Games you hated at first, but later enjoyed?

You would hardly believe it now, but there was a time when I, the Castlevania Evangelist, did not like Castlevania.

The first Castlevania game I bought - Dracula X Chronicles on PSP - was not bought with the motivation of playing a good Castlevania game. I bought it because The Video Game Critic gave it an A. While I don’t see eye to eye with him 100% of the time (he gave Super Smash Bros a “C” and Zelda Ocarina of Time a “B”), an A from him was worth paying attention to, since his A+ for Contra 4 was what lead me to my favorite Nintendo DS game of all time and gateway drug to the Contra series. I also bought Dracula X Chronicles because I got a PSP and wanted good PSP games. I don’t know about you, but when I bought a PSP, my motivation for doing so wasn’t exactly to play classic sprite-based 2D games, it was to play pocket-sized Playstation 2 games.

Anyway, at first I didn’t like Dracula X Chronicles. The main game - a polygonal, 2.5D remake of Rondo of Blood - was stiff and weird. The main character’s animation was unappealing, and his whip weapon did not have a pleasant tactile feeling at all. I just wasn’t getting why this series was such a hit with so many people. There’s one detail that I remember clearly. In one level, there was a crow that swoop in and damage me. I remember thinking, “That’s the most idiotic thing I’ve seen. I get it if a skeleton comes at me with a sword or if a dragon breathes fire at me or whatever. But it’s a freaking crow. If a crow dive bombed me, I’d just punch it and knock it unconscious.” Then I reflected on it a little later and realized, “Wait, you know where it would make perfect sense for a crow to damage your character? An 8-bit game.” Seeing that in a 3D polygon game was dissonant and weird, like someone playing a piano song on the tuba without changing any of the notes.

Around the same time, Leigh Alexander of Boing Boing posted an article about how wonderful Castlevania Symphony of the Night was and how everyone should play it. I realized, “Wait, I have this game on my Dracula X Chronicles UMD. I just have to unlock it.” Unfortunately Dracula X Chronicles makes it such an ordeal to unlock the included games, even though those “extras” are arguably better than the main product. The developers force you to play 3 or 4 stages into the main game and take some secret route into some secret room or something obtuse like that. As I recall, that’s the only reason the Video Game Critic rated this game A instead of A+. But I suffered through that and unlocked Symphony of the Night. When I laid eyes on SotN’s opening sequence, I felt that what I was seeing was so incredible I had to experience this series in order. So I played these instead:

Castlevania (NES)
Castlevania Rondo of Blood (PCE CD)
Castlevania Bloodlines (Genesis)
Castlevania IV (SNES)

Then I played Symphony of the Night. Now I love this series and won’t shut up about it. But I thought it was pretty lame at first.

The 7th Saga

I actually played this initially because I had read so many negative reviews. I think I was influenced a bit too much, as I expected something lackluster. And I was turned off at first. There's a great deal of grinding and that weird defend/attack battle system just felt off.

But after two hours or so this game just clicked hard. It's awesome, the game world and accompanying OST are just marvelous. It's one of those acquired taste games, but after investing many hours into multiple playthroughs I'd now rank this as one of my favorite JRPGs ever.

Have you played through any of the GBA or DS Castlevania entries?


A year or two ago, I played through at least half of The 7th Saga, due to yourself and Ack's fawning over it. I'll admit I do like the world aesthetics, enemy designs, and OST a lot. But the localization screwed up the statistical balancing so bad, it just kills the fun for me. I was doing a solo using Lejes Rimul and the game was straight brutal. Not fun brutal, just brutal. I imagine The 7th Saga is only fun if you use the right combination of characters. I think the balancing is so badly off in the USA version that certain character (or character combination) runs are practically unplayable. It's a shame the balancing is so bad, because the presentation is very strong.


Yeah once you get used to it, the design makes logical sense. It is overwhelming initially, especially for modern players used to more transparent and intuitive GUIs.

I played through 7th Saga with the robot as main character years ago. I wasn't even aware it was supposed to be particularly hard, and though I may have had to grind a bit, I enjoyed it. I wouldn't call it great or anything, to me it was just one of countless solid SNES RPGs.

As for the main topic, it's happened to me a bunch of times, but I can't think of any specifics right now. Lessee... Probably the biggest reversals are Brandish (SNES) and Super Hydlide. My first impression of both was that they were just unplayable trash that I could never, ever like, but once I actually sat down to play them and got used to how they worked, I became a fan.