Underrated indeed

[Iwata]

I was recently going through a bunch of underrated games that I own, when I started noticing a pattern. Quake IV. X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Wolfenstein. Singularity. Star Trek: Elite Force. They were a significant ammount of the catalog of Raven Software! Such cool games, so consistently neglected by gamers and critics!

So what is the most underrated studio you can think of?

 

[Hal10k]

Genuinely under-the-radar studios? Hmm.

Digital Tome- produced only one game, Siege of Avalon. Did well in reviews; not so well from a commercial standpoint. SoA was a pretty standard isometric ARPG, but had superb character writing and enough text to fill multiple phone books large enough to kill tarantulas. Only studio I know of that managed to nail episodic game development. Then they went bankrupt. Life ain't fair.

Elemental Games- made the excellent Space Rangers series, which is best summed up as a space sim with ADHD. It's a combination trading game, turn-based RPG, top-down arena shooter, real-time strategy, choose-your-own-adventure novel, and business management sim. Really funky Russian translation. They're still alive; working on a new game, but I barely ever hear anybody mention them.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

Elemental Games- made the excellent Space Rangers series, which is best summed up as a space sim with ADHD. It's a combination trading game, turn-based RPG, top-down arena shooter, real-time strategy, choose-your-own-adventure novel, and business management sim. Really funky Russian translation. They're still alive; working on a new game, but I barely ever hear anybody mention them.

second this, I just picked up the 2nd one on GoG this past week, only put 40 minutes into it thus far, but it is a ton of fun and I think once I get the mechanics down it'll really pick up speed, and your right, i've been trying to find patches and widescreen fixes, and the russian isn't helping >:/ not blaming them..just saying, it ain't easy sometimes.

 

[Strain42]

Brownie Brown. They make a lot of good games, but because they usually just sort of work under bigger companies, they often don't get credit for games they work on.

They were one of the developers on Mother 3, they helped Level-5 out with the newest Professor Layton and their upcoming game, Fantasy Life.

They also worked on Sword of Mana, which I thought was both a beautiful game and a good example of what a remake should feel like.

While I haven't played it, they made the game A Kappa's Trail, which I think looks really fun, and it was well received.

They haven't done a lot, but I'm impressed with what I've seen.

I hope to see more from them in the future

 

[Hal10k]

Elemental Games- made the excellent Space Rangers series, which is best summed up as a space sim with ADHD. It's a combination trading game, turn-based RPG, top-down arena shooter, real-time strategy, choose-your-own-adventure novel, and business management sim. Really funky Russian translation. They're still alive; working on a new game, but I barely ever hear anybody mention them.

second this, I just picked up the 2nd one on GoG this past week, only put 40 minutes into it thus far, but it is a ton of fun and I think once I get the mechanics down it'll really pick up speed, and your right, i've been trying to find patches and widescreen fixes, and the russian isn't helping >:/ not blaming them..just saying, it ain't easy sometimes.

I never bothered trying to get the games into widescreen; I just set my resolution up so I could alternate between widescreen and 1280 x 720. Fewer tears that way.

I hope they give Empire a proper English version; it's really interesting how they tried to translate the gameplay of the series into semi-MMO format, and I'd like to see an English-language discussion of it for a change.

 

[pyrosaw]

Sandlot Games, they made the Earth Defense Force series, which consists of Monster Attack!(Earth Defense Force), Global Defense Force(Earth Defense Force 2), and Earth Defense Force 2017(Earth Defense Force 3). They're okay games for single-players, but the real fun is in co-op. Very B-movie, very good. Also check out Robot Alchemic Drive. It's unique.

Dejobaan Games, made a bunch of very funny surreal games. The Wonderful End of the World, a well-designed Katamari clone, AAAA(etc.) A Reckless Disregard for Gravity, a surreal base-jump game, and 1,2,3, Drop that Beat like an Ugly Baby, a music-generated base-jump game. Very funny, very good.