Shadowverse

Well, firstly, it was good both for control and for aggro. Against control, which needs to be killed as quickly as possible, it deals an extra 1-2 damage to the face and, perhaps even more importantly, removes 1-2 cards from the opponent's deck and increases the chance of drawing a good card.
Against aggro, it's a free trade. The opponent plays two 1/1 cats on turn one, and you respond with "Cache on Takeoff," Patches comes out, you take out one cat with Patches and the other with your hand, and you might even have a coin to play a second pirate.
Secondly, it was strong not so much on its own, but in combination with other cards. This includes the same Cache, and the 3/2 buccaneer, which was buffed by cheap weapons. A year ago, Patches wasn't scary in itself, but the corridor horror 5/5 before the nerf was terrifying, and it was very easy to reduce its cost to zero with Patches.

I agree that when they nerfed the buccaneer, the axe, and other things, Patches also lost some of its power. But still, people tried to play it in Hunter, Zookeeper, and even Mage (!), which has zero synergy with pirates, which says something.