Obscure game recommendations?

[Danceofmasks]

Live a live.

Yeah, that game is good. I don't think it's amazing, though.
For example, here's another SNES fan-translated japanese game that I do consider amazing.
Seiken Densetsu 3. Since Secret of Mana is Seiken Densetsu 2, you should already have high expectations.

Here you pick 3 characters to build your party with, your first choice determining the origin story you play through as well as whom the major antagonists are (there are 3 "bad guy" factions), with your other 2 characters' stories making less prominent appearances.

The stories are decent across the board (some obviously better than others), but it's the complex class system and (realtime) combat mechanics that got me.
Of course, in a game like this that can be extremely difficult if you don't know how to build characters with synergy, you may have to end up grinding for levels.

Also, Kevin is glitched. Under certain conditions he does double the damage he should.
So for anyone intending to see all the stories, I'd suggest playing kevin as a main character, then never touching him again.

 

[Kyrian007]

I've seen so many users here roll eyes at a topic like this that gets re-posted every few months or so and claim "not another _____ thread again."

But I love the "obscure games" threads. It always another chance for me to talk about Tecmo's Deception series. The more people that find this awesome series... the better.

Tecmo's Deception (PS1): Terrible. Unplayable and annoyingly un-fun. Don't bother.

Kagero: Deception 2 (PS1): Terrible story, bad controls... and the most fun you can have without alligator clamps and a golf cart battery.

Deception 3: Dark Delusion (PS1): Bad story, horribly translated, bad controls, and awful voice acting... and just as fun as the second one.

Trapt (PS2): The most current version. Better graphics but same terrible controls, acting, story, and translation... but few games match how much fun it is to play.

These games are just so sadistic, they are amazingly satisfying. It's just a string of murders using terrible torture devices (a cross between Rube Goldberg, Wiley Coyote and Acme, and Edgar Allen Poe.) The more convoluted, lingering, and painful you can make someone's death... the more points you score.

 

[Nibblitman]

Arcanum: of Steamworks and Magick Obscura

It is an openworld Steampunk RPG that is very similar to the often acclaimed Baldur's Gate and early Fallout games in play style.

An excellent game by Troika(makers of Vampire: The Masquerade games) that is one of the few great steampunk games out there

 

[Razentsu]

Fighting game fans may want to try out Vanguard Princess or MELTY BLOOD Actress Again Current Code.

[HEADING=2]Stuff[/HEADING]

Spoiler: Vanguard Princess

Older version of the game, but yeah:

Spoiler: MELTY BLOOD Actress Again Current Code

This stuff is also from a previous version of the game, but whatever:

 

[Frybird]

Super Amazing Wagon Adventure
Recently released for Xbox Live Indie Games (for 80 MSP, or about 1$) and soon to be on PC.

Basically "What if Oregon Trail was an insane, violent arcade sidescrolling shooter?"

It consists of dozens of semi-randomly chosen scenarios, mostly variations of Sidescroller- or Twin-Stick-Shooter Gameplay and is pretty unforgiving.
The appeal is both the Wario-Ware like variation and the sheer absurdity of it. Being able to jump over rivers instead of crossing them, coming across unicorns and murdering your way through a buffalo herd with a laser gun are probably the most normal things you will encounter.

Here's the Trailer

Flotilla
Turn Based Space Combat Strategy for Xbox Live Indie Games and PC by Blendo Games, who made Gravity Bone.

You play as a captain of a fleet of space ships with only 7 months to live, and as you explore the galaxy you come across random (and mostly weird) events that may upgrade or downgrade your fleet or (most likely) put you into battle against another fleet.

In these you give orders for 30 second intervals in wich you have to maneuver your ships in a way so that you can attack the weak points of otherwise inpenetratably armored ships.

It's very unique in both its writing and its graphics (Battles are fought in a glowy red space, with objects and ships having a clean, untextured look), and while the rather simplistic and very random scenarios may be frustrating at times, it's fun for bite size strategy.


Atom Zombie Smasher
Another Game by Blendo Games, this time a sort of RTS/Boardgame/Towerdefense Hybrid on PC (Steam), Linux and Mac.

It's about a Zombie outbreak in a South American Country in wich you have to rescue civilians and ideally retake territories from the ever-escalating horde.

On a risk-like overview, you can manage research and choose a territory to protect, seperated by difficulty levels, and once you are in the territory, you get control over a rescue helicopter and, over time, defensive resources like soldiers, sniper teams, explosives or mortars, wich you have to position so you can rescue as many civilians as possible while ideally kill every zombie before sundown so you can permanently recapture the territory.

Again, there's a lot of randomness in the game both in story (told through little personal storylines of various characters) and gameplay, as you have only very limited control over wich units you can use and maps may have random conditions that slightly change it's dynamics.
The fun comes from managing often times less than ideal unit combinations and coming up with efficient tactics against almost unfair odds.

Once you win a few times, there is limited replay value to it, but until then, another great and unique strategy game.

 

[Reaper195]

Obscure. Hardly known as far as I know, and it's a somewhat decent horror game to boot.

 

[Burig]

Titanic: Adventure out of time (point-and-click adventure)

I think I may remember that, but I'm not sure.
Is that the one that yoboard the ship and can get a bedroom and are asked questions to best suit the bedroom to your needs - where the bedroom was white (in the times that I played it) and everything was fold-away into the walls? If so, I remember playing that, but not very well, haha.

 

[madwarper]

The Etrian Odyssey series on the DS.

Remember old school rogue-likes, where you needed to draw a map on graph paper just to find out where you were? That's what the touch-screen and stylus are for.

So far, there have been 3 games released on the DS and another announced for the 3DS.

Spoiler: Beware, the FOE

 

[Able Seacat]

I'm not sure how popular it was but Buffy the Vampire Slayer for the original xbox. It really was a surprisingly good game, with fun combat, puzzles, platforming and a decent story with impressive voice actors to boot.

 

[yaydod]

Well i would recommend "the Void"

Very interesting game, strange and god damn challenging, but i find it magnificent and the story is good for the 3 hours i played before loosing my sanity.

Then of course there is "obscure" which is a very nice horror game, and if you play the second installment you must use a controller for certain parts of the game (maybe they patched it now).

 

[PsychedelicDiamond]

Pathologic.

A survival (And yes, there's a rather big survival aspect involved) Horror/Open World RPG Hybrid inspired by eastern european surrealism, kafkaesque storytelling and postmodernist stageplays about a town ravaged by a mysterious plague. It has 3 playable character with different storycampaigns and it's full of obscure symbolism and difficult moral decisions (It's actually one of the few games that not ony let's you kill children but actually makes you consider doing it for your own survival).

But before you all rush to Amazon: There's a catch. The english translation is really really really bad... and it's a very text-heavy game. The german version i played was just fine (It is, by the way, a russian game)but if you have to play it in english... well, you know what to expect.

 

[SL33TBL1ND]

Also would add 'Vagrant Story'. A great PS1 game back when Square Enix made good games.

Vagrant Story is great. Really liked that game.

OT: Front Mission 3 and Omega Boost are my contributions. FM3 is a turn-based tactical squad game with 'mechs and awesome characters (i.e. the ones from my avatar). Omega Boost is a 3D space shooter with an excellent sound-track. Particularly in the EU/AUS version.

 

[Padwolf]

Shadow of Memories for PS2. A great game, a good story about time travel and death. It has multiple endings depending on things you do, and it could be the littlest of things. It can be difficult to know how to get the best ending without a guide though. But I like that, the game can be challenging.

 

[ScrabbitRabbit]

Gemini Rue is a fantastic recent point 'n' click. Even if you dislike point 'n' click games I would recommend this game, it has a brilliant plot, likeable characters, the puzzles make sense (although can be a little too easy) and the music, though sparse, is top-notch and used well.

Zeno Clash is a fun, if flawed, first person beating-the-shit-out-of-people simulator. The pacing isn't very good but the fighting is fun as all fuck.

The main series Shin Megami Tensei games seem to be lagging *far* behind Persona's popularity and it's a damn shame because they're amazing games. Strange Journey on the DS appears to have been almost entirely overlooked and it's a shame and you should go and buy it NOW.

Soleil for the Megadrive (Crusader of Centy for the Genesis in America) is a pretty incredible A Link to The Past clone with a few unique twists (you can talk to animals and have animal companions helping you in combat). Golden Axe Legend on the Master System was also this for the first Zelda. That's also a great game although, unlike Soleil, it is practically identical to it's inspiration.

Arcanum: of Steamworks and Magick Obscura

Started playing this recently. Suffers from the typical slow and boring early sections that seem to plague almost every old-school RPG but apart from that it's pretty fantastic.

Also would add 'Vagrant Story'. A great PS1 game back when Square Enix made good games.

God-damn I love that game. Surprisingly dark and tense for a Square game. I, personally, found it more frightening than their attempts at survival horror with the Parasite Eve games.

It's atmosphere is pretty similar to that of Demon Souls, come to think of it. I'd say it's much harder than Demon Souls, too XD.

 

[hazard99]

Any good game on the Sega Saturn

 

[superdark]

Titanic: Adventure out of time (point-and-click adventure)

I think I may remember that, but I'm not sure.
Is that the one that yoboard the ship and can get a bedroom and are asked questions to best suit the bedroom to your needs - where the bedroom was white (in the times that I played it) and everything was fold-away into the walls? If so, I remember playing that, but not very well, haha.

No. I don't think we're talking about the same game. In mine you had the same room every time.

 

[Blunderboy]

I'm not sure how obscure it is, but I've never met anyone who has heard of Europa 1400 - The Guild. And I love that game.
It's a tiny bit like the sims I guess, except you control a whole dynasty of traders in medieval Europe.
It?s got political intrigue, duelling, a complex economy, plague and a great atmosphere.

 

[scorptatious]

Metal Arms: Glitch in the System (PS2, Gamecube, XBOX)

It's a fun and challenging third person shooter in which you play as a yellow robot with a large arsenal of weapons and help the droid rebellion fight against the Mil overlords. Some weapons include the Cutter, which fires saws that cut off enemy limbs and sometimes causes their torsos to fall over. There's the control tether, which allows you to take control of enemies by hacking into them via their control ports on their backsides, and lots of other weapons.

It's a fun and pretty humorous game and has Dan Castellaneta and Patrick Warburton play as some of the characters in the game. If you have a 360, then you can download the XBOX version off of the Marketplace.

A more recent example would probably be:

Xenoblade Chronicles (Wii)

This game is one of three games that made it stateside via Operation Rainfall. I guess it's technically not that obscure, but it seems like not very many people on here have heard about the game, so I figure I'd let you know.

The game takes nearly everything that's usually frustrating about a JRPG and throws it out the window. There's no random battles, you can save almost anywhere, there are checkpoints in between multiple boss fights, and occasionally, with the power of the main character's weapon the Monado, you can see the future which tells you how much of a certain item you'll need for a quest giver you haven't even met yet.

There are also tons of awesome features the game has. Such as the affinity system which makes it so that the more your party members like each other, the more skills they can share via skill link. This encourages people to actually switch out party members for others from time to time.

There's also the battle system in the game. You don't need healing items or stuff that refills your magic. Instead, your abilities and spells are set to a cool-down system, so you won't be able to spam certain attacks over and over. (Hell, the game's primary healer has a cool-down system which makes her unable to do ANYTHING for a short period of time. So you can't rely on her to heal you at all times.) So the game is able to both streamline the game, but also keep it challenging at the same time.

And going back to the Monado, during battle, you'll occasionally see a vision of an enemy that's about to use a powerful attack on you or one of your party members. After that, you'll have a short amount of time to either use one of the Monado's abilities to counter the attack, or warn one of your party members about it and select one of their abilities to counter it.

It's a very good game, and I encourage anyone who even has the slightest interest in RPG's to get it.

 

[MAUSZX]

Operation Darkness: An xbox360 game that a bet only 1 out of 100,000 knows. Its about Werewolves versus Vampires during WW2, with the former with the British and the latter with the Germans. Turn based combat; very difficult. Made by Atlus. I love it.

I saw a review of it, and aparently the game is buggy and glitchy as hell.