Much as I love Divine Divinity (it's one of the first RPGs I ever played), I agree that if you don't like the first few hours, you're not going to like the rest of it either. It does get more interesting after you leave the starting village (IMO), but the gameplay and writing style don't change substantially.

Beyond Divinity, on the other hand... ugh. Waste of time and money. It removes almost everything I like about the original (huge open world, character interaction, puzzles) and replaces them with a boring linear dungeon-crawl full of bugs, re-used DD assets and general lack of polish. I kept playing in the hope that it would get better; it never did. I also made the mistake of playing a mage, not realising that there's precisely ONE spell in the entire game that's actually useful against high-level enemies, and it's only available from an optional dungeon that you can't return to once you've completed that stage of the game. So I eventually ran into a boss I simply couldn't defeat (after trying for half an hour) and decided to give up, rather than replaying half the game when I wasn't enjoying it anyway.

The only game that did 'get better' for me after a few hours of play was Morrowind - the main quest has an interesting story, but takes a while to get started. However, in that particular case I was still enjoying the gameplay enough to press on with it. Generally, if a game doesn't grab me within the first couple of hours, I'll just stop playing.

Precisely why I never read reviews or seek opinions. If I see a (new to me) game that I think I might enjoy, I seek to determine only what genre it is and what the game play is like and never take any notice of promotional 'gunk', then I make a decision to buy or not. I make my own mind up after experiencing the game for myself and only read reviews *after* I've played through -- where I manage to -- at least once. Needless to say I've bought games I wish I hadn't, but equally I've found (to me) some absolute gems that are generally lambasted. Nobody to blame but myself for those bad experiences.

I got stuck early on with the imp shaman mini-boss :D I leveled up my character poorly, had too low agility, and I'd hit the little bastard maybe once in every 10 attacks. He healed faster then I damaged him. On the other hand he barely did any damage to me, and I healed that easily, so it was an endless draw. And the game certainly wasn't fun enought to replay even a small portion of it to fix my character.

I don't think Morrowind ever "got better" for me, but I got better at it. At first it felt very awkward and I had little to no idea how anything works, it's not exactly intuitive, but once I wrapped my head around it, it's been a lot of fun. Not that I ever finished it. The main quest is damn boring to me, and the sandbox stuff eventually runs out of steam. Still it provided me with hours upon hours of fun.

I'd have to agree that most games really don't get better and you should quit if you don't enjoy it after playing for an hour or so. Personally, I like both Divine Divinity and Outcast, but if you don't enjoy them from the get go, it's very unlikely you'll start enjoying them later.

The only games where I would feel justified telling people "it gets better, just keep playing a little longer" are those that have a really long extended tutorial that makes the start more boring than the rest of the game, and those that have a steep learning curve like Paradox strategy games.

Nowadays, I don't often ask other people's opinions about games, and I have enough of a backlog that I usually quit games pretty fast if I don't enjoy them. But back when I was younger, I remember most of my friends enjoyed playing RTS and kept pressuring me to play them, however I just hated the whole base-building aspect of games like Warcraft 2 or C&C. In retrospect, I wish I and my friends would have simply accepted that I didn't like the genre and left well enough alone instead of wasting dozens of hours trying to get into them.

Stalker Clear Sky perhaps. Or at least have told me that 90% of the game takes place on the exact same maps as the original. Oh, and you don't get to explore the best parts anymore, the underground labs. That, and the final parts of the game are extremely un-fun and very COD-esque.

I am glad I didn't bother with Beyond Divinity, I forced myself to play it until I finished the first dungeon, and then I quit...for good. Everything that I liked about the first game was *either* missing or nowhere as good, it has absurdly huge, ugly and boring dungeons, a dual-character system that no one asked for, worse customizing options and character building, extremely clunky controls, horrible voice acting...Possibly one of the worst sequels ever, it's hard to believe it's from the same developer.

you hit it with dues ex, the funny thing is I AM THE ONE that keeps telling me it gets better cuz i remembered playing this game back in the day and adored it. so im slogging thru one boring level after another, enjoying finding the secrets somewhat but finding the rest of it kinda tedious but that damn voice in my head is screaming at me 'but but its dues ex, you LOVED dues ex, it gets better!!!'

same with baldurs gate only i have no nostalgia with that one, only a nonstop litany of peeps telling me its so damn good and not tedious,clunky and cliche as hell. so i keep playing............or did, finally looked at my huge library of tasty games not even opened yet

and frigging KOTR starwars, i do enjoy the story but once again find the whole gameplay just too tedious, but i must be wrong , so many people tell me im wrong in great detail.

witcher 3, not only do i have a loud chorus of people and my husband lecturing me but i keep telling MYSELF how wrong i am not to enjoy the gameplay and try again to get thru the clunky UI and weird movement to get at all that juicy content, I wont give up on this one....yet

It is pretty tedious though, at least up until you get your hands on a lightsaber.

Some people like candy. Some people like popcorn. Some people like both. Some people like neither. It's who we are.

I know Larian had all sorts of problems with funding etc. after the release of Divine Divinity, and I get the impression BD was just a rush job to try and earn some cash. Luckily they seem to be back on form with their more recent games.

I think the problem with Deus Ex is that so many of the things that seemed revolutionary at the time - like the incredible degree of interactivity and reactivity in the gameworld - have now been done plenty of times by other games. I remember playing the game and thinking "ooh, cool, I can bounce a basketball around!" but I wouldn't bat an eyelid at that sort of thing nowadays. The graphics are poor, and the 'conspiracy kitchen-sink' story is actually pretty ludicrous (I remember thinking so even at the time). You're not impressed by the game's strengths any more because you're expecting them, so all you notice is the flaws... at least, that would be my guess, since I've never actually replayed it.

Skyrim.

I wasted so much time in that game (hundreds of hours) slogging through dungeon after dungeon before I asked myself, WTF am I supposed to be doing before I quit. I had not heard of or played any Elder Scrolls games before, but there was so much hype behind it that I pre-ordered it based on a recommendation from a friend. The story is so boring I forgot about it and was just wandering around to see what I could find. Most of the dungeons were copy and paste jobs.

This is basically what I remember from it. You start out on a wagon full of prisoners to be executed, but your name isn't on the list, so they're going to execute you anyway. A dragon shows up and you manage to escape with the help of some guy. After escaping, the guy you escape with says to split up, so I go my own way.

The friend that recommended it was playing it too. He kept talking about these epic dragon battles he was having, and I had played the same amount of time has he had without seeing a single dragon except for the scripted one at the start. It turns out, the guy you escape with, the one that tells you to split up, apparently you're supposed to follow him so he gives you a quest which starts the main story quest. Dragons don't begin spawing in the world until you complete a certain part of that quest.

If you do split up, he's supposed to tell you to go talk to a friend of his or something which starts the quest. Maybe it was a bug because he didn't do that for me and I wandered around from town to town doing misc. quests and was starting to wonder if that was all to the game when I talked to my friend and we compared how we played the start. I went to the he's goes to and talked to him and he finally gave me the start of the main quest. I played through some of the main quest, but it wasn't interesting to me. I found some of the side quests more interesting and was having more fun exploring on my own. I don't remember the exact point where I decided to call it quits. It was a lot of things that added up over time before I realized I wasn't enjoying the game and quit for good.

DebbieL true that. :) its hard to remind oneself of what is taken for granted now, I bet when they finally plug our brains directly into vr worlds and games become more real than real we will be amazed at how crap todays games are in comparison


i can remember the exact time i quit skyrim was when i couldnt remember where in the hell i had parked my horse, it was at some cave/dungeon entrance and like the poster above hadnt a clue what i was supposed to be doing, had pages of quests that overwhelmed me and some vague idea of a main quest but no matter how many times i tried to stay focused i always got sidetracked by some shiny on the side of the road, that and I got tired of save scumming in order to keep my dog alive

heh

For me it's Fallout. Don't know how many times I started playing in the last 20 years. Everytime I think "I have to like it, it's my favourite genre and the setting is awesome.". And there are so many people who love it and say it's one of the best RPGs ever. But after a few hours I'm so frustrated about the huge flaws that are clearly there (inventory management, stupid AI of the companions just to name a few) that I have to force myself to keep playing. After a few more days I normally give up. Untill somebody tells me again how great the game is and that I probably just was in the wrong mood for it.

It gets better! At the latest at the sixths attempt, you will have a blast!