I'm bringing my PS2 out of retirement to go trough some older game, PS2 was the first console I own that I had some spending money, so I brought a tons of game for it. I was suprised at how many weird little game I had that I never ever hear about. Plenty of them are pretty bad, but most of them at least had one or two interesting aspect (sadly not all of them, looking at you legaia 2). The PS2 was this weird point in time where game were big enough that tiny game could turn a profit but not so big that you needed crazy graphic that were out of reach for most smaller studio.
Most of the game I had were JRPG cause that's what I liked to play, but I imagine there must have been equally many weird little game in other genre, so I'm wondering if anyone can recommend some. I might track them down (or more likely emulate if they're expensive).
Here's a couple of them (working on memory so I don't quite remember everything about them):
Arc the lad: twillight of the spirits: Tactics RPG, except not grid based, you could move around at will. Also had two protagonist that you'd swap between at regular interval, one was the boring usual blank guy but the other was some half human demon who had to deal with demon racism.
Breath of fire 5: BoF is a somewhat known franchise in the SNES/PS1 era, but their last game was actually on PS2. I don't think it did very well and there's a pretty simple reason for that, you were on a timer, at all time. You had a "dragon meter" and everything you did would increase it and it would also slowly tick up in background, if it reach 100%, game over (you could then do a new game plus of sort), being on a timer does not make it very conductive to exploring/talking to people in town. But it was actually pretty interesting because you could turn into a super strong dragon form in battle and easily kill anything you were faced with, but it would increase the meter very quickly.
Castlavania - curse of darkness: I know, castlavania is really well known, but I rarely hear anyone talk about this one in particular. It was a metroidvania, except in 3D, the full thing with large open world and full of backtracking trough already explored area using new power. It was actually really good and if you like dark soul you'd probably find this one interesting. Just surprised it kinda disappeared from collective memory.
Eternal rings: Speaking of dark soul, here's a from soft game. I'll be honest, I never got far in this game cause it was weird. You collected ring and used them to cast spell, that's about all I remember. Looking forward to trying it again to see if it was any good and I couldn't appreciate it back then.
Front mission 4: Since SE is re releasing some of the older FM game, maybe they'll port this one, please? Anyway, nice tactics with a pretty serious story set in the near future. Surprisingly enough its neither feature the US or japan in, half of it is in south america where some US soldier are disillusioned by a peackeeping mission they're on, so they steal the local dictator gold and try to run while the other side see the europian union having to deal with russia trying to undermine their unity while invading smaller neighbor (where have I heard that before?). Fun tactics fight but that tend to really drag on, also okay mech customization that doesn't go nearly far enough.
Growlanser: There were actually a bunch of these and they release them as a set when they ported them from japan. They're sorta tactics game where you could move your character around the battle field. They had pretty interesting story, one of them is about a world that is literally ending and everyone trying to figure out how to survive. Another involved an organization using a super weapon to force peace between a bunch of nation by "nuking" every attempt to have a fight between nations.
Musashi: Sorta sequel to the PS1 musashi game. Action adventure game, really nice art style iirc. Simple devil may cry like combat, but you could learn enemy move and use it against them.
Mana khemia: Technically part of the atelier franchise, but they never continued it after the PS2. I have no idea why, the atelier are all varying level of mediocre but the mana khemia were much more interesting. You go to magic school and had to manage your time, a bit like persona 3-5. Strong focus on crafting and decent (if far too easy) combat.
Metal saga: This one is weird, you play in a mad max hellscape and just walk around the world fighting people in tanks. There's not much of a story or direction, you just go anywhere you want to find tanks, but the tanks customization was pretty decent iirc.
Galerian ash: Weird game, I think its a sequel? Sorta sci fi horror where you play as a psychi and run around using psychi power to kill enemy in 3rd person. Another one I'm curious to see if its any better now that I might be better at it.
Ring of Red: Tactic game about mech fight, except when you attack you had to wait for your mech to aim at the enemy, the longer you wait, the more accurate your shoot is. You also were accompanied by infantry division that you could customize and they would continually fire on the other mech. Really fun, but because every time you attacked the enemy it would take 5 minutes fight dragged on like crazy and there was perma death, so losing a unit toward the end of a level would be brutal.
Radiata stories: Cool little game where every NPC in the game had a routine and the game time would continuously be ticking down, think majoras mask. Lots of side quest and a a branching story.
Shadow hearts: There were three game, all pretty similar. Play during the beginning of the 20th century with plenty of allusion and cameo by real world people. Except the entire things is completely bonker, like one of the recurring character is a vampire mexican wrestler. The combat was pretty good, had this little quick time event associated with it, kinda like legend of dragoon.
Mega man command mission: Yeah they made a mega man JRPG, was actually pretty decent, but the problem is that beyond mega man and zero, nobody know any of the mega man character, so it didn't really feel like a mega man. iirc you couldn't get boss power after you kill them or anything. I mostly remember that one of the bad guy is a party member who goes by the name "spider" in your group and the name "redisp" when as antagonist and I though that was so stupid.
Suikoden 3: plugging this one specifically because S2 gets all of the attention, but I think 3 is better. You alternate between 4 different character to see a conflict from multiple angle, the conflict is pretty interesting, more than the usual "bad empire is bad" (although at the end it does end up being just that). Gameplay is passable sadly.
Any other little known stuff you can think of?
Most of the game I had were JRPG cause that's what I liked to play, but I imagine there must have been equally many weird little game in other genre, so I'm wondering if anyone can recommend some. I might track them down (or more likely emulate if they're expensive).
Here's a couple of them (working on memory so I don't quite remember everything about them):
Arc the lad: twillight of the spirits: Tactics RPG, except not grid based, you could move around at will. Also had two protagonist that you'd swap between at regular interval, one was the boring usual blank guy but the other was some half human demon who had to deal with demon racism.
Breath of fire 5: BoF is a somewhat known franchise in the SNES/PS1 era, but their last game was actually on PS2. I don't think it did very well and there's a pretty simple reason for that, you were on a timer, at all time. You had a "dragon meter" and everything you did would increase it and it would also slowly tick up in background, if it reach 100%, game over (you could then do a new game plus of sort), being on a timer does not make it very conductive to exploring/talking to people in town. But it was actually pretty interesting because you could turn into a super strong dragon form in battle and easily kill anything you were faced with, but it would increase the meter very quickly.
Castlavania - curse of darkness: I know, castlavania is really well known, but I rarely hear anyone talk about this one in particular. It was a metroidvania, except in 3D, the full thing with large open world and full of backtracking trough already explored area using new power. It was actually really good and if you like dark soul you'd probably find this one interesting. Just surprised it kinda disappeared from collective memory.
Eternal rings: Speaking of dark soul, here's a from soft game. I'll be honest, I never got far in this game cause it was weird. You collected ring and used them to cast spell, that's about all I remember. Looking forward to trying it again to see if it was any good and I couldn't appreciate it back then.
Front mission 4: Since SE is re releasing some of the older FM game, maybe they'll port this one, please? Anyway, nice tactics with a pretty serious story set in the near future. Surprisingly enough its neither feature the US or japan in, half of it is in south america where some US soldier are disillusioned by a peackeeping mission they're on, so they steal the local dictator gold and try to run while the other side see the europian union having to deal with russia trying to undermine their unity while invading smaller neighbor (where have I heard that before?). Fun tactics fight but that tend to really drag on, also okay mech customization that doesn't go nearly far enough.
Growlanser: There were actually a bunch of these and they release them as a set when they ported them from japan. They're sorta tactics game where you could move your character around the battle field. They had pretty interesting story, one of them is about a world that is literally ending and everyone trying to figure out how to survive. Another involved an organization using a super weapon to force peace between a bunch of nation by "nuking" every attempt to have a fight between nations.
Musashi: Sorta sequel to the PS1 musashi game. Action adventure game, really nice art style iirc. Simple devil may cry like combat, but you could learn enemy move and use it against them.
Mana khemia: Technically part of the atelier franchise, but they never continued it after the PS2. I have no idea why, the atelier are all varying level of mediocre but the mana khemia were much more interesting. You go to magic school and had to manage your time, a bit like persona 3-5. Strong focus on crafting and decent (if far too easy) combat.
Metal saga: This one is weird, you play in a mad max hellscape and just walk around the world fighting people in tanks. There's not much of a story or direction, you just go anywhere you want to find tanks, but the tanks customization was pretty decent iirc.
Galerian ash: Weird game, I think its a sequel? Sorta sci fi horror where you play as a psychi and run around using psychi power to kill enemy in 3rd person. Another one I'm curious to see if its any better now that I might be better at it.
Ring of Red: Tactic game about mech fight, except when you attack you had to wait for your mech to aim at the enemy, the longer you wait, the more accurate your shoot is. You also were accompanied by infantry division that you could customize and they would continually fire on the other mech. Really fun, but because every time you attacked the enemy it would take 5 minutes fight dragged on like crazy and there was perma death, so losing a unit toward the end of a level would be brutal.
Radiata stories: Cool little game where every NPC in the game had a routine and the game time would continuously be ticking down, think majoras mask. Lots of side quest and a a branching story.
Shadow hearts: There were three game, all pretty similar. Play during the beginning of the 20th century with plenty of allusion and cameo by real world people. Except the entire things is completely bonker, like one of the recurring character is a vampire mexican wrestler. The combat was pretty good, had this little quick time event associated with it, kinda like legend of dragoon.
Mega man command mission: Yeah they made a mega man JRPG, was actually pretty decent, but the problem is that beyond mega man and zero, nobody know any of the mega man character, so it didn't really feel like a mega man. iirc you couldn't get boss power after you kill them or anything. I mostly remember that one of the bad guy is a party member who goes by the name "spider" in your group and the name "redisp" when as antagonist and I though that was so stupid.
Suikoden 3: plugging this one specifically because S2 gets all of the attention, but I think 3 is better. You alternate between 4 different character to see a conflict from multiple angle, the conflict is pretty interesting, more than the usual "bad empire is bad" (although at the end it does end up being just that). Gameplay is passable sadly.
Any other little known stuff you can think of?
