I hate, hate, hate, hate, hate cities skylines with a kind of libidinal burning passion. It drives me mad just thinking about it. It's so ugly it actually makes me sick, has stupid grindy mechanics, and is full of idiotic DLC spam that bloats the base game. But I have some 500 odd hours in it, constantly installing mods and trying out different stuff to get closer to that perfect game that exists in my mind.
After my own heart. I have around the same gametime in it. I don't hate it, at all, but... I've sunk so many useless hours into it, and why? It has always been a "one-launch, one-city" for me. Always start a town from scratch. Waste literal hours trying to fix traffic and not understanding why people don't want to take the train. Get derailed by a stupid tsunami and lose everything. Give up. Repeat with a new mod.
Yet the best games in my life are those I've either finished once, or twice when I was younger. Or those I never actually finished, because then "i'd stop playing after it's done", ironically stopping playing it anyway.
Yet it is a good city building game. More of a sandbox, but still... I can't hate it because I like Gold FM. That's it. Gold FM, the sole reason why I don't hate Cities Skylines. Btw, if you like city building, do play it. It's hateful, disgusting, it's awesome.
In a personal viewpoint, a masterpiece of a game, book or movie, is that which your mind keeps going back to in a positive way, you reminisce of it with fond memories and good emotions (not just 'positive vibes', sadness can be great too). Unfortunately, most of those tend to be narratives, with clear plots and remarkable characters. Sandbox games lack that. And Bannerlord has always been in my mind, but only like "when can I do this?"... "when can I install it and do that?". I go to the library, find Bannerlord, finally install the latest update, spend weeks in the Nexus, days fixing the load order. Play a couple of hours and... "yeah, not there yet."
Oddly enough, this bout of BL playing has been my best, with 1.0.1. I finally went into my third generation with a rather interesting game world. I spent most family and companions trying to save Battania, and Caladog lived into his 90s doing crap, losing everything. Now his grandson's my liege, and all we had was Lageta. And as soon as I left it, it fell into someone else's hands.
So I've got to say the game improved a lot since EA. I've finally had a somewhat remarkable time with it.
It only needed 107 mods.