lets talk about obscure rpgs!!

[Byron]

also I dont think any of the games hicup said counts... tooo popular.

I thought this thread was about OBSCURE rpgs. Not UNPOPULAR rpgs.
TWEWY, I'll give you, and Persona 3 to an extent, but still, I know a lot of people haven't played Persona games. Xenosaga? To be honest I didn't even know about this series until I picked up a pre owned version of it for 99p in GAME a while back, and I haven't heard it mentioned since.
Same with Resonance of Fate (Except I didn't pick it up for 99p)

But yeah.
Another RPG that I don't think many have played is Terranigma. My bros gf loves that game so much and was v/ happy when she realised you can get a snes emulator to play it (Yeah... She didn't know...)
It was a pretty awesome game too. I watched her play it.

Is Lost Odyssey too popular to mention? I freaking loved that.
Also, Ima state. My favourite [obscure] RPG is Vacant Sky by Sai. If any of you haven't played it. Shame on you.

 

[Daxis]

Also, Ima state. My favourite [obscure] RPG is Vacant Sky by Sai. If any of you haven't played it. Shame on you.

I actually played through one or two acts before it was completed, and then he started coming out with the remakes of the original acts and now I'm just waiting for him the finish the remake third act to replay all of it.


On that note, that of rpg maker obscure RPGs, I absoutely adore Dark Eternal: Dissolution. It's generally defined many aspects of RMXP for me, such as the mapping and ambience, and is an example of a game with great (dark) story that overlays a lot of humor (weed as HP pots? blew my 9th grade mind out of the water). The dude has been spending years working on part 2, on and off, as well as making an entire mod/campaign for a prequel on starcraft 2. I'm still waiting for part 2, after all these years, because it just proved so MUCH that you can do with rpgmaker.


And, another obscure RM rpg is probably one that I find no one cares for at all despite the massiveness: Everlong. Rm2k3 game (in its current instance), the game is definitively the game that proves you can do anything in the rm2kx series. The amount of work and effort in this game is completely and utterly unheard of. While the sprites, tilesets, and music has generally been ripped, eeveyrthing else in the game is absolutely insane. MASSIVE world map, massively amount of items, quests, sidequests, enemeies, dialogue, towns, puzzles, and custom system out the ass. The things done with events, the quantity of thigns done with polished events, just blow my mind. Originally started as a final fantasy fangame, it evovled into its own thing, and then.... it just has so much STUFF that it's absolutely insane.
That said the first half is rather linear (FF fangame sure shines here), and then when you get the airship so much opens up.
It gets slightly less concise near the end in terms of story, but overall it's an absolutely amazing jrpg played straight.

Also it can be hard as living fuque so the author added an entire difficulty mode one patch that autoscales your level and lowers enemy encounters so you can just face bosses for this story mode. So many features.

 

[Mega Flare]

id give you ressonace of fate... but persona? my god who hasnt played them.... same with xenosaga... pretty big.... very far from being obscure... same with lost oddysey! anyone with a 360 who likes RPGs have played it... since well 360 didnt have many lol. but anyways I like the Atelier series... but realy I dont know if you could count it

 

[moog]

Another RPG that I don't think many have played is Terranigma.

PLAY ILLUSION OF GAIA ASSHOLE

 

[Xilef]

Vagrant Story, it was like Square's take on diablo but with insane difficulty and awesome graphics.
I don't consider it a good game, I think it is a beautiful RPG though

 

[coyotecraft]

Arc the Lad: Twilight of the Spirits. The battle system was kinda boring. It was like an early ps2 game, voice acting was still a new thing for rpgs. I remember getting into the story, but looking back it was kinda stupid. The first couple chapters were really interesting, then it goes down hill when Darc's ferret thing turns into a stupid looking flying fire nose with eyes thing that they use as an airship. The Spirits are little floating people. Idk, maybe it was something brought over from the older Arc the lad games that I never played.

Somehow Arc the lad: End of Darkness was terrible. It reused the resources from Twilight. I think the voice acting was just limited to battle sounds and maybe a couple scenes. You revisit locations from the first game with a new cast, mixing recipe cards or something to make new armor and weapons. Probably the first game I ever had a bad opinion about.

 

[StrawberrySmiles]

LUNAR!!!

I don't think many people have played that. I LOVE the first game to bits! :D

Threads of Fate and Brave Musashi... Do they count as well? They both have many RPG-like elements. o.o

I've recently got into the Atelier series as well.

 

[moog]

Threads of fate was alright but musashi was the shit

 

[So fist]

Parasite Eve: PS1 rpg by Squaresoft made in that golden age of ps1 console rpg's before squaresoft merged with Enix to become a large mediocre company that didn't take many risks and instead tried to just live off its past. Was a sci fi horror type story with decent plotting, interesting characters, and a female lead. Had a really nifty weapon upgrade system and action gameplay mechanics that made all phases of the game engaging.

Xenogears: Well known in Japan but released relatively under the radar to the west this is yet another Squaresoft title released to ps1 before the merger. Square's reticence of making as giant a marketing push as they would for games in their FF series revolved around concerns over the game's themes and plots concerning religion, human development, and psychology. Gameplay wise their isn't much different than the FF titles released around the same time. Turn based ATB's with characters fitting into pre made roles with a few minor wrinkles. This game's interest draws purely from a deep engaging storyline and character development.

Wild Arms: I don't remember much about this game. It was generally a generic jrpg but had one interesting wrinkle. Its customizable magic system. It allowed you to combine different spells together to discover new spell effects.

Warsong: a turn based tactical battle rpg on Sega Genesis. Tactics lacked a lot of depth and amounted to rock, paper, scissors with troop types and having the better ground. Like many games of the Genesis + SNES era plot is just an excuse to have battles. It was a lot of fun for it's time, though.

Dark Sun Shattered Lands: MSDOS game. One of the first few AD&D video games to get the gameplay right for the period. Was a semi open world set up that many MSDOS rpg's would copy afterward (Fallout being the most notable). It used a third person perspective and had turn based battling. It allowed player agency to do pretty much almost everything. You can even do crap that just broke the game's plotting.

 

[Xhukari]

First is Jade Cocoon on PS1. At the time (2001-ish?) it reminded me of Pokémon. Essentially you fight monsters, you can capture monsters with 'Cocoons' and the biggest thing about it, is that you could merge ANY monster with another. This'll give you different stats and such on the new monster, the new monster generally took some element of the old monster, like colour sor horns or something. But the changes in appearance were limited (cus lol, PS1), so most of the changes were stats and colours. Though I didn't get too far.

Next I'd say Strife. It was a MS-DOS game, it was the last game to use the DOOM engine, but it had a lot of RPG elements, including full voiceover work, an interesting story, quests and stats. But you still used guns. And electric crossbows, and dual grenade launchers, and a stabby knife fist and and... look the intro http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1VQ34ea3UQ.

Cthulhu Saves The World; really cheap game on Steam (£1.99), you play Cthulhu who has been stripped of his powers and must be a 'true hero' to unlock them once more. The game includes some 4th-wall breaking as Cthulhu learns of his mission through the narrator telling the player. The game tries some weird mechanics with insanity and every turn your foes get 10% stronger, funnily enough what I find very interesting is that you can turn on commentary which litters the wrold with big question marks which tells you about the developer's design choices etc etc, as you play the game.

 

[mawk]

SHIT also okage should be on there somewhere (although mawk hates it :<)

okage's soundtrack and general style are fucking excellent

it's just the game itself kind of sucks to play

 

[Jason]

Okage never released over here :sad: