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So what are your guy's favorite underappreciated gems?

Personal favorites include: Oniken *Same guys who made Odallus: The Dark Call made this and it is AMAZING how fun it is* Armello *A recently released Board Game Video Game that is in essence a full game with constant updates, a strangely addicting nature, AND excellent lore in it. *Think Secret of NIMH *Animals* mixed with a bit of Game of Thrones *Regicide, treachery, a bit of Racism AND a corrupting force.* stirred together with great amounts of tact, and some vagueness.* and NEO Scavenger *Survival Roguelike with good skill management and steep *Yet graspable* learning curve taking place in a Post-Apocalyptic Future where the Rads have all but faded out.*

Peace of Mind ~ Boston

The Christmas Carol movie.

Yeah NEO Scavenger is pretty cool from what little I played of it. I just like the fact that Detroit Megacity is the largest civilized area in the game.

You know it's a really bad post apocalypse when Detroit is considered a civilized zone. Lol.

Second this. 

There's a rush unlike any other that comes with becoming a rich water merchant in NEO, donning your Ronald McWomboCombo helm to crush some fool's kneecaps with a crowbar. 

Too bad about the wolfmen (wolfdogs?) and their late night booty calls. As an insomniac, I was never prepared for the boys ( ?° ?? ?°).

I remember once finding a tile with a forest AND lake on in. Meant I could acquire AND purify water without relocating. Boy, I was rolling in cash on that run (you know you are when you're lugging 3 loaded guns and 5 laptops packed with "plot" research wherever you go).

Also, you can get a game over from wearing an old turnip bag on your head. What a way to go too, wooh!

EDIT: Gospodin EndMaster Admin, why doesn't the site render the "le lenny" face properly? Fixing this should be top priority.

The Age of Decadence is an amazing RPG. A free demo is available on steam to try out at your convenience, and can be bough on GOG, Steam, or the developer's site. Current winter sale on steam means it's going for $7 instead of the ussual $30, so jump on that and buy it. 

Game's been in development since 2004 iirc and the final content update came out today. 

Here is a review where the creator calls the readers of Rock Paper Shotgun a bunch of idiots:

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2008/02/01/against-design-decadence-vince-d-weller/

If that doesn't make you wanna buy his game, I don't know what will (ok, maybe a proper description of the game, but the store page is there for a reason, ay?).

The guild 2

Survivalist

Sakura Angels

Starmade

Her Story and To the moon

Alternatively, just buy Mount & Blade. Failing that, Warband. Failing that, just buy Mount & Blade again.

Aducan, you don't understand.

This is Pirate M&B. The implications are fucking mystifying. Also, Warband was better than M&BC, in my honest opinion.

And in my honest opinion M&B had the better animations, better faction focus, and better mods.

Nothing Warband has could ever stand up to Star Wars Conquest (debatable, biased point), Solid & Shade (undebatable, will defend to dying breath), nor Mount and Blade Expanded III (hands down best singleplayer experience one can have with M&B, across all series). 

Hell, I've yet to see a mod that completely changes and revamps combat and progression the same way Expanded III did.

Although Warband DOES have multi, so I'll give you that.

I'll give it to you that M&B's classic animations were probably better from an artistic/realistic standpoint, but honestly Warband's animations, simplified as they were, are much better for gameplay purposes. Things happen quickly and straightforwardly, and you can see where the hitbox is going. For example, when riding on my horse and swinging, the character doesn't swing down at what was going to be hit, they sort of swing diagonally to one side. Now that's great, if you're in it for a realistic experience, but I can't tell whether I'm going to hit when I swing as much as I could if the character turned themself around and swung down all across, showing me where the actual hitbox was. That, and the actual melee animations look... I dunno, a lot stiffer, to be honest.

Well, there is Viking Conquest and Blood and Gold. And hell, Napoleon is a riot if you're into dressing really fancy and want to piss off your CoD-playing friends with reload times. It's possibly the best experience you can have defending a fort with guns and cannons, and walking into a citadel for a good shootout and then screaming as I try not to die after the first shot is an experience I'll never forget. Oh, and we have Warsword Conquest, which, while not as fleshed out and original as S&S, I feel trumps it in novelty because you're allowed to play as a skeleton. Just my personal thing, though.

That's just me nitpicking, though. My main problem is that half the castles and an entire faction are missing. I honestly couldn't deal with not having places as awesome as Sungetche, Mayalurg, Tevarin, or Jameyyad to fight for. With so little vessels of land ownership, war instantly becomes a devastating, faction-eating force that's very difficult to deal with, as opposed to the fun and delicate feudal dance it becomes when there's more castles and more lords. Now you can have simple border conflicts and take and lose siege battles without getting fukt or fucking the person who used to own the castle with roughly a third of the kingdom. It makes conquering Calradia the long and epic challenge that it should be, as opposed to conquering 4 or 5 castles with 4 or 5 lords at your beck and call fucking the entire faction and their 4 or 5 lords.

Well, in S&S you can play as a zombie, riding a zombie horse, with a zombie army, wearing zombie clothes, hitting people with a zombie stick. If you're team skeleton, go Warband, for zombie, go original. :P

NW is definitely the most "fun" thing I've done in M&B. It doesn't have singleplayer tho and I'm yet to find anything close to Expanded III when it comes to SP. 

I don't like the Sarranids because they made the Vaegirs obsolete and contest Swadia for their cav dominance like rabbid dogs.

Vaegir - Archer, Nord - Tanks, Rhodok - Sniper/Anti-Cav, Swadia - Heavy Cav/Generalists, Khergit - Horse Arch/ Light Cav. 

Then come in the Sarranid with the best archers, amazing cav, and capable infantry. See what I mean? I don't feel they have their own unique niche to exploit and so end up intruding on other's (Vaegir and Swadian) turf (not to mention that they also have a much better map spot than Swadia). This is why I don't like Brytenwalda: Everyone fells more or less the same. 

I will concede that the Sarranid are the most fashionable. 

More castles would definitely be better. Warband is most probably the better game, but I'm biased like that. :P

I guess my problem with S&S is that it feels very monothematic, but doesn't maintain that very well by keeping in all the native gear without retexture. It's very centered around the monsters and horror of this universe, and while psychedelic medieval post-apoc is amazing as all hell, it does get old. The dark skies and bright brown sands are very atmospheric, but it takes about a few sessions before you're all out of atmosphere and you start to notice the little nitpicky shit. The ubiquitous brown and gray slowly stops being atmospheric and starts to look like Quake took a shit on old cornbread, and the regular factions were clearly designed for a very different Calradia, and, while not outright clashy, the bright blues and oranges and greens of everyone's clothes really stand out in a way that sort of glares at you. The turquoise robes of the Khergit Riders were clearly made for the beautiful green steppes and mountain meadows of the Khanate, not an Egypt music video.

Even though I'm really not that fond of Warhammer and the lore isn't as enticing as the OU of S&S,  Warsword Conquest  is generally easier on the eyes and allows for longer exposure times due to the wider array of things you'd be dealing with as opposed to just creepy gloom and zombles.

I do wish they had a Singleplayer NW. The Napoleonic wars were practically made for a vast "Conquer the continent" campaign like Calradia was. Closest thing I've found thus far was Imperial Calradia, but the outfits and such aren't nearly as detailed and amazing as regular NW, and there's still quite a bit of weird patchiness where you can tell it still isn't its own game apart from M&BW. The lack of polish is just a reminder of how tough it probably is to achieve that level of completedness that NW had, even with only one gamemode.

 

Star Wars Conquest actually got ported to Warband in August, I believe.

M&B2's coming out next year; tell me what can this can do compared to Vikings, Napoleonic, and w/ Fire+Sword before I pre-order it.

I never kept up with the project, so I don't know. There's probably going to be more, shinier armor. And maybe more late-medieval-type stuff available so you don't have to wait for Floris Bannerlord.

Steve's head.

Oh, Purple Swamphens are underrated. They're better than ducks.

How so? Aside from looking cooler.

They're bigger, and their breeding system isn't a genital arms race with one always trying to rape the other. And they're fucking adorable. Shame about the noise they make and all, but you can still have one as a pet if you're willing to keep it company and find an injured little one or an egg without a pack, because they're social birds who die on their own. That's pretty much the only situation you can keep a bird in, though.They tend to be territorial badasses, and it'd be kind of a dick move to take a grown one in from the wild, even if they're left behind or severely injured, because they don't really trust humans as wild animals and might retain their territorial badass nature. Although I suppose the Maori did keep a lot of them as pets, so I'm not sure how they really act around people.

Still, I love them. They're the best.

That does sound better than ducks.

Forget what I said about the noise. They sound like the stock 'Squeaky Wheels' sound effect from cartoons. I just can't decide whether that's awesome or annoying. Probably both.

Yeah, it's both.

Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura. It's awesome. It's like if the first two Fallout games and The Hobbit had a kid that was really into steampunk.

The downside to that game is the goofy combat system. Well that and the fact that the magic side is overpowered compared to being a techie, but being a techie and creating stuff out of junk and scrap is just more fun.

Second this. 

If you can get past their age and their UI, which I sadly couldn't, the cRPGs of old (Arcanum, Baldur's Gate Series, and Planescape Torment) are some of the best games you will ever find. 

It's also an universally accepted fact that Planescape Torment is the best dialouge/story RPG ever made, and Arcanum is pretty much on every "Best RPGs of All Time" list. Or at least it should be. If it's not, disregard the list.

EDIT: Here are a few more modern cRPGs I enjoyed (more modern than the alternatives, anyway):

Tyranny, The Age of Decadence, and Shadowrun: Dragonfall. The whole Shadowrun series by Harebrained Schemes is good (imo great), but this one takes the cake and if you don't like Shadowrun: Returns (I wouldn't blame you) you might enjoy Dragonfall as it drastically improves writing and polishes the combat.

PS Eiger kicks ass. <3

Yeah I second that opinion on the Shadowrun Series by Harebrained Schemes. Though I LIKE Returns, I can agree it is not VERY great, ESPECIALLY in comparrison to the far superior sequels, while Hong Kong is good, a little too MUCH Emphasis is put in describing areas, though I LOVE it personally as it gets me immersed. Dragonfall just beats it, plain and simple.

Also add 'Risk of Rain' to my list of Underappriciated Gems. *I would but I am enjoying an Omelette *The first one I've ever made* and I don't want to sticky up the list..*

Also Glory is my Waifu. Make of that what you will.

Oh, and also the Blade Runner game that came out in 1997. Gameplay was a bit rough, but what it lacks in that it makes up for in rich story and high replayability (what with the game randomizing which NPCs are replicants and which are human, including the player character if I recall).

Project Reality! It is the greatest gem in military simulation genre and it is even free!

@EndMaster Geneforge Series.

Definitely the Geneforge series, and to a lesser extent, the other Spiderweb series Avadon and Avernum (AKA Exile).

Geneforge was amazing. Honestly, I think that's what Spore should've been, rather than a bunch of arcade games in between creation screens.