The Best Video Games that got No Love

Ever Tactics: Ogre?

Awesome! N64? I believe?

That was the third or forth and worst installment but still better than most the ff franchise knockoffs.

Not sure if anyone remembered Crime Killer for PSX, I was one of the lucky ones who got experienced this game back in 1998, sadly it didn’t get much love at all.

Two more for you:

  1. Tokyo Extreme Racer Zero- Absolutely brilliant street racing. Just cruise around until you find somebody to trounce, flash those headlights and let the race begin.

2 DBZ: Dead Ball Zone- This game was amazing. A hybrid of rugby, soccer, and hockey that included machine guns, knives, and chainsaws… yes… chainsaws! How can you pick up a game like that and NOT play as the Irish Squad?! Lol :four_leaf_clover:

Shining Force and Shining Force 2 hands down are under appreciated games. Great story, great graphics, wonderful world. Recently didn’t even make a list of top 100 rpgs of all time. crazy… Shining Force III for Sega Saturn also very solid.

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This is a crime against humanity imo lol

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Anyone remember the Guardian Legend for NES I think? I can’t be the only one that liked it

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I have, and played it all through. Decent game. Also played 4 and 5 all through, but thought they were no way near as good.

The original and first game was by far the best in the series, in my view. And available on PS3 store if anyone wants to give it a try.

EDIT: also retro awesome: Phantasy Star series. Part IV was my favourite.

Part 4 was good but my favorite by far was the 2nd one. Just the music even now all these years later makes me smile

Edit: this is muh jam!!!

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Shadowrun on SNES

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Ogre Battle: MOTBQ captured something that the spinoffs and even the direct sequel never could in my opinion. This is one of my top picks. It unfortunately had a very limited run and is a rare cart so not many got to play it when it was new, and the format unfortunately died off completely. At least, I’ve never seen another attempt at anything quite like it after Ogre Battle 64.

I have to agree with a lot of the RPGs listed here, but did they really get not much love? I guess the Genesis ones were kind of overshadowed by the SNES Squaresoft RPGs of the era. I loved all of these. As for not yet listed here, Breath of Fire 4 is something a lot of people might not know even existed, I never even heard of when it released actually, it wasn’t until nearly a decade later that I got it for PSP, and it was worth it every bit. I’m really sad at what happened to that IP after that point…

For games people have probably never heard of: Mordor: The Depths of Dejenol. Dragon Court 2. The former is a great dungeon crawler where you methodically map out and conquer 15 floors by gradually accumulating better gear and guild levels. It unfortunately uses 16 bit libraries and needs an emulated 32 bit or lower environment to run on a 64 bit modern computer (Win3.1 installed in DosBox, for example) and the license is owned by someone who has sadly made no effort in facilitating this and so it sits, mostly in obscurity, because of the effort barrier required to play. The latter was an online game, where you were given a short blurb and a number of options you could use to get out of any encounter (one which was combat). It had an energy system that was there only to have you explore other options and play multiple characters (they did not sell energy, and there were farmable ingame items that could refresh energy, allowing you to play forever if you were efficient). It is unfortunately now defunct. I spent many an hour on both of them.

I’m not sure how much these flew under the radar at the time, but Master of Orion 2 (NOT 3), and Conquest of the New World: Deluxe Edition as 4x games. Warlords Battlecry 3 as a pseudo RTS (but mostly heavily focused on RPG elements on building your hero). Lords of Magic is a sort of a blend of turn based and real time strategy. Heroes of Might and Magic series - some of them were better than others. I can’t remember exactly which version I preferred, but necropolis was always my favorite faction. Majesty was an excellent spin on the RTS genre where you don’t have direct control over anything (Majesty 2, not so much, avoid that one).

Most of NIS “tactical” RPGs fly under the radar. Disgaea(s), Makai Kingdom, Phantom Brave, La Pucelle: Tactics, Soul Nomad and the World Eaters. They are admittedly niche which is why they don’t get a lot of widespread attention. They focus heavily on a power accumulation cycle as you approach endgame, but in a way that is generally appealing (excluding the parts where you are expected to repeat a specific “grind stage”, which I dislike). If I could try to explain it in simplest terms to someone that has never played one, each game is “breakable” in a different way but the game itself is designed to be broken.

For Tower Defense, the genre in and of itself is pretty niche to begin with. My favorites are Gemcraft: Chasing Shadows, Defenders Quest, and YouTD (a map for Warcraft 3). Gemcraft is a power accumulation tower defense that strays away from straight tower defense mechanics and more into making efficient feedback loops to squeeze the most you can out of a stage as you progress further into “breaking” the game. For fans of a more classic tower defense experience, there is a mode that does not allow you to “break” the game in this manner. Defenders Quest is a tower defense with a bit lighter RPG elements. YouTD, while not technically a “game”, is a crowdsourced tower defense map for Warcraft 3 done as a thesis project and maintained after that (though rarely updated as of now) and is generally excellently balanced (maybe a bit too well).

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I loved Heros of Might and Magic III, me and my friend would play it all the time

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Age of Empires III

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I preferred Heroes of Might & Magic 2.

While I’m back, I think the Monkey Island series has a cult following, sure - but really also deserved a lot more attention for being all around awesome.

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Master of Orion 2 is a brilliant game, but is widely recognised as such and thus doesn’t meet the requirements of this thread :grin:
Heroes of M&M 3 was always my fave of the bunch.

For any traditional RPG players here I highly recommend ‘Lords of Xulima’ available on Steam. Extremely under rated. I’ve been playing RPGs since ‘Adventure’ on Atari 2600 - so I know what I’m talking about.

http://www.numantiangames.com/lordsofxulima/

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Heh @moons you’re as old as i am lol

Do you remember this one? Not as old but close

Doesn’t look familiar. Graphics look 16bit - Amiga? SNES? Or some other console. But yeah, I still have a lot of retro consoles like Atari, coleco, intellivision.

My fav! The SS is a game called Sword of Vermillion for sega genesis so yes 16 bit!

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