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Technically a media thread, but its a very broad media thread. So the premise is simple, talk about something you took a chance on and ended up loving.

It has to be something you took a legit chance on. It can't be something that was super hyped up or trendy, something you got into because a friend recommended it, or because it held some connection to a franchise you were familiar with.

You saw something you had never or seen, heard, watched, or played before, went "eh, fuck it. Why not?" and ended up really enjoying yourself.

So I'll start off with a non-video game example cause its cliche on this website to do that.

For me it was Once Upon a Time. A show on ABC, that I found on netflix, thats basically like a live action version of Kingdom Hearts. Just without the FF characters and less convoluted (at first). I was scrolling through netflix one day, saw the show, read the premise went "eh, fuck it. Why not?". It ended up being one of my favorite shows. The quality drops as it goes on, but that first season is really good. I suggest giving it a shot.

My friends were really into Monster Hunter but i never bought one because it looked way too hardcore for me. Then, they decided to buy Generations for my birthday so i gave it a shot. The game was kicking my ass, i barely made it through a Great Maccao. But slowly, with each monster slain i gradually started to get better. I ended up managing to do even the hardest monsters.

Now, a few years later, i am a lifetime fan of the series.

Star Wars: The Old Republic, which I only started because of some short videos I saw on YouTube.

I normally hate CRPGs and MMOs in general, but I've managed to get my first character up to level 65(current max is 80) in about a week. The main draw is definitely the story, which is a continuation of the Knights of the Old Republic RPG series BioWare made before they were bought by EA.

Most media my friends recommend me goes this way. Youjo Senki, Jojo's Bizarre Adventure (only parts 1-3), Shadows House, and some other great anime I love have all been friend recommendations that I previously shunned or knew nothing about.

I try also to occasionally join others' TTRPG games as a rando on roll20 or other avenues. Helps me meet new people and see new styles of gming/playing. It's good to get a palette cleanse and expand your horizons from time to time.

Some games that I have thought I could never do have fit into this. Probably the earliest example is Portal. Before, I had only played the fan-made flash version on Armor Games, but could never finish it. When I saw footage of the actual game, it made me a bit dizzy and confused on how you could actually manage to play it in first person. I first decided to give it a real try when my brother got Steam for the first time, and I was able to handle it perfectly. This also got me to try other action-puzzle games eventually, and of course I got to Portal 2 which is now my most played game on Steam due to playing and replaying community test chambers several times.

Another game I have put much time into because now I find it addicting despite not being interested at first is Papers, Please. I didn't think that I'd like it when I first heard about it since there didn't seem that much to it. I then saw my brother watch the first two episodes of Jacksepticeye's first LP of it, and it started to intrigue me more. I looked a bit more into it and decided to give it a try anyways. I ended up loving everything about it: the story, the characters, the addicting yet nervous gameplay etc. I've put much time into the endless mode trying to get as good score as possible, but obviously I'm not that good at it.

When I was around 12 or 13, I bought the Orange Box mainly for Portal; I gave TF2 a shot and enjoyed it, but even after owning the pack for a while, I had zero interest in the third thing, "Half-Life 2" – I thought it looked like a generic shooter and wasn't interested. Some time later I finally decided to give the Half-Life series a shot after hearing some things about it; I now consider Half-Life 2 my favorite game of all time.

How I got into Touhou also probably qualifies, since I'd been exposed to it from day one on the internet like everyone else but it didn't seem like anything I would be into. Fast forward to a couple years ago when Touhou was trending on KYM for an anniversary and I decided to give the article a read to see what the deal had been all this time. It's now very high among my favorite franchises, got me back into drawing (the Twitter account I barely used is now basically a Touhou art account), and I now own eight fumos. No regrets

Among Us and Fortnite as much as I don't want to they ain't bad games

Almost identical to MrLake, I too bought the Orange Box with very specific games in mind. Except I was looking at only the Half Life games, I didn't think very much of Portal or TF2. I thought it was just a gimmicky puzzle game and a childish online shooter respectively. Boy was I wrong. Loved Portal and TF2 became my favorite multiplayer game of all time, well up until it went f2p anyways.

As big of a Vocaloid fan as I am, I didn't think very much of it during its inception and early years. I thought it wasn't for me or something I'd never get into. But, After hearing a few songs by certain producers and coming realize the entirely crowd-sourced nature behind Vocaloid, I became intrigued. Gradually began to listen to it more and more and it finally culminated in going to an actual Miku concert. It's probably the weebiest shit I ever done, but I loved it! can't wait to go again.

SMT/Persona

After watching SSBU DLC trailer of Joker I became interested in the series.

Fast forward I am now throwing money at Atlus.

First thing that comes to mind was the One-Punch Man game, A Hero Nobody Knows. Didn't expect much from it after Jump Force but it was surprisingly fun and well worth the time and money, had so much fun developing my custom character and leveling the different fighting types. Kinda hope the online-exclusive items are added to the offline shops after the online services end.

Kinda similar to what superjumpman said but… Monster Hunter World. I remember deciding to try it out in late 2018 to see if it was good or not. 600 hours later and yep its a good game alright.

Tomb Raider 2013. Prior to trying it out, I was mostly blind on the Tomb Raider series. It was only out of boredom playing the same-old same-old that compelled me to asked a friend what untouched game in my Steam library should I try out for the first time. Tomb Raider was the game that was suggested, and I ended up having more fun with it that I ever thought I would. As someone who's into history, the setting is right up my alley and I felt satisfaction every time I discovered a tomb, artifact, and progressed the story.

Katana zero.
GO PLAY IT NOW.

Jojo Awesome Trip Stand

Mass Effect. I was very vaguely aware of its existence, but didn't care about it. This was actually really common for me since I didn't have much money for games or they were on the wrong system or our computer was too low-spec to play it.

Didn't even know it was from Bioware. I went to a video game store one day but they didn't have what I wanted. Didn't want to go home empty-handed so I bought whatever looked vaguely interesting and on sale. That happened to be ME2. I remember thinking to myself "looks alright. Hopefully it'll be a decent distraction until I find the game I want."

Also anime, believe it or not. I don't mean basic shit like DBZ of course. The first thing I saw was The Familiar of Zero. I thought it was pretty amazing at the time. But I'd actually hate it today since I don't like harem/ecchi stuff.

Currently this is happening with Star Trek. Specifically TNG. Discovered it through youtube recommendations. Slowly working my way through it on netflix. I still prefer Star Wars over it, but I can still appreciate the show. Not interested in going beyond this series though.

Warhammer 40k though not so much tabletopas the games and some books for me.
Shin Megami Tensei
Fighting Games
Really weird foreign foods that might look or smell horrible but taste awesome.
Deep Rock Galactic
Touhou
Just a few more recent ones for me.

Senran Kagura

I bought my first Senran Kagura game(Deep Crimson on the 3DS) because I was feeling down and hey, anime tiddies always lift my spirits up; came across a copy that comes with the soundtrack for cheap, so why not. Boy was I in for a pound.

Writing this reminded me that we are never seeing SK7

I'm sad again

Japanese City Pop
Was into synthwave/retrowave, but future funk was always a little sparkly for my taste. Eventually gave in and listened to some Macross 82-99, Yung Bae, and Night Tempo to name a few. Thought it was nice, but I wanted to hear the samples. That's when I found city pop in earnest. These songs are from some of my favorite artists

Funny enough, most Japanese have distanced themselves from this genre, as it's considered very dated and corny. Its biggest detractors even call it "Shitty Pop," showing just how stuck in yesterday it is for them.
But hey, one man's trash is another man's treasure, right?

The show Squid Games.

Basically everybody talking and raving about it for months, making shit load of memes and fan materials. I didn't got caught up on the trend and decided to watch it when all the hype died down.

So I watch the show in November, and I end up really enjoying the show and consider it one of the best shows of 2021 (along with Doom Patrol season 3).

I wouldn't say "loving," but I approached MOTU Revelation with caution and ended up enjoying it. No it's not perfect, and Kevin Smith is an idiot who really should have just not said anything, but I hardly found it to be the absolute trash fire the outrage machine declared it to be.

I understand why other people don't like it, and that's absolutely fine. I just…Didn't find it nearly as contentious as everyone seems to. Everyone got on the bait-and-switch bandwagon and I was just sitting there like "but the earliest synopsis from the first announcement said this was going to happen?" But hey, what do I know, I'm just about to be down voted into oblivion…

Generator Rex is this. I've seen some previews of it before and I remember bits of his crossover with Ben 10. Other than that, I didn't watched it as a kid due to a mix of not really interested but somewhat curious and not being around to watch full episodes. Once I got around to watch the show, I actually enjoyed the show a lot. Rex is a cool character, concept seems pretty neat and it's made by the same guys that did Ben 10, at least animation wise. Not my all time favorite show, but one of the tops.

Frozen. I know it was hyped as fuck, but hear my perspectives. I thought it was going to be a miserable movie about an annoying snowman & his 2 human sidekicks.
The early advertising did not do it any favors
It looked like Baby Genius level of "Meant for 6 year olds. Don't waste your time."

So when it caught on, I was confused. Curious, sure, but I was still going with my don't watch Frozen mindset.

Then my niece brought it over, & my thought was fuck it, I'm not leaving the room.
So about 10 minutes in, & a single tear rolls down my cheek. I'm laughing, I'm on the edge of my seat. I'm enjoying the songs. And I finally understand the appeal of the snowman movie.

I started playing Katawa Shoujo a month ago. Up until then, I had had very few interactions with this game, limited to a few fanarts of some of the characters, and I didn't even know they were from a video game, or from any franchise. Cue to one month ago, when I learned the existence of this game, the very basic description of it ("4chan users teamed up to make a game about doing the do with handicapped girls"), and that it was downloadable for free.
"Heh, what the hell, got not much better to do, might as well give it a go and see how terrible this gets."
So. Basically. My soul was shattered, many inner tears were shed, I listen to the OST on-loop since weeks, the fact that Rin isn't real brings me pain, I fantasized enough about that game that I could come up with a half-full plot for a potential sequel even though I know damn well I will never commit, and apparently 4chan's best troll of all times was creating a masterpiece. The more you know ¯\(ツ)/¯

>tfw you'll never have a qt blonde half japanese-half scottish blind gf

Now on the topic of this thread. This year decided to give a chance to Falcom's most acclaimed and recognizable franchises: Ys and The Legend of Heroes. I've played this summer Ys Chronicles, (which are the remasters of the first two games: Ys I and Ys II). I gotta admit that, while the gameplay was simple and easy to understand, it can get a little repetitive and if you don't have a guide, you can get lost very easy, specially on the dungeons; so if any of you want to try it, I strongly recommend a guide. Also dat soundtrack tho

After finishing Ys, I played the first game of the The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the sky trilogy. At first I didn't get its combat and quartz system, but after I got a knack for it, the game started to shine: its world building, the characters and the cliffhanger at the end of the first game, it gave me the urge to play the sequels and I hope to play them in this winter break from work. I will end this review saying:

Scherazard Harvey:

is Best girl

Dave the Barbarian.

When it first came out, i wasnt too interested since medieval themed shows really were not my cup of tea. But being part of a Disney family, i figured i would give it a shot since Disney had greatly entertained me growing up with a lot of shows on Toon Disney. Needless to say the best was to describe it was Milo Kalamani goes to the middle ages with minimal fourth wall. The fact it got only one season was enough for me to pinpoint the downward spiral for Disney's TV unit. The show had an amazing cast for voice acting and all of the characters were played to their full potential.

This episode sums up the series in a nutshell

Gothic 1 & 2
When I first saw it years ago, it was on a Youtube channel by a guy that did pure gameplay footage of various games on DOS and other old PC games like Fallout 1 & 2. When I saw a copy of Gothic 1, 2, and 3 being sold in the gaming section of a store on a military base I frequented when I was a dependent, I bought the collection. Playing Gothic 1 & 2 wasn't easy because of how combat was and in 2's case, the game is installed with it's add-on which jacked up the difficulty alot in both combat and in buying and selling things. At first I didn't like it much until giving it a better shot with Gothic 1. Gothic 2 was harder since I had to rely on a third party program that could let me edit damage values but after seeing how combat in that game works with some npcs and seeing one guy fighting orcs without cheesing them (using OP weapons early on, transforming into an armless dragon raptor, etc.) I gave it another try. Needless to say, I have a healthier respect for Gothic 2

Fallout 1 & 2
Much like with Gothic 1 & 2, I was introduced to these games from the videos of the same Youtuber. First played 2 because of a copy I found at a swapmeet along with Daggerfall, all for the price of 10 bucks and it was well-spent. Fallout 2 also taught me the importance of actually reading what NPC's tell me and knowing how useful speech can be on top of knowing the importance of the agility stat in old school Fallout in being able to have a few more action points to do something. Fallout 1 was easy to end up loving since 2 was just a mechanically improved version of it. Honestly, if one gave me these vs the newer Fallout's, including New Vegas and 4, I'd got with Fallout 1 & 2. New Vegas is nice and all, but I love going in as a Vault Dweller/tribal than some post-apocalyptic post man fighting soldiers wishing for nuclear winter and tribals led by a man LARPing as Romans.

The Oldschool Runescape community has had such a massive hateboner for Runescape 3 for the longest time, so when I started playing OSRS back in 2015ish, I kinda climbed on the bandwagon of "RS3 BAD RS3 EZ SCAPE RS3 P2WSCAPE RUNESPAN EOC". But around late 2020 I decided "fuck it, let's play rs3 ironman". Now I have 2k total with 150m to my name and I have no idea what the fuck happened.