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.

Myst, sometimes Max Payne, Doom 3, Tomb Raider

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.

Try Platoon on the NES, you get bombarded by ennemies while you have to find your way through this abomination of a maze!

Head Over Heels. Somehow I eventually managed to complete it, after much trial and error.

Control had me wandering around.

Beavis & Butthead (SNES/Genesis)

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.

Chrono Trigger had me looking up guides as several points just to find a way to progress.

Metroid and Legend of Zelda I and II for NES.

Most recently it’s Clair Obscur Expedition 33. There’s an actual overworld map but you need to get your bearings in area maps and dungeons because there are none. You’ll have to use local landmarks to get around, find clues for hidden areas, and the direction you actually need to go. I’ve spent hours in single areas just getting lost admiring the design and artwork.

For me it’s always been Zelda games.

I would say many games with procedural generated worlds, like Minecraft, No Man’s Sky, etc. Where the main task is deciding where do I go next, where do I settle down, maybe there is some better place over the next hill, next planet, etc.

There are other games, where it is also sometimes not quite clear what to do next. Like games have a lot of progression and rebuilding of stuff that was done before because of it. Like Satisfactory, Factorio, etc.

And on a more literal sense, where you actually redo the game over and over to progress, like The Stanley Parable or Outer Wilds.

Some games have a very labyrinthine level design, where it also isn’t really clear what to do next, like Dark Souls, Subnautica, etc.

Or environment puzzles, where you have to figure out how to progress, like the Myst series, Riven, etc.

The old text adventures where being able to solve a puzzle required hitting the right words. “Oh, twist, not pull.”

Space Quest