I have thought about the use of faqs and replay value before. I'm a fan of JRPGs, which do involve a great deal of time investment, and I came up with the criteria that a game is good depending on if I want to use an faq or not. If I like a game, I'd be willing to play it again to find all the secrets; If I don't like it, I'll use an faq to find all the quests and items in one playthrough, because I do not want to play it again.

It's an idea that I've considered when it comes to designing games. I wouldn't want to play through the exact same game again, especially a JRPG, just to get one thing that I missed. And if I'm expected to play through a game several times just to find everything, forget it I'll use an faq. If a game offers replay value, it needs variety, offering things like unique choices and branching stories, and they better be distinct and game changing enough to be worth playing again.

A lot of these ideas occurred to me when playing Persona 3 and Chrono cross. I played and enjoyed Persona 4 without a walkthrough, and going into Persona 3 I decided I wouldn't use a walkthrough, giving me the chance to explore everything the game has to offer, doing multiple playthroughs as needed. One in-game month later and I saw that this game wasn't as fun as Persona 4. I wasn't going to play through Persona 3 again, I could barely stand playing the first time. I didn't like the idea of building my Social link with Kenji over and over again (freakin' Kenji... no asking your teacher to date you is not a good idea... okay I'll support you just so I can max this social link and then completely ignore you.)

The Persona games are unique in that you are limited by the in game calendar, only able to do a few actions each day. If you don't play right you won't be able to accomplish everything in one playthrough. If I wanted to max all my social links, do the quests, fuse all the personas, etc. I would either have to do multiple playthroughs to determing the best strategy or use an faq. Even in Persona 4 I opted to use a walkthrough for my second playthrough. I wouldn't want to play through a game again, doing all the actions I already did on one play through, just to do the few that I missed.

In Chrono Cross, I thought it was really cool that there were 40+ characters that can join your party. Like Chrono Trigger, there were multiple endings, so I thought the story would play out in unique ways depending on who was in your party. Not even Mass Effect met those expectations and that was ten years later. The story branched off maybe 2 times, and one decision barely had any difference between choices. Both branching points in the story reconvene and continue on with no difference, save maybe a few characters in your party. Yes, of the 44 characters, only 9 depend on the story branches, you only get one of three in the first branching point and three of six in the second. Half of the characters join your party just by advancing through the story so you'll get them no matter what, and you can get all the others in the same playthrough. So in total, a second playthrough is necessary to get four characters, and a third just to get the last one. And there are maybe a handful of moments that whoever is in your party causes something to happen, so doing a replay with different characters in your party is mostly unnecessary. Only one ending out of the twelve is affected by characters in your party, the rest are like in Chrono Trigger and just depend on when you fight the final boss. None of those characters change the story in any influential way by having them in your party. It's just the same one, unless you get a different ending, which just means it's the same story except it's cut short.

That was a game that on paper seemed like it offered a ton of replay value, making different choices each play through. But it's not enough variety to play through the same game, going to the same locations, and occasionally reading some dialogue you haven't gotten before or getting a new item. I'm not going to play through the same game over and over just to get a character I missed. Not when I have an faq to tell me how to get them.

So that brings me to my point, or points. When it comes to walkthroughs a game should encourage discovering things on your own without any sort of guide and without the fear of missing something. And if a gamer does miss something, playing a game again to get it shouldn't be punishment, playing a game should be fun. I could play Braid again to get an item I missed because it only took a couple of hours. Getting something you missed in a JRPG could take hours, an experience made worse if it's the exact same one as before. There should be variety in each playthrough, otherwise they should just skip over all the stuff they've done before to get whatever missing thing.

However, I could be wrong on both counts. For now, I'm tired. I might bring up my counterpoints in a third part later.