Ask Lemmy

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

Kenshi. Ive only ever seen 1 person mention it in the year I've been on Lemmy.

It's like depressed RuneScape.

Escape Velocity and its open-source spiritual successor, Endless Sky.

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.

Board games or video games?

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.

Dark messiah of might and magic

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/

Mount & Blade. It’s not unpopular per se, but somehow I never saw anyone mentioning it around here in Lemmy.

Freedom Fighters. Some mechanics were clunky but most were great and I really can't think of any other games with such a good mix of strategy and quick-thinking/reaction gameplay. I've played it through at least 3 times!

Enderal.

~~I'll edit this later when I can post from my comp (mobile now) with the full pitch~~ as promised:

Enderal

Basically an indie dev crew broke skyrim down to its most basic assets, then rebuilt a completely new game using them. AND IT'S SO FUCKING GOOD. Completely new lore / game universe (has nothing at all to do with elder scrolls, tamriel, etc), new voice acting, terrain, music, you name it.

Steers away from common story tropes to the point that there isn't really an antagonist in the traditional sense - but it uses concepts, emotions, philosophies, etc as the driving force for the main story line and some of the larger quest chains.

This game is an absolute passion project by the devs, which is something we don't see often now-a-days.

Note: link above is to the version that uses Skyrim SE's assets (the 2016 re-release). If you have the original version of skyrim, use this link instead. If you own a different version of Skyrim, there might be a compatible version of Enderal here: https://sureai.net/games/enderal/

Fair warning: the children NPC voice acting is even worse than the kids in Skyrim. The TAI (toggle AI) command can shut them up without breaking them.

Fair warning 2: they redid combat. The OP shit in Skyrim, like the sneaky archer build, will get your ass beat to a pulp in Enderal. Make a save when you get to the point where you can spend some talent points, experiment with a few styles, and go from there.

Fair warning 3: It's built on Skyrim's assets, which means it has all of Skyrim's problems. Step on a basket full of cabbage just right; get launched into low orbit. Quest items clipping through the floor. Bounty that refuses to go away. Shit like that. Save frequently, and don't be afraid to use the command console to do things like magic in a lost item or force a broken quest to progress to the next stage.

Blast Corps

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.

The original mass effect trilogy. I know they're very mainstream but no one talks about them anymore and I must have like 5k hours between the 3 games.

Perfect winter break games for just diving in and doing 20 hour long play sessions

Earthworm Jim

Atomic Robokid (Genesis)

Tempest (Atari 2600 version)

Ghosts and Goblins (NES)

The game where it's a rich guy that sends a trained assassin out onto a island with nothing and hunts him for 24 hours, and if the assassin kills the rich guy he gets his freedom and like $20K.

Rock n Roll Racing (SNES)

Beyond All Reason/Planetary Annihilation

luanti https://www.luanti.org/

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.

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

Gothic II

Bugsnax. It's like Pokemon Snap/Legends Arceus, but the Pokemon are food items, like a sub-sandwich centipede or a lollipop dragonfly. You can feed them to people, and when you do, their body parts turn into the food they just ate. It's great!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/674140/Bugsnax/

• Brave Fencer Musashi
• Limbo
• ReCore
• The Way
• Inside
• Unravel
• Cat Quest
• Death Squared

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.

Nine parchments! Take Diablo, strip out the loot system and plot, add friendly fire and some colors, and you have 9p. It’s not a perfect game but it’s super fun to play with a few friends

Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds.

Basically AoE2 with a Star Wars skin and a few new unit/building types. I must have put thousands of hours into this game in my lifetime and I still play it occasionally.

Syndicate Wars.

“Whiplash!” Was an old racing sim that had crazy tracks. It had collision damage and in single player mode you could give your teammate commands.

It supported 8 players on a lan in multiplayer. All of this while running from DOS. Looking back it seemed a little ahead of its time. I’ve never encountered anyone in person that knew of this game.

Endless Sky According to wikipedia it is a space trading and combat simulation game. Its free and open source, has a lot of content (even more with plugins). You do missions to get the storyline forward and to get money, you can also mine asteroid, trade with other planets, attack other ships and plunder them. You discover new species and Outfits to make your space ship better, etc.

Cyber Empires (PC), Shadowrun (Genesis), Betrayal at Krondor (PC).

Armadillo Run

Robot Alchemic Drive (R.A.D.)

The Saboteur

Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura. Even just the soundtrack is worth the price of admission.