AbstractIn the present paper, we consider the following singularly perturbed problem:$$\begin{array}{} \displaystyle \left\{ \begin{array}{ll} -\varepsilon^2\triangle u+V(x)u=\varepsilon^{-\alpha}(I_{\alpha}*F(u))f(u), & x\in \mathbb{R}^N; \\ u\in H^1(\mathbb{R}^N), \end{array} \right. \end{array}$$whereε> 0 is a parameter,N≥ 3,α∈ (0,N),F(t) =$\begin{array}{} \int_{0}^{t} \end{array}$f(s)dsandIα: ℝN→ ℝ is the Riesz potential. By introducing some new tricks, we prove that the above problem admits a semiclassical ground state solution (ε∈ (0,ε0)) and a ground state solution (ε= 1) under the general “Berestycki-Lions assumptions” on the nonlinearityfwhich are almost necessary, as well as some weak assumptions on the potentialV. Whenε= 1, our results generalize and improve the ones in [V. Moroz, J. Van Schaftingen, T. Am. Math. Soc. 367 (2015) 6557-6579] and [H. Berestycki, P.L. Lions, Arch. Rational Mech. Anal. 82 (1983) 313-345] and some other related literature. In particular, we propose a new approach to recover the compactness for a (PS)-sequence, and our approach is useful for many similar problems.