Hold My Hand or Get Out of My Way: Every Type of Video Game Tutorial Ranked From 'Goated Onboarding' to 'I'd Rather Read the Manual'
Let's be honest. The moment a game slaps a giant glowing prompt on your screen that says "PRESS A TO JUMP" before you've even had a chance to touch your controller, a small part of your soul leaves your body. Tutorials are supposed to be the welcome mat of game design — warm, inviting, and ideally not something you trip over on the way in. Yet somehow, the gaming industry has spent decades perfecting the art of making grown adults feel like they're being walked through a fire drill they didn't ask for.
This is the definitive tier list. No mercy. No nostalgia protection. Every tutorial archetype gets judged.
S Tier: Tutorials That Are Just… The Game
The 'You'll Figure It Out' School of Design
At the very top of the mountain sits a rare and beautiful species: games that teach you everything without ever stopping to lecture you. Hades is the gold standard here. Supergiant didn't write a 12-slide tutorial. They just threw you into the Underworld, let you die a few times, and trusted that you're a functioning human being who can read a tooltip. The onboarding is baked into the loop so naturally that you don't even realize you've been trained until you're clearing rooms like a pro.
Celeste does the same thing with its level design — each screen introduces one concept, lets you fail at it, then builds on it. No pop-ups. No Navi-style interruptions. Just vibes and vertical platforming.
This is what S Tier looks like. The tutorial is invisible because it's just good game design wearing a disguise.
A Tier: The Competent Handshake
Tutorials That Respect Your Time (Mostly)
Elden Ring gets a lot of credit here. FromSoftware spent years being roasted for throwing players into the deep end with zero floaties, and their response was to add a starting cave with basic combat tips carved into the walls. Is it glamorous? No. Does it work? Absolutely. It's brief, optional to re-read, and gets out of your way fast.
God of War (2018) also earns its A Tier badge. The opening hours function as a tutorial without ever announcing themselves as one. You're watching a father-son camping trip go sideways while simultaneously learning how to parry, dodge, and upgrade your axe. Efficient. Cinematic. Chef's kiss.
These tutorials understand the assignment: teach fast, get out of the way, let the player feel smart.
B Tier: Fine, Whatever, I Guess
The Functional But Forgettable Middle Ground
Most AAA games of the last decade live in B Tier. They're not offensive, they're just... there. Think early Assassin's Creed titles — yes, they showed you how to climb buildings and blend into crowds, but the pacing felt like sitting through a mandatory workplace safety video. You absorbed the information, but you weren't happy about it.
Pokemon games have historically camped in B Tier too. Professor Oak's opening lecture has become a meme at this point (no, he does NOT know what that thing is), but it gets the job done. Gen 9 started showing some improvement by streamlining things, though the games still feel compelled to explain that grass is in the tall grass. Groundbreaking.
C Tier: Sir, This Is a Tutorial, Not a Hostage Situation
When Tutorials Forget That Players Have Places to Be
Oh, Final Fantasy XIII. Sweet, misguided FFXIII. The game famously took over 20 hours before it opened up into anything resembling player freedom, with the tutorial phase stretched across what felt like a geological epoch. You weren't learning — you were being processed.
Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain also earns its C Tier stripes. The prologue is beautifully cinematic, sure, but it's also a 45-minute interactive cutscene that occasionally lets you press a button. By the time you actually reach Afghanistan, you've already emotionally checked out twice.
C Tier tutorials have good intentions. They just have absolutely no concept of pacing.
D Tier: The Tutorial That Broke Someone's Spirit
We Need to Talk About Unskippable Repeat Offenders
If you've ever started a New Game+ run and been forced to sit through the exact same tutorial you completed 40 hours ago, you know D Tier intimately. This is the gaming equivalent of your boss re-explaining the printer to you for the fourth time this month.
Early Kingdom Hearts games were notorious for this. The Destiny Islands opening is charming the first time. It is not charming on your sixth playthrough when you're just trying to get to Hollow Bastion.
The rule should be simple: if a player has beaten the game, the tutorial should disappear like it was never there. The fact that this is still a debate in 2024 is genuinely baffling.
F Tier: A Crime Against Gaming
Tutorials That Should Be Studied as Cautionary Tales
Everyone has their personal villain here. For many, it's the original Battletoads getting you killed before you understand what's happening. For a whole generation of kids, it was the Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) loading screen tips that explained mechanics for a game that barely functioned anyway.
But the crown jewel of F Tier belongs to any tutorial that is longer than the game's first act, teaches mechanics you won't use for 15 hours, and cannot be skipped under any circumstances. You know who you are.
The Verdict: Tutorial Skips Should Be Non-Negotiable
Here's where SW Tier List plants its flag: in 2024, there is zero excuse for a game not to offer a tutorial skip on repeat playthroughs. Zero. The technology exists. The player goodwill you preserve is enormous. The argument against it is basically "we spent three months building this opening and we want you to see it" — which is a dev problem, not a player problem.
The best tutorials in gaming history are the ones you don't even remember sitting through, because they were disguised as fun. Everything else is just friction. And friction, as any speedrunner will tell you, is just a skip waiting to be discovered.
