I was about to make a thread just asking a single question, but then I thought - maybe a general thread like this could be usefull for others? It's often an issue for me that I'm afraid to just google something abotu a game, because even just looking at the google search results can end up with a big fat spoiler, not to mention opening random walkthroughs or fora. So here we could have a place to ask spoiler-free questions and get as spoiler-free answers as possible. Or maybe it's a stupid idea, but hey - it can't hurt, right?

To try it out- my question is about Roki. Are there dead ends in this game? Is it possible to get softlocked? Because after getting through most of the game with no hitch, I have now been stuck in (presumably) the last act for literally days, having tried (I think) everything possible. And the game does have a "restart chapter option" which I'm not sure what purpose it could serve other than a last resort after doing something wrong and hitting a dead end. But as the game only has autosaves, and you can only access the last 3 (and it saves ever time you go to a different screen), restarting a chapter, if it's useless, will mean loosing a lot of progress for nothing. So, I don't want any hints or anything, just to know if it's even possible to have hit a dead end, or if I just have to be missing something).

I'm sorry, I don't know the answer, but this thread presents me with the opportunity to ask the very same question about another game, something I've actually thought about doing for quite some time, but never resorted to. I'm talking about Silent Hill 4: The Room; so: are there dead ends in that game? Can you possibly miss some important item you're going to need later? I'm almost certain that the answer is "no", but asking cannot hurt, I think.

I don't know the answer for sure, but I can tell you that I've also gotten stuck in the final (?) act more often than before, and I actually did check walkthroughs and learnt things I overlooked or wouldn't have figured out on my own, so I was able to continue, only to run into the next obstacle again. So there were solutions that I just did not see.

Also, having to restart a chapter due to a dead end, without the game even warning you that you have run into one, would be extremely bad game design and unacceptable in this day and age, so I think if this was an issue in Röki, we would know it (the game would have worse rating and many reviews pointing out this issue).

With both of these things in mind, my guess is, the puzzles in the last act are just particularly obscure. I still need to finish the game some day, but I've lost a big chunk of my motivation because of that and took a really long break from it (which doesn't make things easier). To me, the game overstayed its welcome a bit; I was ready for it to end soon when that whole new act came up with so many new and unintuitive puzzles, halting the flow instead of increasing the suspense curve and speeding things up towards the conclusion ...

I imagine so too, but then I have to wonder what else would the "restart chapter" option be for? If it wasn't there the dead end possibility probably wouldn't even occur to me. I agree. I won't go into details about as I want to keep this thread spoiler free, but (despite annoying controls, seriously why not just normal point and click?) I loved the game for the first two chapters, and I feel like we should just reach the end right after that. Act 3 makes almost every wrong decision I could think of, and just feels tedious and a bit pointless. Still, after getting this far on my own, I really wanted to finish the game, and if possible do so on my own. I'll use a walkthrough eventually, but I'm not quite deperate enough yet.

I don't quite remember - was there maybe some choice somewhere? Something you could handle one way or another? If so, maybe that could be why?

You could try the Universal Hint System.

I started but never completed SH4, but they've always had a good track record of important items being required to progress. Even when it's not a semi-literal key, taking things like a VHS tape or first gun will spontaneously open the next story segment. I think soft-locking might be possible on Silent Hill 2's Hard Difficulty by wasting/not collecting ammo in the apartment because Pyramid Head will need to be shot several times before he leaves and I've never trusted melee weapons for that task. Then of course there's health-draining areas in Silent Hill 3 (also Hard only) where not having health items is a very bad idea. I recall the ghosts in SH4 are health-drainers and you only have 2 swords to pin down the 10-or-so of them, leaving 8 to pester endlessly.

If you are at this point and still not able to consult a walkthrough, you have some kind of pathological spoiler-phobia.
Just search for a video with "<Game> no commentary" on youtube and jump to the problematic part. The only spoiler here is the remaining game time.

If I totally despair of finding the answer myself I'll consult a walkthrough (though something like UHS more likely than some video), I don't reject them on pricnipal or anything like that. But since I did get so far in the game on my own, I would like to keep it that way. I just don't want to hit my head against a brick wall if it's possible I softlocked myself, hence the initial question. I think it's all pretty rational, but if it's pathological... >shrug< It's not a definitive answer, since I have not played it myself, but I did try googling it (as I'm not going to play I don't mind all the spoilers in the world) and it seems there aren't any dead ends.

Thank you. Well I suspected that, since the game, for as much as I played it, really seems to be designed to prevent such an occurrence. After all, we're talking about a relatively modern game, not a Sierra adventure... I've got the two swords. So there's not much left for me but going back to the game and trying to figure out what I'm missing, I guess... maybe I'll do it someday. Sometimes, reprising an adventure game after some time brings a new perspective.

Sorry to say this, but that's a terribly bad advice.

YouTube videos can spoil a lot of things. With a written walkthrough you can at least try to CTRL+F to find the difficult part and hope you only get a sentence or two that get you unstuck.

With videos you have to randomly guess the correct moment, because no video has every twist, turn and puzzle timestamped and linked. If there's any freedom in the game, then just seeing what items there are in the inventory can spoil the next puzzle or two.

Also, in this case let's assume that there are dead-ends in the game.
Jumping to the problematic part may not help much, if there is, let's say, some conversation that has to have been completed before.

Walkthrough videos should always be the last option, for instance if you can't find the right hotspot somewhere. Most of the time the risk of videos revealing too much is simply too big.

And there are very few quality walkthrough videos anyway. If the player in the walkthrough video spends minutes trying to find some item, that's just annoying. On the other hand, if they go through some sequence of events too fast, it's very annoying because you need to watch it many times to figure it out. A good walkthrough video should spend time showing difficult things thoroughly, and skip unnecessary wandering and such. Most videos don't even attempt to be organised like that.

These are good points. On the other hand, I've also made the experience that watching someone equally clueless just play the game (like in your example of them spending minutes to try and find an item) can sometimes open my eyes to things I overlooked or give me new ideas, without spoiling too much. If you look it up in a walkthrough, you'd most probably find the location of the item or what you need to do precisely in order to get to it, while just watching someone else stumble through the same scenes can give you new inspirations for figuring it out yourself.

And the written walkthrough might be structured in a way that immediately tells you what is still to come, whether you want it or not (e.g. if it starts with a revealing table of contents).

So I'd say, both written walkthrough and YT video have a chance to either help you or spoil you too much. It's more a matter of luck than inherent in the medium.