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Thinking about it, the thread title describes most of my PS2 library. Such a treasure trove for weird games that were decent, but flawed or criminally underrated or overlooked. The one that springs instantly to mind, however, is Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter. I was never as big a fanboy for the earlier games as others, so I just took the change of direction in my stride. It did, however, require a huge adjustment in how I handled the game: trying to equate the restarting as another form of level grinding was trickier than anticipated. At some point, it dawned on me that, in many ways (combat style, music, setting, theme and mood) it was essentially a spiritual sequel of sorts to Vagrant Story (one of my favourite games of all time) and once I realised that, it all clicked. It's since gone on to be my favourite in the series. shock.wav posted:Freedom Fighters No, they're pretty up front about it being the Red Menace you have to fight. There's actually a good LP of it going on right now, if you missed it. Kaboom Dragoon has a new favorite as of 05:38 on May 13, 2013 |
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May 13, 2013 05:35
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Kimmalah posted:I don't remember Borderlands really being poorly received except maybe by people who go into a frothing rage whenever a game doesn't take itself super seriously. I admit I didn't follow the first one that closely, but it seemed pretty well liked considering how highly anticipated the sequel was before release. For some reason, cel shading's like this horrible taboo. Every time it rears its ugly head, people seem to get into this venomous froth about how terrible it is. I have never understood it, I've always thought it looks cool.
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May 13, 2013 18:38
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LoudLoudNoise posted:I'll throw PN03 into this list. I remember when the game was still in development, it received a bunch of comparisons to the also-in-development Starcraft Ghost. They were both third person shooters set in a futuristic environment starring an attractive female lead character. At least that's what it looked like. In reality, PN03 has much more in common with Rez and shmups than it does with the third-person action genre of early/mid 2000s console gaming. The gameplay is more about standing still and figuring out how to evade your opponents' attacks (with dancing!) than it was about being stealthy, clever, or outgunning your enemies. Unfortunately that was lost on a lot of reviewers and gamers alike since they expected a full-on action game. I remember when it came out, it was praised for its character animation, but derided for its clean/bland look. I wonder how it would've fair if it was rereleased now, what with iProduct idolatry being what it is. In that respect, it was hugely ahead of its time.
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May 14, 2013 17:59
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Mr. Mallory posted:You should really pick it up, you can get it really cheap used and it's definitely worth if you liked the demo. Fantastic soundtrack too. JebanyPedal posted:Most people's issues with the game were that they were trying to make an atmospheric shooter but it was constrained by the fact that the game wasn't very scary and the shooting segments were hamstrung by the fact that the game operated on movement and shooting mechanics very similar to the Quake series, but it was so consigned to corridors and cramped levels that you could never get the mobility you wanted to. This is pretty much because the engine prevented them from making larger levels so they essentially trapped the player in small arenas where you couldn't fully enjoy the firefights because you were cribbed into little to no mobility on an engine and gameplay concept that relied on that functionality. Did the Doom 3 engine even catch on? Seems like the last few iDtech engines have only been used by iD themselves. Kimmalah posted:If you're going by ratings and reviews, yes very much so. If you're going by profits, not so much since apparently Epic Games didn't sell enough to turn a profit on it. The people who played it loved it (or bought it for the Gears 3 beta access). It's an injustice that it never caught on in the way it should've.
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May 16, 2013 01:53
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Haruharuharuko posted:The main problem I had with that game but was also my favorite part was gaming the poo poo out of the systems in the game. Just level someone as alchemist get megalixirs every turn, have a berserker with auto hestega on and a third something and you win every battle as long as you dont get one shotted. It's funny, gaming FF5's system is practically a genre unto itself, yet X-2's system is even more breakable and no one cares. I thought X and X-2 had the best combat systems of the newer FF games, but I seem to be in an overwhelming minority. M.Ciaster posted:Wait, what? Get Sleeping Dogs and the Nightmare in North Point dlc. You can thank me later.
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May 17, 2013 02:48
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Avocados posted:Weren't they offering some ONE MILLION DOLLAR PRIZE to a gamer who did something in this game? And then ended up pulling it for some reason? I think you had to find a bunch of symbols or images and take pictures or something, but they decided to change it to be an Xbox Live thing when it was pointed out that there was nothing to stop people datamining the disc and cheating like hell. So they switched it over, but because their netcode was... less than stellar, people were finding it physically impossible to complete. They wound up cancelling it and offering a suite of free games to those pissed off by it. Considering the game sunk without trace, I'm gonna go out on a limb and suggest that cost them significantly less than a million bucks.
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May 17, 2013 10:34
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Ularg posted:I remember having a demo of one of the Dynasty Warrior games when I was a kid. The demo is all I needed to have fun. Have you tried the Gundam Dynasty Warriors? It's just as fun, but with Gundams. DW Gundam, Warriors Orochi 3 and the Fist of the North Star game are a fantastic way to waste a weekend. Throw on a dvd in the background and veg out. Also, something I've always wondered: are the Empires games add-ons or stand-alone? Do I need the original games to get the full experience or can I just play as-is?
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May 17, 2013 23:02
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Kimmalah posted:My guess is that's the problem right there. It was made by the people who made Gears of War and that's probably the kind of game everyone was expecting. And considering how popular the Gears franchise is, that's the kind of stuff that sells. Also (to my knowledge) there's no multiplayer beyond co-op play, which probably didn't help. There's a 4-player co-op mode which, surprisingly, still has people playing it (on the 360 at least). It's not worth doing unless you've got friends to play with, though, it really requires a lot of teamwork and cooperation, something pubbies are sorely lacking in. Ularg posted:I might have to try this to get through Lord of the Rings movies without falling asleep. Keep it up guys, I grew up with a lot of mainstream AAA titles and highly liked stuff, so seeing a bunch of other games that have been under my radar for so long to try is awesome. It's worth doing with any gamers that require a lot of grinding or repetitive busywork. Disgaea 2 was a great companion to Deep Space 9.
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May 17, 2013 23:16
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Shlapintogan posted:They're standalones. The original games are a good compliment, but not necessary at all to get the full Empires experience. If you've got a PS3, I'd recommend picking up DW7: Empires. Ah, cool, I was afraid the Empires games were like the XL addons. Just that the Empires games usually plummet in price soon after release, while the core games remain mostly stable.
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May 18, 2013 04:58
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Silly Voodoo posted:For me, it's Wild ARMs 2. As far as I know it's the black sheep of the series, even though Wild ARMs 4 exists and is a loving terrible game. I remember the Liz and Ard sections being completely incomprehensible, partly because of the script, partly because of the awful font they used for the game. I also remember people swearing blind at the time that I clearly had no reading comprehension and to quit being such an idiot who can't read.
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May 19, 2013 13:03
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theradiostillsucks posted:Also, the multiplayer-only Shadowrun reboot from 2006 or so, which I played on the 360. If they had any sense, they would have launched this at a lower pricepoint since there was no single-player, but the fact that it was a $60 multiplayer-only game kind of buried it before it had a chance. Also, the fact that it had very little in common with the earlier Shadowrun game turned a lot of people off before they ever gave it a shot. It didn't help either that the developer went belly-up right after release, so nothing really ever got patched or added as far as DLC went. It's a shame, because I enjoyed this more than any of the Halo games' multiplayer. The PC version of it came with a month's free XBL, so when it fell into the bargain bucket, people finally started buying copies. Usually four or five at a time.
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May 20, 2013 01:59
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Prezer posted:I really have no idea why this game wasn't well recieved, it was really amazing and it probably is on my top 5 SP games. Fast forwarding people and reversing time on other things was quite a fun, and kind of freaky mechanic. Everyone wrote it off as a Bioshock rip-off back when it came out. Assuming they even paid it any heed at all. I can see why they'd say that, since there's a fair few mechanics shared between the two, but when it comes to the story, I almost have to give it to Singularity. It's seriously that well done.
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May 26, 2013 20:34
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...of SCIENCE! posted:And I'm surprised at all the love for Singularity, if only because Wolfenstein 2009 did almost everything it did only better and first. Singularity is Wolfenstein '09 in Cyrillic dieselpunk paint with more "puzzles". Weren't they both made by the same company? Raven software, right?
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May 27, 2013 14:48
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No.44 posted:Yeah the battle system nearly killed it for me. I didn't find that I had much trouble with the breakable weapons bullshit, but the spells take waaayyy to much effort to level up and the character stats are unnecessarily complex. Really, it would've been better if they had just stuck to a regular turn-based system. I think that I'm probably remembering it a little more fondly than it deserves due to nostalgia. Personally, I gave up by the halfway point and just stuck to fists for the rest of the game. Beating down abominations is so much more satisfying than anything else. And yes, Shadow Hearts/Covenant are two of my favourite PS2 RPGs. The first hits a nice level between weird and creepy, while the second exchanges weird for awesome and badass and if you consider the fan theory about the endings, gives Yuri a proper shot at a happy ending.
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May 30, 2013 19:47
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No.44 posted:You're talking about the part of the good ending where Yuri is about to hop the train that he met Alice on during the first game right? I actually had the misfortune of playing Covenant before the original so the ending didn't have the emotional impact it should've. I did get pretty broken up at all the scenes where Yuri and Alice were reunited, even though I didn't really know much about her. The one thing that kind of weird out about Covenant's ending was when it was revealed that Karen was actually Yuri's mother Anne. When Yuri has that flashback to Anne/Karen's death in the first game, I kept wondering why she didn't just whip out Durandal and go to town on those demons. Basically. The theory goes that Yuri gets sent back to the beginning of the first game, but with all his memories intact so he can do everything right and save Alice this time around. So the series goes SH Bad Ending > Covenant Good Ending > SH Good Ending (with Koudelka at the beginning, though her part in the rest of the series is abysmally minimal). Also Karin had amnesia at that point, hence why she wasn't ripping everything to shreds with ease before she died.
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May 31, 2013 01:30
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No.44 posted:Oh okay, that makes sense now. She did seem pretty out of it when Yuri's dad found her. By they way, Covenant's bad ending left open the possibility of a direct sequel, because the Mistletoe curse didn't kill Yuri, it just wiped his memories didn't it? I guess we won't get one though because most of the team behind Covenant is now with Mistwalker. Was From the New World even made by the same team? if I recall correctly Midway was already starting to collapse by that point. Depending on who you ask, it either wiped his memories or left him a total shell. The former can possibly be recovered from (magic, deus ex machina, etc.) while the other option essentially means Yuri is dead. And since Covenant showed they weren't afraid to go with the bad endings... As for Midway, they just published it, they really had nothing to do with the game itself. Accordion Man posted:I'd say it has the best combat system in the series, its just that the game just kind of falls apart plotwise once you get to South America and the characters don't really develop or interact all that much with each other after that point. It also felt a little bit too much stock JRPG in comparison to its predecessors. Still a good game though I still need to beat it. I want a Shadow Hearts 4 so bad, there's so much they could still do. It hit a few of the right notes for me, and had the best battle music in the series, but the balance tipped over from absurd to outright wacky. There was an interesting story in there, but it's easy to forget when you've got a subplot about a giant cat who wants to make a movie and, by the way, the cat used to be Al Capone's advisor and BFF. I wanted to see more of that side of things, in all honesty - prohibition-era gangsters fighting off demons? Tell me that doesn't peak your interest and I'll call you a goddamn liar.
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May 31, 2013 12:12
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Accordion Man posted:I agree, they really dropped the ball when it came to what they did with the time period and setting. Lovecraft was a major influence for the series and Lovecraft is even a character in 3 but they really don't advantage of having the game take place in the time and setting of Lovecraft's stories. They could have had your party of goofballs trying to stop the Order of Dagon from resurrecting Cthulhu or something but instead we get two really bland reject JRPG villains and the Penguin and stock JRPG plot of running to different temples to unlock seals. The three of them just paled in comparison to Simon and Kato. That too. I fully support using new characters for FTNW - Yuri's story is over, one way or another - but there's still a lot they could build on in terms of what the previous games have introduced, and the Lovecraft thing should be an absolute no-brainer. Instead, we escort some Native American I think that's the other problem as well. The first two games had memorable plots. I remember when my then-girlfriend first showed me Shadow Hearts. Having played Koudelka, I knew something was up with 'Francis Bacon' from the start, and that got me hooked. The plot of the second game is even better, and once Kato shows up, you're in for the long run just to see where it goes next. I cannot, for the life of me, however, remember a single drat thing that happens in the third game. Great music, excellent refinement of the battle system, but let's just pretend the rest didn't happen.
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May 31, 2013 19:14
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So all this recent talk of Shadow Hearts gave me a hankering to go back and play the first one. I'm at the final dungeon now, and either it's a hell of a lot easier than I recall, or I'm so used to the nightmare that is your average Shin Megami Tensei game, anything that doesn't include false walls, teleporters or dimensional warps is a breeze. I feel like there should be something wrong with me, but I'll be damned if I know what it is.
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Jun 3, 2013 18:07
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Tewratomeh posted:I know it has a big following on the forums now thanks to supergreatfriend's amazing LP, but I sincerely loved ILLBLEED back when it was first released on the Dreamcast. Reviews were mixed, few copies were sold, and the game's since became somewhat of a collector's item because few people owned a Dreamcast in its heyday, and fewer still owned the game that print ads claimed would make us all "poo poo with fear". I also vaguely remember some people badmouthing it here on the forums before SGF's Let's Play. The Dreamcast was a goldmine for games like that. Maken X was a fantastic game with horrible gameplay. Superb soundtrack, great enemy designs, terrible game design. It was a first-person game where everyone had melee weapons (the devs referred to it as a 'First-Person Slasher'). Your enemies were usually infinitely more mobile than you were and would suckerpunch you left and right. You unlocked special attacks by killing enemies, but using them cost you health, in a game where you were constantly under attack and health pickups were far and few between. You can see where this is going. Even with all the poor choices the designers made, I still loved it. There's about seven or eight endings to unlock, something like 20-odd characters to play, all of whom play radically different from each other. The stages are very distinct and usually sprawling, many of them having hidden areas that can only be reached with certain characters. The PS2 remake, Maken Shao, fixed most of the problems purely by moving to a third-person view, though it never received a US release (it did receive one in Europe though). It's not a game I could recommend easily the DC version at least) but it's still a game I think of fondly from time to time.
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Jun 16, 2013 05:09
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spongepuppy posted:Sega's Resonance of Fate is truly a shining gem, mostly because of the central "hero run" mechanic. It's pretty much the only game I've played where the designers explicitly make the implicit superhumanity of the player characters into an explicit part of the combat system. It also had a hilarious gun-modification system that resulted in some truly spectacular firearm creations, and the voice English-language voice work was superb. Every pistol must have 17 sights and eight barrels. This is a rule  I could never get the Tri-Attack working for some reason, and the game can be ludicrously hard if you don't have exactly the right set-up on your characters, but it's still a great game.
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Jun 25, 2013 11:40
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BiggerBoat posted:How about Silent Hill: Homecoming? I found it to be one of the stronger entries in the series - way better than 3, which was basically Jacob's Ladder and much, much better than 4 (The Room). I thought the story and the way it was delivered were very engaging and having a dude who could actually sort of fight was a welcome change from just running away from monsters. Not sure why people didn't like it. I think I've mentioned it before, but I didn't get to play SH2 until looooong after 3 was released. By the time I had, the game had been discussed to death and I knew most of the major moments by sheer pop cultural osmosis. It leaves me in this weird position of appreciating SH2 for what it does, but actually liking 3 more as a game.
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Jun 27, 2013 06:08
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scarycave posted:Baroque I preordered it, so... I always describe it to people as Silent Hill: The Roguelike. You're trapped in a place you can't get out with, surrounded by creatures that symbolize the worst of mankind's excesses, trying to atone for a sin you can't even remember. Sound familiar? I don't blame anyone for hating it on sight though. The game's repetitive as hell, you never really feel like you're making progress and a lot of stuff, like saving items for your next run, isn't even hinted at, let alone explained. I still love it though. Amazing soundtrack too.
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Jun 29, 2013 14:38
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Krypt-OOO-Nite!! posted:Has anyone said shadows of the damned yet? It's funny if you go back and read the original concept for the game: a serious horror game based on the works of Franz Kafka. Really.
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Jan 12, 2014 16:22
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