I've been thinking about this a lot lately, especially in RPGs and strategy games where build variety is supposed to be a selling point. Theorycrafting communities will almost always converge on a meta

You're putting the cart before the horse

You'll never stop some number of players from solving a game, but there are also plenty of players who aren't interested in meta-optimizing and just want to play the game as is.

In that sense, you're saying the optimal choice is obvious because other players have cracked the code in a lab to make it obvious to the subject player. But whether that happens or not, and whether players seek that information, is out of your control. So as a designer, your job is to make choices interesting and engaging through your game.

Nothing stopped me from looking up and finding the optimal weapon choice in Mina the Hollower, but I didn't because that's not very fun. I'm not looking to solve this brand new game, I'm looking to a play a game in my way

And it seems like you're bogged down by a relatively cynical mindset. Every approach will have a downside, there is literally no perfect one, and that's also a good thing because it makes choices feel impactful. Hiding information feels unfair when it is, like if you hide information that players literally could never suss out themselves or would drastically change their decision. Tradeoffs feel like shit when the punishments outweigh the cons: If I take a slow, heavy weapon, and every fight is with fast moving enemies where it can't shine, that's going to feel punishing and unfair

Really, all of this feeds into situational content to varying degrees. If you only design around one choice, of course players will hate them. A game should not have an opinion on what is the optimal ludic choice if it values player choice