It used to be that some games could be quite buggy, but had their existing features fixed by subsequent patches.
But now, it seems that even some fundamental components of certain games are heavily tweaked, transformed and changed by continuous updates. Unfortunately, most reviews of games address games at launch, and don't pick up on the subsequent evolution. Perhaps this is warranted. Is Sea of Thieves good, now? Is No Man's Sky? These are two games I really wanted to like, but stayed away from, following terrible reviews.
Have you come back or discovered to a game post fundamental patch?
Galactic Civilizations III has improved a lot over the years.
Skyrim was made great by unofficial patches and mods, not sure if that counts.
DAIII went from unplayble to mostly ok.
Mass Effect III was dumbed down by the "extended cut", but overall made better with all the DLCs and patches.
Sea of Thieves still sucks. No Man's Sky is really much better, a bunch of free updates and more on the way. Those devs did not quit on the game.
Surviving Mars seems to have improved: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2018/06/27/surviving-mars-patch-review/
RockPaperShotgun have a series where they check if/how games have improved with updates: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/tag/update-night/
The latest patch of HOI IV is interesting. It looks like they are finally trying to tackle the mess naval warfare has always been in the HOI series. I haven't gotten the DLC, but the gui improvements for Fleet management are quite nice once you get used to them, and convoy/convoy raiding seems to be much better. As Germany my convoys got destroyed when war broke out where previously they might lose some efficiency but it was easy to compensate for. Fleet management to attack/protect convoys and rotating out/replacing losses is a lot easier.