Good games bought on blind buys?

[Youth N Asia]

What games have you bought out of the blue, without playing or hearing anything about it, AND they turned out really good.

 

The first one that comes to mind for me is Suikoden. I was at Funco Land and said "I need an RPG." The guy showed me that one and I bought it. Only took me 15 hours to beat, but I loved the game

[TheTomster]

Kingdom Hearts

[Guest NYankees]

Suikoden and Blood Omen Legacy of Kain were to blind buys for me. I loved each game. Kingdom Hearts cant be a blind buy. That game was getting so much hype before it came out.

[Guest NYankees]

Suikoden and Blood Omen Legacy of Kain were to blind buys for me. I loved each game. Kingdom Hearts cant be a blind buy. That game was getting so much hype before it came out.

[FroGG_NeaL]

Dark Cloud. The back of the game's box made it sound like a Zelda for PS2 type game.

 

And it was, and I loved it.

[Lightning Flik]

Back when I had a GBA, Golden Sun and Rivieria. Golden Sun I wasn't expecting to be worth as much as it was (dammit, the story needs to be finished!!!) and Rivieria was a wonderful little pocket of gold that I wasn't expecting to be so considering its a dating sim/RPG hybrid.

[Special K]

A whole ton of Square games, especially since I've bought every FF game blindly since the first (not that they were all uniformly good)

 

Suikoden

 

Rygar for PS2. It was cheap, and turned out to be a very fun sort of God of War-lite.

[Guest ABOBO]

Chakan way back in the day. Shining Force too.

[Ripper]

Brute Force. It was 7 bucks and it looked cool. Played it, thought it sucked. Played it again and got past the first 3 missions and discovered what was one of the more kickass games I have on the Xbox.

 

But the first 3 missions really really suck.

[Guest InuYasha]

Hmmm....I have a lot, myself.

 

The first .Hack game. After that, I was hooked. I was jonesing for a FF game, so I got desperate and bought Star Ocean: Till The End of Time. It was great, although Radiata Knights blew pretty hard. I bought Still Life, used. It's pretty good, but some of the puzzles are rather overdone, to the point of frustration. Golden Sun as well, for me. I got Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow, even though I hadn't played a Castlevania game since Castlevania 64. It rocked.

[AndrewTS]

I disagree that Kingdom Hearts doesn't qualify as a "blind buy."

 

Do you honestly remember what the impressions were at the time?

 

We were seeing screens of this game coming out of Japan with some spikey-haired punk interacting with FF characters, yanking Pooh's fat ass out of a rabbit hole, and fighting doofy-looking inkblots. On top of it all, that utter hack nomura was heading the project. The entire idea was borne out of a disney exec and a square exec getting in an elevator and brainstorming the most blatant, contrived, and illogical gaming tie-in imaginable.

 

And it worked. By some mad miracle we got not one, but two great games out of it. It softened up one of the most bitter, square-hating folks I know into a blind buy...and "my jaw never left the floor."

 

Okay, it got good reviews, but every square RPG gets good reviews. That doesn't mean we all have/should have high expectations of quality.

 

Obscure: Survival horror meets The Faculty. The voice acting is just precious, too. It's like someone played resident evil 1 for the first time and thought "good, but the dialogue isn't campy *enough*!" The gameplay is hot too. Where else can two people team up in a horror game and beat monsters to death with blunt objects?

 

However, I rarely have blind buys since i usually deeply research my game purchases, but a lot of games i like are unheard-of games for most folks.

[TheTomster]

It does for me, as I don't really like that genre of games and stuff. But I was bored and wanted to try something new and got it and actually quite liked it

[Masked Man of Mystery]

In a way, Metal Gear Solid 2 was a blind buy for me, as I had never played the first one at all(still need to pick up Twin Snakes, now that I think of it) or anything of the sort, had only read like one review of it that was fairly vague because they didn't want to give away too much of the story, and hey, I had a blast playing it. I also bought Summoner 2 for PS2 not knowing it was the same game as Summoner for GC, it was my first PS2 game because it was $5 at the time. FFX was largely the same case as MGS, I had read a review when it came out, but that was back when I just had a Cube. Ribbit King was probably the truest "knew nothing about it" game I've bought recently, it just suddenly popped up in my store, it was $10, and while not great, is pretty fun. Oh...I suppose Fifa 2004 too, I picked that up used just because I wanted a new soccer game and EB didn't have any copies of Winning Eleven. I guess I'll edit in anything else that comes to mind...

[naiwf]

Skies of Arcadia for the Dreamcast. Space Pirates + RPG + ship to ship battles = awesomeness.

[Guest Princess Leena]

Skies of Arcadia for me, too. If it counts, since DC games were dirt cheap by then, and I just got a ton of them.

 

For XBox, KOTOR. I was desperate for an RPG, and figured I'd really hate it since Star Wars shit bores me to death. Very pleasant surprise there.

[KingPK]

Freedom Fighters (PS2). I knew the story of the game (The Soviets invade modern day NYC), but I wasn't aware it was a squad-based shooter (I thought it was just a regular 3rd person). It's a pretty damn solid game for the $20 I dropped on it.

[haws bah gawd]

The best blind buy I can think of is actually Clock Tower 3. I had never played any of the other games in the series, but I was very impressed with this. I enjoyed the holy water system, and the game had above average graphics for the time. Not to mention, the cinemas were quite good. It was worth every penny of the $14.99 I paid for it.

[chirs3]

Bombastic and Technic Beat both come to mind.

[Fökai]

Let me preface this by saying I had never had a strong desire to play any of the 2D versions of Grand Theft Auto. When a large group of my friends (on a road trip for HS basketball) walked into our local Game Crazy, we were there to simply see what was being demoed that weekend. All of the consoles were unoccupied, but there was a small group of teens surrounding the store manager at the register. He fired up the PS2 in the display and we got our first glimpse of Grand Theft Auto 3. I think the only one who knew about it beforehand was one of the employees and he was begging to play it. My first thought was "it's in 3D now? and my second thought was "holy shit! That was cool" as we watched our first carjacking being done by a "Mr. Corporate" store manager who was now reduced to a giddy eight-year-old. I was the only one in my group with more than $40.00 on hand, so I scrounged for the rest and picked it up.

 

That is the defining moment of my experiences with the last generation of consoles. The look on that manager's face is still one of the greatest things I've ever seen.

[EricMM]

Final Fantasy Legends for gameboy

 

Suikoden, of course.

 

Thats about it.

 

I, by definition, do not "buy blind"

[King Cucaracha]

Lumines. Hadn't read about it, didn't pay huge attention to releases and it came as a cheap package with the PSP when I got it.

[ChrisMWaters]

Ogre Battle or whatever that Enix RPG was called for the SNES.

 

...technically it was a blind rental, but we just kept renting and renting it until we bought it.

[NoCalMike]

Jak & Dexter AND Ratchet & Clank.........I already had sports game, shooters, strategy, stealth etc...I was looking for games that just looked fun to play....games that define FUN....so I was at Frys and both these games were in the Greatest Hits section. I hadn't read much, but figured they were probably Crash Bandicoot updates.....bought 'em....loved both series ever since.

[the max]

For the Genesis, Gunstar Heroes.

[Special K]

Yeah, on that note, I've bought some Treasure games simply because they were Treasure games. Bangai-O in particular comes to mind.

[tominator89]

I remember back in the day getting a free copy of Dragon Warrior for renewing my Nintendo Power subscription. That was cool.

[Smartly Pretty]

that Indiana Jones game for SNES.

[KingPK]

Another for me was the original You Don't Know Jack for the PC. I saw it somewhere for like $10 and picked it up because I liked trivia games. I bought volumes 2 and 3 and Movies (though I don't know if I lost that one or what) and they've been pretty good party games for years.

[Vampiro69]

Tecmo's Deception for the PS1. You got to capture people who broke into your home and either sacrifice them or kill them.

[FroGG_NeaL]

I remember back in the day getting a free copy of Dragon Warrior for renewing my Nintendo Power subscription. That was cool.

 

 

Dragon Warrior was one of many blind buys for me. I love those games.

 

The majority of games I own were bought out of the VG clearance bin they use to have at KB Toys, so damn near all were blind buys.