I was thinking about games last night as I tend to often do, and a somewhat bizarre question came to my mind.

When you're playing a game with very segmented gameplay, what do you find is worse? A really awful area that comes after an amazing area, or a really awful area that comes before an amazing area?

I ask this because when Paper Mario Thousand Year Door came out, I gave up on the game after Chapter 2 which was absouletly awful. Supposedly chapter 3 is one of the best parts of the game, but the previous chapter was so bad I didn't play any further and missed out.

Yet when a really good area is followed by a really awful area, on repeated playthroughs it makes it pretty hard to motivate yourself to keep playing after you've already played the best part of the game.

That always happens to me with Disney movies, and Mulan in particular. I often feel like there's not much reason to keep watching after certain song segments that are the best part of the movie.

I was just kind of curious the see if anybody else has put any thought into this, and what their opinion is.
 

Chapter 2 in ttyd is the one with the grey trees right? I stopped there too. Great art direction but just a slog to play through.

I dunno, these days I could probably list off several hundred games I want to play, if a game doesn't grab me, I move on. I don't care when the good part is, the whole thing should be the good part. Maybe I revisit it later and enjoy it but when I'm not feeling a game and I'm bored of it, why continue on?

I do want to give ttyd another try at some point though  

I guess I'll go with awesome area first, then quit when the shitty area comes

I think the first area in a game should be amazing so I don't put down a game before I see what it's really capable of, and the last area so it doesn't end on a downnote. Other than that I don't mind the order as long as there's not too many bad areas.

What's wrong with the great boggly tree in paper Mario thousand year door? I always thought it was fun, neat that they sort of included a Pikmin reference, the 100 punies that follow Mario and are needed for weight scale-controlled doors. I loved playing thousand year door when it was new, recently 100% finished it, still a great game. Been going through paper Mario n64 as well, good stuff.