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Is there a genre of video games that you used to dislike but eventually changed your mind about it?

Drizzlehell

Banned
Like, for example, I used to think that MMORPGs are shit and a waste of time. Whenever World of Warcraft was popular, I first didn't even have an internet connection to try it out, and then once I had internet at home, I didn't have enough disposable income to just go in blind and drop a few bucks into a subscription. The only thing that I could afford were the MMOs that had a free trial and pretty much all of those looked and played like a coiled turd. They had very primitive looking visuals, weird-ass gameplay that had to be built around limitations of an instanced online game, lack of engaging story, and overall focus was on the game basically serving as some weird extension of an online chat room. I just wasn't into it and I couldn't understand why these games were so popular, and none of my friends were able to explain it either.

So anyway, things changed with the dawn of MMORPGs that finally started looking like actual role playing games and had an actual story-driven content that actually looked pretty compelling and engaging. Games like Star Wars: The Old Republic, Elder Scrolls Online, or Star Trek Online finally elevated the genre in my eyes to something that I could have fun with. Of course, compared to people who sink in thousands of hours into those games, I'm still an extremely casual MMO enjoyer, with my most-played game being ESO with just over 200 hours. But it's definitely a time that I enjoyed.

And the best part is that I STILL never played World of Warcraft, lol.
 

R6Rider

Gold Member
Souls games.

Played Demon's, dropped it pretty early.

Then in late 2013/ early 2014 I gave it another shot and loved it. Beat it, bought Dark Souls and loved it too. Grabbed Dark Souls 2 which had just released soon after.
 

Punished Miku

Human Rights Subscription Service
Sorta like now:
  • FPS: I've been warming up to some games slowly. I still don't think I'd be into it enough to buy most of them, but if they're on a sub I am surprised to find that I enjoy some of them quite a bit. Prodeus, High on Life, etc.
  • RTS: the other one I typically don't like. Played some Age of Empires II and actually was pretty into it earlier this year. Another game I probably would have never bought. I don't think I'll play much more of this genre beyond AoE 2 and 4.
Maybe / Maybe not:
  • Sim Racers: I have never been good enough at these to find them enjoyable. Going to try Forza in October, but I anticipate I will likely be deleting it after a few hours.
Still hate:
  • I haven't ever clicked with whatever genre Civilization is. Maybe someday after I take a college course on how to play.
  • I can play roguelikes, but typically I do detest that style of "progression." Rare exceptions click for me big time though like Hades, and a small handful of others.
  • Sim Sports: Hate it still.
  • Survival: Typically hate it, but Valheim is pretty fun.
  • Flight Sim: Nope.
  • MOBA: I have still never tried one.
I think I enjoy almost everything else already.
 
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Fess

Member
First person perspective.

It always got me motion sick. Skipped Halo 1 completely when everyone thought it was the best game ever. Used to play Oblivion and Skyrim by always sneaking because somehow it got things better, running was essentially insta puke.

Then it turns out the real problem was the often low framerate and stutter on consoles, after buying a PC and never going down to 30 and always using gsync I can play everything.
 

Robb

Gold Member
Shooters, mainly FPS. Can’t say I play them a lot today either, but I enjoy the ones I do.
 

DonkeyPunchJr

World’s Biggest Weeb
Roguelike: never really clicked with me until Hades but I really enjoyed that game. Also enjoyed a few others (Nova Drift, Vampire Survivors, Boneraiser Minions).

My favorite thing about RPGs is experimenting with different character builds/party composition and finding the most fun/broken/op stuff. Roguelikes (at least the ones I like) kind of give you that in a little 30 minute package.
 
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Dacvak

No one shall be brought before our LORD David Bowie without the true and secret knowledge of the Photoshop. For in that time, so shall He appear.
Football games. Admittedly, I haven’t touched one in a few years. But they make for surprisingly fun strategic and action-based gameplay. Doesn’t help that I don’t care about football at all IRL, but the games are fun. Especially during the GameCube era.
 

MiguelItUp

Member
Soulslikes. If that's even a real genre, lol. It's the first thing I think of.

I always wanted to love the Souls games, I loved the art, the vibe, the music, the sound, but the gameplay did absolutely nothing for me. From the OG Demon's Souls onward.

Fast forward to several years later and the Demon's Souls Remake comes out on PS5. I think it looks gorgeous and decide to give it another shot. It clicks. Hard. Everything clicks. After beating it, I go back to every other Souls game to revisit it and see how I feel. I love them.

It was the first time and only time I have ever experienced something change that drastically. I figured it may have something to do with me being older and more patient? Or maybe because there was nothing new to play and I wanted to make it work.
 
Isometric as a console only player from childhood (early 00s) was so against my typical first or third person kind of game it made me skip a ton of games until i gave DOS2 try in 2020...now its a genre I genuinely love because the perspective give such a beautiful look at the environment. I almost prefer it to third person over the shoulder at this point.
 

SCB3

Member
ARPGS and CRPG's until I played Diablo 3, since then i've played quite a few, I do need to go play Divinity OS 1 and 2 and Disco Elysium at some point
 

AREYOUOKAY?

Member
I guess puzzle games. Never understood them when I was younger. Dr. Robotniks Mean Bean Machine (Puyo Puyo reskin) went from being a disappointing Blockbuster rental due to wanting it to be more like a normal Sonic game to one of my favorite Genesis games.
 
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JRPGs. Persona 2 (IS/EP) and Final Fantasy 7 were my "come to Jesus" games with that genre, that I thought was mind-numbingly boring gameplay wise, and annoying (Weeb shit). I was treating them like a monolith basically, which was stupid.

And I zigged zagged with Fighting Games. Grew up playing Tekken, played all of them (Besides 6, 7 and the tag team games)
But after a hiatus of not playing FGs at all, I decided to come back, but this time to 2D FGs.

And getting my head around motion imputs was a long and painful process (Never had to worry about that in Tekken), where I ended up fucking despising FGs and dropping them "for real".

But after I came back again, figured those out, I was in love.
King of Fighters 2000 was my "come to Jesus" game.
Playing with Vanessa was the most fun I had controlling a character in a FG.
 

Fbh

Member
Rogue-likes/lites.
I generally don't like too much repetition in games, and a sense of progression is usually also something I enjoy (one of the reasons my favorite genre is RPG's). So this idea of a game where you play through the same areas again and again, fight the same bosses again and again and you also loose your progress every time you die sounded terrible to me.

But then out of curiosity I downloaded The Binding of Isaac (through Ps+) and started playing during shorts sessions when I just had to kill 15-20 min, and I found myself really enjoying the variety of powerups and how unique each run could feel thanks to them. Then I tried Hades (once it left early access) because of all the positive feedback and the awesome gameplay, wide variety of powerups and builds combined with an interesting narrative hook made it one of my favorite games of that year.

It's still not a genre I necessarily love and I don't go out of my way to look for roguelites. But it has gone from a genre that used to be an instant dealbreaker to something I'm willing to give a chance.
I'll say though, I still vastly preffer RogueLITES, I like having at least some permanent progression.
 
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Metroidvanias

Used to be a genre I actively avoided. I don't play them a whole lot now but I've probably beaten 10 or so since playing Axiom Verge when it released on Vita.
 

Mr Hyde

Member
Roguelikes and first person shooter. Or games with first person perspective would be more accurate but oh well. I'm still not entirely 100% on board but I've grown to like them more over time. Dead Cells was a phenomenal game that took the genre to a new height for me. And regarding FPS, I used to hate first person perspective, it was always third person or I'm not touching it, but over the years I've softened up quite a bit and I play everything from Far Cry and Metroid Prime to shooter classics such as Doom or Wolfenstein. I think it was Prime that opened up my eyes for it. Still prefer third person perspective though.
 
Like, for example, I used to think that MMORPGs are shit and a waste of time. Whenever World of Warcraft was popular, I first didn't even have an internet connection to try it out, and then once I had internet at home, I didn't have enough disposable income to just go in blind and drop a few bucks into a subscription. The only thing that I could afford were the MMOs that had a free trial and pretty much all of those looked and played like a coiled turd. They had very primitive looking visuals, weird-ass gameplay that had to be built around limitations of an instanced online game, lack of engaging story, and overall focus was on the game basically serving as some weird extension of an online chat room. I just wasn't into it and I couldn't understand why these games were so popular, and none of my friends were able to explain it either.

So anyway, things changed with the dawn of MMORPGs that finally started looking like actual role playing games and had an actual story-driven content that actually looked pretty compelling and engaging. Games like Star Wars: The Old Republic, Elder Scrolls Online, or Star Trek Online finally elevated the genre in my eyes to something that I could have fun with. Of course, compared to people who sink in thousands of hours into those games, I'm still an extremely casual MMO enjoyer, with my most-played game being ESO with just over 200 hours. But it's definitely a time that I enjoyed.

And the best part is that I STILL never played World of Warcraft, lol.
I can tell you started off with the worst, most grind-heavy NCSoft-style MMORPGs lol (Yet somehow missed Guild Wars which was their best entry). Whenever anyone gets that first impression of MMOs I can immediately tell what type of games they played. Thankfully you bounced back to some of the better MMOs out there and see the value potential in the genre. There's another potential MMO boom happening this generation, very soon, so we will see which games rise and which fall.
 

drganon

Member
Jrpgs. Not sure what my problem was, but after playing persona 5, the genre finally clicked with me. Now I'm at the point where the majority of the games I play are jrpgs.
 

yansolo

Member
souls games, tried dark souls 1 a few years ago turned it off after 20 minutes and now they're one of my favourite style of game
 

Nitty_Grimes

Made a crappy phPBB forum once ... once.
No all the game types I hate I still hate.

And I’m going back to like zx spectrum time to modern day.
 
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sigmaZ

Member
Nothing really. I've always been consistent about I liked. I guess I've become more open to playing big open world games than before.
 

GymWolf

Member
Monster hunter.

Tried the first one on psp, absolutely hated the graphic, gameplay, animations, everything.

Tried the demo of world and i was still hating the damn thing, then i git gud a little and now it's the game where i have more hours compared to any other game by a landslide.

Sometimes a combat system just need to click.

The problem is that i liked world so much that every other monster hunter or hunting game that is not world feels like trash or it just doesn't hit the same way, rise included.

Hopefully paradise is gonna be world 2 instead of rise 2.

Oh and roguelites, absolutely hated the genre until hades, now i love the genre (but there is nothing as good as hades)
 
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Drizzlehell

Banned
I can tell you started off with the worst, most grind-heavy NCSoft-style MMORPGs lol (Yet somehow missed Guild Wars which was their best entry). Whenever anyone gets that first impression of MMOs I can immediately tell what type of games they played. Thankfully you bounced back to some of the better MMOs out there and see the value potential in the genre. There's another potential MMO boom happening this generation, very soon, so we will see which games rise and which fall.
Yeah, pretty much. The first one ever was Star Wars Galaxies, I think. And I know that it has its following and I've seen many videos about what made it special for a lot of people, but it was definitely not a game to start out with for me at the time, lol. Then I think I also tried Tabula Rasa and LOTR Online, and after that I was pretty much done for a while.

I never tried Guild Wars either. Seems like of all the games that I could try I just picked the absolute worst examples, lol.

Although I do remember picking up Defiance sometime in 2013 and playing it a lot. One of the biggest turn-offs in MMOs for me was the fact that the "combat" was essentially just a bunch of floating numbers and two character models awkwardly waving sticks at each, but here was this game that had all the hallmarks of a regular MMO, but it also required actual skill to play and the fact that it was a shooter was an icing on the cake. It's such a shame that it was shut down, considering that we kinda don't have any other game like it that would fill in the void.
 

Drizzlehell

Banned
I haven't ever clicked with whatever genre Civilization is. Maybe someday after I take a college course on how to play.
I think it's a 4x strategy (explore, expand, exploit, exterminate) but I just call it turn-based strategy.

Civilization series is actually the most accessible example of this genre because it doesn't require that much skill and you can easily learn just by playing a couple of rounds. Normally 4x games are extremely sleep-inducing for me too, and I genuinely can't stand playing something like Europa Universalis. But Civilization somehow always managed to suck me in for hundreds of hours. It has that "just one more turn" effect that will keep me glued to the screen long past dinner time.

I'd say you should at least give it a shot. It's casual enough that you won't feel intimidated but just complex enough to be extremely satisfying, especially when you grow your own giant empire and start nuking everyone who made the mistake of talking shit about you, lol.
 
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Hudo

Member
Shmups, mostly. (And other Arcade games like Frogger). Back when I was a lad, I thought "why the fuck would I play these simple games when I can play Total War: Medieval or Command & Conquer?". Turns out that you can have incredible fun with simple things (and let's face it, simplicity is also why Command & Conquer is the best RTS franchise for me). They just scratch another itch.
 

K2D

Banned
Bloodborne. I spent maybe 18 months trying and failing this game, but I knew it was objectively good because the guys in my media stream wouldn't stop raving about it. Most of the time was spent getting owned initially in the first 10-30 minutes of the game, and then the first 4 hours or so.

In the end, they were all correct. Best game of the Ps4 generation and one of my top 5 games.
 
Yeah, pretty much. The first one ever was Star Wars Galaxies, I think. And I know that it has its following and I've seen many videos about what made it special for a lot of people, but it was definitely not a game to start out with for me at the time, lol. Then I think I also tried Tabula Rasa and LOTR Online, and after that I was pretty much done for a while.

I never tried Guild Wars either. Seems like of all the games that I could try I just picked the absolute worst examples, lol.

Although I do remember picking up Defiance sometime in 2013 and playing it a lot. One of the biggest turn-offs in MMOs for me was the fact that the "combat" was essentially just a bunch of floating numbers and two character models awkwardly waving sticks at each, but here was this game that had all the hallmarks of a regular MMO, but it also required actual skill to play and the fact that it was a shooter was an icing on the cake. It's such a shame that it was shut down, considering that we kinda don't have any other game like it that would fill in the void.
Guild Wars was the game that sold me on stories and tight gameplay in MMOs. It had great pacing, storytelling, and cinematics. Also it was paced like a single player game so it didn’t outstay it’s welcome and instead focused on being very close to other amazing 20ish hour single player games around it’s time. It also was Buy to play which meant no subscription fee, just a single purchase and you were good to go(which was unheard of for it’s time because most games wanted you to pay MTX or pay monthly).

It used a skill bar of only 8 skills and people nicknamed it ‘Build Wars’ because of how you would set your skill loadout before going questing. GW2 was more open world but still held that same philosophy. It was like the devs understood how to perfectly balance both games so that it was less about the grind and more about having a fun experience and them being okay with the fact that people would put down the game after beating it until the next story expansion.

When it came to combat though, nothing, and I truly mean nothing could touch Vindictus. It was the game I tried after Guild Wars. Vindictus is the Devil May Cry of MMOs and their combat director really understood the philosophy behind tight, ultra responsive, combo based gameplay with frame perfect dodging/parrying. Also the bosses from around level 20 and up were serious challenges, and level 60 and up bosses all felt like the toughest, Vergil-esque encounters you could face in that game.

Even though it’s still live and playable, I’ve still been waiting for a sequel to that game or at least for the combat director to announce moving on to a new project because whatever he moves to, I’m instantly in.
 

Happosai

Hold onto your panties
Like, for example, I used to think that MMORPGs are shit and a waste of time. Whenever World of Warcraft was popular, I first didn't even have an internet connection to try it out, and then once I had internet at home, I didn't have enough disposable income to just go in blind and drop a few bucks into a subscription. The only thing that I could afford were the MMOs that had a free trial and pretty much all of those looked and played like a coiled turd. They had very primitive looking visuals, weird-ass gameplay that had to be built around limitations of an instanced online game, lack of engaging story, and overall focus was on the game basically serving as some weird extension of an online chat room. I just wasn't into it and I couldn't understand why these games were so popular, and none of my friends were able to explain it either.

So anyway, things changed with the dawn of MMORPGs that finally started looking like actual role playing games and had an actual story-driven content that actually looked pretty compelling and engaging. Games like Star Wars: The Old Republic, Elder Scrolls Online, or Star Trek Online finally elevated the genre in my eyes to something that I could have fun with. Of course, compared to people who sink in thousands of hours into those games, I'm still an extremely casual MMO enjoyer, with my most-played game being ESO with just over 200 hours. But it's definitely a time that I enjoyed.

And the best part is that I STILL never played World of Warcraft, lol.
Never liked action-adventure stealth games. When 5th gen was buzzing over 007: Goldeneye...I just avoided it after boring out playing first time around. What changed my mind was playing MGS 1 about 10-years after its release. There aren't quite as many around but I'm more open to that genre after playing through MGS1 - 4 (which were the best imo).
 

64bitmodels

Reverse groomer.
(but there is nothing as good as hades)
I like Hades but IMO it's very overrated and not all that. It mostly comes down to the combat feel for me, it's not as smooth & impactful as I'd like it to be.
Returnal, Risk of Rain 2 and Spelunky 2 are still the kings for me
 
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GymWolf

Member
I like Hades but IMO it's very overrated and not all that. It mostly comes down to the combat feel for me, it's not as smooth & impactful as I'd like it to be.
Returnal, Risk of Rain 2 and Spelunky 2 are still the kings for me
Combat feels incredible in hades, pixel perfect precise.

At worse we can say that weapon and enemy variety is not huge, but the whole package is leagues beyond any other roguelite for me.
 
I hated souls likes. But randomly one day I decided to play GOW 2018 on Hard mode. It was a challenge, but I loved it. So I then decided to go back to ds3 after hating it and bloodborne bc I didn't understand it. Ds3 is now probably my 2nd favorite game and I am a Fromsoft head.
 
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CatLady

Selfishly plays on Xbox Purr-ies X
First Person Shooter. Halo cured that and now it's one of my favorite genres. Sci Fi shooters only though I'm not into military shooters.
 

64bitmodels

Reverse groomer.
I hated souls likes. But randomly one day I decoded to play GOW 2018 on Hard mode. It was a challenge, but I loved it. So I decided to go back to ds3 after hating it and blpodborne bc I didn't understand it. Ds3 is now probably my 2nd favorite game and I am a Fromsoft head.
Similar story. Admittedly i went in liking souls games since i found the combat in DS1 fun. But it wasn't until i played Elden Ring that Souls really started to click for me.
 

Paasei

Member
Roguelite and/or roguelikes. Couldn’t care much about them and even less for roguelikes.

But ever since the Steam Deck I have been playing quite a few of them and really enjoy them.
 

Drizzlehell

Banned
A lot of you mention roguelikes - yeah, that's another big one for me. Pretty much the only roguelike that I actually enjoyed was Vampire Survivors and I think it's because the game is just so instantly fun to play that I wasn't even thinking about progression, just to stay alive for as long as possible.
 

Guilty_AI

Member
Most of them really. Was really into racing games as a kid and refused to play almost anything else. I did play a few fighting games and platform games but never really got into them too much, mostly played them with other people. Then i tried GTA-style games (which still had vehicles so i considered them kind of ok?), then shooting and FPS games, then action games, then jp games in general, rpgs, turn-based... this over the course of many years. I basically play everything that i think could be interesting these days.

The only genres i still resist to right now are sports games and fighting games. Also competitive games in general. though there are a few exception i'd be willing to try.
 
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RAIDEN1

Member
To this day, I am still not a fan of turn-based games.......saying that though the only exceptions are probably Earthbound from the SNES era, and Mario RPG .....outside of that I still don't like it in general...
 

MLSabre

Member
With some exceptions I avoid sport, racing, and fighting games.

Shooting games as well unless they're sci-fi oriented and even then I'm rather selective of what I play.
 

Elysion

Banned
I used to completely disregard games with a first person perspective when I was younger. I simply found the perspective too restrictive, and hated the fact that I couldn’t see my character when I was moving around. Only when I got older did I start to appreciate first person games.
 
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