To me, the 286 is a bit of an interesting part of PC history. The CPU started development just as the PC platform was being developed at Boca Raton in the late 70's, and came out just a year after the original PC. IBM Did not harness it for the PC Platform until 1984, 2 years after it's release - so the 286's development was not focused on the DOS/x86 market so much at first, but rather business machines meant to interface with mainframes and heavy workloads, as well as a s a "unix" type workstation ("Microsoft Xenix was one such *nix intended to take full advantage of the 286).
However, most people just used them as "fast XT's". TBH, I don't own a 386, I own a 286 running at 12MHz, and that actually covers a lot of ground game-wise, plus the Turbo Switch allows me to slow it down to XT speeds. This is one reason my GEM 286 is in a contest with my Tandy 1000A for which one is the better retro system. I've got a 8088 (tandy), 286 (GEM 286), four 486s (NEC VErsa x3 + Socket 3 Desktop DX4-100 system), and two Pentiums (Versa P75 Laptop, and a P100 desktop that's slower than the laptop) - and honestly, I could easily get away with just one of the 486 and the 286 or the 486 and the Tandy.
The problem with the Tandy 1000 is, being a 4.77MHz system with an actual 8088 instead of a V20, a lot of later XT-class titles run a little too slow, that's where the GEM runs better, but it does have 3-voice sound for AGI Sierra games and games that use it - but the GEM overlaps BOTH the 8088 and the 486 because it runs all the XT-stuff perfectly with Turbo Off, all of the AT/386 era stuff runs quite well on it, and some earlier 486-era titles run on it though not as well as on a 486 of course.
At it's lowest, my 286 runs stuff like old BASIC games and old AGI and SCI games that run at full speed on the "fast" setting. Granted I don't have Tandy 3-voice on the AGI stuff, but I do have Adlib support on the SCI Stuff thanks to a SoundBlaster card. It seems the 286's peak era software would be things like Prince of Persia, Monkey Island 1 & 2, Ultima VI: The False Prophet, Tank Wars, BlockOut, and anything else in that magic zone of 1988-1991. Anything beyond that goes a little too slow, and anything before that that is not speed throttled needs the Turbo Switch turned off. My 286 is the only machine with a Turbo Switch on it.
A 386 has a benefit of going deeper into the 486 catalog if you are not as interested in any DOS software post 94-ish, but it also has a downside that not all 386's have a turbo switch, and not all of them slow down enough to work with XT-class software well enough to work right.
I don't think any games were specifically developed to take advantage of or utilize the 80286 in any special way that a 386 or 486 can't recreate. The 286 is kind of weird in the lot, it goes in this strange time where EGA, ESDI, and GameBlaster were a thing - three of the less as often seen items in vintage PC's, mostly because the heyday was a bit before inexpensive LPX 386 SX IDE VGA machine started to turn up, and the clone scene was just heating up.
I think it really just boils down to a preference of what you'd prefer to have for other reasons? Do you prefer 80's aesthetics? Odd old hardware like EGA, ESDI, or GameBlaster, or Hercules? Or do you want a VGA system with a 386 that was the baseline for most games from 1990 onward? Are you like me, wanting to show what an "underdog" can really do in capable hands? Or someone who wants a more plug-n-play solution? One other thing to consider is you can get the 386, especially a DX-40, near or into 486 DX territory with the right tweaks and upgrades.