Games you enjoyed way more then you expected when you bought them.

[Worgen]

So I got Battlefleet Gothic 2 during the steam sale. I had played a demo of it and thought it was ok, but after getting the full game I am 20 hours in and still enjoying the hell out of it. Ive had this with a few other games too like Freedom Planet which I was really suspicious of since I don't like any 2d sonic games and it looks like one, but it plays so much better. I even kind of encountered this with Undertale, where I spent the first half ok the game just thinking it was ok and overated till it suddenly grabbed me and became one of my faves.

So what are some games that you didn't think you would like or had a bad/mediocre first impression of before they managed to become something you love?

 

[Zykon TheLich]

I was expecting to enjoy Battlefleet Gothic 2. Battlefleet Gothic was my surprise GotY.
You tend to buy 40k games with the expectation that it'll be pretty mediocre at best, but then when one surprises you by being good it's even more enjoyable.

On that theme... Necromunda Hired Gun. Sure it's janky, but the core gameplay is pretty good. Maybe doesn't have much longevity once you finish the campaign but my 1 playthrough was surprisingly fun.

 

[Worgen]

I was expecting to enjoy Battlefleet Gothic 2. Battlefleet Gothic was my surprise GotY.
You tend to buy 40k games with the expectation that it'll be pretty mediocre at best, but then when one surprises you by being good it's even more enjoyable.

On that theme... Necromunda Hired Gun. Sure it's janky, but the core gameplay is pretty good. Maybe doesn't have much longevity once you finish the campaign but my 2 playthrough was surprisingly fun.

I have that relationship with Space Hulk games. I have a weakness for them but they always end up being kinda meh for me and I never finish them. But other then those I have been lucky with the 40k games I've played, like Chaos Gate, Final Liberation, the DOW series.

 

[Zykon TheLich]

I have that relationship with Space Hulk games. I have a weakness for them but they always end up being kinda meh for me and I never finish them. But other then those I have been lucky with the 40k games I've played, like Chaos Gate, Final Liberation, the DOW series.

I found Space Hulk Ascension to be pretty decent, but it's predecessor kind of poisoned the well for it.

 

[Worgen]

I found Space Hulk Ascension to be pretty decent, but it's predecessor kind of poisoned the well for it.

I mean yeah, I enjoyed it well enough but still not enough to beat it.

 

[Zykon TheLich]

I mean yeah, I enjoyed it well enough but still not enough to beat it.

Well, with all the extra chapter expansions there were a hell of a lot of missions, I think I stopped at some point during the final expansion, with the levelling system for your dudes it just got too easy, you didn't really have to think much at all.

 

[happyninja42]

Days Gone. Was hesitant to pick this up when it was first released a few years back, but I wanted to check it out because it has Sam Whitwer in it, and I like him.
Picked it up on sale on the PS 4 last year, and was very happy with it. Did not expect that much story in the game, that much personal investment in the cast of characters. And I did NOT expect to really empathize with one of the villains they established, who I still feel wasn't actually a villain other than because "the script said so." Up until the end bit at least.

It Takes Two. Thought it would just be a fun little game to play with the wifey, and damn was it! But what I didn't expect, was just how impressed I'd be by the effort put into the levels. The art design, variety of set pieces, creativity of unique mission powers that totally change up how you have to tackle each obstacle cooperatively. I mean a LOT of people put a LOT of heart and creativity into those maps. Just jam packet with fun little side games to do, just random cute things. Super enjoyable and impressive from start to finish.

Homeworld. I bought that game at like 1am from my local walmart's game section. It was just a random title in their tiny video game aisle back then. It had been out for a bit, so it was hardly being promoted at all. A single copy, just nestled between some other random titles. Picked that up and fell in love. From the actual instruction manual, that had a 20ish page backstory in it about the world and what was going on, and why, to the opening cinematic, the music, the feel of awe and exploration as these people put their entire planetary efforts into this project. And just, everything after that. Fantastic game, one of my top 5 of all time.

 

[XsjadoBlayde]

Tbh the very first God of War. The cover just looked kinda shit and generic to younger judgemental self. I didn't follow gaming press at the time neither, so knew nothing of any praise. Only a friend's recommendation who is not so good at giving recommendations. Standards were pretty low. Once it was on and playing though, alright, I begrudgingly accepted it might be ok.

 

[Elvis Starburst]

Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor [Overclocked]. I'm not much of a tactics game person, but I was desperate for new 3DS stuff to take with me to work for my breaks, so I gave it a go. The fact it had turn based battles rather than Fire Emblem style combat meant my own choices meant a bit more in combat, not just my tactical prowess. I could get myself out of a jam if I got surrounded or caught off guard.

It ended up being one of my fave 3DS titles ever. It's rare for me to immediately restart the story of a game after beating it the first time, especially a game as long as this one. And yet I not only did that once, but I went through the game 4 times in total to get all the endings I wanted, one of those playthroughs going for the new ending in the Overclocked release of the game. Each route went by faster than the previous, but no route ever got boring for me, except for maybe wishing there was more music. I had an absolute blast playing it.

And then I tried Devil Survivor 2 [Record Breaker] right after I was done and it was shit. Yay!

 

[happyninja42]

Tbh the very first God of War. The cover just looked kinda shit and generic to younger judgemental self. I didn't follow gaming press at the time neither, so knew nothing of any praise. Only a friend's recommendation who is not so good at giving recommendations. Standards were pretty low. Once it was on and playing though, alright, I begrudgingly accepted it might be ok.

Yeah that was a nice surprise too. I enjoyed how much depth they put into that proto-typical greek tragedy tale. It felt like the first John Wick film for me, where there was actually an emotional drive for the protagonist that I could get behind, and empathize with. But both GoW 2/3 and JW 2/3 just felt like soulless cash grabs to milk the fan love. Though I do always give GoW 3 props for the most epic tutorial EVER. Most tutorials have you go fight some fucking rats in a basement, or some random street thugs. But not GoW 3, OH FUCK NO. No your tutorial is you riding on the back of a fucking TITAN OF THE EARTH, storming Olympus itself! While the gods hurl down attacks at you, and their soldiers swarm the titan, forcing you climb around on her and fight them off. THEN, you kill a FUCKING GOD as your "congratulations, you have grasped the basics of the mechanics of this game" In a fantastically, genuinely EPIC fight. It FELT epic scale. Most of the rest of that game though, just made me feel more and more sick at having to play through this monster's story.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Wolfenstein: The New Order. I'd never played a Wolfenstein game before, I thought it was just gonna be just another WW2 shooter.

 

[BrawlMan]

Wolfenstein: The New Order. I'd never played a Wolfenstein game before, I thought it was just gonna be just another WW2 shooter.

Most of the Wolfenstein games aren't ordinary WWII shooters.

• God of War 4 - I was sick and tired of Kratos, and GB negative reaction video to the E3 2016 demo was not helping. About 5 months before the game came out, I thought about it, and realized I'd be no different than most of the shitty game journalists that hate on the games I like and actually played. I put the pre-order down and gave the game a shot on release. I ended up loving the game and Atreus, as it fixed most of the issues I had with story and character wise with the previous God of War games. I still want Atreus to take over as protagonist for Ragnarok, but I don't mind doing one more round as Kratos.
• Onechanbara Z2: Chaos - I knew the game would be decent, but I did not realize how much effort Tamsoft really put in to this game until I dived super deep. This franchise has mostly mediocre games, but starting with Z: Kaguara, they started coming around. This brawler has some of the best character switching in a 3D brawler ever. Give it a shot. Speaking of previous games...
• Onechanbara: Bikini Zombie Slayers (Wii) - I got this at a cheap price a couple of years ago, and it is nowhere near as bad as critics made it out to be at the time. The motion controls actually work, and there is rhythm and timing to button presses and swings. With that said, it sucks there are no options for classic controls and it's not something I would have spent $30 on. It's not better than No More Heroes or Mad World, but still decent.
• Strider (2014) - I don't like Metroidvanias with a few exceptions. This being one of them, and the other is Shadow Complex. Hiryu is just a cool looking cyber ninja you can do bad ass slicing and dicing with. Exploring is fun without coddling nor not giving you any info. Where you wanna go is always explored on the map, but if you take off beaten path, you get upgrades, more items collect, etc. This game has some of the best boss battles in a 2.5D Metroidvania. For me it takes 2nd place as the best Strider game ever made.
• Hyrule Warriors - Thank God for Stephanie (?) (formerly Jim) Sterling. That is all.
• Ghost of Tsushima - I'm not in to open world, and first demo did not do anything for me. It was later E3 demos and some extended gameplay footage where they improved that got me invested. It's just fun being Samurai-Ninja-Batman. Sneaking, challenging duels, and has some of the best beautiful exploration I've seen in a long time in a open world game. The game does start slow, but once it picks up, it picks up.
• DmC: Defenitive Edition - It fixed nearly every gameplay issue I had with the vanilla release. The story still sucks. That is all.

 

[Catfood220]

When I saw something called Paper Mario for the N64 in my local GAME, I was like "what the hell is this? They will slap his name on anything, this looks shit". Fast forward a few months and I was bored and wanting a new game. I looked at it and thought "what the hell? Its not like I've not bought bad games before". I got it home, plugged it in and within 30 minutes, I was in love with Paper Mario.

I played the demo for Batman: Arkham Asylum and was not that impressed. But I bought the game due to the good reviews that it was getting and admittedly it took a while for the game to get its hooks into me. But once they did, I couldn't stop playing it.

 

[Casual Shinji]

Tbh the very first God of War. The cover just looked kinda shit and generic to younger judgemental self. I didn't follow gaming press at the time neither, so knew nothing of any praise. Only a friend's recommendation who is not so good at giving recommendations. Standards were pretty low. Once it was on and playing though, alright, I begrudgingly accepted it might be ok.

Same. I thought the character looked dumb (bald head and goatee was an instant turn-off), and it didn't help that the only footage I ever saw of it on TV was of the QTEs, making me think it was going to be some kinda rhythm game or whatever.

 

[laggyteabag]

Mass Effect

And for reasons that don't make sense.

Everything about Mass Effect was something I liked. I liked shooters. I liked RPGs. I liked Sci-Fi games. I had even played BioWare games before - including Knights of the Old Republic.

Yet, for whatever reason, the idea of a "Sci-Fi RPG" sounded completely contradictory to me. Despite having played (and enjoyed) KOTOR, in my mind, RPGs were strictly fantasy. No exceptions. Maybe Star Wars got a pass, because it was an established property - who knows?

So I slept on the ME games until around the time when ME3 released. I even remember seeing the first trailer for ME2, and thinking "Eh. Whatever."

Until one day, my best friend gets a copy of ME1, and basically just spent the day gushing about how cool it was.

"Fine", I say. "I'll give it a chance".

And just like that, I was sucked in.

 

[Adam Jensen]

Maybe Star Wars got a pass, because it was an established property - who knows?

Or because, you know, Star Wars is fantasy? People who think that Star Wars is sci-fi are just flat-out wrong. Just because it's set in space doesn't make it sci-fi.

 

[andycyca]

Just because it's set in space doesn't make it sci-fi.

Conversely, it doesn't have to be set in space (or the future) to be scifi. But yeah, SW is way more aligned to fantasy

 

[Piscian]

I was on a kick many years ago when I went out of my way to play bad games. Not the shovelware jim's on but stuff from actual studios. One game that comes to mind is a game called "Alpha Prime"


It's a weird FPS based on the DOOM 3 engine using a lot of the same assets. It's atrocious, but in a way thats so bad it's actually good. The dialog is hilarious, the AI is aimbotting so you cant even coverfire you just have to run around screaming and firing trying to confused the AI. I remember laughing so hard at one scene I almost fell out of my chair. Highly recommend wasting your time on it.

 

[thebobmaster]

Dragon Age II. I bought it about a year after release, having heard nothing but how much of a disappointment it was compared to the first, how meh all the characters were, how much they repeated environments, and so on. However, I found that while the environments did indeed get repeated a lot, and the gameplay was definitely dumbed down from the original, the lower stakes of the story was actually pretty refreshing, giving me the feel of a man/woman simply trying to make their way in the world rather than trying to be some big grand hero/ine, and I couldn't disagree more with the people who felt the new party members were disappointing.

 

[laggyteabag]

Or because, you know, Star Wars is fantasy? People who think that Star Wars is sci-fi are just flat-out wrong. Just because it's set in space doesn't make it sci-fi.

I mean, really its both, right?

The setting is unmistakably sci-fi, but the story and themes are very much fantasy. It cannot be just one, because if all of the sci-fi stuff was ripped away, or all of the fantasy stuff was ripped away, it wouldn't resemble anything close to the Star Wars that we know.

That said, this is ultimately irrelevant, because im certain that my teenage brain didn't see Star Wars as anything other than lasers=sci-fi, so I guess my earlier description wasn't specific enough.

I saw RPGs as medieval fantasy, exclusively. Magic and dragons, swords and shields - that kind of stuff. Something about popping over cover, blasting robots with my laser rifle just didn't sit well with me, when it came to an RPG.