I’m always looking for more unique experiences in games but most of the time looking for lesser known games comes up with the same lists of games that anyone digging a little will find and so I’m curious what your hidden gem game would be?

Recently this has to either be my discovery of the EDF and Disgaea franchises for completely different reasons but similar reasons. Both are games that don’t seem like much at a first glance but hold a lot more than a simple glance can show you.

EDF at face value is a a series about killing giant bugs and aliens in the thousands at a time to earn better weapons to kill more of these enemies but just beneath the surface is a surprising amount of depth as weapons that might seem useless when you first get them make especially difficult enemies trivial and specific missions function more like shooter puzzles to figure out exactly what combination leads to success. Eventually you’re leveling entire cities in pursuit of that one bug because its too inconvenient to follow the road and taking on vast armies mostly on your own as your power finally reaches the point where the aliens are no longer here to exterminate you, you’re here to exterminate them.

Disgaea I have a bit less to say on just because I need to put a bit more time into them but as someone that finds JRPGs in general hard to get into and a game I had literally never even heard of prior to picking them up cheap on a steam sale. The combat has a surprising amount of depth early on but this isn’t what makes these games special. It’s that they’re designed to be exploited by the player to become overpowered and once you figure out the tricks, the game absolutely lets you live out the power fantasy that most games don’t for fear of the player getting bored.

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I’m sure someone that’s specifically big into Japanese games will probably say these don’t count but I can tell you in the past several months of talking about them I have yet to encounter anyone that had already heard of them.

So what are your hidden gems?