Mine has to be Dragon Quest: Rocket Slime, a DS spin off of the Dragon Quest series that sees you playing as a slime operating a tank and rescuing the people from your town. You run around the overworld, collecting items to use as ammunition and saving money to upgrade your tank. The art and music are just as great as you’d expect from the Dragon Quest series. It made fantastic use of the DS’s dual screens. It’s also written for a younger audience, so a lot of it is just really silly and fun! Try it out for sure, I’m so sad there’s no sequel :(

  • Walop@sopuli.xyz
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    1 year ago

    In certain circles it is well known, but Baba Is You is one of the most ingenious games for a long while and should be known even wider.

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        1 year ago

        Initially looks just a simple twist on Sokoban, but the game mechanic just keeps going deeper and deeper and blowing your mind.

        I could do that?

        I COULD DO THAT?!

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      1 year ago

      One of the only puzzle games that made me think I’m dumb and give up. It’s fantastic

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    1 year ago

    Among all the love Bioware gets for KotOR and Mass Effect I’m genuinely surprised more people aren’t talking about Jade Empire.

    It’s a full fledged classic Bioware RPG set in an interesting world based on Chinese mythology, has some great characters and a fun (if simple) combat system. Voice acting is mostly good too, especially for a 2005 game and it even has John Cleese doing a part!

    I loved it when it came out and am stumped as to why it never became a BioWare mainstay. Maybe releasing as an exclusive for the original Xbox just killed it, but if you enjoy this style of RPG I highly recommend checking it out!

    • ShoePaste@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      Jade empire was legit. i’m really surprised that there haven’t been any other kung fu type rpgs since.

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      1 year ago

      In parallel universe we would have had Jade Empire (series) written by Bioware at their peak with combat by Platinum games.

      Or maybe some could make SF6 story mode X Jade Empire.

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        1 year ago

        In parallel universe we would have had Jade Empire (series) written by Bioware at their peak with combat by Platinum games.

        I hadn’t even thought about that but you’re right. What a wonderful thought.

        It’s also kind of surprising no effort has been done to remaster Jade Empire since that is such a popular cash grab these days. But maybe the brand strength of the IP is just that low?

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    1 year ago

    Return of the Obra Dinn is an amazing game that I wish I could play again for the first time. The art style is super unique and the attention to detail in every aspect of the game is incredible.

    Highly recommend.

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    1 year ago

    My Summer Car. It’s probably still #1 for play time on Steam for me. I bought a whole-ass racing wheel setup just for that game.

    • TEKUMS@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      Noclip did a doc about it recently (https://youtu.be/GtNvEna6bxc). I remember seeing it for the first time at a buddies place growing up, but I didn’t have a strong enough computer to run it. I did though when black and white 2 came out and it was awesome! I feel the only thing comparable to it currently is the Anno series, no spells or anything but just city management and stuff.

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    1 year ago

    Legend of Dragoon for PS1. It has the single best timed-input RPG combat system of any game ever. Think Mario RPG but way better.

    GUST OF WIND DANCE!

  • d3Xt3r@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    One Must Fall 2097, an awesome robot fighting game for DOS, which is quite different from every other fighting game, because in this one you have to select both pilots and the robots, and each pilot and robot have their own specialities and back stories, so it makes for a lot more interesting gameplay compared to other games in this genre.

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      1 year ago

      Whoooooooa, now you’re really taking me back. I only had the Shareware version, so the full version with all the fighters was something I lusted after for ages, but never actually got. Megarace is another one from this era that stands out, though I don’t think it was a particularly great game.

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      1 year ago

      You know that killer soundtrack right?

      One day Kenny Chou was browsing the internet and randomly thought “I wonder if anyone remembers that game I did the music for?” and was surprised to find his OMF2097 music has a huge following.

      To celebrate he re-constructed the main theme in modern tools here: https://youtu.be/UvlVaQl7kEk

      • d3Xt3r@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        That’s awesome! Cheers for the link! I loved the theme song so much that I made up random lyrics for it as a kid and used to sing it all the time. People used to ask me what was that song that I was singing and I’d tell them all about the game and rope them into it lol.

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      1 year ago

      I can still remember every special move and destruction. And how to select Nova outside tournament. Completed the tournament on Heavy Metal, but it’s hard only in the beginning.

      There are custom tournaments and a open source remake project https://www.openomf.org/

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      1 year ago

      Actually one of my favourite games of all time. Please please please check it out if you haven’t already

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    1 year ago

    MDK. Sure, it was arguably “popular” when it launched, but is largely forgotten in videogame lore. There’s not even talks of a remake.

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      1 year ago

      Thank you for reminding me of The Incredible Machine! I am going to add its two sequels that most people have never heard of, TIM: Contraptions (essentially a HD re-release of the first game in a new engine.) and TIM: Even More e Contraptions (What would now be sold as DLC.)

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        Holy crap there was an HD re-release? I am not even sure which one I actually played. I think it was just TIM 3.0 from 1995

  • dichotomized@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Heroes of the Storm. It’s not getting any updates anymore but as long as the servers are up, I’ll still play it.

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    1 year ago

    Boktai. A trilogy of GBA games about a vampire hunter who uses a solar gun to fry the undead. The cartridge has a UV sensor to detect actual sunlight to charge up the gun. It’s such a silly gimmick but it’s used really well.

    Sadly the third game never got localized, and although a translation patch does exist it’s just not the same without the original hardware. There’s a fourth game on DS which did get localized, but they rebranded it as Lunar Knights, excised most references to the original trilogy, and even cut a good chunk of content. It also ends on a sequel hook that will never get resolved.

    It’s sad to me that we’ll never see games this experimental ever again.

  • Zagorath@aussie.zone
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    1 year ago

    Mine is Dark Cloud. It was a PS2 launch title (or near enough to it) that was sort of a PlayStation answer to the Zelda franchise. Along with the original Spyro trilogy, Dark Cloud was by far my most-played game back in the day. It had an absolute banger of a soundtrack and a few pieces of really interesting unique gameplay including an RPG element where the primary progression system was not in your characters, but in upgrading your weapons, and a city-builder where you have to place all the people in each village near or away from various other elements in the village to meet their needs.

    I almost never hear anyone talking about Dark Cloud, but extremely randomly one of the like four Twitch streamers I actually watch (all of whom are Age of Empires streamers, because that’s basically all I watch these days) happens to play its soundtrack frequently on her stream as background music. So that’s been really fun.