I literally muttered "that's a tough one" out loud to myself when reading the topic title. This definitely happened during my childhood but I'm having difficulty remembering the first. I went off magazine reviews and rented games before making a purchase, so it wasn't often that this happened, but it did happen.
The one that comes to mind is Rebelstar: Tactical Command. It's a pretty obscure GBA SRPG, I was interested in it because screenshots and write ups made it sound kinda like futuristic Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, which I was into at the time. It was also published by Namco, who were basically the publishers that just didn't miss at the time. I saw them as the guys responsible for Soul Calibur II, Tales of Symphonia, Donkey Konga, and classic arcade games that were seeing a cultural revival around that time and could often be found in local pizza like Galaga and Pac-Man. Apparently it was developed by a team completely unrelated to Namco's internal developers, but kid me didn't know that at the time. By the time this game came out I was in middle school, so I wasn't that young, but I can't think of it happening at an earlier time.
I remember seeing it get 7s in Nintendo Power and some other magazine and I decided to skip it. In retrospect its reception isn't that poor, mostly middling, but I also remember review scores seeming kinda inflated at the time, with 7s usually reserved for games that are pretty flawed if not awful. Other SRPGs and strategy games like Fire Emblem, FFTA, and Advance Wars reviewed much better across the board and this game looked pretty similar so my impression was basically that it had to be an objective downgrade next to those games.
In retrospect I'd kinda like to try this game, it seems interesting, but idk. I've basically never heard anyone talk about it and I'd probably never had known about it if I wasn't tuned into gaming news at the time.
