Games that start slow

[SkyKnight03]

Games that have a long prologue or intro sequence before really taking off?

Persona 4 takes several hours for anything to happen. Unfortunately I put it down and gave up the first time. I tried again the next year and it became one of my favorite games ever.

Dragon Quest 7 takes a while too. They trimmed it down on the 3DS version.

 

[Seastar]

What first came to mind reading the title for me is Earthbound. I love this game, but the grinding at the beginning is really annoying before Ness learns a healing ability.
But after reading the post, I will say there's definitely interesting story happening already at the beginning.

 

[.: Meri :.]

Ohh right of the top of my head, there's Pokémon Super Mystery Dungeon—I really enjoyed it and wound up playing until 100% completion (even if I don't think the game quite reached its full potential), but oh my god if I'm remembering correctly it takes like... six hours or so of solid playtime for the story to actually get going. And for those first six hours, you're pretty much stuck as an elementary school student basically LOL. I didn't think the early game was bad personally, but can I see how it lost a lot of people early on.

I feel like a lot of farming sims like the Rune Factory games and Stardew Valley can be pretty slow to start with too. Before you start unlocking features and things to do and gain more stamina/ways to refuel it, it's easy to wind up with little to nothing left you can do long before the in-game day is over. At least you can usually sleep whenever to skip straight to the next day!

 

[LambdaDelta]

the metal gear solid games are like the epitome if this lmao

 

[Sharksheep]

Stardew, Portia, Sandrock, Coral Island
Basically any game where the objective is to grow your farm or the town since it takes a while to unlock everything and to have stable income to do all the other fun stuff like fighting and hangouts.

 

[Kevinnn]

every gacha game starts off slow for me or just uninteresting

 

[IonicKarma]

Definitely all the Persona games start super slow, its a real slog at times.

Final Fantasy 14 as well, and really any MMO for that fact

 

[Midoriya]

It's gacha, but Wuthering Wave's story felt very slow at the start, and then it really picked up once I got further into it.

 

[Yanrima~]

Animal Crossing definitely had the slowest start in the game. As it relies on the player doing these things in the game daily. Doesn't help when you want to unlock some things you want on the get-go in all Animal Crossing games.

 

[LittleMissPanda]

Majora's Mask, Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword quickly came to mind. A lot goes down in terms of story before you reach the first dungeon in each game, but as long as I'm being told and, more importantly, being shown a story and characters I care about, then I don't mind the slow start.

I'm one of the very few people who genuinely enjoys Pokémon Sun/Moon just for that reason. Also, Pokémon Super Mystery Dungeon takes a whiiiiiiile to get going but hey, it has cute interactions and dialogue at the beginning, so I can forgive it. Long-term is when the game starts to suffer, though. Slow but strong beginning, weakish middle part, but somewhat strong again at the end.

Stardew Valley, imo, is at its best in the beginning when everything is overwhelming, but once you complete either the Community Center or Joja story paths and you become the most OP farmer ever, max stats, max farm and whatnot..... Yeah I still continue playing and enjoying my current farm life, but I find myself just wanting to start all over again more often than anything else.

 

[-Blue-]

Dragon Quest 7 takes a while too. They trimmed it down on the 3DS version.

lol that's the first game I thought about when I read the topic title. Going through that weird underground dungeon took like 2 hours or something to start the game. So I got it for the 3ds and was prepared for it to take forever again and I was blindsided by how quick it was.