I kinda miss when games had wacky version differences. While there was usually one definitive version compared to the rest, having a brand new experience to play by simply buying the same game elsewhere was actually nice to have in some cases.
Nowadays it’s just “oh, you bought Skyrim on Switch? Here’s some Legend of Zelda armor” and “Depending on which platform you’re playing HITMAN 3 (a singleplayer game) on, you get a suit with a differently colored undershirt!”
Yes, but also no.
I didn’t play the Halo franchise until late 2015-early 2016, but I thought 3 and ODST were disappointing, and I stopped one mission into Reach. These days, Reach and 3 are my two favorite Halo games and ODST gets an honorable mention for its campaign. So what changed? In retrospect, it’s because they were running on a 360 with an ass framerate, ass resolution, and ass FOV with a weird crosshair that made me subconsciously raise my head and controller-based controls that I was bad at. They were uncomfortable for me to play on the hardware I had to run them on, and as soon as I had them with all that QOL improved, the experience was completely different.
This experience, along with plenty others, has shown me that it’s often not the game itself and could be several other factors, from the port and the platform to my expectations and my attitude. So while I’ve had a bunch of “disappointing” patient experiences, a good amount of them stopped being disappointing when I gave them another shot