A friend insists a game becomes brilliant after the first six hours. That's nearly a week's playtime for me, so ‘it gets good later’ isn't a trivial promise. I've experienced slow openings that pay off wonderfully and others where the later systems are not worth the initial slog. Which games genuinely transform once the tutorial and setup end, and what makes their opening hours worth tolerating?
Games that become better once the opening hours are over
- games-worth-playing
- games
- become
- better
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4 replies
I think people are too generous with “it gets good later.” Sometimes the opening is just bad structure. But when it works, the later game us...
I think people are too generous with “it gets good later.” Sometimes the opening is just bad structure. But when it works, the later game usually changes the way you interact with the world, not just the number of systems you have open.
Disco Elysium is the obvious one for me. The first stretch is all tone and conversation, then it keeps revealing how much the systems matter. It never really turns into an action game, which is probably why it works.
That’s a good example, though I’m not sure everyone would call the opening “tolerable” on a first pass. I bounced off it once and only came...