That underrated, forgotten gem of a game.

[Nikolaz72]

Before this gets flooded with games that are in no way underrated (and it will), I want to toss out Call of Cthulhu Dark Corners of the Earth and Dark Messiah of Might and Magic. I think both of those games have tons of great qualities and are absolutely worth playing, but some flaws and middling review scores have made them more or less forgotten.

I see your Dark Messiah of Might and Magic... And I raise you, Might and Magic (1-8). Everytime I try to recommend it to someone they confuse it with Dark Messiah which makes me think the damn thing isnt as underrated as people keep saying.

 

[Alcoholidayer]

got ninja'd on call of cthulhu, so i'll go with Shogo. Great game with good graphics for that time and cool mecha style warfare. Too bad it got released around the same time as Half Life.

Then there was Pathologic, which surprisingly few people know about. Had a shit ton of bugs, but was very deep story and character design wise and psychologically. A bad translation didn't help the popularity either.

Finally, there was Claw - a 2d platformer. It got released at that unfortunate period when the ps1 and n64 had been released, and everyone was 3d graphics this and 3d graphics that. It was a pretty game, with nicely designed levels which really gave you a hard time. It had multiple weapons, nicely animated saturday morning cartoon style cutscenes, fun boss fights, and clever environment navigation and jump timing based puzzles. It really surprises me how really few people know about this game, even those who claim to be hardcore gamers since , considering it was released by the reasonably well known monolith (who btw also made shogo).

 

[Arfonious]

Gothic and Gothic 2

Two basicly unnoticed RPGs from Germany

A bit unintuative but when you get the hang of it it becomes awesome

Also relativley large areas and a city that feels like a real city

 

[thespyisdead]

Temple of Elemental Evil


Sure it was buggy initially, but thanks to community patches, it now works as intended

 

[surg3n]

Captive:
EDIT - Damn, no idea how to link youtubes.
[link]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFfPgZOylWA[/link]
It's about 22 years old now, was a lot like Dungeon Master, but this game ate years of my life - I'd be healthier if I just took up smoking instead. It's a masterpiece, by Tony Crowther, old school C64 fans might remember him.

 

[Amethyst Wind]

Spoiler: Came bundled with our original Playstation, never stopped being fun

Spoiler: and as for this generation, quite frankly the best Squeenix game I've played in a long time

 

[Tranquility]

Vagrant Story

Alternatively,
Champions of Norrath (and the sequel)

Alt; Alternatively,
Dragon Warrior Monsters (and the first sequel)

 

[chiggerwood]

Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold\Planet Strike I love that game. It was a Sci-Fi FPS put out in 1994 that I played probably to an excessive extent. Planet Strike's main gimmick was that you could blow up any unlocked door with its version of the BFG. Here's some screenshots

Beyond Good and Evil. Amazing PS2 game.

Beyond Good and Evil a forgotten, underrated gem? Really? You know I'm not sure what to say to that! Just... no! That's like saying Okami is underrated and forgotten. I mean yeah it wasn't the biggest seller out there but it was far, far from being underrated, or forgotten.

 

[Kevin Bennett]

I got one, just perfect for Halloween and "don't play in the dark" kinda scary...Nosferatu, The Wrath Of Malachi. First of all the music and sets...wow, its like being in a 1930s universal horror, complete with spooky strings, the whole nine yards. And EVERY room is randomized, even between saves! This way you have NO idea if you will find an empty room behind the door or walk right into a vamp's crypt. Oh and you are just a normal guy, with turn of the 20th century weapons, they are 300+ year old master vampires. if you walk into a crypt you BETTER have a couple of stakes and you BETTER get them before they wake, otherwise you are soooo dead meat!

A truly scary game, and one very few have heard about. it came out on PC in like 2003 so its system requirements are low enough now pretty much anything will run it. if you want to be scared on Halloween, face off against Nosferatu!

 

[VeryOddGamer]

Painkiller. Sure, it got some popularity after Yahtzee mentioned it, but still. It is a glorious game, and very possibly the most cathartic game I have ever played.

 

[RyQ_TMC]

Majesty.

Fantastic strategy game with awesome, unique gameplay. You didn't build and fight with units, you built guilds and had heroes come to your town to populate them, stocked them with items from your market and blacksmith and sent them off to kill monsters by putting bounties on their heads.

There was a sequel, it was also an absolutely fantastic game. I heartily recommend that everyone and anyone plays Majesty 2.

I'm gonna put on my hipster glasses and say that while I adore Majesty, I just couldn't get into the sequel... But yeah, the first one was glorious. Hell, I replayed the demo maybe 20-30 times before I even got the full game.

My pick is Fields of Fire: War along the Mohawk. I have yet to meet another person who played the game. It was a RTW game with bits of RPG mixed in, set during the French and Indian War. It was developed by a company which made baseball manager games. But it had good voice acting and some really nice hand painted graphics at a time when they were going out of style.

Gothic and Gothic 2

Funny, I never thought of them as underrated, but that's probably because in Poland, they were HUGE.

 

[Mordekaien]

I'll go with Two Worlds 2. It's not perhaps the best game, and the story is dumb as hell, but I find that game strangely compelling. The setting was pretty good, combat was fun, if a bit repetitive, magic system was AWESOME (seriously you could do a fireball that homes in on enemy, then explodes into smaller fireballs that spawn Skeletons when they hit something.
This is perhaps the first time I went straight on and played a Mage in fantasy RPG, instead of Fighter.

Gothic and Gothic 2

Funny, I never thought of them as underrated, but that's probably because in Poland, they were HUGE.

Yes, It was definitely big in our region (Poland, Slovakia, Czech Republic), so I too don't consider them as underrated.

 

[Norrdicus]

I am surprised that not one as mentioned Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines!

Because it isn't underrated nor forgotten. Any WRPG fan worth their salt knows the game, and half of those people have played it. Really, Vampire is Troika's most well-known RPG. Arcanum gets (close?) second and Temple of Eelemental Evil is the obscure one

But... To me... The best underrated game I played, own, love, cherish, and elevate every chance I get... is Baldur's Gate 2: Shadows of Amn

No offense, but I'm starting to think you don't know the meaning of underrated nor forgotten. Baldur's Gate 2 is anything BUT

Beyond Good and Evil a forgotten, underrated gem? Really? You know I'm not sure what to say to that! Just... no! That's like saying Okami is underrated and forgotten. I mean yeah it wasn't the biggest seller out there but it was far, far from being underrated, or forgotten.

Honestly, I'd go so far as to say that BG&E is overrated by its fanbase, though I'd somewhat agree on the game's obscurity factor. That game managed to "wow" me maybe once or twice when I played it a year back, but made me groan 10 times for each of those moments.

 

[Legion]

If a game was seen fit to give it a HD remake for this generation (Beyond Good and Evil, for example) you cannot claim that it is underrated or forgotten.

I'd have to go with Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy. I do not actually know a single other person in real life who has ever owned it (as far as I am aware). It was and pretty much still is, the only game to give you decent psychic powers that are actually fun to use. The story was atrocious, but the game-play was some of the best.

It also has an absolutely awesome song.

 

[LordDPS]

Arcanum of Steamworks and Magic Obscura. it remains the only fantasy game that goes "what would happen were society actually you know, NOT IN A MEDIEVAL TIME LOCK" and the consequences of that (the growing irrelevance of wizards,discrimation of different races) and it was made by most of the people who made Fallout!

 

[gigastar]

Dwarf Fortress.

There is no other game ever that carries that much replayability.

 

[Sangnz]

I am surprised that not one as mentioned Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines! That game is a great classic and just because it had a lot of bugs and flaws thanks to a studio being shut down... but it is still a worthy game even to this day!

But... To me... The best underrated game I played, own, love, cherish, and elevate every chance I get... is Baldur's Gate 2: Shadows of Amn. This is the first RPG I ever played in my life... when I was about 7 years old... Too young to really understand the D&D rule sets... But not young enough to just say meh.... haha. I love this game. Nothing so much fulfills that "create your own life, in a game"-game than BG2:SoA.

Actually VTM:Bloodlines is often referenced as one of the best Vampire based games and a good game full stop regardless of bugs.
Also the Baulders Gate games are on about the highest pedestal a game can be placed on by RPG players.

A somewhat forgotten/overloooked RPG that came out back on the original playstation and I think is up on the PSN store, Vagrant Story, while it did get good reviews at its release there are a lot of gamers today who have missed out on this gem of a game.

 

[MetalMagpie]

May I present to you...

This is my all time favorite game from the Gameboy Advance. I sunk more time into this than Pokemon Rudy. It's that fucking good.

Whoops?

Majesty.

Fantastic strategy game with awesome, unique gameplay. You didn't build and fight with units, you built guilds and had heroes come to your town to populate them, stocked them with items from your market and blacksmith and sent them off to kill monsters by putting bounties on their heads.

There was a sequel, it was also an absolutely fantastic game. I heartily recommend that everyone and anyone plays Majesty 2.

The mission in this gameplay video is the one I was up to when I last played the game, it's friggin impossible, the enemy chews up your heroes like so many cats and dogs. Anyways, it's still an amazingly fun game.

YES! Majesty was such an awesome game. I can't believe the formula didn't get copied by more people. The gameplay was fun and original, and everything felt so characterful. And the sequel managed to build on the first game without losing any of the charm.

So that I've actually contributed something to this thread, I'm going to offer up Zoo Tycoon (the original, not the sequel). No, it was never as good (or as loved) as Rollercoaster Tycoon. But it had it stood head-and-shoulders above most of the Tycoon games that were being splurged out at the time and you could feed your guests to the tigers if you got bored.

(I was going to say Theme Hospital, but that game is only under-rated by people who have no sense of humour, or who don't know what fun is.)

 

[9thRequiem]

I am surprised that not one as mentioned Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines!

Because it isn't underrated nor forgotten. Any WRPG fan worth their salt knows the game, and half of those people have played it. Really, Vampire is Troika's most well-known RPG. Arcanum gets (close?) second and Temple of Eelemental Evil is the obscure one

But... To me... The best underrated game I played, own, love, cherish, and elevate every chance I get... is Baldur's Gate 2: Shadows of Amn

No offense, but I'm starting to think you don't know the meaning of underrated nor forgotten. Baldur's Gate 2 is anything BUT

Beyond Good and Evil a forgotten, underrated gem? Really? You know I'm not sure what to say to that! Just... no! That's like saying Okami is underrated and forgotten. I mean yeah it wasn't the biggest seller out there but it was far, far from being underrated, or forgotten.

Honestly, I'd go so far as to say that BG&E is overrated by its fanbase, though I'd somewhat agree on the game's obscurity factor. That game managed to "wow" me maybe once or twice when I played it a year back, but made me groan 10 times for each of those moments.

Thank you for making the post I was about to! Those games are great, but are fairly well known.

I'd say Battle Isle Phase 4 : Incubation.
Customize the equipment of a squad of soldiers, and lead them through an evacuation of a city being swallowed up by an alien horde. Turn-based, with a mountain of tactical planning.

 

[Soxafloppin]

Lost Kingdom 1 and 2, some of my favourite games, would buy a WiiU if it got LK3!