I was literally going to say crystal sage before I read your full post. I’ve never once gotten through a DS3 run without dying several times to him, and I’ve probably played a dozen or more times. Even with the throwing knives cheese.
I HATE playing mobile games but my wife got me hooked on Dawncaster. It’s a roguelike deck builder. I think it’s like $4-5 and no micro transactions but there are expansion packs to add new zones and enemies. I’ve since picked them all up. It’s regularly updated with free content packs and balance changes. The devs are very responsive with the community.
Yeah, Ringleader’s Evergaol was rough, took me over 30 tries. I was a bit under-leveled when I first found it and after getting my ass handed to me for 10 or so attempts I decided to mark it and return later, went back after leveling up a bit and died another 15 times or so. Came back a 3rd time after defeating Mohg on my 4th attempt and finally cleared the evergaol after about 8 more attempts.
Don’t know if it’d be something worth while, but if you’re looking for a game to just pass the time, Devil Dice (or XI in Japan I think) for PSx. Trailer linked is highest quality I could find.
If you have any interest at all in Souls-likes and want to see where the genre really started, consider Blade of Darkness. An updated version is available on GOG with modern resolution support and slightly improved controls (still clunky as hell in comparison to newer games, though).
Metal Gear Solid is one of my favorite games of all time, followed closely by 2 and 3. It really is an incredibly timeless piece of art in my opinion, just filled to the brim with incredible moments.
Sons of Liberty was my first experience of the MGS series and I really enjoyed it. Absolutely off the wall parody of military games in the absolute best way.
Capcom vs. SNK 2: The Groove system is one of the coolest dynamics to tailor the game to your playstyle. Is it balanced? Hell no, but I love this game casually.
The King of Fighters 2002: KOF fans will tell you either 98 or 02 were the absolute pinnacle. I side with 02 because it has Kula in it. Also note that 98 and 02 both have updated rereleases with an extended roster and rebalancing, but those are Windows-only.
Puzzle Bobble 1/3: You've probably played some flash game clone of this. IMO I think 1 was best for its simplicity, I'm not as fond of the garbage patterns introduced in later titles in an effort to give characters some asymmetry. But PB1 does not have AI opponents, singleplayer is only the stage clear mode, so if you don't have a human to play with try PB3 for the next best thing.
Soldam: The singleplayer modes are nothing to write home about, but it has one of the most unique versus modes I've seen in a puzzler. Shared piece queues are normally horrifying, but Soldam makes it work by giving P1 the objective to match red while P2 matches blue. So if you want to snipe pieces that are desirable to your opponent, that means taking pieces undesirable to yourself. Garbage is also based on how you clear lines, so crafting maximally disruptive garbage gets interesting. The catch, unfortunately, is that there is no AI. But if you can play this game with a human, do check it out.
Tetris: The Grand Master 1/2/3: The only good Tetris, do not @ me. Start with TGM2's Novice Mode, then once you can clear that go back to TGM1.
Twinkle Star Sprites: A versus shmup with a very unique format. Chaining enemies on your screen sends attacks to your opponent's screen. Hard to really explain, just give this a spin and feel it out for yourself. There are a lot of moving parts, screenwatching is vital, and feels like I've barely scratched the surface of the game's depth.
Vampire Savior: Aka Darkstalkers 3. This game is fast as hell and it's a blast. Like with any classic fighter, good luck keeping up with FightCade folks who really know what they're doing, but I love it casually.
Waku Waku 7: This game's mechanics are honestly borderline kusoge, you can't even cancel normals into specials. But I love the design and atmosphere so much. Tesse is really fun to play even in spite of the system mechanics.
NES:
Fire 'n Ice: A very rad little puzzle game.
Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!!: Just an absolute blast. I won't bother listing them seperately but also check out Super and Wii. Super's kinda the black sheep of the series, but it's still a good game, just not as good. Wii is an absolutely top-notch successor and I'm sad it didn't get any more sequels after that. The two arcade predecessors are honestly forgettable.
SNES:
Chrono Trigger: I am hesitant to recommend most JRPGs from this era if you did not grow up on them, because many of them haven't aged so gracefully. Chrono Trigger is the exception, this game is a fine wine. You may want to check out one of the rereleases though, or at least a retranslation patch, because the original translation was made on a rushed deadline and bound by heavy technical limitations.
Earthbound: A bit more of a slow burn in comparison to CT, but this game is carried by incredible writing. It's also required reading before playing Mother 3 next.
Kirby Super Star: Definitely the peak of the series, giving every copy power an entire moveset is a blast. Has an updated rerelease on DS with added extras, I do highly recommend this version, but DS can be awkward to emulate so SNES is fine.
Wario's Woods: The NES version is more well known since it was the system's last first-party title, and for whatever reason it's the only version Nintendo ever rereleases. But the SNES version is a notable upgrade, biggest thing it has is AI to play versus mode against. Versus mode is wild as hell, so if you've never seen it please check out the SNES version.
N64:
Dr. Mario 64: Best version, but can be notoriously difficult to emulate. If you have issues with it, SNES is a good alternative. Don't play NES.
Mario Party 2: Still the best in the series.
Paper Mario: Pure perfection. Many fans will say TTYD was better, and it's certainly a good game too, but I think 64 was peak simply because the pacing is so much better.
Super Mario 64: It's Super Mario 64. You do not need me to tell you that this game is good.
F-Zero GX: It's been over 20 years since the GOAT dropped and all we've had to show for it is that damn 99 game. Go play this and weep that we'll never see another like it.
Nintendo Puzzle Collection: The best version of Panel de Pon, but SNES is a close second if you wanna play on a device that can't run Dolphin. GBC is also kinda noteworthy for having a unique singleplayer to work around platform limitations - opponents have a lifebar rather than a board. Just don't bother with 64.
Tales of Symphonia: This game got a PS2 rerelease with some extra content, and the HD remasters are based on that version. But the catch is that they were downgraded to 30fps, and yes that includes the so-called remaster. So I still recommend playing the Gamecube original at 60.
Wii:
Puyo Puyo 20th Anniversary: The absolute pinnacle of the series (by which I mean it's all downhill from here, I will never forgive Sega for what came next ), crammed with a whopping 20 game modes. I really love the challenges where you have to chain under bizarre restrictions. I prefer the Wii version for its 480p assets, and it's the easiest to emulate, but if you care about story mode the translation patch only exists for DS.
GBC:
Game & Watch Gallery 2: Holds a special place in my heart as the first game I ever owned. Has the best lineup out of all the collections, with 3 and 4 you can kinda tell they had used up all the heavy hitters.
Mario Tennis: An incredible tennis RPG. And Mario doesn't even show up until the postgame as a bonus boss, which I find hilarious. Has connectivity with the N64 version if you can get that running, lets you transfer your RPG mode character and unlock more content on both titles.
GBA:
Boktai series: These games were so near and dear to my childhood, especially 2. Really though you want the Solar Sensor hardware for the full experience, but I love these games too much not to plug them anyway. Emulating them is worth it over not playing them at all. And for the third game, you'd have to pick between original hardware or the translation patch anyway.
Golden Sun 1/2: These games were way ahead of their time for how they designed a combat system that encourages you to use all of your tools and not just click basic Attack as if you gotta hoard your MP for a rainy day. Fantastic puzzles too.
Mother 3: Surely you have already heard of this game and do not need me to tell you to go play it. Have you not played it by now? Why not? Well, okay, if you haven't played Earthbound first, go do so, then play this.
Rhythm Tengoku: A wonderful game about pressing the A button. Sometimes you press the d-pad too. Translation patch.
Summon Night: Swordcraft Story 1/2: If you've ever played the classic 2D Tales games, these are excellent spiritual successors to those. There's a third game that's JP-only, translation patch is being worked on but it's been stuck in development hell for years...
Romhacks:
Celeste Mario's Zap & Dash (NES): SMB1 turned into a Metroidvania with Celeste mechanics ported in. I think what impresses me the most is that they got 4-directional scrolling into this engine.
Super Metroid and A Link to the Past Crossover Randomizer (SNES): It's an absolutely incredible technical feat that this even works. SM and ALttP smashed together into a single ROM, with a few doors that take you from one game to the other, then the item pools are shuffled together so you have to go back and forth to find one game's items in the other. Unfortunately because ALttP is a much bigger game with a lot more items it kinda overshadows SM, you may not find this to be as replayable as the standalone randos. But I recommend trying it once because it's just so cool the first time.
I’m a little ways in to Celeste Mario’s Zap & Dash and its just as good as I had hoped. It makes me wish we got a metroidvania Celeste game from exok (maybe Earthblade will fill that niche)
@missingno I have finished the “main” game content of zap n dash with (I think) all moons, but DAMN this post-game content is HARD. Definitely b-sides/c-sides/farewell vibes
Holy recommendations batman! Definitely glad to see a lot of the same games recommended here, makes me feel like they’re on the right track. Fire 'n Ice seems interesting, and I hadn’t heard of it before. Also added a new word to my vocabulary in the form of “kusoge”. Thank you!
You have tons of great game suggestions here so i’m not gonna suggest another game. I’m just going to recommend RetroAchievements as a way to add a little meta-progression fun to your retro journey, if you aren’t using them already. They integrate into various popular emulators (RetroArch especially), and it’s fun to be playing Super Mario World and get a little extra recognition for beating a boss.
I am very prone to completionism so I have intentionally avoided RetroAchievements as I didn’t want to get bogged down chasing them :P But I do very much appreciate the extra recco!!
extremely fair! I just broke a 2-month fever with Pokemon Pinball bc I became obsessed with getting the “beaten” marker on RA. I think I was still having fun up to the end? but not totally clear. So I get it. lol
Oh, and just in the moment I hit send, I remembered another gem from the olden times:
Unreal World: Basically the survival game. 99% of today’s survival games are just a pale shadow of this. I mean, nowadays there are even “survival” games without hunger mechanics or proper simulation of wounds… No, this is not one of those easy mode survival games. This is Fantasy Finland, and it’s the Fantasy Iron Age. Available for free or, if you want updates faster, also for money on Steam.
Oh neat, I’ll have to check this out. I’m not into the whole Open World Survival Crafting pandemic that has taken root but if this is like the best of the best of survival games then it should be fun!
If I weren’t currently at work and would have time to think about the answer, I could probably come up with more titles, but those are the top 2 that come to mind, if I ignore cRPGs (at least that’s how I read your “avoiding final fantasy-esque” requirement):
Settlers 2: It’s new enough to still look decent by today’s standards, and has amazing game design. Available at GoG.
Star Control 2: One of the best early open world games. The graphics have definitely aged by today’s standard, but the humour hasn’t. Or maybe it has, but just a bit. Available for free and open source.
My relationship with cRPGs is weird. I adore disco elysium and citizen sleeper, two of my favourite games. I enjoyed the first ~30 hours of Divinity Original Sin 2 before I just got uber fatigued on how much the game got in the way of the characters for me. Final Fantasy (style) games i just get so exhausted by all the faffing around with party composition and stats and junctions and equipment and skills and whatever the fuck else. What I live for in my tabletop experiences is high storytelling and roleplay, where I can do a little fooling around with fun combat builds and whatnot without getting too bogged down, and my videogaming preferences mirror that.
I guess what I’m saying is that a crpg with a greater focus on the RP and less on the G really fits my tastes, so earthbound is a natural fit.
Settlers and star control both look somewhat neat! I’ll have a look, many thanks.
Older JRPGs in particular are definitely a bit of an acquired taste. There are a lot of games that I love dearly but have a hard time recommending to anyone who didn't grow up on that style of game.
That said, Chrono Trigger is the one that really stands the test of time and I think is the best entry point into the classics. Or just try some more modern games, the genre has evolved considerably.
Earthbound is probably the one I'd put next after CT, but it's a bit of a slow burn that's honestly carried by its writing. Mother 3 raises the bar considerably, but you gotta play EB before M3.
Yeah, I’ve had such a love/hate experience with JRPGs. When the game gets out of the way and lets me just explore the world and its characters I fall in love. And then the gameplay comes back and I have to get out my spreadsheets and shit and I just fall asleep. CT comes highly recommended so I’m looking forward to giving that a go alongside EB and M3. I have Sea of Stars on my backlog which is apparently a spiritual successor to CT so that’ll probably follow along nicely.
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