Obscure Gems

[KoL]

A topic for those games you've come to like a lot, but no-one has ever heard of them. Hell you probably never heard of them until you played them.

Two games come to mind for me in this category: Akai Katana and Muramasa: The Demon Blade. The former I got for Christmas along with Assassin's Creed 3, and to my surprise Akai Katana ended up leaving AC3 very much forgotten and was a very interesting SHMUP with unique ideas, cool visuals and fun, challenging gameplay.

Muramasa: The Demon Blade I saw a small clip of on YouTube by pure luck and after seeing this interesting side-scrolling hack-and-slash game I decided I had to add it to my collection. Problem was that it was unbelievably rare, and I had to do quite a bit of searching to find it but after finally getting a copy I found a very fun game. It will make you hungry when you play it though.

Hopefully we can all share some good titles that no-one even knew existed until now.

 

[StellarWind Elsydeon]

HOLY SHIT DO I HAVE A LOT OF THOSE.

The first that comes to mind is Septerra Core: Legacy of the Creator, an old PC jRPG (though the developers aren't Japanese) with one of the most amazing worlds and storylines written for them I've ever run into. Even though the game itself is obscure it had some very major legacy - the Halo series owes the voice of Master Chief to Septerra Core as it was during the development of that game that Martin O'Donnell met Steve Downes - and later recommended him for that voice when he started working on the Halo series ^^

Yes Martin O'Donnell made the music for this game. Yes, it is amazing. Why do you ask?

On the subject of jRPGs, there is the Japan-exclusive (yet fan-translated rather well) quasi-tactical Live-A-Live. It's an odd game, but definitely a great one. Another RPG (though this one is an action-RPG, kind of Zelda-esque but not quite) is Terranigma - doomed to obscurity because it never got a US release but it got a European/Australian release ages ago. Of course, the problem with both these titles is that they are SNES games and frankly they aren't likely to ever get a virtual console release of any sort. Make of that what you will.

Also, I'm not sure Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga and its direct sequel (they're two parts of the same game really) count - but if they do... Yes. Hell Yes.

For those of you who like Point-and-Click adventure games, The Longest Journey also comes to mind. Still one of the best point and click adventure games ever made. Its sequel can go eat a god damn brick though.

Another game of that genre is The Neverhood. I have no words about that game beyond Win And Freaking Awesome.

That is what comes to mind now. If anything else comes to mind I'll post about it XP

 

[Linkachu]

I'd probably classify Terranigma and the Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga games as "cult followings" myself, namely because they're actually quite well-known amongst RPG fans (especially older fans in Terranigma's case) but most other gamers have likely never heard of 'em before. They're definitely gems too.

With that said, I doubt any of the games I could include within this thread are "obscure" but they're certainly hidden gems.

E.V.O.: Search for Eden immediately springs to mind as an amazing game that's been a bit lost to time. Even though it's an SNES era Enix game it's never appeared on the Virtual Console and likely never will. The game is 9/10ths ingenious yet 1/10th glitchy mess, which drives away anyone who can't get the hang of its random lagging (particularly when attacking). You had to time certain hits juuuuust right or they'd never go through, leaving you to die a horrible, painful death.

Rune Factory Frontier also gets a mention because it's easily one of my favourite Wii games but very few people actually played it, likely because it wasn't heavily advertisized and didn't last long on store shelves before going out of print. Frontier built nicely upon the Harvest Moon/Adventure game aspects of its handheld brethren and really brought its world to life: lots of character, interesting dungeons, some very nice visuals, and hours upon hours of gameplay. I played that game at least 60+ hours and was nowhere near finishing it. Too bad Frontier suffered from one particularly annoying feature in the form of "Runeys". The rest of the game was gold, but I could've done without those fragile, demanding things. ;x

Hmm... That's all I can think of at the moment. Like Terranigma, there are many games from the SNES/Genesis era that were excellent but haven't made it onto the virtual console yet for whatever reason. Those of us who played those games ages ago remember them fondly but many younger gamers are missing out on some great classics.

 

[StellarWind Elsydeon]

Jegus eff how could I forget EVO. XD

Anyhow, speaking of obscure gems I just thought of another game that could be counted as one. The game in question is an extremely surreal freeware RPG named OFF. It's definitely not for everyone - but the story and concept of the game are... definitely something.

Don't expect any of the environment to make sense, though.