Obscure games that you would recommend.

[DaveSW]

Yeah, any fun games that aren't that popular that would recommend others check out?

For starters, I would suggest checking out Aquaria and Wild ARMS: XF.

Aquaria is a Metroidvania style indie game for the PC, where you play as some kind of spiffy singing mermaid, and the whole game takes place underwater.  Great soundtrack and voice acting too.

Wild ARMS: XF is a SRPG for the PSP that is very different from FFT.  The plot and music aren't exactly good, but with so many different customization options, it is well worth checking out.  Might serve to inspire your FFT mods a bit.

Edit: Please add a brief description of the game, and what system(s) the game is on, so others can get an idea of what the game is like.

[Cheetah]

Nice thread idea.

Zack and Wiki: Most underloved Wii game out there. Followed closely by Okami. It is a puzzle adventure kind of point and click game, with plenty of quirky characters and a fun story.

All the other games are RPGs that most every one here has at least thought of.

Usually I would add FFT to this list...

[Eternal]

Fat Princess. HUGE timesink. No pun intended.

[Kaijyuu]

Valkyrie Profile for the PS1.

Though stay the eff away from its sequel.


Also, Dark Cloud 2. The first one's pretty awesome as well, but 2 improved upon it in almost every way, so...

[MysticKnightFF5]

The sequel sucks balls, to be sure.
Valkyrie Profile: Covenant Of the Plume, for the DS, is not so terribad however.

El Shaddai (for the PS3), takes a shitty book's story, makes it epic, then gives you the most badass gameplay I've ever seen. Adventure/fighting game.

[VampragonLord]

princess maker 2

[GeneralStrife]

ace combats

[DaveSW]

Wow, those sound like such interesting games judging from ONLY HAVING THE TITLE to go on. /sarcasm.
What are those games about?

[VampragonLord]

you.... make a princess o.o twice? XD
fine fine <.<
its akin to the monster rancher series..... sorta. Youre this bad ass war hero, who defeats the prince of darkness and the king rewards you by giving you a giant mansion and a yearly salary and such...... after some time, the gods/goddesses send down a girl who was raised in heaven or some such, and its your job to raise her through puberty! THEN THE GAME STARTS! its your job to raise this girl up through puberty to become..... well whatever you end up leading her to become. The "goal" is to raise her to be a princess, but the game has about 329833284274892 different endings, with tons of hidden stuff. It has RPG elements, where you can go on adventures, fight monsters, collect treasure, etc. Or you can raise her without her ever even leaving the confines of your mansion! Its quite addicting and quite fun. Its for the PC and it was made back in 1993, so the graphics leave a bit to be desired, but the gameplay is top notch.

[VampragonLord]

...............it also has an item to increase your daughters bust size. just throwing it out there for the guys.

[GeneralStrife]

I'll just post the best one.

Ace Combat 5: The Unsung War takes place in the year 2010. According to the game's backstory, war had previously broken out in the game world in 1995, fifteen years prior to the events of the game. In this war, detailed in the game's prequel Ace Combat Zero: The Belkan War, the bellicose nation of Belka aggressively attacked its neighboring countries in an expansionist manner. The war turned against Belka, however, and the nation faced defeat under the combined forces of the superpowers Osea and Yuktobania, along with other nations. In response, Belka set off seven nuclear weapons on its own cities in order to stave off the advancing enemy. Following this catastrophe, the opposing nations vowed to disarm. In the war's aftermath, the former state of South Belka became a protectorate of the Osean Federation, although Belkan citizens remained hostile to Osean occupation.

The player character is a member of an Osean Air Force squadron stationed on Sand Island, located on the ocean which separates Osea and Yuktobania. Although initially thought of as an island isolated from civilization, Sand Island serves as a front line during the events of Ace Combat 5 after the "fragile peace" established between Osea and Yuktobania during the previous war comes to an end.

[st4rw4k3r]

Star Ocean. Go for any, they are all quite weird.
Star Ocean 1 (Snes/PsP) is my favorite.

Think of Star Ocean as a bunch of furries running around in realtime battle beating the shit out of things. Lots of amazing cutscenes and story. Very long game.

@GS
Didn't know you were a AC fan! Great game, AC5 is the best.

[Celdia]

I don't know that it really qualifies as obscure but one game I find that so few people have played is Illusion of Gaia on the SNES. It tends to get a lot of comparison to the older Zelda games for gameplay but I think its a bit closer to Terranigma (another good obscure game from what I've seen of it) and rightly so since they share developers and publishers in Quintet and Enix (back when Enix made good games that weren't Dragon Quest).

While the gameplay itself is quite solid I find that the bigger part of this title is really the story and the concepts in it that you didn't see in a lot of Nintendo-approved titles back then...or in any games at all on consoles, really. Add to it the beautiful visuals and memorable music and you just have one great gaming experience from beginning to end. While it does start off a little slow, give it a chance and I think it'll hook you for the long haul.

...as an aside, pretty much anything on the SNES with Quintet as the developers was a great game.

[Kaijyuu]

Alright, 'splainin.

Valkyrie Profile:

I could probably write a 6 or 7 page article on this game, but I'll try to keep it short. In it, you play as a valkyrie who goes down to the human world harvesting souls of warriors and magicians so they can fight in the upcoming Ragnarok. There are several chapters, each with different mortals to recruit and dungeons full of undead to purge. Each time you recruit someone, you get to see a 5 minute cutscene detailing how they died (sometimes pushed along by you), and you get to choose whether to keep them as party members or send them up to valhalla for bonus points with your superiors.

Gameplay wise, it's a turn based RPG with some fighting game inspired combat. All your characters attack at once and the goal is to juggle and combo them as much as possible to gain combat bonuses (including limit break esque attacks if you combo well enough). It's pretty engaging as each character attacks in different ways, making comboing full of experimentation to see how you can best chain together everyone's attacks.

A few words of warning though: The opening is a rather boring 30 minute cutscene. Slog through it and you won't have to deal with anything that long until the end of the game. Also, play on hard (it's actually the easiest difficulty since you get the best equipment). Finally, find yourself a spoiler free guide to get the best ending (and have it handy at the start of the game), because the B ending isn't worth your time.

There's a PSP port but I dunno if it's any good.


Dark Cloud 2:

A dungeon crawler with a main character and plot that puts FFTA to shame in terms of wall banging stupidity and annoyance. Don't let that scare you away though, since absolutely fucking everything else about the game is goddamn awesome. It's a dungeon crawler with excellent gameplay, one of the best RPG leveling up systems ever, paradoxically well written supporting and minor characters (the female lead has real motivations, actually berates the idiot main character without being portrayed as a bitch, isn't a love interest, and is all around awesome), great graphics, great music, and strangely enough one of the best video game dubs I've ever heard.

[MysticKnightFF5]

I'll re-explain Starocean, as it's my favorite series and that just...didn't ... what?

Starocean 1 is about a bunch of aliens (they look like nekos, note, not all of the aliens look like furries or even close), who want to save their race, half because it's their race, half because their friend got killed by this *something*, that an advanced civilization made (all first few hours of gameplay). The battle system is unique in that it's done right (Starocean 1&2), the AI isn't terribad, you can rely on them. A lot of skills that make this game great since you can combo them together. (and the AI will combo appropriately...sometimes...depends on their remaining mana) In the SNES version, you can't manually move, so it's much more like a realistic FF TBS. In the PSP version, you can manually move, and thus manually dodge. They also give you a 3 hit combo which they didn't account for or give the AIs, making you a lot stronger and the game a lot easier. (not that it wasn't easy before)

Starocean 2 is about a human who lands on a civilization still in their medieval period. So, he's sitting here with a half charged plasma gun and a bunch of "IT'S A SPECIAL LIGHT, MUST BE GOD" sort of people.
What's he do? Save a random girl from an ape...of course... :\ This game touches on Sci-Fi elements of the universe a lot more than the previous game. Similar battle system to Starocean 1 (PSP). However, in Starocean 2 (PSP), they give you a 3 hit combo which they didn't account for or give the AIs, making you a lot stronger and the game a lot easier. (not that it wasn't easy before)

Starocean 3 is purely sci fi, just about. The setting is all on an underdeveloped planet for the first half, but as it goes on, the sci fi elements become far more prominent. The gameplay leaves a little to be desired compared to the other games, but still very fun. The story is an improvement from 1 & 2.

Starocean 4 is a disgrace.

[Vanya]

NES - Kick Master

[Kalas]

Skies of Arcadia!

You're a refreshing, savvy, charming Robin Hood pirate of the skies in a Jules Verne universe with a spunky, redhead, sassy best friend and a not-so-typical mystic waif as your allies. You save the world, explore the world and are generally awesome the entire time.

[Celdia]

Dragon Force on the Sega Saturn. Its an odd sort of strategy game that I guess is almost an RTS but not in the Western style. You start the game by choosing one of six rulers of the kingdoms in the game world, (after beating the game, two more are unlocked for play) each of which has their own storyline that all eventually tie together. The game plays out across the world map as you send your generals from castle to city to town, recruiting soldiers to fight your battles against the enemy kingdoms. When two differing enemy armies meet, it switches to combat mode which is where the game gets really odd.

Both armies appear on a field across from each other with their commanding general among the army. You choose from a short list of formations for your army to set up under and then you give them the command to attack. These can vary from sending individual squads to rush the enemy, making a dash around behind their forces to strike from the flank or just issuing commands for a head-long rush. In addition to loosely commanding the army, your general can perform special moves that may damage the enemy general, destroy troops on the field or even resurrect your own fallen army.

The battle ends when one of the generals loses all their health, calls a retreat or both armies are completely destroyed. Should the lattermost happen there is chance to duel the enemy general in an automated battle. You can capture or even outright kill enemy generals (or have the same done to yours) depending on what conditions are met. Some sneaky generals will always escape no matter what but those you do capture can sometimes be persuaded to join your ranks and lead your armies for you.

There are something like 10 or 12 different unit types and a good handful of various general types to keep things interesting, though a lot of the units tend to match up in a very Rock-Paper-Scissors style of fighting (Cavalry will decimate Soldiers but they're very weak against Beastmen for instance) which can make for some ugly scenarios until you learn who works best against who.

There is a lot more to be said about this one but its best to experience it yourself than to just have every little thing written out for you. The multiple kingdoms to play as and varied internal stories for each gives it a solid replay value, even if the end-game is a little samey each time. This was easily one of my favorite games of all time.

[LastingDawn]

Celdia pretty much already hit the game I was going to talk about, hehe. Illusion of Gaia's story and presentation is on a level all of its own.

As for other obscure titles, there is the amazing Lufia series which has been nearly forgotten by now. Admittedly I only knew about it from a youtube LPer called HCBailly, but after seeing him finish the first one I played the second one for myself and was blown away.

Lufia 1 and its other games are a story about an evil organization called the Four Sinistrals trying to conquer the world and a group of people going to prevent this. Sounds pretty plain? Well a few plot twists in the first one keeps you on your toes as the story progresses. For the most part I would be lying if I didn't say its fairly light hearted.

Lufia 2 steps things up. It is a prequel to Lufia 1, the characters seem more developed, the battle system was completely refined (for the most part) and the puzzles in it are some of the most devious in the SNES era! With a great story and an unexpected ending (if you hadn't played the first, since the first ten minutes of the first game is a flashback to the ending scenario of the second game) it really ranks among the top games of the SNES.

[Joseph Strife]

Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume is realy cool game for DS as well as the Valkyrie profile for PSX
I've wanted to test wild arms for o long time, can someone give a overall of the game?
I would recomend Saiyuki: Jounery West for the PSX, it's an awesome game. FFT syle