Originally Posted by
Wolf Kanno
The Persona series in general, while P5 isn't quite as bad as the others, the first five games can take awhile to really get into the thick of things. Not that P5 doesn't have it's own issues on the matter with the hand holding. This is kind of surprising since the rest of the franchise is usually pretty quick about jumping you into the game as quick as possible with the exception of SMTIV.
I'll second the Souls series, though in my experience, Demon's Souls was harder to get into initially, whereas I knew what to expect getting into Dark Souls. Bloodborne also had some early pains as you had to kind of relearn the rhythm of the game with the alterations to combat and needing to item manage again.
Generally, any game made by Yasumi Matsuno, while his openings are not too bad, I feel most people would agree the "hook" moment comes a little ways in. Like the ends of Chapter 1 in Tactics Ogre and FFTactics. XII picks up once you meet up with Basch, Tactics Advance doesn't pick up until you find the first crystal.
I'll second The World Ends With You, the first chapter is kind of rough up until you deal with Beat and Rhyme, then it slowly gets better before the second week changes everything.
I will also second Kingdom Hearts 1, as Destiny Island is a bit of a chore, and the first couple of worlds are kind of boring until Aladdin. If I didn't have the cast of TWEWY being the focus, I was honestly dreading going back to Traverse Town in Dream Drop Distance. While Kingdom Hearts in general is pretty bad about tutorial intros, I didn't mind KH2s due to Roxas being a more engaging and interesting character than Sora and the events he dealt with in the beginning being far more interesting than Sora's actual story, gameplay issues aside.
Assassin's Creed is pretty guilty of this as well. I think Revelations is still the only entry I've played where I wasn't kind of bored at some point in the beginning.