RPG's you didn't like intially, but ended up enjoying a lot

[JarlFrank]

strong beginning

Pillars of Eternity 1 and 2

W H A T

 

[Thac0]

Dragon Age Origins really threw me off the first time I played it.
I was relatively new into the genre, and was playing everything that was mentioned as a classic anywhere.
I arrived at DAO as my first Decline Age game, and it was rough coming from Infinity Engine games.
Only four classes, skilltrees which are not exactly blooming with depth, slow combat, weird itemisation, tons of trash mobs and trash loot coupled with low inventory size and a few dozen other complaints.

I finished the game eventually years later, it is really not that bad. Mages are fun, and unlike the other classes they have quite a lot of variation depending on build. The story is serviceable for the genre. Some of the subconflicts in the sidelocations are straight up good, like the mage tower, the dwarves and their golem chalice and the elves and their furry problem.
The dungeons stay grindy, but after a time I started chain pulling two packs at once, to fry them in a flurry of thunder and sleet storms.
Also I played them on hard the second time, which feels like the right difficulty for that sort of game. Unfair makes random encounters really annoying, as you have to watch for wounds constantly, normal makes the game braindead.

 

[Grunker]

strong beginning

Pillars of Eternity 1 and 2

W H A T

Gilded Vale is one of the best parts of Pillars imho

 

[hellbent]

Arcanum - being a huge combatfag, I hated the combat. Then I settled into the world and story on the second attempt at a playthrough and enjoyed it a lot.
NWN 2 - played it at launch and it was buggy as shit. Couldn't advance past a cutscene and hated the camera and UI that were a big decline from that of the original NWN. Put in much more time with it after patches fixed many issues and MoTB and SoZ launched.

 

[Lord_Potato]

Neverwinter Nights II - I hated first part of OC at the beginning and couldn't get past first chapter. Now, after finishing it twice, I'm quite fond of the entire campaign, despite some derpy parts.

I guess I'm still in my "can't get past first chapter" phase.

 

[V_K]

Dungeon Master and all the various DM-likes - The Summoning, Anvil of Dawn, Legacy etc. First tried them in my late teens and found the dungeons too drab and monotone, and the character development, too simplistic. Fast-forward to ten years later, and I'm having an absolute blast.

Prey. At first I found it visually cluttered and disorienting, but after some tinkering with graphical settings and finally being able to see, I ended up enjoying it a fair bit.

Baldur's Gate 2 - The first dungeon with bio-experiments kind of put me off, since it felt like a departure from the tone of the first game

I think the problem with that dungeon is not so much tonal discrepancy as the fact that it's a boring linear slog with one too many boring fights.

 

[Shadenuat]

loved fallout moment you walk out of the cave
loved bg moment ur thrown into forest. bg2 just because of first lines of amazing irenicus vo
planescape got hooked during dialogue with Dhall already, Deionarra then destroyed my teen mind. and Sigil is fucking amazing. I wasn't even that good at engrish back in the day, btw.
Gothic I tried to climb and walk through barrier and got disintegrated, that was enough to make me love the game. falling into river and gettin carried to weedcamp was the biggest kicker tho.
Icewind Dale first bits of intro city music got me in
Wiz8 I replayed Monastery without going anywhere else just because I liked it a lot
ToEE starts slow but magic missiles and frogs was already cool
Arcanum's character building screen was enough to make me waste years of my life on replaying this game
VTM first NPC said I am malcavian and thus fucked > love. that troika writing, it just pulls you in.
Deus Ex? that one, perhaps, can take a bit more time because only when you replay levels you realise all the nuance developers put in them

looking back, I am happy I got to experience all the masterpieces in a fairly steady fashion and in all the genres at the same time, be it tb realztime akshun or blobber. RPGs are great, but those made by people who had to be the first and lay the foundation for genres are the greatest.

 

[Darth Canoli]

ToEE, first time i played, i dropped it before even leaving Hommlet.
Second time, dropped it before leaving Hommlet...
Well, you really have to skip Hommlet retardation and explore the moathouse as soon as possible.

 

[Mark Richard]

A few. Sadly it's not uncommon to get off to a poor start. KOTOR 2's Peragus Mining Facility goes on forever, and Alpha Protocol presents a fairly straight-laced first chapter before unloading all the James Bond goodness. Wasteland 2 takes the cake though. Players are forced to choose between saving one of two locations - Highpool or the Agricultural Center. Highpool is a simplistic hour-long baby's first RPG town, and the Ag Center is a brutal 6 hour gauntlet of monsters that inflict an incurable disease! At least that's the way it was in the initial release. They've probably reduced the absurd disparity in updates by now.

RPGs tend to require an upfront commitment due to their complexity. I think from the get-go you're prepared to hang in there longer than you normally would in other genres, because the potential rewards are far more fulfilling. I'm glad I stuck with all the games mentioned. KOTOR 2 in particular is a personal favourite.

 

[Strange Fellow]

Couldn't stand Dark Souls at first. It didn't help that I went for the graveyard first thing after escaping the asylum, and banged my head against that for a while without questioning it, because I'd been told the game was really hard. Can't pinpoint exactly when it got good, but boy did it ever get good. Probably when I unlocked my first shortcut.

 

[JarlFrank]

Players are forced to choose between saving one of two locations - Highpool or the Agricultural Center. Highpool is a simplistic hour-long baby's first RPG town, and the Ag Center is a brutal 6 hour gauntlet of monsters that inflict an incurable disease!

Yeah I really didn't like the enemy design in Ag Center. Tried not to get infected so I had to kite all the enemies and make sure I had enough of a distance before killing them. Very annoying.

 

[Mexi]

POE: thought it was too boring until I discovered the joy of Swayer approved min-maxing
Alpha Protocol: took me about 3 attempts to finally finish the opening chapters due to the horrific gameplay.

PoE is kind of similar to me too. I started with a boring build. I forgot what it was, maybe warrior. I then looked up that NerdCommando, and his killsteal Paladin is ridiculously fucking fun build to play. That fucking instant-heal animation when you kill something is so satisfying and never gets old.

 

[Testownia]

Pillars of Eternity - The moment I discovered, via autistically analysing Raedric and later getting a confirmation from Sawyer that my analysis was correct - that the setting and quests are much, much more "morally grey" than 95% of all "dark and mature" RPGs.

 

[AdolfSatan]

First time I played Prelude to Darkness I dropped it after the confusing dream sequence on the start, the controls were unintuitive and the camera was buggy, what a piece of shit rite?
Glad I decided to give it a second try because it became one of my favorite RPGs ever.

 

[Lord_Potato]

First time I played Prelude to Darkness I dropped it after the confusing dream sequence on the start, the controls were unintuitive and the camera was buggy, what a piece of shit rite?
Glad I decided to give it a second try because it became one of my favorite RPGs ever.

How many times I bounced off this dream sequence (and general lack of feedback in the first minutes of the game) I can't even count. Finally I decided to push through it and the rest of the game was epic (except for the rushed ending that really took me by surprise - and I did not choose the rebel path).

 

[Rieser]

Kotor 2, I suppose. Pretty good game. The first section at that fucking mind-numbingly boring station might be one of the most off-putting starts to an RPG I've ever played though.

 

[Bad Sector]

KOTOR 2. I happen to be one of the apparently few (judging from comments about it here) who likes KOTOR's gameplay (well, mainly for exploring the maps and killing stuff) so i was mostly playing on autopilot without paying much attention until a bit after i reached Telos when i noticed that there is some sort of plot going on. I ended up loving the game but the start was boring and TBH aside form Kreia, i liked KOTOR 1's characters more.

Gothic 1. I just found the game a bit aimless and didn't really like the main character. Actually i tried to play the game twice and abandoned it, but eventually ended up getting hooked and enjoyed it.

Fallout: New Vegas. Similar to the previous games, i found Goodsprings boring and just couldn't care about anything that was going on. I dropped it the first time i played it until years later but eventually it ended up being my favorite RPG that i have finished multiple times with different builds, choices, etc. Nowadays whenever i suggest the game to someone i point out that if they do not like Goodsprings that is normal as it is a bad intro and just keep playing since it picks up later :-P. Though IMO the whole encounter with Benny should not have been part of a video that is also a flyby over the entire world because it doesn't create a sense of "you" and wasn't until the third time i played the game that i realized he's actually talking to me (first time i was barely paying any attention, second time i also saw it as a some sort of part of flyby with characters talking to get me into the mood for the game and it wasn't until the third time when i had already completed the game once and went through the entire story that i realized what was going on). Instead it should have been an in-engine encounter, i think it would have felt much more "personal" if you got to be your character (even if only for a few seconds) before getting ambushed.

Alpha Protocol. Another game i dropped until i tried it later, i think it was around the first or second time i tried to play a minigame which IIRC is very early in the game - i remember just couldn't get around the controls at all. Eventually i played it again though i was really not into it with the first real mission being on middle east as i never liked the middle east setting in games. It picked up later and i ended up enjoying it but not to the point of doing multiple playthroughs.

Also pretty much every Spiders game i have played starts with me thinking that they've made yet another interesting setting but it looks like "this time" they didn't manage to make the rest of the game interesting enough - but then it picks up after a while (usually a few hours in) and i end up liking it anyway. The only game of theirs i dropped near the beginning (but played again later and finished it) was Mars: War Logs.

 

[DemonKing]

Mortal Shell was one for me recently. I absolutely hated the beta/demo but for some reason after reading reviews decided to give it another go and the final game turned out to be one of the better designed Soulslike games out there as far as difficulty/balance goes.

 

[Invictus]

Might and Magic 6
I tried it a few years after release but I never got into it for one reason or another; it felt too much of a departure from the previous games in the series I finally got to playing it last year and it became one of my favorite games not only in the Might and Magic series but overall

Planescape Torment
I was high on Baldur’s Gate so I wanted to go straight from the first to the second one but decided to try Planescape, did the Dustmen’s Mausoleum and went back to start Baldur’s Gate 2. About a year after went back with the proper mindset to play it and loved every second of it

 

[Darth Canoli]

First time I played Prelude to Darkness I dropped it after the confusing dream sequence on the start, the controls were unintuitive and the camera was buggy, what a piece of shit rite?
Glad I decided to give it a second try because it became one of my favorite RPGs ever.

How many times I bounced off this dream sequence (and general lack of feedback in the first minutes of the game) I can't even count. Finally I decided to push through it and the rest of the game was epic (except for the rushed ending that really took me by surprise - and I did not choose the rebel path).

Forgot about Prelude, the intro bounced me off twice as well.
I probably gave it another shot only because of the Codex, thanks for this.

Prelude and ToEE probably have the worst first 10 minutes among great cRPG.
Except it could drag for a couple of hours in ToEE.

 

[Mark Richard]

Players are forced to choose between saving one of two locations - Highpool or the Agricultural Center. Highpool is a simplistic hour-long baby's first RPG town, and the Ag Center is a brutal 6 hour gauntlet of monsters that inflict an incurable disease!

Yeah I really didn't like the enemy design in Ag Center. Tried not to get infected so I had to kite all the enemies and make sure I had enough of a distance before killing them. Very annoying.

And since the monsters aren't using firearms, opportunities to replenish your ammunition stocks are limited. I have to imagine choosing the Ag Center over Highpool grants a disproportionately large amount of XP due to the sheer number of enemies. You go in as boys, and come out as men.

As one of the most visually interesting areas in the first half of Wasteland 2, with a survival horror premise that could've been gold in the right hands, it's a shame the Ag Center was handled so poorly. Tasked with investigating a research facility, you arrive to find almost everybody hideously malformed and covered in huge pustules. From there it's off to explore the facility, restore power, and develop a cure before your team succumb to the infection. A megalomaniacal artificial intelligence wouldn't be out of place here.

 

[Erebus]

Hordes of the Underdark. NWN 1 OC was so mediocre that my expectations for the expansion packs were extremely low. The beginning of HotU gave me the impression that it was going to be nothing more than high-level dungeon crawl and I quickly gave up on it.

I went back to it a few years later, on the advice of a friend, and I rather liked it. The first chapter isn't very memorable, but the second and third are pretty cool.

 

[Chippy]

If you wanna call it a RPG: King Arthur The Roleplaying Wargame 2. Everything was worse than the first game. And it was a bug riddled mess that I couldn't finish on the first go. I did on the second, and you could just see the potential if they had been given the time to realise it. It could have been one of my all time favourite games. I enjoyed it once, but once was enough.

 

[Fishy]

Players are forced to choose between saving one of two locations - Highpool or the Agricultural Center. Highpool is a simplistic hour-long baby's first RPG town, and the Ag Center is a brutal 6 hour gauntlet of monsters that inflict an incurable disease!

Yeah I really didn't like the enemy design in Ag Center. Tried not to get infected so I had to kite all the enemies and make sure I had enough of a distance before killing them. Very annoying.

And since the monsters aren't using firearms, opportunities to replenish your ammunition stocks are limited. I have to imagine choosing the Ag Center over Highpool grants a disproportionately large amount of XP due to the sheer number of enemies. You go in as boys, and come out as men.

As one of the most visually interesting areas in the first half of Wasteland 2, with a survival horror premise that could've been gold in the right hands, it's a shame the Ag Center was handled so poorly. Tasked with investigating a research facility, you arrive to find almost everybody hideously malformed and covered in huge pustules. From there it's off to explore the facility, restore power, and develop a cure before your team succumb to the infection. A megalomaniacal artificial intelligence wouldn't be out of place here.

Picked Ag Centre too and I have mixed feelings. Yes, it was the horrible grueling gauntlet with infection and ammo attrition, and that was rough. I won't lie, I hated it at some points, and have been through a fair few reloads, reconsidering my entire strategy. But boy, how fucking good it felt to overcome it. Ultimately, I have some weirdly fond memories of that early struggle. Guess that's half Stockholm syndrome and half Doc Rose being one of the best companions lore/story wise.

Spoiler

I genuinely screamed when she turned to the AI in the final battle. I had stopped investing early into my medic since I got her almost from the start, so was without a good medic for the final gauntlet... I was amazed they dared such a stunt. Taking away the medic of the player's team right before the final battle? Those beautiful bastards...

 

[Alpan]

I bounced off Morrowind two times before managing to make a character that didn't try to be everything at the same time (because everything seemed interesting). The exact same happened with Arcanum when I first played it.

Almost gave up on Witcher 1 in the first chapter (nobody who played W1 can blame me) and denied myself a very enjoyable RPG.

All three games I regard very highly. These near-miss experiences would help a lot when playing The Age of Decadence more than a decade later, which is one of my favorite games.