Asura's Wrath, the button masher QTE on rail and DLC true end drew a lot of hate at the time, but I loved the storytelling and the visceral characterization.

Salt & Sanctuary

While not hated, most fans of the series prefer Darksiders to Darksiders 2. I personally prefer 2, I love the loot system.

Unreal 2, which is a very boring singleplayer game. But then, a year after its launch, they released a multiplayer addon for it, and it's still the best multiplayer FPS I've ever played. Most people remember it as "that disappointing, singleplayer-only sequel to Unreal."

Also, VR Troopers, a fighting game for the Sega Genesis. OK, in hindsight, this game is actually terrible. But we played it all the time in elementary school. I mean, it had the VR Troopers in it! From TV!

Ah, another game that comes to mind: Persona 3 FES

Dunno how not liked it is, but I always see people getting scared away because of the difficulty, and that trying to convince people to play that version for the good part of a decade now.

But just saying, learning the ins and outs of the game makes it far more manageable, and even gets mechanics of P4G and Persona 5 to make sense.

Also, pinning a god-like being to the ground for ~50 turns thanks to Thunder Reign and making another god-like being slap itself to death thanks to Marakarn and Tetrakarn, both due to exploiting mechanics to my benefit, were certainly high points of the game. =D

Even Mitsuru was useful for a single battle in my whole 170h save because of having to exploit the game's mechanics

🍞🔥
("burn by bread" reference)

Rayman M or Rayman Arena in North America. A PS2 era multiplayer 3D Rayman game with only 2 game modes, battle and racing. Most people hate one of the game modes, so half the game and are disappinted by the lack a content. Some critic said that the sense of speed is dull and the level design can be flat-out horrible.

I guess like all multiplayer games it's easier to have fun with friends, but I liked the challenging and sometimes cruel level design that forced skill and reflexes in racing mode.

GBA port of Munch's Oddysee

it's an objectively very meh game, so compared to the rest of the rockstars that make up Oddworld it's crap lol.

but it was one of the first video games I ever played and completed, so I love it unconditionally

I genuinely think Daikatana is a decent (but flawed) game.