the 'blockage' myself but in the end I am playing for fun and getting frustrated at a lack of progress isn't fun for me.

 

To the OP,

Just finish your first playthrough and then check up a guide for the next couple of playthroughs.

To be honest. The achievements in the previous Dragon Age games never required me to use a guide, as the achievements sort of explained what you could do in the game. But I suppose for the mini secret paths then yeah it can be difficult to know whats going
to happen.

I blame that though on the fact that BioWare never seem to be able to make a character all good or all bad. They always mess it up and so the way you answer someone could be totally different to how you would have intended it to come across in real life.

 

I'm like Sword - only use them when I need them. Guilty for looking up the intel locations in COD games if I really want to go for the achievement or looking up the answers to the classroom questions in Persona games to name two examples. But for story heavy
games like Mass Effect, I just go by intuition. If I made a bad choice, tough choice Tyson - endure it.

 

I like to figure out the first play through on my own. After that I use youtube for anything I missed. So in other words no I don't really use strategy guides.

 

The other option is to make regular game saves. (Something I forgot to do at one point in ME2 when I sided with Jack and lost the chance of bedding Miranda)

So when think you have made a bad choice or wrong move you can go back to the last save point and take the other option/options without ruining the whole game.

 

Only used one, skyrim, and that was for my 2nd and 3rd playthrou. To get as much out of the game as possible.

 

Well, unfortunately, I can USUALLY only play through a game one time. The only exception was in the two games I mentioned before when I got horrible endings. In those two games, there were some very specific things that needed to be done in order to get
the great ending. Don't we all want the best ending possible? Getting a terrible ending where everyone dies, or the city explodes, or you are shamed and go from champion to outcast...who wants to get that after working so hard for 100+ hours? But I think
I've made my decision... if I get a horrible ending I'm just going to accept it and move on to another game.

 

I don't think your choices can screw up the ending that bad in DAI. I made some pretty questionable decisions and everything worked out good for me. I guess I'll find out for sure when I inevitably play through it again.

 

I haven't used a strategy guide since like PS1 or Saturn days. Do they still make them? I thought everyone that needed help would just use a computer or Youtube.

 

Just to clarify, when I said I immediately replayed ME2 I meant the Suicide Mission, not the entire game. Heh ha. Even though I picked all the same people for all the same roles during the Suicide Mission the second time, I came through with different results.
Tali alive... not dead. I grr'd.

I didn't do a full replay until months later.

@Brand - I think people might like to have extra fluffy stuff and materials to complement games they really like. Some guides might make really good source books and stuff for the lore. I know when I yank out old BioWare [and Black Isle] PC games and start
unfurling maps and flipping through giant manuals it's kinda fun. =D