ahmallama on 11/4/2023 at 03:50

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i know this is almost blasphemous, but alot of people i talk to online/irl, haven't really heard of thief, or if they had, they only think of the reboot.

the same is true for another series i enjoy (but haven't played thoroughly) is "the legacy of kain" series, specifically soul reaver and soul reaver 2. imagine goth 3d zelda game (before botw) with body horror that would make john carpenter/david chronenberg proud (for some of the bosses iirc)



there was also one i played forever ago that i dont remember anything about, called septera core, that i need to replay sometime. what games do yall enjoy that people arent likely to have heard of even tho they hold a special place in ur heart?

Starker on 11/4/2023 at 10:18

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I was once part of a site called Home of the Underdogs, which was dedicated to preserving and highlighting games that hadn't received the attention they deserved or had been forgotten and swept aside by technological progress. I remember Activision's Portal having been one of the highest praised games there, as well as the Legacy of Kain series. I don't remember Terranigma, but HotU wasn't really the best place for console games in the first place. In any case, I've always considered the site to have been a great education for gaming and was introduced to many great gems over there.

There was constant debate over what exactly counted as an "underdog" or "underrated" and these days it's even more muddled with GOG, DOSBox, various other emulators, and post-HOTU abandonware sites having brought much attention to old classics, but as a general rule I'd say that anything in the genre of interactive fiction automatically counts, as does any game before 1990, to pick a somewhat arbitrary date, as this is the year when The Secret of Monkey Island came out. The rest is pretty much up for debate as far as I'm concerned.

Anyway, here's a few games that come to mind, in no particular order, that might perhaps conceivably be considered to be "lesser known": Betrayal at Krondor, Albion, Fantasy General, Callahan's Crosstime Saloon, Star Control 2/Ur-Quan Masters, Darklands, Gothic 1 and 2, Omikron: Nomad Soul, Outcast, King of Dragon Pass, Sanitarium, Lands of Lore.

Nameless Voice on 11/4/2023 at 11:21

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Gothic series is awesome, but I'm not sure it would count as "lesser known", it's hugely popular in Germany and I think Poland.

The game I always mention in discussions like this is Evil Islands. A fairly obscure isomeric Russian RPG from 2001, set on a number of floating "islands" - chunks of a planet which was destroyed and are floating in the void. It has a number of interesting concepts, including a fairly fragile character that forces you to rely on stealth and picking off enemies one at a time, a really cool crafting system, a character system where everything gets more expensive whenever you buy something, and this interesting thing where each island escalates by having different technology levels / materials available - the first island is really primitive and has almost no metal, with everyone using stone and bone weapons and leather and fur armour, while the later two islands are increasingly more "civilised" and advanced, with metal weapons and armour.

The game also has a ton of flaws that would probably put most people off (the biggest being an over-use of RNG in combat that often makes you have to reload a lot), but I love it and have considered to make a spiritual successor to it.

Hit Deity on 11/4/2023 at 15:12

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I would also say Star Control and Betrayal at Krondor were definitely not "lesser known" either. Pretty darn popular for their times.

Speaking of OLD GAMES..
I'm currently slogging my way through Pool of Radiance, and the rest of the Gold Box, Silver Box, and what-have-you DOSBox D&D games. Talk about RNG hell and game-ending encounters.. thank goodness you can Save anywhere.

Starker on 11/4/2023 at 15:57

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Like I said, a lot of it is very much up for debate. The problem with great games like Thief is that they usually still are relatively well known and Betrayal at Krondor also is pretty famous, but I'd argue not really as much as say, games like Morrowind or Baldur's Gate that anybody could name.

Also, there's the matter of genre familiarity -- Spiderweb's Exile series, Nethergate, and Geneforge are rather well known among people who play RPGs, but I'd say not as much among the general gaming public. Nearly every strategy game fan has heard of Panzer General, but it's not really genre-transcendingly popular in the way Civilization is.