It gets good after x hours

[Unia]

Some games take a while to get going. Some games take a long while to even start acting like games. This is a common issue with JRPGs but there are games in other genres too that hold back a central mechanic or the main conflict in the plot until hours in. Most notorious example I recall is Persona 4, where it takes, I kid you not, over an hour of pressing a button to advance a scripted scene before the player is offered any actual choices. Still love that game, mind.

So let's share experiences here. Which game(s) had slow beginnings, did you stick through them, and most importantly, was it worth it?

 

[tippy2k2]

I don't know a nice way to put it so I'll just say it....if X in that equation isn't two hours or less, I'm not even giving your game a chance.

Now this does not mean that the game has to grab you by the throat and choke-slam your brain with fun but I need to be able to see SOMETHING in the game for me to continue on with it. It's a big reason why I never got into World of Warcraft or Final Fantasy XIII; there are too many games out there that I can put in and have fun right away for me to waste my time playing something that's not fun to play in the hopes that it will get better eventually.

Now let me get off my soap box and answer

Spec-Ops: The Line
I'm very glad that I heard enough about this game to get me intrigued without the big moments being spoiled. The game had good enough gameplay to get you through the beginning but until you get to the "OH Shit" moment (if you've played it, you know it and hell, if you haven't played it, you probably know it anyway but I will refrain from speaking it) and it just escalates from there.

Even though the beginning was a bit of a trudge (though again, by my rules, I felt potential in the game because it was good enough to get me through with the promise of greatness from word of mouth), it was totally worth it.

 

[stormtrooper9091]

Final Fantasy 7 is the main suspect tbqh

 

[Zhukov]

Y'know, I don't think I've ever encountered a game like that.

If a developer can't make an effective intro, the chances of them being able to make a good rest-of-the-game are incredibly slim.

The closest thing I can think of is all the Bethesda games. They all start with a clumsy, linear introduction full of shit animation and video-game-quality writing which you have to struggle through before you can get to the meat of the game.

 

[Casual Shinji]

Kingdom Hearts 2 has one the most cardboard dry openings I've ever played. About 2 hours of doing shitty mini games in visually the most boring level of the entire game. Maybe people who are extremely invested in the "lore" find it riveting, but I had a hard time not just chucking the game in the bin that first time.

Honestly, it depends on the length of the game. If it's a 40+ hour game, I can sit through a couple of hours of slow build. A maximum of 3 though. If it's a 10 to 12 hour game though, then it'd better give me something good real quick. This is why I quit playing The Evil Within after the first hour.

 

[Rylot]

AC IV: Black Flag is kinda doing that IMO.

Game: Hey look! A whaling spot!
Me: Oh cool, how do I do that?
Game:...

Game: Here's where you can do assassination side quests!
Me: Oh, I've already done, like, three of those...
Game:... Oh... Good uh, job... Well done...

Granted AC clutches at my inner collector and I've spent a stupid amount of time doing side quests and upgrading things but it felt like it took a hell of a long time to get the ship and hideout.

 

[The Wykydtron]

You seriously saying Persona 4's intro was bad OP? It was a very effective way of opening its story and had enough meat in it to keep it interesting. It only feels its length to me when the Broswagtagonist and Yosuke have a 5 minute "no we aren't, yes you are" conversation with Teddie, holy shit communication skills guys please.

OT: Dark Souls 2 had a really, really weak opening to me and I assume a lot of other people. I think the moment when it "gets good" is a damn while in, I honestly loved Dranglic (however you spell that) Castle, the build up and presentation of the area was amazing and it managed to keep the quality up when you finally get inside it. Then you hit the Shrine of Bullshit and if you made a melee character, you get to eat shit my friend.

Also the classic offender, Final Fantasy 13 does indeed get good 10 to 15 hours in. Around the spot where it takes the training wheels off the combat and lets you juggle 4 Paradigms on your own funnily enough.

 

[Dornedas]

Well the worst offender for me in this case has already been named.

Final Fantasy 7.

I managed to play the game until I was in Fantasy Las Vegas. And nothing happened that got me even remotely interested. I only got this far because of "OMG FF7 BEST JRPG EVAR AND BEST GAME IN THE WORLD LIKE SERIOUSLY".
And that's when they introduced the cat and I just thought "No. Not another annoying character that will make me punch the screen every time he opens the mouth. Screw this game and screw the whole jRPG genre if this is the best it has to offer."
But I have never been told an exact time when it gets better. Only that it is later.
I only stopped my hate of jRPGs after I played FF6.

Oh and Dragon Age 2.
I needed over 100 hours and 6 tries to finally force me through this game. I did the whole playthrough on easy and am not ashamed of it. Because everything harder would have meant more time playing this game.
In the beginning I thought: Hey this is Bioware I'm sure the game will still become wonderful or at least tolerable.
In the end I only forced myself through it because at that point I still had hopes that maybe, just maybe DAI will be good and if it is I WILL have a savegame to import.
And then it was revealed that you won't be able to import your save into DAI. That was the point that BiowEAre finally died for me.

SO to conclude:
One game that made me nearly despise an entire genre.
One game that made me despise a developer that I would zealously defend before.
Definitely NOT worth it.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Mount and Blade. First two to four hours are spent wrestling with the opaque and hideous AI and trying to figure out how the game works and what it even is.

 

[Dornedas]

Mount and Blade. First two to four hours are spent wrestling with the opaque and hideous AI and trying to figure out how the game works and what it even is.

You talk as if you should know what it is after these 4 hours.
I've played it for 40 hours and all I ever did is putting "Ride of Rohirrim" on repeat and then ride through the enemy lines, hacking at their faces.

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

Also the classic offender, Final Fantasy 13 does indeed get good 10 to 15 hours in. Around the spot where it takes the training wheels off the combat and lets you juggle 4 Paradigms on your own funnily enough.

Thats a hell of a long time, way too long IMO, for someone to wade through to get to the "good" part of a game. I'm a patient person but beyond about 2 hours is my limit to "wait" for a game to get good. I can forgive TV shows because they can get better with time but a game should hook someone within the first few hours to be worth the effort. 10-15 hours is just really shitty on the part of the developers. The only reason I'd put that much time into a game is because it hooked me, not because someone promised me it was worth the 15 hour slog. Hell the mechanics of FF13 in general didn't promise me anything worth 15 hours of drudgery and having to listen to Snow, Hope and Vanille... I've been in a mental ward before and I'd take another month of that over being subjected to those three for 10-15 hours of my life.

 

[PointlessKnowledge]

People keep mentioning the beginning of FF7, but that was the only part of it I really enjoyed. Once you leave the starting city, the game loses all steam and sorta meanders around, in my opinion.

I understand the need Persona 4 to have its slow opening, as it is trying to set up it murder mystery and whatnot, though I can understand that it's not for everyone.

 

[Maximum Bert]

Well the worst offender for me in this case has already been named.

Final Fantasy 7.

I managed to play the game until I was in Fantasy Las Vegas. And nothing happened that got me even remotely interested. I only got this far because of "OMG FF7 BEST JRPG EVAR AND BEST GAME IN THE WORLD LIKE SERIOUSLY".
And that's when they introduced the cat and I just thought "No. Not another annoying character that will make me punch the screen every time he opens the mouth. Screw this game and screw the whole jRPG genre if this is the best it has to offer."
I only stopped my hate of jRPGs after I played FF6.

Oh and Dragon Age 2.
I needed over 100 hours and 6 tries to finally force me through this game. I did the whole playthrough on easy and am not ashamed of it. Because everything harder would have meant more time playing this game.
In the beginning I thought: Hey this is Bioware I'm sure the game will still become wonderful or at least tolerable.
In the end I only forced myself through it because at that point I still had hopes that maybe, just maybe DAI will be good and if it is I WILL have a savegame to import.
And then it was revealed that you won't be able to import your save into DAI. That was the point that BiowEAre finally died for me.

SO to conclude:
One game that made me nearly despise an entire genre.
One game that made me despise a developer that I would zealously defend before.
Definitely NOT worth it.

Weird my experience was almost completely the opposite with FF7 its the one game that turned round my entire contempt for a genre (RPGS) and made me give them another chance. I tried VI first but lost interest very very quickly but after I finished VII I went back and gave VI another chance and found it was pretty damn fun. I have also become much more willing to try other games that I would not really even look at before and while a lot has been uninteresting I have experienced some real gems because of it.

I remember looking at the in game clock when playing FFXII and it was 66 hours before I started to enjoy it. The only reason I persevered that long was because I had finished all the other FF games previous (all main and some spin offs exc XI) and wanted to continue that trend (broke now as never finished XIII-2 even though I am right at the end and will likely never play XIII-3). Most games I give up on way before that if I am not enjoying them especially nowadays when my time is short and I will stop playing even if I am enjoying it simply because it is not amazing and frankly I have way to many to try and not enough time to play. FFXIII took 40 hours for me before it got good in comparison.

That said I do have 80 hours on FF tactics and it still has not got good although I havent touched it in 7 years. I would say it was kinda worth it because I did really enjoy XII and XIIIs endgame. After FFX they probably have the best endgames in the series. But some games like Last Remnant and FF tactics have so far proved to be just a waste of time for me, maybe that will change but since I am unlikely to give them another go on that slim chance probably not.

 

[SquallTheBlade]

Also the classic offender, Final Fantasy 13 does indeed get good 10 to 15 hours in. Around the spot where it takes the training wheels off the combat and lets you juggle 4 Paradigms on your own funnily enough.

Thats a hell of a long time, way too long IMO, for someone to wade through to get to the "good" part of a game. I'm a patient person but beyond about 2 hours is my limit to "wait" for a game to get good. I can forgive TV shows because they can get better with time but a game should hook someone within the first few hours to be worth the effort. 10-15 hours is just really shitty on the part of the developers. The only reason I'd put that much time into a game is because it hooked me, not because someone promised me it was worth the 15 hour slog. Hell the mechanics of FF13 in general didn't promise me anything worth 15 hours of drudgery and having to listen to Snow, Hope and Vanille... I've been in a mental ward before and I'd take another month of that over being subjected to those three for 10-15 hours of my life.

I think people have a wrong impression of FF13's battle system. The battle systems introduces you to different mechanics, paradigms, combinations of them and battles all the time untill you get to Pulse. After that you have all the freedom in the world to use everything you have learned so far. I don't get why this is such a bad thing.

I think FF13 is a good game and the sequels even better. FF13 Lighting Returns is one of the best FF ever made.

 

[The Wykydtron]

Also the classic offender, Final Fantasy 13 does indeed get good 10 to 15 hours in. Around the spot where it takes the training wheels off the combat and lets you juggle 4 Paradigms on your own funnily enough.

Thats a hell of a long time, way too long IMO, for someone to wade through to get to the "good" part of a game. I'm a patient person but beyond about 2 hours is my limit to "wait" for a game to get good. I can forgive TV shows because they can get better with time but a game should hook someone within the first few hours to be worth the effort. 10-15 hours is just really shitty on the part of the developers. The only reason I'd put that much time into a game is because it hooked me, not because someone promised me it was worth the 15 hour slog. Hell the mechanics of FF13 in general didn't promise me anything worth 15 hours of drudgery and having to listen to Snow, Hope and Vanille... I've been in a mental ward before and I'd take another month of that over being subjected to those three for 10-15 hours of my life.

Yeah I really cannot vouch for slogging through the first 10 hours of FF13 even if it does get good, i've only done 18 hours myself. If it had been faster paced and had not spent those 10 hours as an overlong tutorial it would be been way better. I don't mind the characters myself aside from Vanille, I can see potential in their character arcs 'specially in Lightning and Hope but i'm fairly certain Square probably ends up missing the mark.

I'm one of those weirdos who likes characters who are incompetent spods on the condition that they eventually get good so maybe Hope is ok in my book. I am a person who loved Yukiteru as a main character in Mirai Nikki if you ever watched that. A guy who spends 95% of the anime being a complete coward who totally relies on his psychopathic, murder-happy, mentally unstable yandere girlfriend to protect him.

That other 5% though when he has those rare moments when he actually makes moves on his own? Beautiful.

 

[DrownedAmmet]

I find people throw the whole "it gets good later" thing around a little too much. Most of the time it doesn't get much better, or it gets better far too late to be worth it. Lately I've been dropping games earlier and I've been much happier. My time is precious, I don't think it's worth it to suffer through hours of a crappy game when there are plenty of games out there that are good the whole way through.

A couple of exceptions though were the Last of Us and Dark Souls.

The first mission of the Last of Us is incredibly boring, and even when it got to the actual combat I was unimpressed. It seemed like just a generic third-person-shooter. But then eventually I realized I was totally invested in that game world. Every time I killed an enemy I thought about how Joel would feel about it, or how it would affect Ellie. I used molotov cocktails exactly once on human enemies but after I saw the way they screamed in agony and heard Ellie go "Holy shit, Joel!" I stopped and figured it was more merciful to just shoot them in the head or avoid them altogether.

With Dark Souls I came in wanting a challenge, and boy did it deliver. I struggled through that game for weeks on my own before I finally beat the Taurus demon. But even after that I would still get wrecked by the average hollow. But then I hopped on youtube and picked up a few tricks (like putting down your shield in between enemy attacks so your stamina can recharge) and I came back like I was Jesus on fire, steamrolling those weak-ass hollows that were kicking my ass before. Still one of the few games where I feel like I accomplish something when I beat a boss, and not like I just went through the motions the developer wanted me to.

 

[Sniper Team 4]

If I put a game in, I will play it to the end--unless I hit a difficulty spike that I just can't get beyond. It doesn't matter how bad the game is, I paid for it and I am darn well going to play it through!

That being said, there have been a few games where it was a slog. Final Fantasy XIII has been mentioned already, as has Kingdom Hearts II. I would like to add Star Ocean IV (?) Until the End of Time. The game takes a detour from the main plot for so freaking long in the beginning that you forget that there is an actual other plot besides the war going on in the backwater planet. Dear God, that was terrible.

As for a game that started off slow but was still good? Hm...The Last of Us comes to mind (where and when am I going to meet Ellie?), Skyrim a bit (big dragon and then...no more dragons for a while?), and Final Fantasy. Just, pretty much every one in the series, but I guess X takes the cake. Took me a while to get my whole party and figure things out completely.

 

[Darth Rosenberg]

I'll go with Dragon Age Inquisition. I still kinda think it's a bad game (or, rather, an incredibly fundamentally flawed one), but I started out almost detesting it, and yet with each 10hrs or so of gameplay I found myself enjoying it more and more. Despite the combat, despite the 'story', I still kept coming back for more and I'll do so again with the GotY edition.

Re Dark Souls: I came to absolutely frikkin' love it, but it wasn't so much it starting out bad and getting good, it was more about learning the lore and Lordran's secrets. It started out intriguing, and ended up as one of the most rewarding and memorable gaming experiences I've ever had.

 

[-Dragmire-]

Saints Row 2.

The game didn't really pickup for me until I started taking over the city which was several hours in.