COMMERCIAL GAMES THAT "TAKE A WHILE TO GET GOOD"

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We are well advised to "frontload the awesome" and make sure something exciting--gameplay-wise, aesthetics-wise, and/or story wise--happens right up front in the first 15 minutes of the game, lest they move on to something else. It seems clear this is the conventional wisdom in mainstream AAA commercial games as well--these games usually start with a bang to draw us in, even though in that case we've already bought them, often for $60.00 USD.

What are some games that buck this trend and start a little slow or a little boring and build up to the awesome?
Red_Nova
Sir Redd of Novus: He who made Prayer of the Faithless that one time, and that was pretty dang rad! :D
9192
Ignoring the easy answer of all survival horror games with a decent grasp of pacing and atmosphere, I can think of a few. Persona games tend to take the time to set the scene before throwing you into the action. You don't fight your first battle in Persona 4 until about an hour or two in.

Tales of Graces has an entire childhood arc dedicated to setting up the story and characters, and it can take about five or so hours for the action to really kick in.

Half Life 1 forces you into a train for about ten minutes so you can watch a bunch of employees do menial tasks in a lab.

Chrono Trigger moves the typical RPG minigame collection level to the beginning of the game, and you can spend as much or as little time as you want there.
- Final Fantasy XIII might take until Chapter 11 to really open up. But even before that, it's still not until Chapter 4 or 5 that you see battles with any real strategy.

- Dragon Quest VII takes over an hour before you see battles at all and puts you in a long series of fetch quests and puzzles before then. The 3DS version rewrites the intro entirely but it's still a good half hour before you see any action.

- Kind of situational, but Cube's chapter in Live a Live has only one battle at the very end. So if you do his chapter first, it can be a slog.
Secret of Mana takes like an hour before you get to play with two players (making party groups super-annoyed because they were hoping to start playing with player 1), then about another half-hour to an hour to get magic. To open up the better weapons takes alot of story time as you slog through Pandora before finally getting to the Upper Land, then stuff finally starts to open up fully when you are able to fly around. But even then, two or three map areas change massively, keeping you from getting everywhere right away.
Twilight Princess's first few hours are notoriously slow. Its not so bad your first time playing through it but on repeat plays... -_-
Most of the Suikoden games have a bit of build up before shit hits the fan and things get more interesting, but Suikoden V takes the cake in this - it can be upward of 5 hours before you get into the real meat of the story/past the introduction, however most of that is necessary for the sake of the rest of the game as the political setting means you need a good grounding in the history of the country, the politics and people in them as well as the characters being built up.

It certainly pays off in the long run, but some people drop the game before then, sadly.
SunflowerGames
The most beautiful user on RMN!
13323

Star Ocean: Until the End of Time
The Fruit of Grisaia
Sword Art Online: Hollow Realization
YS: Origins long unskippable intro just gets on one's nerve to fully get into it and it doesn't help on repeat plays despite being really good...
author=Red_Nova
Ignoring the easy answer of all survival horror games with a decent grasp of pacing and atmosphere, I can think of a few. Persona games tend to take the time to set the scene before throwing you into the action. You don't fight your first battle in Persona 4 until about an hour or two in.

Tales of Graces has an entire childhood arc dedicated to setting up the story and characters, and it can take about five or so hours for the action to really kick in.

Half Life 1 forces you into a train for about ten minutes so you can watch a bunch of employees do menial tasks in a lab.

Chrono Trigger moves the typical RPG minigame collection level to the beginning of the game, and you can spend as much or as little time as you want there.

The train ride in Half Life was actually kind of exhilarating though, scripted events in shooters being as new as they were at the time (basically, HL1 invented that shit).

Chrono Trigger is actually a pretty darn good example, unless you race right through to the exploding time machine like I did.

I am slightly ashamed to admit I have never played a Suikoden. (What's the gameplay like? Is it an FFT type deal or more of a traditional JRPG.)
Marrend
Guardian of the Description Thread
21781
author=StormCrow
I am slightly ashamed to admit I have never played a Suikoden. (What's the gameplay like? Is it an FFT type deal or more of a traditional JRPG.)


I would say more of a traditional JRPG. Liberty has a few videos on her YouTube channel LPing the series, if you're interested.


Or read one of these threads...
Wow, you have played ALL the Suikoden.
author=Liberty
Most of the Suikoden games have a bit of build up before shit hits the fan and things get more interesting, but Suikoden V takes the cake in this - it can be upward of 5 hours before you get into the real meat of the story/past the introduction, however most of that is necessary for the sake of the rest of the game as the political setting means you need a good grounding in the history of the country, the politics and people in them as well as the characters being built up.

It certainly pays off in the long run, but some people drop the game before then, sadly.


Suikoden V was absolutely the first game I thought of with this prompt. It goes beyond just taking the time to set up the scenario in my opinion, until several hours in I didn't find the character writing or basic flow of the narrative compelling.

I ended up enjoying the game quite a lot, but I had a lot of complaints about the writing, and they were mostly concentrated in the beginning. Although the antagonists were pretty lackluster compared to the games done by the series' original lead writer, and I could only call bullshit on
Sialeeds dragging out the conflict because apparently the royal family didn't have the political capital to punish nobles who'd committed literal treason and armed rebellion.
Strategy and tactical games often take a while to get good. Even though many try to coat their tutorials in bombast and explosions (see: Dawn of War 2) they often are nothing but 'click here to see explosions and maybe a cut scene'

But generally strategy games are about starting out small (after the bombastic tutorial, see also: XCOM) and gather resources for a while until things get awesome.
I thought of XCOM: Enemy Unknown when I posted this thread actually, but the truth was I was pretty stoked even from the tutorial. The bombast worked on me.
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
author=visitorsfromdreams
Twilight Princess's first few hours are notoriously slow. Its not so bad your first time playing through it but on repeat plays... -_-
This is true of most 3D zelda games. Just delete the first town in all of them and they'd be better games. Wind Waker, Ocarina of Time, Skyward Sword. Even Link Between Worlds can't do it right, they were given a pre-made world where it was almost literally impossible to mess it up because Link lived alone far from town, but then they were so intent on messing it up that they created a whole alternate game world state with no enemies just so they could make Link have no sword for the first 20 minutes.

Really I would say that 80% of JRPGs also fail miserably at the pacing in the beginning of the game, making the player wander around talking to people for way too long before their first battle. It would be far quicker to name the ones that don't.
Solitayre
Circumstance penalty for being the bard.
18257
Trails in the Sky is a really great RPG that has the worst intro/forced tutorial section in any game I've ever played.
author=Solitayre
Trails in the Skyis a really great RPG that has the worst intro/forced tutorial section in any game I've ever played.

That makes me feel a bit better about not getting immediately into it. I've heard so many great things about that series, and I get the feeling that I would like it if I kept going. I've tried to get into on several occasions, but the beginning feels like such a slog. And that's from someone who tends to like dialogue-heavy games.
The key to a good RPG is having a good budget it seems to extend as much time as possible to create said RPG. Least that is more true than it used to be in the past since games back then were way less complicated to make HOWEVER they still had a lot of hardware & software issues which today is no longer a real issue.

Biggest trade off is graphics take longer now but software/hardware being no longer a pain in the ass, last I heard that hand animations which was a blight on creating character movements via mocap or other movement suits was just recently fixed.

Also speaking of tutorials, I always hated them in RPGs and anything else as I feel the best experience is finding out for yourself unless there needs to be said instructions for certain sequences.

Btw when it comes to Square Enix Games, I think the issue with them is mostly with Final Fantasy all except FFXIV in recent years. They tend to make their FF games way too easy and even back then some of it was easy if you knew what you were doing. I mean I love the stories but their battles leave something to be desired as I only ever felt threatened with super bosses or those one off enemies that can mess you up.
Cap_H
DIGITAL IDENTITY CRISIS
6625
Slow start's usually fine with me as long as there is something else what appeals to me. It can be as vague as a promise of something exciting to happen or a rumour from other players.
When it comes to Pace I don't like two things. 1) when a game becomes sluggish and 2)being overwhelmed as they are throwing everything they got on me. I think the pace needs to be steady, give the player time to rest and ideally graduate a little.
It differs from genre to genre too. You kind of expect a slower start from an RPG but thinking about it deeper, first battles are often the fastest balanced battles in them.
Other genres like Zelda likes and metroidvanias have very steady pacing, which can many players find boring after a while. Strategy games can get away with an absolutely terrible pacing because they're able to make up for it in the grand scheme of things happening on screen.

Personally, I stopped playing most games, which stress me with all the action and overwhelm me with visual tricks. Half-life's opening is so great because it's slow and it shows features one after another. It's still very thrilling and stressful despite using minimalistic means.
I'd argue that Undertale is an okay-ish game until you beat it once. Then it becomes an actual good game when you play it again.

I stopped playing in the lava area on my first run and put it down for a long time until people told me I had to beat it for it to pick up. Not the best strategy, in my opinion, but it became a hit despite that gamble.
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