Underrated/Obscure Video Games

D96

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There was a game back on the PS2/Xbox/GameCube called Metal Arms that I really loved. Basically, there two "races" of robots, and one enslaved the other. You were a part of a resistance group and had all kinds of awesome tools for fighting back (like a gun that hacked into enemies, a rocket launcher that split rockets into multiple rockets, etc.). Evidently it wasn't really popular, because I've never heard anything about it and there was no sequel.
 

Gamerdude854

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Aw yes, i've heard of this game before, i've never played it myself but i've heard it's really good and even features some awesome voice actors like Dan Castellaneta (The voice of Homer Simpson)
 

D96

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Really? I didn't realize he was in it, that's pretty awesome! I'm just sad it didn't take off, it was really good IMO. Another cool feature I remember was these "hacking grenades" that would turn any enemies hit by it to your side; it just had some really cool concepts in it.

Oh yeah, and it was really hard. Like, I got stuck on the mid-game boss and had to come back to it like two years later. Then I got stuck on one of the last levels and took a few months break before coming back to it. It was pretty darn long for a shooter game; I think it had like 40 levels?
 

Sutekh94

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Anybody here ever heard of the Klonoa series of games? The original Klonoa on PS1 has to be pretty high on my personal list of best video games of all time, and yet, you don't see a lot of people talking about the little cat/rabbit thing or his games. Its PS2 sequel was just as good, and he also had a series of games on the GBA that was pretty good as well. Here's a video of the first game on PS1:

 

Gamerdude854

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Anybody here ever heard of the Klonoa series of games? The original Klonoa on PS1 has to be pretty high on my personal list of best video games of all time, and yet, you don't see a lot of people talking about the little cat/rabbit thing or his games. Its PS2 sequel was just as good, and he also had a series of games on the GBA that was pretty good as well. Here's a video of the first game on PS1:

I've only ever played the Wii remake of the first game, although I loved it
 

Stars

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I've seen Klonoa but know nothing about his games.

Let's see...obscure game...I'm trying to think of something that's not just some random original Gameboy puzzle game like Daedalian Opus.
Is Monster Tale for the DS obscure? It's a Metroidvania crossed with a pet raising simulator. I got it on recommendation a few years ago, and it's pretty inexpensive if you can find a used copy. The environmental puzzles are not particularly varied or challenging, but the pet aspect was interesting. I enjoyed it well enough for the price I paid.
 

Muro

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Anybody here ever heard of the Klonoa series of games?
Got a considerable sentiment for Door to Phantomile which I sometimes play with an emulator on the PC.

In fact, I modded my Skullgirls to have the OST from it a while ago. Modding the game became a mini-hobby of mine and these days whenever I feel like playing SG I switch between Klonoa, Undertale and Guilty Gear soundtracks depending on the mood.
 

Shadow of Death

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I've heard of Kloana and Legend of Dragoon, though I never played any of those games.

@Crym4x - I have One Finger Death Punch on PC. I enjoyed what I played of it, felt rewarding to get a perfect stage.

As to underrated/Obscure games I've played, I'll list a few that don't have many reviews on Steam:

Magic Maker - A game where you mix and match various spell components to create custom effects. The effects can range from useful (room clearing) to just crazy (fill a room full of cotton).
Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale - While it has a few thousand reviews and has been on Steam for ages, I still can't recommend this enough. It's part shop management, part dungeon crawler. I have yet to find another game that does this so well (Recettear sequel PLZ Easy Game Station!)
Lead and Gold: Gangs of the Wild West - I haven't played this in a while, so I don't know how it has changed or the state of its activity, but this was a fun multiplayer arena type shooter game.
They Bleed Pixels - A fun, violent side-scrolling beat-em-up platformer.
Secrets of the Ræticon - I rather enjoyed this game up to the point it bugged out on me and I couldn't progress. This was a while ago, so maybe it's fixed, or I just had bad luck. As a bonus, the title has the same sort of dual character symbol that Them's Fightin' Herds has for Fœnum has.
Bleed - It's a great action-shooter platformer. It can be challenging to unlock some of the stuff, but it's still a very fun game.
Rogue Legacy - Least obscure on the list based on total reviews (over 11K currently), but I still wanted to mention it. Basically, it's a randomized dungeon crawling platformer with a unique twist. When you die, your offspring takes over and there is a degree of randomness. Sometimes the perks are good, sometimes not so much.
Eversion - A platformer that plays much like a twisted Mario game. It has several endings. I managed to get the true ending myself.
The Wonderful End of the World - It's basically a poor man's Katamari Damacy game. The only reason it has as many reviews as it does I think, is because it was part of the Spud special event on Steam years ago (where some games were modified to feature spuds).
Freedom Planet - Not exactly obscure, but it was originally a Sonic Fangame that became its own thing, much like Them's Fightin' Herds, so it deserves a mention for that. It plays much like a the 2D sonic sidescrolling sonic games of yesteryear.
Symphony - Another game that uses music, including your own music, to generate its stages. It's less well known than Audiosurf/2 or Beat Hazard (I recommend Audiosurf and Beat Hazard a lot, incidentally) so I thought I should mention it here.
Nimbus - Not the top game on my list, but it's the most obscure. I played it for over 3 hours so it can't be all that bad (I usually drop games I don't like after an hour or less). It's a racing-puzzle game.
Letter Quest: Grimm's Adventures - A typing game where you progress by typing out word combinations based on what you're given. It's basically like Combat Boggle XD Though the letters don't need to be adjacent. 2nd most obscure of my list. As to another typing game, I also recommend:
Typing of the Dead: Overkill - It's a more traditional typing combat game. It has existed in one form or another for a while, this is a remake or something to that effect. You can create custom dictionaries too, using the tool you can DL from steam. I created a Lawyer Friendly Equines dictionary incidentally. There are more than when I last checked and I haven't updated my own since last summer but it's still usable of course.

EDIT: Oh, and most of these games are on sale during the Steam New Year sale.
 

SubrosianDimitri

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Zack and Wiki: The Quest for Barbaros' Treasure: A spectacular puzzle game for the Wii that used the motion controls to such great effect that even motion plus games can't compare. I have no idea how this game didn't sell that well, and why the heck there hasn't been a sequel :(
One Way Heroics: The only roguelike I've really been able to get into. You have to travel to the right to escape the darkness and defeat the demon lord through endless procedurally generated worlds. It plays kind of like a mystery dungeon game with the grids, combat system, and all the stuff you can find and equip just sitting on the ground. It's also fairly cheap too, and it goes on sale fairly often for about 87 cents.
Star Saviors: Simple and fun bullet hell shooter, lots of weapons to choose from and a rockin' soundtrack, though the character portraits between stages are terrifyingly awful models.
 

Moon Drops

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Legend of Dragoon and Klonoa were both great...

Here's one that no one ever gets... Who's played Silhouette Mirage?
 

Hirosashii

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Seiken Densetsu 3 - Never came out in the US, unfortunately. It's the sequel to Secret of Mana. It's better in basically every way.
Rosenkruezstilette - A really solid Mega Man clone for those interested in that kind of game. There's a sequel too -- Rosenkruezstiltte Freudenstachel.
The Magical Quest Starring Mickey Mouse - One of those old-timey feel-good SNES platformers that you wouldn't expect to fill your nostalgia quota.
Zone of the Enders 1&2 - I donno, I feel cool playing these games. Don't hear a lot of people talk about them.
Talesweaver - Never came to the US, but popular in Asia. One of those classic 2D MMOs that had a charm to it. I actually still play this game.
The Legend of Zelda: Bookworm Hoers Princess - Definitely not unknown, but it feels like a lot of people hopped on the "this is a terrible Zelda" bandwagon. The aesthetic, in particular, although darker/grittier than other Zeldas, is beautiful at times -- especially the boss intro sequences. Not to say the game didn't have problems, but I think it gets trashed far more than necessary.
 
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Stars

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The Magical Quest Starring Mickey Mouse - One of those old-timey feel-good SNES platformers that you wouldn't expect to fill your nostalgia quota.
Friend of mine had that game when we were kids. We played the heck out of it.
 

neopokekun

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Technic Beat for PS2


Arcade rythm game developed by Arika where you move around the stage hitting circle-shaped markers that correspond to the notes in the song. If two markers overlap, and one of them is successfully activated, the second marker will become “reserved” and will play automatically allowing you to form chains. Each character also have a way of moving the markers around. The game has a great soundtrack of both original tunes as well as 30 remixes of music from varoius Namco games.

Gameplay

Lots of chaining
 

D96

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Another fun one I just remembered: anyone ever play Frequency or Amplitude? They were basically the precursor to Guitar Hero/Rock Band, so blame/praise them for that. But you had different songs and you had to play different instruments for each section of the game. So for example, you would do a line of the drums and once you finished that, it would play by itself; then you could swap to another part like vocals or synth and get that rolling along. It was a cool concept at the time, though that style of music game got driven into the ground.

There was a reboot of Amplitude released recently but I haven't been able to give that a shot yet.
 

A88mph

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"Army Men" was an awesome series. I wish that would get a reboot someday. Also has anyone else ever played "Stunt Racer 64"?
 
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Shadow of Death

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Another fun one I just remembered: anyone ever play Frequency or Amplitude? They were basically the precursor to Guitar Hero/Rock Band, so blame/praise them for that. But you had different songs and you had to play different instruments for each section of the game. So for example, you would do a line of the drums and once you finished that, it would play by itself; then you could swap to another part like vocals or synth and get that rolling along. It was a cool concept at the time, though that style of music game got driven into the ground.

There was a reboot of Amplitude released recently but I haven't been able to give that a shot yet.
I really liked the demo for Frequency, I played it a bunch of times but never ended up getting the game unfortunately.
 

Sutekh94

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"Army Men" was an awesome series. I wish that would get a reboot someday.
I remember playing Sarge's Heroes 2 on PS2 to the ground when I was a kid, and I loved every single moment of it. Out of curiosity, have you heard of the game The Mean Greens? I haven't played it myself, but I've heard it's pretty good. From what I've seen, it's basically like if Sarge's Heroes 2 had an online multiplayer feature.
 
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Galaxy Heart

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Down the ne'er-do-well.
A severe underrated classic that was released for the PC a few years ago was Bad Rats.
It's a quirky little puzzle game that, if you can look past the text-to-speech dialogue reader and dated graphics is actually a highly enjoyable game at a cheap price.
 
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A88mph

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I remember playing Sarge's Heroes 2 on PS2 to the ground when I was a kid, and I loved every single moment of it. Out of curiosity, have you heard of the game The Mean Greens? I haven't played it myself, but I've heard it's pretty good. From what I've seen, it's basically like if Sarge's Heroes 2 had an online multiplayer feature.
It's on my wishlist on Steam. I'll get it at some point.
 
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hawthornbunny

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I've heard of Kloana and Legend of Dragoon, though I never played any of those games.

@Crym4x - I have One Finger Death Punch on PC. I enjoyed what I played of it, felt rewarding to get a perfect stage.

As to underrated/Obscure games I've played, I'll list a few that don't have many reviews on Steam:

Magic Maker - A game where you mix and match various spell components to create custom effects. The effects can range from useful (room clearing) to just crazy (fill a room full of cotton).
Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale - While it has a few thousand reviews and has been on Steam for ages, I still can't recommend this enough. It's part shop management, part dungeon crawler. I have yet to find another game that does this so well (Recettear sequel PLZ Easy Game Station!)
Lead and Gold: Gangs of the Wild West - I haven't played this in a while, so I don't know how it has changed or the state of its activity, but this was a fun multiplayer arena type shooter game.
They Bleed Pixels - A fun, violent side-scrolling beat-em-up platformer.
Secrets of the Ræticon - I rather enjoyed this game up to the point it bugged out on me and I couldn't progress. This was a while ago, so maybe it's fixed, or I just had bad luck. As a bonus, the title has the same sort of dual character symbol that Them's Fightin' Herds has for Fœnum has.
Bleed - It's a great action-shooter platformer. It can be challenging to unlock some of the stuff, but it's still a very fun game.
Rogue Legacy - Least obscure on the list based on total reviews (over 11K currently), but I still wanted to mention it. Basically, it's a randomized dungeon crawling platformer with a unique twist. When you die, your offspring takes over and there is a degree of randomness. Sometimes the perks are good, sometimes not so much.
Eversion - A platformer that plays much like a twisted Mario game. It has several endings. I managed to get the true ending myself.
The Wonderful End of the World - It's basically a poor man's Katamari Damacy game. The only reason it has as many reviews as it does I think, is because it was part of the Spud special event on Steam years ago (where some games were modified to feature spuds).
Freedom Planet - Not exactly obscure, but it was originally a Sonic Fangame that became its own thing, much like Them's Fightin' Herds, so it deserves a mention for that. It plays much like a the 2D sonic sidescrolling sonic games of yesteryear.
Symphony - Another game that uses music, including your own music, to generate its stages. It's less well known than Audiosurf/2 or Beat Hazard (I recommend Audiosurf and Beat Hazard a lot, incidentally) so I thought I should mention it here.
Nimbus - Not the top game on my list, but it's the most obscure. I played it for over 3 hours so it can't be all that bad (I usually drop games I don't like after an hour or less). It's a racing-puzzle game.
Letter Quest: Grimm's Adventures - A typing game where you progress by typing out word combinations based on what you're given. It's basically like Combat Boggle XD Though the letters don't need to be adjacent. 2nd most obscure of my list. As to another typing game, I also recommend:
Typing of the Dead: Overkill - It's a more traditional typing combat game. It has existed in one form or another for a while, this is a remake or something to that effect. You can create custom dictionaries too, using the tool you can DL from steam. I created a Lawyer Friendly Equines dictionary incidentally. There are more than when I last checked and I haven't updated my own since last summer but it's still usable of course.

EDIT: Oh, and most of these games are on sale during the Steam New Year sale.
Oh man, Magicmaker is going straight on my wishlist. That looks right up my street. :) It reminds me of the spellcrafting system in an old Amiga game called Legend, where you combined runes to basically program your own spells.

Rogue Legacy is fun, Eversion is A DELIGHTFUL CUTESY PLATFORMER, and while I haven't played Freedom Planet, I did watch it on the Riptiders stream recently. They followed it up with a Sonic month to see how it compares. :)
 

D96

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"Army Men" was an awesome series. I wish that would get a reboot someday. Also has anyone else ever played "Stunt Racer 64"?
I owned the Air Attack 1&2 games, but I never got a chance to play any others in the series. They always looked really fun; I'd definitely check out a reboot if it was ever made.
 
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Ninjab33z

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Please tell me someone here has played Gotcha Force, that game was a good chunk of my childhood
 

Stars

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Anyone here ever played Greendog? He was a potential Sega mascot before Sonic came around. He was a surfer/skater that had to break an Aztec curse that made animals attack him and more importantly prevented him from surfing.

Only reason I was able to beat that game as a kid was a glitch that somehow gave me π∆# or so extra lives.
 

Shikainu

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I don't see Odin Sphere get mentioned much, though its gotta be one of my favourite games.
 
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Gamerdude854

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I absolutely LOVED that game. Here's another one.
At first I thought this was an Animal Crossing Clone...Then I read the back

A severe underrated classic that was released for the PC a few years ago was Bad Rats.
It's a quirky little puzzle game that, if you can look past the text-to-speech dialogue reader and dated graphics is actually a highly enjoyable game at a cheap price.
I personally don't find this game fun in the slightest and was gifted it as a joke, but hey, to each their own
 
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Shikainu

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I personally don't find this game fun in the slightest and was gifted it as a joke, but hey, to each their own
Yeah, Bad Rats is sort of a meme in it's own right. It's usually about 25 cents on the steam store (I think I bought it for 24...i bought like seven copies at that price) and used to be gifted rampantly as a joke because once it's in your library you're stuck being the person who owns Bad Rats.
 
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