Underated Games

[Ultress]

I say it often enough but Wild Arms 1-3 all great JRPGs with a Wild West Flavor with an interesting way of dealing with Random battles. The series kinda of went south once X-Seed started putting it sticky fingers on the series but the first 3,2 and 3 specifically are under rated gems.

 

[Myphon69]

Mystical Ninja for the N64 was pretty underrated, never see anyone talk about that game.

 

[Aeshi]

Multiwinia and Darwinia (you can buy both together off Steam for about £9)

The Myth series is also worth a mention.

 

[Glamorgan]

Well, Physconauts is obvious. I really enjoyed a game called Kya: Dark Lineage. It's kind of similar to Mario 64, but with an awesome combat system.

 

[Cpu46]

Rune Factory 2

Harvest moon/ monster fighting dungeon crawl/ monster catching game

 

[Se7enUpMustang]

mechassault 1 and 2
black
conker live and reloaded
sniper elite (good luck finding it though)

 

[Chancecall]

Battletoads. I'm pretty sure it defined a generation.

 

[Sacman]

Star Wars Republic Commando, horribly underrated...

This, this and for the third time, this.

OT: Seriously. Star Wars Republic Commando is, IMO, the third best Star Wars game (first and second being Jedi Outcast and KOTOR) ever. This game needs a sequel, and I do not accept those crappy Karen Traviss books.

They actually started on a sequel but only got as far as concept art...

 

[Arqus_Zed]

Shadow Hearts and Shadow hearts: Covenant.

They were some the the coolest Rpgs that took some amount of skill to master the judgment ring. The storylines in both are ridiculously awesome and a big step in rpg territory (First time i saw a guy gets his head popped in an rpg)

Covenant was the best for me. Huge storyline, Interesting characters that meshed together very well. There were a bunch of characters but all of them interacted with each other. No one in the rag tag party were strangers to one another. A feeling of friendship among your circus of freaks was predominate and awesome. Such a well told story.

... Then From A New World blew so hard it would make a woman in Bangkok blush. Lets not talk about that one.

DING DING DING!

We have a winner!
/thread

Seriously, what this guy said.
To all of you who are even remotely interested in jRPG's and didn't get these two sleeper hits: FOR SHAME!!!

An he's right: From The New World was the worst way to end a trilogy ever.

P.S.: Harmonixers rule!

 

[phar]

Kameo, Prey, Heavy Rain, Just Cause, Quake 4 and Doom 3 are ones that come to mind.. ill have another think

Heavy Rain was not underrated. It got like 8-9 out of 10 everywhere. Which I find ridiculous, considering it has no replay value and is only about 8 hours long. I'd say it's extremely overrated, because it should only cost about 20-30 dollars for the low amount of content, and it wasn't even very interesting.

OT: Metro 2033, all reviews complain about buggy gunplay, and poor stealth, but I've had no issues with the gunplay, and I like the stealth. I think it's great.

Also, Spellforce 2 is a very interesting RPG/RTS hybrid, but no one I've seen has ever even heard of it. (And it does have its fair share of glitches.)

Also, the Escape Velocity series is absolutely awesome, but seeing as how the first two games were Mac exclusive, the third being the only one released on Windows, I can see how they went primarily unnoticed. Also, you can get plug-ins for the third game to modify it into the first two, so you can "technically" play all three on Windows, but only through mods of the third.

Good reviews are one thing but when most people consider the game a joke. Most people just think its a movie with a few quicktime events in it. Plus not many people even realise its out. Ive told a few of my friends about it as I enjoyed it and they have never heard of it.

 

[phar]

Kameo, Prey, Heavy Rain, Just Cause, Quake 4 and Doom 3 are ones that come to mind.. ill have another think

Just Cause on the PS2 sucked.

I never played the PS2 port but I loved it. Ill admit it was buggy, but still was quite fun.

Just cause 2 absolutely blows it away though.

Wait, PS2 port? Wasn't it a PS2 exclusive? And Just Cause 2 isn't all that amazing as well, but it certainly is better than the original.

If memory serves me right, it was released for Xbox, Xbox 360, PC and PS2

 

[Orcus The Ultimate]

I agree with most of what you guys entitled!!!

I never played the PS2 port but I loved it. Ill admit it was buggy, but still was quite fun.

Just cause 2 absolutely blows it away though.

btw nice helmet, i love The STIG !!!

 

[Hazy]

Harvester [http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_taqT58uKZCQ/SqNQxmZdbtI/AAAAAAAAAJc/rySzgMnTkPs/s400/harvester.jpg].

An ultra-violent, disturbing, disgusting[footnote]I think it should be noted that I had a hard time stomaching some of the crazy shit you do in the second half. It's intense.[/footnote], and hilarious FMV game that... wait for it..

[HEADING=1]DIDN'T SUCK![/HEADING]​

Old Xbox, though? Phantom Dust.

 

[Xeros]

XGRA, fun as hell racing game.

 

[Snarky Username]

Kameo, Prey, Heavy Rain, Just Cause, Quake 4 and Doom 3 are ones that come to mind.. ill have another think

Yeah i like prey and doom three really isn't underrated it was a massive financial success

Doom3 isnt highly regarded with a lot of gamers, it was overshadowed by halflife 2 and the stolen alpha from e3 didnt help as most people avoided it because they assumed you needed some beast PC to get half a dozen frames a second. Most people didnt like that Doom3 was not doom it was some survival horror type of game

fair enough i got told but prey was quite good

Prey was a good FPS, but it had no risk what-so-ever. You couldn't die. When you did die, you just did a minigame then came back to life with full health and mana exactly where you were with no ill effects at all.

 

[chozo_hybrid]

Under the Skin. Man that was fun, talk about crazy gameplay and even weirder cameos.

 

[Arcane Azmadi]

Funny you should bring this topic up -again- because I just recently started playing another underrated game which even I'd forgotten about.

Wild Arms 3 for the PS2 may have a completely generic story with a cookie-cutter cast and a fairly conventional turn-based combat system, but it's the details that make all the difference. The encounter gauge system allowed you to avoid a certain number of random encounters if you didn't feel like fighting them and the Force Point/Arcana system remains one of the most original magic systems I've ever seen. As you fight, you build up Force Points for attacking, being hit and dodging and you can cast any spell which you meet the minimum FP requirement for without expending any points (ie. if you have 20 FP you can cast any spell up to 20 FP cost as many times as you like without expending FP). FP is also used to power each of your 4 characters' unique abilities -2 of which in particular are absolutely essential- for 25 points a pop, fire off a powerful multi-attack called a Gatling for 20 points per additional hit, or summon an elemental spirit for your entire stock of FP, with the power of the summon determined by how much FP you expended. The system forces you to strike a balance between attacking to build FP, using your arcana abilities and expending your hard-earned FP for battle-turning specials. The game also has great Personal Skill and ARMs Upgrading systems, although ARMs upgrading is a bit expensive. And although the story is your generic Save The World From Awakening Ancient Evil Mysterious Bad Guys Are Hoping To Control, the fantasy western setting is virtually unique among JRPGS and the cast is at least kind of likeable. There's also some great puzzles in the dungeons, as well as a whole series of hidden bonus towers containing more mindbendingly hard puzzles.

It was one of the first PS2 games I ever bought and I'm ashamed to say I played it through for quite a bit until I got distracted by other games and never finished it. Now I'm starting it again from the beginning and kicking myself for not beating it when I first got it. I'm also surprised more games haven't taken inspiration from it- the Encounter system isn't the perfect solution to the random encounter problem, but it's really a very god idea and I think more games should have utilized it.

 

[Gladion]

Shadow Hearts and Shadow hearts: Covenant.

First time I can call "ninja'd" in a topic like this. Care for a drink?

 

[blarg363]

Unholy wars for the PSone, love that game =)

 

[Lancer873]

Both of the LocoRoco and Patapon games. The latter was a smash hit ignored by most awards (it outsold God of War:Chains of Olympus if I'm not mistaken), and the former was a minor hit ignored by everyone too thick to try the demo. I'd also say Toy Home for the PS3, which was everything you wanted to do with RC cars as a child without the crushing limits of reality. They even had an online multiplayer, which I was depressed to learn nobody used.