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Hidden Gems

Yeah the game was pretty bad.

But on ACTUAL hidden gems...

 
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Having received an excellent HD version a few years back, it's less rare than it was, but I still rarely meet people who've played Rez. I still regard it as the only real Buddhist game out there.

 
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TheGoggledGamer said:
http://www.indieroyale.com/
Tends to sell hidden jems all the time
Agreed! They've had some awesome sales. Noitu Love 2, Bunny Must Die, Sequence, and a couple other games mentioned on this thread have all been on there. I definitely picked up Telltale's Back to the Future bundle when they had it, along with WadjetEye's 4 Blackwell games.

A couple other cool little games I discovered on Indie Royale were The Oil Blue and Reprisal (which I think is free now anyway). They also had a bundle with To the Moon, and I still look forward to playing that one.

Indie Royale doesn't seem to repeat its bundles much, but sometimes I'll see a game go on sale again at sites like IndieGameStand. It's always cool to find something new!
 
Here's a nice Hidden Gem. Not just this game but the whole series, seriously you can basically find these games only at Game Stop.
And before I forget, another Hidden Gem of the PS2 era:
 
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Wow, talk about timing! Chelsea and the Seven Devils launched on Steam today, only a few days after I mentioned it!
I should mention games on Steam Greenlight more often!
 
Disgaea is life.

Also, there's a Wii game called Blast Works which I own but I don't think I've ever heard anyone talk about. It's basically a scrolling shooter where you fly into enemies you defeat and they stick to your ship, shooting as the would if they were alive but on your side this time. Eventually you can just be this insanely huge block of enemy ships blasting everything in your path. To be honest though, the gameplay is fairly average in my opinion, what makes the game shine is its stage creator. It comes with an enemy creator, bullet path creator, ship creator, scenery creator and level creator, all of which have a huge amount of freedom it's almost like building a scrolling shooter through a game engine's SDK and I've yet to see anything like it in any other game. Definitely worth checking out if you like level editors or scrolling shooters (or both).
 
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Another game by the company that made 99 spirits from that bundle is War of the Human Tanks.
(Skip the cutscenes though, they're horrible. Not Magicka tier horrible, but close. They're also so long and frequent that reading them would probably become 75% of the game. It's like if Advance Wars was packed with a really bad VN.)
 
DARKNESSxEAGLE said:
Also, there's a Wii game called Blast Works

Oh man, that game is so good. One of my best Wii purchases hands down.

And don't forget, beyond all that deliciousness that you mentioned, the game comes with a bunch of ports of the creators pc bullet hell shooters, which are all really good.
 
Well considering that were counting Disgaea as a hidden gem (is it really that hidden) we might as well throw this game into this mix as well.
 
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Ever17_Game_Box_Art_by_Hirameki.jpg

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Ever17 had the best story I had ever seen. It's a bit sad that 999 practically copy-pasted the plot twists, but Ever17 still somehow did it better.
 
Y'all be acting like you forgot about Omega Boost.


Kickass PS1 shooter that's sort of like Panzer Dragoon with mecha. The music's awesome, and the gameplay is intense. The first time I played it, it actually gave me hand cramps, and I gotta respect any game that does that!

I have never heard ANYBODY talk about it and that's a damn crime.
 
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TheGoggledGamer said:
(is it really that hidden)
We lost the hidden part when we talked about Cave Story. So, you know what's a great hidden gem? Half-life 2. That's a great hidden gem.
I didn't like Hell Yeah. There were just random minigames that would pop-up after killing a big enemy and the game didn't tell you what to do. So it got pretty frustrating. I remember there being one about a bee that I was constantly losing at, so I just dropped out.

I forgot to mention Recettear, an RPG in which you play as the general shop shopkeeper to pay off loan sharks, the dungeon gameplay is still good but the whole economy simulation makes it awesome.
Defender's Quest: Valley of the Forgotten is probably the best tower defense game I've ever played. It's half team-based RPG, half tower defense, and it works wonderfully.
 
ReluctantZombie said:
Y'all be acting like you forgot about Omega Boost.
Got that shit at the house. I agree with you on all points, and add that it's a fucking crime that they never made a sequel. Seriously, the graphics they wrangled out of the PS1 were amazing, just think what they could've done with every generation after that.
 
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Beuzer0 said:
Ikaruga also has buddhist background, like the name of the levels.
I loved Ikaruga, but it really didn't really get into any of the core concepts of Buddhism. Rez was like, completely about that.
 
0bs7HE7.jpg


Carnage Heart is truly a hidden gem on the PS1.

It's a mecha game that, instead of controlling the mechs themselves, the player programs their AI. The mechs act entirely based on how you program them, so your success and failure largely depended on your programming skill. You can win even with stock mechs and weapons if your program is good enough. But even if you've never programmed you can still compete as the flowchart design is pretty easy to understand.

The game also came with a second disc containing one of the best tutorials I know of:

Unfortunately the first game was the only one released outside of Japan until recently (Carnage Heart EXA released on the PSP/Vita earlier this year). Such a shame since the sequel (Carnage Heart EZ) was even better. Another casualty of time seems to be the turn-based tactical part of the game, but what can you do.
 
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Luweewu said:
Carnage Heart is truly a hidden gem on the PS1.
That shit looks bonkers. I might have to look this one up and find a copy, or barring that, a, "copy."

EDIT: Hey, they made a sequel!

 
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I'm also surprised you guys would consider Disgaea a hidden gem, but that's cool. Since the topic of SRPGs came up, has anyone ever played Kartia: The Word of Fate?

Kartia_-_The_Word_of_Fate_Coverart.png

I remember the game was fairly standard for the PS1 era, but it actually had a cool Versus mode, which seemed kinda rare for the genre at the time. It also had a strong focus on its forging and summoning mechanics, which were pretty neat.

My friend and I had a hard time finding it back when it was released, so this might have been one of the earliest purchases we made with the internet. Internet shopping was a little scary back then, but the 2P mode was enough to get us excited.

Which reminds me, I need to get back to Front Mission sometime!
 
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Night Phyre said:
I loved Ikaruga, but it really didn't really get into any of the core concepts of Buddhism. Rez was like, completely about that.

If you like Ikaruga you should really play Exceed 2nd. I think it really does improve and refine the color switching mechanic with some very clever and subtle level design and gameplay tweaks.
 
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avalon_code.jpg

The world is ending, and you're given the means to create the new one. Namely, you go around slamming a book on people's heads and fiddling around with the things on their page.

There's a bit too many switch puzzles, though.
 
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Poy Poy for the PSX, never had throwing stuff been more fun for me back then.


Man, good childhood times i had with that game, wish they'd make a 3rd installment, but that probably won't happen :c
 
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Jutsei said:
Backing up Disgaea as a Hidden Gem.
It's a great series, made so many friends because of that series.
IT really changed my life for the better
Yeah, it's one series that I don't mind shelling out money for. I even have the new D2 game preordered.
 
Horseman said:
Another game by the company that made 99 spirits from that bundle is War of the Human Tanks.
(Skip the cutscenes though, they're horrible. Not Magicka tier horrible, but close. They're also so long and frequent that reading them would probably become 75% of the game. It's like if Advance Wars was packed with a really bad VN.)

Then, is it proof of my bad taste that I enjoyed the cutscenes? They were quite charmingly bad - between backgrounds that are very clearly just photos ran through a photoshop filter, at times unenthusiastic storytelling (which, however, fits the personality of the main character very well) and a whole bunch of cliches. And, despite all that, it actually had an interesting core motif or two, and I liked how one certain enemy officer was treated so differently by the story, depending on the path you took. Also, I liked Heshiko. It's definitely not a story to be taken seriously, though.

The core gameplay was good until the point where I figured out how to break it in half. Still was fun afterwards, just a different kind. Music was definitely a strong point, too. A lot of the tracks are still stuck in my head.
 
VIVIT_rv00 said:
Then, is it proof of my bad taste that I enjoyed the cutscenes? They were quite charmingly bad - between backgrounds that are very clearly just photos ran through a photoshop filter, at times unenthusiastic storytelling (which, however, fits the personality of the main character very well) and a whole bunch of cliches. And, despite all that, it actually had an interesting core motif or two, and I liked how one certain enemy officer was treated so differently by the story, depending on the path you took. Also, I liked Heshiko. It's definitely not a story to be taken seriously, though.

The core gameplay was good until the point where I figured out how to break it in half. Still was fun afterwards, just a different kind. Music was definitely a strong point, too. A lot of the tracks are still stuck in my head.
I can say that I attempted to read those cutscenes, and I'm okay with vn's, but... I feel like they had a big missed opportunity. They could have done something with the whole part where the human tanks were able to process sentient thought but were used in inhumane ways, but instead of going with that it decided to focus on the characters that were all slice of life cliches with absolutely nothing thrown on top of each archetype. And they also focused on the stupid rebel "doesn't follow the rules but gets results" main character without ever thinking to make him learn a lesson like they pretended he was going to after they talked about how he treated human tanks like pieces of shit. And instead of something that could have been actually decent it was just like a really long, drawn out slice of life thing that got so boring towards the middle that I started skipping cutscenes (which I almost never do, even in stuff like kingdom hearts where the story is damn near incomprehensible.)
 
Horseman said:
I can say that I attempted to read those cutscenes, and I'm okay with vn's, but... I feel like they had a big missed opportunity. They could have done something with the whole part where the human tanks were able to process sentient thought but were used in inhumane ways, but instead of going with that it decided to focus on the characters that were all slice of life cliches with absolutely nothing thrown on top of each archetype. And they also focused on the stupid rebel "doesn't follow the rules but gets results" main character without ever thinking to make him learn a lesson like they pretended he was going to after they talked about how he treated human tanks like pieces of shit. And instead of something that could have been actually decent it was just like a really long, drawn out slice of life thing that got so boring towards the middle that I started skipping cutscenes (which I almost never do, even in stuff like kingdom hearts where the story is damn near incomprehensible.)

- It's repeatedly mentioned that Shoutaro is very humane in treating his Human Tanks - in comparison. It definitely goes further than viewing them as merely disposable weapons. He berates his staff officer for callling mass suicide shock tank tactics a glorious victory. (The mistreatment of Heshiko is mostly slapstick.)
- This, paradoxically, clashes with the deepest wish of every Human Tank: To be of use to their superior, ideally in a warrior's death. Miou's entire start of darkness was because Shoutaro ordered her to -save- herself and her corps, instead of throwing her into a suicidal charge.
- This point is finalized in the last mission of the northern path, in the mad science lab, where the horror mutant tank attempts to telepathically instigate a Human Tank rebellion against their masters. It fails, because, turns out, Human Tanks are actually happy with their situation.
- That being said, the characters still are really flat, and the No-Shoutaro-You-Are-The-(Partially)-Human-Tanks-plot twist isn't exactly original either.
 
Apparently Orange Juice decided to make a "Mario Party" (it looks more like a decent Sonic Shuffle but whatever) game using it's IPs from what I herd it's fun but I don't really, apparently the AI targets mostly the player, but playing with other players is fun so from what I can tell it's less of a gem more of pearl :(
 
I have a friend who says it's really fun.

Suguri (one of the games by Orange Juice) is basically a fighting game/shmup hybrid, it's pretty interesting and very fun.
 
Compared to Street Fighter, it's probably buried. Then again, almost all fighting games are like that, so...
 
Jutsei said:
Looks pretty fun. Huh.

Does Arcana Heart count as Hidden?
...Probably not

For anyone who's not a fighting game fan, yeah, definitely.

But fighting game players tend to know about almost every other fighter in existence automatically, unless it's some REALLY obscure doujin game or forgotten arcade title that never got a fanbase to begin with.

Same way most shmup players tend to know every Cave game by heart, but the average player would be likely to say "Espgaluda what? Ketsui who?".

I would say Arcana fits the bill.
 
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solatorobo.jpg

I don't know about US or Japan, but in the UK this got a little bit of attention among the small core gaming community on its release but immediately dropped under people's radars in a couple of weeks. It's an adventure game with RPG elements (or maybe vice-versa?) and it looks and feels a lot like an N64 game which, for me, just made the experience even better. The backgrounds are reminiscient ofthe kind you see in Studio Ghibli films and that's quite nice in a DS game. The gameplay was good enough and, although the combat was repetitive, Solatorobo was just the right length that I didn't get bored of it.
 
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How about this one.
Battle_Fantasia.jpg
Battle Fantasia was a fighter that was released on Xbox360 NA in 08 and PSN NA in 2009, the game is really smooth and the art is amazing as well as developed to be a true "easy to learn, hard to master" style games but this was considered as ASW's filler game between Guilty Gear and Blazblue and unfortunately it was released in NA a month before SFIV so it got bashed when compared to it even though Ono said that this game was one of the inspirations (when released in Arcades in 2007) and reassurances to him that a 2.5D style fighter would not look weird.
 
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As far as obscure fighting games go, one game I really like and that I'd like to play competitively is Advanced Variable Geo 2.

advanced_variable_geo_2_1_web.jpg


It feels like a cross between the Alpha series, KOF and Darkstalkers. It has chain combos but there are quite short, the combo system is pretty liberal, the buffer system is very generous and links are really easy to pull off. I am aware of some of its BS (Kaori and Chiho being the main culprits), but what games don't have them? Unfortunately, I don't think there is a community for it left and PS1 emulation netplay is kind of a pain to set up.
 
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Night Phyre said:
Having received an excellent HD version a few years back, it's less rare than it was, but I still rarely meet people who've played Rez. I still regard it as the only real Buddhist game out there.


I heard about this around the time I heard about Child of Eden and I want to play both. Like a good chunk of games I want to play, I lack the appropriate system to play them on.

As for hidden gems I've enjoyed:

Elite_Beat_Agents.jpg

250px-GitarooMan.jpg

Rhythm-Thief-and-the-Emperors-treasure.jpg

I'll admit I haven't gotten too far into that last one since I just downloaded it but it's been alright so far. I've been waiting for it get on the eShop and it just happened this week.

Since Ever17 was brought up, would anyone count the Zero Escape games as hidden?
 
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