Yes which is why I'm side eyeing people who mention FFXV as a game w an amazing start
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Games with a strong start, but fall off later.
- Thread starter Graven
- Start date
Came to post this. The first disc was so well done, then everything seems to fall apart slowly after. The villain really disappointed.
Days Gone was also amazing up until the the last area where the story just got too out there.
Recore and the Order:1866
Recore started out as this awesome psuedo open world platformer/collecathon game that was tons of fun but then his this weird gate like 60% through the game. It was like the developer ran out of time to create what they wanted and just threw these gates up to pad out what work they had done.
Order:1866 started out incredibly promising, great graphics, neat story, interesting world and characters and some half decent cover shooting with neat weapons but about 60% through the game it took a huge turn for the worse with some terrible stealth sections, some really bad/poorly designed shooting sections in the latter and then an abrupt head scratching ending that made you feel like you just beat a lengthy prologue.
Recore started out as this awesome psuedo open world platformer/collecathon game that was tons of fun but then his this weird gate like 60% through the game. It was like the developer ran out of time to create what they wanted and just threw these gates up to pad out what work they had done.
Order:1866 started out incredibly promising, great graphics, neat story, interesting world and characters and some half decent cover shooting with neat weapons but about 60% through the game it took a huge turn for the worse with some terrible stealth sections, some really bad/poorly designed shooting sections in the latter and then an abrupt head scratching ending that made you feel like you just beat a lengthy prologue.
Indigo Prophecy is the winner for this, though it does go so far off the rails that I still wanted to finish it just to see how deep the rabbit hole would go.
The original Half Life gets this for Xen alone, but even before then it started to weaken after the big set pieces with the soldiers.
For recent RPGs, Bravely Default has the whole time cycle bit which while I didn't feel was horrible, it was certainly less interesting than the buildup to that point and I know a lot of people were completely turned off the game by it. Ending was solid enough but that cycle stretch just dragged it down.
I'm guessing you first played this in modern times? World of Ruin is all about exploration rather than linear story, so some people vastly prefer it over World of Balance depending on taste. As a kid I loved both worlds, but for very different reasons. I can see how the combat would feel like a drag in modern times - I guess when you're a kid that gets two games a year a lot of random battles doesn't phase you =)
Same for me. Really cool for a bit, then it turned into a bit of a grind.
The original Half Life gets this for Xen alone, but even before then it started to weaken after the big set pieces with the soldiers.
For recent RPGs, Bravely Default has the whole time cycle bit which while I didn't feel was horrible, it was certainly less interesting than the buildup to that point and I know a lot of people were completely turned off the game by it. Ending was solid enough but that cycle stretch just dragged it down.
I'm guessing you first played this in modern times? World of Ruin is all about exploration rather than linear story, so some people vastly prefer it over World of Balance depending on taste. As a kid I loved both worlds, but for very different reasons. I can see how the combat would feel like a drag in modern times - I guess when you're a kid that gets two games a year a lot of random battles doesn't phase you =)
Same for me. Really cool for a bit, then it turned into a bit of a grind.
In recent memory I felt this the most with Breath of the Wild. Magical opening hours, loved exploring the plateau, then you glide off and get a first taste of the overworld, but slowly but surely the magic evaporated for me. I kept hoping for the shrines to impress me, but they could not make up for the lack of dungeons. I shouldn't even have grinded them all out, looking back that was a waste of time.
Also last year I had this with Carrion. Great premise and at first it's fun to play around with your prey, but it's crazy how boring playing as The Thing gets further on. I had to drag myself through the game even though it's pretty short.
Also last year I had this with Carrion. Great premise and at first it's fun to play around with your prey, but it's crazy how boring playing as The Thing gets further on. I had to drag myself through the game even though it's pretty short.
Haha wow. That was the 'nail in the coffin' for MMORPG's for me, the final straw in a long line of being bamboozled into an experience that lasts a week or two. Such potential though!
Control is an example of this. The game starts promising and mysterious, but ends up doing nothing in the final hours of the game. The last chapter is the biggest anticlimax I've experienced in gaming. The game ended whilst it felt like the story still had 30% to go.
I think that's a fair assessment and I'm sure there's plenty of JRPGs I played as a kid with encounter rates I probably wouldn't be able to stomach today. And your guess is correct - I played VI about five years ago.
Control is weird because I think outside of the Ashtray Maze all the interesting parts of the game are side content. I mean hell 90% of the boss fights in the game are in optional side quests while the main quest ends in a horde mode!
The side content was great. It's weird that most of the bosses were in the side content instead of the main story which lacked good boss fights.
Interesting, I feel it's the exact opposite. Xenoblade 2 has a somewhat slow start that takes a while to ramp up, especially compared to how quickly Xenoblade 1 hooks the player with some early dramatic story moments. But the final third of Xenoblade 2 is where it really starts firing on all cylinders in terms of plot, character arcs, and gameplay and I think the ending is the strongest component of the game.
As someone who just started Xenoblade 2, I think the start has plenty of dramatic moments to hook you, lol.
Everything from getting on the ancient ship to Nia getting captured which is where I'm at has been almost nonstop plot movement
How about some old school? Turok 2 had some really good scripted events at the beginning that blew me away at the time... then they kinda disappeared.
The most recent one that comes to mind for me is Control.
I was so pulled into that world for the first few hours. The mysteriousness of The Oldest House. The questions around what the Bureau of Control was all about. The janitor. The questions of how Jesse arrived there and why. The weapons, powers, and how to use them...
But by the end of it? I just wanted it to end, for the most part. Game went on too long, became less and less interesting as more questions were answered, and just generally felt more cookie cutter in the latter half than it did in the beginning.
Still a solid 7.5/10 game for me, but in the beginning I thought it might've been an all-time great.
I was so pulled into that world for the first few hours. The mysteriousness of The Oldest House. The questions around what the Bureau of Control was all about. The janitor. The questions of how Jesse arrived there and why. The weapons, powers, and how to use them...
But by the end of it? I just wanted it to end, for the most part. Game went on too long, became less and less interesting as more questions were answered, and just generally felt more cookie cutter in the latter half than it did in the beginning.
Still a solid 7.5/10 game for me, but in the beginning I thought it might've been an all-time great.
You got that backwards. TLOU for me went from average zombie game to fucking amazing. The game after Wyoming is incredible.
Come on. The game was fan fiction wet dream since the beginning lol. It was consistent with bizarre it was. I still would love another game like that.
Nah man the "music video" fight and the wedding put it over the top and also Snake magically
doesn't die after all the foreshadowing of the foxdie virus and crawling through a literal microwave.
It's all pretty subjective, and I don't really have an issue with it myself, more just going off criticism I've seen before. The combat is a lot more limited in the early game and opens up gradually. Chapter 4 is generally seen as the game's "low point" but even that's subjective, as it's when the game focuses more on humor and plot set up for a while before really going in for the second half.
There were a few for me:
- Persona 5 - fantastic first act, then immediately falls off a cliff afterwards.
- Astral Chain - gameplay wise, it fell off at chapter 8 with the section that's just a bunch of minigames (which are optional, but it was the tipping point that made me decide I wasn't going to play it for ranks because the minigames are ranked like combat is for some god forsaken reason). Story wise, it should have ended after chapter 9 with the fight against Jena Anderson, because it completely devolves into utter nonsense afterward, and the plot was already pretty nonsensical to begin with, so...
- Bravely Default - same as everyone else: once it goes Endless Eight on the player.
Playing Halo 2 recently and it fits this to a T
The first like 5 levels are amazing! The station, New Mombasa, Arbiter, Delta Halo, Regret
and then it falls off once the flood take over the narrative with some really annoying levels like....the rest lol. It becomes better to just run past encounters than to engage because the flood come in waves and are sometimes overwhelming or come at you with surprise! rockets. They are just not as fun. Not even the brutes are really that fun either and all the levels aren't as well designed as the first half.
The first like 5 levels are amazing! The station, New Mombasa, Arbiter, Delta Halo, Regret
and then it falls off once the flood take over the narrative with some really annoying levels like....the rest lol. It becomes better to just run past encounters than to engage because the flood come in waves and are sometimes overwhelming or come at you with surprise! rockets. They are just not as fun. Not even the brutes are really that fun either and all the levels aren't as well designed as the first half.
Not sure why some people mention Mass Effect 3. It really did not have a strong start. The first Earth mission is just horrible to go through everytime and people just love to make fun of the stupid kid that somehow traumatized Shepard enough to have nightmares despite meeting him for like 30 seconds. Thankfully it got better once you reach Mars.
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The game does have a pretty strong middle though.
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The game does have a pretty strong middle though.
You could say the Mass Effect trilogy as a whole, though 2 is my favorite of the 3.
Every time I play 1 I wish I was playing 2 or 3 instead. Fingers crossed LE gameplay upgrades fixes this.
Brutal Legend has a fantastic first hour, then here comes the rts part which leads to a good couple of hours until the emo stuff sets in and the writing goes to hell
I was going to mention these two, but y'all summed it up well. It's a shame because I really enjoyed these two. My contribution will be Alan Wake (hello Remedy Games!). I adore the game and would put it in my personal top 10, but feel the game loses the well done haunted atmosphere after the concert in favor of an action-horror title.
I wouldn't even call it controversial. Start out with the bombing mission, and then the plot immediately comes to a squealing halt as you're made to run around doing mindless tasks that make absolutely no sense within the story (gets to truly absurd levels in Chapter 8 with the flower picking) and suffer bloated, filler-padded renditions of what was (originally) few minute sequences.
And this is the theme of the entire game.
Weird, pointless ghost story? Bizarre Deep Ground reference (that no one wanted) that lasts hours? Chasing around sewer animals (in the same sewers you already spent hours in) for a key? Yet another dungeon invented whole-cloth that is worse and less effective than the empty corridor crawl it replaced? The entire last seven or so hours of the game is essentially a very obnoxious boss rush that you're praying will finally end. The only thing I enjoyed about VIIR was the combat, and it got worn so thin by filler that even that got annoying. Does not help that the story takes a running leap off a cliff.
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I'm going to say Dark Souls. It starts out pretty well and is even relatively easy with the Undead Burg, Undead Parish and Lower Undead Burg, but afterwards I feel like it just begins to fall apart. The map branches out in several places making it hard to know where to go, Blighttown is just a pretty bad area (Quelaag was a good boss though) and there's no real coherency to the map afterwards.
I think there are a lot of people who would disagree and call it their GOTY. I feel pretty much how you summed it up myself, so at least there are a few who agree it seems.
Can you elaborate on this without spoiling anything? This is next on my to-play list.
I didnt mind the ending but the whole Act 3 felt like a rush job to get to the end.
I feel many recent Ubisoft games suffer from this, since they are too long to keep feeling fresh and engaging. First 20 or 30 hours are great, but then you have to do 80 more that are very unsurprising after what you just played.
Basically you need to repeat everything you did on the first half again, again, and again.
Sorry if you consider this a spoiler, but I couldn't think about any other way to elaborate it.
So true. Painfully true even.
I couldn't finish after starting three times. I feel the progression and loot are super basic too, as well as enemy and encounter variety. All together really bring it down after the first area.
Dark Souls. I think some of the latter areas are judged a bit too harshly but still, Dark Souls.
One of the few genres that doesn't fall into this problem are Metroidvanias or Metroid-likes whatever you want to call them. Seems like as you progress they usually get better and better, as you get more abilities you're able to explore more and you feel more powerful; Metroid Prime, Hollow Knight etc... My recent example is Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order.
But for me, BotW, Dark Souls and Demon Souls falls into this problem imo. Demon Souls was pretty meh by end game.
But for me, BotW, Dark Souls and Demon Souls falls into this problem imo. Demon Souls was pretty meh by end game.
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So it just becomes repetition? Does it serve the story or is it just some bullshit?