[Question] Games that grow on you

I had the same feeling with Puzzle Quest, and yet I still play the damn game.

See my thread about Shaun White to see exactly what you were saying about games you buy cheap or like the genre, and hate, but then love.

The key example of this though would be something that would eventually lead to some life changing things, FINAL FANTASY!
I started out absolutely hating this game series, (although I didnt know it was a series at the time, I just thought the 7 on the end of it was a cool title, like in XIII or Toejam and Earl Too - Altho I later found out Toejam and Earl Too was a sequel too). I worked in a little computer game shop, I was about 15 ish at the time and saw this game land on the shelf, its box looked pretty uninteresting, the title didnt inspire much, but the reviews screamed about it: "ITS FINALLY OUT ON A NEXT GEN!!!" "THANK GOD THIS SERIES HAS AN UPDATE" "THE WORLD WONT KNOW WHATS HIT IT" - I mean, I never judge a game by its cover, but this one just didnt leap out to me at all so I just left it there. Then they put it on the PSX Pod instore so people could play it. It was always in the Midgar section and nothing ever seemed to happen, and I thought the 10 minute timer was the demo timer, so again, just thought what a pile of crap and let it slip from my mind.

2 Weeks Later...

Im sitting in my mates room and were playing Tekken 2! (Hell yeah that game was awesome). We clear a few more characters and watch the awesome endings, then he suggests we try a new game he picked up, Final Fantasy VII. I groaned and said "Dude, its awful, its all jappy and confusing, and nothing happens, it just sits on a bridge doing nothing, looks really buggy and graphics are crap". He still goes ahead and pops in the first disc, I couldnt work out for the life of me why it needed 4. The intro fires up (which to this point I had not seen) and my jaw dropped, but I didnt say anything as I was still standing my ground that this game was a bridge over a light and that was all. My mate then moved down the screen, and up popped a whole new area, I was starting to see what was going on, and we worked through to the bit where the reactor blows up (forgotten the game spans over 4 discs at this point). Reactor blows up, Game COMPLETE.... right? We had fun, its all over back to Tekken 2 now? WRONG!!!! The game drops us into a destroyed section of Midgar and then the next part of the story fires up! We are hooked, but we dont know it yet, out of curiosity we follow it along, and realise this might be the most epic story we have ever seen, so I go to my piratey friend and order the NTSC copy of the game for full screen fun (I was a naughty pirate back then, I have redeemed since). Me and my cousin begin the experience, and find the game to have hundreds of hours in it, a deceptively amazing storyline, lovable characters and gameplay so addictive, its infuriating!

Final Fantasy VIII came out a few years later and I was salivating over its release, bought it, hated it at first, mastered Junction, then loved it, me and another cousin had a bet on who could get to the ending first, I won by literally 2 minutes, it was so much fun, and loved every second.

Final Fantasy IX hit the shelves and me and my cousin had a new bet on, beat Ozma, he beat me by a few days, but after collecting the animals it was done.

Final Fantasy X came out, we both played and didnt get the same feeling of immersion as the other games, the free world was gone and there didnt seem to be as much, the world had lost its freedom.

X-2 slid through the cracks and we enjoyed mastering the dress-spheres, and collecting the catnip, but otherwise pretty non-eventful.

XI.... XI... I wish I had never picked up that game, 2 years of my life wasted on that addictive pile of crap. Nearly ruined my university, I got fat, nearly lost friends, but it was my own fault, now im through the looking glass, passed my WoW and FFXI addictions and realised I just need to avoid MMoRPG's.

Amazing how all this started from a game I never intended to give the time of day.

Jam it back in, in the dark.