The Most Underappreciated PS2 games Part 2
Part 1 Part 3
In my last post I took it upon myself to unearth the most influential, wonderful PS2 games that never got their due. My working definition has been: those that are well-made, creative, or important, but never got the recognition, sales, or attention they deserved—even today. Yes, these games are all either very well-made, creative or important.
This list of underappreciated PS2 games Part 2 continues, and it needs to be big because of the huge size of the PS2 library. I will continue to update this list on Part 3, out now.
Finally, heads up—I earn a small commission if you buy anything through my links. No extra cost to you, and it helps support the site!
A Tier Continued – Significant Underappreciation
Jade Cocoon 2 (2001, Genki)
I’d never heard of Jade Cocoon 2 until researching this article. Jade Cocoon 2 is a standalone sequel set centuries after the first game. You play Kahu, a rookie Cocoon Master trying to purify the Eternal Tree before the spreading Kalma (an evil force) consumes everything. The tone is lighter and more comedic than the original’s folklore-heavy story, but the stakes are still apocalyptic.
Its hook is the deep monster system: capture wild “Minions,” breed them for new skills, then fuse pairs to create hybrids. In battle, you command up to eight Minions on a rotating ring, turning them to expose different elemental sides (fire, water, earth, air) in real time. It’s like an adult Pokémon crossed with a tactical JRPG—fast, strategic, and perfectly seamless. Those fusion mechanics are still better than most modern games.
Critics loved the gameplay complexity and beautiful 3D art, but felt the dungeons were a little repetitive. Sales lagged behind the PS1 original, Genki left the series, and there have been no ports or remasters since. Jade Cocoon 2 had brilliant innovation that couldn’t find its audience but deserves recognition.
Sky Odyssey (2000, Cross/XAX Entertainment/Future Creates)
Sky Odyssey was a PlayStation 2 launch title. It pioneered a genre hybrid: a non-combat, adventure-focused flight game with a quest-driven story. Instead of dogfighting or simulating Boeing checklists, you hunt pieces of an ancient map to reach the Tower of Maximus by surviving natural disasters in the air: flying through caves, navigating storms, dodging falling rocks, and landing on moving trains.
With over 40 missions, the challenge was battling the environment rather than enemy aircraft. Reminiscent of Indiana Jones but with airplanes, the game featured weather effects and environmental physics that were very impressive for a launch window title. Critics responded well, but despite positive reviews, SO sold poorly and failed to find a large audience.
Today, adventure flight games are still incredibly rare, and SO’s unique gameplay could have started a new subgenre. The soundtrack by the composer for Shadow of the Colossus enhanced the experience, but even that couldn’t save it from obscurity.
Maximo: Ghosts to Glory (2001, Capcom)
Maximo: Ghosts to Glory proved that brutal arcade difficulty could thrive in modern 3D action-platformers. It reimagined the Ghosts ‘n Goblins formula—where armor loss signaled vulnerability and death came quickly—into a console-friendly experience with checkpoint saves, hub-world progression, and over a dozen unlockable special abilities.
Maximo forced players to manage risk with its infamous pay-to-save system, using collected souls to secure progress, power up, or gamble on survival—mechanics that prefigured the resource-based checkpoint design of later Soulslikes. Despite a major TV ad campaign and reaching Greatest Hits status, Maximo was overshadowed by more accessible platformers of the PS2 era: Jak and Daxter, Ratchet & Clank, and Sly Cooper.
Today, Maximo is largely forgotten: no ports, no digital re-releases, no inclusion in Capcom anthologies. Long before Demon’s Souls popularized “fair but unforgiving” as a guiding principle, Maximo was already doing it.
Freedom Fighters (2003, IO Interactive)
Freedom Fighters remains criminally underrated—a Cold War nightmare that deserved far more recognition.
Set in an alternate timeline where the Soviets won WWII and invaded NYC, plumber Christopher Stone becomes the legendary “Freedom Phantom” after his brother Troy gets captured. Stone builds a resistance movement by recruiting fellow fighters and liberating Soviet-controlled Manhattan locations.
What made it special was the charisma system: complete objectives to earn respect, allowing you to recruit up to 12 squad members who actually follow intelligent orders. The propaganda newsreels between missions were brilliantly satirical, showing how Soviet media spun your rebellion.
Despite its solid reviews and squad mechanics, this hidden gem got buried in a crowded shooter market. FF is pure tactical satisfaction that deserved to define squad-based combat but never got credit.
Steambot Chronicles (2006, Irem)
Remember that quirky PS2 adventure where you roll through seaside towns in steam-powered mechs, jam onstage with a jazz band, and take a personality quiz that changes how everyone talks to you? That’s Steambot Chronicles, released by the studio behind R-Type.
This first entry in a planned series let you romance multiple partners while seamlessly switching between mech combat, rhythm games, and life simulation—all without loading screens. Critics liked it, but it underperformed commercially, and Irem quietly axed the entire franchise after the 2011 Tōhoku tsunami disrupted their operations.
Years before heavyweights like Skyrim let you wander off the story path, Steambot was already handing you the keys: pick side jobs, tinker with your customizable “Trotmobile,” decide whether to be a hero or a scoundrel, and literally rock out through rhythm-game concerts. The game still feels fresh today, but no mainstream devs cited it, and its innovations were quietly left behind. A small fanbase keeps the flame alive, with YouTube essays calling it “the best game nobody played.”
Crimson Sea 2 (2004, Koei)
Crimson Sea 2 is a sci‑fi action adventure where operatives Sho and Feanay lead dozens of missions across a war‑torn star system to root out a growing alien threat and the human conspiracies enabling it. They protect colonies, uncover who’s orchestrating the outbreaks, and wield psionic abilities to turn the tide.
A sequel to the Xbox original it fused fast third‑person shooting, stylish melee combat, and light RPG upgrades into a smoother, more expansive campaign. Players alternate between Sho and Feanay across missions, and can trigger a bullet‑time‑style “time extend” in single‑player. The game adds split‑screen co‑op, versus, and challenge modes, but the campaign is really the focus.
Reception was solid: critics liked the hybrid combat, pacing, and improvements to controls and camera, but didn’t care for the repetitive objectives and voice work. Koei put its marketing muscle into Dynasty Warriors, but CS2 deserved it too. The series later showed up digitally as a PS2 Classic, but never received a modern remaster. CS2 didn’t break out liked it could have, but it’s a polished, space‑opera brawler that was easy to miss and is easier to appreciate in hindsight.
Siren (2003, Sony)
Siren deserves way more love than it gets. Created by Silent Hill director Keiichiro Toyama, this PS2 exclusive introduced innovations no other horror game attempted, like “Sightjacking,” which let you see through enemies’ eyes using real-time facial capture.
Its nonlinear story unfolded across 10+ characters with overlapping timelines, creating a surreal nightmare steeped in Japanese folklore—one that many Western players struggled to understand. Critics acknowledged the ambition but the unforgiving stealth design, where a single mistake meant restarting long segments, alienated casual players.
Siren flopped in North America, and its sequel, Blood Curse, shared the same fate. Today, cult horror fans and YouTubers call it one of the best horror games ever made, while major outlets still ignore it. Its psychological tension, directional audio mechanics, and refusal to rely on cheap jump scares feel like a blueprint for modern indie horror. This isn’t just a forgotten game—it’s a landmark horror experience that most players never even heard of.
Downhill Domination (2003, Incog Inc)
Downhill Domination is more than just a blast to play. This title, from the developers of Twisted Metal: Black, stood out in the crowded extreme sports scene by adapting car combat physics to high-speed mountain biking across nine distinct mountains.
Players could upgrade attacks by performing tricks, creating a unique risk-reward system where showboating made you more dangerous in mid-race combat. Critics recognized the innovation, extolling its unique flavor in a market full of skateboarding clones. However, the unexpected violence and combat focus alienated both family-friendly extreme sports fans and car combat enthusiasts expecting vehicular mayhem.
It never earned Greatest Hits status, and quickly faded to bargain bins. Today, complete copies sell for under $25, with no digital re-releases or modern ports. Despite a loyal cult following, major gaming outlets have generally overlooked it in retrospective coverage. That’s why DD is here: innovative design, critical respect, but abandoned by the market and mainstream memory.
SkyGunner (2002, PixelArts)
SkyGunner brought something few others had attempted: translating the intensity and visual precision of 2D shoot-’em-ups into fully 3D aerial combat. With innovations like a target-focused camera system and crash avoidance mechanics, it tackled a long-standing design challenge—making chaotic dogfights manageable and cinematic.
Critics recognized its ambition, but the game flopped commercially and quickly vanished from store shelves. For over 20 years, SkyGunner remained locked to aging hardware with no ports or re-releases, effectively lost to time. Even its 2024 resurrection via PlayStation Plus Premium didn’t generate the retrospectives or critical reappraisals you’d expect from such a title.
Its steampunk-anime look, multi-character dogfight system, and mechanical vision were never adopted by other developers, and remain uncelebrated outside enthusiast circles. It wasn’t just overlooked—it was abandoned by history, despite showing what 3D shooters could have become.
Ring of Red (2001, Konami)
Ring of Red is another example of critical acclaim colliding with commercial neglect. Released in 2001, it earned love from major outlets: GameSpot called it “easily the best strategy game on the PS2 at this time.” Set in an alternate Cold War-era Japan, the game’s Armored Fighting Walkers are inspired by WWII German military designs instead of the typical anime mechs.
Its mature political story and deep strategy mechanics made it unique at the time, but poor sales and limited distribution doomed it. Ring of Red saw a brief second life as a PS3 Classic re-release in 2011, but this edition was delisted by 2014 and remains unavailable on modern platforms.
Despite its technical innovations and quality, it left no documented influence on subsequent games, and its sophisticated design has remained unrecognized outside specialist circles. Retrospective coverage continues to label Ring of Red as “forgotten” and “criminally overlooked.” Do yourself a favor, grab it off eBay or Lukie Games.
Robot Alchemic Drive (2002, Sandlot)
Back in late 2002, Robot Alchemic Drive (RAD) arrived on PlayStation 2 screens with a new idea: don’t hop inside your mech, I want you commanding it from the streets below.
Unlike most mech games—Zone of the Enders, Armored Core—RAD emphasized indirect control and urban destruction from a civilian’s perspective. Players manually pilot skyscraper-sized robots via remote control, navigating urban battlefields with realistic inertia, weight, and animation-based movement.
Critics rewarded this twist with a 79 on Metacritic, and EGM and GameZone praised its take on mech combat. But despite its revolutionary dual-layer design—juggling human positioning and remote machine warfare—with poor U.S. sales and virtually no collector hype at launch, it hardly sold at all. Its external-pilot mechanic has gone unused by developers.
Second Sight (2004, Free Radical Design)
Second Sight delivered a mix of third-person action, stealth, and psychic abilities in a conspiracy-driven thriller. You, John Vattic, are an amnesiac unraveling a government plot through reality-shifting flashbacks and powers like telekinesis, possession, and astral projection.
Released in 2004, it launched alongside Psi-Ops and just before Half-Life 2. Its psychic powers received acclaim for how seamlessly they integrated with both the gameplay and the story, culminating in a stomach-swiveling twist later echoed in BioShock.
Despite critical praise and its inclusion in “1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die,” the game sold modestly and faded into semi-obscurity, due to marketing and a crowded release schedule on the PS2. Today, it only has a few niche retrospectives labeling it as underrated, and the absence of modern ports or remasters forces players to seek it out on original hardware or through emulation.
Klonoa 2: Lunatea’s Veil (2001, Namco)
Klonoa 2: Lunatea’s Veil is a prime example of how excellence doesn’t guarantee recognition. This platformer earned a stellar Metacritic score of 91(!), but failed commercially worldwide.
The game follows the dream traveler Klonoa through the world of Lunatea, divided into four kingdoms representing different emotions: joy, indignation, tranquility, and discord. Players navigate beautifully crafted 2.5D levels that blend side-scrolling gameplay with 3D camera work, using Klonoa’s signature “Wind Bullet” ability to grab enemies as projectiles and platforms. The story builds to a surprisingly emotional conclusion about balance, dreams, and sacrifice.
Despite pioneering innovative 2.5D design techniques and earning universal praise from reviewers, the game generated virtually zero industry influence and has been largely absent from mainstream hidden gem retrospectives–that’s why I’m covering it. Even its 2022 re-release in the Klonoa Phantasy Reverie Series couldn’t erase the fundamental tragedy: one of platforming’s genuine masterpieces somehow slipped through the cracks of gaming history, remembered by critics and the few who played it, but invisible to the broader gaming public that missed out on something special.
Shadow of Destiny (2001, Konami)
Shadow of Destiny represents a perfect example of how innovative storytelling can earn critical praise yet still slip into obscurity.
The game follows Eike Kusch, an ordinary man caught in a deadly loop: he keeps getting murdered by mysterious assailants, only to be saved by a supernatural entity who grants him time-travel abilities. Using a device called the Digipad, players jump between four different periods in the same German town—from the medieval 1580s to the early 1900s, 1980s, and 2001—to prevent Eike’s death by altering past events. The ingenious mechanic requires navigating complex cause-and-effect relationships across centuries, with eight different endings based on your choices.
What makes SoD’s underappreciation remarkable is how its innovative time travel storytelling predated many later games that would use similar concepts, but it generated virtually no industry influence. Despite critical recognition for its unique narrative approach, the game has been mostly absent from retrospectives and has never received a modern re-release—a creative adventure that deserved a much larger audience than it found.
Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy (2003, Eurocom)
Sometimes, timing buries a great game. Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy is a perfect example. It combined Zelda-style adventuring with puzzle-platforming but never found the audience it deserved.
The campaign is split between two very different heroes. Sphinx, a demigod warrior, tackled combat-driven quests across Egypt, chasing stolen relics. His unlikely partner, Tutankhamen, returned as a bandaged mummy, stumbling through slapstick puzzle challenges by setting himself on fire, flattening through grates, or literally falling apart to flip switches. The contrast kept the pacing engaging and highlighted Eurocom’s smart design.
Critics were impressed; the game was praised for its art direction and dual-protagonist structure. Players, though, generally overlooked it. THQ reported sluggish sales, and it disappeared from charts. Since then, only a few retrospectives have surfaced to call it the hidden gem it is. Fans remain loyal—its Steam release holds a 94% “Very Positive” rating—and while HD ports on PC and Switch keep it accessible, its moment in the spotlight never came.
Head on to Part 3 to see more.
Tier B – Underappreciated Honorable Mentions
- Zone of the Enders: The 2nd Runner delivers some of the most spectacular and fluid mech combat ever created.
- Shinobi. This game created the ultimate high-risk, high-reward action system that was too hardcore for most players to appreciate.
- Gitaroo Man. This game fused rhythm and action gaming in a way that’s never been replicated, I don’t think.
- Valkyrie Profile 2: Silmeria. It’s here because despite taking JRPG battle animation and real-time/turn-based hybrid combat to new heights, all anyone remembers is the first game.
- Grandia III. G3 created the smoothest, most elegant JRPG combat engine on the PS2, period.