Path of Exile. My friend introduced me to the game but he was a hardcore player so I started playing hardcore with him. A few years later I decided to try the game on my own in softcore and got addicted.

I have close to 5000h despite only playing like 8 leagues. (And who knows how many hours on PoB)

Mass Effect. I didn’t get far in the original. Played the Legendary Edition trilogy all the way through. Went back to the original. It’s the tank (Mako). It dies in like 2-3 hits and you get less XP for kills in it. It’s just not fun and they never fixed it in the original. Legendary fixes it. At the very least, it’s balanced to the game’s difficulty setting. Where in the original it’s stuck on the hardest setting, but only for the Mako missions.

Original came out in like 2007, Legendary came out in like 2016. Might be off by a year or two with one or both.

rimworld, dwarf fortress, factorio. ugh. cannot escape it now. though with DF the “jitter” of the chars moving messes with my eyes, so i really dont play it much. i know its turn based, I just like smoother movement or a roguelike where my actions begets movement in “clips”.

Various actually

• Speulnky
• Slay the spire
• Fallout : New Vegas
• Rogue Legacy.

My steam top X :

• Speulnky
• Balatro
• Isaac
• STS
• TF2
• FNV
• Rogue Legacy

Skyrim was this for me. Took me a bunch of tries to get into it but its one of my most played games now

Dwarf Fortress back in the day (I think it's more user friendly now). I just couldn't figure out how to do most things.

Then I just decided to like job it: watched some videos, took some notes -- basically did my homework, then was able to build a base and last long enough to starve. And again. Then the next time ran out of booze. Then was doing great but eventually had too many dwarfs and starved again. Then goblins. Then a big monster. And it goes on like that and that's the fun!

Destiny. I picked it up at launch, played the campaign, then thought "that's it?" I didn't exactly realize what Bungie was doing. I picked it back up when The Taken King launched and have been playing ever since. Still play D2 even though many people have dropped it.

Grounded. It initially felt impossible cuz early game practically every enemy one-shots you. Abandoned it for a while, then a friend played it and told me the secret is to learn all the movesets and perfect parry every single hit, and I was like "that sounds unreasonably difficult", and then immediately played it for like nine hours straight.

Demon Souls, couldn't get into it the first time, then I gave it a shot sometime later but with a guide for only the order to do levels ( I have no walkthrough policy) , it is fantastic (ps3)

Valheim.

The first time I tried it, I got a really terrible seed, which turned me off pretty quickly. I also went in solo and blind.

My second time around, I got a pretty decent seed.

One where the Swamps actually gave me iron for once, and the Plains and Mistlands weren't surrounding my tiny ass meadows spawning area...

I also watched a few tutorials and played with friends.

By the end, I had 1800 hours in the game and had built entire towns in vanilla mode.

I spent about twice as much time in creative/debug mode just building away.

I haven't played in a year but I can't wait to dive back in with the new North location once it releases.

Enter the Gungeon. I stopped after a while because it felt a bit too hard and I felt like I wasn't progressing. Came back 3 months later and had a blast and beat it.

• Nova Drift
• The Long Dark

Now my most-played games on Steam!

Baldurs Gate 2. Never played the first and didn’t know D&D so it was a LOT to get used when Final Fantasy was the most complicated RPG I’d played before trying it.

Fumbled the intro dungeon and just couldn’t get into it so it sat in a drawer for awhile. Then Throne of Baal was announced and for some reason I gave it another try and got SUPER into it. No idea how many times I’ve played through it now. The engine really doesn’t hold up well but I love the characters so much.

Stationeers. I bought it a while ago and apparently played it for an hour, although I don't remember anything about that experience. Then I got into it again and got really into it.

EDIT: It happened with DRG a while ago too. That was because my motion sickness prevented me from getting into it, but a while later and with a PC upgrade I was able to get into it.

Monster Hunter for me.

Space Engineers. It was a bit hard to get at first, but then it clicked like crazy

Sekiro

Hades & BotW were like that for me.

Happy to say - none. Only time a game didn't click right away was due to being way too young for it, and all of those were most excellent once I played them again later in life.

Not a game, but as a Fallout fan I hated the show at first. The acting is bad and everything looks too shiny and new to be 200 years old (plus I don't like how the show is inspired more by Fallout 4 than any other game in the series). But I gave it another chance a year later, and it's growing on me. Binged the first season in a a few days. Sure beats a lot of the other crap on TV these days.

Factorio. When it first came out, I played about 30 mins and I couldn't really get into it. Few months later I tried again, and now have over 3000 hours logged into it!

Outer wilds