So my brother gave me Ni No Kuni for the Switch for my birthday. I was not at all enthusiastic about it, and even less so after the first few minutes, none of which gave me any reason to want to continue playing, outside of stupid stubbornness. It might have been the wost start to a videogame I’ve ever seen.
That said, it’s not impossible for a game to start out less than promisingly and then improve. Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia’s worst level is its first–ditto Ace Attorney 6. Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle, another gift, also overcame the unpleasant IP combination to become reliably (if not spectacularly) enjoyable, once it got going. But I’m not exactly confident.
Of course, normally, videogames don’t generally start off on the best foot. First stages are often designed to be good enough to get you hooked and keep playing, but rarely is it the most memorable part of the game, or the part where the developers place the most inspired interesting bits. I can think of a couple, though: Resident Evil 4, Final Fantasy VII (depending on what you consider “the start of the game”), Sonic Adventure. Notably, there’s an element of showing off a leap in technology or gameplay in these games–the developers are going “look what we can do now,” and so these first levels get the equivalent of TV pilot budget. But again, that’s not the norm.
What are other games with notably bad first levels? And how many of those eventually go on to overcome them?
I think there are a lot of great games with bland first levels. It’s gotta be difficult to design something that gets players’ feet wet without being too complicated or too easy. A recent example I experienced is Sky Odyssey. Most of the level is easy but there are challenging sections near the end of the route. The trouble is that the stage is very long, about 15 minutes if you’re being careful and if you fail, you have to start over. I didn’t fall in love with the game until I saw what the second mission was about.
Metroid Prime 3 bored me to tears for the first hour. You can pinpoint the year it released because it has a long opening where you walk around talking to NPCs before going through long linear scripted setpieces that fail to impress.
(it’s a really good video with great examples for this thread but everyone should know this YouTube channel by now so I guess if you don’t, go watch it immediately)
I think this problem clearly got worse as videogames became more complex and tutorials became more of a necessity. Game dev is hard, etc, etc
Doom and especially Doom II will probably always be my favorite examples for start-out-awesome games.
I never played 3 but that’s heartbreaking to hear, seeing how they did it so right in the first Metroid Prime! I like the kind of starts where you’re fully upgraded and then they take away your powers and you have to get them back.
Obligatory mention of Blood Will Tell: Tezuka Osamu’s Dororo goes here. A game in which you’re a super-human augmented killing machine at the start and have to regain your humanity, downgrading yourself in the process, getting weaker as your skills hopefully improve, making you stronger on the whole. I never finished it because it’s a super hard game but I always loved the concept.
It’s a good illustration of a general problem with game designs that are purely a survive/die dichotomy. For the easy rampup of a game to maintain any interest, it helps to have some kind of resource you can accumulate by playing it more perfectly.
Fallout 2 is notorious but most people act as though the game stops sucking right after temple of trials, nah it’s awful at least up until you’re ready to leave Klamath. By then you hopefully have Sulik and a gun that doesn’t need to be reloaded every single time you shoot it. uuuuugh
early Morrowind also sucks i never gave a shit about seyda neen or fargoths ring or any of that garbage. It doesn’t get good until you get a decent athletics score/the boots of blinding speed and an OK weapon, so you’re not crawling around unable to hit even a kwama
Kind of agreed about Sekiro but i’m puzzling that out in the fatigued souls thread. I will say that the start of Bloodborne is a chore to replay. Few shortcuts, 1 lamp, you can’t level up until you meet an easy boss guarded by way harder enemies, or a really hard boss who’s a beefgate for the next area, or you find an item that’s really rare tucked away into a corner
Oh yeah twilight princess was like a solid three hours of tedium before it picked up. Skyward sword had such a bad start that it soured the entire game for me
I feel like the Yakuza games probably fit this, at least if you’re not prepared for their special kind of jank. Endless dialogue filled cutscenes of confusing political machinations, constant switching of cutscene presentation style, tutorials that just throw up text boxes etc
Okami has a true test of endurance at the start with long cutscenes + excessive tutorializing + incessantly yapping mascot character with a gibberish Banjo Kazooie voice interrupting everything
