Witcher 3. It had me for a bit then lost interest again. But, I'm planning on trying again.

Baldur's Gate 3. I tried it when it was in early access and thought it was too clunky. Tried it again a few months ago, absolutely love it.

Kenshi. I got it in 2013. It seemed interesing but ran so badly on my machine at the time that I gave up on it. Played it again when I got a better PC and some religious people came around to preach and hand out bibles, I put them in a skin peeler.

Oh it's a distant memory now, but I remember the first time I played RimWorld I bailed out again in less than an hour and didn't touch it again for at least a year

Fast forward to now and I think it's claimed 1500h of my time

Disco Elysium for me! Didn't understand it and thought it was weird. On the third try, it was amazing. I finally understood what it was trying to do. It was an art piece and I don't think I'll ever have that same journey again for a long while.

This happened to me with three games:

• Hollow Knight
• Steamworld Heist
• Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin

In each case the game just didn’t gel with me on the initial play, even if I could objectively tell it was a quality game.

Currently playing through Stranger of Paradise again now. I think I expected a more traditionally “Final Fantasy” game my first time through and dropped it at 10 hours. Started fresh recently and am tearing past where I was and playing it enthusiastically now, it’s a lot of fun.

I’ve played some souls-like games in the interim which helped with the general gameplay loop and control scheme. Also have upgraded hardware since my first run, which makes a big difference as the game was previously a shimmery mess full of slowdowns.

Guild Wars 2. Didn't click with it at launch, tried it again a few months ago and oh my god so much has changed in over 13 years. I'm still playing plenty of other games but it's nice to have an MMO (without monthly fees or any kind of FOMO) to come back to every couple of weeks.

Slay The Spire. You never seemed to get powerful enough and the fights always whittled away my health. Much later I played Balatro and this sonehow inspired me to give it another go.

I do think some of the boss design is anti-fun though, or at least punishing you for not following the build the developers want you to. The sequel already seems to be better for letting you play it your way.

The Witcher 3. First couple of times it didn’t click. Now it remains one of my favorites.

witcher 3

first time playing, i got to the bloody baron and for whatever reason i can't explain, felt like it wasn't resonating with me. went back some time later and was hooked enough to finish the main game and all DLCs.

fucking fantastic game

FTL the space dogfight roguelike. Took me 10 years to revisit and I've gotten more than a hundred hours in it since then

Dragon Age Origins. My third try it finally clicked, but a year after I bought it!

Disco Elysium.

First go was after finally playing Planescape : Torment and I just wasn't in the mood for another text heavy game, even though it came highly recommended and had some voiceacting from some podcasters I knew about.

Then the Final Cut came out with all the professional voice acting and it was absolutely excellent.

Hollow Knight

Bought it not long after it came out because I was so in awe with the visual style. Played it for some hours and thought it was fun, but it was not clicking with me as much as I thought it would. It got even worse when I got stuck in the progression. I put the game down and did not play it for a while. Fast forward 3 months and I decide to pick it up again. For some reason this time I found out where to go next and from that moment I could not stop playing it. I could not believe how vast the exploration felt. To this day it is still my favourite game of all time.

Skyrim.

I couldn't stand the ultra hype. I didn't see anything special about the game. To me it just looked like a dumbed down fantasy Fallout without guns.

Then like a decade later I picked it again.
Ended up first playing hundreds of hours on normal, then hundreds more on VR.

Dark Souls

Eventually went back to it after beating Bloodborne.

Dark Souls. Bounced off it a bunch of times on PS3 and PC, then got the remaster on Switch and it got its hooks into me and never really let go.

Arma 3 was a big reason why I built my first PC. Purchased it in alpha and fucking hated every second of it. Tried it again here and here but it just never clicked, everything was so confusing and it got worse as more dlc and mods were released...I just figured full simulations weren't my thing but was still happy to support the game. In 2022 some friends had me join them for some KotH and I finally learned the basics. Then I joined an Antistasi group, told them I was new and they taught me everything. Now I own the entire series and routinely play A2, A3, and Reforger...I literally have a 2tb ssd just for Arma because I have so many mods, like I am full blown addicted to this shit now.

Baldurs Gate 3. When I first saw it on the Fitgirl website I thought it was lame dork shit. I month ago I decided to try it out and have been hooked on it like crack.

Stardew valley was this game for me. I basically sped through getting married and then put the game down after maybe 20 or so hours. Then I got it on switch and have over 1.5k hours

Monster Hunter.

There's a community saying: everyone loves Monster Hunter, they just haven't played it enough yet. It's an incredibly common experience for new Monhun players to hate it on their first or even second go around, but then eventually fall in love! It happened for me twice in fact. I played Tri on the Wii back when I was a kid, and then World on release in college, but did not get far either time. Then I tried it again a few years later and now I have played at least one monster hunter game from every generation as well as most of the spinoffs and it is my favourite series ever!

BOTW. First time played handheld and screen was too small to appreciate it. Picked up again years later on a tv and finally loved it.

Dark Souls, kinda. Got DS2 when it was pretty new, and couldn't get into it at all. Then I tried DS1 years later and absolutely loved it. So I tried 2 again, and it still didn't click. Then 3 released, loved it to bits, played through 1 again, tried 2 again, SotFS this time, and I still hate that game. The way everything moves in 2 is just awful, and I will die on the hill that it's a poorly made mess, from the ground up.

The other souls games are great though. Still have to get around to BB since the frame rate killed it for me on the ps4, but it works great in emulator now, as well as DeS

As weird as this will sound, Skyrim. Picked it up, played a tiny bit then didn't touch is for 3-4 months

Factorio. I really didnt understand it when It was first released. Got to my first steam generator and quit.

Freaking love this game now, so many hours. Conveyor belts are the same as happiness.

balatro

Possibly my favorite game, "From the Depths" got me like this. It's a vehicle builder that gives you a lot more stuff to design, both in functionality and in letting you make something look how you want, than most others I've seen... But the learning curve is like a brick wall and I just didn't get what I was supposed to do the first time around.

rimworld, dwarf fortress, factorio. ugh. cannot escape it now. though with DF the “jitter” of the chars moving messes with my eyes, so i really dont play it much. i know its turn based, I just like smoother movement or a roguelike where my actions begets movement in “clips”.

Hollow Knight

For me it was Saints Row 2. When I first saw the game, I was like "what is this GTA knock off?!". But when I finally played the game, I was hooked and went "Haha! It's so funny spraying shit on buildings!"

GTA V. Also didn't help that I was running it on integrated graphics.

I've been playing regularly for 8 years now.

Grounded. It initially felt impossible cuz early game practically every enemy one-shots you. Abandoned it for a while, then a friend played it and told me the secret is to learn all the movesets and perfect parry every single hit, and I was like "that sounds unreasonably difficult", and then immediately played it for like nine hours straight.

So many games but Hades lately. It’s so good!

Skyrim was this for me. Took me a bunch of tries to get into it but its one of my most played games now

Both Project Zomboid and Old School Runescape. Dropped both of them quick the first time around and now they are the only two games I play

Dragon's Dogma. I tried any number of times to get into it over the span of years, I'd put 8-10 hours in, but I just couldn't manage it, it felt like I always hit some kind of unreasonably gruesome difficulty spike and I could never overcome that, and I'd drop it. But then one time I played it and I just... Never hit that spike, for whatever reason. Played it all the way through to completion. Great game, knew I'd like it, I just couldn't find a foothold!

Outer Wilds. Wandering around in the village in the beginning was a bit boring so I put it down. Took it up again some days or weeks later and continued to play until I found the thorny seed on my home planet. That was the point where I was hooked and at the end it became one of my favourite games of all time.

Path of Exile. My friend introduced me to the game but he was a hardcore player so I started playing hardcore with him. A few years later I decided to try the game on my own in softcore and got addicted.

I have close to 5000h despite only playing like 8 leagues. (And who knows how many hours on PoB)

Hollow Knight.

At first, I was a bit put off by what I felt were stiff mechanics (I played the Ori games first), then I tried it again after a while and realized the mechanics were really just precise.

And now I'm absolutely hooked on Silksong and nothing else compares.

I predict that Cyberpunk 2077 will become this game for me in like 3-5 years