Not quite looking for a game, but I have a silly story about a game (or two) that eluded me for years.
I used to watch my older brother play practically all of the PC RPGs and strategy games of the late 90's, but there was one that stuck out in my memory. The cover art had your typical hooded wizard/sorcerer type guy with no visible face, and the gameplay fascinated me because you had what I remembered to be an isometric overworld in the style of Heroes of Might & Magic, but combat encounters suddenly turned the game into a Warcraft 1&2 style top down RTS.
Cut to a couple decades later, and I couldn't tell you what that game was to save my life.
Until one day, while looking for something unrelated, I found the cover art from my memories:
Mystery solved! Except... Betrayal at Antara is a pretty typical RPG, not any kind of strategy-RTS hybrid thing.
But then I came back around to a game I initially crossed off the suspect list, due to a lack of wizards on the cover: Lords of the Realm II.
And well, long story short, my brother used to keep a copy of Lords of the Realm II in the box for Betrayal at Antara. Thank you brother for decades of confusion.