Really Obscure RPGs

[CryptRat]

I don't know what I missed, but monsters (suddendly?) deal much more damage to my character than they did before. Now lightning wasps in the first map are almost a real threat while they were not and if I leave the first map I get killed by basically anything. I assume damage taken used to be reduced by something but I don't know what.

 

[octavius]

I hope it's not some kind of level scaling?

 

[Crash]

The Scent of War I. - Damn Those Demons seems so obscure it can't be bought nor downloaded anywhere

Have any of you had any luck finding the game ?

 

[CryptRat]

No, it's unlikely, I've got no proof but I'd be very surprised if the game had any scaling.
The game is all about becoming stronger to be able to fight the next threats or pass the next skill checks, it's advertised this way and works this way.

 

[Grauken]

The Scent of War I. - Damn Those Demons seems so obscure it can't be bought nor downloaded anywhere

Have any of you had any luck finding the game ?

The creator chimed in last page and linked where you can download it

https://www.jhanson.com/software/games/the-scent-of-war-i---damn-those-demons

 

[CryptRat]

I completed The Earth Lords. I enjoyed it a lot and would recommend it.

It's weird the game has such terrible portraits because the top down locations are nice and often unique. Dungeons are often interesting and your exploration is carried with nice descriptive texts, it's not modern "show, don't tell" nonsense. Story involves super-techs and time travelling.

It's a long game and it's midly linear, there are areas you can't access in any order but some high level ones are accessible and there's room to get a strong weapon in a hard dungeon which will trivialize a bunch of easier ones. I think the best shops available in particular are only hidden behind two hard fights.

I'd say the game is first and foremost focused on combat, Flee, Savescum, cheese, but also use different weapons because sometimes your stronger weapon will yet not work against some enemies so you'll typically have to use some spell staff. Also as you get stronger you get up to more than 10 attacks/round and more than 10 moves/round so you often have to plan your turn or just flee if the combat would be unwinnable. Basic attacks only cost one attack but using items cost 3 attacks + 3 moves. Note that hand-placed encounters are not fixed, the battlefield as the number of enemies will randomly vary so it's often possible to find a winnable configuration. There are a lot of fights, and unfortunately I don't think there's a setting to totally remove any waiting time from combat.

Managing your stats and skills is fun, and so is managing your equipment. You'll never have to choose between two melee weapons or two armor parts since one is always clearly better than another one but you need to manage your money and look for the required utility items.

There are some welcomed skill-checks and the usual but at least actually used utility skills and spells. There are some parts you can bypass. I can't talk that much about magic although I imagine playing as a mage is fun too, I think there are many spells and some spells require gems. A couple of times I raised one utility skill but there probably were different solutions, I think when there's no alternative solution the game just let you find books which will raise the skill. You gain most skill points via quest and via exploration, not via levels. That said I think you still need to raise your level to progress since it's your main and almost only way to raise basic attributes.

 

[LordCrushWill]

I bought Bless Online, luckily Steam can get back the money.
The game looks like a typical game of this type, 10 years ago, weak gameplay, I do not recommend it. I would write more, but I was in a hurry to play to get my money back.

 

[Piotrovitz]

Not exactly obscure, but has anyone actually finished Konung 1 or 2?

Tried first one ages ago and fuck, what an unplayable mess it was.

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

But it had a nice music.

 

[octavius]

(The Scent of War I. - Damn Those Demons)

The game is basic but somewhat fun.

This game was promising, but unfortunately is was buggy for me.
When loading a saved game, one character's inventory was bugged.
I tried an earlier save, replayed the starting cave and saved, but when I reloaded half the party was bugged.

I think I saw a mention of save games not working on some non-US systems, so I assume that's what's happened. Too bad, as it looked like a good enough little game, despite a somewhat annoying UI.

EDIT: Seems you have to select the goody two shoes answer in the first cave to progress?

jhanson?

 

[deuxhero]

Pachipara 12, 13 and 14. For some reason (most likely lots of drugs) Irem decided to reuse the engine for Steambot Chronicles with all the sandbox stuff still there but the Steambot stuff replaced by gambling simulation and a world that's Yu-Gi-Oh tier obsessed with it. It also includes Disaster Report series's unconventional (Rather than good/evil choices, the choices are more along the lines of nice/practical/asshole/pervert and a few others depending on the situation) dialog paths: literally the first thing you're asked in 13 is a personality test asking what you do when you see a kid crying and one of the options is to laugh at him. There's a lot of stats that make you better at various shit you can build up in the sandbox. Unfortunately PCSX2 can't emulate anything using that engine worth a damn.

 

[Darth Canoli]

Not sure if fits the criteria, still, i played a flash dungeon crawler today, well, it mostly played itself, to be fair as it's a idle dungeon crawler, was a first, there is a shitload of idle "RPG" but this one is something new.

https://www.kongregate.com/games/PolakX3/dungeon-kriper-2

It randomly generate an infinite dungeon, when you kill a boss, you can go to the next level, you can exit anytime to buy / sell equipment (keep one of each for the achievement), there is spells, stats and passive skills.

You can play it or let it do the job, well, at the very beginning, you have to play.
There is a chance a legendary monster can spawn (RIP ) but as everything that isn't in front of you doesn't exist, if it's not on auto mode, you can escape by just turning around.

Very interesting concept for a pixelated dungeon crawler, the dev said he was inspired by Dungeon Master.
Don't expect much, still, it was fun.

 

[Cael]

Kongregate has a lot of weird little games that are surprisingly fun and usually mindless.

Elona Shooter is one, and it is apparently based on a full RPG. However, some here would consider it a RPG, since you can hire NPCs, and it has character creation and you get control over what skills your character gets (limited by character class) and there is a plethora of equipment and an equipment upgrade system. You even get to improved your keep/town.

 

[Darth Canoli]

Elona Shooter is one, and it is apparently based on a full RPG.

If you think Elona shooter and Elona RPG* are related, i don't think so or if they are, i'm failing to see the resemblance, Elona RPG is a retarded deviant RPG for pedophiles while Elona Shooter is a very good shooter RPG, maybe one of its kind; there is starwish RPG but it's more a thunderforce/R-type with RPG elements and visual novel elements (it's light on the Visual novel shit or you can skip it as far as i remember )

(*) tried Elona RPG years back after i had a lot of fun with elona Shooter, thinking that might be a hidden gem, well, let's keep it simple, i was wrong.

 

[Cael]

Elona Shooter is one, and it is apparently based on a full RPG.

If you think Elona shooter and Elona RPG* are related, i don't think so or if they are, i'm failing to see the resemblance, Elona RPG is a retarded deviant RPG for pedophiles while Elona Shooter is a very good shooter RPG, maybe one of its kind; there is starwish RPG but it's more a thunderforce/R-type with RPG elements and visual novel elements (it's light on the Visual novel shit or you can skip it as far as i remember )

(*) tried Elona RPG years back after i had a lot of fun with elona Shooter, thinking that might be a hidden gem, well, let's keep it simple, i was wrong.

Yeah. I didn't like Elona RPG either. Elona Shooter was a great game, and very Rogue-like. When you get days where you have a swarm of 30 suicide bombers running at you, pray you have that nuke everything on screen handy, or you'll cry.

Starwish is a very weird one. Yes, it has a lot of visual novel elements, but the sheer number of endings it has is ridiculous for a side scrolling spaceship shooter. Talk about C&C. Just about everything you say in the mess hall will count towards what ending you get. Even which order you talked to people mattered. Whoever wrote that was on some serious shit. If only Bethesda, Obsidian or cuckdog hired that guy, they'd have a pretty good RPG on their hands.

 

[CryptRat]

This game was promising, but unfortunately is was buggy for me.
When loading a saved game, one character's inventory was bugged.
I tried an earlier save, replayed the starting cave and saved, but when I reloaded half the party was bugged.

I think I saw a mention of save games not working on some non-US systems, so I assume that's what's happened. Too bad, as it looked like a good enough little game, despite a somewhat annoying UI.

jhanson?

If you manually replace all the ","s by "."s in the save file you're going to load then it will load fine.

 

[octavius]

This game was promising, but unfortunately is was buggy for me.
When loading a saved game, one character's inventory was bugged.
I tried an earlier save, replayed the starting cave and saved, but when I reloaded half the party was bugged.

I think I saw a mention of save games not working on some non-US systems, so I assume that's what's happened. Too bad, as it looked like a good enough little game, despite a somewhat annoying UI.

jhanson?

If you manually replace all the ","s by "."s in the save file you're going to load then it will load fine.

I recall that being a problem with another program 15-20 years ago, and the solution was very simple. Go to Control Panel, click on "Region and Language" and change language from Norwegian to English.
In Norwegian we write for example PI like 3,14 instead of 3.14, which is obviously the cause of the problem.

It worked with this program too.

 

[Cael]

This game was promising, but unfortunately is was buggy for me.
When loading a saved game, one character's inventory was bugged.
I tried an earlier save, replayed the starting cave and saved, but when I reloaded half the party was bugged.

I think I saw a mention of save games not working on some non-US systems, so I assume that's what's happened. Too bad, as it looked like a good enough little game, despite a somewhat annoying UI.

jhanson?

If you manually replace all the ","s by "."s in the save file you're going to load then it will load fine.

I recall that being a problem with another program 15-20 years ago, and the solution was very simple. Go to Control Panel, click on "Region and Language" and change language from Norwegian to English.
In Norwegian we write for example PI like 3,14 instead of 3.14, which is obviously the cause of the problem.

It worked with this program too.

Yeah. Bloody Europeans use the opposite.

1 million = 1,000,000 (normal people), but 1.000.000 (Euros)
Value of Pi = 3.14 (normal people), but 3,14 (Euros)

And then the assholes rammed their version through as ISO standard. Fucking French and Germans, man. They fuck up eeeeeee-verything...

 

[octavius]

Damned, it will take some getting used to the clock in the corner saying 4:25 PM instead of the normal 16:25.

In Scent of War my party was just wasted in the Well. Quite high encounter frequency, and the moles pop up even when turning.

 

[Tito Anic]

Cold Zero (Action RPG)

Played it at high school, enjoyed it very much.

Take the role of private detective John McAffrey and step into a world of trouble in Cold Zero. A deal-gone-wrong has the hero indebted to the mob. He is asked to put his skills of stealth and tactics to use for his underworld overseers. His first mission has him sneaking inside a bioresearch facility and stealing a virus known as "Cold Zero." But what exactly is this virus? Is delivering it to the mob the smart thing to do? Players must find out for themselves as they play through this dark adventure.

The missions can be completed using stealth or full out combat. There are 100's of different weapons including melee weapons. You can also pick up objects from dead bodies which you can pawn for cash.

http://www.mobygames.com/game/windows/cold-zero-no-mercy

 

[octavius]

Just finished The Scent of War I. - Damn Those Demons.

Nice little game jhanson, but the last dungeon was quite tedious, fighting Demon Knights every 5 steps.
In the end I was so pissed off, both by the insane encounter frequency (and very basic combat) and being forced to play a goody twoshoes the rest of the game, that when end boss Slynndar offered to join forces my party accepted the offer, and became commanders of the all conquering demon army!

Short and simple game, but worth a playthrough IMO.

 

[jhanson]

Just finished The Scent of War I. - Damn Those Demons.

Nice little game jhanson, but the last dungeon was quite tedious, fighting Demon Knights every 5 steps.
In the end I was so pissed off, both by the insane encounter frequency (and very basic combat) and being forced to play a goody twoshoes the rest of the game, that when end boss Slynndar offered to join forces my party accepted the offer, and became commanders of the all conquering demon army!

Short and simple game, but worth a playthrough IMO.

Glad you enjoyed it!

Sorry about that encounter rate. I had a lot of fun making that game back in the day, but I really didn't know what the heck I was doing.

 

[Micormic]

Not exactly obscure, but has anyone actually finished Konung 1 or 2?

Tried first one ages ago and fuck, what an unplayable mess it was.

Never played the first, picked up the 2nd in a bargain bin on vacation in Canada.



It was literally one of the worst and one of the hardest games(for the wrong reasons) I've ever played.

 

[Micormic]

This game was promising, but unfortunately is was buggy for me.
When loading a saved game, one character's inventory was bugged.
I tried an earlier save, replayed the starting cave and saved, but when I reloaded half the party was bugged.

I think I saw a mention of save games not working on some non-US systems, so I assume that's what's happened. Too bad, as it looked like a good enough little game, despite a somewhat annoying UI.

jhanson?

If you manually replace all the ","s by "."s in the save file you're going to load then it will load fine.

I recall that being a problem with another program 15-20 years ago, and the solution was very simple. Go to Control Panel, click on "Region and Language" and change language from Norwegian to English.
In Norwegian we write for example PI like 3,14 instead of 3.14, which is obviously the cause of the problem.

It worked with this program too.

Yeah. Bloody Europeans use the opposite.

1 million = 1,000,000 (normal people), but 1.000.000 (Euros)
Value of Pi = 3.14 (normal people), but 3,14 (Euros)

And then the assholes rammed their version through as ISO standard. Fucking French and Germans, man. They fuck up eeeeeee-verything...

I literally just caught aspergers reading this.

 

[Harry Easter]

Does anyone remember Arcatera the Dark Brotherhood?

Did any of you ever finish it or at least enter the city (was impossible in my version :D )?

(It had one nice opening song, though)

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4YOJDGytHw