which rpgs have the most secrets?

hi all.

I ask here,

which rpgs have the most secret items, locations, and hidden finds?

I like to explore and to find hidden items and secrets. I expect that larger games might have more, but then again developers might really pack in hidden items, in some games.

thanks...freestone

I'd say Witcher 3 and Morrowind. Later TES games had less hand-placed, more random loot, and place icons EVERYWHERE.

Some of the earlier Final Fantasy games and others like Phantasy Star, Shining Force, and others turned this into an almost art form. You could find some exquisite goodies if you strayed off the known path, the objects were often hidden or guarded by ferocious enemies, but if you could defeat the guardians or find the lost treasure, the loot found could often vastly augment your characters. I simply love designs like this, because with great risk you should get a decent reward.

Oh, that's a really good question! Hidden levels have mostly gone out of fashion (it simply costs too much to make something so few players will see) but they still happen. I've never played it but I hear Dark Souls 1 has a pretty big, secret area.

The Stanley Parable isn't an RPG but it's practically made of secrets.

Maybe the Last Remnant? I think those are more "optional" than "secret." Going back to areas you've been before will sometimes let you fight optional bosses (some of them very difficult) and there's some areas in the game that you won't see at all unless you go exploring.

Fallout 2.
Every single location has at least 3 secrets and the map contains quite a few special "random" encounters that appear or not depending on your stats.

If you can't believe an ancient game is capable of something like that... Either you didn't play it at all or you thought overrated fastrun to finish it in 10 minutes is the best thing to do with that game.

If you sum all the secrets in mentioned above TW3, TES and silly grinder TLR - Fallout2 has still more than that.

DarkSouls? LOL. Even Tetris has more secrets than that abortion.

@joxer;, your ignorance is showing as usual. Your knowledgeable about many things so no need to waste time talking about things you don’t know.

Darks souls is full of secrets.

Multiple secret areas, bosses, shortcuts, Npc’s with rare items, all loot is hand placed and you need to explore every nook and cranny to find it. Clever level design, you could walk through an area several times before noticing a small Plath off to the side. Getting cured and losing 1/2 your health without knowing how or where to cure it. Growing a parasite
head with no idea how to cure it or if you even want to because its also a cool weapon.

The mystery and unknown is one of dark souls strengths imo.

Dark Souls has only one secret and it's the name of a person who finished it in the first playthrough without grinding. Of course such person doesn't exist thus it'll remain a secret till doomsday.
Another "secret" is why so many people shill for grinders, not just Dark Souls. That'll remain a secret, at least to me.
Anyway, please don't mix ignorance with hatred. I hate grinding as I don't need a second job in my life.

About nook&cranny stuff, seems you forgot Gothic games and Dishonored games. But even then, Fallout 2 is more rich.

Okay, first off: Next to nothing in Witcher 3 is really hidden. Most of it is in plain sight, marked on your map. Even worse, none of the stuff you find is really that interesting. I like the game, but this is a complete hit and miss in this context. (Some of the TES games, especially the older ones may be a good fit though)

Some recent games I want mention:
- The Bard's Tale IV: Barrows Deep has lots of hidden stuff. And not placed at random. Some of that stuff is hidden behind puzzles, some is hidden behind secret walls / etc. Mostly accessible via using the right skill to reveal it (you always get the required skills though). What I like here is the non-random placement and content of the secrets. Also, no wall-hugging required. On the down side, you may end up using those skills compulsively.
- Some other more recent dungeon crawlers that may be of interest: Legend of Grimrock, Vaporum. Also hand-placed, so that's nice. But some of these secrets are… oh well… rather obscure. No good chance to find them without a guide. This is a very common issue in this genre. An issue that the new Bard's Tale avoids, mostly.
- Pathfinder Kingmaker: Lots of hidden stuff, although mostly hidden only via skill checks and being close enough to something. I'm not sure this is what you are looking for. If you are, Age of Decadence may also be worth a look.
- Elex is definitely worth a mention. Exploration works well, and there's lots of actually interesting stuff to find.

You have to expect the usual nonsensical comment from joxer at this point.

I found quite a few cool places in TW3 that weren't marked in any way. i.e. underwater caves, underground labratories, etc. That said, I wouldn't consider it one of the better games for secrets simply because of the shitty loot system. There are lots of neat places to discover but few worthwhile things to find in them.

Basically, you can't go wrong with anything from Bethesda or Piranha Bytes if you like finding stuff.

Bard's Tale four is a more recent game that went this route, that's for sure. Lots of goodies scattered about in not so obvious places.

And Fallout two isn't ancient, rather, it's well seasoned! Most of today's games only wish they could be so delicious.

joxer said:

Dark Souls has only one secret and it's the name of a person who finished it in the first playthrough without grinding. Of course such person doesn't exist thus it'll remain a secret till doomsday.
Another "secret" is why so many people shill for grinders, not just Dark Souls. That'll remain a secret, at least to me.
Anyway, please don't mix ignorance with hatred. I hate grinding as I don't need a second job in my life.

About nook&cranny stuff, seems you forgot Gothic games and Dishonored games. But even then, Fallout 2 is more rich.

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We’ve been over this before. Grinding is not required in Dark souls. Maybe one day you’ll be able to take off your bias and agenda driven glasses and look at things objectively but i doubt it.

The threads not about grinding though. It’s about secrets which i gave several examples of. Which you know nothing about since you’ve not played the game.

BG2 actually does a pretty good job of secret areas as well. Most lead to substantial quests with good lore and loot. The lich battles spring to mind as the most obvious example.

The Great Gaias - this game has 232 Steam achievements and many of them are hard to find/to solve secrets. Have fun.

I have played this game to final (final!) boss in 221 hours and I have completed 195 achievements.

HiddenX said:

The Great Gaias - this game has 232 Steam achievements and many of them are hard to find/to solve secrets. Have fun.

I have played this game to final (final!) boss in 221 hours and I have completed 195 achievements.

Click to expand...

I thought about this game for a bit, but I just can't do the 1990 graphics. The allure of RPG-Maker type games boggles my mind. If it would have been less than 5 bucks…maybe.

I would say Risen 3 or Morrowind are the best that I've played...for fun hidden stuff at least.

The devs of The Great Gaias put their energy in story, characters, quests and secrets and not in the graphics engine - like so many other games today.

Yep, but I'm a proud Graffic Hoar.

Games like Fallout 3, Fallout 4, Fallout 76 and Skyrim are in the lead when it comes to the sheer amount of distinct and bespoke content you can find when exploring - including many, many secrets.

Witcher 3 doesn't even begin to compare with those games in that way.

On a smaller scale, games like Gothic 2, Risen and Elex compare favorably to most other CRPGs.

Beyond that, if we take games like Might and Magic/Goldbox games - they have a lot to find, but most of it is text-based and therefore not what I would call bespoke content.

The real magic of games like the first ones I mentioned is that the objects and secrets you find are actually represented by something tangible. Swords are actual swords that exist within the world - and which you can touch and manipulate.

To me, that's very important - and not common in huge open world CRPGs.

The Avernum games are riddled with secrets. In fact, most of the game is stuff you can find from poking around above and beyond the call of duty.

Many good rpgs have been mentioned. I'd like to nominate Arx Fatalis. That game was really secret heavy. Some quests for instance weren't spelled for you. You had to look for clues and put them together. Some areas or properties of items for instance could only be revealed through correct spell formulas, items or stealth.

Morrowind. Hand-placed secrets everywhere, to where you can still play the game today and find little things you never found before. For sheer hand-placed secrets it really doesn't get much better than that, at least in the CRPGs I've played.