Topic: What games surprised you

As gamers we all have different opinions obviously. So I'm curious. From a personal opinion, what games surprised you by being really great that most people either don't like/never paid attention to and what games were you surprised didn't live up to your expectations.

Games I liked:
Rhythm Thief: A lot of people didn't hear much about it since it came out right at the time of Theatrhythm and some people didn't like the unbalanced difficult but this is honestly one of my favorite rhythm games ever. I was so glad when it came on the eshop since I couldn't find a reasonably priced retail version.
Paper Mario Sticker Star: It gets a bad wrap and I know why but I actually enjoyed it.

Games I didn't care for
Kingdom Hearts 3DDD: This hurts me because this was the game that I originally got my 3DS for. I love the franchise. The game isn't bad but I REALLY hated the drop system and I don't really understand why it was necessary and I unfortunately couldn't bring myself to finish it.
LoZ ALBW: I think it's a great game but it's just not for me. This was the first time I've ever played Zelda. The renting system was kind of annoying and going back and forth between Hyrule/Lorule.

Super Monkey Ball 3D surprised me in that it is more of a lite "don't run out of time" game more than previous games which had difficulty beyond that. :/

Ghost Recon Shadow Wars surprised me by being as enjoyable as people said it was despite being a brown strategy game.

Project X Zone surprised me by making me care about series I otherwise would have ignored and being one of the few good crossover stories (ironically by not caring about the story).

Luigi's Mansion Dark Moon surprised me by being a Mario sequel post-Galaxy 2 that was actually willing to not be the same game as the last game or be 10 hours of Mario 3 fanservice.

AA5 surprised me by having better use of art than any previous game (and better 3D than a lot of 3DS games).

The maze game surprised me.

Just a few off the top my head:

Metal Gear Rising
I was honestly shocked when they revealed that the latest Metal Gear game was an over top hack and slash with a cyborg protagonist. I have to give credit to Platinum since it was probably my favourite game I played last year.

Donkey Kong Country Returns
I had no idea what i was getting into with this game, but i definitely didn't expect a tough as nails platformer with an incredible atmosphere and amazing music.

Bravely Default
I usually love JRPG's, and can even sometimes stomach bad ones, but there was something about Bravely Default that just didn't click. I stopped playing around 25 hours in and I doubt i'll be coming back anytime soon.

Luigis Mansion 2 surprised me a-lot!. What with all the ghosts popping out...

Luigis Mansion 2, i never played the original so i didn't know what to expect. What a fresh experience it was, for me the best game on the 3ds.

Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days is such a gem of a game, and I can't figure out why nobdoy ever did play it, It had fun combat, and an amazing side story that actually plays better with no former KH experience.
Attack of The Friday Monsters: A Tokyo Tale seemed interesting, and I got it on sale. Seems like a great deal, right? Well, $5 for 2 hours of content was pretty lame, especially with about an hour being running around picking up crystals. Its very difficult to even relate to a tiny Japanese village, especially since the actual plot is never really fully revealed. I can understand a child's innocence, but trying to put a 'real' place and feeling with all the crazy stuff that happens (which is very little, about two things even happen story wise, one of which is never explained at all) just puts me off. Which is a shame, because I expected to like it.

Legendary Starfy. Great game for $15 it was a steal.

The Scribblenauts series and Fortune Street

Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure. I was looking forward to this before it was released but I ended up enjoying it much more than expected! For me personally it's up there with Uprising and New Leaf! I still play it from time to time.

Mutant Mudds as well. This is my favourite eShop download. Honestly wasn't sure how good it would be before buying it. I can't wait for the upcoming DLC.

I didn't know what to expect from this game before I got it either but I find Gunman Clive strangely addictive.

Pullblox entertained me for a lot longer than I expected it to.

I think Rayman 3D and Heroes of Ruin are the only games I've been really disappointed with. Rayman 3D was the first time I played any version of Rayman 2 but I honestly didn't enjoy it that much despite hearing praise for the game, maybe because it just felt too dated on what was a completely new handheld at the time. Heroes of Ruin was just too easy to play though- it's entertaining and has some nice environments and I liked the story, but the actual gameplay was lacking and got pretty repetitive.

Oh yeah, Skylanders: Giants was also a huge disappointment when I got it. It was so much slower than the first game, which I really enjoyed because it was fast-paced, the combat felt slow too and the exploration was boring and the game had a lot of annoying bugs. I've come to like that game more though even with its faults.

Too many to count to be honest.

https://www.nintendolife.com/forums/other_gaming/your_personal...

Isn't this thread the same idea?

The Golden Sun Series reason the music and the gameplay and some of the puzzles really has you thinking.

Dsiware - Commando : Steel Disaster (It is basically a Metal Slug clone but going by the review here you would think it was completely broken but it is very good. More fun than Metal Slug 7).

Yup I'd say Ghost Recon Shadow Wars was a great surprise, spent almost 40 hours on its campaign if I remember correctly - also really put me in the mood for some new Advance Wars (hint hint Nintendo ahem).

Also despite good reviews I wasn't expecting to love Jamestown as much as I did when I got around to playing that late last year, a cracking shmup with an incredible soundtrack, adored it.

EDIT: Just remembered I'm in a 3ds thread so feel free to ignore that Jamestown mention up there!

Good surprises:
WWHD - I bought because I had little else to play, surprised me because I enjoyed it so much more than the original. It kind of makes the most recent games seem charmless by comparison although TP and SS did make me smile a good number of times.
Earthbound - I normally avoid JRPGs and avoid hyped games that I missed first time around because it's hard to recapture the old magic. The game was excellent despite being very dated. The story was one of the funniest I'd played in years.
Nearly every 6.0-7.5 rated Nintendo published game - It's incredible how good the games that get poor reviews are (New Nintendo IP). Stuff like Disaster and Geist were so much better than equivalently rated games on rival systems but for some reason, most reviewers only give certain franchises good scores.

Bad surprises:
Sonic Racing Transformed Wii U- It was slow, it was too buggy to play any multiplayer without hard crashing my Wii U, it was woefully easy, its control methods ignored the original Wii Classic Controller. That doesn't mean that MK8 couldn't learn a few things from this game.
GTAV - It was a great game but the reviews were insane. Nothing could ever live up to that hype.
Arkham City Wii U - another game that was massively disappointing.

Castlevania Lords of Shadow: Mirror of Fate - contrary of most bad reviews you can find online, this game rocks. I liked the demo but was on fence for full price and bad reviews. After 50% discount on eShop I gave it a go... and I'm so glad I did! Great 2D action platformer with really nice graphics. So that was nice surprise.

Opposite of that was Zelda:OOT... maybe I expected too much from "One of the best games of all time... blah blah". It's not bad at no means but its far from best I played and because of that - disappointment.

Animal Crossing (2002) got it when it first came out just for the old NES games and now it is my most played game ever.

I still think it's really solid but 95% of its hype is because of how innovative and amazing it was in 1998 and like most popular innovative titles, other games took the same formula and made it way better (especially later Zeldas)

Ah the good old days of the first Animal Crossing, I remember trying to explain to my friends that it was exciting that 'things happen in like, REAL TIME '