There were a bunch of obscure RPGs I played as a kid that I rarely ever meet anyone else who played them.
Robotrek (Could not find a better picture of its US box art), or Slapstick in Japan, was an interesting one. The protagonist never participates in battle, instead he builds and upgrades robots to fight for him. It also had an item creation system, I always liked the fact that you can make an axe by combining a sword with a hammer. The first axe can actually destroy the game's difficulty up until around a third of the way through the game, it was strangely very strong. The game is mostly humorous and colorful, which is reflected on its Japanese box art, but the US box art instead has an ominous shot of the final dungeon.
The 7th Saga, or Elnard in Japan, has you choose one of seven protagonists, each with their own stats and spells. The goal is to find the seven runes scattered throughout the world. The characters not chosen could be encountered throughout the game, and at one point one of them will use one of the runes to take over a city as its dictator, which one is randomized each playthrough although because the dialogue is set for this part it will never be Esuna (The sole female character, the dialogue refers to the character as male) or Lux (WHO IS A ROBOT WHO TALKS IN ALL CAPS). The localization for some unknown reason cut stat growths, but only if the character is in the party, since you can add one of the non-chosen characters as a partner it's entirely possible they could wind up significantly stronger than the protagonist. This also makes the aforementioned city dictator part much more difficult, because that character will be the same level as the protagonist but with stats based on the original Japanese growths. The Japanese box art was so much better, it's a cool shot of several of the main characters instead of the vague warrior-looking figure in a pink light.
Quest 64, or Holy Magic Century in European regions and Eltale Monsters in Japan, is one of the few RPGs released for the Nintendo 64. It's also very clearly not finished. It has an interesting element system where you level up not the protagonist Brian, but his elements instead, which lets you learn new spells of that element. You can also combine elements for various effects. It's just that a majority of the spells range from extremely inefficient to downright useless. And earth magic is OP, so usually you're better off leveling it and a bit of water for the healing spell. The game was supposed to have a party system, and early in the game you can meet a princess NPC who has an oddly detailed model and a visible sword, but because of the aforementioned unfinished nature of the game, she just stands there and never joins the party. Brian has to go on his journey solo. I don't know why the US box art makes Brian look so much older, he's like 9. The Japanese box art and name make it look like some sort of creature collector-type game even though there's nothing like that in gameplay at all.
These all look awesome, 7th Saga I may have played or I know of it at least.
Don't think I've heard of any of the others, sounds like they were a good time though, glad someone got to play them and get their enjoyment out of them.
More than someone obviously, just the one that I know of here now.
