So, is it just me, or do ther people use a guide when playing through games. Most notably, I do this with PS:T. RPG games arent quite like an adventure game, or a puzzle game. The guides dont really take away the challenge of the game by solving it for you, rather, allow you to avoid missing any details.

In PS:T guide, the Dan Simpson one, he provides details of the alignment effects certain dialogues hve, or what you might need stat wise for certain dialogues. When I first played the game, I built a traditional fighter type. Heavy on strength, con etc. As such, I missed out an awful lot. Other items like the bronze sphere got lost as I thought they werent important.

By gaming with the guide, I can make sure I get most things. Quests, dialogues, upgrading your companions and the like. I feel that now, I get the very most out of this RPG story, for that is what I feel it is.

I also use a guide when playing some others, like BG2. I dont use them for tactics or strategies, for I have since developed my own, and have my own way of playing. To me they are much more of a checklist of things to do. It also allows you to plan your time, like knowing how long the time will be between an NPC joining and them having a quest related to them going on. eg Jan summoned home.

For me, they really help add to the game, rather than remove anything from the game. The strategies you develop yourself, and it is really more of a way of making sure you get the most from your game.

Does anyone else do this? And if you do, what exactly do you use them for? Do you see them as a help, or simply as means of making the game far too easy.

I try to avoid guides when I first play through a game but then I'm so weak willed I generally use them for checking out the items and then read it after going through an area to see if I missed anything.

After some runs through any game I very much enjoy walkthroughs to show me options I would not have tried otherwise.

IMO guides totally ruin the game. I think that in an rpg the goal isn't to play the game like a guide says to, but more like I want to. Guides tell you where you can find this, what you should say to this guy, etc. I would rather figure out all of these things on my own then have some guide tell me. Where would the suspense be? Where would the surprise at betrayal, etc. be? It wouldn't be there. In PST, which I just got a few weeks ago, a guide would ruin the game for me. It's such a realistic game. IMO going through PST with a guide would be like going through life with a guide. That wouldn't be very fun now would it? I don't think so.

I can see where you are coming from there Awake. A game like PS:T could certainly be ruined by a guide first time through. But I'm really talking more about subsequent runs through the game. The first time I played PS:T I didnt use a guide, and it wasnt until I played through with one that I realised just how much I missed. I didnt even realise many of the possibiliteis were out there, and probably never would have.

Once you play a game through enough times, you can easily become set in your ways, so discovering new things generally doesnt happen. Though saying that, I'd played BG through about 15+ times, and only the last run through I found that Sorcerous Sundries had an upstairs... who knew?

But with a game like Planescape, I found that going through it with a guide... second time... really allowed me to find out much much more.

I dont really bother reading the strategy sections and useful playing hint etc. I dont need someone telling me how to fight, because we each have our own ways of doing that, and finding it yourself is half the fun. But, like what has been mentioned, sometimes it's great to go over a section you think you've finished, and check off things so that you have done it all.

Even so, it can take away that surprise when you do discover something new. So I guess you have to weigh up what you really want to get out of the game. Personally, I have the desire to find out everything as soon as pos, rather than the explorer who discovers things by chance.

I use guides when I am completely stuck (which happened quite some times during PS:T ) even on my first run. I get really frustrated when I'm stuck and I'm playing the same quest for over hours, at this point I either use a guide or I quite the damn game. On subsequent runs I use guides to see if I missed something but still I discover new things on every run.