Games you didn't have much expectations for but surprisingly ended up enjoying them
 

Title says it all. We all have games we more or less know what to expect from, but then there's others where we don't really know what to expect and just say "ah f*ck it, let's see how it is. How bad can it be?"... and then they surprise us in a positive way.

A few ones that come to my mind:

Animal Crossing - I didn't know what it was at all until I saw my brother playing it on GameCube one day in 2007. Some years later I remembered its existence and decided to play it myself too... and ended up liking it a lot.

Deus EX Human Revolution: Deus Ex is not exactly an obscure game series, but I've never had played it at all until 2012 when I got this game for like 2 euro from Steam. I am not into shooters, but was told this one was different since it had RPG and stealth elements and you weren't forced to shoot and kill most of your enemies. Since the price was ridiculously cheap for a quite new game at the time I decided to give it a try... and liked it a lot.

Super Smash Bros. Melee: Ok, you're all thinking now "what?!"... well you see, I didn't get the chance to play the N64 Smash game, even though it looked interesting to me. As for the GameCube title, I didn't know of it until I saw it in a store around Christmas 2002, let alone if it was good or not. I was only 12 at the time, so it's not like I was very aware of what was going on in the gaming world yet.

Now, I'm not saying I expected the game to be mediocre. I assumed it was gonna be good. For a 12 year old massive Nintendo fan like I was, I obviously knew it was gonna be decent enough... but didn't really expect it to arguably be the best Nintendo GameCube game ever and that the Smash series would become a huge thing. The N64 one made some impact, but it isn't the first N64 title you think of when you think of the console. The GameCube game took it to another level.

What about you?

Transformers: Devastation comes to my mind. I knew it was likely to be good, based on all I'd heard, but I'm about as casual a fan of Transformers as it comes, so I didn't really know if it would do anything for me personally. I only picked it up because I liked the developers' TMNT game. When I finally did play it, I played it every day for weeks and ended up buying it for a good friend as a gift, such was how impressed I was by it.

As a kid, I found the original Rocket Knight Adventures for Sega Genesis to be a hidden gem. For whatever reason, there was a new copy on extreme clearance at a local KB Toys for $8, which was the cheapest "new" video game I had ever seen at the time. I got it simply because it was so cheap and looked to be my kind of game (action platformer, mascot character), but I didn't have huge expectations for it to be great quality because of it's cheap price and that I had never heard of Sparkster. But boy, what a game it was! Without a few months, I had tracked down a copy of the sequel Genesis game and enjoyed both of them for many years since!

Rocket League, since I'm not a fan of driving games or sports games.

Final Fantasy 12, because I didn't like FFX and thought the series would only get worse.

Bioshock 2, there's a lot of hate thrown at it but truth be told, the gameplay was improved from the first one.

Pokemon Black/White 2. I didn’t think much of the original games but the sequels blew me away with all the content they had. The characters were way more interesting and Hugh quickly became my favourite rival in the whole series. Black 2 is still my fav Pokémon game.

The new Spider-Man game on PS4 is far far better than I was expecting it to be.

Mario and Rabbids wound up being one of my favorite Switch games when everyone thought it was going to be some poor Ubisoft spinoff game at first. The DK DLC is also amazing.

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe: when I first got it, I hardly knew anything about the Mario Kart games so I didn’t realize there was going to be much more fun to it than exploring new levels. I ended up playing games with a popular YouTube person and ended really loving the game. I keep having fun playing the game online.

I bought Splatoon 2 just to see what it’s about. I didn’t expect to like it as much as I do. I thought it was just going to be a regular game but I ended up having fun playing turf wars and ranked battles online!

Not sure how well it applies, since I kind of had a good feeling about it based on pedigree alone, but whatever. I've been playing "Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker" on the Legacy Collection for PS3. I'm a huge fan of the series so I knew it'd be good, but it's been a ton better then I expected. Since it was on PSP originally, I thought it would be "watered down" in some way, rather than possibly the largest game in the series. I've been playing it every day for two weeks; I'm not sure I can say that about any other MGS. So good.

There is a MGS game for the Game Boy Color which was also considered surprisingly very good back in the day, considering it's a stealth game for the ****ing Game Boy Color

Ah yeah, I have that. I don't think I ever finished it, but it's definitely good. It's very much like the original Metal Gear, with some of the mechanics from Metal Gear Solid stapled on. Pretty good!

Kind of an older one, but "The Darkness" for 360. The FPS genre is really stale for me personally, so it takes something different for me to like a game in that genre. The Darkness was genuinely interesting!

Attack On Titan 1 and 2 for the PS4. In captures the anime in every way as well as the Arkham games did for Batman.

Yeah, FF12 is radically different. Though I've tried to get into it on multiple occasions and always end up losing interest.

I don't know, maybe Link's Awakening on Gameboy? It was like, "Eh, how good could a stupid Gameboy Zelda game be?" I think I liked it almost as much as A Link to the Past.

I have the DX version with colour. I need to go back ot it one day. I think I only beat the 1st dungeon but then got lost in the 2nd dungeon or smth.

It's kinda funny to see Mario villains ina Zelda game haha

So, about a couple of months ago I bought One Piece Pirate Warriors 3 on the Switch eshop. It had an 84% discount or something, which made it have a really low price. I had heard about it and read a bit about it, but I still took the risk and bought it. After all, it was so cheap. Even if it turned out to be not so great, it wouldn't really be much of a waste.

...and I have about close to 70 hours on it now. It's actually a pretty solid licensed game. Even if it's not as good as Hyrule Warriors, it's still a lot of fun. The only cons I can think of is it being a bit repetitive and not too challenging for the most part. But that's literally it.

Pirate Warriors 4 is fun as well, but I just like 3 better for some reason.