10 Best Hidden Gem RPGs Of The Last 10 Years

2. Star Renegades

Greedfall game
Massive Damage, Inc.

Tactics RPGs have been a pretty hard sell to western RPG fans, who prefer to do things up close and personal. The best success stories like XCOM and Fire Emblem usually put some kind of twist on it to hook people. Star Renegades does something similar: a spin on the nemesis system from the Shadow of Mordor games, and an engaging rogue-lite progression system.

Star Renegades' Adversary System has enemy officers evolve as the game goes on, moving up in the ranks the longer they go without dying. And as your characters fall, the little robot buddy JST-1N goes to the next dimension to share combat data with the next generated batch of heroes. So even if your party completely wipes, you never truly lose progress.

As shown with games like Hades, this kind of Roguelike system is easier for mainstream audiences to get behind, since it guarantees some level of progression, and Star Renegades is as good at that balancing act as Hades is, and even better in some areas.

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Contributor

John Tibbetts is a novelist in theory, a Whatculture contributor in practice, and a nerd all around who loves talking about movies, TV, anime, and video games more than he loves breathing. Which might be a problem in the long term, but eh, who can think that far ahead?