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Most Underrated Video Games That You Have Played?


Roland
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Title says it all. What are some underrated video games that you have played?

Mine are:

  • F.E.A.R: Super fun FPS game with some legitimately creepy moments. A ton of fun, and it's two expansions are really good.
  • Metal Gear Solid V: Might be a bit controversial, but I thought that, save the ending, MGS V was a super fun game.
  • Tactics Ogre Let Us Cling Together: One of my all time favorite strategy games. The story in this game was amazing.
  • Castlevania Portrait of Ruin: Of the DS Castlevania titles, I don't see a lot of praise for this one, which is a shame because it's so fun.
  • Prototypes 1 and 2: You play a super powered bio weapon that can shapeshift, turns your arms into weapons, and thrown enemies around like ragdolls. What's not to love?
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I'm not sure how many of these actually are underrated, but, off the top of my head:

  • The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie: The Video Game: As far as movie-license games go, it's far from the worst. It's not a great game, but it a fairly enjoyable 3D platformer. 
  • Megaman Battle Network 6: Most reviews I've seen of it seem to consider it only okay. I haven't finished it, and I admit that I'm not an expert on the Battle Network games; having only played 5 and 6, but I think 6 was a great way to end the franchise: the return of the WWW, a new cast, copybots, etc. 
  • The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures: I understand the criticisms of this game; namely the disconnected levels and the fact that multiplayer is only possible through those gameboy-gamecube connection cables. But, as a single-player game, it is very fun and, in my opinion, it has the best version of controlling a multiple-character-team in real-time combat that I have seen so far in a video game. 
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Honestly, it's gonna sound ridiculous, but The Sims 2 for DS. It's ugly as sin, being a 2005 DS game, but the music is good, the characters funny, and the humor honestly felt like something straight out of the Mother series.

Unlike PC Sims titles, S2DS is story driven. Your car breaks down in a small desert town called Strangetown, and by mysterious circumstances, you are left managing a broken down hotel. You're tasked with restoring it while the game's story progresses, which has you dealing with three strange tenants taking over your hotel - Frankie Fusilli, a mobster with a shady agenda on the town (He tries to draft you into burying a chest in the desert at some point...that has a person in it), Ava Cadavra, a goth cultist who worships a cow-god (she makes you build a shrine and kidnaps your hotel guests to join her cult) and Optimum Alfred, a cleaning bot gone rogue who you have to defeat in your alter ego, the Rattinator, a rat-themed superhero. 

The game has an atmosphere that, combined with the horrible graphics, gives you an intense horrified feeling, like...no horror game I've seen has ever come close to putting the same fear in me as this game. ESPECIALLY if you dare to change the DS clock. DON'T DO IT.

It's honestly in my top ten games of all time and I would recommend everyone who likes offbeat humor play it. My one issue besides graphics is it runs on real time and takes literal eight hours to get each room built.

Also, I've had the same save for 8+ years and I'm still finding things I didn't know about.

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Alpha Protocol: People that play the game complain a lot about the gameplay but as long as you don't use Shotguns or SMG's I really don't think the gameplay is as bad as people say it is. Sure, at the start of the game your aim is pretty bad but the moment you start upgrading your skills that becomes a lot less of an issue.

Everything else about the game is great. The story is great, the characters are amazing, the dialogue tree is the best way of handling a dialogue tree I've seen and the choice and consequences are also handled incredibly well and very subtle at that. 

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Custom Robo Arena: Pretty good if not well known, fun gameplay, decent story (if you ignore a few Natsume-isms) the 3D battle graphics for the DS have aged about as well as DS graphics can (due in part to the intentionally chunky designs of the Robos) only real problem is that it's pretty easy 90% of the time and there's no real way to increase the difficulty, save using intentionally inferior gear, it's only ever challenging in a few BS sections and 2 or 3 genuinely hard fights. 

The Urbs; Sims in the City for GBA/DS: A lesser known gem of a game. It's a story driven sims game, with a bit more depth in its characters, and surprising amount of stuff to do outside of the story. The in game clock advances when sleeping so it can be awkward getting time specific events, but other than that it's super fun. The DS version is the same as the GBA version except it has a little bit more content. 

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FF XIII. I know it's one of the more hated FF's but I think its gameplay is amazing and the storyline/characters arent that bad. For it's time the graphics were pretty good as well. The pacing was good in my opinion.

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4 hours ago, lightcosmo said:

FF XIII. I know it's one of the more hated FF's but I think its gameplay is amazing and the storyline/characters arent that bad. For it's time the graphics were pretty good as well. The pacing was good in my opinion.

 

2 hours ago, avensis said:

For me it was FFXIII too, I loved the story and the gameplay 

Y'all need to keep up with the FF scene, the redheaded stepchild is now FFXV (which happens to be my favorite).

My vote goes to Mercenaries Saga 2.  It's a e-Shop only game that somehow works as a sRPG, despite the rather rigid customization options.  And the less-than-stellar writing.

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Can a game be underrated when nobody even talks about it? If that's the case, then pretty much 75% of my favorite games would fit that mold.

If we're talking underrated in its own community, then I have to drop at least three games:

  • Final Fantasy XII: I absolutely adore this game, even despite its many faults (like the main character not actually having anything to do with... well, anything). The world is beautiful, the combat, while a little weird at first, is pretty fun, the monster designs are great, the story, even if it is less dense than other FF games I've played, is really cool and would honestly be an AMAZING plot for a Fire Emblem game, and I actually like the six characters that you play as, too. Sadly, it gets overlooked by the Final Fantasy fanbase at large. Or at least that's what it feels like.
    The DS sequel/spin-off, Revenant Wings, is ass, though.
  • Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World: The game that got me into the Tales series. I loved pretty much everything about it, the story, the combat, the characters, the humor (good lord, this game can be hilarious when it wants to be). While there have been better Tales games since then (Xillia, Xillia 2, Berseria), this one still holds a special place in my heart. So you can imagine my surprise when I looked up what other people thought about the game and the general consensus was that it's a pretty shitty game and an even shittier Tales game. Don't know if that counts as underrated if the community simply loathes the game, but there you go.
  • Atelier Sophie: The Alchemist of the Mysterious Book: You can basically apply what I said about Dawn of the New World to this game as well. It's what got me into Atelier, I absolutely LOVE this game, and the fanbase disagrees with me on that. Why? I have no freaking clue.
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13 minutes ago, eclipse said:

Y'all need to keep up with the FF scene, the redheaded stepchild is now FFXV (which happens to be my favorite).

As a redhead myself, I have never been a fan of the expression "redheaded stepchild", and I imagine stepchildren aren't fans of it either.

Final Fantasy XV had so much potential, but it ended up an incomplete shell of a game due to the development nightmare it suffered. One just needs see the trailers from when the game was originally Final Fantasy Versus XIII to see what it could've been. 

And when I say development nightmare, I'm not exaggerating. Even the shortest summary I can write is a little long, so I'm putting it in a spoiler tag. 

Spoiler

The game was originally announced as Final Fantasy Versus XIII: a darker take on the Final Fantasy formula and an open-world game to be developed by Tetsuya Nomura's team (Nomura being the director of Kingdom Hearts) and released for the PS3. However, at the time, Square Enix insisted that all its games be developed using in-house engines, and the in-house engine at the time was Crystal Tools: a terrible, unfinished game engine responsible for XIII's delays, and it was only made for linear games, when Versus XIII was supposed to be open-world. So, before they could start making the game, they had to find ways to modify the engine to accommodate it. This, combined with members of Nomura's team being siphoned off to help finish XIII and its sequels, meant that, after seven years, they had still made almost no progress. 

At one point, after seeing Les Misérables, Nomura, partially as a statement of how little progress his team had been able to make, requested that the game be made a musical. The executives understandably shot the idea down, but they also didn't take the hint. 

After seven years, Square Enix decided to rebrand the game as Final Fantasy XV; gambling that making it a main-series game would make more money and make up for losses. They also made Hajime Tabata co-director and told him they had three years to finish the game. By this time, Nomura had also been made director of Kingdom Hearts 3, so his focus was split. It especially didn't help that Square Enix had also been made director of Final Fantasy 7 Remake without his knowledge, so he kept being asked questions by the development team and had no idea why until FInal Fantasy 7 Remake was officially announced. After a year, they pulled him off the project and made Tabata full director. But this would not be the end of their issues. 

Nomura and Tabata have two very different philosophies when it comes to making RPGs. Nomura is very much a classic JRPG guy, while Tabata is a big fan of western RPGs. When Tabata became full director, it was reported that he told his team to play Skyrim and The Witcher 3 to get an understanding of how he wanted the game to be different from how Nomura had originally envisioned it. Not inherently a bad idea, but when one considers the tight deadline they were on, this was a mistake. 

Furthermore, the transition to PS4 meant that they now had to use the new in-house engine: Luminous, which, while able to accommodate an open world, was far from finished, so the team was having to finish the engine at the same time that they were making the game. Not only that, but, now that it was a main-series title, Square Enix wanted it to be a worldwide release, and the Chinese Government did not like the idea of a game where the protagonist's home kingdom reveres a Grim Reaper character, which was a core part of the worldbuilding in Versus XIII, so massive swaths of the game had to be rewritten. As the deadline approached, more and more of the game had to be cut for time.

 

To this day, Nomura is very upset about what happened. He envisioned Versus XIII as his Magnum Opus, and he saw Noctis, whom he had created himself, as one of his children; the other being Sora from Kingdom Hearts. Apparently, having to draw Noctis again for the Dissidia Final Fantasy game brought him to tears. For a long time, the only thing that kept him silent about his anger over what happened was that Square Enix had forbidden him from talking about it or even saying the name Versus XIII. Now, he is trying to recycle some of his original vision for use in Kingdom Hearts in the form of Verum Rex, and more information has been given revealing how destroyed he was after being pulled off of Versus XIII. I honestly can't blame him for feeling that way, nor can I blame either director for this game's terrible development; the fault lies with Square Enix's upper management. 

 

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3 minutes ago, DragonFlames said:

Final Fantasy XII: I absolutely adore this game, even despite its many faults (like the main character not actually having anything to do with... well, anything). The world is beautiful, the combat, while a little weird at first, is pretty fun, the monster designs are great, the story, even if it is less dense than other FF games I've played, is really cool and would honestly be an AMAZING plot for a Fire Emblem game, and I actually like the six characters that you play as, too. Sadly, it gets overlooked by the Final Fantasy fanbase at large. Or at least that's what it feels like.
The DS sequel/spin-off, Revenant Wings, is ass, though.

FF XII is very popular, from what I understand. And I agree it's amazing, other than the trial mode, that isn't so great.

54 minutes ago, eclipse said:

 

Y'all need to keep up with the FF scene, the redheaded stepchild is now FFXV (which happens to be my favorite).

Hey, I love FF XV as well! I think the characters being so close to each other is one of favorite parts of the game. Well, that and the characters being generally loveable is something I really appreciate. They dont sound fake, as in, poorly written, either.

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3 minutes ago, lightcosmo said:

FF XII is very popular, from what I understand. And I agree it's amazing, other than the trial mode, that isn't so great.

I stand corrected then.
Up until now, I was under the impression that FFXII was barely even talked about in conversations about best FF games.
Glad that's not the case!

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1 hour ago, DragonFlames said:

I stand corrected then.
Up until now, I was under the impression that FFXII was barely even talked about in conversations about best FF games.
Glad that's not the case!

Yeah, it always had very high ratings, and people always seem to praise the amount of options the player has, etc. I hardly see any negative comments on it.

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I know I don't have a lot of major franchises in this one, but I think it's pretty hard for a major franchise to have "underrated" entries since they usually have some fans even if they're just a small portion compared to the rest.

Chameleon Twist 1 & 2 (N64): These were fun platformers on the Nintendo 64 and offered a really unique tongue twisting experience that hasn't been built on or utilized much since then.
Custom Robo (GC): It's really unfortunate to me that this franchise never took off.  This could have filled the void for Mega Man Battle Network and imagining it on a bigger budget with todays development just fills me with disappointment that we'll never see it happen.
Drakengard series: These games appeal to a niche audience and I'm part of it, so this is understandable to me.
Lost Odyssey (X360): The story alone in this game makes it a 10/10 in my book.  Even if you look at lists naming the best Xbox 360 exclusive games, odds are you either won't see it listed or listed at a criminally low spot.  It's almost criminal to me that this game isn't more widely celebrated and recognized.
Legend of Spyro trilogy: I liked the direction of making a kid friendly God of War and the epic mythology feel that was added to the Spyro franchise.  It has its fans to this day at least, though I think it could have been a more celebrated hour of the franchise if the games had more polish to them.
Lunar: Silver Star and Lunar: Eternal Blue: Another criminal act of an underrated franchise in my opinion.  These two games have some of the most memorable and charming presentation values in a video game ever in my opinion and I've had a difficult time being able to find an alternative to fill that void.  These were games that were simple turn based RPGs at their core but it was those presentation values, story, characters, and music that made them so special.  These games really deserve more fans.
Pretty much every Star Fox game that isn't Star Fox 64 (except Command):  Another Nintendo franchise that just can't seem to take off.  This franchise could go in so many directions if it was just given a chance to do so but people seem to only want a UHD version of Star Fox 64 and nothing else.  

10 hours ago, lightcosmo said:

FF XIII. I know it's one of the more hated FF's but I think its gameplay is amazing and the storyline/characters arent that bad. For it's time the graphics were pretty good as well. The pacing was good in my opinion.

+1 for this.

3 hours ago, lightcosmo said:

Yeah, it always had very high ratings, and people always seem to praise the amount of options the player has, etc. I hardly see any negative comments on it.

Just me speaking from Gamefaqs experience, while XII was given high praise and ratings from professional reviews back in the day, I saw it get crapped on by the general gaming community for a long while until XIII came out.  In fact from my experience the general gaming community only started to like it a few years ago with the re-releases.  Maybe it has changed by now, I haven't exactly been in touch with the fanbase for a while.

Edited by Emperor_Siegfried
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17 minutes ago, Emperor_Siegfried said:

Just me speaking from Gamefaqs experience, while XII was given high praise and ratings from professional reviews back in the day, I saw it get crapped on by the general gaming community for a long while until XIII came out.  In fact from my experience the general gaming community only started to like it a few years ago with the re-releases.  Maybe it has changed by now, I haven't exactly been in touch with the fanbase for a while.

 

Your talking about the original PS2 version, IZJS/TZA are soooooo much better, they have a ton of changes to improve the game, making it amazing.

Also, I'm not sure gamefaqs is reliable, but that's just me, so who knows?

Edited by lightcosmo
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Tales of Symphonia 2: Its um....not all that good but its not as bad as people say it is either. Its a game made at a budget and its average because of it. But I wouldn't say its below average either. In particular I'd say its two leads are under appreciated at well. 

Dragon Age 2: Its painfully rushed but it does have some good in it. It was actually somewhat refreshing to play someone with no higher ambition than just being a productive member of his city and who had a party who's lives didn't entirely revolve around his quest.

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I think most people that had problem whit FFXII was either because they did not liked thenplot or because it was the first non turn-based FF. 

Anyway, on the list. I will avoid obscure jems because usually they are actually rated higly by those that know them. Overlooked or forgotten would be better words.

KOTOR 2 : not super underrated, but i find puzzling that many people seems to prefer the first over it. Also i think it's by far the best thing to ever came out of the Star Wars univers and would like for it to be aknowledges more. also i would love a disney adaptation just to laugh at how much they will butcher it

Neverwinter Nightthis days, the game is mostly considered inferior to Baldur Gate and more of a toolkit than anything else. However, i feel that fore all it's flaws the main quest can get very creative and shows just how much wonder there is in D&D. There are many quests and places that remained impreinted in my memories even if they were mediocre just because of how imaginative they were. Also there is a mod that Add a truckload of Classes and i pray for the Binder to get playable in the future.

Xenoblade X: quite frankly, imo that game was murdered by it being on wii u. It suffer from the usual Takahashi Syndrome and it's clearly just the chapter 1 of some grand epic, but i found it more interesting than the 2 xenoblades. Not in the main story, wich is useless, but in the amazing world building throught so many interlinked sidequest. I never felt so much part of an expanding society like in X. 

Fire Emblem Awakening: i think the gameplay is only bad if you are looking speciphically for a classic fire emblem experience. Awakening is instead closer to a Disgaea or FFT, where the gameplay is "Find something gamebreaker and use it againist bullshit enemies". Played that way is much funnier.

 

 

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I saw the trailer for Vice: Project Doom when it was added to the NES online switch app and thought "Wow, that looks like a fun action platformer". Then I played it and said to myself "Damn, that was a good action platformer". Dunno if it would make my top ten list of NES games, but it'd be in the deliberations, for sure. If you're looking at the pile of NES games on your switch and wondering which ones are worth your time to check out, I highly recommend this one just as surely as the obvious Marios and Zeldas.

I'm sure I've played hundreds of forgotten games at this point, but honestly? A lot of them deserve to be forgotten lol. Most of what does come to mind are indie games, but indie games by definition can be described as "underrated" because they get passed over due to their lack of recognizeable characters or development studio.

Edited by Glennstavos
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Tales of Symphonia 2 simply reuses way to much from the original game. And I'm not talking about models or enemies or whatever, like Majora's Mask did.
They make you visit many of the same dungeons then the original Symphonia, doing the same puzzles in the exact same manner. ...well, at least not to a degree that I, who played both games pretty much back-to-back was able to tell the difference.

Edited by BrightBow
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Non Twisted Metal "car combat games" -  but especially Cel Damage, Vigilante 8, and Interstate 76 -

I' ve had hundreds of hours of fun with some of these, and my own nostalgia factor rates them higher even than Black - Cel Damage is …. a bit off-genre and more arcade than than normal, especially the One hit kill gamecube version (as opposed to Xbox or modern port versions that use Xbox base) - Vigilante 8 is a series that takes the "fighting game combo" bonus element in some Twisted Metal games up to 11 - instead of having the freeze and the jump, every weapon in the game has 3 alternate firing mode combos (4 in 2nd Offense) - Including some that are amusing because they deform the physics.  Finally Interstate 76, despite being ANCIENT, is half appealing because it's the ultimate Singleplayer story car-combat game, and half appealing because it's made to be modabble and has accumulated an impressive amount of content over the years. 

8 Degree of Freedom Games - Descent, Freespace, and might as well mention Colony Wars and G-Police

Descent is most commonly seem as a footnote along other early FPS games in the wake of Doom and while most articles admit that it is almost a subgenre of Doomclone onto itself due to the Spaceship, the overall impression left is that is impressive than the others and people shouldn't seek it out until they've already made the pilgrimage of BLood/Shadow of Triad/Duke Nukem, etc.... I find this nonsense - it's still good today. Descent and Descent 2 even stands out a lot from the games that would copy it's engine, due to the game taking place entirely in caves as opposed to Space (or low atmosphere) - and Like Doom, it is paradoxically a LOT faster than most "real" space games of the flightsim type, and it's really exhilarating.  - Freespace 1 and 2, are very cinematic in their way, and you will occasionally see some very strong cult support, but imo I think their distant 4th behind (Tie FIghter + Wing Commander 4 + Freelancer) is given too much of a gap - 8DD in space on its own is a great dogfighting experience, and they Freespace 1 and 2 have an amazing cinematic feel to them storywise themselves. Colony Wars 1, Vengeance, and Red Sun are a neat PS1 trilogy, which I adore to death, and their use of 8DD is great, their story is interesting and unconventional insofar as you play each game presents the last game's story through the propaganda of the losing faction, the game has some of my favorite sound effects in ANY game, and the length of the game is satisfying between it's branching paths and (kind of high ) difficulty.  These games use a shield/hull system instead of the "powerup" esque gameplay of classic Descent though...  G-Police was made by the same developers as Colony Wars and is weaker in most areas. but is nevertheless pretty solid.

It's a whole other topic but - puzzle game master race games either don't get recognition and the ones that are too big to ignore (at least for historical importance if nothing else) aren't given ENOUGH respect as things that are  still fun today - I"ll never call Lemmings, Solomon's Key, and Lode Runner underrated, but games like Boulderdash, Bombastic, Head Over Heels, Lumilines,, Adventures of Lolo, XI Jumbo, Kurushi Final, ChuChuRocket, Mr Driller - This doesn't even include the "block" and drop down puzzlers which are seen as only their own niche and not stone cold classics in their own right (except tetris) - The differences between  Puyo Puyo, Magical Drop, and Bust a Move should be appreciated by more people. More than anything else, people should engage with Puzzle games instead of resorting to padding out their idea of what a puzzle game is with puzzle platformers and adventure/puzzle hybrids: things like Braid or The Witness are great GAMES but are they really special in the context of the puzzle world? 

Random One off things

Steambot Chronicles - underated but admittedly it's pretty heavily flawed game - The steambot itself has tank controls, a unco-ooperative lock on system, and can cause extreme amounts of slowdown and lag in common situations (eg explosions of any kind)-- But everything OTHER than the combat is really great, it's not an extremely large sandbox, but I do find it as engrossing as GTA / Saint's Row at times when just checking wandering around the city's, doing the music stuff. The game's cel-shaded with faded "early Victorian" aesthetic is great, and is a lot more grounded than the superpowers of say, Vaklyria chronicles - it even is thematic throughout the game (eg villian motivations, multiple player sidequests (expanding a railroad, changing the textile industry). I'm not going to deny enjoying the Rockstar formula, but I can't think of EVER enjoying the on-foot parts of any sandbox quite as much as in SC.  

Creatures 1 and 2 - This is arguably the most the most successful A-Life game ever released if you genre-police hard enough to keep the Sims out of the genre -  but today it is mostly forgotten and the entire idea of artificial life in video games is split between indies who never go beyond being "quirky" and stuff that is a little TOO dry academic - Creatures 1 is a happy accident that is both complex, but still a GAME (Steve Grand would go DEEP into academic A-Life after he left) - I think the most impressive thing about it is in the language instruction - if you leave them to babytalk instead of teaching them yourself, the Norns can actually try to make those sounds into a language itself and come to mutally accepted definitions for food and other objects, making their own language out of the sounds. *Creatures 2 and 3 kind of need modding to enjoy, unlike C1, but the original 2000s community made easy to use injectors and large mods for all three games.

Majesty 1 - Very unlikely to appear in a search unless you are in a Dungeon Keeper forum and are looking for "similar games" - Maj 1 isn't really that close to DK (except by comparison to "normal" RTS games) - It's a very special game due to the indirect unit control being combined with extensive decision tree AI that gives all the charathers "personalities" and the game has enough randomness in it that you can't quite get to the point of predicting things - sometimes a Rogue WILL be brave, or a Paladin WILL run away, a Monk will develop an unhealthly fixation with your Inns, a Ranger will survive a fight with a Minotaur that would have killed 9/10 other rangers, you'll get a non wizard hero ACTUALLY use the library, and all sorts of little "make up your own story to explain it" things that the game just DOES, all the time.  Honestly, I think the real best comparison is not DK but actually things like Dwarf Fortress and Rimworld - you just set this game loose and magic happens  - *Keep in mind that the actual mechanical parts of Majesty are very basic and not simulationist like in those games though.

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5 hours ago, Reality said:

8 Degree of Freedom Games - Descent, Freespace, and might as well mention Colony Wars and G-Police

Descent is most commonly seem as a footnote along other early FPS games in the wake of Doom and while most articles admit that it is almost a subgenre of Doomclone onto itself due to the Spaceship, the overall impression left is that is impressive than the others and people shouldn't seek it out until they've already made the pilgrimage of BLood/Shadow of Triad/Duke Nukem, etc.... I find this nonsense - it's still good today. Descent and Descent 2 even stands out a lot from the games that would copy it's engine, due to the game taking place entirely in caves as opposed to Space (or low atmosphere) - and Like Doom, it is paradoxically a LOT faster than most "real" space games of the flightsim type, and it's really exhilarating.  - Freespace 1 and 2, are very cinematic in their way, and you will occasionally see some very strong cult support, but imo I think their distant 4th behind (Tie FIghter + Wing Commander 4 + Freelancer) is given too much of a gap - 8DD in space on its own is a great dogfighting experience, and they Freespace 1 and 2 have an amazing cinematic feel to them storywise themselves. Colony Wars 1, Vengeance, and Red Sun are a neat PS1 trilogy, which I adore to death, and their use of 8DD is great, their story is interesting and unconventional insofar as you play each game presents the last game's story through the propaganda of the losing faction, the game has some of my favorite sound effects in ANY game, and the length of the game is satisfying between it's branching paths and (kind of high ) difficulty.  These games use a shield/hull system instead of the "powerup" esque gameplay of classic Descent though...  G-Police was made by the same developers as Colony Wars and is weaker in most areas. but is nevertheless pretty solid.

I remember the thief-bot ship being memorable when I was watching my dad play Descent, even though the game gave myself motion sickness due to the tight corridors and movement. I've heard good things about the game Overload in a similar fashion (it was made by the original Descent developers), although I haven't checked it out myself.

Even though it was mentioned here, I feel as though Freelancer is fairly underrated. The entire gameplay loop was really satisfying and it felt like I've really struggled to find other games like it where there was an entire pre-determined and structured universe and the ability to be a trader, pirate, bounty hunter, etc. It seems to get a rare mention in gaming communities but perhaps that is due to space sims not being that popular from what I've seen. And hasn't really given us any true spiritual successor yet...

Heavenly Sword. Partly on the account of being in the PS3 launch time period and being a short game, it never really got any recognition. And was not really regarded as anything more than mediocre but the action was good and was a game worth playing if you owned a PS3 at that point (many didn't).

Edited by Tryhard
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Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep. I know people say they butchered the combat from KH2, but I actually really enjoy it. I think the Style changes flow pretty nicely, and the combos aren't awful in my opinion (i'm looking at you, KH3) of course, i'm pretty biased on this end, but I don't think it's nearly as bad as people say. Besides the Mysterious Figure... that, is awful.

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23 hours ago, vanguard333 said:

As a redhead myself, I have never been a fan of the expression "redheaded stepchild", and I imagine stepchildren aren't fans of it either.

Final Fantasy XV had so much potential, but it ended up an incomplete shell of a game due to the development nightmare it suffered. One just needs see the trailers from when the game was originally Final Fantasy Versus XIII to see what it could've been. 

And when I say development nightmare, I'm not exaggerating. Even the shortest summary I can write is a little long, so I'm putting it in a spoiler tag. 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

I read the supposed original script.  I don't think I would've liked that at all.  I'm not a fan of plot twists for the sake of plot twists, which is what it read like.

The fact that it turned out as well as it did should say more than anything.

Signed,
A stepchild who takes no offense to that metaphor

23 hours ago, lightcosmo said:

Hey, I love FF XV as well! I think the characters being so close to each other is one of favorite parts of the game. Well, that and the characters being generally loveable is something I really appreciate. They dont sound fake, as in, poorly written, either.

See the quote above me?  Those that post online tend to have a negative opinion of the game.  We're the minority (and there's nothing wrong with that).

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5 hours ago, eclipse said:

I read the supposed original script.  I don't think I would've liked that at all.  I'm not a fan of plot twists for the sake of plot twists, which is what it read like.

The fact that it turned out as well as it did should say more than anything.

Signed,
A stepchild who takes no offense to that metaphor

See the quote above me?  Those that post online tend to have a negative opinion of the game.  We're the minority (and there's nothing wrong with that).

Yeah, it's not for everyone, for sure. But alot of the scenes were very emotionally touching, I think. And I think the way Noctis' friends support him endgame, even though they know what's going to happen, is one of my favorite points. Stuff like that makes me really like the story.

For another example:

Spoiler

The campfire scene was so sad, I really felt the emotion that they were trying to convey. Knowing they have to say goodbye and that it's the last time they will see him. It's really heart-wrenching to me. It sounds a bit cheesy when I put it like that. 

 

Edited by lightcosmo
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On 1/4/2020 at 12:16 PM, vanguard333 said:

I'm not sure how many of these actually are underrated, but, off the top of my head:

  • The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie: The Video Game: As far as movie-license games go, it's far from the worst. It's not a great game, but it a fairly enjoyable 3D platformer. 
  • Megaman Battle Network 6: Most reviews I've seen of it seem to consider it only okay. I haven't finished it, and I admit that I'm not an expert on the Battle Network games; having only played 5 and 6, but I think 6 was a great way to end the franchise: the return of the WWW, a new cast, copybots, etc. 
  • The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures: I understand the criticisms of this game; namely the disconnected levels and the fact that multiplayer is only possible through those gameboy-gamecube connection cables. But, as a single-player game, it is very fun and, in my opinion, it has the best version of controlling a multiple-character-team in real-time combat that I have seen so far in a video game. 

Most people in MMBN fanbase generally agree that BN6 is kinda a return to form whose only main flaw is its almost as broken as/maybe even more broken than 2 and 3, but its generally considered on the upper half of the series

 

im surprised about the specific things you noted as positives though. I'm ok with the new cast but it always feels weird when i played it back then that the series ending games to end all games uses largely new characters.... outside the technically villain side.

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