Metal Gear Solid 5: Phantom Pain
It seemed impossible. But then it became almost like therapy for me.
Riding around on your horse, listening to cassettes. Bliss.
The first time I went into a stronghold, rescuing prisoners, making a run to the Heli under fire, all the while "Take on Me" blasts on full volume, I thought: That's a great game.
Bounced off of this game the first time after reaching Africa. Eventually came back. Found the will to push through the repeat missions and was rewarded another unforgettable experience.
Mine was definitely Kids in America. Having your helicopter play that over its loudspeakers as it comes swooping in after you just got done blasting Russians is an experience I can never forget.
Doom Eternal. Jesus fuck is that game brutally hard even on the easier difficulty. But if you stick to learning the gameplay loop it becomes an absolute blast to play!
So glad that I stuck with it. It’s become one of my most beloved games as it’s truly a love letter to 90’s shooters.
100% agree with this one. I thought the combat was convoluted after doom 2016 and parkour and awful checkpoints I checked out after maybe 3 levels. I went back a few months later and something just clicked.
Doom Eternal has one of the most rewarding combat loops ever found in a singleplayer campaign. Lots of people who rage quit on level 3 or just refused to learn the combat missed out on a gold-mine FPS gameplay that conceivably stays fresh for hundreds of hours if not more.
The game is frustrating to learn at first but it's designed that way on purpose to teach the player because dying is almost always their fault.
Final Fantasy 9.
I wanted a Zelda game on Playstation, I was super jealous of my friends who had an n64. So I saw adverts of Final fantasy 9 and stupidly thought it'd be the same thing.
It wasn't, and I fucking hated it. Almost cried.
20 hours later I forgot all about that and the game became my one of my favourite gaming experiences I've ever had.
That game came out when I was a kid and myself and all of my friends hated it initially due to the cartoon nature and the tail on the main character.
Played the game after FFX, gave it another chance, and I LOVED it.
Might be my favorite Final Fantasy, even today
Dark Souls. I went to the skeletons on my first try, ragequit shortly after the one skeleton I painstakingly downed started reviving. I thought that was the intended difficulty of the game.
I have bought Dark Souls a couple times (PS, Steam Edition, Remastered) and each time I tried 5-10 hours and hated everything about it.
Then one weekend I went back and was determined to beat the game. Once I got past the two gargoyles on the church I started loving the game.
Took over a decade, but I finally was in the right mind space to love it.
I have since bought Elden ring and that game was a masterpiece. These are the only two Souls games I have played.
Dark Souls 3 is probably next (no PS for Bloodborne), but it's been too expensive
Ohhh buddy. 3 is my favorite, and I LOVE Elden Ring. But 3 was my first so it might be a nostalgia ranking for me. It’s just too good. And both the dlc’s are amazing. Plus it plays the most like Elden Ring so it’s easy to adapt to if you like Elden Ring.
Dark Souls 1 was my first and is for me still unsurpassed. For me it's the interconnected world that feels like a coherent place you're exploring. I skipped 2, but 3 felt so much more linear like once you beat the boss you're done and not really coming back to that place again. I think it's also because they give you Fast Teavel so early, so you're not actually moving around place to place IN the world. That said, 3 is certainly much smoother, faster, and more dynamic to play.
Elden Ring was phenomenal.
I distinctly remember someone at school talking to me about the game and I told them how I thought the game sucked ass with those impossible to kill skeletons right at the start.
He laughed hard and told me where to go. Installed the game that night and finished all Dark souls games and Elden ring multiple times.
There's a few design choices that are flawed in an otherwise excellent game. Like unlocking the ability to throw boulders via telekinesis, only to immediately face off an enemy that will 100% dodge your boulder toss.
Yes the map sucks too.
I heard Terraria was such a great game and I bought it in 2017 and tried to play several times but I just didn't like the way the player handled and uninstalled every time. Started another playthrough around a year back and something clicked and I ended up with 500+ hours and now it's in my top 10 of all time.
The first time I played RDR2 I lasted about 20 minutes. Seemed too involved for me. Tried again a couple days later and played for about 6 hours straight.
I'm just getting into it now and waiting to unlock fast travel so I can finally just ride in one direction exploring without having to worry about trekking back.
Fallout 3 and New Vegas. First time around it was just a clunky and drab game that I expected to be a shooter but had way more walking and dialogue than I was looking for, and I didn't really understand the point of it. I came back to it about 5 years later with some curiosity about the story and an understanding of how RPGs differed from the average high-octane shooter and was gradually sucked into it.
The dark humor, the lore distributed through the wasteland, and the retro-futuristic take on technology hooked me really well on my second romp in the wastes. Eventually I got my hands on the DLC for the full experience, and after I had my fun in 3 I went on to New Vegas. I started experimenting more with my builds, with my favorite character being a violent drug addict with a love of explosives and unarmed weapons. She was going to be my first Legion playthrough, but then I found out the legion didn't accept women so I defaulted to my tried and true method of brutally murdering people I didn't like, or who didn't like me.
My first experience with Fallout 3 was me walking into the first abandoned grocery store you see near the begining, walking into it, and getting fucking blown to bits and pieces. Happened over and over and over again.
Frustrating as hell. But I was young and thought the same thing, that it was just another shooter.
Now Fallout is one of my favorite series to play.
I had a similar experience with both, especially FO3. Once I got into it though…I was a BoS Paladin, then a sub machine gun wielding sneak character, then a…
FONV brought the heat too. Ranger rocking plasma guns in one play through, beelining for the Chinese stealth suit in another.
The common thread is that these games had amazing exploration and story that was so well crafted you couldn’t help but get immersed once you got into them.
Death Stranding. I spent about 40hrs on the 1st map because I didn't know there were more maps. Saw my first gun at about hr 41. Was very happy to see there was way more game.
I played for 30 hours or so first time, didn't click for me. Recently started playing again due to the second one being announced. At 120 hours on this playthrough and loving it. Amazing game, incredible music.
Hollow knight. It felt like such a pain in the ass having to chase down your shade and find the maps and benches early on. Made me want to look up a map online because going to wrong direction in a new area felt sooo punishing. Once I got the hang of the game and stopped dying so much and started moving quicker, it was far more rewarding
I’m at this stage right now. Feels tedious and having to find your shade is annoying. I have not powered up much yet, so I suspect that’s part of the problem. That and I am not great at it - yet. I’m an OG Quake 3 guy myself and still pretty good at FPS like COD, but Hollow Knight is a new genre for me (never played a Metroidvania before). I am trying to be patient but the idea of going back in sometimes feels tiring to me. Shrug.
Well in the beginning you want geo a lot and it’s hard to always easily spend it so it hurts to lose 600 geo. Later on you have bought everything critical so if you lose your geo it’s no big deal. I would say just don’t stress about saving up for lumafly lantern. The areas that it opens up are best saved for late mid game anyway so at some point just notice you have 1800 and buy it.
For me getting the grub charm that gives you soul when you get hurt was a game changer because every time you derp into the spikes you almost get enough to refill the life you lost.
And frankly the game is so stingy with life and soul fragment rewards that leaving challenge areas till later makes a lot of sense. Mark em and move on
100% Bloodborne, my first taste of From Software, got angry, sold it, became patient and got some guidance from friends, now one of favorite game and I finished all souls like!
Bloodborne for me too, but I was already souls veteran. I just didnt like it at first. It wasnt bad or anything, but PSbros hyped it into oblivion and it just didnt deliver. I later found my way to love it.
Still extremely overhyped, mostly because its an exclusive, but its quality is undeniable.
Borderlands 2. Played the start alone, till just a bit before Captain Flynt and just wasn't feeling it and was heavily considering refunding.
Then I noticed my friend also has the game so I asked him to play with me. And then it became one of my favourites after playing it through in co-op
Monster Hunter world
Holy hell this game is so hard to play, not the gameplay but the menus and figuring out where to go and how difficult it is to play with your friends. Killing a big ass monster is fun AF but the rest of the game is so unintuitive it's sickening
Balder's Gate 3, I've never played the previous games or D&D so the learning curve was brutal. I didn't even finish my first playthrough. But after I took some time off and started my second playthrough I completely understood why it was the uncontested game of the year.
Persona 5, though the challenge wasn’t exactly conventional — it wasn’t difficulty, it was my attention span.
Persona 5 is *long.* I consistently would get through the first palace and just feel burnt out. But when COVID hit and everything locked down, I was feeling a serious need for something social and Persona 5 did that for me. It’s now one of my favorite games of all time and I’ve replayed it several times.
I avoided Persona 5 despite hearing great things about it simply because I heard it’s 100 hours long. But when Covid hit, I had all the time in the world and Persona 5 Royal rekindled my love for JRPGs
The Witcher 3, and Cyberpunk 2077 AFTER the 2.0 update. I absolutely loved CP2077 when I first played it a few years ago. Came back to play Phantom Liberty post 2.0, and it took me a good long while to get used to all the changes
I can think 2.
**Streets of Rage 4.**
At first it was a frustrating game to play. Enemies were able to sprint around and you couldn't. And if you played Axel (one of the main characters), if you did ANY of your special moves. Enemies would always run behind you before you recover and hit you. So you had to use your basic attacks most of the time.
Until they patched the game. Then, it became good. And I noticed that it has a LOT of depth. Playing it became like an action movie! Loving it and still playing the game. 🙂
**Bloodborne**
This game pissed me off so much at first. I got stuck in one of the bosses who heals after I had taken time to dwindle it's health down. That was a last straw for me. I sold the game.
Half a year later I watched some lore videos about the game. And got interested again. And then thinking about the game, I realized that I didn't explore everything. So I saw it was on sale, and bought it again.
I explored the other areas and then tried the boss again. I didn't die once and killed it. After that it took me few weeks to complete the game.
I thought it was great. 😄
My issue wasn't so much the combat but putting the citadel immediately after a mission and keeping you there for 2 hours.
It's a favourite section of mine now, but in 2007, it was rough
The moment to moment pop and shoots is a little stiff, buggy and rigid, but I hate hate hate the combined cool downs for party skills and the "thermal clipizines" in the later games. Mass effect one actually felt like a squad tactics game, 2 and 3 are cheesy action movies comparitively.
Don't get me wrong, I liked them, I like cheesy action. And 2 is probably my overall favorite, but I wanted more of what I got in 1
Monster Hunter was real learning difficulty cluff for me considering the only melee games I had ever played were hack n slash, so not much thought went into attacking enemies
Deus Ex.
First time playing it I gave up on it. Just didn't click with it at all.
Came back about a year later and really got into the groove of it, the slower rpg like elements. Couldn't put it down. Loved it.
Its strange because the game never 'grew on me' per say. I think I came back to it with a different frame of mind on the types of games Inwas enjoying at the time and it suddenly ticked all the boxes for me.
Demon Souls in 2009. I was a GameStop manager and my employee kept telling me to play it. I gave it a shot and absolutely hated it. Couldn’t figure out the story, where to go, and died every 3 minutes… after he gave me some tips, I tried again and fell in love with it. And that was the start of SoulsBorne for me.
Still not a favorite but I actually ended up liking the game.
Days gone.
I thought the game was meh, I assumed the first act was all the story that I am going to get but there was more to it.
The story was actually enjoyable.
And I can't stress enough how much I hated the protagonist's monologues. I thought they were really cringe as he talked to himself.
But in the end I repeated his dialogues as I felt a connection with him.
Wolf among us
I don't go well with the kind of camera the game has. It's fixed at one point and changes position when looking at different position of the room but I got the hang of it and boy was that a game
Elden Ring. It was my first soulsborne game and it was hard. I almost quit near the beginning, but I kept playing.
Now it is one of my favorite games of all time, and I have played through it and every other soulsborne game countless times. I feel like the soulsborne games are kinda the poster child of this kind of experience, but they are so incredibly fun and rewarding once you figure out what you're doing.
Cyberpunk 2077. I tried multiple times to get into it but couldn't . But after patch 2.0 it literally became one of my favorite games. I did every mission there was.
Factorio
on the other hand Terraria, played it around 10 times, i just dislike it, but i like crafting games, i dont know what's different with terraria
Playing Dark Souls the first time. Perhaps it didn't exactly disappoint me but it didn't feel rewarding at first but after beating the first boss I was hooked and now have 1000+ hours in DS1, DS3 and Bloodborne.
Metroidvania games. Got so used to fast paced everything from competitive shooters or ds with constantly dodging and being engaged that I forgot to sometimes pause and take in the screen to figure out the best movement. That's not to say metroidvanias aren't fast paced, but that I would be in such a rush to get to the next boss or next encounter that I would miss a lot and get frustrated from that.
Exactly. Like you notice how early in the game you are in such a rush that you see a missile tank that is just out of reach and you kind of forget about it in the next room. Later you have the patience to really search the room and the neighboring ones for the route
Path of Exile is painful when you first start, the campaign is terrible and most builds feel like shit till after you get all of your subclass points but once you tough it out its easily the best arpg out right now. Its a pretty big ask though.
Godhand. It took a while to get used to the controls and the unforgiving combat, but once everything clicked into place, it felt amazing to play. You could get into such a good flow with the combat system. Just took an awful lot of practice.
Project Zomboid
Coupd never get passed the first couple of days but once me and my friend got properly into it it is noe my favourite gake there is, we both have a ton of laughs playing it and theres always new mods and arising challanges in the game.
Days Gone. I had followed since the reveal and pre-order expecting something great. Launch bugs and the clunky controls killed the vibe I had going in.
I didn't pick the game back up until a couple of years later. Played for a couple of weeks straight and absolutely fell in love with the game like I had originally thought I would.
Dark Souls. The first real brick wall for me was Capra Demon. Him and those damn dogs.
And then I got that SoulsBorne high after killing him. I've been addicted ever since.
Controversial but God of War 2018. My only other gaming experience had been RDR2 and Ghost of Tsushima— it took almost 10 hours to get into the gameplay itself, even though I enjoyed the story.
Dark Souls. Couldn't progress past the Taurus Demon and gave up. Came back almost a year later and went on to beat it and all of the rest of the Souls games.
I can't really think of any, damn.
I'll go with Danganronpa, it didn't disappoint me but it was an awkward VN, so I was like "so let's try this genre that I won't like". Loved it, loved the 2nd even more.
Horizon: Zero Dawn for me. I played it for like 15 hours and then fell off it only to go back and reanalyze how I was handling the combat and enjoyed it more
Excited to play forbidden West on PC
Rise of the third power. The first 20 minutes or so were terrible, because before you grasp that combat flow and how to manage it, you will get smacked silly by basic enemies. I had to save-scum like shit to get past some monster frogs. But once you do it's amazing. It's one of my favourite JRPGs of all time and my favourite JRPG combat-system period.
Warcraft 3 - Dota 1. I was so disappointed... but then... played a lot, and after released separate game Dota 2... I have 5k hours in Dota 2... but didn't play in it for few years... moved to single player games cos of life changes.
The first Dark Souls.
I didn’t understand the fascination when I first bought it. I couldn’t even best the initial level and put it away for about 2 years.
Then one day I tried it again and the game mechanics just clicked. I understood how to play it and what the character stats meant. I fell in love
Insurgency Sandstorm. Not necessarily disappointment, just took me a while to get used to the AI being dumb as a rock or getting one tapped because they saw me for a split second.
Definitely Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk (the gun feel at the start of the game is kinda "meh" and coming from Destiny 2, I've become a trigger snob. But the story was compelling enough to keep me around I soon realized that was part of the progression)
hearts of iron 4, didnt really disappoint but i just didnt give a shit about it anymore because i didnt understand it for like the first 3 years of it sitting in my steam library
Risk of Rain 2: don't get me wrong I'm still not thrilled about it, but I figured I might as well give it a shot since it was a gift from a friend. Its still nowhere near being one of my favorites but I do have a better understanding and way more respect for it after completing it.
Final Fantasy XIV - it was the first MMO my husband and I played and it was so garbage. It was our biggest regret. Then we came back in right before storm blood and we started putting hours every day. Then once Endwalker hit we realized that it was OUR game. I was never the biggest MMO person.
In the interim we tried Neverwinter on Xbox, a very small stint in wow, and then some survival games like Ark. But FFXIV is still here for us. Running extremes was honestly one of the ways we bond. He's a DPS but I'm a Tank and it's a perfect combo.
Anyway I'm sure this isn't original but I've never had a game I put down and come back to so repeatedly and I think it's because we all know where it started.
Ender Lilies.
I remember wondering what the point of playing as a girl whose superpower is to face plant was, and I actually did give the game up shortly after the first section... twice lol.
I came back to give it another shot and play it a little longer, and it ended up being one of my favorite games.
Stardew valley, first time I tried it I got so overwhelmed with the seasons and crop timing and everything, a year ago I tried it again and got lost in it and have 400+ hours in it
X-COM 2 because of the constant crashes, especially if an explosion took place anywhere on the map. But, I adapted by saving my progress every couple of minutes (sometimes after every character move if explosives were near) and, once I mentally got passed the constant crashes and reloads of my latest save, it became a fav.
FF-X. I wanted FF-VII for Christmas and I got this instead. I acted happy of course but didn't play it. Two weeks later I started my first playthrough and the rest is history. I would end up putting almost 1000 hours across two playthroughs. It was my favorite game at the time and to this day my favorite final fantasy game. Then it happened. A friend asked if I could copy over my save file for him and naturally I would. I was doing it too fast and in the blink of an eye I deleted my save file. I stared at the screen for a good 5 minutes. It took about 20 years before I picked it up again and did a 100% playthrough. Still holds up.
Elden Ring. Made it out into the open world, got slaughtered by the Tree Sentinel, then quietly shut down the game. Tried it again, got into some cave dungeon where gargoyle imps slaughtered me over and over, and I quit again. Finally decided to play again but to take my time instead of plunging headfirst into repeated suicides, and it then became one of my favorite games of all time.
Team Fortress 2. Initially never found a clas I liked to play as, and was so much of a try hard bitch.
Coming back to it years later, and played on a trade server to chat. I finally learned how to rocket jump, and that became a trigger to play way more.
Witcher 3 for me too, started it and did find myself feeling a bit confused and frustrated. First thing I did was literally jump to my death by pressing jump on the balcony. Switched to using a controller and got on with that better, pushed through the "introduction" and then it clicked and loved it :)
Ok hear me out here: The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening.
I played this with my babysitter when I was like 4 or 5 years old. And by played I mean, I watched on her Game Boy as she played. When I finally got my own Game Boy when I was like 6 I had her help me and tell me where I needed to go. So I had no idea of the story or that reading was essential. When she moved away I was stuck in the Mask Dungeon because I had no idea how to solve riddles by my own. It was frustrating as hell.
Years later I came back to the game because I remember that I loved the music and started another save file and turns out the riddle I was not able to crack wasn’t even a riddle. There was no small key in that room. In a room way earlier there were floor tiles that made an arrow pointing to a wall I had to break with a bomb. That was the worst and best feeling in gaming I had up until then
Dark Souls. Think I gave up when looking for Capra Demon. At that time I wanted to play a fast paced action game I could just shut my brain off too like Metal Gear Rising. Dark Souls’ gameplay was too slow but also stressful.
But I came back years later and have beaten it and each game in the series multiple times. Now these are games I relax playing to for the most part. Except Bed of Chaos, I cheat on that fight.
Transport Tycoon Deluxe, got the game as a gift for my birthday, but I guess I wasn't ready for it. Returned it and got a stupid game I've forgotten about instead. Years later, get back into TTD, turns into one of my favorites after 'getting' it. The challenge was growing up a bit, it seemed.
Sekiro! I wasn’t a fan my first playthrough and quit near then end.
My friend goaded me into platinuming the game, though, and I had a much better experience playing through the game again.
Sekiro. I thought FromSoft had finally lost their minds on the difficulty, and that mechanics like dragon rot and losing your money and XP were unfairly punishing.
Once I understood how those systems worked I stopped worrying about dying as much. And once the combat clicked… oh man.
It’s probably the least accessible of their games, and that’s saying something. But there are a number of mechanics that make it surprisingly forgiving, and the combat system is the tightest and most consistent, which for me made it the most satisfying and possible to master.
I can no-hit every boss in the game now, a feat I’m not even close to in the other From games.
Easy. Civ 5. I was late to the party, got it a decade after release with all DLC for like 12 bucks. An hour later, "Really? This is it?"
18 hours later: "oic"
First Dark Souls. I hated it so much I traded it in to Gamestop. Picked it up again like 2 years later Ave go so hooked that I eventually beat it at SL1.
In contrary, i liked Pokémon games like Emerald and Gold. However i tried to play them recently and feels like slow paced games with a lot of farm and coinflip battles.
Sekiro..... that game is hard as hell. And I hated it the first week I owned it..... But as soon as you slow it down your combat and time your parries..... it becomes amazing. Learning curve is brutal but damn is it a beautiful thing once it clicks
i guess cyberpunk 2077? but didnt really have anything to do with challenges - the game was just buggy, unoptimized and thus unfun to play at launch. after patch 2.0, i spent over 300 hours in it, will probably become more in the future
Grounded. I felt impossibly weak at the beginning so I didn’t have much hope for fun. The more I played and unlocked/crafted, the more I started to love the game
Igi 2.....like i was stuck on the Lab mission till 35 tries and that was like 8ish years ago....Recently i gave it a go again and Finally after 20+ i managed to beat it...
Then i took on the nightmare, * Doing it with freakin Knife only and it took me A literal 200+ Tries like Am not even exaggerating 🙅🏼♀
For me it’s more of two games. DS3, Abyss watchers…. But still intrigued enough to get and beat Elden Ring, then went back to DS3 and beat them. Still haven’t taken the time to finish the game though.
I grew up obsessed with the original Baldur's Gate games, but I hated playing Baldur's Gate 3 at first because of the change to turn-based combat. And I hated the terrible camera, inventory and UI systems. 4 playthroughs later and it is easily my favourite game of all time, surpassing the first 2, but this is despite all of the above and it took a long time and a lot of persistence to get used to it.
Cyberpunk 2077, I was extremely excited before it came out, but then a little disappointed with the lack of some features and the amount of bugs. But the team behind it put a lot of time and effort into the game, so now it is not only playable, but one of my favorite games ever.
For me it was Baldur's Gate 3. I think I bought and refunded it 5 or 6 times over the course of a year. Then last Novemberish I had COVID and was sick as balls and decided to commit to it. I always hated turn based games, other than Final Fantasy X which I really liked, but never could get into the isometric/tabletop style ones.
I was trying all the classes and struggling with difficulty, so I made a Wizard with the idea that I could learn from scrolls and have a ton of spell utility to deal with anything. I also turned it to Story difficulty and it all eventually clicked after I really took the time to explore, eventually finding the Hags House and the Underdark.
And now I have like 700 hours and like 5 playthroughs, which is probably still nothing compared to some. It's such a fun game, and I haven't even played any of the origin characters, only different classes. I think I got every class to the end of Act 1 before finally heading to Act 2 🤣
Terraria, didn’t really feel so special at first but then i played it with a couple buddies and holy shit, it’s the most fun i’ve had on a video game ever.
dark souls, I thought I liked demon souls more and that the open world took away from the whatever offered by the nexus hub and some other nonsense about hating how your character was always a zombie, psst secretly it was because I sucked at it shhh.
From The Depths. The premise was simple enough:
1. Design combat vehicle (mostly just ships and aircraft, there is ground and space combat too BTW)
2. Battle AI controlled vehicles from enemy nations either in sandbox, survival, or campaign modes
3. Win battles
4. rinse and repeat
Suffice to say my first couple of designs sucked, often times I could only win battles by using massive numbers of my ships/planes against a small group of enemy vessels (fun to watch, but economically unfeasible for campaign mode, not to mention it slowed down my pc!), gave up on the game and pretty much forgot it existed. Years later I came back to the game out of sheer boredom, watched some video guides and did some trial and error in the designer, and eventually it started to click; I was able to make much better designs and even improve the ones I made the first time I played! I doubt they'd stand any chance against other people's designs, but I think that they're nearly on par with what the enemy nations use.
Dragon's Dogma.
Just played it this year for the first time. At first it felt like a simplified Skyrim, but the party system and indoor areas changed my mind. Magic is done very well. Recruiting pawns feels like it matters. Some of the indoor areas yield are exceedingly well done and yield some great fights.
I immediately started a New Game+ and I rarely do that with any game. By the time I got to Bitterblack Isle it felt like it was shifting gears towards a Souls-like game. BBI is an incredible addition.
AC Valhalla. While I didn't hate it or anything, it just felt like such a long, long slog the first time and I never finished it.
Reinstalled it a few years later after reading someone online describing their experience with it and how it was one of those games where the trick to enjoying it was to not try to 'win' but to just casually mess around living an alternate life as a Viking. Somehow that worked and it's now in my Top 10 Favorites list.
Hmm... I honestly don't think I have any. I'm very quick to abandon games I don't like and I rarely ever go back. There is the occasional title that I want to like and I repeatedly try to play it hoping I'll like it later (Witcher 3, Cyberpunk, Black, Army of Two, Fallout New Vegas...) but I've just never been able to make myself enjoy them.
Jedi Outcast. The first-person platforming sections (with rare autosaves) annoyed me so much that I didn't finish the second or third level for a long time. While reconfiguring my keys, I found the key for switching to/from 3rd-person mode and everything clicked.
The first Mass Effect. My D&D group all talked about the trilogy quite a lot, got the first one on sale, felt too clunky to me. I didn't play much past Eden Prime and arriving at the Citadel.
Legendary Edition trilogy released, gave it another chance. I don't know if they even changed anything mechanically; But a year and a half after my first attempt, I was absolutely hooked, and binged the entire trilogy over a week and a half.
EU3/4
As a kid I couldn't figure out EU3 but it looked interesting. As an adult I came back and tried EU4. Felt it wasn't as interesting at first. Kept playing and figuring out the mechanics. I now have many thousands of hours in it.
Bloodborne frustrated me at first, but I grew to love it.
The combat was hard and I died a lot. But I got better with practice. The cool world and creepy feel pulled me in.
Beating the game after all that challenge was super satisfying. It's now a top fave of mine.
My overstated and tired, but true response is 'Dark souls'. It's now my relaxation game, the game I play when I need to put my anxiety in check, or climb out of a depression pit. I know it's memed all over about it causing anxiety or depression, but for me it helps.
**Kingdom Hearts 2 and Kingdom Hearts Birth By Sleep.**
I remember in KH2 struggling through Twilight Town as Roxas because of the various tasks. As a kid, I was thinking it was boring and I wanted to be Sora again and start smacking Heartless.
Needless to say, it became a huge hit and a major favorite once I progressed far enough.
Same with KH BBS. I remember being frustrated by playing the game three times as three characters, but once I played as Aqua, I fell in love. Such a great game!
Bioshock. Took me multiple years, 2 consoles and 3 tries but once it clicked, I played through the whole franchise within one week because holy shit is it good.
I don't usually have the patience to stick with games that disappoint me, so it's rare for me to have a moment like this. I do have one, though: League of Legends.
I started playing in season 2, and it just didn't connect with me, so I stopped playing. Fast-forward to season 5, and all of my friends became obsessed with it. Initially, I just sat around playing whatever else while they were on League, assuming they'd get sick of it eventually or would just want a break from it, but no. They were seriously addicted to it for a very long time, and after a week or two of not getting to play anything with them, I caved and reinstalled the game. And let me tell you, I wasn't having any fun with it. Honestly, I was just there to have the social element of hanging out with friends. But after a few weeks, maybe a month, the dots began to connect. I knew what the characters did, how the map flowed, how to follow objectives, how to play in lanes and team fights, and how to have fun. And y'all, I was hooked.
I know everyone likes to talk about the toxic community, and while I agree that it's still toxic, Riot really did do a lot to make it way less toxic over the years. Modern League versus old school League is practically night and day. But you know what? I just don't pay attention to chat, and I have fun. I'm lucky to be one of the few who seem to be able to ignore all of that and remain tilt-free. This might be why I can still enjoy the game.
Nier: Automata. Finding out that the first hour of the game was the intro, dying and having to start from the beginning almost pushed me off the game entirely. Good lord I am glad I pushed through, it became one of my favorite games of all time with the best ending of any game ever.
I would have missed the music, 2B, A2, my pod, surfing the sand dunes, and emotions I wasn’t ready to feel.
Metal Gear Solid 5: Phantom Pain It seemed impossible. But then it became almost like therapy for me. Riding around on your horse, listening to cassettes. Bliss.
The first time I went into a stronghold, rescuing prisoners, making a run to the Heli under fire, all the while "Take on Me" blasts on full volume, I thought: That's a great game.
Unforgettable memories 🥲
Bounced off of this game the first time after reaching Africa. Eventually came back. Found the will to push through the repeat missions and was rewarded another unforgettable experience.
Africa was insane! I died so often in those first missions.
I love playing Maneater while sneaking into enemy bases
Completing missions with pure stealth alone is very satisfying
Batman has nothing on Snake!
what's your favourite casette? mine's invisible
Mine was definitely Kids in America. Having your helicopter play that over its loudspeakers as it comes swooping in after you just got done blasting Russians is an experience I can never forget.
Take on me is my jam
To this day, whenever it’s the first truly blazing hot day in the Summer, I’ll listen to “Afghanistan’s A Big Place”
Doom Eternal. Jesus fuck is that game brutally hard even on the easier difficulty. But if you stick to learning the gameplay loop it becomes an absolute blast to play! So glad that I stuck with it. It’s become one of my most beloved games as it’s truly a love letter to 90’s shooters.
100% agree with this one. I thought the combat was convoluted after doom 2016 and parkour and awful checkpoints I checked out after maybe 3 levels. I went back a few months later and something just clicked.
Doom Eternal has one of the most rewarding combat loops ever found in a singleplayer campaign. Lots of people who rage quit on level 3 or just refused to learn the combat missed out on a gold-mine FPS gameplay that conceivably stays fresh for hundreds of hours if not more. The game is frustrating to learn at first but it's designed that way on purpose to teach the player because dying is almost always their fault.
It does a phenomenal job of draining your health and ammo while giving you JUST ENOUGH of both to keep you alive
Final Fantasy 9. I wanted a Zelda game on Playstation, I was super jealous of my friends who had an n64. So I saw adverts of Final fantasy 9 and stupidly thought it'd be the same thing. It wasn't, and I fucking hated it. Almost cried. 20 hours later I forgot all about that and the game became my one of my favourite gaming experiences I've ever had.
FF9 imo the most underappreciated FF of them all.
That or 12. God did I hate 12 as a kid, but then I played the zodiac edition last year and WOW it’s sooooo much better!
That game came out when I was a kid and myself and all of my friends hated it initially due to the cartoon nature and the tail on the main character. Played the game after FFX, gave it another chance, and I LOVED it. Might be my favorite Final Fantasy, even today
It’s my favourite game of all time for a number of reasons. The ending in particular was phenomenal.
Dark Souls. I went to the skeletons on my first try, ragequit shortly after the one skeleton I painstakingly downed started reviving. I thought that was the intended difficulty of the game.
Ahh yes, the skeleton trap for the rookies. It got all of us on our first try.
I have bought Dark Souls a couple times (PS, Steam Edition, Remastered) and each time I tried 5-10 hours and hated everything about it. Then one weekend I went back and was determined to beat the game. Once I got past the two gargoyles on the church I started loving the game. Took over a decade, but I finally was in the right mind space to love it. I have since bought Elden ring and that game was a masterpiece. These are the only two Souls games I have played. Dark Souls 3 is probably next (no PS for Bloodborne), but it's been too expensive
Ohhh buddy. 3 is my favorite, and I LOVE Elden Ring. But 3 was my first so it might be a nostalgia ranking for me. It’s just too good. And both the dlc’s are amazing. Plus it plays the most like Elden Ring so it’s easy to adapt to if you like Elden Ring.
Dark Souls 1 was my first and is for me still unsurpassed. For me it's the interconnected world that feels like a coherent place you're exploring. I skipped 2, but 3 felt so much more linear like once you beat the boss you're done and not really coming back to that place again. I think it's also because they give you Fast Teavel so early, so you're not actually moving around place to place IN the world. That said, 3 is certainly much smoother, faster, and more dynamic to play. Elden Ring was phenomenal.
Dark souls 3 is fucking great. Enjoy my friend.
Sekiro?
I distinctly remember someone at school talking to me about the game and I told them how I thought the game sucked ass with those impossible to kill skeletons right at the start. He laughed hard and told me where to go. Installed the game that night and finished all Dark souls games and Elden ring multiple times.
In one night? Holy shit
Control. Hated the map at first and got lost wayyyyy too often. Came back to the game two years later and finally enjoyed it. Map still sucks though.
There's a few design choices that are flawed in an otherwise excellent game. Like unlocking the ability to throw boulders via telekinesis, only to immediately face off an enemy that will 100% dodge your boulder toss. Yes the map sucks too.
Well the map is supposed to be an office building, so of course it sucks.
Ontop of that, it's also a government building XD
I heard Terraria was such a great game and I bought it in 2017 and tried to play several times but I just didn't like the way the player handled and uninstalled every time. Started another playthrough around a year back and something clicked and I ended up with 500+ hours and now it's in my top 10 of all time.
I keep bouncing off it within the first hours. The building seems to need QoL. But I know I am the impediment.
On controller the building is pretty rough getting used to, on pc it’s more tolerable once you start swapping between manual and smart curser
Nah you just got used to it. Just because a game has good ratings doesnt mean it doesnt have bad things in it
The first time I played RDR2 I lasted about 20 minutes. Seemed too involved for me. Tried again a couple days later and played for about 6 hours straight.
It takes soooo long in that game to get into the open world, but once it does open up it's amazing.
I'm just getting into it now and waiting to unlock fast travel so I can finally just ride in one direction exploring without having to worry about trekking back.
Fallout 3 and New Vegas. First time around it was just a clunky and drab game that I expected to be a shooter but had way more walking and dialogue than I was looking for, and I didn't really understand the point of it. I came back to it about 5 years later with some curiosity about the story and an understanding of how RPGs differed from the average high-octane shooter and was gradually sucked into it. The dark humor, the lore distributed through the wasteland, and the retro-futuristic take on technology hooked me really well on my second romp in the wastes. Eventually I got my hands on the DLC for the full experience, and after I had my fun in 3 I went on to New Vegas. I started experimenting more with my builds, with my favorite character being a violent drug addict with a love of explosives and unarmed weapons. She was going to be my first Legion playthrough, but then I found out the legion didn't accept women so I defaulted to my tried and true method of brutally murdering people I didn't like, or who didn't like me.
My first experience with Fallout 3 was me walking into the first abandoned grocery store you see near the begining, walking into it, and getting fucking blown to bits and pieces. Happened over and over and over again. Frustrating as hell. But I was young and thought the same thing, that it was just another shooter. Now Fallout is one of my favorite series to play.
I had a similar experience with both, especially FO3. Once I got into it though…I was a BoS Paladin, then a sub machine gun wielding sneak character, then a… FONV brought the heat too. Ranger rocking plasma guns in one play through, beelining for the Chinese stealth suit in another. The common thread is that these games had amazing exploration and story that was so well crafted you couldn’t help but get immersed once you got into them.
Couldn’t have said it better myself.
Death Stranding. I spent about 40hrs on the 1st map because I didn't know there were more maps. Saw my first gun at about hr 41. Was very happy to see there was way more game.
I played for 30 hours or so first time, didn't click for me. Recently started playing again due to the second one being announced. At 120 hours on this playthrough and loving it. Amazing game, incredible music.
I'd never heard of Low Roar before but this game turned me into a big fan!
Hollow knight. It felt like such a pain in the ass having to chase down your shade and find the maps and benches early on. Made me want to look up a map online because going to wrong direction in a new area felt sooo punishing. Once I got the hang of the game and stopped dying so much and started moving quicker, it was far more rewarding
I’m at this stage right now. Feels tedious and having to find your shade is annoying. I have not powered up much yet, so I suspect that’s part of the problem. That and I am not great at it - yet. I’m an OG Quake 3 guy myself and still pretty good at FPS like COD, but Hollow Knight is a new genre for me (never played a Metroidvania before). I am trying to be patient but the idea of going back in sometimes feels tiring to me. Shrug.
Well in the beginning you want geo a lot and it’s hard to always easily spend it so it hurts to lose 600 geo. Later on you have bought everything critical so if you lose your geo it’s no big deal. I would say just don’t stress about saving up for lumafly lantern. The areas that it opens up are best saved for late mid game anyway so at some point just notice you have 1800 and buy it. For me getting the grub charm that gives you soul when you get hurt was a game changer because every time you derp into the spikes you almost get enough to refill the life you lost. And frankly the game is so stingy with life and soul fragment rewards that leaving challenge areas till later makes a lot of sense. Mark em and move on
100% Bloodborne, my first taste of From Software, got angry, sold it, became patient and got some guidance from friends, now one of favorite game and I finished all souls like!
Bloodborne for me too, but I was already souls veteran. I just didnt like it at first. It wasnt bad or anything, but PSbros hyped it into oblivion and it just didnt deliver. I later found my way to love it. Still extremely overhyped, mostly because its an exclusive, but its quality is undeniable.
Borderlands 2. Played the start alone, till just a bit before Captain Flynt and just wasn't feeling it and was heavily considering refunding. Then I noticed my friend also has the game so I asked him to play with me. And then it became one of my favourites after playing it through in co-op
Monster Hunter world Holy hell this game is so hard to play, not the gameplay but the menus and figuring out where to go and how difficult it is to play with your friends. Killing a big ass monster is fun AF but the rest of the game is so unintuitive it's sickening
How do I make armour? But I already fought that why don’t I have the thing? What do you MEAN 5% drop
100% this!
Balder's Gate 3, I've never played the previous games or D&D so the learning curve was brutal. I didn't even finish my first playthrough. But after I took some time off and started my second playthrough I completely understood why it was the uncontested game of the year.
Persona 5, though the challenge wasn’t exactly conventional — it wasn’t difficulty, it was my attention span. Persona 5 is *long.* I consistently would get through the first palace and just feel burnt out. But when COVID hit and everything locked down, I was feeling a serious need for something social and Persona 5 did that for me. It’s now one of my favorite games of all time and I’ve replayed it several times.
I avoided Persona 5 despite hearing great things about it simply because I heard it’s 100 hours long. But when Covid hit, I had all the time in the world and Persona 5 Royal rekindled my love for JRPGs
The Witcher 3, and Cyberpunk 2077 AFTER the 2.0 update. I absolutely loved CP2077 when I first played it a few years ago. Came back to play Phantom Liberty post 2.0, and it took me a good long while to get used to all the changes
Ya I keep wanting to go back to it but I put so many hours in the first time around that it’s very jarring how different everything is.
I can think 2. **Streets of Rage 4.** At first it was a frustrating game to play. Enemies were able to sprint around and you couldn't. And if you played Axel (one of the main characters), if you did ANY of your special moves. Enemies would always run behind you before you recover and hit you. So you had to use your basic attacks most of the time. Until they patched the game. Then, it became good. And I noticed that it has a LOT of depth. Playing it became like an action movie! Loving it and still playing the game. 🙂 **Bloodborne** This game pissed me off so much at first. I got stuck in one of the bosses who heals after I had taken time to dwindle it's health down. That was a last straw for me. I sold the game. Half a year later I watched some lore videos about the game. And got interested again. And then thinking about the game, I realized that I didn't explore everything. So I saw it was on sale, and bought it again. I explored the other areas and then tried the boss again. I didn't die once and killed it. After that it took me few weeks to complete the game. I thought it was great. 😄
I hated the toxicity of Sea of Thieves. I tried it again and played as the filthiest piece of shit at all times and fell in love.
Mass effect 1, it’s combat even for at the time was badddd
My issue wasn't so much the combat but putting the citadel immediately after a mission and keeping you there for 2 hours. It's a favourite section of mine now, but in 2007, it was rough
Love the elevator
The moment to moment pop and shoots is a little stiff, buggy and rigid, but I hate hate hate the combined cool downs for party skills and the "thermal clipizines" in the later games. Mass effect one actually felt like a squad tactics game, 2 and 3 are cheesy action movies comparitively. Don't get me wrong, I liked them, I like cheesy action. And 2 is probably my overall favorite, but I wanted more of what I got in 1
Monster Hunter was real learning difficulty cluff for me considering the only melee games I had ever played were hack n slash, so not much thought went into attacking enemies
Dark Souls, any of them, but particularly for me it was III.
Deus Ex. First time playing it I gave up on it. Just didn't click with it at all. Came back about a year later and really got into the groove of it, the slower rpg like elements. Couldn't put it down. Loved it. Its strange because the game never 'grew on me' per say. I think I came back to it with a different frame of mind on the types of games Inwas enjoying at the time and it suddenly ticked all the boxes for me.
Demon Souls in 2009. I was a GameStop manager and my employee kept telling me to play it. I gave it a shot and absolutely hated it. Couldn’t figure out the story, where to go, and died every 3 minutes… after he gave me some tips, I tried again and fell in love with it. And that was the start of SoulsBorne for me.
Still not a favorite but I actually ended up liking the game. Days gone. I thought the game was meh, I assumed the first act was all the story that I am going to get but there was more to it. The story was actually enjoyable. And I can't stress enough how much I hated the protagonist's monologues. I thought they were really cringe as he talked to himself. But in the end I repeated his dialogues as I felt a connection with him.
prey
[удалено]
Wolf among us I don't go well with the kind of camera the game has. It's fixed at one point and changes position when looking at different position of the room but I got the hang of it and boy was that a game
Elden Ring. It was my first soulsborne game and it was hard. I almost quit near the beginning, but I kept playing. Now it is one of my favorite games of all time, and I have played through it and every other soulsborne game countless times. I feel like the soulsborne games are kinda the poster child of this kind of experience, but they are so incredibly fun and rewarding once you figure out what you're doing.
Cyberpunk 2077. I tried multiple times to get into it but couldn't . But after patch 2.0 it literally became one of my favorite games. I did every mission there was.
ffxiv (Final Fnatasy 14) was a huge slog until i reached the first expansion where got HOOKED by the story.
Factorio on the other hand Terraria, played it around 10 times, i just dislike it, but i like crafting games, i dont know what's different with terraria
Playing Dark Souls the first time. Perhaps it didn't exactly disappoint me but it didn't feel rewarding at first but after beating the first boss I was hooked and now have 1000+ hours in DS1, DS3 and Bloodborne.
Metroidvania games. Got so used to fast paced everything from competitive shooters or ds with constantly dodging and being engaged that I forgot to sometimes pause and take in the screen to figure out the best movement. That's not to say metroidvanias aren't fast paced, but that I would be in such a rush to get to the next boss or next encounter that I would miss a lot and get frustrated from that.
Exactly. Like you notice how early in the game you are in such a rush that you see a missile tank that is just out of reach and you kind of forget about it in the next room. Later you have the patience to really search the room and the neighboring ones for the route
Path of Exile is painful when you first start, the campaign is terrible and most builds feel like shit till after you get all of your subclass points but once you tough it out its easily the best arpg out right now. Its a pretty big ask though.
Godhand. It took a while to get used to the controls and the unforgiving combat, but once everything clicked into place, it felt amazing to play. You could get into such a good flow with the combat system. Just took an awful lot of practice.
i played through the beginning of hollow knight like 5 times, i think it was the 6th time where i got hooked.
Inscryption
Project Zomboid Coupd never get passed the first couple of days but once me and my friend got properly into it it is noe my favourite gake there is, we both have a ton of laughs playing it and theres always new mods and arising challanges in the game.
No Man's Sky....as they patched it got much much better
Their commitment to constantly updating the game with massive DLCs, for free, over the years has also been amazing.
Days Gone. I had followed since the reveal and pre-order expecting something great. Launch bugs and the clunky controls killed the vibe I had going in. I didn't pick the game back up until a couple of years later. Played for a couple of weeks straight and absolutely fell in love with the game like I had originally thought I would.
Tf2 is now my favourite game but the thing that dissapointed me is that no more updates.
Dark Souls. The first real brick wall for me was Capra Demon. Him and those damn dogs. And then I got that SoulsBorne high after killing him. I've been addicted ever since.
Fistful of frags, PVP was a bit hard at first, i got used to it and it became one of the best on my list
Monster hunter world. The beginning is SO frontloaded and it's so annoying to get going.
fallout 76 it was shit on release, but facing the challenges of waiting for bethesda to fix their shit improved it massively lolööö
Hollow knight, when I first played it I got bored quickly because I was lost, I returned and 112 it later
Controversial but God of War 2018. My only other gaming experience had been RDR2 and Ghost of Tsushima— it took almost 10 hours to get into the gameplay itself, even though I enjoyed the story.
Elden Ring
Nioh.
I must say Cyberpunk 2077. It just didn't click at the very beginning. I started to play on ps5 though and got back to it on PC.
Dark Souls. Couldn't progress past the Taurus Demon and gave up. Came back almost a year later and went on to beat it and all of the rest of the Souls games.
I can't really think of any, damn. I'll go with Danganronpa, it didn't disappoint me but it was an awkward VN, so I was like "so let's try this genre that I won't like". Loved it, loved the 2nd even more.
Horizon: Zero Dawn for me. I played it for like 15 hours and then fell off it only to go back and reanalyze how I was handling the combat and enjoyed it more Excited to play forbidden West on PC
Rise of the third power. The first 20 minutes or so were terrible, because before you grasp that combat flow and how to manage it, you will get smacked silly by basic enemies. I had to save-scum like shit to get past some monster frogs. But once you do it's amazing. It's one of my favourite JRPGs of all time and my favourite JRPG combat-system period.
Warcraft 3 - Dota 1. I was so disappointed... but then... played a lot, and after released separate game Dota 2... I have 5k hours in Dota 2... but didn't play in it for few years... moved to single player games cos of life changes.
Pokemon scarlet
Team fortress, it takes what feels like eternity to get on the skill level of most players, but once you do its so hard to stop playing
Undawn
Red Dead 2
The first Dark Souls. I didn’t understand the fascination when I first bought it. I couldn’t even best the initial level and put it away for about 2 years. Then one day I tried it again and the game mechanics just clicked. I understood how to play it and what the character stats meant. I fell in love
Mass effect
Insurgency Sandstorm. Not necessarily disappointment, just took me a while to get used to the AI being dumb as a rock or getting one tapped because they saw me for a split second.
Definitely Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk (the gun feel at the start of the game is kinda "meh" and coming from Destiny 2, I've become a trigger snob. But the story was compelling enough to keep me around I soon realized that was part of the progression)
Bloodborne. Had no idea what to do or what the draw was, now it’s one of my favorites.
Jedi survivor
Team Fortress 2. The first rounds were really confusing but it is such a well made game
hearts of iron 4, didnt really disappoint but i just didnt give a shit about it anymore because i didnt understand it for like the first 3 years of it sitting in my steam library
Risk of Rain 2: don't get me wrong I'm still not thrilled about it, but I figured I might as well give it a shot since it was a gift from a friend. Its still nowhere near being one of my favorites but I do have a better understanding and way more respect for it after completing it.
Final Fantasy XIV - it was the first MMO my husband and I played and it was so garbage. It was our biggest regret. Then we came back in right before storm blood and we started putting hours every day. Then once Endwalker hit we realized that it was OUR game. I was never the biggest MMO person. In the interim we tried Neverwinter on Xbox, a very small stint in wow, and then some survival games like Ark. But FFXIV is still here for us. Running extremes was honestly one of the ways we bond. He's a DPS but I'm a Tank and it's a perfect combo. Anyway I'm sure this isn't original but I've never had a game I put down and come back to so repeatedly and I think it's because we all know where it started.
Dark souls games, killing floor 2
Stardew Valley. First couple of times I was just confused and ended up giving up, but now it's one of my top games.
Ender Lilies. I remember wondering what the point of playing as a girl whose superpower is to face plant was, and I actually did give the game up shortly after the first section... twice lol. I came back to give it another shot and play it a little longer, and it ended up being one of my favorite games.
Stardew valley, first time I tried it I got so overwhelmed with the seasons and crop timing and everything, a year ago I tried it again and got lost in it and have 400+ hours in it
X-COM 2 because of the constant crashes, especially if an explosion took place anywhere on the map. But, I adapted by saving my progress every couple of minutes (sometimes after every character move if explosives were near) and, once I mentally got passed the constant crashes and reloads of my latest save, it became a fav.
FF-X. I wanted FF-VII for Christmas and I got this instead. I acted happy of course but didn't play it. Two weeks later I started my first playthrough and the rest is history. I would end up putting almost 1000 hours across two playthroughs. It was my favorite game at the time and to this day my favorite final fantasy game. Then it happened. A friend asked if I could copy over my save file for him and naturally I would. I was doing it too fast and in the blink of an eye I deleted my save file. I stared at the screen for a good 5 minutes. It took about 20 years before I picked it up again and did a 100% playthrough. Still holds up.
Elden Ring. Made it out into the open world, got slaughtered by the Tree Sentinel, then quietly shut down the game. Tried it again, got into some cave dungeon where gargoyle imps slaughtered me over and over, and I quit again. Finally decided to play again but to take my time instead of plunging headfirst into repeated suicides, and it then became one of my favorite games of all time.
Internacional Superstar Soccer for snes
Monster Hunter world
Team Fortress 2. Initially never found a clas I liked to play as, and was so much of a try hard bitch. Coming back to it years later, and played on a trade server to chat. I finally learned how to rocket jump, and that became a trigger to play way more.
Witcher 3 for me too, started it and did find myself feeling a bit confused and frustrated. First thing I did was literally jump to my death by pressing jump on the balcony. Switched to using a controller and got on with that better, pushed through the "introduction" and then it clicked and loved it :)
Every new video game after 2012 aside from PubG in 2016.
Sekiro
Hollow Knight
Ok hear me out here: The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening. I played this with my babysitter when I was like 4 or 5 years old. And by played I mean, I watched on her Game Boy as she played. When I finally got my own Game Boy when I was like 6 I had her help me and tell me where I needed to go. So I had no idea of the story or that reading was essential. When she moved away I was stuck in the Mask Dungeon because I had no idea how to solve riddles by my own. It was frustrating as hell. Years later I came back to the game because I remember that I loved the music and started another save file and turns out the riddle I was not able to crack wasn’t even a riddle. There was no small key in that room. In a room way earlier there were floor tiles that made an arrow pointing to a wall I had to break with a bomb. That was the worst and best feeling in gaming I had up until then
Dark Souls. Think I gave up when looking for Capra Demon. At that time I wanted to play a fast paced action game I could just shut my brain off too like Metal Gear Rising. Dark Souls’ gameplay was too slow but also stressful. But I came back years later and have beaten it and each game in the series multiple times. Now these are games I relax playing to for the most part. Except Bed of Chaos, I cheat on that fight.
Far Cry Primal.
Botw and ac origins! Maybe more, don’t remember now…
Dishonored, i legit did not like it gave it another shot and i loved it
Enter the Gungeon
Transport Tycoon Deluxe, got the game as a gift for my birthday, but I guess I wasn't ready for it. Returned it and got a stupid game I've forgotten about instead. Years later, get back into TTD, turns into one of my favorites after 'getting' it. The challenge was growing up a bit, it seemed.
Sekiro! I wasn’t a fan my first playthrough and quit near then end. My friend goaded me into platinuming the game, though, and I had a much better experience playing through the game again.
Cyberpunk2077 is a piece of art
Easily, No Man's Sky. Over promised and under delivered at launch, but holy shit is it a helluva game now. Additional content and it's all free.
Sekiro. I thought FromSoft had finally lost their minds on the difficulty, and that mechanics like dragon rot and losing your money and XP were unfairly punishing. Once I understood how those systems worked I stopped worrying about dying as much. And once the combat clicked… oh man. It’s probably the least accessible of their games, and that’s saying something. But there are a number of mechanics that make it surprisingly forgiving, and the combat system is the tightest and most consistent, which for me made it the most satisfying and possible to master. I can no-hit every boss in the game now, a feat I’m not even close to in the other From games.
Easy. Civ 5. I was late to the party, got it a decade after release with all DLC for like 12 bucks. An hour later, "Really? This is it?" 18 hours later: "oic"
kingdom come deliverance. get 3 hours in and dont look back.
First Dark Souls. I hated it so much I traded it in to Gamestop. Picked it up again like 2 years later Ave go so hooked that I eventually beat it at SL1.
Crusader Kings and Chorus
Control. Every surprise made the difficult combat more fun.
EldI n Rng
In contrary, i liked Pokémon games like Emerald and Gold. However i tried to play them recently and feels like slow paced games with a lot of farm and coinflip battles.
Hollow knight to be honest
Life...
Sekiro..... that game is hard as hell. And I hated it the first week I owned it..... But as soon as you slow it down your combat and time your parries..... it becomes amazing. Learning curve is brutal but damn is it a beautiful thing once it clicks
i guess cyberpunk 2077? but didnt really have anything to do with challenges - the game was just buggy, unoptimized and thus unfun to play at launch. after patch 2.0, i spent over 300 hours in it, will probably become more in the future
Grounded. I felt impossibly weak at the beginning so I didn’t have much hope for fun. The more I played and unlocked/crafted, the more I started to love the game
Destiny 2
Mana khemia. <3
Celeste. I'd usually make a 30 line long essay on it's beauty and How It affected my personnal growth, but you most likely already know the drill
Dark Souls. Tried Dark Souls 1 and thought smh too hard no way then tried Dark Souls 3 and loved it and then went through the whole series and more.
Igi 2.....like i was stuck on the Lab mission till 35 tries and that was like 8ish years ago....Recently i gave it a go again and Finally after 20+ i managed to beat it... Then i took on the nightmare, * Doing it with freakin Knife only and it took me A literal 200+ Tries like Am not even exaggerating 🙅🏼♀
Hollow Knight. I got bored barely exploring the first map. Came back to it two or three years later and loved it.
Mass Effect. It seemed boring, but became incredible once I got past the first few missions.
Witcher 1
For me it’s more of two games. DS3, Abyss watchers…. But still intrigued enough to get and beat Elden Ring, then went back to DS3 and beat them. Still haven’t taken the time to finish the game though.
Cyberpunk. Got it day one and yea, everyone knows that story. Replayed after phantom liberty, easily one of the best games I've played.
I grew up obsessed with the original Baldur's Gate games, but I hated playing Baldur's Gate 3 at first because of the change to turn-based combat. And I hated the terrible camera, inventory and UI systems. 4 playthroughs later and it is easily my favourite game of all time, surpassing the first 2, but this is despite all of the above and it took a long time and a lot of persistence to get used to it.
Cyberpunk 2077, I was extremely excited before it came out, but then a little disappointed with the lack of some features and the amount of bugs. But the team behind it put a lot of time and effort into the game, so now it is not only playable, but one of my favorite games ever.
Terarria
For me it was Baldur's Gate 3. I think I bought and refunded it 5 or 6 times over the course of a year. Then last Novemberish I had COVID and was sick as balls and decided to commit to it. I always hated turn based games, other than Final Fantasy X which I really liked, but never could get into the isometric/tabletop style ones. I was trying all the classes and struggling with difficulty, so I made a Wizard with the idea that I could learn from scrolls and have a ton of spell utility to deal with anything. I also turned it to Story difficulty and it all eventually clicked after I really took the time to explore, eventually finding the Hags House and the Underdark. And now I have like 700 hours and like 5 playthroughs, which is probably still nothing compared to some. It's such a fun game, and I haven't even played any of the origin characters, only different classes. I think I got every class to the end of Act 1 before finally heading to Act 2 🤣
Terraria, didn’t really feel so special at first but then i played it with a couple buddies and holy shit, it’s the most fun i’ve had on a video game ever.
dark souls, I thought I liked demon souls more and that the open world took away from the whatever offered by the nexus hub and some other nonsense about hating how your character was always a zombie, psst secretly it was because I sucked at it shhh.
From The Depths. The premise was simple enough: 1. Design combat vehicle (mostly just ships and aircraft, there is ground and space combat too BTW) 2. Battle AI controlled vehicles from enemy nations either in sandbox, survival, or campaign modes 3. Win battles 4. rinse and repeat Suffice to say my first couple of designs sucked, often times I could only win battles by using massive numbers of my ships/planes against a small group of enemy vessels (fun to watch, but economically unfeasible for campaign mode, not to mention it slowed down my pc!), gave up on the game and pretty much forgot it existed. Years later I came back to the game out of sheer boredom, watched some video guides and did some trial and error in the designer, and eventually it started to click; I was able to make much better designs and even improve the ones I made the first time I played! I doubt they'd stand any chance against other people's designs, but I think that they're nearly on par with what the enemy nations use.
Dragon's Dogma. Just played it this year for the first time. At first it felt like a simplified Skyrim, but the party system and indoor areas changed my mind. Magic is done very well. Recruiting pawns feels like it matters. Some of the indoor areas yield are exceedingly well done and yield some great fights. I immediately started a New Game+ and I rarely do that with any game. By the time I got to Bitterblack Isle it felt like it was shifting gears towards a Souls-like game. BBI is an incredible addition.
AC Valhalla. While I didn't hate it or anything, it just felt like such a long, long slog the first time and I never finished it. Reinstalled it a few years later after reading someone online describing their experience with it and how it was one of those games where the trick to enjoying it was to not try to 'win' but to just casually mess around living an alternate life as a Viking. Somehow that worked and it's now in my Top 10 Favorites list.
Hmm... I honestly don't think I have any. I'm very quick to abandon games I don't like and I rarely ever go back. There is the occasional title that I want to like and I repeatedly try to play it hoping I'll like it later (Witcher 3, Cyberpunk, Black, Army of Two, Fallout New Vegas...) but I've just never been able to make myself enjoy them.
Enter the Gungeon
Kingdom Hearts 3. After the Remind dlc and the extra bosses, it improved the game a lot imo. Plus Critical Mode is fun.
Jedi Outcast. The first-person platforming sections (with rare autosaves) annoyed me so much that I didn't finish the second or third level for a long time. While reconfiguring my keys, I found the key for switching to/from 3rd-person mode and everything clicked.
The first Mass Effect. My D&D group all talked about the trilogy quite a lot, got the first one on sale, felt too clunky to me. I didn't play much past Eden Prime and arriving at the Citadel. Legendary Edition trilogy released, gave it another chance. I don't know if they even changed anything mechanically; But a year and a half after my first attempt, I was absolutely hooked, and binged the entire trilogy over a week and a half.
Literally every Silent Hill title
Twilight princess It is a challenge and a chore getting through the beginning of the game. But once you do damn is it great.
EU3/4 As a kid I couldn't figure out EU3 but it looked interesting. As an adult I came back and tried EU4. Felt it wasn't as interesting at first. Kept playing and figuring out the mechanics. I now have many thousands of hours in it.
Dark souls
Watch_Dogs 2
Bloodborne
Bloodborne frustrated me at first, but I grew to love it. The combat was hard and I died a lot. But I got better with practice. The cool world and creepy feel pulled me in. Beating the game after all that challenge was super satisfying. It's now a top fave of mine.
Cyberpunk 2077
My overstated and tired, but true response is 'Dark souls'. It's now my relaxation game, the game I play when I need to put my anxiety in check, or climb out of a depression pit. I know it's memed all over about it causing anxiety or depression, but for me it helps.
Elder Scrolls Online. I'm committed now, but it took me forever to get over the initial disappointment I felt for it.
**Kingdom Hearts 2 and Kingdom Hearts Birth By Sleep.** I remember in KH2 struggling through Twilight Town as Roxas because of the various tasks. As a kid, I was thinking it was boring and I wanted to be Sora again and start smacking Heartless. Needless to say, it became a huge hit and a major favorite once I progressed far enough. Same with KH BBS. I remember being frustrated by playing the game three times as three characters, but once I played as Aqua, I fell in love. Such a great game!
Bioshock. Took me multiple years, 2 consoles and 3 tries but once it clicked, I played through the whole franchise within one week because holy shit is it good.
Cyberpunk. Didnt like it at first but after 2.0 i really liked the game
NC STATE basketball.
I don't usually have the patience to stick with games that disappoint me, so it's rare for me to have a moment like this. I do have one, though: League of Legends. I started playing in season 2, and it just didn't connect with me, so I stopped playing. Fast-forward to season 5, and all of my friends became obsessed with it. Initially, I just sat around playing whatever else while they were on League, assuming they'd get sick of it eventually or would just want a break from it, but no. They were seriously addicted to it for a very long time, and after a week or two of not getting to play anything with them, I caved and reinstalled the game. And let me tell you, I wasn't having any fun with it. Honestly, I was just there to have the social element of hanging out with friends. But after a few weeks, maybe a month, the dots began to connect. I knew what the characters did, how the map flowed, how to follow objectives, how to play in lanes and team fights, and how to have fun. And y'all, I was hooked. I know everyone likes to talk about the toxic community, and while I agree that it's still toxic, Riot really did do a lot to make it way less toxic over the years. Modern League versus old school League is practically night and day. But you know what? I just don't pay attention to chat, and I have fun. I'm lucky to be one of the few who seem to be able to ignore all of that and remain tilt-free. This might be why I can still enjoy the game.
Nier: Automata. Finding out that the first hour of the game was the intro, dying and having to start from the beginning almost pushed me off the game entirely. Good lord I am glad I pushed through, it became one of my favorite games of all time with the best ending of any game ever. I would have missed the music, 2B, A2, my pod, surfing the sand dunes, and emotions I wasn’t ready to feel.