Whats a game that everybody seems to love that you cant stand for one reason or another?
recent: tears of the kingdom, or as i like to call it botw 1.2, its the same thing all over again just with one or two added gimicks, the open world is dead, npcs are boring and nintendo just got away with it like that
not so recent: i cant stand persona 5, joker and his entourage are annoying teenagers, the time management is a horrible gameplay addition and the artstyle is just a visual overstimulation
Counterstrike. I was raised on Unreal Tournament and Battlefield 1942/Vietnam, every iteration of CS I've tried is just slow and boring comparatively. Doesn't help that the maps and guns never change either. I'll probably give it a go again with CS2 but I'm not expecting anything different.
Speaking as a player with thousands and thousands of hours in CS... I definitely get why it doesn't appeal to some people. But what you describe about it is exactly why I and so many other people like it. The game changes very little, and pretty much only gives you guns and grenades as weapons, no fancy abilities or anything like most modern titles.
That unchanging-ness and limited toolset means that raw strategy and to a lesser degree reflexes are the only ways to get ahead. With the map designs set in stone, many with decades of refinement and balance adjustments, you get intimately familiar with every door, corner, and corridor. It becomes much more about predicting what the other team will do and strategizing against it, rather than just grappling with the game and mechanics.