What RPGs you hated at first that ended up being enjoyable?

[Darth Canoli]

Prelude to Darkness.
I tried to play at least twice before my Codex subscription and couldn't get past the battle intro, ugly is alright but sluggish on top of it, it was too much.
Thanks to the Codex and probably Lord Potato whom commented on his playthrough, I tried harder and discovered one of the best cRPG ever made (in one of the most sluggish and buggy engine but still).

Underrail.
I didn't hate it as much as I hated PtD at first and I didn't change my mind that much afterwards but still, playing past the Junkyard after X aborted playthrough, along with the movement speed options (which the dev once said he'd never implement) made me appreciate the game.
I'm still on the fence between a mediocre/decent and an alright/good appreciation but it's worth playing and enjoyable.

PoE 1 & 2, PK and DOS 2.
I got the opposite experience, I wanted to like them, it doesn't start so bad but it gets worse and worse and all the terrible features just pile up.

 

[Cryomancer]

NwN2. Hated. Installed spell fixes and loved it.

 

[Catacombs]

Baldur's Gate I
Fallout
Underrail (the first few hours trying to navigate and understand the stats; have since sunk more than a hundred hours into it and really loving int.)

The opposite (liked the game but ended up hating it):
DOS 1 and 2
Divine Divinity

Larian is shit.

 

[FriendlyMerchant]

Never happened. It's either I like it, I hate it, or I liked it and then started to hate it. I don't give terrible games a second chance and it's even easier for me to do so because I take measure to avoid the sunk cost fallacy. Plain and simple, you try to convince yourself that you liked bad games thanks to the sunk cost fallacy. If you don't buy the game and borrow it instead for free, you don't need to worry about any psychological urges to convince yourself to like a bad game. You simply uninstall it and ignore it.

 

[Desiderius]

D&D

 

[Supermedo]

Divinity original sin, didn't like the writing and dropped the game, came back again to play when they released the enhanced edition and I really liked it.

The Temple of Elemental Evil. Hommlet made me want to kill myself, Lareth made me want to kill the devs, and Nulb made me wish I'd killed myself back in Hommlet. And then it got good. Really, really good.

Is it playable? I heard the game was a buggy mess, and the GOG version didn't fix that.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Is it playable? I heard the game was a buggy mess, and the GOG version didn't fix that.

https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/project-temple-released.98904/

 

[luj1]

None

 

[Abu Antar]

I was uncertain about Blackguards when I first played it. I was kind of liking it, but it wasn't really clicking with me. A few hours in, my mind had changed. I had a better grasp of the rule set, which helps a lot. The same goes for Drakensang: The River of Time. Reading up on the rule set, and also understanding how equipment works, made things easier.

 

[Darth Canoli]

The Temple of Elemental Evil. Hommlet made me want to kill myself, Lareth made me want to kill the devs, and Nulb made me wish I'd killed myself back in Hommlet. And then it got good. Really, really good.

As much as I find Hommlet's quest structure absolutely retarded, I loved Lareth the Beautiful and I wish we could enlist him for good.
And Nulb isn't fantastic but it's quite alright with a great side-quest (fishing) and a good tavern brawl, plus a couple of decent quests.

 

[Joggerino]

I'm thinking about this question and actually not a single RPG that fits the criteria comes to mind.

 

[Angriph]

D&D

Which edition/s?
D20 doesn't have the best distribution curve but D&D is so emblematic and features so many build options and content that is hard not to fall in love with it.

 

[Angriph]

I was uncertain about Blackguards when I first played it. I was kind of liking it, but it wasn't really clicking with me. A few hours in, my mind had changed. I had a better grasp of the rule set, which helps a lot. The same goes for Drakensang: The River of Time. Reading up on the rule set, and also understanding how equipment works, made things easier.

I have yet to play Blackguards but I recall playing The River of Time on release and loving it from start to end. I found it such an improvement over the first one.
Back in the day there was a Spanish/Italian publisher named FX Interactive that released fairly unknown games FULLY DUBBED for 10/20 euros, and both Drakensang were done by them.
If I remember correctly, each stat was dependant on several other stats. I liked being able to spend experience points on the go as opposed to leveling up for a change.

 

[rubinstein]

vtmb - hated my first ventrue playthrough, but then tried as a malkavian a year later and it was so much better. obfuscate is just too good.
ss2 - i needed three attempts to get into it. finally i played melee/psi character. psi str + crystal shard combo was fun

 

[Zlaja]

Fallout 1 - Failed my rat diplomacy check and kept sucking at combat so much I felt I was wasting my fucking time. And that clumbersome inventory didn't help. Then I got good managed to suck little less and the atmosphere started to suck me in. Also, this was way back and my younger self was just making a transition from console gaming.

 

[Harthwain]

Fallout: New Vegas.

I really hated the ugly 3D at first as it felt against the spirit of the original Fallouts, but the game won me overgradually by having other enjoyable bits (light survival elements, V.A.T.S., etc.). All in all I ended up liking the game more than not, although I still place isometric Fallouts higher than New Vegas, for obvious reasons.

 

[Gargaune]

Is it playable? I heard the game was a buggy mess, and the GOG version didn't fix that.

Absolutely, get the Temple+ engine mod that Rusty linked. Optionally, you can also get the Circle of Eight content mod, comes in two flavours - minimal content updates and lots of content updates. I played the game with Temple+ and the basic Co8 mod.

And Nulb isn't fantastic but it's quite alright with a great side-quest (fishing) and a good tavern brawl, plus a couple of decent quests.

May well be, but I was too traumatised by Hommlet. I got to Nulb and was like nope, not risking it, get me walkthrough and get me to the fucking Temple already.

 

[MurkrLurkr]

For me it was Kingdoms of Amalur. I'm usually attracted to gloomier, peculiar settings but underneath its MMOish Whimsyshire like surface, I found a game that has more to give then meets the casual eye; e.g. Destiny skill-tree system and its flexibility and openness to trying different skills and builds without the need to restart the game was new to me at the time..

 

[Tony]

Mine would be an MMORPG. World of Warcraft. I wanted to hate it before I played it. All my friends wanted to do when Warcraft 2 came out was play Warcraft 2. That and a game called Hexen. Command & Conquer was another one they loved. I don't like RTS games. We used to run D&D campaigns. Warcraft 2 LAN parties ruined that. Warcraft 3 came out and everything was Warcraft 3 this and that. So I hated Warcraft. I tried World of Warcraft and fell in love with it the second I logged in for the first time.

 

[Tony]

Mine would be an MMORPG. World of Warcraft. I wanted to hate it before I played it. All my friends wanted to do when Warcraft 2 came out was play Warcraft 2. That and a game called Hexen. Command & Conquer was another one they loved. I don't like RTS games. We used to run D&D campaigns. Warcraft 2 LAN parties ruined that. Warcraft 3 came out and everything was Warcraft 3 this and that. So I hated Warcraft. I tried World of Warcraft and fell in love with it the second I logged in for the first time.

Have playing World of Warcraft made you check out Warcraft 2 or Warcraft 3 too?

I played both before World of Warcraft, as well as the original Warcraft. I'm just not an RTS fan.

 

[Valdetiosi]

Have to be Morrowind for me. I was like "God what a piece of shit game it doesn't have what makes Oblivion good"

Fast forward now and I'm like "God what a great game this is, why didn't Oblivion turn out to be bit similiar?"

 

[Dhaze]

I first played 20 hours of a blind run of DOS2 and absolutely hated it for its systems and tone. Some weeks ago I was bored and played it from start to end and I quite liked it at the end. Moreover, the more I think about it now that I have finished it, the more I like it while remembering things such as Lohse's curse or Fane's backstory. I found the color and music relaxing and the character stories cute if a bit simple. What allowed me to enjoy it this second time around was researching the systems more to plan my characters in advance.

I had an experience somewhat similar to yours.

First played it until the last chapter's beginning, at which point I had grown increasingly and exceedingly frustrated with a number of problems the game had, thus dropped that playthrough.

The encounter design annoyed me beyond reason with a frankly ridiculous amount of ambushes; so frequent they were they became easily predictable, thus defeating the very point of an ambush. Then there was the Magical/Physical Armor system, which recompensed pure damage to the detriment of crowd control abilities and even environmental effects. Plus a collection of little nags like the fact that finding a good, high-level weapon almost always resulted in my character being unable to use it right away because of the 1 or 2 levels discrepancy.

And though this one is purely personal, Ifan Ben-Mezd always got under my skin because he looks exactly like a guy I know who's a real piece of shit. (and why does he look so much like Thorin Oakenshield?)

In the end, I reinstalled the game a year later. Created an undead necromancer as main character, only travelled with Fane and Lohse, and meta-gamed to an extent in order to focus as much as possible on what I liked about the game while minimising what aspects I disliked... and I had good, genuine fun. Not devoid of irritations, but fun nonetheless.

It's definitely one of those games I can truly enjoy only after having gone through all or most of it once.

 

[Angriph]

I first played 20 hours of a blind run of DOS2 and absolutely hated it for its systems and tone. Some weeks ago I was bored and played it from start to end and I quite liked it at the end. Moreover, the more I think about it now that I have finished it, the more I like it while remembering things such as Lohse's curse or Fane's backstory. I found the color and music relaxing and the character stories cute if a bit simple. What allowed me to enjoy it this second time around was researching the systems more to plan my characters in advance.

I had an experience somewhat similar to yours.

First played it until the last chapter's beginning, at which point I had grown increasingly and exceedingly frustrated with a number of problems the game had, thus dropped that playthrough.

The encounter design annoyed me beyond reason with a frankly ridiculous amount of ambushes; so frequent they were they became easily predictable, thus defeating the very point of an ambush. Then there was the Magical/Physical Armor system, which recompensed pure damage to the detriment of crowd control abilities and even environmental effects. Plus a collection of little nags like the fact that finding a good, high-level weapon almost always resulted in my character being unable to use it right away because of the 1 or 2 levels discrepancy.

And though this one is purely personal, Ifan Ben-Mezd always got under my skin because he looks exactly like a guy I know who's a real piece of shit. (and why does he look so much like Thorin Oakenshield?)

In the end, I reinstalled the game a year later. Created an undead necromancer as main character, only travelled with Fane and Lohse, and meta-gamed to an extent in order to focus as much as possible on what I liked about the game while minimising what aspects I disliked... and I had good, genuine fun. Not devoid of irritations, but fun nonetheless.

It's definitely one of those games I can truly enjoy only after having gone through all or most of it once.

Now that you mention it, I also had to house rule out some stuff out in order to enjoy DOS2. For example, avoiding the talent that allows you to talk to animals and kicking out Sir Lora immediately. No talking animals in my watch! Minimizing the things that took me out of the game was somewhat enough to create an immersion that was initially lacking.

About Ifan, I also remember that my first run attempt was with him as main character, and he annoyed the hell out of me. The dialogue responses are written in such a way that they make a mess of his origin storyline, which still I was supposed to carry through.

In my second attempt I hesitated a lot between making a custom character or choosing an origin character. I ended up taking the Red Prince and it worked well for me because his story is inoffensive enough that I felt I could move on without having to figure out a lot of backstory from the start. I had Ifan in my party and he was a resourceful guy, much more acceptable than he was as MC. Together with Fane and Lohse it was a decent group to have around.

 

[jac8awol]

Fallout, as a teen. I just didn't get it. It was overwhelming, like you can go anywhere and do anything. Too many possibilities, too much to try. So I put it down for a few weeks. Next time I tried it things suddenly clicked and it became one of my favorites of all time.

 

[mediocrepoet]

Drakensang, the jank and art put me off at first, but then I saw how pretty much everything it did was simulating turn-based play (e.g. timed herb gathering) and had a decent system implementation and a reasonably good, if fairly standard, fantasy adventure.