Games you've replayed and turned out to actually be good in your opinion when they weren't initially?

I'm currently replaying Assassin's Creed 3, and that game was the worst Assassin's Creed game to date until I just started playing it again. It was, in my opinion, a mediocre game bordering on poor. Once I finish the game and it sticks to being as good as it is now, it definitely puts the AC series as a good bunch of games nearly through and through with one outlier (Unity is still below average to me [the first AC is also not great I believe, though the story is fine]). Originally AC3 was a huge bore for me, the visual hitches were a hindrance and the story and characters were underwhelming; all those things are not so true anymore, I liked Black Flag and I also liked Rogue for their on foot gameplay (which I also played relatively recently), and three is basically the same type of thing, though with a few differences.

Some things that bothered me was always running away from enemies after not being incognito due to killing British soldiers, and the combat was frustrating. The one thing I did like about that was the stellar soundtrack that played, which was the one thing I loved about the game minus the fact it doesn't really play when you explore, but even that is negligible now. The combat isn't frustrating, it looks cool and is just fun. Getting around the city when guards are on alert, it's almost akin to old-style MGS (without the vision cones) as you go through ally's waiting for soldiers to pass. I don't remember ever using the town criers either which would have alleviated that issue. I borrowed the game from my brother when it came out, that's the last time I played the game.

I have the feeling I was being quite hasty with it all and it, in turn, made me lack the know how to really play the game well which led to it being a lot more frustrating than it could have been and it clouded my view of the game overall. On the story side of it, I felt Connor was a boring, kind of whiny character, especially coming off of Ezio, and yet now I see him as a sympathetic character that strives for good and equality in harsh times for groups of people. He's not as romantic and sarcastic as Ezio, but in his own way, he is respectable as a character I'm finding. I also think the game does a better job with the setting than I remember, be it through visual as you walk the cities, or how people are treated in the world depicted in the story. Playing the game on Xbox One through backward compatibility has made the frame rate not quite as bad as it was. There are still hitches, but it's not as bothersome.

I haven't run into anything noteworthy in terms of glitches, the worst is just the pop in which has occurred in all AC games. The sound design even by today's standards is phenomenal. I love the Lorne Balfe soundtrack, and the voice work is exceptional as well with decent sounds of the city life. The only issue is sometimes a lack of sound, like when there's a crowd and you can't hear them, which kind of tarnishes the atmosphere in the moment. I also wish there was some music during the time you roam the environments, but it's not as much an issue now as I said. What game was similar for you?

Dota probably

I was deep into Warcraft 3, browsed around the custom game list every now and then and always saw Dota up there. But whenever i would join such a room , i would be kicked . (Later learned that it was to keep noobs out of the lobbies; Real dota players would download the map file from a site before joining a lobby ) . Eventually made it into 2 games and i was just bewildered by what kind of game it was. The map looked huge and very dark, and there were shops scattered around and towers and a lot of creeps everywhere. I didn't even make it to my tier 1 towers, i would just sit around in the middle wondering what to do, occassionally wandering into range of a tower, and dying. It didn't help that i picked Techies, a hero that lays bombs around the map but is fairly ineffective in direct fights. I pretty much gave up on that custom game and played other custom games instead.

Then the beta of Dota 2 rolled around, and i knew a lot of people were into league. So i figured that there was something to those kind of games. I downloaded league and had to play it on 10 fps (old PC). Bought a new PC eventually and heard about the International. Watched the international and loved how 'wild and crazy' all the spells looked. A spell that transforms the terrain? a black hole that can take out an entire team by himself? That looked so unlike league where everything felt a lot more conservative and hits didn't seem to hit as hard. Also, i kinda liked how 'elemental' and 'earthy' the game felt. Like the UI was carved out of this rock-ish material, the logo is like a slab of clay and a lot of the heroes were elemental in nature. That stuff spoke to me for some reason. I bet having a love for Diablo 2 and Warcraft 3 is fertile ground to be attracted to Dota 2 with all it's attack modifiers and buffs / debuffs. Now Dota 2 is one of my favorite games, so i'm glad i gave it another try.

Not that I can think of. I've had a lot of times where I wasn't sure about a game because of a slow start or something, but eventually got into it(Ni No Kuni comes to mind for that).

Closest thing I can think of is Deadly Premonition. I rented that through Gamefly before Giant Bomb ever did anything with it. Played about 15-30 minutes and put it back in the mail the next day. Eventually the ER happened and I watched all of that. Some time later my cousin bought it, so I decided to finish my play through of it. By the end I could see where people are coming from in terms of the characters/story, but I still didn't like the game. I just can't get past the controls/game play. Just couldn't really have any fun playing it.

Made me think Swery would be better off making games in a more Telltale style. More story, less game play. Which I guess D4 is, but I never got to play that(don't have an Xbox One, or a decent PC).

I can't imagine replaying a game I didn't like in the first place. There are just way too many games out there and it's rare for me to replay ANYTHING, let alone something I didn't love.

There are games where I started out not liking them but grew to like them as they progressed, but that's a little different, and frankly I won't give a game I'm not enjoying more than a couple hours unless it has received truly universal acclaim.

Witcher 3. My initial opinion of it wasn't terrible but I wasnt that impressed with it on my first playthrough.

I gave it a second playthrough when the Blood and Wine DLC was coming out and since I knew what I was getting into I was able to enjoy it a lot more. I guess I was just expecting something different the first time around.

@catoasapun: The idea of doing two playthroughs of a game the size of the Witcher 3 literally makes me uncomfortable. Like physically uncomfortable.

Dark Souls. Got it at launch because I was at a gamestop for some reason buying something else and got it because I had some credit left over and people were raving about it. Played it for a few hours and absolutely hated it. Went back a few years later after watching Vinny play through it and grew to appreciate it and even enjoy it. Hated Dark Souls 2 but liked Dark Souls 3 a lot. If I ever get the time I plan on getting back into Bloodborne.

The Last of Us is the first thing that springs to mind. In some part because everyone was hyping it to shit as the best story ever, so I was extra harsh on it and it just wound up being a bunch of zombie cliches and I could never engage with it because that's what I was focusing on. Mostly though, the gameplay was baaaaaaaad on normal difficulty, it just felt like a shoddy 3rd person shooter.

I replayed it maybe a year or two ago on the Grounded difficulty and it was both fascinating and exhilarating. The combat actually clicked since you had to use all your tools, and you use guns so rarely that the clunkiness of that aspect of the game just kinda fits. It also put me so on edge and got me way more invested in the world, and so I believed the characters more, and so I actually enjoyed the story aspect of the game that time around too (also separated from most of the zeitgeist at that point).

I guess that kinda taught me a lesson because I usually hold off on games and do a bunch of research before jumping into a hyped up game these days. I listened to everyone gush over what was good in Breath of the Wild for hours, and then got a good feeling on what the bad aspects of it were, so I was totally prepared going in to focus on what I'd enjoy doing (just exploring, pretty much).

Wow, did not expect to see an AC3 appreciation post in here. Very cool.

Most recently, I think No Man's Sky fits the bill. It helps that they're still working on the game. I don't love it, but it's more enjoyable now. I tend to agree with @bigsocrates about replaying story-driven games though. Especially those big ones.

I didn't get stealth for a long time. I tried to play Metal Gear Solid 2 a few times over and never understood why it was so damned hard to take out enemies. Finally took a shot at the entire franchise a few years back and loved it. Some of my favorite games now. Especially 3. Phenomenal story telling.

I like The Division a lot more now that enemies don't take forever to kill.

Dark Souls, for sure. Started off poorly by thinking the graveyard was the first place to go... it most definitely is not. Fell off of it hard because that was not the kind of hard I wanted. Took me a long while to find the right way. After that, I was on board. I'll hold back from going any further cause I'll type out a novel about Dark Souls, and we've heard it all before.

Crusader Kings 2 was just confusing and overwhelming and dull as hell when I first opened it. Then over the course of a few gym carpools I had a buddy explain the basics to me, and suddenly dozens of hours disappeared into that wonderful game.

I actually just replayed Alan Wake recently. I remember playing it on 360 and really not liking it. I don't know if my expectations were off at the time, or playing it on PC eased some of my issues with the combat, but I liked the game quite a bit more this last go around. Don't know if I can call it good, necessarily, but I had a lot more fun returning to it.

Fallout 3, When the game came out I was more into multiplayer centric shooters. I wasn't that familiar with the franchise outside of knowing the name. I played it initially long enough to escape the vault and explore megaton, but I came back later once all of the DLC was out about 6 months later and found myself much more entertained. I think in that time away from the game and burning out on MP sessions in other games I was ready for a change of pace. Hunting down all of the achievements and entertaining quests in the game was a highlight for me. The only thing I will still criticize the game on is that typical bethesda jankiness that could result in issues if you don't save often. I encountered some gamebreaking issues from time to time where doors wouldn't open or quests wouldn't trigger appropriately. Maybe I should try to come back around and give Fallout 4 another try, they made design decisions that turned me off to that game but I could always try again and maybe it will hook me in.

I played AC3 towards the end of 2013 due to be a Playstation Plus title but I could never go back to it. I feel like I suffered through that game. It's just bad. I know Dan just flat out thinks the AC series is bad in general but I genuinely loved 2 and Brotherhood but each game either hasn't grabbed me or doesn't interest me enough to check it out.

To answer the topic though, mine might actually be Shadow of the Colossus. I never had a PS2 but I heard so much praise for it and eventually played the HD version on the PS3 when it was on Playstation Plus (I used to use PS+ for pretty much 90% of my gaming back then). I played it for maybe an hour and just didn't get it. There's this open world and all you do is ride your horse through an empty field and eventually climb a guy. It just left me cold so I just left it and played something else. A few years after that, I was just going through my PS3 list of games and saw it and thought that I should give it another chance. I did and ended up loving it. Maybe I was just in a different mindset but the second time around it really just struck me and while it has its flaws for sure, it's a damn beautiful game but I do feel the new remake is pretty unnecessary when the HD version is a great way to play it.

The first time I played Persona 4, I stopped about 3/4 of the way through the exposition dump in the beginning. Didn't pick it back up for 6 months after that. Glad I did, because it immediately became my favorite game of all time, and I don't think anything will ever be able to top it.

I'm hoping I'm in the midst of this experience right now with The Amazing Spider-Man 2. The one where it's based on the titular movie, but they didn't secure appearance rights nor VO rights, so Parker/Spider-Man neither looks nor sounds anything like Andrew Garfield.

I bounced off it pretty quickly a while ago, but have decided to give it another go. I've heard from a trustworthy source that this game is pretty awesome for a Spidey fanboy, even if it's only an "okay" game overall. Haven't finished nearly enough to say for sure but hey, they got the swinging nailed down, that's like half the battle.

Killzone 3. First time through it felt like gears of war but first person and not as good. But after cranking down the difficulty and playing with motion controls that game is a lot more fun.

I was also a bit lukewarm on Bloodborne after beating it but as it turns I missed half of the game and some of the best stuff is entirely optional. I've now replayed that game about 6 or so times and it's probably my favourite souls game. (I like Demon's Souls a whole lot but the valley of defilement is a fucking slog)

EDIT: MGS 3 is another one. I wanted a follow up to MGS 2 not this weird cold war Rambo 2/Ninja Scrolls thing. But I played it again in HD with a functional camera after having played MGS4 and I enjoyed the game a lot more.

The Final Fantasy Legend confused the shit outta me as a child, nowadays I super appreciate how totally bizarre that game is.

Transforming into creatures you've eaten, character progression for humans being tied wholly to their quickly degrading equipment, fighting God to leave the game world and it's artificiality behind and (presumably) enter real life.

Shit's bonkers.

I've never outright replayed a game I didn't like in its entirety. I have however given certain games a few chances by restarting their first 2-3 hours again to see if something just didn't click the initial time with me.

Some of those games are, The Witcher 1, Fallout 3, STALKER Shadow of Chernobyl, Resident Evil 1, Mass Effect 1 and Deus Ex 1.

MGS2 in the sense that I've come around to the story more as I got older. I think I was just too young when I first played through it and the interminable yakity-yaking about data control and memes got on my nerves. It didn't help that they pulled that switch to Raiden when all I wanted to do was do cool stuff as Snake. Turns out the plot was kinda prescient.

Still not a big fan of the level or boss design, though.

Fallout 1, when I first played it I had no idea how to really play it. The controls and systems were foreign to me and it wasn't like any of the games I usually play. I think I literally didn't make it out of the opening rat cave area. I thought it was a bad game that didn't explain itself well.

Years pass and I had played more games of that type, plus I had evolved to be more patient and try stuff out before giving up and I wound up loving it after I figured out how to play it.

And to a lesser extent Deadly Premonition, I kept seeing everybody talk about that thing and play it and review it and make fun of it and yadda yadda blah blah blah, so I thought it would be fun to pick it up and play it as an "it's so bad it's good" experience, and I just wound up enjoying it regardless.

Going through this type of replay experience now with Dying Light. Played when it came out, and found the parkour and combat a bit confusing and punishing. The game just has a stiff learning curve and is hard at first without any skills unlocked and terrible gear. Just an unforgiving start really. Anyway, got the game again bundled with all the DLC for cheap and I'm enjoying it much more now. Due in part to being more patient, and in part to recognizing that it is more simulator than a Zombie arcade slaughterfest. I'm using the parkour much better and fluidly traversing the environments(still in first urban area)much better and getting quests done and leveling and progressing much better. Weapons wear out quick and just break permanently, and you just have to accept that and keep stocked up on alternate gear. I'm pretty sure I'll stick with it now and finish out all the story and DLC. I've come to recognize that it's a good game, so yeah, very cool.

It is tough to find a partner for co-op considering how old the game is, but some peeps are still playing if you look for game on XB1.

@lv4monk: I replayed Final Fantasy Legend I & II recently and while those games still have... issues... I was able to enjoy them and appreciate them much more as an adult. I think I made it Apollo's palace in FFL2 before I said screw that noise. They're fascinating and quirky games, but the SaGa series really took that play style in the direction it deserved. Or Pokémon, given that the Final Fantasy Legend series was cited as a major inspiration with the monster mechanics.

Fallout 3. The first time I played it was on a rental from Blockbuster and that was not a good way to go at that game. I thought it was boring and directionless, which stressed me out given the time constraint. A few months later, a friend loaned it to me and I hewed a little closer to the Megaton story path and it all clicked.

Demon's Souls, probably. It's at least the only one I can remember coming back to and liking.

I didn't initially like it because I didn't fully understand it. Didn't pick up on a lot of the nuances and systems. And I didn't realize that spending a little bit of time to farm for herbs and other supplies would be paramount and make the game much much easier. Learning to take your time with your approaches also helped.

@ntm: Welcome to the club! ACIII is a great game. I'm still a little salty with the reaction to that game. There's an alternate universe out there where people didn't outright reject that game and we would get more ambitious and unique AC games; meaning we wouldn't have gotten AC Unity or Syndicate.....

Anyways, I started Dragon Age: Origins and didn't really enjoy it, but then I gave it another chance and immediately plowed through the game. Bioware storytelling at its peak. What a great game.

Nuclear Throne may be that game for me. I still have my problems with it, however, they are more minor issues and I accept what that game is now. Things may have been different if I wasn't so into The Binding of Isaac Rebirth. At first, I was turned off by the lack of variety, the amount of weapons, and just how hard that game is. Isaac is a little bit of that at first. I remember how it took me a little bit just to defeat Isaac's mom, when in reality doing that is like 5% of what's in that game. Once you get the hand of that you can keep going deeper and deeper until you fight Mega Satan or whatever. Nuclear Throne on the other hand felt too hard at first, so that carrot on a stick feeling was always "Welp, I didn't make it. Let's just do it again and hope I get past that level next time", while the objective and levels remained the same.

The thing that changed is I just got better at that game and I also readjusted my expectations. That game is more of a twin stick shooter and less of the RNG madness that is The Binding of Isaac. I only got to the Throne once or twice, but I could get to the later stages more reliably. I don't think it is super great, but I dig it a lot more now.

It took me three solid attempts to get into the first Saints Row game, which is now one of my favorite game franchises. I cannot for the life of me figure out why I gave it three chances but I am very glad I did.

I don't like MMO's, every one I have tried was not able to hook me much at all. I played up until you got a mount in WoW and immediately put it down. When I tried Final Fantasy XIV for the first time it left me similarly cold, bored and ultimately uninterested. Maybe it was Danny O'dwyers No-Clip documentary, maybe it was hearing people over time say how much they enjoyed it, maybI i didn't have anything else to play but I decided to give it another shot. 148 hours later I can comfortably say FF 14 is one of the best FF games and the best MMO I have ever played. Shameless fan service may be some of the draw here but beside that square was able to build a really great game around a universe I have great reverence for.

It does a great job of "onboarding" too. FF 14 slowly introduces new players to its dense systems and vast gameplay options. Veterans to MMO's might be turned off by how long it takes to open up all the options but for a new player, it worked surprisingly well for me. There is a lot of reading and lore diving to do here but from what I have seen it has been well worth it. The story won't blow anyone away but for an MMO the story is one of the best things it has going for it. The game does a great job of making you feel like you're continually making progress whether you're doing a story mission or cleaning up side stuff you always feel like your working towards something worth unlocking.

I'm gushing a bit here but I am so pleasantly surprised at what FF 14 was able to do for a guy that typically doesn't like MMO's and burns out the second the grind gets too grindy. The community has been great too not to mention all the good folks in the Giant Bomb free company (guild) VinCo. I highly recommend checking out if you're into MMO's at all or are just curious. Some of the most fun I have had this year so give it a real shot if you're interested.

Dragon Age: Origins, which coincidentally I decided to try again just this week.

I first tried it back in 2012. I normally love big RPGs, and everyone raved about DA:O, so I thought I'd love it too. Instead I found it deeply, deeply boring. I put 12 hours into a character, kept looking for ways to make it less boring, restarted twice, but I just couldn't keep on. I was slowly dying of boredom. There were other things about it that bugged me too, like how battle outcomes seemed almost random (I'd run into an encounter and we'd get slaughtered; I'd reload and go in to the same encounter immediately and completely dominate); the terrible "approves"/"disapproves" stuff, which made me feel like I was never going to figure out which party members were the right ones to use; the fact that I always felt like I was missing out on extra stuff because I did something slightly wrong.

I decided to go back to it again, this time on "casual" difficulty, skipping almost all dialogue (most of which I find interminably boring), and using a guide. All things I would almost never do in games, especially in an RPG. But after a couple of boring hours, I got into it! Now I like it! Admittedly probably not for the reasons other people do, but at least I'm finally enjoying myself.

Surprisingly few mentions of Dark Souls on here. I played it, couldn't get into it, watched Vinny play it, got enough of a grasp of the mechanics to start Dark Souls 2, finished that, loved it, then played the first game and now I really like that series.

I actually didn't really like the first Devil Survivor game when I originally played it on the DS, thought it was too hard. However I gave Survivor another shot on the 3DS after I had had more experience with strategy games and enjoyed it a lot, although it was still pretty difficult in spots.

Demon Souls for me for sure. Really hated that game and didn't get it at all the first time I played it, then I saw more on it and realized...oh maybe I should give this a proper try aka I'm playing it wrong.

Far Cry 2 as well. I first played that on PS3 and heard some hype about the series, newer ones were even coming I think by the time I tried it. I played it for a few frustrating hours, and didn't really get what all the hype was about. I later went back and pounded out a good 10+ enjoyable hours on it realizing it was just a playground. But coming from titles like Bioshock I was expecting my hand to get held a little more, and initially was like "why should I care about this world."

It was a while ago now, but my pick would be my first foray into Disgaea. I think it was the third game with the demon father breaking the sons video game console.

The first time I picked it up, I was completely overwhelmed by the sheer amount of systems upon systems, all of them with their own experience levels. The offbeat setting and story didn't work for me either, and overall it was a bit of an assault on the brain. I noped out after about 2 hours.

A year or so later I tried it again, and fell down the deepest SRPG hole I've ever been down. Everything just clicked into place the second time around, and I loved all of the near 300 hours I ploughed into it. I'm now a total Disgaea convert.

Metal Gear Solid V The Phantom Pain took me nearly 18 months to really click with. After all the countless re-plays of the opening mission, and knowing how to S Rank at least the first 10 from all the Hard Restarts I did. I finally got into the story fully about march of this year and proceeded to completed the game. I was personally really underwhelmed by that ending but I was getting so frustrated about not watching Metal Gear Scanlon V that I eventually just did it to meet my urge.

Dark Souls. I really disliked it when it first came out and I played up to the undead burg. Later on I gave it another chance and it clicked.

I'm wondering if I should replay Assassin's Creed Unity now... It was kind of forgettable, to be honest. I finished AC3 and I enjoyed going through the story a lot more, and I have no idea why I thought it was frustrating when I originally played it.

I've played a bunch of games that will leave an awkward first impression for many reasons. Usually it's just that the fun mechanics are really obscure and hard to understand or the game just has a wall of a learning curve.

Devil May Cry 4 comes to mind as a game with terrible level design dumb story and inane puzzles. But it's also one of the most fun combat systems I've ever played with (I have easily over a hundred hours of gametime in DMC4). It's just that you have to jump through several hoops to find the fun part in there. I know a lot of people beat the game just hitting Y a lot and not realizing how to use Nero's fun mechanics like Exceed and charge shot. And Dante is just a whole different can of worms of impenetrable gameplay.

I was so enveloped in the art design and I'm stubborn as hell so I pushed through pretty easily. But I think most of us would lie if we don't think Dark/Demon's Soul's has a real awkward transition when you first play one. There's a lot of archaic things that feel straight terrible before you get used to them, and after that I personally think they play great.

I had a similar thing with Metal Gear Solid, and i still think the first two play mostly like dogshit even if I like them a lot more now. It wasn't until 3 where I started really liking the series, and because of that I developed a retroactive apprecitiation of the previous games. But man was that a long period of thinking something was pretty bad but interesting to thinking they were pretty cool overall.

And just as a footnote, these 3 examples came to mind because they are among some of my favorite games of all time. To me there's a lot of merit to the process of figuring out a weird game and liking it for what it is when you understand it. I've developed a lot of attachment to these quirky messes.

So... I started playing Unity again, and to my surprise, with a little enthusiasm, interest, and curiosity going in, I am actually enjoying it more than I had in the past. Also, the game runs relatively well; better than I remember it. It's mainly in cutscenes that I notice dips in frame rate. I got the game on the One. It, especially jumping from AC3 to Unity looks really great. I believe it's the best, most current-gen looking Assassin's Creed. I think my lack of enthusiasm for this game in particular, and again like AC3, lack of patience when it came out really lowered my tolerance for enjoying it. I was hesitant to get it but ultimately got it due to my brother since it's a co-op game (but to be honest, I didn't play the co-op once since I finished the game and didn't want to play it anymore). While I understood how to play the game fine, and got through it with relative ease, I didn't necessarily take the time to try and play it well. More often than not I'd just run into combat (accidental or not) than stealth my way through moments that can be stealthed through, and the stealth is actually decent! I didn't remember that stealth worked in such a way. One thing I am doing though that I didn't do when I just went through AC3 is that I'm actually digging the France setting, and I'm doing side quests and jumping on buildings rather than simply going through the story, though that's partially because there's a level system in this one.

Elder Scrolls online. Was pretty bad generic mmo on launch. After content/game design updates (especially Morrowind), became much more fun.

I should give ME Andromeda another shot, maybe they finally finished it. But it's probably difficult to patch bad writing.

It blows my mind that people have time to finish games, let alone replay them.