Metroid II- Got it when I was very young and really not good enough to navigate the game especially since this one had no map. Tried it again when I was much older and wound up loving it.

Kid Icarus- Just took me a while to get into the gameplay. It's kind of weird with some Megamanish platforming and some Metroidish elements. The controls also feel a bit dated considering I played it in 2010 or so.

Xenoblade Chronicles X- I was expecting it to be more like Chronicles 1 and wasn't expecting the pseudo MMO gameplay. But it got me eventually. Actually think it was kind of influential on BOTW in some ways.

Banjo-Kazooie Nuts and Bolts- Like most people I hated the game on principal when it came out. I only wound up playing it when it was down to 10 bucks or so later on. Even then, it took me a while to get on board with the weird physics. But eventually, I came to love it.

Smash Bros Melee- Well, sort of. Kirby was my main in Smash 64, and he is just so terrible in Melee. Once I switched characters and stopped getting destroyed, wound up liking it much more.

Street Fighter 3- Taking out all of the characters except Ryu and Ken was an interesting choice. I didn't quite hate this game, but I just preferred the Alpha series with all the characters I was familiar with. Didn't really get into Street Fighter 3 till the anniversary collection way later.

Kirby's Dreamland 3- I never hated this one, but after Kirby Superstar, this felt like a huge step back. And, yeah it kind of is, but eventually I learned to like it on its own merits.

I won't say I disliked it, but it took a while for me to warm up to Demon's Souls on the PS3.

There was a similar thread last year. Feeling lazy I just copied my answer from that thread.

Punch out!!

When I first tried this boxing game I did not like it at all. I punched and punched but got nowhere besides beating the first opponent. It was first when I revisited the game years later that I finally got it. The game is not so much a boxing game it is is a pattern recognition game. Now it is one of my all time favorite games and one of the top 3 games on NES. This change of mindset I think have more to do with maturity of the mind of button-mashing child than anything else.

Super Smash Bros Melee

This was the first game in the smash series that I played, in a store at a demo station. I did not have a Gamecube and none of my friend did, mostly since they did not think it was cool like the PS2. But I did have a PC with an N64 emulator, so me and my best friend played smash 64 on the computer. Spent countless hours me as Mario and him as DK. Two years or so after the GC released me and my brothers put our savings into buying a Gamecube with a few popular games, one of them Melee.

I did not like Melee at all. It was so stupidly fast, everything was small and very chaotic. The original game on 64 was chaotic for sure, but it did not give me the feel of frustration Melee did. Played very little smash on the cube and when I did it was Giant mode, since at least then I could actually see my character. Continued playing smash 64 instead.

Then one day a small gaming association we had in the small town we lived in decided to have a small Melee tournament. I did not want to be dead last and even less not join in at all, so I started to give it a serious go. Soon I got used to the smaller size, I stated to follow the faster game play and before I knew it I grew a love for the chaotic style. Of course lost to my baby brother the first match of the tournament anyway finishing dead last.

Today I still think Melee is the most responsive game in the series and to me by far the most enjoyable fighting game to watch competitive play of. Smash ultimate as to me surpassed it as a better game overall (much due to the ridiculous amount of content) but the hours spent in a couch with this gem is surpassed only by Mario Kart Double Dash!!. It is strange of the fast paced game play, that initially kept me from playing at all, is now the thing I miss the most in all of the sequels.

A game that I forgot to mention was Halo 5. I loved the beginning of the game and the multiplayer. Then I started the "campaign" and never played the game again.

legitimately every game I played during 2018 that wasn’t on Switch lol. Mario 64, Mario Sunshine, Mario World… to name a few. Can’t think of any games in recent memory I’ve had this experience with.

Actually, Resident Evil 1! I forgot to mention this one.

When I first got it, I was thinking something along the lines of "What the fuck is this shit?" and I put it down not to think about it again for a while.
Later, I had some friends over. We got high and ended up playing several different games. Resident Evil 1 among them. We also played through RE2 and did GE007 for like 20 hours or something, the sun literally set on the second night before we finished that gaming session. I had sleep problems for about a week, every time I closed my eyes all I could see was the vague screen burn-like image of some dude walking around with a gun. Good times! Screenburned into my memory.

MDK2 on Dreamcast. Tho my original basis was on the demo as I did not have time to get used to the controls. While it does prove DC needed a second analog. Once I did buy the game cheap and played it. The controls eventually grew on me. Just a steep learning curve back when games had that.

Sorta VanQuish but let me explain. When VanQuish was first shown it was a live-action teaser with no real gameplay. Peak 7th gen of when EVERYONE was chasing Gears of War. Most were lackluster and then we had the term "Halo Killer" as well for FPS games. It just gave the impression of some generic shooter. I got the game a few years after launch and OH MY GOD it is anything but generic. THE BEST TPS ever made in SP. My fave in the genre.

Dragon's Dogma. Again played a demo on 360 and hated it. My friend would later tell me it's just a game that demo's badly but is great. I trust them as they rarely let me down. So I bought the Arisen version on PS4. LOVED IT! So hyped for DDII!

Dragon Age: Origins.

Thought it presented like a 6th gen game which turned me off.

Eventually gave it a chance and it's one of my favorite games of all time.

Final Fantasy 7.

Had never played a JRPG before. Rented it and tried to return it, but missed the hour return window. So, just kept playing it. And kept renting it until I eventually bought it.

Demons souls, Persona 5, daysgone, death stranding,