What retro games exceeded your expectations?

[Ian Naxieas]

I've heard about them for many years, but I didn't get around to playing Shadow Hearts & Covenant until last year. The overall consensus was they were really good games, but with some flaws. I can't disagree with that sentiment, they were far from perfect, but I still fucking loved them. The canon ending to the first game was legitimately a punch in the gut and it wasn't overdramatic or anything. Covenant was overall better and my favorite of the two, but the ending was a bit of a mess. Regardless, I'm super glad I finally got to play them and From the New World is at the top of my list of games to play next. I really should play Koudelka as well, though I have an idea of how it ends by nature of playing Shadow Hearts. x)

Parasite Eve 2 was actually a really big surprise for me. I'd played it a few times over the years and I bounced off it super hard each time. However I tried it again last year and something finally clicked and I didn't stop playing until I beat it. It does have it's problems and is not as good as the original, but I'm really glad I gave it another chance.

Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance is my final choice. I started with Awakening and played all the new games up 'till Three Houses. I was a bit scared to play the older games because I always pussied out and played without permadeath on the newer ones. >.> I played a bit of the GBA ones, but they didn't really get their claws in me. I wasn't expecting much out of it but I tried Path of Radiance on a whim and it clicked with me right away. It was another game I didn't stop playing until I completed it and I started Radiant Dawn not even an hour after finishing it. x) Path of Radiance is currently my favorite Fire Emblem game, but I do intend to give the older ones a shot sometime.

 

[starseeker300]

Chrono Cross

what I was expecting: an ok experience with a weird story and convoluted battle system that is really only for hardcore fans of Chrono Trigger

what I got: A masterpiece on regret, free will, and how your actions affect others plus how they affect you in return, with many great characters an a genuinely great battle system, that I cannot recommend enough to everyone. The marble sidequest is probably one of the best sidequests ive played in a game as well. all the little choices the game gives you really add to the replayability as well

 

[Jeff]

If the US Mario 2 did not exist, we would not have The Super Show, picking up objects mechanic for future Mario games, Mario 3D World, and Super Mario Bros. Wonder.

1 is beloved exactly for its simplicity, no wonder it has so many versions and clones

View attachment 5199

All those american youtubers saying its bad or merely "not that bad" this was a truly remarkable game for 1987

Big maps that encourage exploration and experimentation, lots of variety with the different characters, lots of varitety in levels when many games from 87 just reused backrounds, lots of interascting with your enviroments, the only thing that makes it feel like an early famicom game is the repetitive music

Nintendo was tasked to make a promotional game for a one time festival and instead of just doing a reskin of a pre existing popular game for easy money they made one of the best most inventive platforms on the system
So much so that they later released the international version on carts too


DID YOU KNOW THIS GAME WAS ORIGINALLY POSTAL 2-

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Post automatically merged: Feb 9, 2025

Also, this beast right here exceeded my expectations!

 

[ShibbyDealer]

Showing my lack of age here, but when I first played Half-Life and Metal Gear Solid, I was impressed by how well they aged. I hadn't played many similar games before that, but it caught me off guard how forward-thinking they were despite being old and have been considered to have "not aged well."
I sort of assumed things would be janky, boss loops would be tedious, and solutions would be cryptic like those old adventure games, but no, you don't need to overthink things and just use common sense or listen to what your support says. It's quite telling how good the design is when a zoomer can get it on their first try.

 

[ciro64]

Kaeru no Tame ni Kane wa Naru's ending makes me cry. The game in general also surprised me.

 

[Bakuma1997]

Actraiser, let's put it kindly, at first a fast paced genre like plataformer and a slow paced and methodic one like Village Sim are two things that i expected to ne unable to go together, like tuna and milk, what i got is a combination that mixes them together masterfully, like Tuna and Rice

The Stage 1 theme alone blew my mind and i started playing it three years ago

 

[Leon]

I've heard about them for many years, but I didn't get around to playing Shadow Hearts & Covenant until last year. The overall consensus was they were really good games, but with some flaws. I can't disagree with that sentiment, they were far from perfect, but I still fucking loved them. The canon ending to the first game was legitimately a punch in the gut and it wasn't overdramatic or anything. Covenant was overall better and my favorite of the two, but the ending was a bit of a mess. Regardless, I'm super glad I finally got to play them and From the New World is at the top of my list of games to play next. I really should play Koudelka as well, though I have an idea of how it ends by nature of playing Shadow Hearts. x)

Parasite Eve 2 was actually a really big surprise for me. I'd played it a few times over the years and I bounced off it super hard each time. However I tried it again last year and something finally clicked and I didn't stop playing until I beat it. It does have it's problems and is not as good as the original, but I'm really glad I gave it another chance.

Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance is my final choice. I started with Awakening and played all the new games up 'till Three Houses. I was a bit scared to play the older games because I always pussied out and played without permadeath on the newer ones. >.> I played a bit of the GBA ones, but they didn't really get their claws in me. I wasn't expecting much out of it but I tried Path of Radiance on a whim and it clicked with me right away. It was another game I didn't stop playing until I completed it and I started Radiant Dawn not even an hour after finishing it. x) Path of Radiance is currently my favorite Fire Emblem game, but I do intend to give the older ones a shot sometime.

So here's a spoiler about shadow hearts 1 and 2 that might clear up a couple of things.

Spoiler: Shadow Hearts Spoilers

So as you know, canonically alice dies in shadow hearts 1, in shadow hearts 2, the "yuri dies" ending is also canon (The one where he get's impaled), however what the canon path actually is, shadow hearts 1 ending, alice dies, shadow hearts 2 ending, yuri dies and in doing so get's sent back in time to just before the start of shadow hearts 1, and then shadow hearts 2's good ending, so basically, both endings in shadow hearts 1 are canon (or that's yuri's view of heaven, debate is there).

 

[starseeker300]

Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance is my final choice. I started with Awakening and played all the new games up 'till Three Houses. I was a bit scared to play the older games because I always pussied out and played without permadeath on the newer ones. >.> I played a bit of the GBA ones, but they didn't really get their claws in me. I wasn't expecting much out of it but I tried Path of Radiance on a whim and it clicked with me right away. It was another game I didn't stop playing until I completed it and I started Radiant Dawn not even an hour after finishing it. x) Path of Radiance is currently my favorite Fire Emblem game, but I do intend to give the older ones a shot sometime.

you dont have to play fire emblem with permadeath, theres no shame in not playing it that way, though i would recommend an iron man challenge on fe6 or one of the archanea games. it might be fun

 

[diapered]

Langrisser II is most recent. Random recommendation from /vr/ so I was really surprised how good it is; still working my way through. It's obvious I missed it though, having grown up in US :P

Saiyuki also surprised me how good it was. I remember ads in gaming magazines but always thought it was some generic action game for some reason (no idea why). Had I known it was an awesome srpg like FFT with great story and characters, I would have asked for it as a gift from parents. I have no excuse missing out on this one ;_;

 

[Ian Naxieas]

So here's a spoiler about shadow hearts 1 and 2 that might clear up a couple of things.

Spoiler: Shadow Hearts Spoilers

So as you know, canonically alice dies in shadow hearts 1, in shadow hearts 2, the "yuri dies" ending is also canon (The one where he get's impaled), however what the canon path actually is, shadow hearts 1 ending, alice dies, shadow hearts 2 ending, yuri dies and in doing so get's sent back in time to just before the start of shadow hearts 1, and then shadow hearts 2's good ending, so basically, both endings in shadow hearts 1 are canon (or that's yuri's view of heaven, debate is there).

Yeah, that's basically what I figured once I found out that the good ending in Covenant was the canon one.

Spoiler: Shadow Hearts Spoilers

I didn't know that both endings in the first game were canon however. That's really nice to hear, they deserve to be together after everything they've been through. There is one thing I wonder about, why was Karin sent back to be Yuri's mother? That was the most weird and baffling thing I thought. My guess is that her prayer was to be with Yuri since she loved him and the only way to do that was to, uh, become his mother? It was just really weird. Time travel plots, especially ones that are introduced last minute like in Covenant, aren't my bag.

you dont have to play fire emblem with permadeath, theres no shame in not playing it that way, though i would recommend an iron man challenge on fe6 or one of the archanea games. it might be fun

Ultimately I'm not too broken up by playing without permadeath, otherwise I would have played Engage with permadeath on. x) But isn't FE6 one of the harder games in the series? Iron man sounds mean, though it's not as mean as it'd be in Thracia 776.

 

[Somnia]

Dragon Quest 7! As a fan of PS1-era RPGs I had seen the buzz around that game being so divisive in the mid-2010s. Most westerners seemed to lament its glacial pacing and general lack of a central plot to latch onto whilst eastern audiences viewed it as one of many peaks in the genre on the whole. When I finally played it, I had no idea what to expect but was greeted by a game with a sense of scale and adventure I had yet to really see from a game. Almost any of the individual plots in that game could be entire games on their own and yet serve as mere chapters in a wonderful story. The party system and being able to constantly check in and see how they feel about situations made characters feel more believable than some western CRPGs at the time (which I still tend to view as the peak of character driven RPGs). Combat was also pretty perfectly paced. Not too difficult or grindy especially for the time period with just enough complexity in the job system to keep me going.

It was my first mainline Dragon Quest game and it was a bit of an odd starting point since no other game in the series is like it, but I've since played several more DQ games and loved all of them!

 

[Stingy Perry]

Contra Hard Corps is vastly better than Contra 3 The Alien Wars.

 

[starseeker300]

Ultimately I'm not too broken up by playing without permadeath, otherwise I would have played Engage with permadeath on. x) But isn't FE6 one of the harder games in the series? Iron man sounds mean, though it's not as mean as it'd be in Thracia 776.

fe6 isnt that hard in of itself overall, its more so that bosses can be annoying because of the overall lower hit rate of weapons in that game. if you want to get the true ending, use a guide. you can make an ironman as strict or as lenient as you want

 

[bjork]

Noobow on original Game Boy. I assume the character is either from a kid's show or some kind of toy mascot, because the game itself is pretty simple and linear, you can figure out the puzzles and finish it in probably an hour or so? But there's something so charming about it and I can't quite put my finger on it.

 

[99nereids]

hands down has to be Star Ocean: Blue Sphere for gbc. Holyshit is the art good and it’s a blast to play. Very in depth character leveling system and a huge cast of playable characters from the jump, highly recommend. Wild that it was never localized but thank god for the fan translations

 

[King Koopa's iconKing Koopa]

Phantasy Star IV. I expected to like it but I didn't expect to be blown away!

 

[Raud]

Comix Zone, I played The Game not expecting much, but The Sprites are awesome, it have a deep combat system for a beat them Up and the presentation is gorgeous.

 

[Leon]

Yeah, that's basically what I figured once I found out that the good ending in Covenant was the canon one.

Spoiler: Shadow Hearts Spoilers

I didn't know that both endings in the first game were canon however. That's really nice to hear, they deserve to be together after everything they've been through. There is one thing I wonder about, why was Karin sent back to be Yuri's mother? That was the most weird and baffling thing I thought. My guess is that her prayer was to be with Yuri since she loved him and the only way to do that was to, uh, become his mother? It was just really weird. Time travel plots, especially ones that are introduced last minute like in Covenant, aren't my bag.

Ultimately I'm not too broken up by playing without permadeath, otherwise I would have played Engage with permadeath on. x) But isn't FE6 one of the harder games in the series? Iron man sounds mean, though it's not as mean as it'd be in Thracia 776.

Spoiler: Shadow Hearts Spoilers

The karen thing makes a bit more sense if you played shadow hearts 1 first, since there was alot of mystery about yuri's mother in shadow hearts 1 and karen is actually based at least partly on yuri's mother's image in the first game, but i can get how the story comes off as wierd (it's japanese and time travel, of course it is).
It helps that in shadow hearts it makes it clear that the god of the abrahamic religions, whatever form he is, very much does exist in it's canon and is used to imply a "god was my copilot" story.

 

[tigg]

Shadowgate, Uninvited, Deja Vu all for the NES
Shadow Hearts, Shadow Hearts Covenant for ps2

 

[spectresfrommercury]

xenogears

 

[Kid Dynamite]

-River City Ransom
-FF1
-Mario 3
-Bionic Commando
-FF2

 

[ThunderBoy]

Snather.

I've always heard great things about this game.
Until I played it, and it blew my mind.
Even more than I expected

 

[starseeker300]

-FF2

 

[hazys]

I thought people were exaggerating due to its rarity, but Panzer Dragoon Saga is truly one of the best RPGs of all time.

Sakura Wars was also way more enjoyable and modern-feeling than I expected. Looking forward to the translation of 2.

Not sure if it qualifies as "retro," but the JP-only Chibi-Robo! DS sequel quickly became one of my favorite adventure games of all time...

Garage: Bad Dream Adventure, a 90s JP-only PC game that was miraculously revived and ported to Steam, has also become one of my favorite adventure games ever.

The whole Shiren the Wanderer series has been a delight to explore, especially 2 for N64.

Baroque has some of the best art direction I've seen in a game.

 

[Kamako]

Shinobi the Arcade Game is the dog's bollocks.

I played a re-released version for X360 and had a huge grin on my face the whole time. Cool sprite works, fun bosses and levels, good music too. And fittingly it's pretty damn difficult. Pretty cheeky that the version I played gives you 5 continues after you Game Over, but once you get to World 5 (the final stages), if you Game Over with continues remaining, they're forfeit. Dastardly.