The Best Obscure RPGs - 2022 Update

Table of Contents

• The Best Obscure RPGs - 2022 Update
• Atelier Sophie: The Alchemist of the Mysterious Book
• Regalia: Of Men And Monarchs
• Masquerada: Songs and Shadows – a triple-A indie
• A House of Many Doors – an RPG from another dimension
• Expeditions: Viking
• Moonlighter – not-so-peaceful life of a shopkeeper
• Vaporum – a steampunk Grimrock
• Tower of Time – a heir of Baldur
• Valkyria Chronicles 4 – war in the Japanese version
• Druidstone – tactical RPG from the fathers of Grimrock series
• Octopath Traveler – a breath of fresh air in jRPG
• Sunless Skies – a train through fantasy outerspace
• Broken Lines – World War II in the form of a tactical RPG
• Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark - a worthy continuation of the Final Fantasy Tactics tradition
• Dungeon Of Naheulbeuk – there's no end to games and laughter

A House of Many Doors – an RPG from another dimension

A House of Many Doors is a great exploration-based RPG, created on the engine of Sunless Sea. The production allows you to explore the fascinating world, a parasitic dimension that cannibalizes its components from all sorts of different realities. We use a crazy machine resembling a train with legs instead of wheels to navigate the world.

During the game, the player travels through a randomly-created country, collecting items, discovering secrets and completing quests. Managing the crew is crucial, and it's not easy, since each member has different personalities and biographies.

During the adventure, we regularly need to make difficult decisions that have serious consequences for the further development of the story. The game is also not short on skirmishes, played in a turn-based system. An interesting gimmick is also a poem that the game writes based on our exploits.

Although A House of Many Doors uses the same engine as the Sunless Sea, those are two completely different games. The game pays much more attention to the plot and the RPG elements, and the visual style is also different. When it comes to common elements, we want to name the excellent design of the world and the fascinating stories that wait to be explored.

The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel

The Japanese company Nihon Falcom started as a PC developer, but eventually switched to consoles. For a few years now, however, their productions gradually turn back to the PC. The most important such release was probably Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel, which debuted on the PC three years after the PlayStation 3.

Since its release on consoles, the game has admittedly aged a bit. But it has been a great quality leap for the franchise. Finally, we got full 3D, a voice-over, and increased interactivity of the world. The mechanics of personal relationships between the team members have also been revamped, and now have a much stronger impact on the character's combat efficiency. The pace of the turn-based skirmishes was also increased

The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel suffices for a long time, and offers an extensive storyline. Also, it's an absolute masterpiece when it comes to PC conversion quality. XSEED, the company responsivle for the conversion, came up with a great idea and hired Peter "Durante" Toman – a modder who saved numerous PC ports of many Japanese productions, including the original Dark Souls.

Durante did a titanic job. He switched from the OpenGL/Cg render to DirectX 11, tweaked the game engine, added a bunch of new features (including setting the field of view, several variants of anti-aliasing), and next to original cap of 30 frames per second added the 60 FPS cap, as well as the option to disable the framerate limiter. In addition, the optimization is trully excellent.