To some degree, you’ve got to do it alone. If you google any game made in the past 10 years, you’ll get a thousand youtube videos, a hundred guides and ten wikis, all of which meticulously detail every item, monster and piece of lore that pertains to that game’s world. But the same cannot be said of a lot of older games, where GameFAQs becomes your premier resource, ASCII diagrams and all.

There was a point playing Megaman Battle Network 3 where I felt hopelessly lost. The game is a very weird mix of genres, combining Pokemon, rhythmic dodging and deck building into a remarkably cohesive whole. I was fighting a boss called Bubbleman, who’s attacks were super effective against my fire suit (that at the time I didn’t know you could remove). True to his cowardly personality, he spent most of the fight well protected under various pieces of cover.

The problem is, I couldn’t just look up a walkthrough for the answer - although I definitely tried to. My specific circumstances didn’t really line up with what the guide was advocating. There was an element of just having to improve like in F-Zero, but what I really needed was a different strategic approach. And so I experimented.

I tried out all the weird utility chipsets at my disposal. There was a move that summoned a rock, and another that pushed any entity forwards. There was a mechanical timed bomb attack that went in a straight line, before honing in on an enemy as it became adjacent to it. There was even a move that pierced all enemies in a row, including those damn bubbles that kept providing layers of protection.

Part of the brilliance of Battle Network’s gameplay is that it gives you all the tools you need to overcome your problems. If you’re struggling with your default approach, you can simply switch up your deck configuration and crush that one problematic opponent. It feels amazing to figure this out by yourself, giving you a real sense of ownership over your victories.

Now when I’m faced with road blocks in games, both modern and old, I try my hardest to not consult outside help. I had to learn to do without outside resources while playing Battle Network, and got a lot of value from playing around with the systems available to me. It's not always obvious, but there’s almost always a way to solve your difficulties if you look hard enough and tackle things with a little imagination. It even helped me get past the seemingly impossible missions of Tribes: Vengeance (on hard), although ‘cheese’ is probably a better word for the approach I took.