Leaderboard

For me, the biggest 2 that I can think of are Zelda: Majoras Mask and [I[Zelda: Links Awakening[/I]. They both begin incredibly boring with no real direction laid out, and are just slow as hell. But once you spend an hour or 2 playing around and get a feel for the game and make a little bit of progress, they become really fun and actually quite addictive. The first disc of FF8 is slow as hell, but I can't say it turns me off from the game the way the other 2 do.

Darkest Dungeon takes a while to get into, but when it clicks, it’s hard to top its roguelike dungeon-crawling action. The fact that it’s hard as brass balls probably puts a lot of people off as well. Also, Armello is similar, in that it’s hard to get into, but again, very addictive when you grasp the rules.

Just about every 4X game you can think of is slow to get started. Sid Meier's Civilization, Stellaris, Space Empires... These games are long and slow to start, to the point that I'm pretty convinced the entire genre is this by definition. The problem with games like these is that you need a lot of time on your hands to be able to commit to them, at least if you want to play multiplayer, especially with more than one other person, which IMO is the most interesting side of these types of games. Of course, in single-player, you can play at your own pace and be just fine throughout, which is also quite fun.

Check out our interview with Tymon Smektala, Lead Game Designer for Dying Light 2! https://www.vgr.com/dying-light-2-player-choice-build-ambitious-world/