Street FIghter 3. Never really got into it. Bought the collection mainly for Alpha 3, but have spent most of my time playing SF3.

Wind Waker for me. Playing it on GC it never really grabbed my attention and I didn't have much interest in finishing it. Decided to give it another go when it was re-released on Wii U and decided I was going to play through the entire thing and beat it this time and by the time it ended, my feelings about the game changed and now I love the game.

Crackdown! I never would have purchased it, just wasn't on my radar, but came out as one of the free games if you subscribe, and I've enjoyed it so much. It even had me excited for Crackdown 3 the first twenty times I thought it was coming out.

Dark Souls - at first it felt like Severance: Blade of Darkness (just easier and with worse combat), only you could die due to camera quite easily and had to do it all over again - it felt quite tedious, tbh. Then I played it again after some time, and it kinda grew on me due to great level design (combat was and still is quite mediocre), so I played and finished all 3 of them (plus Demons) and these days I consider it one of the best new IPs of 7th gen.

Deus Ex Human Revolution, before the game came out I wasn't really impressed with what I saw and thought it wasn't going to be received very well, but when it came out and was getting praise I managed to borrow the game and really loved it.

Batman Arkham Knight, I played it over my friend's house and got half way though the story and I really was not having any fun with the game, was super bored, (the super obvious Arkham Knight twist they were trying to hype up, that anyone with even the slightest bit of batman knowledge would know instantly) I was really disliking it especially the batmobile. I decided to borrow the game any way just so I can finish the story since I played all the Arkham games already. I started a new game and instantly enjoyed the game waaaaay more for some reason, still not a big fan of the batmobile but it felt less annoying. Even got the platinum for shits and giggles.

Street Fighter IV. I bought the original version on PS3 and played it for a bit but it didn't really click. Much later, I played Ultra SFIV with co-workers and got hooked since I wasn't constantly getting my ass kicked online, playing with friends is much more pleasant. I eventually re-bought the game on PC (Ultra version) and played it a lot.

Well, there's a fair amount of subjectivity to the sentiment, and it's of course limited to games I've played. Also, just to make double sure we're on the same wavelength ( and I think we are ), the slow burn I'm referencing is the transition from mediocrity greatness specifically as it relates to the battle system. I really liked it it by the mid-way point of the game, but it still didn't hit it's apex until post game, which is quite a long time. TBH, I think it was a highly questionable choice by the devs to go this route. Worked out good for me at least. Anyways, I'm curious as to what your choice(s) would be. :)

None. I am a very cynical person.

I think there are probably many games that started bad for me and then won me over, so much so that I've developed a habit where if a game hooks me immediately, I'll usually put it down and move to something else, something worse that still needs to prove itself. It's led to me not finishing a lot of games that I consider to be good.

I can quickly think of Breath of Fire Dragon Quarter, at first I was disappointed with the big change from previous titles but I kept on going and at some point I just accepted that this was its own thing and really began to enjoy it for it's new structure. I think that was a moment where I realised I should just take each game for what it is and not how much it resembles other games in it's franchise. I think I'd been doing this a long time with Mario 2 and a few other games, but it might have been this game made me realise it.

Uncharted is another but it didn't directly win me over, Uncharted 2 did. I'd bought Uncharted at launch and didn't really get what was good about it, I tried but it just wouldn't click, it seemed to have potential but I didn't enjoy it much. A few years later I picked up the sequel not expecting much, maybe an improvement to fix where the first game failed and everyone else seemed to love the game, Well I was shocked, the game was good! Then I went back to Uncharted and suddenly had a new appreciation for it, it's definitely worse than it's sequels but now I enjoyed it and have completed it several times.

And for the most recent game i can think of, WipeOut won me over, I've always had an interest in high speed futuristic racing games but despite trying to like Wipeout since 1997 I didn't really enjoy any of the games. I got the Wipeout collection on Vita for free and it seemed ok but when they released VR support for the PS4 version I was converted.

The first Octopath Traveler demo didn't do it for me. I dropped out of the demo within 20 minutes each time.

After great reviews, I tried the prologue demo. After 3 hours, I said - "man I need this!".