re: Do you think you could have figured out FF7's golden chocobo without a guide?

There’s a part in FF8 where you go back to Edea’s orphanage and everyone has the flashbacks of being there together. It does not tell you in the game that’s where you have to go and it’s not marked on the map. There’s no way you’d know to go there without a guide

Also, In the older FFs if you missed an important item in an area there was no going back to get it you just missed it. And there were a lot of “points of no return” in which if you were under leveled and couldn’t beat a boss you were fricked because there weren’t really chances to just leave the area and level up. I think this is why I search every nook and cranny of the map and am always over leveled in all these new games. My first playthrough of FF8 as a kid I got all the way to the Adel boss fight towards the end and was under leveled and could not defeat him for the life of me and the monsters you fought in the area only gave you AP and no exp so I was completely stuck and had to start over. Never again

I guess you could prevent this by creating multiple saves but I always just had the 1