Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines I didn’t get around to playing this game until about a decade after its release, and I seriously don’t understand who could find that game enjoyable except 13yo edgelords.

There's a lot of games people recommend me based on cozy things which is good cause I do like them.

Then they get confused when I'm going deep into the Warhammer or the rogue likes/lites cause those are not very cozy.

And I do not like visual novels despite being in the demographic.

Everyone seems to love Alan Wake. I played it recently, but didn't enjoy it.

I feel like I'm missing something.

Have a friend who is obsessed with the borderlands series. Played through the pre-sequel with him. Was not a good time

He wanted to play through 3 with me after, and I noped the hell out

Undertale was zero fun. Interesting story and I liked the graphics and music but the combat got extremely annoying, and I say this as someone who plays 8 bit (heck even 4 bit) combat games. I quit it.

This is kind of tangential to the question, but an incredibly irritating former friend would not shut the fuck up about Elden Ring for months after it came out and kept telling me to get it. I told him I didn’t like souls-like games and he said ER was “different” without explaining how. I still haven’t played it, even with recommendations from other people I trust. Same guy ensured I’ll never play Death Stranding, too.

Dragon’s Age Origins. Had a friend tell me how it was their favorite franchise and that specifically was the best game, such amazing lore, gameplay, etc.

Couldn’t even make it past the first quest before I hung it out.

I was the main marketer for "weird, different games" to my friends, back in school. I was the one that first found out about Harvest Moon on PSX and recommended it to another friend, he loved it - mind you, this was back in 2004. In 2006, I got 3 into World of Warcraft, I even printed a "beginners' guide" I made myself just to help them understand the game.

Two games that I experimented from word of mouth were Tibia and Ragnarok Online. The former I gave up the same day - there were like 10 players for each rat in the sewers, the respawn took forever and you were supposed to grind them until you reached level 7, which would take over a week of real playtime at that rate.
RO was an interesting situation, the dude who first started it was bragging about having lots of hours to play, when I disdainfully replied "Why pay when you can just play for free"? He didn't like the reply, but we didn't get along anyway, so I took every chance to jab him, and he did the same to me. Anyhoo, I went online, looked around for a private server and started playing, free of charge. The others didn't join in.

During school and college, none of my friends were interested in RTS or even turn-based strategy games. I already knew about Civilization thanks to my dad. In the internet years, I always lurked around some talks about strategy games and that's where I found Supreme Commander, which is still one of my favorites. Total Annihilation is still on my "to-play" list.