Really Obscure RPGs

[Grotesque]

3. Arcatera, the Dark Brotherhood
Hide Spoiler

Stay away from it.

I tried to play it two times but it's so buggy that you can finish the game.

Also, this one is a good obscure game - Inquisitor

 

[vazha]

Inquisitor isn't really obscure, it one of the best "Could've been great if..." games, where "if..." is its atrocious combat and hordes of mobs you have to mow down. Atmosphere, world-building, art design (esp buildings and equipment) are all phenomenally good. Story & quests are quite decent too.

 

[JarlFrank]

NeverEnd (2006), action RPG where you play a sexy elfgirl. Saw it in a store over 10 years ago but never played it. Available for piracy if you know the right sites for old mid 90s to mid 00s abandonware.

Spoiler

Realmz, an old game for Macintosh computers, also has a Windows version. Officially abandonware, developer made a post somewhere that describes how to crack the demo to make it a full version.

Spoiler

Eamon, an old Apple II text RPG from 1980 - which came with a level editor, was later ported to DOS (latest version was released in 2012!), and has over 200 fan-made modules available!
The RPG mechanics are a little simple, but goddamn it, I've been looking for a good text RPG for SUCH A LONG TIME and all I had found was the tickling fetish text RPG "The Supreme Element" with D&D 2E combat rules (pretty damn good game despite the weird fetish theme), and the funny but mechanically simple "Treasures of a Slaver's Kingdom"... and now I've found an entire fucking treasure trove of text RPGs! I wish it had more complex RPG rules but oh well, beggars can't be choosers.

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[/quote]

 

[CryptRat]

Man, you opened the Pandora's Box. Now besides Scent of War I: Damn Those Demons I also want to play Tom Sherwood's City Quest and can't find it either, while I just shouldn't even know these games exist.

- Maze quest is freeware and available :

Spoiler

The game is really short but it's all I like, party creation, dungeon crawling, trapped chests, good descriptive texts, and the monster sprites look good.
If City quest is in the same vein, only much bigger, then I want to play it.

I played some others of those freeware, unfortunately filled with bugs.

- I spent most of the last few days on Treasurs and Terrors I : The Dragon Eggs. The main problem of the game is that it keeps crashing, not that it would be particularly good anyway. The world is open, you start with only one created character and assemble a party along the way to crawl through dungeons and solve a few banal quests. You're very quickly far too strong for every monster which would cross your way and exploration could be worse but it isn't that good either. I've not finished the game because I didn't manage to reach the volcano where the dragon king or whatever it is is located. I have got a raft but it dosen't seem to work on the sea, and casting "float" on my horse doesn't make it fly above water either. Maybe there's a boat available, or maybe you're meant to reach it via the underworld but there's one teleporter I can't take here because I'm not experienced enough (Idon't know if it means not enough XPs or remaining quests to do, there are some quests I haven't done).

Spoiler

- In Elysian Fields the bugs are not too annoying once you spotted them, but sometimes there are lags during animations and anyway animations are too long even with the max number of cycles in the DosBox. The game is ugly and banal. There's no exploration, it's a long boring corridor with random encounters, a decent amount of bosses and a few tiny towns. You play as pregen chars and you've got a basic bunch of spells and consumables. You can grind but what's cool about the game is that it is not easy if you don't spend your time going back to the last town (and probably hard if you don't even once). The boss fights are longer than exciting because you don't have many options during battles but at least you get to consume your resources. The main character especially has powerful damaging spells but he is also the only one with healing spells.

Spoiler

- This game just called Quest could be a decent, if ugly (but not as ugly as the game above), Dragon Quest clone with fast combat, secrets and other thing to look for or figure out but the problem is that inside dungeons interacting with the world does not seem to work so for example you can't open chests. I really doubt it is because I just can't open chests, because the natural message which is displayed outside dungeons when there's nothing is not displayed inside dungeons. Besides saving, or rather reloading does not work either in dungeons so there's really something particular in dungeons. It's weird, it does work in town and on the world map but not in dungeons.

Spoiler

 

[CanisCosades]

Y'all need some more of delicious Russian shovelware, so let me introduce you to Talisman (published by Buka in 2003). It continues the trend of looking nice on the screenshots while being janky and mostly unplayable in reality.

Spoiler

- open-world isometric RPG, set in the realm of old Slavic fables and myths
- nice soundtrack
- impressive and detailed wooden architecture of Kievan Rus
- most of everything is destructible - you can set fields on fire and demolish buildings
- hard as fuck
- buggy, unresponsive and slow, with abysmal load times (I'm talking minutes here)
- no translation

A true gem for a true connoisseur. God I am still pissed I spent 100 roubles on this shit back in 2003. It is obscure even in Russia, and for good reasons, but I'll never forget it, probably because it feels like such a waste of potential and ambition.

 

[Theldaran]

Is Anvil of Dawn considered obscure, or did someone besides me play it?

 

[Merlkir]

Is Anvil of Dawn considered obscure, or did someone besides me play it?

It's not really obscure, it's even on GoG.

 

[V_K]

This game just called Quest

Is this the one with a linear succession of levels (i.e. you go from one map to another without the possibility of going back)? If so, I think I finished it at some point. Don't remember much, it's just that the look of it seems familiar.

 

[CryptRat]

No, the world is open (well unless there's more than one world map which I doubt), I would have gladly finished it, or at least played more of it, if the dungeons weren't bugged.
You're not talking about Elysian Fields above, are you? Because it is exactly as you're describing.

 

[rohand]

Quite obscure college project demo called Insurrection

Edit: Dev's page was changed to a linkedin redirect and there's no more images.

All it was reduced to some random forum post from 1998

http://www.verycomputer.com/155_97caf8a8ee33893d_1.htm

Not even archive has the screens: https://web.archive.org/web/2003073...y.net/software/insurrection/insurrection.html

(you can imagine something like Excelsior phase 2 but poorer)

And some interview that mentions it
https://blastawaythegamereview.com/...nes-a-qa-with-colin-day-of-spellbind-studios/

This is his studio nowadays
https://spellbindstudios.com/

EDIT 2: was able to pinpoint the DEMO to one of those old demo cd-roms
https://archive.org/details/topgames5

Got screens from DOSBOX

 

[JarlFrank]

Dark Disciples and Dark Disciples II. They were both available as freeware, but the original website no longer exists. Now they're available on this abandonware site:
https://www.myabandonware.com/game/dark-disciples-43a
https://www.myabandonware.com/game/dark-disciples-2-43b

And also on this CRPG development blog (only Dark Disciples II):
http://ancient-architects.com/?page_id=225
Which also hosts two modules created with the game's editor, one made by the game's dev and one made by the guy running the blog:
http://ancient-architects.com/?page_id=117

Screenshots:

Spoiler

Excelsior Phase One and Excelsior Phase Two.
Decent Ultima clones that are still sold for a ridiculously high price at the devs' website.
http://www.excelsior-rpg.com/ex2.htm
Fun fact: the game is actually cheaper on itch.io than on the devs' own site, lol
https://excelsior-rpg.itch.io/excelsior-phase-two-lysandia

Shareware version is free to download and try out. Haven't tried it yet, but the screenshots look decent.

Spoiler

 

[Lord_Potato]

Y'all need some more of delicious Russian shovelware, so let me introduce you to Talisman (published by Buka in 2003). It continues the trend of looking nice on the screenshots while being janky and mostly unplayable in reality.

Spoiler

- open-world isometric RPG, set in the realm of old Slavic fables and myths
- nice soundtrack
- impressive and detailed wooden architecture of Kievan Rus
- most of everything is destructible - you can set fields on fire and demolish buildings
- hard as fuck
- buggy, unresponsive and slow, with abysmal load times (I'm talking minutes here)
- no translation

A true gem for a true connoisseur. God I am still pissed I spent 100 roubles on this shit back in 2003. It is obscure even in Russia, and for good reasons, but I'll never forget it, probably because it feels like such a waste of potential and ambition.

That looks great CanisCosades! Too bad you say it sucks. And even worse,that there is no translation. I played Heath the Unchosen Path, so I am ready to try out games considered shitty if they look interesting and this one certainly does... but without English version I am out of luck.

 

[Micormic]

out of the ones i played

Chicago 1930 wasn't an rpg, it was a really shitty isometric action game with some of the worst ai
Restricted area & Harbinger both some of the worst diablo clones you'll ever play, out of the 2 RA is def worse
Hexplore was more of a puzzle/action game, wasn't a fan but not as bad as some others
Gorasul was really bad, good soundtrack though
Metalheart again, really bad and probably one of the worst games mentioned in the thread. I remember liking the soundtrack aswell though
Gun wasn't obscure and isn't an rpg, it's like GTA in the old west
Boiling point was sort of Deus ex style, bad ai alot of driving sections with bad vehicle control. Hard as hell too from what I remember.
Septerra core is a JRPG, never got far into it
Silver has a shitty fixed camera which made it unplayable for me


Couple other bad ones not mentioned in this thread;

Once upon a knight(?) I actually still own this one too
The Konung games, prolly the only games worse then metalheart on this list.
Sniper Path of Vengeance, really bad aswell, someone actually bought this one off me on ebay like a week ago, like 20 overall on mobygames lol.





I still have a bunch of these trash games listed on ebay, I think I've had RA/Harbinger/Metalheart each listed for like 4-5 years without so much as a watcher.

 

[Alpan]

There's another game called Well of Souls -- no relation to Chosen: The Well Of Souls -- a free pseudo-MMO that's been around for at least 18 years (I remember playing it in 2000-2001 with a friend, when I was a kid in middle school). You didn't do much other than chat, kill monsters, level up, gain new abilities and items. But there was actually quite a bit of variety and when you're a kid it's enough.

It's still online, as far as I can tell:
http://www.synthetic-reality.com/wosHome.htm

It's actually quite difficult to find screenshots of this game that don't feature Windows XP:

 

[JarlFrank]

out of the ones i played

Chicago 1930 wasn't an rpg, it was a really shitty isometric action game with some of the worst ai
Restricted area & Harbinger both some of the worst diablo clones you'll ever play, out of the 2 RA is def worse
Hexplore was more of a puzzle/action game, wasn't a fan but not as bad as some others
Gorasul was really bad, good soundtrack though
Metalheart again, really bad and probably one of the worst games mentioned in the thread. I remember liking the soundtrack aswell though
Gun wasn't obscure and isn't an rpg, it's like GTA in the old west
Boiling point was sort of Deus ex style, bad ai alot of driving sections with bad vehicle control. Hard as hell too from what I remember.
Septerra core is a JRPG, never got far into it
Silver has a shitty fixed camera which made it unplayable for me


Couple other bad ones not mentioned in this thread;

Once upon a knight(?) I actually still own this one too
The Konung games, prolly the only games worse then metalheart on this list.
Sniper Path of Vengeance, really bad aswell, someone actually bought this one off me on ebay like a week ago, like 20 overall on mobygames lol.





I still have a bunch of these trash games listed on ebay, I think I've had RA/Harbinger/Metalheart each listed for like 4-5 years without so much as a watcher.

I've played a lot of really, really bad Diablo clones back in the day, but out of all of these Restricted Area was definitely the worst. Terrible. Just absolutely terrible.

Fun fact about Boiling Point: there's a sequel called Xenus 2: White Gold.

Spoiler

And there's also a sci fi FPS-RPG hybrid by the same developer called The Precursors, which is actually pretty decent for what it is.

Spoiler

This "Once Upon a Knight" that you mentioned is a Polish RTS with RPG elements that here in Germany was known as KnightShift. It's decent enough, not terrible, and has some interesting ideas (like a completely milk-based economy for the RTS part).
It's available on Steam under the name KnightShift for a low price.

Spoiler

 

[CryptRat]

Some more games I've played from the pack of freeware, which I think are not on mobygames :

- In Tales of Zuidat, you roll two characters. There are 3 available classes : fighter, rogue and sorcerer. The game is quite long, one would say too long, you walk from one map to the next one, each map generally (always?) containing a treasure chest and one more available monster during random encounters, which leave loot and xps when killed. You can save everywhere, but past that aspect the game is hard, or maybe I rolled two losers, I died a lot. Pieces of equipment, necklace aside, have a durability and quickly break and that's the most fun part of the game, sometimes you're naked with mediocre weapons and the next few encounters are quite hard while sometimes you're well equipped and will win the next few encounters. There are several stats involved and sometimes you can make a true choice between two armors or weapons but I'd say it does not matter that much ; however necklaces do have different effects. During combat you have a few options, several attack types with different chances to hit and damage, blocking which can help a very fast character against a slow one. Sorcerers get several spells during the game but I played through the end with a fighter and a rogue so I can't talk about spells (the first one makes some damages at the cost of one HP, with what seems to be 100% chances to hit the target, the second one deals more damage for 2HPs but is very slow, which means your recovery time until your next action is longer).

The game looks OK, especially in full screen and the different tunes are nice.

Overall the game is very simple but I thought it was somewhat fun if only because I died a lot, you can give it a try it if you don't mind just going from one random combat to the next and that the game relies on luck more than your average game. Encounter rate is also quite high. I also recommend to roll a mage (or even two?) unlike what I did because it's getting old fast not having more options in combat, don't fear to reroll a lot either.

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- Tower of Fortune is a tiny prototype of what could be a typical good game, the little you can play is fun. You're making your party from a bunch of races and classes and there's a first quest to find and solve by fighting a ghost in a wine cellar (you need silver weapons and/or spells to kill it). Then you're asked to go into the sewers but it does not seem to work. The game is somewhat brutal and after just erasing the default party and making my own naked party which always got killed by roamming halflings I had to restart to take the default party's equipment, their spellbooks in particular, before deleting it, and that didn't make the game a cakewalk, my mages frequently got killed.

Spoiler

- In The Nocturne is a short single character game quite similar to classic JRPGs. You're roamming through a small dungeon looking for spells and consumables (there's no equipment) then you get to fight Dracula. Stats are raised independently depending on what you do during combat, and you get to use your consumables, the power of some monsters can surprise you at times. Another quite simple game but it's not that bad although it would have benefited from a better dungeon with better hidden stuff.

Spoiler

 

[FeelTheRads]

if you know the right sites for old mid 90s to mid 00s abandonware.

Can you suggest? Since Underground Gamer died I didn't find anything worthy. The couple of abandonware websites that still exist are far from comprehensive.

 

[Micormic]

This "Once Upon a Knight" that you mentioned is a Polish RTS with RPG elements that here in Germany was known as KnightShift. It's decent enough, not terrible, and has some interesting ideas (like a completely milk-based economy for the RTS part).
It's available on Steam under the name KnightShift for a low price.

Spoiler

Maybe it's better then I remember it being, not a game I played for very long.





Yeah I can't think of a diablo clone off the top of my head that was worse then Restricted Area, although I can think of plenty of terrible ones. Maybe dungeon lords and mage knight apocalypse are worse(both of which I also sadly own).

 

[JarlFrank]

if you know the right sites for old mid 90s to mid 00s abandonware.

Can you suggest? Since Underground Gamer died I didn't find anything worthy. The couple of abandonware websites that still exist are far from comprehensive.

Try theisozone. It's nowhere near comprehensive but it's decent and has a bunch of obscure late 90s and early 00s games.

Yeah I can't think of a diablo clone off the top of my head that was worse then Restricted Area, although I can think of plenty of terrible ones. Maybe dungeon lords and mage knight apocalypse are worse(both of which I also sadly own).

Dungeon Lords? Isn't that Bradley's third person action RPG? That wasn't great, but it was decent enough to provide some fun, and isn't even a Diablo clone. I played Mage Knight Apocalypse, and while it wasn't good it at least had some nice-looking graphics for the time.

Restricted Area on the other hand...

Man, I played so many Diablo clones and so many of them were utter shit, but this one takes the cake because of how utterly devoid of soul it is. There are two or three types of dungeon, each with maybe 5 different enemy types, and that's it. Higher-tier enemies are just retextured versions of the ones you already encountered. Same with the dungeon tilesets. It has almost zero content, everything is just the same shit with a different texture, and there's no soul to the game whatsoever. The devs of this didn't put in any effort at all. It's just depressing to play.

 

[Citizen]

if you know the right sites for old mid 90s to mid 00s abandonware.

Can you suggest? Since Underground Gamer died I didn't find anything worthy. The couple of abandonware websites that still exist are far from comprehensive.

I prefer old-games.ru. The catalogue isn't the biggest one, but most of the games are actual disk images, not rips.

 

[FeelTheRads]

Yeah, I know that one, but it's still nothing compared to UG.

 

[makchanka]

Realmz

So it's actually a bit of a pain in the ass to figure out how to register this fucking game. I did about 30 minutes of digging on google and came up with this post, which details (almost) everything you need to know

https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg_gamers/comments/3u8b6v/any_realmz_fans_out_there/d35uui7/

In order to reset the serial number, you need to type 410 into the registration code area itself, then enter the new serial number when prompted, then enter the registration code. There's no button to reset the serial number.

I also found some information on the game mechanics

https://fantasoft.powweb.com/HTML/Realmz_Files/Realmz_HTML/Realmz Manual/Manual Files/chapter_6.htm

Note that there are only two genders, and that men and women have different stats, so the codex shouldn't devolve into shrieking and shit-flinging about the gay agenda. However, there may be some Jews in the game (gnome cabalists), so just be aware that the game might be trying to mind-cuck you into wanting a pair of yoga pants and a topknot and other instruments of the (((globalist))) agenda. You have been warned.

You can get the game here: https://www.myabandonware.com/game/realmz-bce

I'm still looking for a way to fix the resolution so that you don't need binoculars to play. If anyone has a lead on that that'd be great.

 

[octavius]

I'm still looking for a way to fix the resolution so that you don't need binoculars to play. If anyone has a lead on that that'd be great.

Changing you computer's screen resolution seems to be the only way for the PC version.

 

[Grauken]

the problem with the Realmz is that for some of the scenarios you can't find unlock keys online and the original website is abandoned, same with the New Centurions game they did

 

[JarlFrank]

the problem with the Realmz is that for some of the scenarios you can't find unlock keys online and original website is abandoned, same with the New Centurions game they did

Yeah, their New Centurions game looks really cool due to its setting, but there's nothing about it anywhere. It's pretty much just gone.