Persona 5. I know this is a pretty mainstream answer, and the game definitely has it flaws, but it was more so the circumstances around my purchasing the game that led to me being pleasantly surprised. Tl;dr at the bottom of the post.
I've been playing the MegaTen franchise since the (horribly localized) first installment on the original PlayStation. (I know Persona is technically divorced from the mainline MegaTen franchise, but I'm lumping it in to establish foundation.) I really enjoyed the series, all the way up until Persona 4. I didn't hate the game, but I was definitely starting to get the vibe that I was growing out of the target audience for it, being only two years away from entering my twenties when it first dropped. Then came Golden, and all the endless spin-offs, and I had pretty much come to the conclusion that Persona was just...no longer for me. This was compounded by the fact that some of the other MegaTen titles were starting to follow Persona's lead, rather than continue being, you know, MegaTen. SMT IV Apocalypse felt like a saturday morning cartoon version of the franchise. The enhanced port of Devil Survivor 2 only further reminded me of that fact. Tokyo Mirage Sessions was...what it was. Then came the announcement of P5, rumored to feature an adult cast.
Until Atlus backpedaled.
Then the new rumors came that it was going to feature a mixed-age cast.
And Atlus backpedaled again.
High school. We were going back to high school yet again. Needless to say, my expectations weren't very high. But I told myself I'd come this far with the franchise--if I could get it cheap, I'll give it a go, but I certainly wasn't picking it up on release day like I'd done with the other installments. Flash forward to early this year, around February, when I managed to find a boxed copy, brand new, for about $20 USD. That was a reasonable price--if I liked it, great; if I didn't, I wouldn't feel too cheated.
Playing the game brought me back to the fold.
Now, let me say this upfront: Persona 5's writing leaves a lot to be desired at times. Some would even argue it's some of the worst in the series for how on-the-nose it is with its "adults bad; kids good" message at times. But the gameplay for this installment has been so refined and polished compared to previous iterations--the dungeon crawling actually felt fun and engaging. Fights were exciting and stylish. And while the soundtrack took a little bit of time to grow on me, I can't deny that the pulp-y, "super spy"-esque mood they went for ended up complimenting the game perfectly.
I'm actually looking forward to playing Royal and Scramble now, just because of how much goodwill P5 managed to garner with me. So yeah, definitely don't regret purchasing this one, especially for the price I got it at.
Tl;dr version: Persona 5 ended up renewing my faith in the franchise after almost giving up on it following the wake left by Persona 4.
