Your Favorite Non-Mainstream RPG

[Darknacht]

Arcanum. It has a fallout meets steampunk feel, because it steampunk made by x-BlackIsle programers, and its awesome.

 

[Serges]

Dark Messiah: Might and Magic Elements.

That's probably my favorite "non-mainstream" RPG game. It has some really cool features, including having to craft your weapons via-forge by yourself as opposed to the game automatically doing it for you.

 

[Zekk Distor]

favorite rpgs of all time are the baldur's gate games, they are responsible entirely for be getting in to d&d (i am, of course, referring to the pc games, not the shitty console versions)

played

Finally someone mentioning the legendary series containing Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, and Planescape Torment. Yes, they were developed by Bioware (though under the name of Interplay Studios), but since Bioware was founded just a few years before these games were released, and thus still relatively small and unknown, it still counts...right? ^^
And anyway, still relatively few people have heard of these games, and even fewer have played them, but yet everyone should have played these games, if only for the epic storylines. I mean, Planescape Torment will stay with me the rest of my life.
They should release them again on steam or something, I'd buy them again.

 

[WolfenD]

"Mana Khemia: Alchemists of Al-Revis" The reasons you should play it
A Lv up system where you make items to level up and you only havve to fight monsters to get material to make the items.
Good story: The story has many plot twists and always keeps the game new fresh
Characters: The main cast of characters get the most development, i.e you can take side quests to find out more about the characters in the main party. Even secondry characters have good development
It doesn't have random monster encounter, you can see the monster and kill the monster before you get to battle.
When the character talk a image of their full body appears and it is drawn in anime style and the voice acting is better than most main stream stuff.

So if I had a choice between Mana Khemia: Alchemists of Al-Revis and any main stream RPG, I would choose Mana Khemia: Alchemists of Al-Revis!

 

[Unrulyhandbag]

Arcanum: of Steamworks and Magick Obscura, one of the most in-depth RPGs to date.

I have a disk of that somewhere.
Arcanum should have been the greatest game ever but its complexity made for a ridiculous amount of bugs.

Has the GoG version been fixed?

edit: want to add Silver to this. A brilliant little JRPG style game from Spiral House I can't get it run on PC these days but the Dremcast version is just as good.

Well, people do still get stuck in walls on occasion, and for some reason the potion of persuasion doesn't seem to work on gar the orc for the purposes of trying to recruit him. I've also seen the animation for the torches at the safe entrance to the closed sewers in Tarant freeze sometimes during latest afternoon. I think that there is one instance where the waypoint system doesn't work if you pass too close to Tarant's Station E: Warehouse District. The biggest one is probably that there's no music on the bonus module.

So yes, there are quite a few minor bugs, none of which will irrevocably break the game. The GOG version is still the most modern one, so I expect it won't have all the problems of the old version.

Saves that randomly corrupted on you (items in game had wrong ID's, if you had them in your inventory and saved the save became corrupt; oh and thanks to bugs in the turn system followers could get the wrong items giving the same result).

the weird invisible menu thing when dragging spells.
massive slowdown after a short while playing eventually making the game unplayable.
characters alignments changing randomly.

Characters staying permanently out of party or unable to talk after resurrection , several quests that simply couldn't be completed

These are all present on the original disc, some people didn't see any major bugs (didn't pick up some items didn't have more than 32MB video card etc.) but the game was simply unplayable on my machine.

But thanks for reminding about the game, going to find the most recent patch and have a play now. I may be gone for a few days. It's probably the only CRPG that really deserves the label.

 

[Ophi]

.hack, .hack//G.U.

Wait, what the hell? Since when is Fire Emblem an RPG? Maybe I've got a different definition of RPG than most people, but it's a turn-based, grid-based strategy...

If for some reason we're counting FE as a non-mainstream RPG, it has my vote for sure.

1) I've always been curious if the .hack series is worth playing all the way through; the first one was slow/repetitive, but definitely showed potential. Did you play the entire series?

2) I've always seen Fire Emblem as a Strategy RPG. I feel like the RPG elements (levels, very slight customization) are enough to label it as such.

1. I've played the entire series, loved it, but... it's certainly not for everybody. I'd say that if you generally dislike anime, STAY THE HELL AWAY FROM G.U. I found the G.U. games to have better/faster gameplay. The story was less complex and easier to follow, which may or may not be a good thing to you. Speaking of story, however, G.U.'s can get kind of hilariously lame sometimes once you remember the characters are playing a video game. If you can look past the sheer over-dramatic silliness of it, .hack//G.U. was a fun game.

In my opinion, anyways.


2. Hmm. Noted. By that definition of levels and slight customization, would you also count, say, Warcraft 3 as an RPG? /justkidding

 

[ThePizzaGuy556]

Mount and Blade for sure

 

[Timbydude]

.hack, .hack//G.U.

Wait, what the hell? Since when is Fire Emblem an RPG? Maybe I've got a different definition of RPG than most people, but it's a turn-based, grid-based strategy...

If for some reason we're counting FE as a non-mainstream RPG, it has my vote for sure.

1) I've always been curious if the .hack series is worth playing all the way through; the first one was slow/repetitive, but definitely showed potential. Did you play the entire series?

2) I've always seen Fire Emblem as a Strategy RPG. I feel like the RPG elements (levels, very slight customization) are enough to label it as such.

1. I've played the entire series, loved it, but... it's certainly not for everybody. I'd say that if you generally dislike anime, STAY THE HELL AWAY FROM G.U. I found the G.U. games to have better/faster gameplay. The story was less complex and easier to follow, which may or may not be a good thing to you. Speaking of story, however, G.U.'s can get kind of hilariously lame sometimes once you remember the characters are playing a video game. If you can look past the sheer over-dramatic silliness of it, .hack//G.U. was a fun game.

No, I love anime, but is the story of the original quad...ril..ogy...worth the countless hours it takes to finish? Or does it also get hilariously lame at some points? I got halfway-ish through Part 1, and I thought the whole "this video game can actually make you go comatose" premise was awesome. Just curious to see if its full potential is realized.

 

[The DSM]

Disgaea or Tales of Vesperia/The Abyss.

Probably Tales of Vesperia is slightly better, but I still have more hours on Disgaea im still racking up to this day despite the fact its 7 years old.

 

[Iron Lightning]

Arcanum: of Steamworks and Magick Obscura, one of the most in-depth RPGs to date.

I have a disk of that somewhere.
Arcanum should have been the greatest game ever but its complexity made for a ridiculous amount of bugs.

Has the GoG version been fixed?

edit: want to add Silver to this. A brilliant little JRPG style game from Spiral House I can't get it run on PC these days but the Dremcast version is just as good.

Well, people do still get stuck in walls on occasion, and for some reason the potion of persuasion doesn't seem to work on gar the orc for the purposes of trying to recruit him. I've also seen the animation for the torches at the safe entrance to the closed sewers in Tarant freeze sometimes during latest afternoon. I think that there is one instance where the waypoint system doesn't work if you pass too close to Tarant's Station E: Warehouse District. The biggest one is probably that there's no music on the bonus module.

So yes, there are quite a few minor bugs, none of which will irrevocably break the game. The GOG version is still the most modern one, so I expect it won't have all the problems of the old version.

Saves that randomly corrupted on you (items in game had wrong ID's, if you had them in your inventory and saved the save became corrupt; oh and thanks to bugs in the turn system followers could get the wrong items giving the same result).

the weird invisible menu thing when dragging spells.
massive slowdown after a short while playing eventually making the game unplayable.
characters alignments changing randomly.

Characters staying permanently out of party or unable to talk after resurrection , several quests that simply couldn't be completed

These are all present on the original disc, some people didn't see any major bugs (didn't pick up some items didn't have more than 32MB video card etc.) but the game was simply unplayable on my machine.

But thanks for reminding about the game, going to find the most recent patch and have a play now. I may be gone for a few days. It's probably the only CRPG that really deserves the label.

Well, I'll have you know that the GOG version has absolutely none of those major bugs. Well, to be fair I don't know about the resurrection bug; I play a high-tech character currently and I have not gotten anyone magickal enough to perform resurrections.

 

[Unrulyhandbag]

Arcanum: of Steamworks and Magick Obscura, one of the most in-depth RPGs to date.

I have a disk of that somewhere.
Arcanum should have been the greatest game ever but its complexity made for a ridiculous amount of bugs.

Has the GoG version been fixed?

edit: want to add Silver to this. A brilliant little JRPG style game from Spiral House I can't get it run on PC these days but the Dremcast version is just as good.

Well, people do still get stuck in walls on occasion, and for some reason the potion of persuasion doesn't seem to work on gar the orc for the purposes of trying to recruit him. I've also seen the animation for the torches at the safe entrance to the closed sewers in Tarant freeze sometimes during latest afternoon. I think that there is one instance where the waypoint system doesn't work if you pass too close to Tarant's Station E: Warehouse District. The biggest one is probably that there's no music on the bonus module.

So yes, there are quite a few minor bugs, none of which will irrevocably break the game. The GOG version is still the most modern one, so I expect it won't have all the problems of the old version.

Saves that randomly corrupted on you (items in game had wrong ID's, if you had them in your inventory and saved the save became corrupt; oh and thanks to bugs in the turn system followers could get the wrong items giving the same result).

the weird invisible menu thing when dragging spells.
massive slowdown after a short while playing eventually making the game unplayable.
characters alignments changing randomly.

Characters staying permanently out of party or unable to talk after resurrection , several quests that simply couldn't be completed

These are all present on the original disc, some people didn't see any major bugs (didn't pick up some items didn't have more than 32MB video card etc.) but the game was simply unplayable on my machine.

But thanks for reminding about the game, going to find the most recent patch and have a play now. I may be gone for a few days. It's probably the only CRPG that really deserves the label.

Well, I'll have you know that the GOG version has absolutely none of those major bugs. Well, to be fair I don't know about the resurrection bug; I play a high-tech character currently and I have not gotten anyone magickal enough to perform resurrections.

Cool, no excuse for not playing this game then. Think I'm going to try a half-orc idiot, spending the whole game being insulted could be fun.

 

[Savagezion]

Arcanum: of Steamworks and Magick Obscura, one of the most in-depth RPGs to date.

This one. LOL was actually about to boot it up. Started a new mage on it last night.

 

[Cheesepower5]

Is SMT mainstream yet? If so, probably Baten Kaitos Origins.

well for me its Terranigma <3

Yes. This. Everyone needs to play it.

Indeed.

 

[darkmushroomm]

I quite liked Lost Odyssey, not sure if that counts.

 

[Ophi]

.hack, .hack//G.U.

Wait, what the hell? Since when is Fire Emblem an RPG? Maybe I've got a different definition of RPG than most people, but it's a turn-based, grid-based strategy...

If for some reason we're counting FE as a non-mainstream RPG, it has my vote for sure.

1) I've always been curious if the .hack series is worth playing all the way through; the first one was slow/repetitive, but definitely showed potential. Did you play the entire series?

2) I've always seen Fire Emblem as a Strategy RPG. I feel like the RPG elements (levels, very slight customization) are enough to label it as such.

1. I've played the entire series, loved it, but... it's certainly not for everybody. I'd say that if you generally dislike anime, STAY THE HELL AWAY FROM G.U. I found the G.U. games to have better/faster gameplay. The story was less complex and easier to follow, which may or may not be a good thing to you. Speaking of story, however, G.U.'s can get kind of hilariously lame sometimes once you remember the characters are playing a video game. If you can look past the sheer over-dramatic silliness of it, .hack//G.U. was a fun game.

No, I love anime, but is the story of the original quad...ril..ogy...worth the countless hours it takes to finish? Or does it also get hilariously lame at some points? I got halfway-ish through Part 1, and I thought the whole "this video game can actually make you go comatose" premise was awesome. Just curious to see if its full potential is realized.

Strictly speaking of the original four games... SOMETIMES it gets a little silly, but it's an acceptable degree of silliness in my opinion. About being 'curious if its full potential is realized'... I'd say no, the idea could have been executed better, but if the whole idea of video games making people go comatose appeals to you, then I'd say go for it.

Virus core hunting in the fourth game sucks, though. : )

 

[Shoggoth2588]

Megaman Battle-Net! I loved that game ^__^ Never played the others, just the first

I am picking up Persona 3 this weekend

 

[FishforBrains]

The Way and A Blurred Line. Two rpg 2000 games that rised my standards just a tad to much.