The trap of the big map
Open worlds front-load freedom and hide their systems. The first ten hours are when you are least informed and most able to waste things that cannot be recovered — unique upgrade materials, one-time rewards, early stat investments. Everything below is about not spending those badly.
Read what the store page promises
Check the current store features and system requirements. Single-player does not guarantee offline availability, and cloud saving must be checked for the particular platform and edition.
Pick one damage stat and stay there
Enemy scaling and respec rules vary by game. Check the requirements of a weapon you want to use before spending scarce materials; do not assume all RPGs use the same progression system.
Spend upgrade materials only on what you will keep
Early gear is disposable. If a weapon drops in the first area, a better one drops two areas later. Upgrade a piece you already like the moveset of rather than the one with the highest number this week — movesets are the part you cannot replace later.
Do side content in bursts, not in sequence
Clearing every side marker in a region before advancing makes main-story enemies trivial and dull. Clearing none of them makes bosses a wall. A workable rhythm: main story until something blocks you, then side content until you are two or three levels above it, then back.
Mark resources, not quests
Most of these games have a map you can annotate or a photo mode you can abuse. Screenshot the location of rare crafting nodes and merchants rather than memorising them. Re-finding a single merchant an hour later is a real time sink.
Check the difficulty options honestly
Several entries here ship with a story or relaxed mode. Using it is not a failure state — it is the difference between finishing a 60-hour game and abandoning it at hour 12. You can raise it later once the systems click.
The one thing to avoid
Do not read endgame builds before your first playthrough. Min-maxed setups assume knowledge of items you have not seen and often route around the exploration that makes the genre work.