Ask Lemmy

The Strider reboot. I wouldn't have minded another one of them, but I guess I'll replay it again instead.

Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup

I have been playing this game my entire life on/off, and have the most hours in, but I have never beaten it. I came close 1 fucking time, and I will forever remember the one dumb mistake I made that lost it for me just on the cusp of victory.

One day...

https://crawl.develz.org/

Warzone 2100.

The Adventures of Lolo - a puzzle game on the NES. There were 1 or 2 sequels depending on how you count and they were fun too.

It’s a puzzle game with fairly simple mechanics but surprising complexity and difficulty. I beat both US versions and designed levels for a knockoff but have never met anyone in person that has heard of it.

Fahrenheit/ Indigo Prophecy, an early David Cage/ Quantic Dream game from the same people who made Heavy Rain, Beyond: Two Souls, and Detroit: Become Human

I haven't played it in forever so I'm not sure how well it holds up (if at all) and I also have a love/hate relationship with it.

It has one of the single worst/ cheap levels of any game I have ever played*, and in the very last level the story really shits the bed. On the other hand it was doing things at the time that I still haven't seen in other games. (I haven't gotten around to playing his other games so he might be doing similar things in them). In terms of attempting to evolve the way stories are told in games it was truly groundbreaking and unique for its time.

I still have fond memories of playing it despite it's flaws. I'd say it's worth playing for anyone interested in a older game that does some really interesting things from a story telling perspective and/or people who are fans of the later games and are curious to see where it started. As long as you can make it through the QTE level with your sanity intact and are prepared for the story to get stupid right at the end- it's worth a playthrough imo

*Even though I hate the level, the concept behind it is actually pretty cool. A malevolent force tries to kill the player character by throwing his apartment at him. The problem is it's a 4 1/2 minute QTE sequence that requires precise timing and you can't mess up even one time or you have to start the entire thing over from the beginning. You also have plenty of time to wonder why the force never varies it's strategy of throwing one object at a time. Good idea, terrible execution.

The original Master of Magic for DOS. It's STILL being actively modded 32 years post release and has never quite been duplicated.

The Age of Wonders series does a fairly good job with the feel, but it's just not the same.

Rhythm Doctor.

The Void by Ice-Pick Lodge, the makers of Pathologic.

This game taught me that actions have consequences and that I should be more humble and think twice about the environment before exploiting it like I'm playing a game.

Yes, it's that kind of game.

Didn't see Receiver 2 mentioned, so I'll give it a shoutout! Really interesting game, and as far as I know the only one with such deep shooting mechanics. Unfortunately the sale had ended a couple days ago, so it's back to its normal price, but even then I'd heavily recommend it!

Armadillo Run

Robot Alchemic Drive (R.A.D.)

The Saboteur

Patricks parabox. The ultimate sokoban IMO

Revenge of the Mutant Camels - highlight 1: "Ninety-foot high, neutronium shielded, laser-spitting, death camels". Hightlight 2: Almost 40 years after its first release, in 2021 Jeff Minter fixed a bug on collision detection in the Commodore 64 version.
Impossible Mission - highlight: "Another visitor. Stay a while... stay forever!"
Deuteros - highlight: the way the game world unfolded and opened up
Syndicate - highlight: abusing the Persuadertron
Shadow Hearts - highlight: the Judgement Ring

Shadowgate / Deja Vu / The Uninvited (NES)

Uniracers (SNES)

Custom Robo (GC)

Lost Kingdoms (GC)

Baiten Kaitos (GC)

I rarely see any Ys game referenced. It's gotten a bit bigger, but still a super underrated series.

The Saboteur by Pandemic as well.

Field Commander on PSP.

The original Overlord game (with the minions).

Shining Force 3. Mostly cause it's marooned on the Saturn but it's so friggin good.

Perfect Dark. I didn't have a sibling to play with, so I am eternally grateful to Rare for making computer-controlled bots in the multiplayer mode.

GUNZ The Duel - man that was just so much fun. Online guns and swords gladiator style battles in the most neat stages. I remember an old mansion with broken staircases and balconies, a train station with freight cargo all over the place, an actual roman colosseum, a beach with a grounded ship ashore.

Some people could do this thing called K-style or butterfly style where you slash your sword against walls or other objects which made you lift off the ground, and switch between your gun to shoot as you do so - it was a neat trick which I learned but definitely did not master.

So much fun though.

Squarez Deluxe.

I've been on a one-man promotion spree of that game for almost 20 years

It is now freeware, it's available on DOSBox, and it is the best shape-packing game ever made - you cannot even debate me once you try it.

The Thief series. I LOVED the first one especially, Thief the Dark Project. Medieval (low magic fantasy?) stealth shooter. The more valuable you pick up directly translates to what you can buy as a load out for the next level so you're encouraged to explore, though even the low level enemies can kick you ass so you have to be sneaky. Actually great stealth mechanics even for an old game. The world building is amazing, with it's own lore, culture and slang. The plot of the games are also great.

The Kingdom of Loathing is a game I've played almost non-stop since about 2003. Web based and free, it's based off of old text based games. But it's fun. Really fun. And hilarious. The currency is meat. The classes are goofy. Saucerer? Disco bandit? Seal Clubber? A lot of games deal with things like power creep or inflation, or how the heck to get people to actually help pay for it. This game solves problems like these elegantly. The user base is fun and friendly and corporative, there's always new stuff coming out to try, they do a holiday special every year, and all the pictures are crudely drawn stick figures.

Legend of Legaia. It’s a JRPG from the PS1 golden era, but it had a relatively small launch and basically zero marketing. It was completely overshadowed by other games like FFVII and Legend of Dragoon. It has a sort of cult classic following now. The story starts off as a fairly basic “world is awful, kid gets a magic weapon to beat the big evil thing” type of plot, but has a surprising amount of twists and turns.

The combat system is interesting, and hasn’t really been replicated since. You string together a series of small attacks, to make larger super combos.

Fair warning, the US release is significantly harder than the JP and EU versions. For some reason, the devs multiplied all the enemy stats by 1.25, and slashed their exp/gold drop rates by 50% for the US release. So you need to grind twice as long to be properly geared/leveled, and the grinding is 25% more difficult.