• agent_nycto@lemmy.world
    14·
    2 months ago

    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.

  • Lycaon@lemm.ee
    13·
    2 months ago

    I don’t see people talk about the Katamari Damacy games very much which is a shame because I think they’re delightful! I also wish more people talked about Cattails (especially the sequel, Cattails: Wildwood Story), these games deserve more love imo haha

  • From_D4rkness@lemmy.worldEnglish
    131·
    2 months ago

    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/

    • Doxatek@mander.xyz
      2·
      2 months ago

      I was playing it on console so I didn’t get to do any mods to really increase the fun but I still had a lot of fun anyway. I do think the devs need to try a bit harder. I feel like they just provide a framework for mods without making a really nice game themselves.

      That being said I played hundreds of hours of both and really like them. I just wish they were a bit better

    • moobythegoldensock@infosec.pub
      4·
      2 months ago

      Never played Escape Velocity, but Endless Sky was fantastic. Both the main quest lines had fantastic stories, especially the first one.

    • tal@lemmy.todayEnglish
      0·
      2 months ago

      Escape Velocity also had a sequel or two done by Ambrosia Software themselves. I remember playing and enjoying them.

      kagis

      Escape Velocity Override and Escape Velocity Nova.

      It looks like Ambrosia Software’s website is now down, so I assume that one can’t legally purchase it any more.

      It looks like Escape Velocity was never ported to anything outside of classic MacOS, so playing it today probably entails obtaining a classic MacOS emulator and abandonware copies of the binaries.

      While Endless Sky is neat and last I looked still getting expanded, it also didn’t have as much story content as the Escape Velocity series either (again, at least last I looked).

      The image of each planet in Escape Velocity series (not really worth keeping IMHO, as they were saved at 8-bit depth) were done with KPT Bryce, a now out-of-print terrain generation and rendering software package. Probably one of the better-suited applications for it, as it was pretty good at letting one quickly turn out alien-looking landscapes. While there are newer terrain generation software packages, I have to say that Bryce did a lot of neat stuff and I don’t feel that there’s something that quite fills its “exploration” role in modeling and rendering software today. For example, procedural generation of textures using slope and altitude (so, for example, you could get rocky faces where generated terain was steep, or snow at high altitude on mountains).

      • grueling_spool@sh.itjust.works
        1·
        2 months ago

        Re. EV series ports - check the first link in my previous comment ;)

        And I had the same experience with Endless Sky when I first found out about it some years ago. It has gotten a lot of updates since then, but I am holding out for a 1.0 release

  • JakoJakoJako13@lemmy.worldEnglish
    101·
    2 months ago

    Tactics Ogre. I see people drop Final Fantasy Tactics as the greatest tactics game of all time. Then you always see Fire Emblem, Advance Wars, and Disgaea after. People sleep on Tactics Ogre. It’s a mechanically superior game to all of the mentioned. It’s story is equally as good as FFT. I think the graphics are better. It’s a challenging game from the start. FFT was created with the Tactics Ogre director and lead artist to be a more accessible version of TO. People see 90s golden era Final Fantasy and automatically put FFT on a pedestal. TO is like Undertaker stalking AJ Styles ready to obliterate whatever is in its way.

    • megane-kun@lemmy.zipEnglish
      3·
      2 months ago

      I’ve played Tactics Ogre after I’ve read some accounts of it being described as FFT’s spiritual successor, but I must admit I never finished it–not because of the gameplay which is suprisingly deep for its time, but because of my own perfectionism. I didn’t let myself just play the game without any guides or overthinking, instead went full “I want the perfect gamesave”.|

      But yes! what you said is true. FFT is a more accessible successor to Tactics Ogre.

    • lightnsfw@reddthat.com
      2·
      2 months ago

      I think this was the game I rented once as a kid and never saw again but pops up as a memory every so often and I could never remember the name… Gonna check it out again.

      • JakoJakoJako13@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        2 months ago

        Try it. It’s a fantastic game. I think the newest version that came out on Steam is the way to go but a lot of people still recommend the PSP Version if you wanna emulate it. Or you can go all the way back to the SNES version. I don’t think there’s a bad version of the game but there are definitely better versions of the game.

  • mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    8·
    2 months ago

    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.

    • BlameTheAntifa@lemmy.world
      3·
      2 months ago

      When videogame rentals were a thing, developers often intentionally made games unreasonably hard to spur repeat rentals or purchases. My money is on that.

      • mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        3·
        2 months ago

        Even the EU version is dozens of hours long for a casual play through. The game is surprisingly long for only being one disc; They didn’t use a bunch of pre-rendered cutscenes like many of the bigger games did. Those pre-rendered cutscenes take up a lot of disc space, and are why games like Legend of Dragoon and FFVII have multiple discs.

  • Metju@lemmy.world
    8·
    2 months ago

    Kinda cheating, since this game (hell, entire series; linking my fave entry) has kind of a cult following in Central/Eastern Europe.

    Gothic II

    • And009@lemmynsfw.comEnglish
      3·
      2 months ago

      Oof, my favorite! It was too good for it’s time.

      Gothic 1 is one of the most difficult RPG I’ve ever played, in terms of quest. The sequel, I’d still play it if only it ran on my devices.

  • wjrii@lemmy.world
    6·
    2 months ago

    Outlaws. An early Spaghetti Western themed FPS from LucasArts. After Dark Forces (Retconned by Rogue One) and before DF2:Jedi Knight (the one with the amazibad FMV cut scenes and the best expansion pack ever), it leveraged the 2.5d engine for all it was worth and did a hand-animated slightly Don-Bluth-esque aesthetic that worked perfectly.

    Level design was good. Multiplayer was fun, even though if you tried to LAN with an unswitched hub (it was 1998!) player 3 would lag like motherfucker and be relegated to throwing dynamite and praying. Story was straight out of a Tropes-R-Us, but well executed and with good voice acting (including John de Lancie IIRC). The coup de grace was the soundtrack, Clint Bajakian seemed to inhabit Ennio Morricone’s soul, but with leitmotifs to make John Williams proud. It absolutely elevated the game.

  • dethedrus@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    6·
    2 months ago

    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.

    • chunes@lemmy.world
      1·
      2 months ago

      You are the only person I have ever seen mention Armadillo Run. I used to be obsessed with that game.

      • londos@lemmy.world
        1·
        2 months ago

        And you’re the only person I’ve ever seen recognize it in turn.

        Part of me wants to ask where you went to college since that’s the only community I knew who played it, but I also wouldn’t post that here.

  • Nibodhika@lemmy.world
    5·
    2 months ago

    One of my favorite games is a hidden gem that I never see people mention. It’s called Out of Space and it’s a couch co-op game similar to Overcooked with two major differences, it’s less frenetic so you can play it to chill out, and it’s procedurally generated so you have lots of replayability. For me and my wife it’s the perfect game of “let’s play a round of something”, yet I never see it mentioned anywhere.

  • 2ugly2live@lemmy.world
    5·
    2 months ago

    The Fatal Frame series (maybe the second one here and there) and Kunitsu-Gami. The second one surprised me since it’s relatively new, but I thought it was a great surprise. I loved the hell out of that game.