8 gaming masterpieces that made you want to quit in the first hour

It isn't rare to see someone praise the living daylights out of a game, while still mentioning that they did, in the beginning, almost quit said game. That's right — some of the games we revere as masterpieces today aren't perfect from start to finish, or if they are, they don't always get the message across from the starting line itself.

Some of the greatest experiences in gaming are front-loaded with rough starts. Call it slow pacing, confusing mechanics, or exposition overload, but many players got turned off by the thousands. It was only after trudging through the initial friction that we saw such games transform into something unforgettable. They may have made us want to quit early, but they damn well rewarded us for staying.

Persona 5 keeps you feeling shackled for hours

When style meets an incredibly slow start

Persona 5 is inarguably one of the most stylish JRPGs ever made, but for those first couple of hours? It feels like the game's holding you hostage in a visual novel. You sit through walls of text, dialog-heavy introductions, and slow tutorials that tease the brilliance of the game that is yet to come, but no dice for another few hours. Heck, it takes about 4–5 hours for the game to actually give you free rein.

But once you're finally let loose into Tokyo's daily grind as you juggle school life, social links, and dungeon-crawling as Joker? It all comes together brilliantly. The style, the soundtrack, and the confidence of Persona 5 all comes roaring to life.

Death Stranding needs to be slow to get its point across

The struggle before the serenity

Death Stranding is one game I recommend everyone in the world should play at least once. Sadly, those who did, found it difficult to stay engaged in the game, even after investing a hefty 5–6 hours. Truth be told, no game should take an entire two or three days to get good, but when Death Stranding finally gets going, there is just nothing like it. Sadly, the whole point of the game is for the first seven or eight hours to be a slog where you essentially trek around the country on foot, delivering packages and making connections. To make matters worse, this insanely strange and new world that you inhabit requires a lot of lore, all of which comes through exposition dumps from some of the most weird characters in all of gaming, turning into cutscenes worth hours of screen time.

It's only after sitting through the first few hours that you come to appreciate getting a bike, or seeing a bridge built by someone else, or an intercity road that even keeps your trike's battery charged while you ride through. It's a shame that this appreciation only hits home the way it should after the fatigue of the initial acts. But when it's all said and done, Death Stranding will always be one of the most innovative gaming experiences of all time, and also a non-negotiable if you wish to play the sequel, which is my personal pick for Game of the Year 2025.

Life is Strange is a game you won't ever forget

A slow-burn that turns into a wildfire

Life is Strange's opening episode is one of the slowest burns in modern storytelling. The first episode in the game has the unenviable task of introducing you to Arcadia Bay, the high school drama, Chloe, Nathan, Max's entire school project, and, of course, her newfound ability to rewind time, all with the pacing of a meandering indie film. For many players, it's a tough sell, especially when the gameplay itself feels limited to walking, talking, and taking the occasional photograph.

But by the time Episode 2 is halfway through, Life is Strange morphs into a deeply emotional ride. The relationships deepen, the choices start carrying real weight, and the narrative grips you by the heartstrings. From then on, especially Episode 3 through 5, Life is Strange becomes a thrill ride you can't get off of, to culminate into one of the most powerful and impactful endings in gaming.

Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain

Crawling before you can walk or run

An entire hour of belly-crawling and cutscenes — that's what Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain has in store for gamers the moment they start the game. In the first hour, you're going to get about 15 minutes of painstaking belly-crawling action as Venom Snake makes his way through a hospital's crumbling corridors, and the other 45 minutes? Nothing but cutscenes, making sure that you know you're playing a Hideo Kojima product.

Once the game does open up, though, The Phantom Pain becomes one of the greatest sandbox titles ever made, and ten years later, it manages to hold its own in the stealth, open-world, and cinematic departments. Kojima's time with the Metal Gear franchise came to a rather unsightly end in 2015, but MGS V will always stand as an immortal testament to his legendary creation.

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice will test your patience

Pain, parry, and a whole lot of perseverance

This one is a bit of a no-brainer, isn't it? Sekiro doesn't ease you in. Instead, it tosses you into the fire, hands you a Katana, and expects you to learn from pain because there is simply no other way through. The first hour is an unrelenting gauntlet of death screens and humbling defeats, and truth be told, that goes on for a few more hours after that (or until the credits roll, honestly). Unlike Dark Souls, however, you can't grind your way to safety in Sekiro. You can either get good by constantly trying and failing, or you can perish trying.

But that's exactly what makes Sekiro so special. Once you finally master the parry timing in the game? That's when you feel like Neo from The Matrix when he finally realizes his destiny as The One — you can read your enemies' attacks, and the game transforms completely into a rhythmic ballet of precision and fury. The frustration that made you want to hurl the controller at the TV screen? That metamorphoses into adrenaline, and every single victory delivers dopamine straight to the brain. Those brutal first few hours are Miyazaki's way of filtering out the faint of heart, leaving only those ready to rise from the ashes.

Kingdom Come Deliverance takes immersion seriously

Realism in this game feels like punishment

If realism were a weapon, Kingdom Come: Deliverance would bludgeon you with it in the first hour. You start as a lowly blacksmith's son who can barely swing a sword straight... in a swordfighting game. So, all that's left to do is stumble through the tutorials where each control feels deliberately clunky, and every villager is either scolding you, or beating you up. This is immersion taken to the extreme, because you can't 'get better in a day'. In fact, it's this very immersion that often causes many players to simply bounce off.

But stick with Kingdom Come: Deliverance, and that ultra-grounded approach also becomes the game's biggest strength. As you slowly learn to fight, read, survive, and eventually thrive, the world of Bohemia starts to open up like a medieval dream come true. Every victory in the game begins feeling earned because you had to put real time and work into it. The game may begin as one of gaming's most atrociously dull openings, but it turns into one of the most rewarding RPG experiences in recent memory.

Outer Wilds will have you pulling your hair out

This one will confuse you before it enlightens you

Outer Wilds is a critically-acclaimed and award-winning darling, but it also doesn't tell you what to do at all. It just drops you in, smiles cryptically and cruelly, and lets you figure out the rest. The first hour of the game can be downright maddening as you die repeatedly, float aimlessly in space, and fail to grasp what the game even is and what you're supposed to be doing. There's simply no clear objective here, with no combat or hand-holding. Instead, all you get are compounding questions, and a clock ticking toward inevitable death.

Once it all clicks, though? Outer Wilds becomes pure magic. You realize you're exploring a living solar system in a time loop, piecing together a cosmic mystery through discovery alone. The game lets you learn instead of outright reaching you any of its mechanics, and that's what makes it so darn unforgettable once the credits have rolled. Sure, that first hour or two is celestially frustrating, but every hour after that fills you with nothing but awe.

Red Dead Redemption 2's prologue is a test of patience

It's easy to get bored in the snowy prologue

This is one gripe with RDR2 that almost everyone who played it has had. The game's first chapter sticks you in the icy mountains, which is essentially a long, drawn-out tutorial. Sure, the narrative is still gripping from the word go, but from a gameplay perspective, the 2–3-hour period is nothing short of a slog, and a significant number of players dropped their controllers due to it, never to return again.

Heck, I myself dropped the game for a good few months thanks to the snow part, and it was only after I stuck through it during the winter of 2019 that I came to realize what I'd been sleeping on. That is an experience that, for many, has been the same. It takes a genuine while to get going, but when the map opens up for you at the three-hour mark in Red Dead Redemption 2, it proves its reputation as one of the greatest open-world games of all time.

Some of gaming's most unforgettable stories require patience

These games made us want to quit, but never let us forget why we didn't.

There's a strange satisfaction in realizing that some of gaming's most frustrating starts also lead to some of its greatest payoffs. In an age of instant gratification, some of the most unforgettable stories require you to have patience, with the reward at the end of the tunnel not being the credits, but instead, the endurance you built while playing through the part where most others quit.

When the grind, the confusion, or even the boredom finally gives way to brilliance, you genuinely feel it in your very bones, and a smile creeps its way on to your face while playing the same game you were swearing at a few hours ago. These games may have made us want to quit, but they never let us forget why we didn't.