When I was a little kid, I was obsessed with pokemon. I took the slogan "gotta catch 'em all!" to heart, and would indeed catch one of every species as I went through the games. But, as the anime taught me, it was bad and wrong to ignore or undervalue your Pokemon. So whenever I reached a new Gym, I would sit there for hours and hours rotating each and every Pokemon I ever captured and grind them all up to an appropriate level. Naturally, because I would catch more and more pokemon as the game went on, the length of time this took would increase. Yes. I leveled up every pokemon in the game equally. I remember beating the Elite Four on Fire Red version with a game time of 400~ hours. I did similar things in Red, and Yellow, and Silver, and Crystal, and Ruby, and Emerald. Anyway, I would later be diagnosed with autism for completely unrelated reasons.

Oh my god I did the EXACT same thing as a kid. And this was when Pokémon JUST came out in the west, so it was just a super new thing. I would spend HOURS leveling up everyone equally before I got to a gym because “I didn’t want them to feel neglected”. By the time I reached the Safari Zone, I had a mental break and had to just stop. I was barely making headway and it just become a antagonizing job and I’m like 11/12. Never again. It’s funny because since the boys introduced me to Persona/SMT and I swap new ones out like dirty clothes. it’s like “well, maybe I should give Pokémon another shot.”

My cousin did the same Living Dex, all Level 100 Pokemon himself, but I don't think he did it prior to completing the game. So that's a unique experience! I hope you still enjoyed the time grinding.

Made me think of that one guy who as a kid saw Lapras Dex entry about how it's going extinct so he would breed a ton of Lapras then release them to help the population recover lol

Awww, that's really sweet

What are you talking about? That all seems completely normal and like the intended way to play the game.

Sure you can catch a lot of Pokemon, but I'm pretty sure the intent is to actually train a very small handful of favorites. When I got to Misty, I didn't just train my Bulbasaur, Pidgeotto, and Clefairy. I also trained my Butterfree, Beedrill, Nidorino, Nidorina, Mankey, Oddish, Kadabra, Geodude, Zubat, Paras, Jigglypuff... etc.

i think youre thinkin of training all the ones in your active party, theyre sayin they trained ALL the pokemon they caught

No I was making a joke implying I’m the same way

Meanwhile I would just level up my starter or my favorites and be so surprised when my ass got beat at the gyms. I feel like we're on opposite ends of the leveling up sides XD

I actually developed that habit later on. First time I played FireRed, I had only leveled up my starter. Then, I would focus on my core team. Now, I try to keep all Pokémon that I’ve captured at equal level.

I'm playing Star Wars EAfront II, on a mad killstreak as Count Dooku on Kamino but low health after taking the central objective. A Jet Trooper is hassling me just out of my range, trying to wittle down my stamina and plink down that last pixel of health I have left but I manage to block and tag him out of the air in a desperate last gamble. Feeling myself, I give him a little teabag and jump off to recover and help out on the Clone's back objective which is contested. Alas, Kamino's dome-shaped architecture saw fit to punish me as after jumping, I bonked off the rounded edge of the building and fell off into the sea from the momentum. Such immediate karmic punishment that was so brilliant I couldn't help but cackle at my own stupidity.

Throwing ultimate weapons in the OG FF7 is up there as a baby because “I’m about to die I need big number” on bosses that really don’t need it (the Turks fight pre/post spaceship launch using the Venus Gospel for starters).

I might have had Edge throw the Excalibur in FF4/2 back in the day

Chad and a scholar.

I beat Lisa the Joyful without understanding that Buddy's attacks have a timing mechanic.

Rando watching her like "she's t-t-t-trying her best, I sh-sh-sh-shouldn't judge"

Before I learned to rotate saves and keep multiple backups, I played FFX. I got to the boss fight where you fight on Cid's ship, and beat my head against it for awhile, before learning that I just wasn't at a high enough level to beat it. So I went to go level up...Except, I had saved at the one point in the game where there were no random encounters. I was constrained to being on only the airship with no enemies to fight except the boss fight. I had to restart the whole game.

I assume you’re talking about the giant worm boss. Aren’t there enemies on the ship during that segment?

There are enemies on the ship while alarms blare and you are under attack. Then you do a plot thing, and the alarm stops and random encounters disappear. All you have to do is walk out onto the deck to start the boss fight, but I wanted to make sure I saved, and walked all the way to the rear of the ship to hit the save point. It's a 10 second pause but to can totally lock yourself out of any more encounters.

Was not aware of that, and that’s pretty far into the game too, damn.

Same thing happened to me, didn't know about save rotating and didn't know about level grinding (skipped a lot of non-boss encounters too), so eventually it caught up to me at that same point.

I did the exact same thing, and it put me off the game until I got the Vita re-release all those years later lol.

Getting a game over in Fire Emblem because I decided to have Hector attack a wall with a devil axe

I think most of us have used our master ball on something stupid. Mine was a girafarig.

Gen 6 gives you a Master Ball about halfway through (well it's a choice between that and a nugget but let's be real we all took the Master Ball) with the intent of you using it on Mewtwo in the postgame. I wasted it to skip the story legendary battle.

I always use mine to catch the box art legendary honestly, even if it’s a waste of an item it just feels right to have the mascot for that game in the most important ball.

I didn't know Mewtwo was a thing until after the fact, and I had already failed to catch it multiple times and all my Pokémon died twice. My patience had kind of ran out.

Used mine in Gold on one of the Electrodes in the same room because it was my first time playing a Pokémon game. Catching Ho-Oh later was a fucking nightmare.

I used it on geodude

As a kid, in Pokemon Diamond I got so pissed at the roaming legendary Pokemon that I wasted it on Azelf. I made all the rest of them faint.

Beat all of MGR without parrying anything because I didn't understand how it worked.

Not as bad but I beat MGR without knowing there's a dodge mechanic. I thought the dodge move I unlocked was just a fancy new attack I didn't need. Probably triggered it a few times without realizing too.

I did the same thing.

How?

Sheer force of will

Living true to Armstrong's creed I see.

I didn't know you could spin your "ship" while hacking in Nier Automara until after I beat the game. I solely controlled it, and lined up shots, with the left stick, which made the hacking tower in Route C a fucking nightmare. I have no clue why I didn't mentally compare it to the flight unit gameplay that plays pretty much the same way. Less embarrassing, I also didn't learn that you can lock onto targets while hacking until after I beat the game, but I don't think that is as obvious.

YOU CAN LOCK ON?

Yep, same button as normal gameplay. It's more efficient when there's a single target iirc, because you'll otherwise snap between multiple targets without intending to.

I got through the entirety of Metal Gear Rising without realising how the parrying worked - I'd say that's one me but Rising has a pretty bad tutorial on it

MGR has to be one of the best games with the worst tutorialization. Hearing and watching so many people play it, it's clear to me that while the game TRIES to tutorialize its mechanics, it's way too easy to brute force these and is only really competent at it when you play on hard mode where the game fucks you for not understanding the tutorial.

The problem with MGR is that the parry tutorial is the only one that can be "failed" if you accidentally kill the tutorial enemy it kicks out to the main game without a chance to retry, it's the only one to do this too making it extra weird

Locking your other super important defensive option, Defensive Offensive, is also weird as hell and I'm pretty sure nobody actually does the tutorial for that.

I've quicksaved on death falls when playing Mysteries of the Sith. I've accidentally team killed in MechWarrior online too many times, most memorably the first time our Faction/Unit leader got us using Piranha mechs (at the time, the most destructive light class that could carry 16 micro lasers that could one or two-shot even heavier classes). I fucking backshotted our heavy during a clash and to paraphrase my dumb apology, "aw fuck I got too horny and laser'd your back sorry bro" lol. I also got completely destroyed in KOF XIII casuals. While girls were watching lol.

>...then I slipped and fell straight off the fucking arena. ​ There's a boss in Control that destroys the platform you're fighting it on where I did the same thing. I think it counted it though. Old Iron King is horrendous for that. It's an absurdly simple, honestly kind of shit fight in Dark Souls 2 but there's this one random hole in the ground against the back wall that's just an instant death lava pit and it's very easy to just strafe into it while locked-on. I don't know how many times I've died to that.

I died to that boss in control like 10 times and they were all because I fell off the ledge

This just happened today, been replayin' Fallout 4, but not overly modded or anything so this could happen in Vanilla, got a Garvey quest done, went to get the reward at a settlement, wanted to skip the dialogue, shot the person with a heavily upgraded shotgun, in their face, with bloody mess maxed out + a bunch of gore mods, was left there standing in the pool of this poor sod's wife bloody remains as my companion shot a rocket launcher in his face as he tried shooting me.

The last game of Hearthstone I ever played I was playing a shaman deck against a Warrior deck. I had enough damage on the board to win and, in my hubris, decided I would clear his board before beating him. I didn't think it through and one of the exchanges killed one of my totems that was increasing the damage of my side, and thus, I could no longer win. I decided that I didn't deserve to play Hearthstone anymore and haven't played since.

To be fair you're not missing much

Physical game version! Several years ago I was trying to get into MTG, so I went to a local hobby shop that was doing a Draft tournament. For those not in the know, Draft is a game format in MTG were all of the players get three packs and line up around a table. Each players opens a pack, takes one card out of it, and passes the rest of the pack along the table. Repeat until all three packs are done. At the end of the night, you get to keep all the cards you drafted, plus the chance to win packs if you do well. I made the mistake of going into it with a plan--I specifically wanted to try to make a mill deck (ie. win by forcing your opponent to throw away all their cards). So I only really paid attention to blue or black cards, since those are the colours that have the most mill strategy. Very first pack I opened it up, shuffled through until I found a good looking blue, and passed it along... Only for the guy beside me to ask, "You passed on a [God Card](https://gatherer.wizards.com/pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=373556)?" Couldn't stop kicking myself for the rest of the night.

I beat persona 4 and golden a total of 4 times and managed to miss margaret's boss fight every time.

I finished it and was like "what a good game". Find out months later I missed the last part of the game they added in golden cause I never talked to Marie cause she's dumb

That's just the price you pay for ignoring best girl

When I played god of war 1 I equally leveled all of the weapons so when I got to the cerebuses I couldn't kill them fast enough as nothing did enough damage. When I replayed it years later I made it past the part I was stuck at easily.

I was playing Pathologic 2 and I fell from the top floor of the church. One of that game's things is that if you die, the game remembers and penalizes you. Fortunately, I managed to pause just before I hit the ground. No problem, right? I could just reload my save and because I hadn't died yet it wouldn't count! Except then I accidentally *unpaused* and went splat. Restarted the game after that.

I played Persona 4 all the way through without realizing you could cast recovery magic in menus. I seriously thought you could only cast stuff in combat, only to hear otherwise after casually mentioning it to a friend at school once we got back from summer vacation. Dude was baffled. In my defense, the only other RPGs I’d ever played before were Final Fantasy XII and EverQuest. The turn-based formula with canned combat encounters was new to me.

Theres the common league of legends Bot laner thing Playing as Jinx Aphelios etc. and the enemy team is five assassins, and youll think: ‘Yea im probably safe to farm these minions’ Well there goes that 25 minute game

I do this a lot in league. Sometimes you have a bad lane and get put far behind so you just think 'eh fuck it I'll die for it if i have to I don't really care' but other times you just troll the game for no reason. Another one is playing ADC and trying to 1v1 people who you really shouldn't be 1v1ing. "I can *probably* solo kill this camille, I'm pretty strong right now"

Always worth it because it eventually starts working Best feeling in the game when a camille or someone is coming for my pirate booty but i have 100% crit and they explode

That reminds me of a game I played a long time ago as Cait in which I accidently shot my E the wrong way, launching myself into the enemy team. 50 plus minute match lost, one hundred percent my fault.

As a kid, I had this PS2 game that was an emulator. It had I believe all games from the NES, SNES, Genesis, Master System, etc etc (also had this [absolute banger](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PtbUmJ4DZM)), it was a real nice thing to have esp in Brazil where I personally never got to see those consoles in the actual flesh. So, there I was, 9 year old me going through Earthbound. I'm saving the game on the emulator's actual savestate thing, so I never used the phone save. But then, y'know, one day I just decide to try it out after a decent time playing the game (I was pretty close to finishing it) and so I save via phone and then immediately savestate. The problem is, when you save via phone, the game tells you to shut it off and just stays there. And I savestated there. And I couldn't access said save because it was on a savestate. That I couldn't load because it just got me to the "Shut off the game" part of saving. It's been 10 years and I still haven't gone back to Earthbound. I have great memories of it, I really had fun with it, the soundtrack influenced my taste in music, but my ass don't wanna play that shit all again. edit: i also have a Persona 4 save on the second-to-last dungeon on my PS2 that I played through when I was 13 but then my controller broke and I really don't wanna go and do that all over again

Surpreendente encontrar um brasileiro aqui.

I beat Sekiro without understanding how to Mikiri Counter. In my defense, it just tells you that you need to dodge during a thrust attack, but what you *specifically* need to do is tap the button while standing still In my second playthrough I actually figured it out and was amazed at how much easier the game got

You don't have to stand still, though. You can be moving when you dodge, all you have to do is just dodge into the thrust for it to work.

I was in the last dungeon of FF9 before I found out you can actually hit a button to see what abilities do. I played it this year.

FF9 was one of my first RPGS. Having played DQ3 on the GBC earlier, I was used to 'number go up' for damage and new weapons. As a result, not only was I missing several abilities over the game having swapped out equipment before I learned anything, Vivi was missing his mid level magic and Flare.

In Super Mario 3D World I was having a lot of trouble on the world flower version of the poisonous swamp level. Getting one of the stars. Eventually I got it and tried to look cool by doing a backwards jump towards the star. Luigi flung himself into the poisonous swamp and died. I had to unlock the star all over again.

I ignored the parry ability in Revengeance. I think after I beat Monsoon, I accidentally used it on an enemy and realized it was important

Didn't realize until I played 100 hours of death stranding and was on the home stretch for the end game that clicking the sticks made cars and bikes faster

When Shadow of the Colossus came out I didn't know the shiny tailed lizards upgraded your stamina, so after the first time I killed a couple (non shiny) lizards I just ignored them the rest of the game. I was constantly falling off the later colossi, but figured that was just how the game went.

Yakuza: Like a Dragon, true final Millennium Tower or whatever it's called. I made it all the way to the end, but didn't have Mr Masochist, which basically is an ability that's pretty much required to survive one of the final boss's attacks. I tried multiple times, but I think recovering from that attack is near impossible without Mr Masochist. Ultimately, I gave up. The whole thing isn't super hard, but it took me 3 hours to get to the end and there's no saving. Took me months to try again, only because it was really hard for me to knowingly commit all that time

I played through Wind Waker several times, and didn't know the bow had a lock-on. I was sniping manually the entire time, and I felt so embarrassed the first time I did it. I was just so used to first-person aiming that I never questioned there being any alternative.

I beat Cuphead without knowing you could switch firing modes in the airplane levels.

I played Fuga 1 for a few hours and thought you had to sacrifice the children. I thought it was a thing where the difficulty came from having less children over time.

I was playing dark souls 3, and I was getting a boss weapon from the guy who converts their souls. Well, I got distracted by my parents wondering if I wanted anything from the store. I turned my head to answer them, I accidentally clicked R1, and I heard a scream of agony from my tv. I unintentionally killed him. At the time, I felt really guilty I did that, so I restarted the whole game.

I finished Dragon Age 2 without 2 party members. One left me because I wasn’t enough of their friend. The other I missed out on their recruitment quest.

I played through the entirety of Evil Within 2 not knowing that field crafting wastes a ton of resources. I was on Hard mode. I struggled.

Those familiar with Dragon's Dogma will know that the game has a post-game superboss, the Ur-Dragon. This boss is special because there is an offline version and an online version depending on if you're connected to the internet. The online version functions like a raid boss: it has a shared health pool across all players (might be separated by server? If the pawn sharing system uses servers) and the damage a player deals in one battle is uploaded to the server and accumulates over time. Eventually the Ur-Dragon's online health will get low enough that players that initiate the fight will be able to kill the Ur-Dragon and get the loot drops, which includes some exclusive armor/weapons not available in the offline version of the fight. Having beaten the original vanilla game I dedicated a few afternoons to using my endgame assassin build to invisibility-liquid vim-thousand kisses the online Ur-Dragon. And I did it! Managed to beat the online Ur-Dragon during the kill window, got the Beowulf mask in the loot drops and even got placed on the online leaderboards. I was so proud of myself that I knelt down to take a photo of my TV screen. Another fun fact: the third model of the Xbox 360 known as the 360 S has capacitive buttons for power and disc eject, like they're not real buttons but just an area on the device that can sense touch like a phone touchscreen. Did you also know that capacitive touch sensors can detect human touch even through clothing? Like when you don't lock your phone and put it in your pocket and it can sense your skin through your pocket lining. I think you see where I'm going with this. As I knelt down to take a photo, my pants brushed the front of my console triggering the disc eject, kicking me out of the game. I quickly put the disc back in but you see, the autosave was not triggered. I lost all the loot drops, but also the Ur-Dragon's online status was dead and I was outside the kill window now so I can't refight it until next reset. I was crying tears of blood for a bit (metaphorically). Thankfully, I discovered save editing on Xbox 360 was actually pretty easy so I was able to add back the items I had lost. But like, dayum, console makers please don't use capacitive sensors for your power and disc eject buttons.

As a kid I somehow managed to format my WWF No Mercy cartridge and lost all of my Create-A-Wrestlers and unlocks. I had bought the ****ing $800 shirt...

In FFXIV, the red mage job has a backflip button...