Quote Originally Posted by Raistlin View Post
FFXIII is really a great example of a game getting both better and worse in the latter half of the game. After chapter 9, the story went downhill fast, and dashed all my hopes for the game. But with chapter 11, the gameplay became much more interesting.
I would actually say chapter 11 was the final nail in FFXIII's coffin. Actually it as long before that, but that chapter did nothing to redeem it for me. I hated the story, world and battle system up to that point, and even unlocking that last little bit of the battle system around that point didn't help. It's still one of the worst designed and least engaging battle systems I've ever seen. And fter an incredibly linear game they decided to try and destroy what pacing the game did have towards the end and open things up to a world that was utterly devoid of anything worth doing. Just run around exploring and hunting marks. It felt so pointless that even if my PS3 hadn't died I might have given up around here anyway.

As for the topic, I'l go with RE4. The gameplay was all right at first and the atmosphere created in the village at the start was great. Once you leave that village though the cool atmosphere the game has has long since passed and everything degenerates into a game of enter a new area, fight waves of enemies for a few minutes, enter a new area, fail at a quick time event (twice because they changed the button input the second time), fight waves of enemies, rinse and repeat. It was also not long after the village that the small annoyances built into the combat system really started to grate on my nerves. Had the game been 5-10 hours I may remember it as a decent enough experience. Instead I finished it at the 20 hour mark and vowed to never play it again.

Frankly, I don't think it's ever a good thing to keep playing a game hoping it gets better later on. After FFXIII I will never do that again because no game should take 5+ hours to get to the good stuff. If it does, it's a bad game, no matter how good it gets later on. Odds are you'll know inside of 1-2 hours if you really like something and it's good to listen to those instincts.