Really Obscure RPGs

[Lord_Potato]

Septerra Core is one of my favorite JRPGs (clone).

I haven't heard anyone mention Valhalla Chronicles (2002, pictures can be found on google), which is an isometric viking ARPG.

There is this Diablo clone I have stored somewhere that I haven't heard anyone mention. It was released in early 2000, and there was a male Barbarian with a sword on the cover of it. You could play a male barbarian, a female sorcerer and a third class which I can't remember.

It might not be that obscure, but I really enjoyed Darkstone: Evil Reigns (1999), and I didn't know it got a remake for phones in 2014.

[Edited]: The Diablo clone from above is called Nightstone (2001). I made a thread about Valhalla Chronicles on RPGcodex 3+ years ago with pictures, and no one that answered had played it. https://rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/valhalla-chronicles.102943/

I heard only bad things about Valhalla Chronicles. Tried to play it ones, but it did not grab me.

Didn't hear of Darkstone, so there might be a chance it's quite obscure.

 

[aweigh]

I actually owned Septerra Core. I bought it in a double-pak that came with Planescape: Torment, lol.

 

[glass blackbird]

You've listed so many bad Mac RPGs and no mention of the one that is actually good? I mean Cythera, of course.

Cythera is a pretty good Ultima ripoff. If you like that kinda thing it's definitely worth checking out. MacOS 7 emulation is kind of a pain in the ass to setup but once you do it runs perfectly iirc, and it's even resolution agnostic since it has resizable windows and stuff

 

[V_K]

MacOS 7 emulation is kind of a pain in the ass to setup but once you do it runs perfectly

IIRC I just used AppleWin and had zero issues with it.

 

[V_K]

Didn't hear of Darkstone, so there might be a chance it's quite obscure.

It's a rather interesting attempt to marry a Diablo clone with a proper RPG. The combination results in some weird design decisions. Like you have a party of two characters, but the game is fully real-time, so you only control one at a time, relegating the other one to AI. Or there are 7 pre-designed (i.e. non-procedural) quests with their respective dungeons, but each is picked from 4 possibilities on a new game.

 

[Cosmo]

Didn't hear of Darkstone, so there might be a chance it's quite obscure.

Darkstone's not really obscure (not in France anyway) ; the press at the time presented it as the only serious alternative to Diablo.
All in all it's quite simple but charming, and its early 3D graphics have aged really well, which speaks volumes for the clever use of stylization...

 

[V_K]

its early 3D graphics have aged really well

Um, I'm not sure how its graphics would be perceived now, but I distinctly remember that at the time of release they looked rather prosperous. I think the consensus was that the models were way too low-poly and that maybe it wasn't time for a full 3D RPG yet (RPGs lagging in graphical quality in comparison to other genres was perceived as the norm at the time).

 

[Cosmo]

Um, I'm not sure how its graphics would be perceived now, but I distinctly remember that at the time of release they looked rather prosperous.

I rather think its graphics were slammed because the bright colors and cartoony choices weren't deemed realistic and grim enough (especially compared to Diablo).
IMHO they deserve another look : yes they come a bit short but at higher resolution you can see they tried to circumvent poly limits by giving the game a style that's built around polygonal shapes, eschewing realism, plus the use of hand-drawn textures that complements it very well.
So yeah at the very least i respect what they tried to do.

 

[Ninjerk]

The Darkstone shines

 

[CryptRat]

Good luck finding something more obscure! :D

Challenge accepted: http://www.dk-software.com/da2.html

I actually thought it wasn't online anymore. Guess I was wrong, and the dev actually updated the old games to modern systems.

Did anyone managed to play this? I'd like to but I can't cast spells or use combat skills, using the View Keyboard commands option gives nothing, when I reach the town from the sewers if I talk to a guy which say he can raise my intelligence for 25 golds the game just gets locked and I can't do anything.

Btw not a problem but there's a funny "feature" in the dungeon : if I walk using the mouse then random encounters trigger but if I use the arrows instead then they don't.

 

[V_K]

Did anyone managed to play this? I'd like to but I can't cast spells or use combat skills, using the View Keyboard commands option gives nothing, when I reach the town from the sewers if I talk to a guy which say he can raise my intelligence for 25 golds the game just gets locked and I can't do anything.

Btw not a problem but there's a funny "feature" in the dungeon : if I walk using the mouse then random encounters trigger but if I use the arrows instead then they don't.

I only played the earlier version, back on Win7 (or was it even XP?).

 

[CryptRat]

Thanks, I've got none of the mentioned bugs with the older version.

 

[CryptRat]

I completed Dark Ages 2, I'd say just play the 1.2 version if you ever want to try the game but I have not dug deep.
Sure the UI seems a bit improved in 2.0 but it was unplayable with my config while I had 0 problem with the old one. I wonder if I should contact the guy because having the same experience I had with the 2.0 gives a wrong impression of the game, I don't know if I was just unlucky.

The game is a full length RPG (20 hours?). It plays a lot like a classic JRPG. You play as pregenerated characters, which imply some retarded dialogs between the characters in the party, but not that many and at least the 3 characters are put on an equal rank. The setting and story are banal more than anything else I could say about them. There are some story choices where you can especially choose between doing one dungeon or another one.

The world is quite big, and about half open. Story dungeons are unavailable until the storyline brings you there, but you can travel through most of the world very quickly, most towns are available and many optional dungeons of various difficulties including the hardest ones are available from the start. The world seems a bit empty at first as you're travelling through those big areas but there's actually some meat in it.
You've got a rudimentary and cool-looking map to help you navigate. Also a quest log, alright, which can also display some quest marker sometimes, less alright, but you really don't want nor have to use them, NPCs give the good direction hints you need to search for a place but also stumbles into another one during the travel.
The game has pairs of teleporters to activate but you need to activate the two teleporters to be able to use them, I didn't find enough of them and then never used them.
I think quests don't give XPs at all, which is a bit of a shame.

Most encounters are random encounters but random encounters take place only in dungeons, some special places aside you'll never fight on the overworld or in towns.
The game uses a classic blobber combat system.
You can probably maximize damages and minimize defense less than I did, but with my characters the fights didn't take long and were deadly.
However, unfortunately, fights are very simple. The main problem is that the only thing every single monster in the game can do is dealing damage to one character. Pictures aside you're fighting the same enemies, except a bit stronger, over and over again.
The characters in the party can do some more, but not that much. And you control only 3 characters you didn't selected or created so there's really no deepness here either.
The second half of the game was just spamming the strongest spell targetting all enemy twice and drinking MP potions between fights.

The character system is simple. You control one mage who can cast spell, and a warrior and a thief with a few combat skills.
It's all about combat, there's no skill check, no exploration skill or spell, all spells are combat or healing spells, that part is really disappointing.
On level up there are 4 stats (strength, agility, speed, intelligence) that you can increase at will, it's simple but also sorts of work at least.
Spells cost money, and there are 8 equipment slots and a lot of items so although equipment just increases stats I thought that managing money was fun for a substantial part of the game. You're also rewarded with actually good items when going through dungeons.

There's not more than combat regarding character's sheets and the combat part itself is quite simple but at least the growth in power is satisfying. That explains a bit while I think that dungeons are alright overall. Encounter rate is average, you can avoid many fights and the game does not encourage grinding, you quickly gain levels as you fight the next strong monsters. The dungeons are small, with a given type of monsters and some background, some more or less inspired layout and some occasionnal puzzles, and loot. They could be better but I don't think they're that bad either.

Overall the game is alright, I enjoyed it enough to play through the end. The game is quite simple in some aspects, and I think the small, fixed, party is a bit weak, but it's a fairly decent work especially for a freeware so I couldn't blame the game for that. However IMHO the game would have been better with a more open-structure. The game really works when you're just visiting the world, stumble upon a hard dungeon, take note of it and come back later with some more levels and after spending all your money on one good piece of equipment. Therefore forcing the player to visit half of the dungeons in a given order was a bad idea. The campaign and story are not really interesting, and generally it's locked the worst possible way, there's an entrance to a cave and one character in the party says "Why would we enter this cave?" (seriously?) and you can't enter then after you've got given a quest you can enter. And to make it worse you also have to get back to talk to some NPC at the other end of the world between two main story dungeons. I don't mind backtracking to the other end of the world to visit a dungeon which was previously too hard but backtracking to advance the story is boring. That would be my main gripe, it's still a quite interesting work especially for a freeware.

 

[samuraigaiden]

This is the most underrated thread on the Codex.

 

[Lord_Potato]

This is the most underrated thread on the Codex.

I don't know if it's underrated. We had a lot of movement here and still offer a nice library of less known rpgs (some even with short reviews). It's just we can keep scratching the bottom of the barrell, when there is nothing left there

 

[howlingFantods]

This is a sci-fi dungeon crawler where you hunt and kill crew members of some spaceship as a malevolent alien.
I hear it's garbage but goddam if that isn't a novel premise for an RPG.

 

[Grauken]

This is a sci-fi dungeon crawler where you hunt and kill crew members of some spaceship as a malevolent alien.
I hear it's garbage but goddam if that isn't a novel premise for an RPG.

I bet zwanzig_zwoelf would like the idea

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

Attack of the Earthlings used same idea.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

This is a sci-fi dungeon crawler where you hunt and kill crew members of some spaceship as a malevolent alien.
I hear it's garbage but goddam if that isn't a novel premise for an RPG.

I bet zwanzig_zwoelf would like the idea

You're right.

 

[laclongquan]

Septerra Core is very underrated, not entirely sure why.

I am guessing the main reason is the enforced main character as a female. I love Maya but a bluehair strong amazon BUT not showing skin female, aka feminist character, might not to most people's taste.

No really. I love Maya. the tits and asses roles we have the blonde sexbomb of a mechanic Led to rely on.

The setting is really good. Several continents floating above a central core planets, with theme range from super science to junk yard to jungle to desert, etc... The combat is reasonable in FF style (phase based) and somewhat tactical. Items are varied and meaningful in combat.

The quest chain is not good though. Too much backtrack and unescapable encounters. And the map loading can be very atrocious for pre2005 computer. We are talking about loading a map at once with all the creatures pathing and heavy texture. The superscience baazar map can make the game entirely unloadable in low spec computer.

 

[CryptRat]

Obscurity had an article about TaskMaker quite recently : https://obscuritory.com/rpg/taskmaker/
This map of one of the dungeons of the game is engaging :

The game and its sequel are old mac sharewares. The shareware version of the two games are available here (and it seems you can still buy registration key) : http://www.robotroom.com/StormImpact.html

The full article :

Spoiler

There’s a trick TaskMaker loves to pull where one tile in a wall looks slightly different than the others. It’s called a “passwall,” and if you spot one, you can walk through it into a hidden passage or shortcut. TaskMaker doesn’t treat them like secrets. They’re part of the tutorial, and sometimes they’re the only way to advance through the game.

Secrets like this are the language of David Cook’s eccentric role-playing game TaskMaker.

According to an Easter egg that explains the development of the game, TaskMaker was loosely inspired by a tabletop role-playing game that creator David Cook ran with his friends back in 1982. He adapted the basic idea into a computer game six years later for his software company Storm Impact, working on it part-time at night over the course of a year. Very little remains from the original tabletop concept apart from, most notably, the king-like ruler known as the TaskMaker.

(Whenever you speak to the TaskMaker, the game announces “TaskMaker!” in a dramatic voice. Please listen to the game say “TaskMaker!” so you can imagine this sound every time you read the word TaskMaker.)

You’ve traveled from faraway to enter into the TaskMaker’s employ to help him defeat evil. Of course, he ends up being a tyrant. At first, he assigns you benign errands, like retrieving his favorite chessboard, and he bestows gifts upon you to celebrate your success. Then gradually he gives you terrible tasks like robbing the old king’s tomb. It becomes clear that you aren’t actually helping anyone. The TaskMaker is not only a violent despot but petty and vengeful: he orders you to kill the leader of a peaceful independent town and humiliate a nearby kingdom by stealing their coat of arms.

You don’t get much say in following the TaskMaker until near the very end, and as most of your tasks are solved by killing a parade of evil monsters, the game doesn’t quite earn its final, predictable twist when the TaskMaker gloats, “Rather than become your own person, you gladly followed my evil whims.” It does, however, act as a slight critique of the inherent tyranny of role-playing games with kings handing out quests, like Lord British in the Ultima series. The world is better off without an errand boy enforcing the rule of an empire.


Sometimes the best way to deal with monsters is to hide behind a wall and recover

It’s not a satire or a parody of RPGs, exactly, more like a funhouse mirror amplification of their quirks. You fight goblins and golems, but you also fight angry lamps. The monsters generally seem to mean well even while they’re stabbing you to death, and given the chance to make peace by offering them a valuable item, they’d much rather talk to you about how much they love cream spinach. There are items like the rich ring, a piece of jewelry that gets you drunk, and a townsperson named Man in the Moon who looks like that creepy McDonald’s mascot Mac Tonight. We know in our hearts that the TaskMaker can never oppress the free spirit of Man in the Moon. Maybe he hates what he can’t understand.

The game avoids veering into a full-fledged comedy, just exaggerating the silliness that already exists here, in contrast to an adventure that can be dark and foreboding. The only gap in TaskMaker‘s cleverness is its very literal, repetitive interpretation of role-playing game combat. It feels imaginatively constrained, perhaps out of an obligation to some sense of RPG dogma; for instance, the game gives your character separate traits for Intellect and Spirit without coming up with a meaningful difference between them. (To the developer’s credit, the sequel to TaskMaker revised that.)

But TaskMaker saves the most creative exaggeration for its oddly build towns and temples. Every village and dungeon is an interlocking nest of secret hallways, almost to the exclusion of anything else coherent about the setting. If the way forward isn’t hidden behind a passwall, it could be behind a locked door, a maze of teleporters, a trap floor, or a long snaking tunnel where the letters on the walls spell out literary messages – which, as absurd as that sounds, happens in three different locations.

Here’s a closer look at one section that serves as a great example of this game. This is the fourth dungeon – the quest to steal a magic book from the Arbalest Catacombs, shown below:


The labyrinth of Arbalest Catacombs (click to enlarge)

The layout is terrifically intricate, switching themes and architectural styles between every room. These are catacombs, but they have an underground lake and an inconveniently located sandwich shop, which must get terrible business. (TaskMaker was originally a black-and-white game redrawn in color, which may explain the strong profiles of tiles like the purple eagle-patterned TaskMaker floors.) The game never shows the full map like this; your vision is buffered by walls and doors, so you rarely see more than one area at a time. As you move between section and warp across regions the map, keeping track of where you are and where you’re going can be taxing. You’re always heading down further and deeper, farther away from any anchoring place you might remember.

That’s a perfect representation of TaskMaker. Every location in this game is a densely packed, intersecting nightmare, unusual fountains and cities within cities, interspersed with orcs, gargoyles, and Crab-Claws to fight. The game hides surprises everywhere. There’s something unusual on the other side of every door and every teleporter, whether it’s a sword or a bag of marbles. You can even find treasure by rummaging through literal piles of garbage.


Open the door, and… force fields! Where’s the heart switch?

TaskMaker encourages you to poke at its seams to an extent that verges on cheating. Some of the most powerful weapons in the game are kept in the backrooms of the TaskMaker’s castle, and although normally you have to wait until the end of the game to retrieve them, you could drink an Ethereal Potion, a rare item which lets you walk through certain walls, and sneak in through a single permeable tile in the back of the castle. You should definitely not be allowed to get the Vorpal Sword so early, but the game quietly leaves that door open in the back.

All this has the cumulative effect of feeling like you’ve exploited the game or gone somewhere you’re not supposed to. But it wants you to do that! TaskMaker is so saturated in secret areas and sneaky backways that I still don’t know what its baseline for “normal” is. Beating the game felt like I got away with a crime.

When you finally overthrow the TaskMaker after a comically difficult battle, you inherit his powers. This is still not necessarily a happy ending for the world, but it opens a menu that grants you god-like abilities to go anywhere, to summon any object and character, and to change the tiles in the world itself. (I used this mode to capture the dungeon map!) When you have total omnipotence, it makes the eccentricities of TaskMaker even more visible. Evidently, there’s a “10 meter cattle prod” weapon somewhere in the game. Was it tucked away in that huge tendril-like maze that I assumed was a dead end? On the other side of that lake you can only cross with random luck by using a magic scroll?

And furthermore, who started a mysterious sandwich shop in the catacombs?

Download
TaskMaker and its sequel, Tomb of the TaskMaker, are shareware. You can download the shareware copies of both games from the Storm Impact website hosted by David Cook. Cook also still sells registration numbers for the games if you want to play the full versions.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

howlingFantods gimme a name of this one plz, images are loading like garbo here lately.

This is a sci-fi dungeon crawler where you hunt and kill crew members of some spaceship as a malevolent alien.
I hear it's garbage but goddam if that isn't a novel premise for an RPG.

 

[ghostdog]

howlingFantods gimme a name of this one plz, images are loading like garbo here lately.

This is a sci-fi dungeon crawler where you hunt and kill crew members of some spaceship as a malevolent alien.
I hear it's garbage but goddam if that isn't a novel premise for an RPG.

https://www.mobygames.com/game/pc98/blood-seed

 

[Abu Antar]

Septerra Core is very underrated, not entirely sure why.

I am guessing the main reason is the enforced main character as a female. I love Maya but a bluehair strong amazon BUT not showing skin female, aka feminist character, might not to most people's taste.

No really. I love Maya. the tits and asses roles we have the blonde sexbomb of a mechanic Led to rely on.

The setting is really good. Several continents floating above a central core planets, with theme range from super science to junk yard to jungle to desert, etc... The combat is reasonable in FF style (phase based) and somewhat tactical. Items are varied and meaningful in combat.

The quest chain is not good though. Too much backtrack and unescapable encounters. And the map loading can be very atrocious for pre2005 computer. We are talking about loading a map at once with all the creatures pathing and heavy texture. The superscience baazar map can make the game entirely unloadable in low spec computer.

You answered your own post in the last paragraph. I liked it despite its many flaws. Slow loading, too big dungeons, slow battle system, and in general slow pace, which I usually don't mind. It's okay for one playthrough if you can tolerate all of these things.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

howlingFantods gimme a name of this one plz, images are loading like garbo here lately.

This is a sci-fi dungeon crawler where you hunt and kill crew members of some spaceship as a malevolent alien.
I hear it's garbage but goddam if that isn't a novel premise for an RPG.

https://www.mobygames.com/game/pc98/blood-seed

Thanks bruddah.

This kinda reminds me of Starfire (developed by Starcraft & designed by Winston Douglas Wood). It has good graphics and music is absolute tits, but the game itself is a mind-numbing RT dungeon crawler.