What Is The "PoPoLoCrois Principle"?

Many of the reviews here will reference this when assessing games. But many people may not have played the first PoPoLoCrois game, released on Sony PSP in 2005.

At the time, PoPoLoCrois was a breath of fresh air at a time we were desperately lacking so-called "throwback" role playing games. Games that let you experience reading a book through gameplay, rather than what seemed to be more popular, which were games getting more and more realistic and/or focusing on graphics over story.

But PoPoLoCrois suffered from a very...very slow start. It's broken up into chapters, with each chapter telling a different part of the story. Chapter 1, and I've said it before multiple times, is arguably some of the worst gaming experience I've ever had. And I've played a lot of games over the years.

It's not that any one thing is wrong. It's just slow...very slow, takes way too long to develop, and unfortunately in PoPoLoCrois' case, there's excessive random encounters that further drag the experience down. Once you get past Chapter 1, things start to pick up pace and the game becomes one of the greatest thrill rides I've ever undertaken. But I often will warn gamers to slog through that first chapter for the payoff.

So when I say that a game suffers from the "PoPoLoCrois Principle", it means that whatever game also has a terrible, slow burn start that tends to turn gamers off, and it takes patience to get to the good stuff.