It seems to me like there are tons of games where the first hour is the best hour. A lot of games put their best foot forward, which often leads to some very strong first impressions. To this day, when people talk about Resident Evil 4,they are primarily talking about the opening act. But not every game starts off strong. There are some truly great games that take a little time to adjust to.
For this piece, I’m looking through the games that, for one reason or another, left me feeling cold to begin with, only to later impress me. These titles are the reason why you should always give a game a fair shake, even if you aren’t vibing with it off the bat.
Balatro
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Balatro takes the classic card game of poker and adds roguelike gameplay, using Joker cards with various abilities to build your deck and attempt to defeat pesky blinds.
By the time I played Balatatro, the hype around the game had hit a feverish pitch. It is poker! But it’s a rogue-like! Actually, it’snotpoker, it justpretendsto be! It was hard to make heads or tails of the explosion of Balatro enthusiasm that seemed to have come out of nowhere. And when I first booted it up and played a few rounds, it seemed… fine? It felt like people who had never playeda deck-building gamebefore were playing Balatro and giving it credit for every conventional aspect of the genre.
However, I kept it installed and a while later, when I needed to kill ten minutes or so, I jumped back in. This happened a couple of times after that. Eventually, I realized that I was popping in for a run on a daily basis. By the time I found myself playing for multiple hour-long stretches, I had to admit it. Balatro is a damn fine game. Do I think some of the surrounding excitement hadBoss Baby vibes? Sure. But two things can simultaneously be true, and Balatro is also an engaging deckbuilder that got its hooks into me.
I hadn’t played Balatro in a few months, but after reminiscing, I jumped back in for a quick match. The bastard ended up taking another hour from me!
I liked what I had played of the original Way of the Samurai on the PS2. It was a little rough around the edges, but it seemed like a cool game. I picked up Way of the Samurai 3 on a whim, remembering my time with the first game, and expecting something a little more refined. After the first half hour of playing it, I was experiencing somefiercebuyer’s remorse.
It is ugly. It feels terrible to control. I didn’t care about any of the characters. Clearly, I’d made aterriblemistake. Thankfully, a little voice inside of me urged me to push through the first hour and give it a real shot. And as I did, I learned the ins and outs of how the game operated. Once it clicks, and you realize that this is Groundhog Day, but set in Feudal Japan, Way of the Samurai 3 really sinks its teeth in. A playthrough doesn’t last long, but every choice you make actually matters.
Every action you take is a commitment. Every place you go, every scene you witness, every character you interact with leads to you missing something that is happening elsewhere in the village at the same time. You will learn what happens, when it happens, and, with a little skill, you can navigate your way through the warring factions and change the course of history. No game has choices that matter as much as they do in the Way of the Samurai games. It puts every RPG morality system to shame. Way of the Samurai 3 is rough, but it is also one of the coolest games on the PS3.
Vampyr
Vampyr is an action RPG in which you play a doctor who has been forcibly turned. It gives freedom of choice as you balance the need to feed and the oath you swore to help others.
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Out of all the games on this list, Vampyr is definitely among the roughest. My initial feelings of Vampyr being a bit of a janky mess weren’t based on a misconception, and progressing farther into the game doesn’t introduce new elements or mechanics that smooth them over. No, Vampyr’s problems are front and center. However, what you don’t see is how great the non-combat mechanics are. The more I played Vampyr, the more I liked it. Jankiness be damned.
The core mechanic sees you needing to befriend people and learn their stories so that you’re able to extract more blood from them. This creates some fantastic tension, as you will come to like some of the individuals you encounter. Some of the citizens you encounter prove to be rather complicated as well. I found myself constructing a twisted moral code of sorts as I played through Vampyr. Sure, the combat may only be okay at the best of times, but the core feeding mechanic is so intriguing that I found myself getting sucked into the world (pun intended).
From Frustrating To Fantastic
Final Fantasy Tactics
Considered one of the greatest tactical RPGs of all time, Final Fantasy Tactics first launched in 1997 for the PlayStation, before being ported to the PSP. Created by some of the minds behind the Ogre series, it takes place in Ivalice during a war of succession.
My first experience with Final Fantasy Tactics was losing in the second battle over and over and over again. It seemed like no matter what I did, Ramza was destined to be beaten to death by a gang of brigands. After banging my head against the wall for an hour, I quit in frustration and walked away from the game for a solid month or so.
However, sometimes a bad first impression can be a matter of miscommunication. Notoriously, Final Fantasy Tactics doesn’t do a great job of communicating that you may deployotherunits. Once I realized this, that first battle became a breeze, and I was able to begin my journey through one of the finest games ever made.
Over the years, I have had at least a dozen people tell me they had the same experience the first time through. Good to know that I wasn’t just painfully dumb.
Daddy’s Got It Going On
NieR
You can’t talk about games that give a rough first impression without talking about Nier. I was skeptical going into Nier, as its reputation was not positive, but a friend of mine assured me that there was something really cool buried beneath the cumbersome combat and clunky controls. I certainly didn’t see it. After playing it for an hour or so, I put it down for a couple of months.
I don’t know what possessed me to pick Nier back up, but I gave it another shot and finally saw what its fanbase saw: Nier is a deeply impactful, wildly creative, if somewhat clunky, modern classic. I’ll also say this, while Nier: Replicant Ver.1.22474487139 is the better experience, it isstillworth tracking down a copy of Gestalt and giving it a playthrough so that you can experience a Father Nier playthrough. He adds a unique flavor to the game, and playing as a gargoyle-featured middle-aged man in a JRPG isn’t something you get to experience particularly often.
Elden Ring Nightreign
ELDEN RING NIGHTREIGN is a standalone adventure within the ELDEN RING universe, crafted to offer players a new gaming experience by reimagining the game’s core design.Join forces with other players to take on the creeping night and the dangers within featuring 3-player co-op.
Take command of uniquely skilled heroes, each possessing their own abilities and distinct flair.While individually formidable, their skills create powerful synergies when they unite as a team.Overcome a relentless environmental threat that sweeps through a land that changes between each game session and defeat the magnificent boss of that night!
Oh look, FromSoftware is being weird again. Look, I’m a long-time fan of the company, but not all their gambles pay off. A Soulslike with elements ripped directly from Fortnite, that is meant to be played by three players, is a choice. I went into the game with low expectations. A few coworkers had spoken highly of it, but I largely went in blind. My first impression was that Nightreign was a cute little experience, but it didn’t seem to have the legs to really hold my attention for long.
I had committed the biggest blunder a gamer can make: I had bet against FromSoftware. Once the hooks are in, they are in. Nightreign is a pulse-pounding Soulslike that distills the experience down and reshapes it. But make no mistake, thaticonic tension you feel while fighting a boss is here, as is the sense of accomplishment. The classes also add a brilliant dynamic to the experience. When all was said and done, I walked away from Nightreign feeling like it may, in fact, be the superior game to carry the Elden Ring moniker.
The Breath of Fire series is a little like the Final Fantasy series in that every game is set in a new world with new characters. These aren’t games that connect to each other. However, unlike Final Fantasy, there are a few constants. Your protagonist is always named Ryu, he can turn into a dragon, and his love interest will be a girl named Nina. Dragon Quarter has all of that! Another established aspect of every Breath of Fire game is its colorful, expressive sprite-based graphics. That’s where Dragon Quarter loses a lot of people.
Gone are the sprites, and in their place are noodle-armed polygonal models. Moreover, Dragon Quarter begins in the bowels of a depressing, subterranean city. So, everything looks muddy and dark. You can’t help but feel like it is a massive visual downgrade. Worse yet, when you get your dragon powers, you are punished for using them. Every time you transform, your D-Counter goes up, and once it hits 100, it is game over. You areneverable to lower that counter. If this all sounds miserable to you, it is. Well, at first, at least. Then the genius of Dragon Quarter reveals itself.
By putting that hard limit on players and forcing them to ration their dragon powers, the game can make those powers feel truly special. Now, the power Ryu wields in the combat matches what you see during cutscenes. Every boss encounter becomes a matter of trying to push things as far as you can without resorting to transforming into your dragon form. When you finally need to use those powers, and you tear through a massive robot that you were barely able to scratch previously,youfeelpowerful.
With its fantastic, uplifting story, lined with some great villains, Dragon Quarter may just be the best RPG on the PS2 - a consolestackedwith great RPGs. There is a reason the fanbase is so split on this one. Some fans were never able to get past that rocky first impression. But those who do are in for the time of their lives.
