The original demon's souls. I went from cursing the developers to it being one of my fav games of all time. I gave it a shot prob 6 months after I first played it. Platinumed it.

Gears of war

at a quick glance it looks like a generic dudebro fest. Deep down there's an engaging story, chilling atmosphere, and downright some of the best TPS gameplay out there.

TES 4 Oblivion. Was the first game I bought on my 360 and after only like 3 hours I got into a fight with a guard and accidentally saved with the guard aggro'd, ruining my save and forcing a start over. Didn't feel like starting over and redoing that starting dungeon so I just quit and the game sat on my shelf for years. Ended up playing it again shortly before Skyrim released and enjoyed it alot more the 2nd time around. Now Bethesda is one of my top 5 favorite game studios.

Xenoblade Chronicles 2. The poor tutorial meant I had a weak grasp of the combat system and it made fights difficult and tedious. At one point I stopped playing for a few months and when I came back I watched some YouTube videos on how to play and then everything clicked and I came to enjoy it a lot. The Gatcha system for blades still sucks though.

Fallout 3 and Dark Souls 2. When I started both I was yawning and thinking 'Why did I buy this?'. I got their platinum with satisfaction.

Resident Evil 4. It was just too much of a departure for me from the rest of the series and it did not grab me so I quit after the first action set piece. During a summer break when I didn't really have any other games to play except RE4, I decided to give it one more shot and I absolutely loved it. Fantastic game, and easily the best in the series for me up to that point. I will be giving the RE4 Remake a go at some point as well.

I feel Monolith was never the best at teaching players how to play. X was confusing as well. Amazing games but man Monolith is not the best at tutorials. Xenoblade 3 you are still getting them 10 hours in.

Final Fantasy 8.
Mostly it’s because I went in with a negative outlook (because the Internet poisoned the well for me on that one and I developed some biases against it) mixed with bad tutorials that emphasized things like the drawing skill, when other skills were superior. When I played it a second time ignoring the biases (I think I might have dropped acid before playing) I enjoyed it a lot more.

Now FF8 occupies the top tier on my list with FF6 and maybe FF7 if you include the first 2/3rds, as I’m not a giant fan of the later parts of the game (Cloud unconscious, the Ancient City, and Yufi’s town). I love the Winter town, but hate the area around it. Winter areas are always a big hit and miss for me, FF7 is both. But FF7 is second tier for me because of those later parts.

What I find telling is when people call it the 'Draw system' instead of the Junction system. Draw is just one aspect of it, and it's how you get magic at first, which is very quickly replaced with GF abilities but the game doesn't fully tell you this, you have to find it out. Beelining for item magic refining skills allows you to stack prefered magic on correctly junctioned slots becoming really powerful. Add Meltdown and Aura and it's game over for most bosses.

Plus, Squall grows so much and changes a lot in the game, more than other protags.

The Legend of Zelda and TLoZ: A Link to the Past

Both for the same reason: I started with the second game first and absolutely loved it, and only afterwards got to play it's predecessor an successor. I was missing the RPG system (it's also the game that got me into RPGs), and some ennemies (Tektites in Zelda I, Knights in both titles)were so much weaker than in Zelda II that it felt dumbed down to me, and the perspective change didn't help things, eiter.

Zelda 1 did grow on me relatively quickly though, after 2 years I was playing it a lot, too. But for aLttP, it took me until the late 2000's before I really warmed up on it.

I had the exact same experience with Victoria II (and Hearts of Iron III instead of CK2 for you). Paradox games in general really need to grow on you.