Obscure/Niche Open World RPGs?

[Hurtyy]

I am looking to play a Open World RPG but I already played most of the popular ones. Any recommendations on Obscure RPGs worth playing? Can be new or old, 2d or 3d, etc

[Acrux]

Skyrim

[Stack of Turtles]

Skyrim

He said "worth playing".

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Xenoblade Chronicles X

Final Fantasy XII is semi open world. About half of the zones become available to travel to about 10 to 15 hours into the story, and then you gain access to almost all of the other zones another 10 to 15 hours after that. There are lots of zones that the main story never takes you to, and you can abandon the plot to do the hunt sidequests and fight hard optional bosses or search for the 12 summons to fight and capture them.

[Oyster Sauce]

Xenoblade Chronicles X

[BosanskiSeljak]

Don't know what you like specifically. Also what do you mean by open world? Open right away, full map to travel with minimal loading screens or open world as in go where you want when you want if/when unlocked?

Euro Jank (if that's your thing):
A.I.M.: Artificial Intelligence Machines
Arcatera: The Dark Brotherhood
Sea Dogs Series
Space Rangers HD
Two Worlds

Indie:
Balrum
Brigand: Oaxaca
Eschalon
Kenshi

Old:
Darklands

[Hurtyy]

Skyrim

He said "worth playing".

I also said obscure. Skyrim is far from obscure lol

[Hurtyy]

Xenoblade Chronicles X

Final Fantasy XII is semi open world. About half of the zones become available to travel to about 10 to 15 hours into the story, and then you gain access to almost all of the other zones another 10 to 15 hours after that. There are lots of zones that the main story never takes you to, and you can abandon the plot to do the hunt sidequests and fight hard optional bosses or search for the 12 summons to fight and capture them.

Any other JRPGs you think are worth recommending?

[Mondain]

Elex is good

[BosanskiSeljak]

Elex is good

"obscure"

[Mondain]

Elex is good

"obscure"

Elex is obscure

[BosanskiSeljak]

Elex is good

"obscure"

Elex is obscure

yes of course

[Mondain]

"obscure"

Elex is obscure

yes of course

Now go look up how many reviews skyrim has

[Finarfin]

Xenoblade Chronicles X

Final Fantasy XII is semi open world. About half of the zones become available to travel to about 10 to 15 hours into the story, and then you gain access to almost all of the other zones another 10 to 15 hours after that. There are lots of zones that the main story never takes you to, and you can abandon the plot to do the hunt sidequests and fight hard optional bosses or search for the 12 summons to fight and capture them.

How playable is Chronicles X on an emulator, been thinking about playing it since it was unplayable on wii U

[BosanskiSeljak]

Elex is obscure

yes of course

Now go look up how many reviews skyrim has

that doesn't change anything. 11k reviews for this type of game is not obscure. skyrim is not an RPG isnt a good comparison. try again

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Xenoblade Chronicles X

Final Fantasy XII is semi open world. About half of the zones become available to travel to about 10 to 15 hours into the story, and then you gain access to almost all of the other zones another 10 to 15 hours after that. There are lots of zones that the main story never takes you to, and you can abandon the plot to do the hunt sidequests and fight hard optional bosses or search for the 12 summons to fight and capture them.

Any other JRPGs you think are worth recommending?

I am hard pressed to think of any other open world JRPGs, but if you mean JRPGs in general?




Final Fantasy IX: Great aesthetics that have aged very well. The story for the first two discs and the first few hours of disc 3 is gripping, as you have an urgent plot about war and powerful summons being used to annihilate kingdoms and armies, and you're constantly exploring new towns and meeting new characters. However, once you return to Lindblum a few hours into disc 3, the plot becomes about the hunt for Kuja (not very interesting), and you stop going to new towns and meeting new people. Instead, you get dungeon after dungeon for the rest of the game, and the final act really jumps the shark, and then you realize that the combat isn't very fun. The Terra plot is poorly explained ingame. We had to wait years for the Ultimanias to be fan translated into English to explain what was going on in the ending, and even then, I don't think Necron was ever explained. I think the first 2 discs are 9/10 great and recommend playing for that. As a whole, probably a 6/10 fine.

(The other two PS1 Final Fantasy's also have good first discs. FF7 with the dieselpunk dystopia, and FF8 with the grounded special forces mission. However, they both begin to fall off after disc 1, and don't look as good as FF9, which is why I didn't include them).

(One thing that should be noted, is that historically most Square Enix PC ports are terrible. Unless otherwise stated, you should emulate the game as it was on console rather than play the PC port. However, with FF9, you have the option of playing the Steam PC port and installing the Moguri mod to get enhanced backgrounds).




Final Fantasy X: The pacific setting and aesthetics are good, and parts of the soundtrack are memorable. The turn based combat is relaxing, and the game has some good ideas, with only Wakka (who wields a ranged weapon) and magic being able to hit flying enemies, Auron using his strength to break armored enemies, and so on, so each character feels distinct in gameplay. The character progression system, the Sphere Grid, offers no meaningful choices and just exists to waste your time, as filling in each slot on each character's grid is a tediously time consuming and laborious task. The highlight is the journey with the characters, who are overall likeable. Unfortunately the plot can become a little boring in the middle, but fortunately it's a short game (30 hours) compared to your usual modern JRPG length.

(Emulate the PS2 or PS3 version. Do not play the PC or PS4 ports as they botched the aesthetic look of the character models and their facial animations).




Final Fantasy XIII

A very good game that had the misfortune of being branded as a FINAL FANTASY title, which comes with certain expectations this game would not fulfill (trekking through a wide open wilderness as opposed to 11 out of 13 chapters spent in futuristic sci fi urban and industrial environments). If it had been branded as an original title like The Last Remnant or Lost Odyssey were, then it would have been judged on its own merits and much better liked. Has great aesthetic, great music, and the most fun combat of the mainline games. It was popular to rag on the plot but I never found it difficult to understand, and I found most of the cast to be likeable, particularly Snow. Only real caveats are 1. the crafting in the lategame is tedious, and 2. the protagonist, Lightning, is rather dull, and is somewhat unlikeable early on. Follow the Steam modding guide to make it look better.




Final Fantasy Tactics Advance 2: has the most enjoyable gameplay of the Tactics series. Coincidentally, Matsuno was not involved in designing it. I quite liked developing my characters and making them into OP one man armies. I also liked the aesthetics of the game and the varied races. You have dog lady wizards, awesome lizardman dragoons, vikings, and so on. The story is meh but you're here for the gameplay.




The Last Remnant: I thought that the setting was very interesting, with nations centered around magical artifacts to defend them from the beastmen hordes that roam the earth. Unique races like fat fishmen, little frog people with floppy ears, and rare four armed lynx men. The protagonist Rush, the deuteragonist David, and the antagonist The Conqueror were likeable. Great powermetal battle music. Commanding 20 guys on the battlefield gave me that war feel I craved. Unfortunately, the game really suffers from layers of RNG upon RNG which just kills the game for me. Walking through maps just to check if the right mob spawned, and then fighting it and killing it only for the item you need to not drop is not fun. The game also suffers from a bad case of walkthroughitis, where you need a guide telling you when to do stuff and the obscure requirements or you will miss out content. You really need to play on PC with the TLRplanner mod to have a good time. Each time I think of replaying the game, the thought of the RNG and the walkthroughitis turns me off. The game was delisted from the Steam store (Unreal engine license agreement expired?) so you have to buy a Steam key from G2A. You could play a console port, but you will not be able to use TLRplanner to reduce the frustration of the game.




Fire Emblem Fates: this game has a hatedom against it, but I thought it was okay. Honestly, Fire Emblem plots are usually never nothing to write home about, not even the grossly overhyped FE4. I did feel disappointed by Conquest, though. The premise is that you stick with the evil empire and conquer the Japanese kingdom, but you don't get to do that. Instead, it turns into this bizzare imitation of World of Warcraft where you're on the side of the conquering faction, but you play as characters who are doublethinking themselves as the good guy heroes. I wish I could have just been a straight up evil conqueror. For Birthright, the medieval Japanese aesthetics were quite refreshing. I bought Revelation but never got around to it. I must've spent 100+ hours on this game, the gameplay loop is fun enough. There is an English fan translation patch that addresses the localization issues.




Suikoden 1: it's a 15 hour long heavy war story. Lots of major character deaths. Suikoden 2 is generally the more overhyped game, but it had few deaths stretched out across 40 hours and felt more like a regular JRPG than the heavy war story of S1. One really nice thing about Suikoden is that there are several dozen party members to pick from, and you can have up to 6 party members in combat at once, so you can fill up your party with your most favorite characters, as opposed to most JRPGs where there are only maybe 2 or 3 characters you like and the rest you don't but you're forced to use.




Pokemon Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald: I like the tropical island feel of Hoenn. I liked the interconnected world design, and there was a strong sense of adventure. Bushwacking your way through a dense rainforest during a storm, and then emerging on the other side felt great. The game wasn't a cakewalk and could get challenging at points. I remember a lot of the music fondly. The 3DS remakes were fun but missed a lot of the spirit of the original game.




Pokemon Black & White: the first story heavy mainline game, but executed well. You're not trapped in 5+ minute long unskippable cutscenes every 10 feet. I overall liked the cast. Probably the best story in the mainline games. The new completely brand new roster of Pokemon was exciting. The Pokemon League was brutal and I game overed on the final boss, and beating him felt really satisfying. I disliked how linear the world was, and the lack of side activities like Pokemon Contests or the Trick House. The game did have some postgame content in the form of hunting down the Sages.




Aselia the Spirit of Eternity Sword: a visual novel SRPG hybrid. One of the best game stories I have ever read. Fully voiced acted (in Japanese). Has a fantastic soundtrack by Aki Hata. Is a serious story about a young man who gets isekaied to a fantasy world, but he doesn't speak the language and gets promptly captured and enslaved and forced to help conquer other kingdoms for a man he hates. I found this game fun enough to replay.




Granblue Fantasy Relink. Action JRPG set in the Granblue Fantasy setting which I like. Has gorgeous visuals, up there as one of the best looking JRPGs, though it is short on environments and cities to visit. Story is fine/goodish, not a masterpiece but never infuriating like several recent JRPG stories. Once you beat the story, there is a fun postgame of progressing through the harder quests to eventually defeat the superboss Lucilius. I think I sank about 30 hours into the main story and then another couple hundred into the postgame before killing Lucilius and hanging up the game. Has 20 different playable characters, though unfortunately only two or three of them seem older than 30. Has a good soundtrack by Nobuo Uematsu and Tsutomu Narita. The English dub is bad, play with the Japanese voices.




Trails of Cold Steel: one of my most favorite games. Is a fantastic 9/10 JRPG with a very unique setting, being the early modern period in fantasy Prussia with the recent invention of airships and mechas. Has cool nobles wearing trenchcoats and cravats pracitcing anime swords martial arts. Very immersive and cool setting. Has very fun combat and character building. I would advise playing on at least hard difficulty. The first few hours may seem very tough, but then you start understanding what's going on and it felt very satisfying to beat the bosses. Very endearing cast. Fantastic soundtrack as is usual of a Falcom game. The first two CS games have an above average English dub. This is one of the few games fun enough that I have replayed it multiple times. The sequel, CS2, is even better. CS3 and CS4 aren't as good but were still fun.




Sakura Wars 5: visual novel SRPG hybrid. The visual novel sections actually have gameplay, as timed dialogue boxes pop up and you have to decide how to respond within a certain time limit. Sometimes, letting the timer run out and not saying anything is the correct answer. That helps spruce up the gameplay and makes the VN sections fun. The combat is actually really fun. The battles are separated into two halves: the first half is a traditional SRPG battle, and then in the second half the boss appears and your mechas transform into jets and you battle in the skies, and it's a spectacular setpiece fight. The battles towards the end got really challenging and were fun. Predecessor to Valkyria Chronicles' battle system and level design (made by the same team!).




Valkyria Chronicles: a unique SRPG/third person shooter hybrid set in fantasy WW2, with magitek supertanks and superpowerful warrior maidens. Tone is overall more serious than many JRPGs but don't expect a super serious gritty war story. Has interesting mission design. Good aesthetics. English dub is fine. If you finish VC1 and enjoyed it, then consider playing VC4 which has a lot more missions with interesting design, and the story is also just as good.




Utawarerumono trilogy: Basically Fire Emblem (VN/SRPG hybrid) but it is 200 hours long and 80% of it is slice of life visual novel fluff. 10% of its battles. And 10% of it is really hype scenes. The first game has a more varied cast featuring older party members, while the second and third games are pretty much all kids. The story quality varies. I liked the first arc of the first game but that was it. Nothing happens in the second game until the end. The third game has some cool moments but the story goes down the toilet during the last 10 hours. Overall fine. The gameplay is meh. Some of the music was memorable. The game is fully voice acted (in Japanese), which really helps the 3rd game because you hear the difference between what the protagonist says, and what he really thinks. The 3rd game has a really compelling protagonist. The gameplay is... serviceable? It's neither very good, nor bad.




Xenoblade Chronicles 1: grossly overrated but fine/goodish. Has good cutscene direction. I found most of the cast to be whatever, only particularly liked Shulk, Dunban, Dickson, and Riki. Cool setting to run through. The MMO combat is meh. The sidequests are bad and a waste of time. The highlight is the revenge pursuit in the first half of the game which is pretty gripping. Once you reach Prison Island, the stakes evaporate and the plot begins to fall off, though it was still enjoyable enough to finish. The English dub was unusually good. Some of the musical tracks are memorable. Avoid the Switch rerelease if you can as it replaces the painterly character models with plastic moeblob faces, and also botched the look of the environments.

How playable is Chronicles X on an emulator, been thinking about playing it since it was unplayable on wii U

Pretty good. You have to do a bit of fiddling to get it to work but there are step-by-step tutorials for it.

[Vergil]

There's Overlord which is a weird RPG/RTS hybrid. The Way of the Samurai games (particularly 4 which is the only one I've played) are pretty interesting as well.

Elex is good

@rusty_shackleford

[rusty_shackleford]

@rusty_shackleford

what

you know we have a report button, right?

[Vergil]

@rusty_shackleford

what

you know we have a report button, right?

... it's a joke... because you always talk about hating Elex to the point of being glad the developer went under... you gave me a warning for this...

[rusty_shackleford]

@rusty_shackleford

what

you know we have a report button, right?

... it's a joke... because you always talk about hating Elex to the point of being glad the developer went under... you gave me a warning for this...

Elex 2 you dip

[Tweed]

Does Genesis Shadowrun classify as open world? It's p open.

[Vergil]

what

you know we have a report button, right?

... it's a joke... because you always talk about hating Elex to the point of being glad the developer went under... you gave me a warning for this...

Elex 2 you dip

I guess I forgot the mental stressor of making the connection between the two is a bit much to expect.

[Zothique]

Does Genesis Shadowrun classify as open world? It's p open.

****, that one takes me back...

[Hurtyy]

Elex 2 you dip

Is Elex 2 that bad? I heard it wasn't near as good as the original but I didn't know it was horrible either

[rusty_shackleford]

Elex 2 you dip

Is Elex 2 that bad? I heard it wasn't near as good as the original but I didn't know it was horrible either

Yes, it's pretty awful. All around worse than Elex in every way except for the improved jetpack.

[Arbiter]

Ultima 7
Might and Magic 6-8
Wizardry 7 and 8

[Arbiter]

Yes, it's pretty awful. All around worse than Elex in every way except for the improved jetpack.

How can Piranha Bytes make the same game for 2 decades and fail to perfect the formula?

[Rand]

I'd say Exile III, but there's probably no chance you'd play it.



Then I'd say the remake Avernum 3, but I doubt you'd play that.



The least good second remake Avernum 3: Ruined World may be something the average modern gamer would play and is still an okay game.




Exile and Exile II are too primitive even compared to Exile III.
But the Avernum remakes and their remakes are also worth playing.
Although Exile II and the remakes of it are less open world than the games that preceded or followed.

Avernum 4, 5, and 6 are not worth playing unless you played the first three games. You won't have any clue what's going on or how odd they are.


Exile, Exile II and Exile III:
https://www.spiderwebsoftware.com/productsOld.html



First remakes (with some Phil Foglio art)



https://www.gog.com/game/avernum_the_complete_saga


Second remakes:
https://www.spiderwebsoftware.com/products.html

They all had demo versions. But many are now free full versions.

[BosanskiSeljak]

Geneforge is best vogelware, better than any other game/series he's done.

[rusty_shackleford]

Yes, it's pretty awful. All around worse than Elex in every way except for the improved jetpack.

How can Piranha Bytes make the same game for 2 decades and fail to perfect the formula?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus

There is no 'Piranha Bytes'. There were developers that were crucial to making the good games that likely left.