Underrated Video Games

[Face McShooty]

Are there any video games you think get shafted by the majority of gamers because of popular games? Well post them here and if you've played them, give your thoughts on them. Here's some I think are underrated and shafted.

 

Twisted Metal series

Now sure, at first this series was all any PS gamers talked about. But now? It's almost like the series doesn't exist anymore even though they just rebooted the series 4 years ago (still waiting on the sequel). It had everything; fun characters, cool levels, awesome stories, and just the designs of everything.

 

Split/Second

A racing game that deserves a sequel, even though Disney Interactive Studios recently closed its doors on console games. The concept of playing a game show, similar to the movie series Deah Race but without the killing of those in last place, was really cool. The track changer power ups were awesome! There was very little I personally didn't like, if anything, about this game.

 

Rage

This game had problems, like a lot of games, but once you looked past them, you had one of the coolest post apocalyptic games out there. It reminds me of Borderlands, except instead of set on another planet, it's set on Earth after the impact of asteroid 99942 Apophis. Coming from a person, who at the time had never played a FPS at the time I had played it, I found myself enjoying it quite a bit. I recommend checking this one out if you have Windows, PS3, XBOX 360 .

[LordCowCowCowCowCowCowCowCow]

I've always disliked the term underrated. Cause a rating is either a professional, objective, thing or totally personal preference.

 

That being said there are a few games that I personally love but hardly ever see mentioned.

 

Lunar: SIlver Star Story Complete. While the story is basically the definition of typical fantasy, it's extremely charming how they do it. The music, and the cutscenes (fully animated, something really great for the PS1) were wonderful. The combat was simple but I never felt it really was dragging at any point.

 

Summon Night Series. This one is really unique in my opinion. It's a 2-D action RPG where you craft your own weapons. There's not the most depth to it but there's enough to make it interesting. The characters are really fun and colorful, and the art is really pleasant. It's just an all around fun game and I think I've seen 2 people who have even heard of it.

 

Vanguard Bandits. This is totally personal preference. The story is corny, the voice acting blows, but it's a turn based strategy mech game set in a medieval setting which is just....fascinating. It's a game I really enjoyed playing through every time and the fighting looks pretty cool, I never got bored of watching the little scenes.

 

Front Mission (2 specifically). This not as much as the others given how many sequels it got but it's still something I haven't heard many talk about. TBS again, Mechs again, but this time more slightly futuristic military style. The maps are always fun to strategize, the mechs look cool, and there's just so much about this world to explore despite that it's not an open world thing. Cause of the internet. The game has its own internet thing where you can look through pages upon pages of news, history, etc. It's quite interesting.

 

Once upon a time I could've said Fire Emblem (at least in the US) which is pretty interesting to note.

[Jord200]

Time Hollow - The first Visual Novel I ever played. Puzzle game, interesting characters, engaging plot, well written, you name it. Real sad it never got a sequel. ( That I know of or that we got at least. )

 

Ghost Trick Phantom Detective - EASILY in my Top 10 Games of all time. Fun puzzles, AMAZING music, I cannot choose a favorite character. I admit I had a little something in my eyes at the ending. Also, I feel like if you like the Ace Attorney games, you'll like this.

[The Nyx Avatar]

Twisted Metal series

Now sure, at first this series was all any PS gamers talked about. But now? It's almost like the series doesn't exist anymore even though they just rebooted the series 4 years ago (still waiting on the sequel). It had everything; fun characters, cool levels, awesome stories, and just the designs of everything.

 

OH MY GOD! YES! I loved those games, and it's a shame they didn't get more recognition.

 

Would Okami count as underrated? It has some good characters, the great theme(s) to Japanese mythology, the art style and music complements the overall theme, a variety of bosses, and isn't that hard to play. I don't often hear people mention this game.

[LordCowCowCowCowCowCowCowCow]

OH MY GOD! YES! I loved those games, and it's a shame they didn't get more recognition.

 

Would Okami count as underrated? It has some good characters, the great theme(s) to Japanese mythology, the art style and music complements the overall theme, a variety of bosses, and isn't that hard to play. I don't often hear people mention this game.

It's in one of those weird points like Shadow of Colossus. People love it, but they only get talked about occasionally. I wouldn't call them Underrated simply cause they do get recognition as good games fairly often.

[Face McShooty]

OH MY GOD! YES! I loved those games, and it's a shame they didn't get more recognition.

 

 

Glad someone agrees with me, the only time I hated the games was when I had to hunt down and kill Darkside... Dude was freaking HARD!

[Novalaxia]

I think people might disagree with me when I say this, but Zone of the Enders 2 was an absolutely brilliant game, despite not getting much attention as the first game (probably only because it didn't have a demo disk for Metal Gear Solid 3). The game plays a lot better than the first one, having a lot more responsiveness to it that makes the immersion of it being a mecha game so much more fun. The section where you blow up a whole armada of battleships is so satisfying to go through, and it's a shame that the HD re-release and its cancelled sequel didn't do this series justice.

 

The voice acting is pretty narmy though, even for an early-2000's Kojima game.

[The Nyx Avatar]

It's in one of those weird points like Shadow of Colossus. People love it, but they only get talked about occasionally. I wouldn't call them Underrated simply cause they do get recognition as good games fairly often.

Fair enough.

Glad someone agrees with me, the only time I hated the games was when I had to hunt down and kill Darkside... Dude was freaking HARD!

Which installment was that in again?

[mitchermitcher]

Falcom games in general, but especially the Trails series. It has it's own cult following and Cold Steel's name is at least kinda well-known in the JRPG community but the amount of love the series has is nowhere near enough. There's no other JRPG series that endears me to its worldbuilding and characters like this does.

[Resident Fascist]

Ty the Tasmanian Tiger. That's all.

[Face McShooty]

Which installment was that in again?

All of them but the main one I'm referring to is the first one, he was such a pain

[The Nyx Avatar]

All of them but the main one I'm referring to is the first one, he was such a pain

Kind of like how your first fight in the first one was almost always a 1 versus 1 between Sweet Tooth.

[Jord200]

Oh, and of course the Zero Escape games.

[mitchermitcher]

Oh, and of course the Zero Escape games.

As of ZTD's release I wouldn't say the series is underrated anymore.

[The Nyx Avatar]

Wait! I think I have one. What about Dino Crisis?

[Tinkerer]

I've always disliked the term underrated. Cause a rating is either a professional, objective, thing or totally personal preference.

 

That being said there are a few games that I personally love but hardly ever see mentioned.

 

Lunar: SIlver Star Story Complete. While the story is basically the definition of typical fantasy, it's extremely charming how they do it. The music, and the cutscenes (fully animated, something really great for the PS1) were wonderful. The combat was simple but I never felt it really was dragging at any point.

 

Summon Night Series. This one is really unique in my opinion. It's a 2-D action RPG where you craft your own weapons. There's not the most depth to it but there's enough to make it interesting. The characters are really fun and colorful, and the art is really pleasant. It's just an all around fun game and I think I've seen 2 people who have even heard of it.

I came in to basically say these, especially the Summon Night ones for the gba. I'm actually doing a run of Lunar Legend since I hadn't actually completed it last time I'd started.

 

I also personally find the Monster Rancher games to be quite good. Now that I think on it, that'd be one game that'd translate really well to mobile. Instead of using disks, you could scan bar/QR codes for monsters...

 

The Medabot RPG Games were pretty strong imo thanks to their tremendous amount of customization. I'd definitely recommend them.

[cr47t]

I feel like I should bring up StarTropics here. I haven't played the game myself (but I want to) so here's a video review of the game.

 

[spoiler=video review]

 

 

[Icy]

Legend of Legaia.

 

Its a Sony IP with a huge if cliche ridden world. Very little replay value. But almost everything is slammed in your face. Very few questions are left unanswered and a casino zone that would make AAA games cry with envy (the main one is a simple rock paper scissors 1v1 ala Rock'Em Sock'em Robots). But what won me over was the battle system.

 

You queue up attacks in a bar using each limb. Certain combinations trigger special moves on the final input. So like if a special was High kick, low kick, high kick; the special attack would replace the high kick. Weapon hands did more damage. Certain equipment would make the bar smaller or larger. Same for the amount of attacks you could queue up. Thiss won me over and still does. And if special attacks overlapped in commands, they would execute accordingly. 

 

Example: An attack is Right, Up, Left. The special would trigger on the left hand attack. Then if your bar is long enough that you could input more you could do; Right, Up, Left (Special #1/ RUL), Right, Right (Special #2/ LRR). It had summons too, some of which would make any Final Fantasy game blush but that... was far and away on the wayside to me.

 

You have no idea how sad I was when I found out it wouldnt be in Playstation All-Stars.

[LordCowCowCowCowCowCowCowCow]

Legend of Legaia.

 

Its a Sony IP with a huge if cliche ridden world. Very little replay value. But almost everything is slammed in your face. Very few questions are left unanswered and a casino zone that would make AAA games cry with envy (the main one is a simple rock paper scissors 1v1 ala Rock'Em Sock'em Robots). But what won me over was the battle system.

 

You queue up attacks in a bar using each limb. Certain combinations trigger special moves on the final input. So like if a special was High kick, low kick, high kick; the special attack would replace the high kick. Weapon hands did more damage. Certain equipment would make the bar smaller or larger. Same for the amount of attacks you could queue up. Thiss won me over and still does. And if special attacks overlapped in commands, they would execute accordingly. 

 

Example: An attack is Right, Up, Left. The special would trigger on the left hand attack. Then if your bar is long enough that you could input more you could do; Right, Up, Left (Special #1/ RUL), Right, Right (Special #2/ LRR). It had summons too, some of which would make any Final Fantasy game blush but that... was far and away on the wayside to me.

 

You have no idea how sad I was when I found out it wouldnt be in Playstation All-Stars.

So it's like a Fighting Game RPG? Or am I misunderstanding?

[Icy]

So it's like a Fighting Game RPG? Or am I misunderstanding?

 

Sort of? Never thought about it that way tbh.

Pay more attention to the combat sections. Or the soundtrack if thats your sort of thing.

 

There's also the pretty shoddy summon mechanic shown in the video. RNG chance to "capture" a monster by killing it. They replace the traditional idea of spells, thus items are never outclassed (even basic potions whereas in other games unless you've got Elixirs, use healing spells). Special Attacks cost AP which have a hardcap depending on the spirit stat/charge thingy. 

[Shradow]

Shadow the Hedgehog. Game's hella fun.