What's a game you bounced off of and later came to really enjoy?

I didn’t understand the appeal of Terraria at first because it seemed like bad 2D Minecraft. A friend convinced me to give it an honest go by describing it as a Metroidvania with some building and crafting features. Really great game if you like platformers.
- It currently is sitting in my backlog, bell yeah I’ll check it out with that mindset
  
  One of the best video games, ever. There's just an incredible about of stuff to do and places to explore and things to build. Going in blind is a complete absolute goddamn trip.
- Crabulon 🦀🦀🦀

Europa Universalis 4. It took me a couple of attempts to get the hang of all of the intricacies involved, but once I did, I ended up having a blast. Prior experience with Victoria 2 and Crusader Kings 2 definitely helped.
- If you can handle Vicky 2 you’ve already defeated paradox at their most paradox lol.
  
  Funny enough, I found CK2 harder than Vicky 2. A modern nation-state is a lot easier to get my head around than feudal politics.
- Vicky 3 was what finally got me into Paradox games, after I had just bounced off of Sellaris and HoI4. I'm revisiting HoI4 now to see if I can get over the initial learning curve.
  
  Imo HOI4 is weird because stuff like "optimal" unit composition is extremely important and there's basically no way to know what's best unless you look up a guide online.

For me it would be Caves of Qud. I bounced off hard, like less than an hour of playtime, before getting back into it and really enjoying it.
I think the updates to the UI and ignoring the common advice to not be a psychic right off the bat are what changed that.
Being able to see the future is absolutely busted. Being able to hijack the bodies of a high level esper hunters who also have the dominate skill is a great way to “level up” as well.

Sekiro, played it for a bit at launch and didn't really click with it
Came back a few years later and the combat fell in to place, now it's one of my favorite games of all time. Ended up going NG+7 without Kuro's charm + demon Bell and getting my only platinum trophy

Bloodborne. It was my first soulsborne game and it was too hard for me/I made my character kind of wrong and hit a difficulty spike. When I came back to it after playing ds3 I kind of overdid it during covid I've beaten it countless times

Satisfactory. My first playthrough I got like 20 hours in, died and lost a bit of progress because my body glitched through a waterfall and I couldn't get the stuff back. But I got back into the game last year and started from scratch, got to the same point in much less time, and had a lot more fun once I got to the point where I was building multiple different factories connected by rail. Extremely fun game with a painful early game.
Also, Noita. I played until I beat it (around 30 hours) and stopped playing for a bit. Came back later because I heard there was more to the game and clocked in a few hundred hours.
- That’s pretty crazy going from “done with it” to logging 170 more hours lol.

I can't actually think of any. Either a game hooks me and I play the shit out of it, or I drop off like 5hrs in and never come back.

this is me with sekiro right now, it's finally clicked with me

Remnant: From the Ashes
First time I played, I didn't get how the game processed how the enemies are leveled and I ended up making the game a lot harder for myself
Came back a year later, figured it out, had a great time
- What’s the way it does that? I’ve never played it, but it’s on gamepass so I’ll probably check it out at some point.
  
  The game averages your highest level equip for each gearslot when you start a new area. It has a Dark Souls style weapon upgrade system so if you pump upgrades into a bunch of weapons/armor and then don't use them you can handicap yourself.
  The lower level upgrade materials start to get VERY abundant once you move up to another tier so the difficulty will end up leveling out on the next area as long as you don't screw yourself too hard.
  
  Enemies don't level up with your experience, but rather with your gear and how far into the game you are
  And it goes off the highest upgraded piece of gear rather than an average, so if you put all your upgrades into a single piece, you can screw yourself
- Ayy same, but due to the control, and how bland the world are at the beginning. I keep accidentally doing melee because the game doesn't have a hip fire and have to aim to shoot, it's hard to get into so i quit. The second time i give it a chance i change the melee to mouse 4 so no accidental melee, push through the first few hours, and the game is pretty awesome. Still don't like how they lock some weapon behind random event though, and the armour really lack variety.

I dunno whats wrong with my brain but I do this with pretty much every game I end up enjoying.
Oblivion - made a bad character and got bored getting owned
Fallout 3 - same thing, made a bad character and got bored, INT isn't optional on a first playthrough apparently
Doom 3 - "This game is just jumpscares"
Final Fantasy Tactics - This one I just got tired of getting owned over and over until I figured out the systems.
Resident Evil 4 - "What do you mean I'm supposed to shoot their legs I ain't doing that" to "Its way more fun if you shoot them in the legs"
Monster Hunter Tri (Wii) - "This game controls like ass with the wiimote" (This is true, but hammer mains DGAF apparently)
- Doom 3 did get a lot of flack for a lot of random jumpscares and slow combat. I remembering being awed by the graphics at the time though.
  Also, who's fucking idea was it to keep the flashlight in the weapon slot? fucking stupid move, man.

I guess Doom Eternal.
Let's just say I wasn't a big fan of the direction it went (being a "hardcore", fast-paced strategy shooter with platforming elements) at the time.
- It’s basically the quake version of doom 2016. They just rebooted it using the doom IP.
  Good and bad at the same time, but the final product is worthy regardless.
  Why do you call it a strategy shooter? I haven’t encountered that term before and am interested in learning more about what you mean by that.
  
  Not the person you're replying to, but Doom Eternal gives most enemies some hyper-specific weakness that requires you to switch to one specific weapon to deal with them. Most fights are huge swarms with multiple different types of these enemies so you have to identify which ones are the quickest to deal with/biggest threat, and then deal with them one by one. They also doubled down on the resource management with multiple types of grenades, the sword, and flamethrower in addition to the chainsaw so you need to constantly monitor your cooldowns and leave weak enemies alive to farm HP/ammo/armor if you get low. You do this all while bouncing around the arena at 100 miles an hour. Eternal is the only shooter I've ever played where I feel mentally exhausted after only a mission or two.

Dark souls
- Makes sense

Tyranny then I played Pillars of Eternity and then I made a new character.

Final Fantasy 7
- For the old factor? That’s why I bounced off it the first time lol. The whiplash from DA:O to trying FF7 because it was a classic rpg was intense.
  
  I think it was mostly because it was long and other things kept distracting me.
  Great game though, if you ignore some of the problematic stuff.
  I wonder how the remake will handle Cid...

Dragon Age Origins is a game I've owned since launch, but only finally actually played all the way through a couple of years ago. I didn't connect with the combat system, nor the initial linear part of the story, but it becomes much more interesting once it opens up.

Ori and the blind forest
Didn't click with the floaty movement and combat. But once you get through the first hours, the game is a delight

NieR Automata.
Heard from friends that it'd be right up my alley. Didn't even complete the tutorial the first time I tried to play it. Sat on my computer for, like, 2 years before I bothered to boot it up and give it a proper bash. Would seriously recommend it if you can get past the
character designs and anime bullshit.
- I like any game that is fanservicey across the board. Couldn't get into the gameplay, though.
- I played through all three ending
  "there's actually 26 endings so you're wrong."

Xenoblade Chronicles 2. The combat seems really boring when you don't understand what's going on but it's actually very complex and engaging when you get it.
- I liked that game a lot, the combat was really fun once you got the hang of it and got some good combos built up

Persona 5

echoing Sekiro cuz i tried playing it like other from soft games first run. embraced that it was different second attempt and its one of my faves now.

New Vegas. Got to the rocket part/lab with the invisible creatures or something like 8-10 hours in, iirc. Didn't really get the humor and wackiness of the Fallout universe, or at least the Bethesda/Obsidian Fallout universe. I expected a more serious and gritty tone or something. I didn't really like the guns breaking down and how inaccurate they were either. Came back a couple years later and played Fallout 3 with a different mindset and really liked it. Still need to go back and play New Vegas again.
- If you were able to enjoy 3, NV with mods is peak Bethesda fallout. Adding more complexity to the survival aspects really makes it shine.

Digimon: Cybersleuth. I played for the first hour, tops, set it down, and came back to it like 3 years later, totally obsessed.
- Yo, try and explain it to me please.
  I loved it until the part where you go to the real world and would like to get last that bounce off.
  
  I stopped when I was still a mess of static, so that helped me. A lot of people didn't like the human world segments, but I personally loved the bouncing back a forth. Any one part is repetitive, but EDEN, the physical world, and your storage box are all locations you should be frantically bouncing between. Most of thr quests manage that once the ball starts running.

Dragon Quest 11.
It was a very sweet, beautiful, and wonderful experience with sincere and simultaneously shallow and profound characters.
Veronica's act in the conclusion of Act I of that game genuinely made me sad and tear up.

This War of Mine
- I keep seeing this pop up as a switch sale for $2. Might have to give it a shot for the hell of it

Path of Exile.
Years ago I tried it, hit level 2 and opened the skill tree, closed the game an uninstalled.
A while later a friend convinced me to try again and taught me enough to get started and now it’s my favorite game.
- Hell yeah, are you in the Hexbear guild? It's been a bit quiet this league despite it being a very very good league.