Mine has to be Dragon Quest: Rocket Slime, a DS spin off of the Dragon Quest series that sees you playing as a slime operating a tank and rescuing the people from your town. You run around the overworld, collecting items to use as ammunition and saving money to upgrade your tank. The art and music are just as great as you’d expect from the Dragon Quest series. It made fantastic use of the DS’s dual screens. It’s also written for a younger audience, so a lot of it is just really silly and fun! Try it out for sure, I’m so sad there’s no sequel :(
In certain circles it is well known, but Baba Is You is one of the most ingenious games for a long while and should be known even wider.
One of the only puzzle games that made me think I’m dumb and give up. It’s fantastic
Truly a unique game. Super challenging for people who think they “know” puzzle games lol
Played it with some friends on a pass the controller night. Really fun and makes you think.
Initially looks just a simple twist on Sokoban, but the game mechanic just keeps going deeper and deeper and blowing your mind.
I could do that?
I COULD DO THAT?!
Among all the love Bioware gets for KotOR and Mass Effect I’m genuinely surprised more people aren’t talking about Jade Empire.
It’s a full fledged classic Bioware RPG set in an interesting world based on Chinese mythology, has some great characters and a fun (if simple) combat system. Voice acting is mostly good too, especially for a 2005 game and it even has John Cleese doing a part!
I loved it when it came out and am stumped as to why it never became a BioWare mainstay. Maybe releasing as an exclusive for the original Xbox just killed it, but if you enjoy this style of RPG I highly recommend checking it out!
Jade empire was legit. i’m really surprised that there haven’t been any other kung fu type rpgs since.
In parallel universe we would have had Jade Empire (series) written by Bioware at their peak with combat by Platinum games.
Or maybe some could make SF6 story mode X Jade Empire.
In parallel universe we would have had Jade Empire (series) written by Bioware at their peak with combat by Platinum games.
I hadn’t even thought about that but you’re right. What a wonderful thought.
It’s also kind of surprising no effort has been done to remaster Jade Empire since that is such a popular cash grab these days. But maybe the brand strength of the IP is just that low?
Legend of Dragoon for PS1. It has the single best timed-input RPG combat system of any game ever. Think Mario RPG but way better.
GUST OF WIND DANCE!
Return of the Obra Dinn is an amazing game that I wish I could play again for the first time. The art style is super unique and the attention to detail in every aspect of the game is incredible.
Highly recommend.
Lucas Pope is an incredible game designer. I’m very excited to see what he comes up with next
My Summer Car. It’s probably still #1 for play time on Steam for me. I bought a whole-ass racing wheel setup just for that game.
Heroes of the Storm. It’s not getting any updates anymore but as long as the servers are up, I’ll still play it.
My gf talks about that game quite often!
There is still a player run league going strong. I’ve played in it for almost ten years. Great group of folks and new teams are often forming especially at lower MMRs.
Hadn’t realised they stopped updating it :(
I play a few games of hots about everyday.
Black and White, it was a god simulator on PC in 2001. You interact with your villagers and the world as a floating hand, casting spells to raise faith in villages or throwing rocks to smite as necessary. You also got a giant pet that you could train to do your bidding.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_%26_White_(video_game)
Noclip did a doc about it recently (https://youtu.be/GtNvEna6bxc). I remember seeing it for the first time at a buddies place growing up, but I didn’t have a strong enough computer to run it. I did though when black and white 2 came out and it was awesome! I feel the only thing comparable to it currently is the Anno series, no spells or anything but just city management and stuff.
That was a fun game! Would love to see a remake of it.
All these years later it still haunts me…
One Must Fall 2097, an awesome robot fighting game for DOS, which is quite different from every other fighting game, because in this one you have to select both pilots and the robots, and each pilot and robot have their own specialities and back stories, so it makes for a lot more interesting gameplay compared to other games in this genre.
Whoooooooa, now you’re really taking me back. I only had the Shareware version, so the full version with all the fighters was something I lusted after for ages, but never actually got. Megarace is another one from this era that stands out, though I don’t think it was a particularly great game.
CrossCode. It’s an SNES-style action RPG with very fun combat, 2D-Zelda-like puzzles, and a genuinely charming well-written story that was made in HTML5 and JavaScript for some reason. It is genuinely my favorite game of all time. I habitually proselyte this game to friends, but check it out for the love of God
Actually one of my favourite games of all time. Please please please check it out if you haven’t already
Hard to settle on just one. In no order:
- ChuChu Rocket (Dreamcast): insanely fun and manic couch multiplayer game
- A10 Tank Killer II: Silent Thunder (PC): the soundtrack alone justifies the time to play this aging flight sim
- Virtual On (Arcade): this was ported to Saturn and the port is good, but the giant arcade machine is where it’s really at with dual twin stick cockpits
- Mario Paint (SNES): Really fun non-game from a time when non-games were uncommon on home consoles. I have hundreds of hours into this
- Dungeon Keeper (PC): darkly comedic evil dungeon lord management sim. I will never forgive EA for what they did to Bullfrog and subsequently the DK franchise. There have been many attempted homages and clones but none have captured the magic.
- Super Tennis (SNES): an actually fun tennis game
- Super Play Action Football (SNES): football game with a unique isometric view
- Hank Parker’s Super Black Bass 2 (SNES): super fun fishing sim. I wish there were games like this today that took fishing more seriously and less arcadey.
- Brain Age (DS): a genuine sensation in its heyday and largely forgotten now. Really showed off the potential of the DS
- Cel Damage (GameCube): twisted metal with zany little cel shaded cartoon characters. Never got the respect it deserved and probably never will since they butchered the game’s balance with the HD re-release
DK2 took up far too much of my teenage life
I played Dungeon Keeper like mad back in the day.
It is payday
N+ it’s such a good game and no one ever knows what I’m talking about.
Boktai. A trilogy of GBA games about a vampire hunter who uses a solar gun to fry the undead. The cartridge has a UV sensor to detect actual sunlight to charge up the gun. It’s such a silly gimmick but it’s used really well.
Sadly the third game never got localized, and although a translation patch does exist it’s just not the same without the original hardware. There’s a fourth game on DS which did get localized, but they rebranded it as Lunar Knights, excised most references to the original trilogy, and even cut a good chunk of content. It also ends on a sequel hook that will never get resolved.
It’s sad to me that we’ll never see games this experimental ever again.
Mine is Dark Cloud. It was a PS2 launch title (or near enough to it) that was sort of a PlayStation answer to the Zelda franchise. Along with the original Spyro trilogy, Dark Cloud was by far my most-played game back in the day. It had an absolute banger of a soundtrack and a few pieces of really interesting unique gameplay including an RPG element where the primary progression system was not in your characters, but in upgrading your weapons, and a city-builder where you have to place all the people in each village near or away from various other elements in the village to meet their needs.
I almost never hear anyone talking about Dark Cloud, but extremely randomly one of the like four Twitch streamers I actually watch (all of whom are Age of Empires streamers, because that’s basically all I watch these days) happens to play its soundtrack frequently on her stream as background music. So that’s been really fun.
I don’t see anyone talking about CrossCode, but it’s such an amazing game. And it’s on sale right now!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/368340/CrossCode/
Profound story, excellent sound design, amazing soundtrack, insanely well designed combat system. It’s just an incredible game. It has more content, depth, and attention to detail than most AAA games these days.
If you’re picking it up, get the DLC as well! It’s not just DLC, it’s the conclusion of the game’s story!
I checked the game just now, I’m intrigued. What game do you think has similar vibe as this game?
Just more info for anyone that is interested in the game; now is the perfect time to buy it on Steam because the game currently has its biggest discount yet (same with its 2 DLCs).
CrossCode is phenomenal. I love how they crammed it with tons of sidequests without ever getting bogged down in repetition, because most of those quests put brand new spins on the combat mechanics.
I never see anyone talk about Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch but it’s one of my favorite games of all time. The Studio Ghibli collab makes it ooze charm.
People talked about it a ton when it was new.
