A game you "didn't know it was bad 'til people told you so"?
I'm talking about games that you still like but you had no idea were criticized so much.
The perfect example for me is Sonic Unleashed.
I admit that the game has its bad things, but I would have never imagined that it was so hated at the time... Although, that could be extended to the entire Sonic franchise, since for many years I was not aware at all of that "Sonic was never good", "Sonic had a rough transition to 3D" nonsense.
Assassin's Creed Odyssey apparently, according to reddit a few years ago, was looked at as being shitty I guess? Not the best one?
It's the only one I played, and I played it 3 times with ~240 hours. Kassandra is my favorite character ever, in any video game. I loved the world, its beauty, the ships and sea, and shooting arrows through rocks as a demo god.
Odyssey was really good in a vacuum. Ive heard it described best as that it was a good action RPG set in Greece, but not a good Assassins Creed game. The main issue being that stealth was usually a huge focus in previous titles, but this one seemed to favor general combat and didnt even have the signature wrist blade until the DLC.
Also a bunch of the story seemed to return pieces of previous lore, some setup in just the previous game that came out a year prior. Overall though I did enjoy the game!
Yeah I think you're right with it being good in a vacuum. That makes complete sense because it was different than the other games.
I have panic disorder, so most games with combat overwhelm me as I'm just constantly afraid. I never got that with this game. Just give me a bow so i can stand hella far away and clear the area before entering it. Thats how I did stealth. I'd take an hour slowly picking off everyone from the fort. Plus, it was really beautiful and emersive. Exploring the map was super fun.