Xenogears wasn’t that high profile, it didn’t even get a European release. I doubt that all the FFVII fanboys even know of Xenogears despite being developed by Square. Though I’ve played it and loved every bit of it I wouldn’t put it up there with Panzer Dragoon Saga but it was damn good and surely deserved more attention than it got and a European release. But I guess Square was busy pimping their Final Fantasy titles instead. Shame. It certainly has a place among my favorites alongside the likes of Grandia and Skies of Arcadia. Though it was quite short it had great atmosphere and in many scenes gave off a vibe similar to the PD games… Kinda.
Neither did Chrono Trigger or Chrono Cross, and those were reasonably high profile (especially when they came out). Xenogears still managed to sell something like 110k units in the US (I think it hit 1million units worldwide), which was a good bit more than Panzer Dragoon Saga. Also, it helped that it came out on a system that wasn’t damn near dead in the US.
Considering it was published by Squaresoft, came out on the most popular console, got loads of mainstream coverage, and was actually advertised…I’d say that Xenogears was quite a bit higher profile than PDS.
[quote=“roushimsx”]
Neither did Chrono Trigger or Chrono Cross, and those were reasonably high profile (especially when they came out). Xenogears still managed to sell something like 110k units in the US (I think it hit 1million units worldwide), which was a good bit more than Panzer Dragoon Saga.[/quote]
That’s a little out of context, considering only 70k-odd PDS units were manufactured for the North American territory. And every single one of them was bought.
And being ‘higher profile than pds’ doesn’t really mean much in terms of, err… high profile-ness 
I kind of agree with that overrated list… Of the games on it, I played 9. Shenmue, Nights, Perfect Dark, Donkey Kong 64, Killer Instinct, Donkey Kong Country and Toshinden and I’d say none of them were particularly good and most (except Toshinden and Killer Instinct) got pretty gushy reviews.
Bit of an odd selection considering the massive numbers of off-the-mill licensed games and sequels floating around getting wonderful reviews today (or last time I could afford to read games mags regularly, anyway). But maybe that’s the point - criticising those would be too easy - most ‘old school’ gamers hate them anyway.
Others I’d add:
Virtually everything by Namco
Half Life
All the Mario games after Mario 3
The Shining Force series (sorry guys 
I can’t stand the cheesiness of it all, and the battle system was essentially an uninspired turn based strategy)
Could be interesting to do an underrated games thread considering the gaming knowledge here, though. In fact, I think I’ll start one now…
Any Mario after Mario 3 is overrated? Hmm…I haven’t played Mario 64 but I’d agree with you on the Mario 3 vs SMW debate there…SMW was a little bit too easy, compared to some of the near impossible levels on Mario 3 (World 8’s normal levels, outside of the airships, were rock hard).
Sunshine was OK, the blue coins idea sucked.
As far as I’m aware, Shining Force was the first turn based strategy game that had proper walking around sections outside of battle, which added quite a lot to the game that games like Fire Emblem don’t have. This was greatly expanded on in the sequel, Shining Force II, where you could walk from one end of the continent to the other.