Games you initially did not like, but after a second look enjoyed

[SvennoJ]

RDR, burned out on it quickly. Picked it up again half a year later and absolutely loved it to the end.

Horizon Zero Dawn: That long 'tutorial' area nearly killed the game for me. I rather forced myself to continue after reading it gets better after 10 hours. And yes it got so much better after you can leave the first area. It became one of my favorite games that gen.
They didn't learn though, Horizon FW has a horrible start as well, then gets amazingly good. At least this time I was prepared for a rough start.

And more recently Pistol Whip. I bounced off hard from the 'story' mode. Didn't feel any rhythm at all, just shoot whatever pops up while someone keeps talking. I tried again a couple days later, now with my surround system properly working with the ps5 (first time HDMI ARC stripped PCM 7.1 output down to 2.0, and 90% of the sound just came from the center speaker) I ignored the story levels and just set up arcade to my liking, dual wield, infinite ammo, one shot kills, play on hard. Sound up loud, subwoofer working, and started warming up to the music selection. Still not touching story mode levels, but will buy some better music packs when/if available.

Not sure what it is with game openings. Movies are much better at grabbing you from the start. So many games are pretty hard to get into, mainly because they can't resist talking your ears off before you finally get to play.

You can add God of War to the list. Gave up on it a couple times, but it does get good later on.
Zelda Skyward Sword is also a game I gave up on a couple times. Enjoyed the later levels (Sand Sea was awesome) but never finished as the repetitive bosses with wonly motion controls killed it off for good. If it would let you skip the cut scenes and just let you try again I would have continued.