Arguably the first Dark Souls is one of these. Most of the classes push you towards shields as the cornerstone of defense. The studio felt like this overemphasis on shields was such a mistake they took 2 whole games (Bloodborne and Sekiro) in an almost entirely shield-free direction to teach players there were other ways.

That’s more the studio changing design philosophy rather than the game giving poor hints, I would argue. Shields are very viable through all of DS1.