On the flipside from the "games that badly disappointed" thread, which games were way better than you expected, and in what way/why?

Balatro. It looked fun, but didnt expect digital heroin.

Yeah speaking of digital drugs, I felt the same way about Vampire Survivors. Normally those roguelike/procedural/fight til you die type games aren't my thing at all, but VS was like crack to me.

Shadow of the Colossus. I knew absolutely nothing about it, and only bought it because it had a cool box art and was published by Sony. It went on to become my favorite PS2 and Sony game of all time!

I ignorantly shurgged off Parasite Eve 1 as a cheap Resident Evil clone and dropped it... then replayed a year or two later and fell in love.

Zone of The Enders 1 was a game that had me excited just looking at magazine screenshots, but the final product disappointed. Two years later I find its sequel sitting on a game store shelf, and something told me to buy it, I guess I was interested in where the story was going. It well exceeded my original ZoE expectations, and still stands as one of the greatest sequels in gaming history. It's a crime that this game isn't at least 10 times more popular than it is. An all time great imo.

Ring of Red is a game that I went into with moderate expectations (Konami branding and cool anime art were what sold me). Cool ass game, but it was somewhat challenging and I didn't have the time to "study" it due to highschool and an abundance of other great games taking my finite energy.

The truth is too many old games exceeded my expectations. Back in the day, we bought and borrowed games that we knew next to nothing about, so being pleasantly surprised was a regular occurrence.

Silent Hill F. I had Konami written off as dead, SH as a franchise of the past. Then F hit and it is the best horror game ever. Superb.

Expedition 33. Which I know sounds crazy. But when the reviews are all stellar and everyone says it is the next best thing... yeah, my skepticism cranks up. And yet, I think it was better than everyone said. I truly think it is the single greatest rpg every crafted in the history of all videogames.

The Last of Us on PS3, I played it only in 2017 and was blown away by the grafix and the gameplay as I had thought it was another zombie game with the clunky combat from the Uncharted games.

Another topic I will trickle games in as it goes. Too tired to list a bunch.

Stellar Blade. I needed this game from the first trailer. At first thought it was Korean Bayonetta. As more was shown I was more interested. Finally playing it and while it was different than I expected. It was also better than I was expecting and shocked how polished it was for a studios first console game. Became my GOTY and had to shout it from the rooftops until someone heard me. Legit on this forum heard me.

Great pick, Stellar Blade is awesome, far better than one would expect from, as you say, the dev's first console title. Anyone who writes it off as just a pretty face is doing themselves and the game a disservice.

AGREED.  My god, the game is stellar.  It competes with Bayo for my all time favorite action game, ever. 

I can't recommend the game enough.

I usually buy games I think I'll like, so I have at least some limited knowledge on it which makes it hard for games to surprise me too much in that sense, it happened a lot when I was young and had no internet, but I'll list one from the HD era.

Terraria

I got it on PS3 because it was so cheap, so why not.

Went into it thinking it was just 2D Minecraft as I heard before, which is partially true, but it was so, so much more.

I still remember when the first boss showed up, after a crypt message popped up out of the blue when I was digging. I was not ready for it, I didn't even know the game had bosses, but I loved it, and the more I played the game the more I discovered how much content it had, it's insane, the progression is great and it feels like you never stops discovering stuff, was easily over 150 hours in just a few days of playing it.