It gets good after x hours

Fox12

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Wow, I loved the intro to Persona 4 and KH 1&2. It's nice to see a game that has the confidence to take its time, especially if it has good atmosphere.

The only game that comes to mind is Dark Souls. It has an awful entry wall, and the game isn't any good until it finally "clicks." This seems to be a common experience. Once you get it, though, it's brilliant.
 

RJ 17

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Personally, if someone's describing a game to me and the sentence "don't worry, it gets good after x hours" is used then I almost immediately lose interest. I'm with Yahtzee on this one: "Why can't the game be good now?" Why should I have to slog through a bunch of crap in order to get to the good bits? I'm not asking for immediate gratification here...I don't expect the first few hours of a game to be all booze and blowjobs. But that "it gets good after x hours" phrase is generally used to describe games that have utter crap beginnings, not games that can manage to hold someone's attention and then actually start getting really interesting later on.
 

JohnnyDelRay

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I find this to be the exception rather than the rule. That is, most games I feel start off pretty slow, and it's rarely that I just jump into the game and go "holy shit this is awesome". I think it's attributed to the premise that most games are a progression of sorts. And many games are getting RPG elements of unlocking, levelling up, and getting more adept in line with your skill curve.

It's not just RPG's tho. In fact, in genres that I play, everything except multiplayer FPS games are a slow buildup. Racing games especially, like to start you in the weediest little sewing machines, and it's a damn long slog until they start getting fun. Some more recent franchises have improved on this though (Grid, DiRT Rally, Forza, etc).

One game I recently re-played was RE4. Hell's bells does shit go south quick there. Starts off pretty quiet, then in no time flat you're thrown in a panic situation, just to test how you would handle yourself. And it gets more tense every step of the way. As soon as you think you've got a handle on things and inventory is looking good, they throw another mental enemy type or ridiculous boss fight in. That's how pacing should be done.
 

Nazulu

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No. It's either good now or it's not good at all. Even if they want a dialogue heavy intro, it still needs to do it well to draw us in. Any real artist knows it's the most important along with the ending.
 

FPLOON

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I thought all Persona games from 3 onward took about a hour or so before you go all "combat gameplay" for the first time... :p

OT: Gameplay-wise, I'm drawing a blank here... expect in most of the fighting games I've played during their respected Story Mode... "I like the VN aesthetic, but I did just spend almost a hour going through dialogue and I haven't beaten the shit out of anyone more than once..." Story-wise, most of the Tales of games take a couple of hours before it just clicks and then, hours later, [REDACTED] happens and then you're either "This is getting so good" or "Is this why people like the series"...

Other than that, I remember it took a few hours in the OG Hyperdimension Neptunia game for the combat to click as smoothly as the presented story at the time... Good thing the sequels didn't take that long afterwards... Also, the DS version of Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days had a more boring tutorial than Kingdom Hearts 2... At least 2 had more story agency unlike in 358, which was more of an excuse to hang out with the members "you" won't see again...
 

Ikasury

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Any game in the Xeno-series: Xenogears, Xenosaga series, Xenoblade Chronicles (and crossing my fingers for Xenoblade Chronicles X :D)

they start off slow, pretty much holding your hand and you can wonder around the starting 'village' (yes in Xenosaga is was a ship but bare with me) doing miscillanious quests and might even get a minion or two, collecting stuff, doing dinky little things that teach you other things and so on and so forth to the point you're running around the whole village talking to EVERYONE and you start to get a feel for village life and liking these guys and caring for them and-

THEN THE VILLAGE GETS BLOWN THE FUCK UP!!

this isn't even a spoiler, they've literally done this in EVERY game with Xeno at the beginning of its title... everyone you started to care about, all those hour/s you played around doing random fetch stuff for them (or that fucking RPS game!) and getting to gratingly get to know these people... BLOWN THE FUCK UP!!! in one manner or another... then shit gets real and the game actually starts...

suppose its subjective to how long it takes but you'll usually spend a decent hour or two wondering around the 'village' learning stuff... then BOOM!! cutscenes from hell setting off the plot...

and these are long games, so generally worth it...
 

iseko

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PointlessKnowledge said:
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.
Ff7 they mean after the city. Game basically starts getting good for me when you find the temple. Before that its just you faffing about. Tbh the city intro is damn good. Between leaving the city and finding the temple is... Boring.

For me: KOTOR I.

Talk about a long ass intro on taris. It sucks... so bad. And to make matters worse, you cant lvl up your character there. Well to be clear: you can but you are kneecapping yourself if you do. Wait untill you are a jedi, then lvl up or you have waisted valuable skill points.

Its ony best games eva list though so the rest of the game makes it up to me.
 

mysecondlife

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In a way, Demon's Souls did it for me. There's a somewhat steep entry curve to the game. It took me hours to finally the understand the game and enjoy it.
 

Skatologist

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Final Fantasy 7 is the main suspect tbqh
That's kind of weird for me to hear, considering I've seen a lot of people online finding FF7 to be rather overrated and actually would have preferred Squaresoft stuck to a story surrounding eco terrorists rather than the much more traditional JRPG story the game we got was. And from what comes after the few hours after that..."introduction" I'll call it, I kind of agree. Never finished it and haven't picked it up in months, so when exactly is it supposed to "get good" again fellow Escapists?
Casual Shinji said:
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.
I really couldn't disagree with this more. Maybe because it was the first KH and I think the first action RPG I ever played, but I still had no qualms with the beginning of KH2 other than the collecting munny minigames. Heck, I still really enjoy the design of twilight town and feel the intro was more fun for me than about half of the rest of the game. Sure, I was aware of the game having many Disney worlds and also having a different protagonist, but I liked Roxas, I liked the fact the world always seems to be in a state of dusk, and it was really the world I most wanted to spend more time in. Also, I find the Disney aspects of KH are highly overrated.
Fox12 said:
Wow, I loved the intro to Persona 4 and KH 1&2. It's nice to see a game that has the confidence to take its time, especially if it has good atmosphere.
See! Someone gets it!

EDIT: Will also mention my biggest gripe with Birth By Sleep was actually how quickly it took you out of the introductory world compared to the console games.
 

Yopaz

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Harvest Moon games are like this. You spend some time growing like 2 crops that are worth just enough money to let you buy 5 the next time and then spend the first month eagerly awaiting the day you might finally take care of your very own chicken. The problem with this is that many Harvest Moon games are in fact boring. If you get past that first part of boredom you might just realize that the entire game is boring and not worth playing.
 

sonicneedslovetoo

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I think the Disgaea games have a bit of that to them, in fact a lot of JRPG's seem to. The most egregious example I can think of was Final Fantasy 13 in which the first at least 10 hours of a casual play-through are a boring linear corridor without NPC's to talk to or towns to visit. Granted it was a pretty corridor but it just felt so empty I couldn't bring myself to care. The sad thing was my friends at school were all talking about how much playtime they got out of the game as opposed to how much fun they had with it.

New Vegas, this one isn't so much a problem on your first runthrough but once you've seen Primm once you'd better get used to seeing it every goddamn time you play the game because deviating from the set path the game sets you on will have your ass crammed full of every Cazador and Deathclaw in the entire Mojave desert.

Age of Wonders 3, I'm putting this one in here because I don't want everything I say to be negative. AOW3 is bad until you figure out that you can take a Rogue + Frostling Ice Scrapers and do more damage per hit than a stone giant, same goes for Arch Druid + most sorts of animals if you play your cards right. The game looks complicated but its actually really easy to understand and without hidden mechanics.

Rubber Band Balls, they just aren't very good until they start getting rounder so the first half an hour or so of making one it'll generally be lopsided somehow and you just have to compensate for that.
 

SmallHatLogan

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A few that have already been mentioned. Persona 4 of course. But I had already played and loved Persona 3 so I was predisposed to like it right from the get go. Was the pay off worth it? Definitely.

Final Fantasy XIII is an incredibly slow boil. I played it start to finish and I enjoyed it, but in recent years I've become a lot more critical and finicky about games. I think if I played FFXIII for the first time now I wouldn't make it very far.

Spec Ops: The Line is one I didn't follow through with. Yeah I know the story is apparently amazing but the gameplay was so boring took all my willpower to keep from nodding off. I played for an hour or two and nothing interesting had happened so I decided to cut my losses and move on.

One I'm currently playing is Fire Emblem: Awakening. I'm about two hours in and sweet fuck all has happened. and I'm finding the gameplay pretty underwhelming. I'm thinking I'll be giving up on this one. Although I have no idea if indeed it does get better later or if this is it and the game just isn't for me.
 

Itsuki93

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I had this with WOW. Every time I would mention to someone I was quitting because I found it boring they would say "But you need to wait until you reach level (normally around 5 levels higher than I was at that time)! That's when the game actually gets good."

It wasn't until someone said that it's only when you reach max level that the game is actually any fun that I decided to say that enough is enough. Sure have the first few levels to get used to the world, combat, leveling etc but when you have to play through for that many hours to essentially beat the game in order to get a decent experience you've got yourself a badly designed game.
 

PointlessKnowledge

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iseko said:
PointlessKnowledge said:
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.
Ff7 they mean after the city. Game basically starts getting good for me when you find the temple. Before that its just you faffing about. Tbh the city intro is damn good. Between leaving the city and finding the temple is... Boring.
But the city is the actual beginning of the game. What it seems that you are saying is that FF7 has a good opening, then get boring for a bit, which is not what the topic is about. This would be more like "It's good for a few hours, then its not good for x hours, then it gets good again!"
 

Dalisclock

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It seems appropriate that this was posted because this is pretty much what I've been thinking about with Final Fantasy X. I played through Final Fantasy IX for the first time this summer(I always was late to parties) and fricken loved it(with a few small nitpicks, mostly related to Freya getting screwed over on her character arc). After a brief sabbatical, jumped into FFX, because for a while I'd heard it was one of the best FF games.

I'm still not really seeing it. Part of it might be the fact Tidus mostly annoys the shit out of me(his voice acting is one of the big problems, but dressing and acting like a clown isn't helping his case) and part of it is that for the first 7 or so hours there's a rather decent subplot based around Blitzball. Except that you hardly get to see blitzball at all, get no chance to practice it until you're thrown into the big tourney after you get to the stadium. I've heard a lot of people say it's a super fun mini-game, but it's not doing it for me. Maybe I need to play a couple more games or maybe it's because I've never really liked sports games, but right now it's pretty much the card game in FFIX for me, as in something I'm forced to play because but I get no enjoyment out of.

The idea of the game still appeals to me, I actually like the combat and the sphere grid is interesting. The problem is, I keep thinking "Why am I not interested? Why is it that every time I start getting engaged in the story and the characters and the world, the game itself finds a way to break my interest?". I'm about 10 hours in right now and just watched the scene where the party members talk to the people who've passed on, and apparently the thunder plains are coming up soon, but I keep thinking "When is this gonna grab me? When is this gonna get good?". I haven't loaded the game in a couple weeks now and I'm really debating on giving it one last chance or dropping it entirely.

Because 10 hours in without feeling like I want to continue seems like a bad sign. I'm really, really tempted to just give up and say that FFIX was the last Final Fantasy game. Starting with X, the series became something else that still uses the name but the series I knew and enjoyed is gone(and the finale at the end of IX was the true end of Final Fantasy). I'm torn about whether I should give it one last try before I write it off entirely.

Sorry if this turned into a mini-rant, but I feel it kind of fits the topic.
 

Lord Garnaat

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I normally don't have patience for this attitude, following the same train of logic that Yahtzee points out: if a game forces a player to invest x hours into it before it becomes playable, then that it is a poorly made game. Nevertheless, there are a few exceptions that I think are worth considering.

Crusader Kings II is a big one. Just starting out in the game, the mechanics of it are so esoteric and arcane that even the most simple actions seems close to impossible. This is not aided by the fact that the tutorial is near-useless in explaining the bulk of the game's content. After getting used to it however (and possible consulting some online guides), you find an extremely engaging, deep strategy game like no other.

Spec Ops: The Line is a different example: it's incredibly easy to understand at the beginning, but it just seems boring. If someone knew nothing about this game, I imagine that the first hour or so would seem incredibly dull and run-on-the-mill - just another 3rd person shooter in the Middle East. It's only after that point that things really start to build up, and you become painfully aware of exactly what it is you're watching and playing through.
 

Fox12

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Skatologist said:
I think the slow buildup makes the payoff better. If there's one thing I hate about modern games, it's the fact that they feel that they need to "hook" you in the first few seconds. An action packed opening is fine if it works with the story, but sometime having a sense of mystery is better. That amazing fight with Axle, where you're bouncing off walls, wouldn't have been as rewarding if they threw it in the first thirty seconds. Going on an epic quest wouldn't have been as exhilarating in KH1 if you hadn't seen what the world is normally like for the characters. It makes the fantastic elements of the game more fantastic.

The Disney parts always felt like a series of vignettes between the big set pieces of the game. Some, like Beasts Castle and Steam Boat Willy, really stand out, but for the most part I could take them or leave them. When I remember KH, I remember Traverse Town, Twilight Town, Hollow Bastion, and The World That Never Was.
 

TilMorrow

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tippy2k2 said:
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.
I really don't see how people find Spec-Ops: The Line to be such a great game. I mean sure, it has the shock moments but they don't really carry any weight as the occur as a result of forced player action. They're not something you can just bumble into and go "Well fuck". Additionally the fact there's a bunch of plot holes involving Walker and his 'state' as well as events happening not making sense which causes the whole story to fall apart.

OT: I have a couple of culprits that come to mind.
As previously mentioned FFXIII is a major example of this what with the story taking nearly half the game before it stops bumbling about and has a clear-ish goal and you have full access to the Paradigm system customisation amongst all your characters.

To a lesser extent FFVI, which takes about 2-3 hours of confusion before you reach Ultros and the story starts to become brillaint.

KOTOR II, you're stuck on a mostly deserted mining station where you find out you're a jedi but then proceed to swordfight or blaster the same droids for too long until you encounter a HK47 and a ship full of Siths almost immediately after each other, escape and then get stuck in the inter-galatic version of the DMV.

Dark Chronicle (or Dark Cloud 2), the opening is frankly awesome. It sets up the main characters, motivation, intrigue and then you get stuck in the sewers. Not only do you have to deal with the dungeon key system in order to progress between levels (you need to kill every monster till you find it) but the difficulty ramps up incredibly fast meaning that if you want to keep playing as Max get ready to grind and don't even get me started on how confusing and annoying the weapon synthesis and durability system can be.
 

CaitSeith

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Monster Hunter Tri. I'm not sure of the hours count (I think is about 1 or 2 hours), but you have to complete several minor quests before you actually fight your first big monster: the Great Jaggi.