oh my god Pokémon! For sure. This is just making me think of more: the games from when i was really young, like leisure suit Larry, police quest, day of the tentacle, sam and max, the dig, grim fandango, that are ultimately like 1-2 hours if you know what to do but in the absence of a walkthrough take like 600 hours of trial and error with endless save hopping

Those old adventure games used to be punishingly difficult