I ask because I've had a similar experience recently with the first Watch Dogs. I Played it back when it released for a few hours, but I remember being extremely underwhelmed. I put it down and never looked back. Fast forward a decade - I find the physical disk lying around at my old house, in almost pristine condition, evident of the fact I had barely used it. I decide to give it another shot - and I was hooked. The story in particular was really enjoyable, and I loved the little side-missions where you can randomly clear out a bunch of mobs with stealth. I know it's not a lot of people's cup of tea still but idk, it just clicked with me this time around.
Do you have any similar experience with a game you've played?
Right now, disco elyseum. I've just picked it up again yesterday after trying to play it 3 times over the years. I'm really enjoying it this time around.
I know it has a lot of fans, but to me it was a borefest.
I did beat it though. The ending was a huge letdown for me.
Yeah you gotta be in the mood, it's mostly just reading. It's great though.
Elder Scrolls Online
I hate the whole MMO thing so much that I just couldn't do it even being a huge elder scrolls nerd. Just recently, they did a set of interviews with Kinda Funny that convinced me to go back and give it another try.
I still hate sharing the world with other people, but I'm having a lot of fun
Yeah I tried it when it first came out. Was actually excited when it was announced, but at launch the game was…. lacking - we’ll call it that. Lol
Took a year later for it to come out on console and gave it another try. Have really enjoyed it, casually, since then.
Rage 2, I tried it years ago and didn't click. Tried it on game pass again this week and it's exactly what I've needed. Heavy feeling guns and fun special abilities!
I was the same. I don't even know why I didn't like it on the first play attempt. But now I've played it quite a few times. Such a slept on game.
I was really loving that game, until a game-breaking glitch near the end completely locked me out of the endgame. There was no solution but to load a previous save, or start over. I didn't have a viable previous save, so the game was completely broken for me.
Elden Ring
Dark Souls
Death Stranding
Xenoblade Chronicles
Monster Hunter
TL;DR generally games with obtuse/unusual mechanics
Monster Hunter at first feels so…rustic. Like, your movement doesn’t feel fluid enough.
Then you get used to it and the game becomes so good.
Monster hunter rise for me fealt almost identical to generations on the 3ds just with camera control and a few niche movement options.
Blessing and a curse imo, once you've learnt it is like riding a bike but man it took a few hundred hours to truly get it.
And going from rise to wilds I feel so limited now... I miss my wirebugs
Dark souls for me too! Didn’t understand the from software of it all. Gave it a 3rd try and really enjoyed it.
Skyrim. Coming from playing World of Warcraft all the time, I tried Skyrim after several of my friends told me it's basically the same but better. I tried it, and the first time it was just meh to me. Then my sub expired so I gave it another go, and I've been playing it ever since.
Who the fuck thought WoW and Skyrim are even remotely similar?
That is some fucking logic of a mother calling every console a Nintendo.
Like they got in common that they are both fantasy with a semi-medieval setting and both have magic. That is about it.
They have completely different gameplay. A completely different progression system. One is single player only the other one is an mmorpg.
Like these two games could hardly be any different. It is like saying a Jetski is basically like a Helicopter. Because both have a motor and can go over water.
Have you tried the Oblivion Remake?
Kingdom come deliverance 1 played it years ago it was so clunky I stopped picked it up again maybe 3 years before 2 came out and loved it
CP2077. I thought it was pretty meh when it came out, probably due to hype. But I loved it on my 2nd playthrough after phantom liberty came out
It was meh when it came out. By PL, CP2077 had been through so many updates it was a very different game so I am not surprised you found it to be a lot better :)
the updates weren't content updates though. most of them were just bug fixes and even at the point with edgerunners, it was still fundamentally the same game.
The game only ACTUALLY changed with the 2.0 update, that happened right before Phantom Liberty, as that patch rebalanced the entire game.
2077 launched as like... a 10/10 linear game (great missions, story, characters ext.), with a completely unfinished and hilariously broken open world. Of course when people come in expecting or wanting an open world, that doesn't go great.
Played it 4 times, or tried to, and failed to like it every single time. The city is just ‘dead’ and FPS feels so wrong for the game
This was another one for me for sure.
Idk I was a day 1 buyer for the PS4 version and it was awful. Crashed non stop. Fast forward 2 years I have the PS5 version and it doesn’t crash at all which is really nice and the graphics are top notch. BUT, the world is extremely lifeless. There’s like 15 cars in the entire game and there’s nothing to do. I found myself walking around and driving like I do in GTA but with absolutely nothing to do. After driving around what do you do? It’s a great game if you’re following the script as the games designed but pretty empty in such a busy world. I respect your opinion though they made big improvements
Lately? Sonic Frontiers.
Got it a few weeks after launch on PS4, but couldn't get the hang of it. Tried again a few months later on a PS5, and the same thing happened.
Then I got a copy of it for the Xbox in a lot. I was testing the disc, and suddenly got hooked. Spent the next week getting it to 100% without even noticing.
Next, I'm still debating if I go for Control, Watch Dogs or Sleeping Dogs.
I remember loving sleeping dogs. But it might have been over ten years since I played it
FF7Remake was not my favorite when I first tried it. I saw the appeal but I just wasn’t having a great time.
I had it on my account still and sort of randomly booted it up about 6 months ago. Ran through the whole game and really enjoyed it.
If you have tried Rebirth yet, it’s like Remake on 10 doses of crack.
There is an absolutely insane amount of content in that game.
Odd, I really enjoyed Remake after also leaving it for a couple of years and randomly booting it up and doing an entire playthrough.
Was really excited for Rebirth and.... I don't like it, I think the open world section is so boring with nothing fun to really do :/
Put about 30 hours into it and just haven't touched it again.
Maybe the same will happen lol
I bought it on sale a while back but haven’t played it yet. Just playing through some other stuff right now.
For me it was Bioshock Infinite. It wasn't clicking at all the first time I played it. Sometime during lockdown I decided to get the platinums on Bioshock 1 &2 when I picked up the collection on sale. I gave Infinite another shot and idk what it was but it clicked. Absolutely loved it even played Burial at Sea which made the experience even better. Amazing game and a great finale to the series.
Sekiro for me. I played all other From games, but I just hated Sekiro combat. I actually made it all the way to Fountainhead Palace (which is like 75% through the game), but it just never clicked.
2 years later, I played Lies of P and, since I loved the parry combat, I figured I would give Sekiro another shot. This time it clicked instantly and I figured out what I was doing wrong before: with combat being so focused on deflections, I was doing just that and only attacking when I saw huge windows. Meanwhile, thia game has no stamina - any time the enemy is not attacking you, you should be just attacking constantly.
With that knowledge, I actually beat bosses like Owl Father and Isshin quite easily. Demon of Hatred was still hell, though, lol
Turns out "Hesitation is defeat" is actually instructive on how to play.
Also Demon of Hatred objectively sucks and even well after Sekiro clicked for me, I had more luck playing him like a regular Dark Souls boss.
Control! For some reason I just could not get into it when it came out. I played it again recently and was instantly smitten with it!
Same! Combat is so fun. I think I gave up too soon the first time around, didn't give it a fair chance to learn the combat flow.
Red Dead Redemption 2.
The control scheme is awful. So bad that I gave up during the prologue. I remembered the original so fondly for its story and characters and vibes I’d forgotten how bad the Rockstar controls are.
But I did truly love the original, so I gave it another go. I honestly never got used to the stupid controls - even after over 100 hours, I was still tripping over my own feet, so to speak. But once I was in it long enough for the characters to start to shine, I could put up with any amount of shitty controls. They’re that compelling. Also the world felt alive like no other open world does.
I won’t say it was good enough to ignore the shitty controls - I was still cursing at the screen 100 hours in, and now several years later I’m still annoyed and baffled by some of their design decisions when it comes to character steering, control mappings, and their general prioritisation of animation over responsiveness. But the ending brought me to tears even more profoundly than the original did, and the ride there was nothing short of magnificent.
To anyone else who hates Rockstar controls as much as I do - stick with it, it’s worth the frustration. Their writing team and environment art teams are good enough to put up with gameplay even that bad. It’s among the best games I’ve ever played even though I was cursing at the controls the whole time.
Wow are you me in another timeline? I quit at the same spot for the same reason. I just haven't picked it up again. It took like 17 presses to pick up my hat and get back on my horse and I quit after the first town you reach.
It's so stupid - they overloaded some of the buttons so badly that I was still sometimes initiating combat by accident in the epilogue - putting "aim gun" and "speak to the person" on the same trigger might actually be the worst control design decision I've ever seen in a AAA game (except maybe some of the bullshit in Too Human). But, not content with some of the really important buttons being so hopelessly overloaded - they also found space on the controller for two (or was it three) different buttons for "pick thing off floor"! I forget what it was - I think it was one button for picking up regular items, one for picking up weapons, and a third for picking up hats? This was years ago, I can't remember precisely.
And, aside from the button mappings - the absolute supremacy of animation over responsiveness. A character can't just turn around on the spot, they have to walk in a wide loop so that the animations blend just right without any popping. So much of the awful character steering issues could have been resolved if they were allowed to let animations pop in certain circumstances. Or how about the decision that every chunk of meat needs to be cooked individually? It's like they have a banner on the wall saying "QoL? Fuck QoL!".
But even after saying all that, I still recommend the game to anyone who likes a well-told story with many interesting characters in it, and to anyone who wants to ugly-cry big manly tears. It's genuinely one of the best stories I've seen in almost 40 years of gaming.
The wide loop shit might be one of the most ridiculous things about all R* games post-2008. The amount of ledges I've fallen off of, furniture I've accidentally climbed onto... unbelievable that they've just kept doing it instead of getting something like TLOU's movement style.
The TLoU comparison should be particularly galling for them, since it also went for super high fidelity for its animations and thus proved that it doesn’t need to be such a stark tradeoff. Here’s a game with super fluid animation, that also abhors popping and the more action-gamey style of animation, but doesn’t steer like an oil tanker.
Are you playing with a keyboard or a controller?
It took me a while to learn the controls on keyboard but they're nowhere close to awful.
The first time I tried playing with a controller I accidentally punched my own horse.
I got it on PlayStation, so yeah controller. The way aiming works, it feels like it was designed for controller foremost. So much aim-assist it’s silly - but honestly I’d rather trivial combat than challenging combat when the controls are that clunky.
Not to rub salt in the wound but you can shoot the wings off a fly with keyboard/mouse.
Just headshot -> headshot -> headshot.
I'm so glad I played it, twice through story and one to 88% completion, but same buddy. Both around release. Now I find it pretty hard to come back to it.
Man, I bought it a few months ago on a sale and I just could not get into it. I've played about 10 hours so far and always quit in frustration because of the controls and awful slow movement.
This is my response. When the game came out, I just found it too slow paced especially the intro on the mountain.
Then came COVID. Getting to Valentine, I really got into the swing of things. Fell in love with the story, characters. In all honesty, I found that I care a lot more for Red Dead than GTA.
Persona/SMT I have tried to pick them up since I was 11. Got Persona 5 Royal for my PS5 during COVID. By next year, I beat all the Persona games twice + metaphor will probably start SMT V next month. Fell in love with CRPGs after BG3/Disco Elysium as well.
I'm thinking about playing the SMT/Persona series at somepoint but I has so many games on my list
I mean there are other better RPGs out there in my opinion. I was in the equivalent of HS during the pandemic so Persona 5's theme of friendship and time management hit me at that time. If I were you I'd probably start with Metaphor/Persona 3 Reload. Those games are better paced, deal with more mature themes and in the case of Metaphor does a much better job with the Calendar and Combat system. So I wouldn't be in a big rush both all of those games are 100hr RPGs.
Multiplayer of Max Payne 3 on PC.
People kill me all the time, but now I learn to play and I enjoying it.
Ensemble Stars. Figured out how to play rhythm games
Dark Souls. Took me like 4 attempts and a better port to get going
I’m honestly hoping to say death stranding one day. I dropped it twice cuz something just isn’t clicking with me, but I feel like if I push myself, I might actually really like it.
I hated the traversal so much I built an extensive network of zip lines all over the map. I didn’t actually like the game until the very ending which made me feel like all that work I put in wasn’t just busywork but had meaning.
I finally pushed through it recently after starting it five years ago. The first 10-15 hours are painful, but when Kojima stops Kojima-ing and leaves you alone long enough to actually let you fall into a rhythm, the gameplay loop is fun. The consensus around this game years ago was "it's not for everyone," which is true because no game is, but I really believe it was so controversial because the game had genuine, valid issues that the term "it's for everyone" killed all discussion of, and DS2 has confirmed that because it's fixed literally everything wrong with it, and it's not nearly as polarising. This is easily the most fun I've had with a Kojima game, and I think it's his best work because of it.
Original Final Fantasy Tactics.
I had come in only playing FF5 and FF7. Had no idea how the job system worked. No idea how JP worked. I couldn't make it pasted finding Algus. I was like man this game is terrible.
A couple of years later fired it back up on PS1, actually read the in-game tutorial so I could learn how to change jobs and how JP worked. Became one of my all time ever games. When the remaster comes out, it'll probably be one of the few games in the past decade I'll buy at full price. It's one of the best games I've played for story, music, visuals, and overall fun.
Dark souls 1
I started New Vegas at the exact wrong moment in my life and found it boring and depressing. Tried it again a couple years later and it’s my favourite Fallout game. 🤷♀️
Minecraft, it’s good.
Im kinda the opposite. Loved it back in the day, now Im super jaded at Mojang's snail's pace updates. Feels like it's been a decade and the game still hasn't lived up to its potential.
I can only play with mods now.
Same here. A good 15 years of development has made it quite fun.
What I didn't expect was for it to be the single most sociopathic game I've ever played.
Define. What do you mean it's sociopathic? If it's in terms of the evil things you can do let me introduce you to a game called RimWorld.
It's less in terms of the evil things you can do and more in terms of the evil things consistently being the superior option.
I could interact with villagers normally, letting them go about their day and communicate and do their jobs, OR I could put them all in a box with their bed dug one block deep like it's a grave and putting their profession block one block away with a slab overhead so I can consistently trade with them instead of trying to hunt them down.
I could have a free-range chicken farm, OR I could encapsulate them in a box that automatically forces their birth from an egg and then incinerates them as they grow up because if I don't, it's easy for them to escape through my fence gate.
I could swim or use a minecart to go to a higher elevation, OR I could drown the already silently screaming compacted souls that I took from hell in order to make an elevator to save time.
The list goes on.
OP mentioned Rimworld and it's much the same. I can't think of a game that rewards you for playing in a morally ethical way. Wearing the black hat is too tempting.
Well, I did say that I had ever played, so...
Anyway, I guess I should check out Rimworld and compare. I know it's supposed to be very good.
I love the first Watch Dogs so much
That last mission was so good
Baldur's gate 1. Coming from pathfinder it was a big shock to get used to ad&d 2e. Didn't go past the first few areas. A few years later i decided to try it out again and bam, i became a fan
KOTOR. I was too young and never played a “turn based” RPG before.
Came back later and loved it.
Dear Esther
Lords of the Fallen
Lies of P
Not sure if it counts since I didn't dislike it... The og Dead Space.
Played it for like 10 minutes and turned it off because I was scared shitless, after like two years I grew a pair and tried it again, became one of the best games ever for me.
This is my issue with Alien Isolation
Legitimately the most stressful game I've ever played
Wy Piipo the Movie.
Dragon Age: Origins. Couldn't get into it on the Xbox, couldn't put it down on the PC. It's been added to my "heavy nostalgia" list, and I only played it last year!
Persona 4. When I first played it, I got to the second dungeon and stopped playing. Years later I was on a week long vacation to play a new wow expansion, but I had the day off before it dropped so I needed something to do and decided to play persona 4 again figuring it'd just keep me busy for a day then I'd get bored again. Instead, I played it through from start to finish that week and didn't even touch the new expansion until I was done with p4.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider
Zelda Breath of the Wild
Bought a Switch in 2018 just for that game alone because it was GOTY. Played a few hours and it just felt boring compared to the Zelda type games I liked in A Link to the Past and Link’s Awakening.
Didn’t touch the game for years until 2023 when I had a flight to Tokyo. Gave it a second shot and didn’t stop playing for the 9+ hr flight except for restroom and in-flight meal breaks. It finally clicked and I loved it ever since.
Cyberpunk. I installed and uninstalled it 4 times in 2 years. It was just not clicking for me for some reason. On the 4th run I managed to do the heist but uninstalled it after that. I saw something called phantom liberty was being added as a dlc and everyone was praising it. After watching the anime I decided to brute force my brain to sit and play when I saw people saying the real game starts after the whole betrayal. Boy am i glad I gave it another go. After the betrayal it actually became pretty fun to play and I got addicted to it. Honestly a 9/10 game that should be experienced atleast once in your life
Im so unsure what to do in this game, you reference a betrayal, should I prioritize story until this happens and then spin off into side stuff?
Phantom Liberty has a massive side story, easily 20 hours of content plus new weapons, cars, apartments and stuff.
You will progress to a point where you will unambiguously have to betray someone. The DLC goes into nitro mode at that point until its conclusion.
After it you will gain a lot of perks and items to make the main game more interesting.
I'm talking about deshawn betrayal sheet jackie dies in heist. After that it was kinda fun to play. This game is pretty confusing with the whole cybernetics and stuff. Watch a yt channel to see what kinda build you wanna play with and copy the build. Main story is not really that important but side quests are pretty cool
My friend bought me Mount and Blade warband over 10 years ago to play the multiplayer with him, and I thought that the pvp battles were the whole thing.
I only recently discovered the single player and now I can't stop playing.
Split/Second.
The way kid brother described it, it sounded like a shovelware 'but we have Burnout at home' with an extra helping of edge just because.
Got it years later when I picked up a used PS3, lost a few hours in it, and called to tell him his description was terrible.
Never played, only watched... but also have to give No Man's Sky props for turning its launch day shit-show around.
Half-Life one. I downloaded it because of the Valve pack, had a kneejerk reaction to the extremely dated graphics, UI, controls, etc. And didn't touch it for years. Then I decided I'd play it just out of curiosity over how such a classic of the industry was, fully expecting it to be like one of those terrible shovelware PS2 games. Today, I think the entire genre of singleplayer FPS still somewhat lives in it's shadow.
The Witcher 3. I wasn't very invested in it the first time I played it, and though I beat it, it didn't stick with me. I gave it another shot around the time the Netflix show was starting, and for some reason I got so much more immersed into it the second time around and I fell in love with the world and the characters.
Borderlands.
No years later, but a few weeks / months : Tunic and, worst... the GOTY OF ALL TIME, Outer Wilds 😱
Far Cry 3. I played a little bit when it came out in 2012 but couldn't pass the first real mission. (Collecting hog skin and herbs) So I was just, put the game aside for almost 2 years. When I picked up again almost 2 years later I had a better "spatial awareness" so to speak. I passed the mission and then I completed the game in 2 days. It's still one of my favorite games and Far Cry 4 came out a few months later, I was quite lucky. I like Far Cry 4 more but I really miss the islands of FC3. FC5 is also fun, I just didn't like how Ubisoft introduced (and implemented) the player selection option.
Digimon World 1, and Unlimited SaGa
They are such unique games, both of them. Nothing quite like it even now in 2025. But theyre both so jank and obtuse and difficult, with super deep mechanics that are hard to understand and figure out. But damn are they well crafted experiences
Enchanted Arms (2006, Xbox 360), for years I just would play the first bit and lose interest. It was only a few years back I was revisiting some of my Xbox 360 collection and decided to give it a chance. I ended up diving pretty deeply into it and realized the game has a real charm to it.
Hell Let Loose.
First joined a game got completely overwhelmed and never thought about it, went back many months later and everything just sort of clicked and eventually started coming across decent people having fun with the mayhem.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance. I wasn't really sure about it, then before the sequel I decided to give it a good go and fell in love with it. Then pre-ordered 2.
It wasn't years but I bounced off Demon's souls at launch, came back 8-10 months later and was hooked. I've been a souls fan ever since and they have ruined many not only games but other entire genre's of games for me.
Fallout 3
Played the storyline and ignored the side quests, didn’t realise you can store items so I was just constantly dropping items so I wasn’t overloaded. I was always broke as well, never enough bottle caps for anything. Ultimately the game was okay, I had fun but I didn’t see the appeal.
I went back to it a year later and played everything Available to me and had an amazing time, I couldn’t wait for New Vegas to release and wasn’t disappointed
It was fallout 4 for me. I had done all the side quests, built awesome camps, etc., and was at the story branching moment where I could pick which ending(s) I wanted. But, something about the game and all the work I had put into it made me SO tired of playing it that I put it down for 9 years! (Can’t believe it was so long) Went back last year to finish the story and all the DLC and loved it.
Fortnite
Project Zomboid
Not exactly YEARS later, but... Monster Hunter Freedom Unite. It took a lot of reading up on how the game worked mechanicallyl for me to really get into it, and I've enjoyed the series since.
Though my finger still cramps with pain at the memory of the claw.
I remember getting Fallout 3 at launch. Excitedly played for about 30 mins, and quit. Never even left Vault 101. When New Vegas was announced, I retried the game and almost failed to get out of the Vault again but pushed through until I saw the Capital Wasteland with my own eyes. Hooked instantly after that. Became my most played game until New Vegas took that title.
Days Gone. I didn’t hate it when it came out but it didn’t really grab me. I played like 3 hours of it and move onto something else.
About a month ago I jumped back into it but this time on PC on my ultrawide and absolutely loved it. I don’t really even know why it wasn’t doing it for me the first time around when it came out.
Splinter Cell
I'm surprised no one has mentioned No Man's Sky yet. It was ok at launch, if you didn't buy into the hype, but now it's amazing.
Imma have to give it to Minecraft. I know, what am I smoking, but bro it was so boring to me as a kid. Now that I’m older, THAT GAME IS TOP TIER. Man I love playing survival and trying to make my own towns and communities, it’s fun.
the first watch dogs was amazing. all the AR side missions were the best. coin run was amazing. creating and playing other peoples runs was awesome. the game was a it clunky. driving and parkour could have been a bit more fluid. that’s my only criticism really. wd2+3 were assss
Project zomboid, this shit is rough, but after watching a few folks play a bit I got much more comfortable with it and I’m really enjoying it now.
Horizon Zero Dawn. Bought it for $10 on ps4 played it for a while and didn’t care too much for it. Went back and tried it again and it’s one of my favorite games of all time
Old PS1 game called Azure Dreams. It's basically a rogue-like game and I didn't have internet at the time. I didn't know "how" to progress or get stronger. I started to hate it because I just couldn't figure it out and kept dying.
...I kept coming back to it because I believed that "SOMEBODY" must have beaten the game at least once. There HAS to be a way.
It has taken me such a long time to finally beat because of how hard and unforgiving it was, but I finally did finished it. Out of curiosity, I looked up guides that only taught me things to play the game more effectively.
Mass Effect. I thought it was a sci-fi shooter, not an RPG, at first. Played it up to the long hallway full of geth in Eden Prime then stopped. then a sequel was announced so i figured i'd give it another go. Once I reached the Citadel, I fell in love.
I desperately wanted to like monster hunter and despite trying a bunch of the games a bunch of different times over the years I just kept bouncing off and even would've went so far as to say I hated it. One day I decided to give World another try for what must've been the 5th time it just suddenly clicked and I'm SO grateful for that.
Lol.. I've played 80% of the way through World twice waiting for it to get fun. I think Monster Hunter games are just not my jam
Mass Effect Andromeda
Armored core 6 I bought it on release thinking it was gonna be like Elden ring cuz I loved that game and it’s made by the same people but just couldn’t understand how to play and had no idea what was going on in the story since nothing really happens in chapter 1 then at the end of chapter 1 I just couldn’t beat the boss so put it down then about 6months ago I picked it up again and 100% it in a week absolutely adored every second of it once I understood how it actually worked. I do not here enough people talking about how amazing that game was
Okami. Too slow a start and it bored me. Years later after always hearing how it’s one of the best games in existence I decided I must’ve made a mistake and needed to try again. I still wasn’t too into the start, but pushed myself to keep going and soon understood why the game is so beloved.
I got monster hunter freedom unite (MHFU)for the psp back in 03 my freshman year of high school. Thought it would be cool and intense. The starting missions bored the hell out of me. And the beginning monsters were basically a chicken and some raptors and I was not into at all.
I came back to the franchise with MH3U and gave it a legitimate try. Reading everything and soaked it all in. The boring beginner missions were there. Only then after reading everything and taking my time, I figured out that the game was trying to teach me how to gather materials and combine them so I can have a steady supply of items by the time I get to the more difficult monsters! That game ended up being one I played for close to 1000 hours by playing online with others. I then got my friends into the next game, MH4U and we’ve been going ever since with MHGU, MHWorld, MHRise, MHWilds. It’s easily my favorite franchise of any system and I am so happy that I took another chance on it.
Prey. It was too difficult when I first tried it. Then I had a kid so it took years to come back to it. Finally I had time to sit down with it earlier to is year and play it more patiently. It was fantastic.
No Mans Sky
Pokémon. Years ago I just didn’t get it (Gold/Silver days). I was on a big 2D Final Fantasy kick thinking I was too mature for Pokemon. Then years later jumped in on Platinum and was hooked! Now old school Pokemon is all I play (GB, GBA, DS eras)
Sekiro was too hard. Then I grew some balls and learned the mechanics. Now it's one of the best games I have ever played.
Need For Speed Underground 2, still no racing game that compares to it.
The Witcher 3
Dark Souls - bought the PtDE on Steam in 2015 and never got past the tutorial boss
Bought Remastered on Switch in 2020 and have been hooked ever since
Dark souls. Bounced off of it at first. Came back a year later because a friend got through it and it very much is a game that gets better the more you know about it. Have beaten every souls game since and have plunged almost 600 hours into elden ring.
Control. I gave up after 5 hours thinking it was meh. But 5 years later I played it on Xbox X gamepass, gave it a shot and this time I was blown away. Really fun.
Hollow knight, its so difficult at first but if you stick with it its defenitely worth it. I havent finished it yet but i'm at roughly 80% i think. Great game.
Dishonored. I was a big metal gear fangirl back in the day and every game with stealth to me was "this isn't as good as metal gear". Played the first mission and quit. Years later I discovered my love for the imsim genre, played Thief, loved it to death, tried Dishonored again, loved it too.
Fell in love with might be a stretch, but I initially bounced off of far cry 6 super hard. To the point of kind of hating it. Tried it again about a month ago and really enjoyed my time with it.
MGS. Played it on a demo disc and it felt kind of obtuse and I just thought "what kind of a POS is this?"
After hearing the reception I decided to give it another go, actually gave it a chance to understand the gameplay mechanics, and threw a solid 10/10 at it.
RDR2. I still can't stand how tedious they made the game to play, but once you can bypass some of those systems with a PC trainer - as opposed to on console - you get to see all the amazing stuff!
Bioshock
Final Fantasy 7. I played it when it was new and hated it. I hated the polygon look, the anime hair, the characters and the dialogue. It looked like an ugly mess and it drifted far from FF6 which I loved and wanted more of. 20 years later I figured I'd finally see what all the hype was about and I loved it. I still think it looks like an ugly mess but I played it 20 years after release, I knew it would and oddly enough that didn't bother me at all. I was late to the party but I got there eventually. Game rules.
Death stranding. Originally played when it released on pc and literally fell asleep playing after a few hours. Uninstalled it and didnt touch for about 6 months. Then I saw a friends steam review of the game and some advice in it. I took that advice and decided to give it another go and boy am I glad I did. It is definitely up in my top 10 for favourite games of all time.
Dark Souls
Dwarf Fortress.
In the early days the ASCII graphics on top of the steep learning curve was just too much for me. It wasn't until years later when I got the Lazy Newb Pack that I finally started to get into it.
Final Fantasy Tactics. I was trying really hard as a kid to get into Final Fantasy and Tactics was one of the first games I played and I did not understand it at all. Like I was so bad I couldn't even beat some of the earliest fights.
After about 5+ years or so I went back and tried again and I absolutely loved it and played it for dozens of hours to completion. Then I got the PSP version alongside a PSP and played that to completion as well.
FFXV
Halo 3: ODST.
Death Stranding, bought it when it first came out but I didn’t get it. Played off and on for a few years but never made it past the first chapter. When the sequel came out I decided ti push through and finish the game. Now I’m at mission 37 and can’t put the damn game down.
I wont say dislike, but Dark souls initially frustrated me so much I quit playing then I came back to it a year later and got over the initial difficulty hump and now bar-non it is my favorite franchise. I love Dark souls so much it makes me actively like other games less because they are not Dark Souls lol
i've just had nearly the same experience with the same exact game. I wanted to play it as a kid but didn't have a good PC or modern console back in the day. A few years ago i tried the game out finally but didn't like it back then for whatever reason. Probably the driving.
Recently picked it up again because my friend lent me his WD2 disc last year and i liked it a lot so i thought to try the first one again. Damn i was hooked, finished it in a matter of weeks even while fooling around in freeroam with side missions and screwing with the police.
Took me two tries to get into Xenoblade.
The first one remains my favorite game ever to this day.
Alien Isolation, played it as kid on the 360 and the begining of the game was such a slog I had to put it down, 10 years later I forced myself to give it another shot and it ended up as one of my favorite games of all time.
Resident Evil Outbreak. Initially played it when I was younger and didn’t like too much simply because none of the characters were any of the original characters from the main games. Came back it to on a rainy day and realized the game is rich in series lore and ended up liking some of the in game characters. Also went on to play Outbreak 2! I sunk a bunch of hours into both games to score unlockables and catch references to the main games
Batman: Arkham Asylum (and by extension, Sleeping Dogs)
When it came out, I did not understand Arkham Asylum’s combat. I was VERY used to the timing of and how counters worked in the Assassin’s Creed games (of the time). I couldn’t get through the first combat encounter. I couldn’t land combos, and I kept countering goons and they never went down. Mind you, I had a full size adult brain at this point in life (I still do, I’m just saying I wasn’t a kid), but I could not grasp how combat worked. It wasn’t until playing Shadow of Mordor years later that it clicked. I don’t know if it’s just how slightly different that game’s combat is or if it’s that Talion has a sword, but it finely made sense and I went on to love the Arkham games (and Sleeping Dog, which I realized does not have as similar of combat to the Arkham games as I had thought).
Final Fantasy XII.
I didn't have a lot of time to play it when it first released. Nothing very specific, but I think a bit of everything; I loathed the combat, the story seemed meh and I wasn't a fan of how the license board worked.
Came back to it after a steam sale on the zodiac age. Loved the combat (it was different at the time, but feels more like modern games now), was thrilled with the job system for the license board, and the story was just fantastic. It went from one of the very few games I've ever just stopped playing, to my top 10 game list just by giving it another shot.
Deadly Premonition. Noped out about 2 hours into the XBOX 360 version. Platnumed the directors cut on PS3 years later.
Project zomboid. Inventory system drove me away. Years later and inventory tetris mod subscribed to and its my favorite game
Trails in the sky. After 10 years i sat down and then i understood
The first Monster Hunter on PS2. Gave it a shot on release but was too hooked on PSO so I went back to that not giving it a fair shot. Tried MHFU on PSP but the claw grip was giving me worst hand pains so I dropped that.
Got my full of World and kind of got bored abd never got the expansion. About a year ago, I decided to give the Japanese version a shot since it was translated, had better controls via patch, and a private server was running. Now im bouncing around between Tri and 3U loving every second of the older gen games.
I'm going down this rabbit hole now with the franchise.
Path of Exile.
Couldn't get into it the first two times I tried. Third time got me completely addicted and every new league is a mini Christmas
Total war warhammer 2
Who whole mass effect series. For Mass Effect i was hoping for a solid shooter and instead got a deep rpg with a lot of talking. Waited a year and came back and loved it. Went into mass effect 2 expecting more of 1. Instead I got a really good action shooter which wasn't what I wanted. Waited a year and loved it.
Borderlands 3. It was rough going from BL2 to that at the time. Then one day I finally played too much BL2 and wanted to try BL3 again. I actually love it now, basically just as much as I love 2.
Dark Souls.
"These controls suck and those skeletons are bullshit. I'm not going to play this."
three years later
"Oh, what a weird looking lizar- dragon. Giant dragon. GIANT DRAGON MADE OF TEETH."
Persona 4 Golden
I initially misunderstood a couple of mechanics around the time management and fights, which put me off playing it, until a while later it clicked
Slay the spire! I tried to get into it probably 4 or 5 times and I just didnt understand. Then I came back to it a week I was home sick with covid and it clicked.
Back in the 2016 I hated dark souls 3 so much and I sweared never playing it again, and I finished all souls game on steam
Death Stranding
Guild Wars 2. It just didn't click. I was too used to WoW and its progression systems. But coming back to it a few times over the years made me appreciate it and now I prefer it. My gear is still relevant after all these years, no sub fee so I don't feel like I wasted money if I don't login each day and loads of things to do, fun combat... I personally think it's the best MMO available today.
Metroid Prime due it's back tracking but after I played Dread ( and I liked It a lot ) I tried Prime again on Switch and I enjoyed It .
Team fight tactics, couldn't stand it when it was released by riot. I came back to it at the end of 2024 and I play daily
Oh man, tft is the only multiplayer game I play these days. Riot was the only devs that actually figured out how to make the genre fun (anwer is variety)
Fortnite! I hated it before ever playing it but now I love it
I thought Bloodborne was a Dark Souls ripoff when I first played (I hadn't played Dark Souls previously).
Dark Souls 1.
I played it on release in college... on PC.... with a mouse and keyboard. It was *miserable*. Controls were completely broken, and the experience was super tedious and grindy. Forgot about the whole souls series right then and there.
Found a fancomic online one day about a strange game with beasts, eldritch horror, a doll, and a neverending nightmare. Of course, turned out to be Bloodborne. I bought it and played on my friends PS4- fell in love. I didn't know anything about the "souls" games, so I went back to them and gave them another try,
This time I had years of patches for support and an xbox controller. Needless to say, I had a MUCH better time the second go-garound.
DayZ - at first didnt understand the point. Now I understand there is no point.
I have a love hate for dayz. I tried it when it first came out as a mod for arma 2 and hated it. Some time later, all my friends are on the dayz hype train and convince me to try it again.
Had a blast and got hooked and we would no life the shit out of that mod.... the hatred comes from the fact that I maintain dayz killed arma 2s online community.
I had a similar exp. Played for a bit back on ArmA 2, but quit pretty quickly since the long time players would basically hunt you for sport with way better gear. Came back to it many years later on a private server and really enjoyed the community. You really gotta find the right people to play with.
No no, i thoroughly enjoyed hunting players lol.
But having the right people absolutely matter. I could play it some solo, but then you're missing out on alot of stuff. All my best stories are with friends.
I bought arma 2 for dayz lol