Dark Souls II. It was the first Soulslike I bought and I hated it. It was obtuse; there was no explanation for all the items and features and what they did; there was no knowing where to go next once you hit the main portion of the game, so I'd end up getting slaughtered tackling a high level area far too early; the controls (PC port) were... bad; it felt like you needed a Wikia to make any progress; and so on. I gave up after a few hours and didn't return.
But then The Surge came out and I decided to give the genre another shot by trying that out. I ended up loving that game. So I decided to give Dark Souls II a second chance, armed with more knowledge of the genre and how you were supposed to approach it, and it all just clicked. From there I didn't look back and I've loved every FromSoft Soulslike I've played since.
