Barely known/obscure games you wish more people knew

[Pearwood]

Is Persona 4 classed as obscure? It's probably somewhere between sort of known and obscure so i'll throw it out there.

I'd say no, fans of JRPGs tend to know about it. Great game though.

I usually say Etrian Odyssey in these threads so I'll say it again - Etrian Odyssey. Nice little dungeon crawler on the DS.

Final Fantasy 9 (PS1, PSN) is overlooked far too often, it's one of my favourites in the series. Cute graphics, good gameplay, nice story, shit ending with a final boss who comes out of nowhere but until that fight you've got fun antagonists.

The Space Quest series isn't so much obscure as it is just old, it's aged well though and I'd recommend people who like adventure games to check them out. Not so much King's Quest, time has been less kind to the earlier games in that series.

 

[Snake Plissken]

Star Control 2. It's pretty old, my first memory of it was playing it on a 3DO. Basically, it's Mass Effect before Mass Effect was ever a twinkle in someone's eye. It's fucking awesome, and someone made it free open-source port that you can download. It's fucking free now, so go play the goddamned thing.

[link]http://sc2.sourceforge.net/[/link]

 

[blizzaradragon]

I'll put my list of games per platform:

NES - Vice: Project D.O.O.M. (or Gun-Dec in Japan) Castlevania, Spy Hunter and Operation Wolf had an underrated chimera.

SNES - S.O.S. Best use of MODE7 on a game ever! I got it by chance as a rare cheap import no one wanted.

Genesis/Mega Drive - Soleil It's game that made noise, yeah, but have you heard of people who actually played it? I don't =/

Saturn - Guardian Heroes Alright, fair enough, I think now it's on XBLA, but how long it took that game to be noticed?

PSX - Panzer Bandit Awesome Beat'em Up like Guardian Heroes, for PSX with a hero that looked like Sonic =D

DreamCast - Radilgy Vertical Shoot'em Up quite hard and addictive. I don't recall the North American name.

PS2 - Shadow of Memories/Destiny That game was popular, I think, but it didn't lasted long enough to be remembered by Konami, I wish more people were to know this one.

I don't recall a game on PS3 that I've played that is barely know. but I want to try one called Folklore, seemed good enough, but it's hard to find that game nowadays in here.

 

[Spandexpanda]

I've said it once and I will say it again: The World Ends With You. I loved that game despite it being a bit of a button smasher on the DS.

That game was so, so amazing. I really, really enjoyed the premise, the art direction, the gameplay, everything. It was so, so hard later on as well, the last properly tough game I've played in a while.

My recommendation would have to go for Freespace (in the US it was called Descent: Freespace I think), and its sequel. Those games feature a brilliant storyline that really left me wanting the third installment (that's probably never coming unfortunately), amazing atmosphere, besides being an extremely solid space sim, and featuring more ship and weapon porn than you can shake a stick at. I love those games.

 

[NerfedFalcon]

As I say on all these threads. Ghost Trick and Radiant Historia, both for DS.

Yeah, I've heard this is brilliant, but it's also so unknown that I can't find it anywhere but Amazon for $40. Is it really worth that much, plus whatever it takes to get it shipped from the US to Australia?
~~~~~~
OT:

The World Ends With You: brilliant (if wordy) story with a unique battle system. Not for people who dislike JRPGs for their anime aesthetic or lack of "CHOICE!!!!" but everyone else with a DS should probably play this. Nintendo DS exclusive - it simply wouldn't work otherwise.

Okami: Although this might not classify as "unknown" since it tends to pop up a lot on threads just like this, it's still a game that's worth playing and not a lot of people did. Don't just pass it off as a Zelda clone. Its soul is entirely its own. PS2, later ported to Wii.

Cthulhu Saves The World: A (mostly) self-aware parody of 16-bit JRPGs and the Cthulhu Mythos (of course). Also, it's a pretty damn good 16-bit JRPG on its own. Steam and XBLA, also comes with Breath of Death VII. See also: MARDEK, and in its case I really do feel like the only person on the entire Internet who knows it exists...

 

[Shoggoth2588]

If you still have your old PS2 or Xbox then look out for Obscure. It's a survival horror centered around 5 high school students and their haunted high school. It was a pretty good game, an M rated survival horror where you could play as all 5 students and the game continued on if they died which greatly expands the number of endings available.

The original Earth Defense Force on the Xbox 360 is another one a lot of people passed over. It should be dirt cheap now and while the visuals are dated, it's a great arcade style game.

 

[Revnak_v1legacy]

The ones that first come to mind for me are The World Ends With You and the Fire Emblem games. Shadow Dragon on the DS is one I especially wish more people played because then I could test out the awesome WiFi team I made against something other than my own team controlled by AI.

BUS-IT! You stole my answer! I love Fire Emblem and believe it to be severely under-appreciated. How many games are there where death is final? How many JRPG's are there where death is final? I'm pretty certain the answer to the latter is one, Fire Emblem. They also have dozens of characters who are all more fleshed out than even the most thoroughly characterized character of most games, which makes their deaths sting just that much more.

 

[Guy32]

Billy Hatcher - awesome multiplayer and the story mode was pretty good too as I recall.

 

[Lerasai]

Even though I risk sounding like a broken record, I will say what I always say in obscure game related threads; Odin Sphere. It's a fun game that makes you really sympathize with all of the characters as you follow their individual story lines. Plus, it is simply gorgeous. It is criminal that so many people are unaware of its existence. And its beauty. Seriously, to an artist this game is like eye sex. Or I'm weird. Whichever.

 

[RolandOfGilead]

All the good points of these are highlighted in positive reviews so I don't have much to add

Section 8: Prejudice, well-balanced, very tactical, I found the first S8 because I was looking for a Halo and didn't have an xbox, I don't know enough about shooters to say which elements were previously found in other shooters and which are original, but every shooter I've read about since it came out is copying S8P, seriously, every one of them.

Barnyard Blast: Swine of the Night, very cool retro, very hard
Dark Void Zero, very cool retro, very hard
Etrian Odyssey 3 is great
Infinite Space is really good, but that last boss battle is not that hard (disagreeing with poster up above)
Casltevania: Harmony of Despair

Odin Sphere: this is a game in need of an HD port as the original had terrible slowdown

 

[blizzaradragon]

Wow, I feel special cause I know a good amount of games you guys have mentioned Great recommendations guys, thanks for all the ideas.

Fire Emblem, The World Ends With You, Odin Sphere, Psychonauts, Okami, Final Fantasy 9, Billy Hatcher, Phoenix Wright, Persona 4, and Final Fantasy 11 are all games I've either played or currently own, and can say that they are all good if not great. As for all the other recommendations, I'll have to check those out(except for that Anatomy Lesson game cause my processor is 64-bit sadly).

Other games that I'm gonna say for people who want to play some good games are the Ar Tonelico series(first two are on PS2, third one is on PS3), the Atelier series(there are a few on the PS2 although some are Japan exclusive, and there are two on the PS3), and Rogue Galaxy on the PS2. Yeah, I really like me some RPGs lol

OH! And of course the Monster Rancher games. God damn do I love 3 and 4 on my PS2...

 

[Treblaine]

Serious Sam? Does that count? It's definitely under-appreciated, but it still seems to be quite well known. Still deserves more appreciation than it gets, that game is god damn intense and really puts the heat on you!

PS: I hope this doesn't become a hipster "well I bet you've never hear of this game, and I have" competition, this should be about giving games their due appreciation, not obscurity for obscurity's sake.

But going full hipster mode, I'd say Abuse (PC, 1996)

It's a side scroller where you play something that looks like a Predator alien, I love the style for how it's WASD movement and mouse for full 360 degrees aiming and shooting allows for a LOT of precision, far more than capable with a thumbstick. Yet virtually no other games have used this control scheme, it came just as 3D was hitting and we've hardly looked back.

 

[IBlackKiteI]

An old PS2 game called Kya: Dark Lineage. A lot like Jak and Daxter and similar adventure style games with a trippy as hell world and tons of cool encounters.

 

[Blood Brain Barrier]

The Darkness Within series. While gamers rave on about Call of Cthulu: Dark Corners of the Earth and Amnesia, this Lovecraftian horror series topped them both with its amazing atmosphere and superior puzzles.

 

[darth.pixie]

Horde.

From back in the day when if the developers didn't make you feel like a useless sack of flesh who couldn't properly defend anything, they weren't trying enough. It's a hard game. But it's also very funny and very fun to play.

Blackwell Legacy, the whole of it and Gemini Rue. Maybe Shivah. Or anything Wadjet Eye ever made, really. And Divine Divinity. Larian games are amazing.

 

[Infernai]

Medieval for the PS1- Arguably one of the first games i ever played and one of the ones that i got the most joy out of. Seriously, absolute blast and full of imagination.

Drakengard for the PS2- Yep, bringing up Square Enix's forbidden game agan. Ok, i guess people more or less know of this one (Either because i won't shut the fuck up about it or because it's so weird). But, considering this was made around the time that Enix was moving to the FFX style of games and protagonists, to get something so different and dark from within that company (At that time) was just...oddly refreshing. Even now it's not really easy to find a game like it, and i recommend it (Despite it's flaws) simply because it's so different to the stuff Enix releases nowadays.

 

[hellobanana]

Tsugunai: Atonement is an awesome turned-based JRPG. The protagonist's spirit is separated from his body, and in order to get back into it, he must help people. In order to do that, he has to possess them and complete their associated quest. One of my favorite lines in the game happens when you try to read a book: "Ghosts can't turn pages!"

One of my favorite games, Shadow of Destiny/Shadow of Memories is a very peculiar third-person adventure game with no combat (in a traditional sense), and there are multiple endings depending on what you do (or don't do). You play as a man who has to travel through time to prevent his murder. I wish there were more games like it, with an emphasis on exploring the setting and interaction with others rather than on big fights and action sequences.

Okami: Shadow King is also favorite of mine. You play as a young man who's shadow is possessed by Demon King Stan, who all but forces him to help him get his throne back. You meet and recruit a cast of great characters along the way. It's another turn-based JRPG, and although the combat is pretty unexceptional, it's story and characters are what make it stand out for me.