Games

Morrowind, but in a good way

Any metroid game.

Disco Elysium for me. Too many open directions. Too much player agency. I had no idea where I should go.

The first 4 Tomb Raider games on PC/PS1

Digimon World on PS1, made worse by the fact that it's a tamagotchi roguelite RPG. I never played DW3, but I heard it can easily become a "where the fuck do I go now?" because of obtuse/asshole time sinking designs here and there

Most 90's and late 80's point and click games (Sam and Max, Full Throttle, Monkey Island, The Dig, Loom, Maniac Mansion, Day of the Tentacle, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, Zack McCraken and the Alien Mindbenders, Kings / Space quest, Dark Seed, Beneath a Steel Sky)

All of fucking Bloodborne. Fast travel is great. Building into the narrative where you don’t tell the story directly? Fuck that.

Old DOOMs up till 64. Halo 1 was also very repetitive in its lookalike hallways and got me lost multiple times. I don't miss the get lost mechanics of these games. Especially in doom where the function of the many look alike chambers was unknown to me so the architecture made no sense.

I'm sure I can think of several examples but recently I was replaying the original Darksiders and boy howdy did I get lost all the fkn time

The original Bard's Tale

Me and my best friend literally spent a month of near nightly playing trying to get through the first in-town dungeon

Daggerfall also fits the bill

A couple times in Linda Cubed Again. The game's next objectives are told to you by characters, or through the in-game voicemail system.

However, there is no "current quest" screen so if you take a break from the game, you can easily forget where you left off.

Also, it doesn't help that the game was only released in Japan (and fan translated only recently) so there's not a lot of walkthroughs you can follow.

I remember there being a few points like that in Megaman Legends 1 and 2.

Just started playing a simple isometric game called Tunic. It's cute, and you play as a little button mashing fox creature with a sword in a language that's gibberish as you find hidden paths in the isometric style. It's frustrating for being so simplistic, because the hidden paths are hidden. I kinda like it so far tho. Just simple, relaxing, chill music, and cute AF artwork.

This is an extremely specific situation in a game, but...

In World of Warcraft, back in the day, there was a dungeon in Outland, I believe it was Helfire Citadel. It wasn't particularly hard, but if you died, you were screwed. The way dungeon deaths worked was your spirit would spawn in a graveyard out in the regular world, and you would have to run your spirit ass back to the dungeon entrance to respawn. But finding the entrance to Helfire Citadel was so difficult I told the group if they don't rez me, they'd have to just kick me, because I'd never make it back in. It was awful.

Control had me wandering around.

Myst, sometimes Max Payne, Doom 3, Tomb Raider

Jedi Fallen Order has no fast travel and the map sucks, do you often end up lost or backtracking.

Divinity Original Sin is also one that doesn't guide the player particularly well.

That's my experience with 99% of old school point and click games. At some point in every one it devolved into me running in circles and trying every item on every object.

Ecco the Dolphin is literally impossible without a guide.