RPGs that are/were underestimated!

[Ionstormsucks]

Ok, since someone closed my "overestimated RPG" thread - here now the thread that deals with RPGs that were/are underestimated!!!

I'll begin with... hmmmpf... uhmmm... ya well... hmm...

meh... you start!

PS: maybe we can just make it games that were underestimated... might be easier.

[curious]

since you're strarting a new thread/changing the wording i would suggest dropping the word estimated as (not trying to insult you if english isn't your first language) it is not a very accurate word to use as i think most people will be thinking in terms of overrated or underrated. estimated would apply to peoples opinions of games before they are even finished. i'm not trying to be nitpicky but in a thread that spawned so muched discussion it would be helpful to start things off as clear as possible...

[Alrik Fassbauer]

We could open up a second discussion. I'd actually like to see your opinions about games that are/were "underestimated". As long as the discussion remains civilized, of course.

[Ionstormsucks]

since you're strarting a new thread/changing the wording i would suggest dropping the word estimated as (not trying to insult you if english isn't your first language) it is not a very accurate word to use as i think most people will be thinking in terms of overrated or underrated. estimated would apply to peoples opinions of games before they are even finished. i'm not trying to be nitpicky but in a thread that spawned so muched discussion it would be helpful to start things off as clear as possible...
I have to admit I wasn't aware of that... thanks for the advice. Well let's make it underrated then instead of underestimated. What I meant was if people know of a game that they thought was quite good, but didn't get enough attention, or did get rather poor reviews.

[HiddenX]

Underdogs - these games should get more attention:

Albion
Evil Islands
Independence War 2
Wizardry 8

[Ionstormsucks]

Underdogs - these games should get more attention:

Albion


Oh yeah, I found that one pretty good. At first I was a bit disappointed because Albion was somewhat more linear than Amberstar and Ambermoon (the games that Thalion made before Albion), but the setting and plot of Albion were really nice!

As another underdog Wizards & Warriors came to my mind. It got really poor reviews in some magazines, but I never could really understand why. It certainly isn't the greatest game out there, and the character creation kinda sucks, but I still very much enjoyed it.

[Zaleukos]

Kinda hard to pick, but of the ones I've played I'd say that Arcanum and SSIs old Darksun games got less recognition than deserved. Ditto for the Realms of Arkania games, but I suspect they were big in Germany.

[Moriendor]

Ditto for the Realms of Arkania games, but I suspect they were big in Germany.

Yes, they were :) . But not only (t)here. Star Trail actually scored PC Gamer's "RPG of the Year" award in 1994 so "underestimated/underrated" doesn't really apply.
Also, the series probably wouldn't have disappeared back in 1996 if they would have gone with a different publisher. Topware killed Shadows over Riva by making it a budget game. That must have been one of the dumbest moves in German game publishing history since it was completely unnecessary to target the budget market with such an accomplished franchise.

[Corwin]

Possibly SS1 when it was released, though that could also apply to Fallout. The media seemed to ignore both games!!

[Moriendor]

...though that could also apply to Fallout. The media seemed to ignore both games!!

Nah. A total of 21 reviews with an average score of 90.9% (http://www.gamerankings.com/itemrankings/searchresult.asp?term=fallout&itemid=197289) is hardly ignorance :) . It "undersold" maybe but it wasn't underrated/-estimated.

[JemyM]

Gothic III

[JDR13]

Gothic III


Surely Gothic 1&2 even more so. Especially the first Gothic, it received no advertising at all here in the US. I'm thankful to have stumbled upon it by accident.

[Cormac]

Oblivion and Divine Divinity.

[Corwin]

Gothic 1 wasn't even released in Australia!!

[Squeek]

I would definitely have to vote for Gothic. Most RPG fans overlooked it completely. Then some of the ones who did give it a try gave up on it before they mastered the interface. Too bad. Gothic was an exceptional game -- the kind you can love.

[Lucky Day]

Since the category is Underestimated not Underrated...

Baldur's Gate was released with some obscurity. The big game that year was (1998) supposed to be Ultima 9 and there was buzz with Fallout 2 as Fallout 1 gave it a lot of word of mouth. Dungeons and Dragons as a name had been faltering for a few years.

Coincidentally, Icewind Dale was supposed to tank in light that it had the same release date as as Diablo 2.

Diablo 1 had a poor initial release as its satanic box art put a lot of people off. But that's not an RPG of course.

I don't think anyone realized the Gold Box games would be as big as they became, although Ultima was still outselling it.

FF was a boulder that started downhill in Japan and is still rolling.

Ultima Online took EA completely by surprise with 55 000 accounts in the first month. It overwhelmed their capacity.

EQ's smooth 3d graphics unseated UO.

Warcraft, although had tremendous hype and expectation, I doubt anyone would have believed that EQ would suffer such losses.

City if Heroes was a minor hit, defying the pattern fantasy RPG's.

Wizardry I. No one thought such a game was possible with the technology available.

Ultima 3 ditto.

Ultima 4 the one CRPG that made a complete Gestalt Shift in gaming in general. Later games would simplify the morality feature to a simple Karma meter.

Ultima Underworld: the first major smooth scrolling FPS. It didn't do well in sales, yet keeping the Ultima tradition it radically changed gaming forever.

King's Bounty: few people played this game but it launched the Heroes of Might and Magic series

Might and Magic 6 revived the traditional CRPG which was thought long dead. I contend it was inspired by the emulation craze of the mid to late nineties. 3do realized such games were marketable again.

Gemstone: AOL's MUDD coughed up $2 and hour from anyone that played. Such games were so successful they scrapped the original NWN when no one would leave when they went unlimited monthly.

Colossal Caverns Adventure took over many a mainframe and was launched at roughly the same time as D&D PnP

[Corwin]

How was UU an FPS? There were no guns in the game!! :)

[Hindukönig]

Well, you could shoot rocks, arrows and magic missiles, for example.

[aries100]

Kult: Heretic Kingdoms is, imo, a very underestimated rpg. It has a nice story, some very fine dialoques and some fine character interaction as well. You're pretty much oon your own, since there isn't even a map in the HUD (or UI). But I have played through the demo, and when I saw the game for 10 US dollars in the bargain bin, I grabbed it :)

[Alrik Fassbauer]

Ultima 4 the one CRPG that made a complete Gestalt Shift in gaming in general.

Interesting. It's the very first time I read this expression.

"Gestalt" means "form", basically, but is more used for works of art.

[Maylander]

Gothic 1 tops my list. It was pure luck that I happened to buy it - I was looking for a new game to play, found it and thought "why not?" as it sounded promising when I read the back of the box. One of the few games I've bought this way actually, I usually keep my eyes on games for a long time before they are released, and do a lot of research before I buy. I really got lucky with that one.

[magerette]

...As another underdog Wizards & Warriors came to my mind. It got really poor reviews in some magazines, but I never could really understand why. It certainly isn't the greatest game out there, and the character creation kinda sucks, but I still very much enjoyed it.

Have to agree.I had a lot of fun with W. & W. I think it was the many and serious bugs that kept it from doing better. And to some extent, that it was very much what today we call "niche".

I second Hidden X on his other picks including Evil Islands. I got Wizardry 8 for Christmas the year it came out and had never heard of it. Same for Gothic, though I'd seen a bit on the net about it.

Kult:HK also gets my vote. Short but quite good and definitely underrated.

And since we're not strictly limited to rpgs, I'll add one of my favorite little action games, Darkstone.


@Cormac
Sometimes your dry sense of humor is rather cryptic. ;)
But I do agree on DivDiv--very underrated at the time, though it has come into it's own since. The name turned many people off.

[Jaz]

How was UU an FPS? There were no guns in the game!! :)
There were no guns in Catacomb 3D or Heretic or Hexen or Witchaven, either :). Yet all of these do qualify for the FPS sticker.

Gothic was a top-selling game here, so I can't name it. Can't think of an underestimated/underrated CRPG right now, perhaps I'll remember one later.

[JDR13]

Jaz, where are you from? I always thought you were in the US, I'm guessing now that you must be in Germany.

[txa1265]

Yep, the Gothic as best-seller is a clear indicator of her origin ;)

But here in the US the Gothic series is very much underestimated / overlooked / whatever.

I would also say Nox, which I sort of stumbled upon just over a year ago. Definitely Divine Divinity, as I was back into full hardcore gaming mode and completely missed that one for over a year after release.

[Alrik Fassbauer]

The name turned many people off.

That was expected by the community. You should've read the common outcry/moan in the forum !

But CDV is a small company that grew up with distributing Shareware games here in Germany. They distributed the full versions of Commander Keen, Duke Nukum (that was the first name) etc. .

In the Larian forum someone made the remark that - although CDV pretends to be a world-wide publisher of some sort - the spirit is still that of a Shareware Publisher - hence the title "Divine Divinity". I hesitate to use the expression that they are "square", but it smells like that to me. At least the boss, who was - according to a rumor - responsible for the name change.

Cynically speaking, I'm almost sure he wouldn't see or admit that his name change (if he really war responsible for that) drove off too many gamers with English as their native language.

And, by the way, the name change was done at a time when a similar sounding game was selling extraordinarily good for CDV : "Sudden Strike".
They truly milked that cash cow.

[Lucky Day]

Ultima 4 the one CRPG that made a complete Gestalt Shift in gaming in general.

Interesting. It's the very first time I read this expression.

"Gestalt" means "form", basically, but is more used for works of art.


its used in philosophy when you shift from one idea type to another. like Karl Marx shifted from being an individualist to collectivism.

I've seen the phrase used for artists as well, I think Picasso is a great example, when he shifts from his pink period to his blue period, then starts defying dimension and invents a sort of cubism.

It sounds to me that that's not the way the expression is used though as you describe it. Are you talking about how its used in German?

Perhaps I should of said Garriot created a whole new Paradigm. But that's so overused. As in, buddy can you paradigm?

[Lucky Day]

Wizardry 8 got a lot of press and won awards but it never sold well because of limited. distribution. I think it applies.

[Alrik Fassbauer]

Of course I'm talking about how it is used in German ! ;)

[MudsAnimalFriend]

Wizardry 8 got a lot of press and won awards but it never sold well because of limited. distribution. I think it applies.
For what it was I’d agree Wizardry 8 got an excellent press reception, overrated in fact. The game was hopelessly dated on release and marred by ridiculously heavy combat. Walk forward five pixels, meet wandering monsters, initiate twenty minute combat sequence (most of it waiting for the CPU), walk forward another five pixels, meet wandering monsters, repeat ad uninstallum. The game was only for the hardest of hardcore CRPGers, with an appeal based mostly on nostalgia.

[magerette]

That was expected by the community. You should've read the common outcry/moan in the forum !...

Cynically speaking, I'm almost sure he wouldn't see or admit that his name change (if he really war responsible for that) drove off too many gamers with English as their native language....


Alrik, I'd heard somewhere ( can't remember where) that the original title was supposed to be "Sword of Lies" or some such, and that the title decision was influenced by the publisher. Thanks for the inside info. :)

On another board I frequented at the time of release, a few posters spent a whole thread trying to argue people into playing the game and ignoring the title. All we got from the majority was : "It might as well be called 'Stupid Stupidity", I'd be embarassed to buy it," etc. I've always taken a certain satisfaction in it's later justly deserved popularity. :)

[Alrik Fassbauer]

The original title was, as far as I can remember it, "Unless, The Sword Of Treachery".

I just guess the folks at CDV never hads the international market in mind when making up that title.

And yes, the folks constantly telling "forget about that title" could've been Larian forum members. ;)

[Jaz]

Jaz, where are you from? I always thought you were in the US, I'm guessing now that you must be in Germany.The Gothic sales sure are a giveaway. I'm from (and in) Germany :).

[Moriendor]

The original title was, as far as I can remember it, "Unless, The Sword Of Treachery".

Yes if you go waaaaay back to right before the last ice age :biggrin: but what eventually turned into Divine Divinity was... 1) Project C (working title... the C stood for cash since Larian needed it desperately) --> 2) Divinity: The Sword of Lies (working title no. 2 and intended release title) --> 3) Divine Divinity (CDV's joke release title).

Or as Swen "Lar" Vincke, the founder of Larian Studios summed it all up in this interview (http://rpgvaultarchive.ign.com/features/interviews/divinity.shtml)...Larian Studios was founded somewhere in 1996, though nobody really knows when, as it kind of just happened. It kinda grew out of a small room/garage start up. The first thing we were making was called Unless, The Treachery Of Death. It was a role-playing game, quite ambitious in scope, but we definitely didn't have enough people or money to finish it. I think there were four of us at that time. At some point, we managed to sell it to a company called Atari. They were forming a PC games division and they were interested in signing Unless. http://rpgvaultarchive.ign.com/features/interviews/images/divinity/px02-001.jpg (http://rpgvaultarchive.ign.com/features/interviews/images/divinity/px02-01.jpg)
Unfortunately, the day I was supposed to go to London to meet the guys of Atari, and sign a contract, they announced that they were retiring from the PC scene, which was kind of painful for us. So, we changed this game Unless into something called LMK, and started working on that. After six months of basically living on water and bread, we had a demo ready and started showing it to publishers. Unfortunately, nobody was really interested in a small start up from Belgium with no money whatsoever. They said the risk was too high, and that we had no track record. So in November 1996, we said, ok, if that is the case, we'll prove we can make a game, and we'll make it pretty quick. That was LEDWars. We made that in five months. And when it was almost finished, we signed a publishing contract with Ionos, which is now out of the publishing arena, and in the same week we signed a contract with attic entertainment from Germany for LMK. So LEDWars was shipped somewhere in the summer of 1997 and we continued working on LMK. As most know, something went wrong there, and we were forced to abandon LMK, something which we did very reluctantly.
So in the beginning of 1999, we were again where we started. No money, plenty of ideas, plenty of skills, and no game. The one advantage we had was that we had a much larger and experienced team. We started working on Divinity with a few programmers somewhere in the beginning of 1999, while the rest of the company focussed on trying to survive and bridge the debts that had been caused by LMK. Essentially, we had been funding that title ourselves since the spring of 1998, and by the time we figured out that we were being ripped off, there were several loans and debts that had to be paid. By making a host of what we call "other products" we managed to do that by the summer of 1999, and in August 1999 or so, we started working with the entire team on Divinity, which is what we're still doing right now.

[Alrik Fassbauer]

Yes, again you were right, Moriendor. :)

With one small exception: "Unless, The Sword Of Treachery" (I think that was the title) was the original title for LMK. :) Before it became LMK. ;)

But thanks anyway for reminding me. :) This is all soooo long ago now ... ("Long" in terms of computer gaming ... ;) )

[Corwin]

LMK- Lady Mage Knight was a game I was following closely at the time. I read a lot on the Larian boards, but only post rarely. I'm hopeful that their next release will make me forget about BD!! :)

[magerette]

Yes, even old age isn't doing that for me. And usually I can forget anything. :)

[Delirious Nomad]

Anachronox

[mute]

Hrm, i feel compelled to name my underestimated RPG, but i will be hung by the neck...

Perhaps its worth it. ;)

POR2

(there is another thread debating its roots and comments be better placed there, but there is alot of mixed feelings about the game in this forum, and most people think it plain sux. Which i understand. But it doesn't help the fact that this game have impressed me most of all the RPG bought the last couple of years.)

[Corwin]

Mute, you have our deepest condolences!! :)

[txa1265]

Hrm, i feel compelled to name my underestimated RPG, but i will be hung by the neck...

Perhaps its worth it. ;)

POR2

(there is another thread debating its roots and comments be better placed there, but there is alot of mixed feelings about the game in this forum, and most people think it plain sux. Which i understand. But it doesn't help the fact that this game have impressed me most of all the RPG bought the last couple of years.)

I do still plan to go back and give it a try again ... I tried it soon after ToEE and just found it useless. Maybe given even more distance ...

[Corwin]

Mike, trust me, keep your distance as far away as possible!! :)