Underrated Games

[Sabby]

One thing with this subject that pisses me off is when said unloved game has a crappy imitator which makes it big and everyone still loves it :/ example. Final Fantasy. Go play Grandia 2. Its superior in every possible way, but no, all other JRPG's wanna copy FF's shitty shin kicker battle system.

[consortium11]

I'm not sure if I'm misunderstanding you but FF pre-empts Grandia by about a decade. Even FF7 (the one that arguably made the FF series huge across the world) came out at essentially the exact time time as Grandia and 3 years before Grandia 2.

[Sabby]

I'm aware of this :P I'm mostly peeved about the gameplay though. I've never liked Final Fantasy's battle system, and I found Grandia's to be great, but guess which one got adopted by everyone else? Just irks me...

[Denivar]

Grandia 2 was great fun -- it had a combat system that could be fun without being a tile map based full-fledged tactical affair. It wasn't without its flaws (magic was way too powerful) but with some improvements and balancing could have been perfect. It's so sad it hadn't been built on much. :(

Another great, underrated game: Gladius. A fun tactical battle game which just didn't sell well.

[Shjade]

One thing with this subject that pisses me off is when said unloved game has a crappy imitator which makes it big and everyone still loves it :/ example. Final Fantasy. Go play Grandia 2. Its superior in every possible way, but no, all other JRPG's wanna copy FF's shitty shin kicker battle system.

FF's battle system might be pretty dry and dull, but Grandia 2's battle system is so abusable it makes the game basically have no challenge. You just infinitely stunlock/pushback enemy attacks and turns, interrupt if they ever start casting a spell, and voila, you get through most fights taking no damage. I can't think of another RPG I've played that makes boss battles such pushovers throughout the game.

I mean, if you like easy games, sure it's superior, but other than that? I dunno.

[Inkidu]

Generally I think JRPGs are floundering all over. They can't seem to get or create anything that works. I think it's happening because the new trend is to try and enforce story through gameplay, and to quote Yahtzee, "The story and gameplay of JRPGs are separated by a wrought-iron gate... made of tigers." Now not every game does this, but Mass Effect, Assasin's Creed kind of does it, Fallout 3 and New Vegas do it, hell even Alpha Protocol does it. That's just my opinion though.

Oh, why people like that enforcement. It makes them feel smart. JRPGs tend to spoon feed a lot of things and assume the players no nothing. The World Ends With You 104 math problem thing comes to mind. (I think  that's the number)

[Malefique]

Can I play Darkfall 3 by itself, or do I need to play the first 2?

Sorry it took so long to reply, sabby - spawn attack!  (Damn this sudden epidemic of holidays).  Darkfall 3 can be played stand-alone, but there are some nice in-game references you'll miss if you don't try the first two.  I managed to run The Journal on a Windows 7 machine, though, the compatability wiazrd took care of any issues, and I got it on eBay for a couple of quid along with a couple of Jules Verne games.

[Hemingway]

I would like to add Ground Control 2 to this list.

I've only briefly played the original, but GC2 was a solid tactical RTS. A very interesting game, that seems to have been forgotten.

[Heaven Sent Blossom]

The Ground Control games don't get anywhere near enough love, they are fantastic attempts at deviating away from the atrocious base-building formula that taints the RTS genre as a whole.
Ground Control 2 was marginally worse than the first but I still found it to be a delightful experience.

[Bayushi]

Sabby may hate it, as it's a JRPG....

But there was a great PSX title from Sony called Legend of Dragoon.

Unfortunately, this game received VERY LITTLE advertisement, so it didn't sell very well in the US (at first. Ended up running 980,000 sold in the US). Several online critics like IGN rated the game pretty badly, while gamers did not seem to agree.

Another PSX title I adore is Valkyrie Profile. Unlike Legend of Dragoon, this game was highly rated by online critics, but it experienced a number of huge setbacks. A warehouse fire with a majority of the North American copies of the game caused a dramatic shortage, as did an issue with low-quality plastic media for the CD ROM discs (they tend to crack from the center of the disc). A used copy of Valkyrie Profile will set you back a fair bit of cash (and I wouldn't trust buying a used copy of a game online. I have made the mistake several times), and at minimum $300 US.

A possible alternative to shelling out hundreds on VP is to get the PSP port, Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth. Sadly, I do not own a PSP or I would have done this (as I used to own a copy of Valkyrie Profile, until the first disc cracked).

While it's a JRPG, it's very dissimilar to Final Fantasy and other JRPGs, using a more frantic and entertaining style of combat. The story and the characters are beautiful, the environments beautiful, and the side-scrolling action a nice change of pace from the traditional isometric RPG view.

The game has a LOT of replayability, with several endings based on your actions in the game. I don't recall if one is able to import old saves for a new game or not (I haven't played since 2001).

[Sabby]

Wait, is this, like, Panzer Dragoon? o.o Because I loved Panzer Dragoon Orta xD

[Oniya]

No, LoD is a fantasy quest involving seven warriors who are chosen by ancient dragon spirits to combat a great evil destined to destroy the world.  There have been people who call it an FF7 rip-off, but now that I've actually played part of FF7, I have to say that Legend of Dragoon is worlds better, especially graphics-wise, despite being released around the same time.  It used an interesting method of 'special attacks' called the 'Addition system', where you had to hit the attack button in a certain rhythm (up to seven or eight 'taps' for the higher level attacks) in order to pull off more damage.  Personally, I loved it!

[Tsenta]

Mmmm legend of dragoon...me loves!

[CmdrRenegade]

I'll second Legend of Dragoon and MAJORLY second Valkyrie Profile.  That game was unique property and spiritual successor to Actraiser at the same time. 

[Geeklet]

Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura

[Hemingway]

Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura

I definitely second this.

[Shjade]

I'll second Legend of Dragoon and MAJORLY second Valkyrie Profile.  That game was unique property and spiritual successor to Actraiser at the same time.

Hell, why not add Actraiser itself to the list while we're at it? I still play emulated versions of that game now and then for nostalgia (though the endboss gauntlet where they all move 2x as fast and you have one time limit to finish all the bosses in a row is a pain in the ass).

[Inkidu]

I don't think Legend of Dragoon was so obscure as it was broken (at least for me) it took us until the PS2 to actually be able to play the game. Seriously, two PS1s and two copies of the game, and we kept getting an error messages. I don't know what the deal was to this day, and even on a PS2 there was still a pretty good chance it would bug out at some point in disc four (if I remember correctly) and you'd have to start all over again in hopes it wouldn't this time around. That's why I never played it.

I think Final Fantasy VIII gets a bad rap, and is highly underrated (at least for a Final Fantasy game). It took a lot of work, which you could knock out in the early game and the rest of it would flow really nicely, but no one wants to put the work in on it.

[Oniya]

I discovered that swapping disks (putting in the wrong one and having it prompt me for the right one) got around the error messages.

[Inkidu]

I discovered that swapping disks (putting in the wrong one and having it prompt me for the right one) got around the error messages.

I think we may have tried that, but heck if I know, I don't even think we have it anymore. I chalked it up to developers just not giving a care years ago.

[DarklingAlice]

I'll second Legend of Dragoon and MAJORLY second Valkyrie Profile.  That game was unique property and spiritual successor to Actraiser at the same time.

Y'know, I never noticed that until you said it, but you are completely right. Strange that, loving both Actraiser and Vallkyrie Profile (which I haven't been able to finish because my second disc is the one that broke >_<) I never really thought of the similarities.



To add my own entry: I am always of the opinion that the Shin Megami Tensei family of games are vastly under appreciated. They were my favorite from a young age, and now they are about the only modern JRPGs I can bear to play. The fact that they are still being overshadowed by things like Final Fantasy tells me that there is a severe disconnect between myself and today's console RPG gamer.

[Idej]

I never really had much problems with Legend of Dragoon and so I wouldn't know about the issues that were discussed about Legend of Dragoon when it comes to the bugs and such with the game.  But I can at least give my empathy about those problems.

I really did like LoD very much and wish there was something to continue the story or do something about the Dragon Campaign.  It was still somewhat sad the Rose, Zeig, and Lloyd had to die in the end.

[Shjade]

It took a lot of work, which you could knock out in the early game and the rest of it would flow really nicely, but no one wants to put the work in on it.

It's a game. Why would I want to do work to enjoy it? ;p

[Violence]

My favorite JRPG franchise, Suikoden, always seems to be overlooked in JRPG discussions... but I think it had enough of a following that it can't really be called "underrated", I guess.  But a hidden gem that I remember from the PSX era, and I still have this game, was a game called Trap Gunner.

I honestly don't even know what kind of game Trap Gunner was, really.  You picked your character from a list of what were essentially anime archtypes.  You then proceeded to run around leaving mines and your character's special traps to try and kill the computer character that was hunting you.  The multiplayer didn't work at the time, because it was splitscreen so you always knew where your friend was dropping traps... but it's kind of a shame they never made anything like it for Xbox Live or PSN or anything.

[Kunoichi]

There's this one sandbox game for the PS2 called Steambot Chronicles that I remember really enjoying. ^^ You had a lot of freedom in the way you could go about things in the game, and you could easily just ditch the main line of quests and fool around doing other stuff if you wanted.  It was really cool, really...

Oh, and of course, giant steam-powered robots always make for a nice aesthetic addition to any game, in my experience. :P