Asklemmy

Hollow Knight and Darkest Dungeon both fit this for me. When I initially played them there would be some pain point where I got frustrated with some wall in the exploration or a tough setback (like some classic darkest dungeon bullshit like 3 spiders getting critical hits in a row killing a hero at full health). But the atmosphere of both games kept pulling me back again and again, and each time I’d get a little bit further.

Now I can say I’ve beaten Darkest Dungeon probably a half dozen times, nearly 100% Darkest Dungeon 2, and beaten every pantheon in Hollow Knight (with bindings on all but P5).

Not sure if my obvious masochism was the biggest factor in these games pulling through for me, but I can still say they are fantastic experiences for anyone willing to dig in and face the challenges they have to offer.

The Division 2

The main campaign story is boring, but end game is tons of fun and customization of gear builds.

Need for Speed: Most Wanted (2005) I thought it was just a gimmick when I first saw a friend play it and the tried it myself later at home and the graphics, the story, the cars, and the gameplay, everything blew me away. I still consider it the best Need for Speed game ever.

League of legends.

Absolutely despised it, thought it was just pointless since progress doesn't really carry over from match to match, so what's the point?

Eventually gave it a go back in 2011 and never got rid of it. Took me a while to get into it too, I'd only play because of my brother and with friends on teamspeak but eventually got reeeeally into it.

These days I don't have time, or at least don't want to invest it, for rankeds or even SR (5x5) so I mostly play ARAMs and some of the riot forge games (LOTRK, song of nunu). Looking forward for the mmo, really love the universe and I loved the TV show too.

Monster Hunter (I tink it was 4U).

The first time I just didn't Get It(TM) and kept dying to uuuuh I think some scaly raptor doggos. But the damn good music and the monster designs lured me again and I gave it a try and among other things, I learned that the first time I tried I had been wandering into the Hard Mode section of the game, into which you can head at T=0 without warning. I guess that's why I kept dying. Oh well.

That defo taught me to READ THE TEXT of the NPC dialogues and the item and quest descriptions and such. And the game is much better with that.

DDR, use to talk mad shit about that game. Can’t remember what happened but I think my uncle bought it for me and then it just clicked. Ended up hanging at the arcade for hours all sweaty getting food court food.

So many games in here, that I started and apparently need to go back and try again.

Not that I didn't like them, but with limited time, I just couldn't get into them properly.

One of the first video games I owned was FFXII, gifted to me for Christmas after I had finally saved up and bought my own PS2.

I did not understand how to play the game well. Basically kitted out every character as archers, and if I ever struggled (which was frequently) my go-to was to chain mist attacks and use up all my mana at once. I would often sure a lot of time just waiting for mana to regenerate after any had fight. It was slow but worked, until the bomb king boss in the forest. I would finally kill it, and then the thing would revive, and I would have nothing left. Tried and tried until I managed to kill it a second time and it revived again.

I gave up out of frustration. Came back to it a couple years later, a little bit wiser, and found the game much easier when the different characters had different roles and I didn't blow all my mana at the first sign of trouble. The bomb boss was actually a breeze, and I noticed this time that each revival was with fewer hp than before, so it only revived 3 times before it was done for good.

Hades. I'm not really sure why it didn't grab me the first time...

Against the Storm. Been on steam for 15 years and it’s my third most played game now. Rimworld and CK3 are the only ones above.

Watch Dogs 2

Deep Rock galactic. I played it very early, didn’t feel it and refunded it. A year or so later I stumbled upon it again and bought it again. I really like it now.

Vagrant Story and Parasite Eve

Played them as demos back when that was a thing and I didn't get why there's spheres popping up making battle stop (semi-turned based combat) and why there's a dude named Ashley.

Tried again a couple years later after playing FF7, connecting that they were all by squaresoft, and it all made sense. Absolutely became a couple of my favorites.

Left4Dead

First time I turned it on I just heard the music and saw the zombies puking and thought it was some kind of horror suspense game and never played it.

I had my GF play it with me since I didn’t want to play horror alone, and we both loved it.

World of Warcraft.

I bought it because a classmate told me about it and we planned to play together, but he had a level 60 character and didn't want to start a new one to level with me. So I played alone for the first 25 levels or so, and quit out of boredom. Then I told my brother about the game and we started again together. That lasted until about halfway through Legion (at least 10 years, with a few breaks ofc), when we both stopped playing. I've been trying to get back into it a few times since then, but it never really clicked again.

Path of Exile for me. I went in blind towards the end of Synthesis league (Q2 2019) and played completely SSF with a homebrew zoo witch. Managed to eventually fight and kill shaper but it was so draining I didn't even want to look at the game again... Til the end of the year when I hopped into the end of Blight league and I've sunk almost 2k hours since

Tetrisphere

Since the Trails series is continuous, it's what I think of with this sort of thing. I bounced off of and had to nibble at Trails in the Sky over a good while until the third game hooked me. I never would have gotten rolling with that series without pandemic lockdowns.

Now, Trails to Azure is firmly in my top 5 games.

Dragon Age: Origins. Not sure why. I was a big fan of Mass Effect already, and of story heavy RPGs in general, but I stopped this one pretty early on and sat on it for several years. Needless to say, it stuck the second time and now I've played it and the other Dragon Age games multiple times.

Crusader Kings II

Hotline Miami

Knights Field series. I never could get into them back in the day, but I've been on a retro kick with my Anbernic and got sucked into them. Ended up putting 20 hours so far into the English translation of the first Japanese KF.

Also, Vagrant Story. Pretty much same scenario where I rented it back in the day and bounced off the combat for not making any sense to me. Tried it recently and really dig it. The combat system is really quite clever once you understand it.

Dark Souls, took a partner to get me to give it another shot, I've played all souls games since lmao

Dota2

Cyberpunk and RDR2 both