Oh man! The first hour was the bomb, it's a shame the rest of the game wasn't as good

Name an RPG where you love the beginning but wound up disliking the game for one reason or another.

I naturally enjoy games too much for my own good when it comes to this, so I don't think there is anything I can think of. FFX and FFXII probably have touches of this, though. FFIX had the opposite vibe. Not to say I disliked these games (I enjoyed a lot about each of them, and if I recall FFIX and FFXII were both in my top 100 games), but yeah.

The only thing that really comes to mind right now is Devil Survivor. As annoying as the cast is, the game really had a nice, well-paced beginning with everything steadily going to hell in a more updated version of SMTI's demon apocalypse. Too bad the characters are all terrible and it just gets tedious later on, rather than the genuine tension from the beginning.

Usually RPGs only get better as the game and systems open up. I can't think of one that actually got worse. I guess Eternal Sonata was one where I was digging it at first, but it just got repetitive with fairly flat characters that I stopped caring about.

It's not exactly one hour in, but I started struggling with Suikoden 4 after the sea opened up and I could travel more. Sounds like a good think, but the ship traveled so slowly and the encounter rate was so high that it felt like a slog.

I should play the game again one day, but it just didn't feel as good as it should.

The best part of Tales of Graces was when they were all kids, then post-timeskip they did nothing with most of the plot points I thought were interesting (boiling down to Asbel making amends for running away from all of his responsibilities and relationships). I was way more interested in Cheria and Hubert than Richard and Sophie.

A lot of Tales game have this problem. One other that comes to mind is Final Fantasy VIII. It's way more charming when it's focused on high school quirkiness and smaller-scale SeeD tasks. Once the game moves on from after Timber I don't care for it as it gets more serious and the flaws of the Junction system become more apparent.

Since I've been thinking Suikoden lately, Suikoden Tactics certainly counts. The prologue story as Kid Kyril is pretty cool and gives some much needed background to Suikoden IV but the main plot is just not nearly as interesting and the few good elements never get much attention.

Grandia 2. The first half of the game was a lot of fun, then once a certain event happens, it starts taking itself way too seriously, and just looses a lot of the charm it had.

Idk, I liked how Grandia 2 progressed