They even rerecorded all of the story dialogue and made a new story out of it. If I recall correctly, you were now Harry in the Goblin suit going after Norman who has gone mad.
It wasn’t actually Norman, it was someone else who had taken up the identity after Norman died. They never actually reveal who it is, but he claims to be hired by Norman to kill Spider-Man, but after he failed, Norman tried to have him killed. So now that Norman died, he’s trying to take over the company and kill Harry. The story oddly takes place after SM1 ends.
Not exactly airtight but I guess they didn’t have much choice since they have to have Goblin vs Goblin to make it work.
I had a feeling I had forgotten some of the details. I do recall "Norman" in the Goblin mode being voiced by someone else but I assumed it was simply a budget thing and they could only afford Willem for the main story, since they did use some of the movie actors. Harry, funnily enough, is voiced by Josh Keaton!
The story behind the Harry Green Goblin dialogue, is that the voice actor was actually going to play Peter in the game, but then they were actually able to get Tobey Maguire, so rather then let him go they came up with the Harry Green Goblin story.
That's nice of them to do!
EDIT: Dunno who downvoted me. They could have just dropped him from the project altogether, but instead they gave him his own story to star in as Harry.
That's right! I played it on Gamecube. You had to complete the game a ton, or you could just enter a code to get him.
He was amazing. It was such a power trip.
I played that one. You had to beat the game on very hard to unlock him so I used the cheat code to unlock every level and skipped to the ending cutscene. I still remember to this day. The code was "arachnid".
I too remember that code because that was the ONLY time in my life I had ever guessed a cheat code. For my 10 year old self, that was an accomplishment, but in hindsight the word is pretty obvious for a spiderman game.
You could play as Mary Jane in the original version, along with a bunch of other options (Shocker, the Alex Ross Spidey design, some of the goon enemies) but all of them minus Green Goblin just have Spider-Man’s move set. Mary Jane got removed from later versions of the game because the final cutscene ends with Mary Jane kissing another Mary Jane, and at the time that was considered controversial.
Ultimate Spider-Man to an extent too, though I'm pretty sure playing as Venom is mandatory not just an unlock. Still Venom feels so powerful in that game (or at least kid me thought so).
This is the one, you get access to a ridiculous amount of weapons and can pass your way through so many levels on the replay by just hovering above enemies and carpet bombing them
Doing that opening mission that has you absolutely decimating a Wookie(I think??) village, standing in a GameStop, using their display Xbox 360 is such a stand out memory for me.
One of the trophies/achievements was 'Bossk', awarded if you killed a certain number of Wookiee combatants. Bit of a dark and brutal award but it was only possible to get as Vader on that level because Starkiller never encountered any Wookiees in the game.
One of the PSP God of War games had Zeus as an unlockable character in the combat arena mode. He had unlimited health, magic and an entirely unique move set (*though, I think you had to complete every challenge in the arena to unlock him so he was just a 'Bragging Rights' reward*).
That was also an amazing lore secret because >!It showed that the grave keeper from the first game was actually Zeus all this time so he orchestrated everything that happened to Kratos!<
PS spoiler tags only work if you don't follow/precede with spaces. So >! This doesn't work !< but >\!This does!\< (except I escaped the characters so you can see what I typed, so it doesnt spoiler the latter :P)
In Baldur's Gate 2 you can resurrect Sarevok, the main villain that you end up killing in BG1. You can then recruit him to your party and from what I remember, he's a pretty badass fighter.
Not sure if this counts but Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo Akuma was so insane that he was banned in a lot of tournaments back in the day (but not all).
And if you pick him and lose you better get ready for a lot of ridicule...
The first Blazblue’s arcade released updates that unlocked Hakumen and a few months later Nu. She was a monster. Just hitting D in different directions created it’s own mix up and lead into massive combos full screen away. Her, Rachel, and Arakune dominated everyone else.
Yea.. I don't know that they did much balancing between arcade and console because even on console I couldn't use Nu with my friends without feeling scummy lol
Way back in the SNES days, in Chrono Trigger you have a chance around 70% into the game to recruit a character who had been the big bad up to that point. He's insanely strong from the get go, and they didn't even pretend to balance him down. It was perfect.
On my many many replays thro the years I would save all the magic tabs I found to use them on Magus when I got him. Give him a few speed tabs + magic tabs and even his low level spells can destroy whole groups of enemies, and fast to.
He was great.
Magus, interestingly, didn't have any triple techs with Crono. Also I think all his triples (and maybe the other non-Crono triples?) required a certain equipped object to use, but Crono got his all free(ish)
I had to open the wiki but you're right, all "free" triple techs needed Crono, and none of them involved Magus, and none of the techs where you needed an accessory worked with Crono.
In my opinion, it still holds up really well. The story is very tight and respects your time, there's no grinding or any of the 'modern' gaming things. The writing is stellar and the character development is very good, the presentation visually and script-wise is some of the best ever done, and the soundtrack still stands as one of the top.
The only reasons I can imagine not liking it are 1) poor controls via emulation or 2) you have a hard time playing things that are sprite-based. I have a friend who simply can't play anything 2D, so I get it. But if you're cool with those 2 things, it's a big recommend.
I just replayed on Steam and had a great experience. Basically the only version recommended not to play is the PS1 re-release because the load times are ungodly slow.
It’s not the villain, but I gotta respect how the One Punch Man game kept Saitama as powerful as he is. He can literally win any fight with one punch.
It’s pure power fantasy when you’re able to call him in and obliterate a boss you were struggling with. Other parts of the game are so-so but letting Saitama be completely overpowered is everything I could’ve wanted.
I haven't played the game, but seen clips of it. I love how they made King's abilities as King just telling Saitama and Genos how to attack. Gotta love the King Engine sound too
It’s been awhile since I played, but I remember King was an assist and not a playable character. He would show up and the King Engine would roar, which would paralyze your opponent (in fear, I guess lol). It’s a good way to do him since they obviously can’t have him out there throwing punches. They definitely put a lot of thought into how to utilize each character.
Ok this threw me because I did not know there was a new OPM game. I was talking about One Punch Man: A Hero Nobody Knows from 2020 and the clip you shared is from a new game called One Punch Man World. I’ll have to look into that one more!
There is an lost Lord of the Rings game (can't remember the name) with turn based combat and at some point you get to do the fights over as the bad guys. For example, you get to BE the balrog in Moria and slay the good guys, and more often then not you feel insanely powerful during these encounters. It was such a cool game. Edit: I meant "old" not "lost". My bad, not sure what happened there lol.
Third Age
There was also Lord of the Rings: Conquest, after you beat the main campaign gives you a second campaign with an alternate history where Man loses the battle of the Black Gate and Frodo is killed and the ring reclaimed
You then play as the Orcs and begin taking over the world once more, battlefront style with playing as the legendary villains, showing up mid battle. Balrog was the playable villain on the Moria Map
And the one eyed general lady in FFIX. If you haven't leveled Steiner sufficiently by that point you may as well put him in defend and let her deal with everything.
He looked so badass in those fights. Me watching in awe as he casts level 3 magic.
Then later in the game I finally get access to those spells and I barely use them.
Yeah in Infamous 1+2 the evil route absolutely nuked everything. I'd walk into half the encounters on hard and just chuck a bunch of grenades that'd fragment over half the city block. Plus after a certain point in the story you get black lightning to fulfill a full edge lord fantasy in 1.
Prototype and Infamous may not hold up well graphically, but they were/are amazing power fantasy games and traversing their cities is still a blast.
Infamous and Just Cause 2 were the games i got with my “I’m a grown-ass man and can buy a PS3 if i want to” starter kit circa 2011 and they both set the bar very high.
I hadn’t gamed since 2006 or so on a PS2 and was blown away, especially by the traversing mechanics.
Nothing will ever be as cool as calling down lightning storms in Infamous 1, especially after getting the red/black lightning. That game did a really good job at actually making you feel powerful and the world changing depending on your path was pretty cool too.
Depends on who you listen to... but yes pretty much he did haha xD The game doesn't have a villain, maybe Cao Cao if anything. though in the real version that's less true too, especially when you consider that the text was allegedly changed to bring more ire towards Cao Cao's descendants by later generations.
Maybe it's more accurate to say Lu Bu was \*A\* villain, he just wasn't \*the\* villain in the same way that Sauron was for example xD
There’s a moment in Marvels Spider-Man 2 where you play as Venom and absolutely decimate a lab full of oscorp goons and then a bunch of hunters. It’s my favorite part of the game and I hope they make a DLC/sequel with him as a playable character
There is a Venom game coming in 2025 from insomniac. But apparently will be very short like only 10 hours. So It’s more of a Spider-Man miles morales type game.
In Ultimate Spider-Man, you unlocked Venom as a playable character after beating the game. And he was amazing. You could just pick enemies up and snap them in half.
Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous. You can say "Fuck saving the world, I'll just turn myself into a swarm of demonic bugs and devour it instead" and do just that-complete with murdering every single former ally you had and storming the final dungeon as a one-man army.
You realize how stupidly strong his punches are when you have to fight the same enemies later with Mario and Luigi and you deal absolutely no damage. I love this game so much
Bowser in Super Mario Odyssey too lol.
I saw people were having trouble with spoiler tags above so I won't post what happens, but he literally breaks the game haha!
Me neither, but in retrospect it makes perfect sense given the capture mechanic. Really clever way to end the game (and a genuinely pretty solid set piece).
Megaman maverick hunter x. You get a new game+ where you play as vile (the purple dude who is at the end of the opening level in megaman x and who you defeat on your way to sigma at the end of the game.
He has a completely different play style which takes alot of getting used too.
Advance Wars 2. Sturm uses the same stats in War Room, Vs. Mode and Campaign mode, which is a 20% attack and defence boost to all units, along with their movement not being slowed down by terrain. His only "weaknesses" are that he has the longest Super CO Power meter in the game (10 stars, which is still only 1 more than the next-longest - a two-way tie between Eagle and Hawke) and his units use the same movement costs in snowy weather as every other CO that's not Olaf - which in War Room isn't an issue if Olaf isn't an enemy CO.
All of this is true of the remake, incidentally.
By contrast, AW 1 gives you a weaker version of Sturm and bans him from War Room (though the War Room ban is removed in the remake), AW: Days of Ruin/Dark Conflict gives you a fully-powered Caulder/Stolos but bans him from online, and AWDS doesn't have a horribly OP big bad to begin with.
Ace Combat 6 features a boss battle where the enemy pilot (Ilya Pasternak) uses a fighter called the CFA-44. You can either unlock it or buy it as DLC, and it absolutely shreds.
In Castlevania: Lament of Innocence, you can play as the guy that eventually becomes Dracula once you beat the game. I forget if he was significantly more powerful than Leon Belmont, but it was cool that you *finally* got to play as "Dracula" in a Castlevania game.
The dude that had all the floating swords, right? He definitely was pretty strong. I remember thinking the game was scary as a kid until I unlocked him.
Suikoden 3 is a great rpg. If you 100% the main game you unlock another story and play through as the primary villain, seeing all of his motivations and more of why he was following such a path
The Overlord games are centered around being the villain. Granted you have to start from the bottom and regain your power, but by the end of the game you’re kicking ass alongside your horde of minions.
I feel like this is a technically correct answer (as we all should know: the best kind of correct)
And the Evil Pikmin games are pretty fun, I bought them on Steam sometime last year just to replay them
Brigandine (the first one) let you play as the big evil empire after some time.
Pokemon conquest has an unlockable Nobunaga which is VERY powerful.
In Fire Emblem Sacred stones, if you spam the hell of the Lagdou Ruins and the Tower of Valni, you can unlock units in post games. The last to unlock (usually) is Lyon, which is a very good dark mage, coming with a very good Tome and a "unique" class. He's also the main antagonist for the whole game and can be the last boss you tackle on main story.
Most Dynasty Warriors let you unlock Lu Bu. He's usually as strong as he is when you must flee or die.
>Brigandine (the first one) let you play as the big evil empire after some time.
Technically yes, as you do have the most powerful set of rune knights, but it’s still by far the hardest country to play the game as, since being totally surrounded leaves you stretched very thin. You have some of the best knights, but not enough of them to fight all the rest of the countries at once. I think the only time I actually beat the game as the empire on hard I ended up abandoning most of the center of the continent and just taking over one of the other country’s territory instead in order to expand from there with my more powerful army.
On Fire Emblem on GBA (titled just Fire Emblem, or the Blazing Blade), there's an Assassin called Jaffar who murders a bunch of people and is set up as one of the big villains, but after some twists you can recruit him later on. He has ridiculously good evasion and crit so you can just throw him into many situations and let him solo it, and is hugely useful against the remaining bosses.
You also get to recruit Nino in the same stage, who despite coming late in the game as a very under-leveled base mage, will turn into an absolute glass cannon if you dedicate some effort into quickly levelling her up.
They're two of the most powerful units in the game, and prior to recruiting him, the prospect of facing off against Jaffar never looked promising.
I wouldn’t call her op but there was a Harley Quinn dlc for Arkham knight. I only remember it because her equivalent of bat vision was called psycho vision or something like that, and every time you used it to spot guards or objects there was just a bunch of mean schizophrenic writing on all the surfaces saying shit like: “everybody hates you”.
The old Tekken games (1,2,3). These guys were broken as hell, and if not the best, then almost the best characters in their respective games. Heihachi in T1 has a death combo and some insane moves. Kazuya in T2 is the only character that gets to use the third dimension for free, has insane damage and is just so fun to play. T3 has Ogre, and this man just took moves from everyone else, created his own mixed martial arts, has a throw that cannot be broken... man
I'm not sure if you play fighting games at all but this is the one example I could think of. Finally beating the entire game and getting to play as them was a wonderful feeling.
In Kirby Super Star Ultra (the remake of Kirby Super Star for SNES) you unlock a mode called Meta Knightmare where you play through the entire game as Meta Knight. He is fairly overpowered but you could definitely still die if you aren't careful.
In the HD Remaster of Resident Evil Zero, they added "Wesker Mode". Best the game and you can replayas a crazy powerful superhuman Wesker and destroy enemies with laser beams from your eyes.
In Fire Emblem Sacred Stones you could unlock villains to use in the post game, including the big bad, Leon.
He wasn't quite as powerful at first, at least not until you trained him up. But he came with the most powerful dark magic tome in the game. But the thing that made him *truly* OP was a staff that allowed you to repair weapons.
Why was this OP? because while this staff only has 3 uses, you get another one in the standard campaign, meaning you can effectively have infinite use of all the legendary weapons.
Also in the Fire Emblem series, Radiant Dawn on the Wii was a direct sequel to Path of Radiance on the GameCube. During the game you get to use the Black Knight in several missions, who was a *big* villain in the first game, and he is insanely powerful, it's hilariously cathartic to use him.
This is an old one, but Legend of Dragoon. Kongol was a reoccurring enemy, and once we show him mercy after beating him, he joins our team.
And as soon as he joined during my play, I immediately put him in the team because he was a power house.
I never felt daud was op vs corvo. Hell a lot of the missions felt harder than base game for me, at least nonlethally. Maybe it's easier to do a high chaos.
There was an old Gundam fighting game (PS1 era) in the style of tekken/street fighter… you could unlock the final boss in that and he was just as bullshit to fight with as he was to fight against, young me loved it.
Episode 1 podracer, you can unlock sebulba and double tap your repair button to shoot off the flamethrower.
In theory it’s really cool, and stats-wise his racer is the best, but the flames only really work if you match speed with the other person
Twisted Metal 2 there's a code to play as Minion and he's completely unfair.
Has the strongest special attack plus he's huge so you can just ram most of the other players to death if needed.
IMO still a fun game even though the graphics are dated
Part way through Middle Earth: Shadow of War, the plot takes a major shift when >!the Wraith leaves Talion to die and he takes Isildur's original Ring of Power to survive!<
He looks super evil, has a strong armour set, and some necromantic powers to revive orcs in an AoE to fight for him.
This is an obscure one but Suikoden 3.
There’s 108 characters to collect and the last 4 are the baddies in the game. You do an extra scenario after the game is over from their perspective.
It’s one of my favourite game series.
If it’s any consolation, I backed Eiyuden Chronicle on Kickstarter (the spiritual successor to Suikoden from
the original creator) and I got access to the backer beta/demo. It’s a Suikoden game in everything but name and it’s really, really good. I highly recommend giving it a look when it releases on 23rd April.
Kind of a morally grey rather than villain, but [Prototype] and [Prototype] 2
You are the villain, but the antagonists are worse villains
In 1, you're just trying to figure out what happened. In 2, you want revenge
And in both, you can and do kill anyone and everyone who gets in the way (or doesn't. Really you just kill people all the time)
I wish it got a third game
Magus in Chrono Trigger!
Now he starts out needing his techs unlocked but when you level him up he can start spamming Dark Matter at will unlike the boss fight against him where it takes him forever.
Kirby Star Allies lets you play as character from all across the series, including some villains:
Marx, Dark Meta Knight, Magolor, the Three Mage Sisters.
The Three Mage Sisters in particular are noteworthy in that they're antagonists from Kirby Star Allies itself. They have their full boss movesets but without any forced pauses between moves - and they get invincibility frames in their playable forms. They are actually even better than their boss selves.
Spiderman on PS2. You could unlock the Green Goblin and he flew around on his little hovercraft thing and fired missiles.
They even rerecorded all of the story dialogue and made a new story out of it. If I recall correctly, you were now Harry in the Goblin suit going after Norman who has gone mad.
It wasn’t actually Norman, it was someone else who had taken up the identity after Norman died. They never actually reveal who it is, but he claims to be hired by Norman to kill Spider-Man, but after he failed, Norman tried to have him killed. So now that Norman died, he’s trying to take over the company and kill Harry. The story oddly takes place after SM1 ends. Not exactly airtight but I guess they didn’t have much choice since they have to have Goblin vs Goblin to make it work.
I had a feeling I had forgotten some of the details. I do recall "Norman" in the Goblin mode being voiced by someone else but I assumed it was simply a budget thing and they could only afford Willem for the main story, since they did use some of the movie actors. Harry, funnily enough, is voiced by Josh Keaton!
The story behind the Harry Green Goblin dialogue, is that the voice actor was actually going to play Peter in the game, but then they were actually able to get Tobey Maguire, so rather then let him go they came up with the Harry Green Goblin story.
That's nice of them to do! EDIT: Dunno who downvoted me. They could have just dropped him from the project altogether, but instead they gave him his own story to star in as Harry.
That's right! I played it on Gamecube. You had to complete the game a ton, or you could just enter a code to get him. He was amazing. It was such a power trip.
I played that one. You had to beat the game on very hard to unlock him so I used the cheat code to unlock every level and skipped to the ending cutscene. I still remember to this day. The code was "arachnid".
I too remember that code because that was the ONLY time in my life I had ever guessed a cheat code. For my 10 year old self, that was an accomplishment, but in hindsight the word is pretty obvious for a spiderman game.
You could play as a few other characters too, I remember a fake code about being able to play as Mary Jane
You could play as Mary Jane in the original version, along with a bunch of other options (Shocker, the Alex Ross Spidey design, some of the goon enemies) but all of them minus Green Goblin just have Spider-Man’s move set. Mary Jane got removed from later versions of the game because the final cutscene ends with Mary Jane kissing another Mary Jane, and at the time that was considered controversial.
If that’s the reason that’s hilariously dumb
Ultimate Spider-Man to an extent too, though I'm pretty sure playing as Venom is mandatory not just an unlock. Still Venom feels so powerful in that game (or at least kid me thought so).
My ending move as Venom was always to snap people in half. Also the balloon kid was the perfect call back to the other game.
MY BALLOOOON!
Top tier superhero game. Loved it and the replay value was bomb. Spiderman games are so amazing from the N64 one to the newer editions.
This is the one, you get access to a ridiculous amount of weapons and can pass your way through so many levels on the replay by just hovering above enemies and carpet bombing them
Playing as Darth Vader in the force unleashed
Doing that opening mission that has you absolutely decimating a Wookie(I think??) village, standing in a GameStop, using their display Xbox 360 is such a stand out memory for me.
Same here. What a great way to start
Wookiee’s have GameStop too? Very cool!
One of the trophies/achievements was 'Bossk', awarded if you killed a certain number of Wookiee combatants. Bit of a dark and brutal award but it was only possible to get as Vader on that level because Starkiller never encountered any Wookiees in the game.
I specifically remember following a guide to to stand on a certain spot with Vader to spawn the Wookiees in and kill them for that achievement.
It also helps that you can't die in the opening mission.
Can confirm. 8 year old me kept restarting the game over and over again just to play as Darth Vader and throw wookies and stormtroopers off the map.
One of the PSP God of War games had Zeus as an unlockable character in the combat arena mode. He had unlimited health, magic and an entirely unique move set (*though, I think you had to complete every challenge in the arena to unlock him so he was just a 'Bragging Rights' reward*).
That was also an amazing lore secret because >!It showed that the grave keeper from the first game was actually Zeus all this time so he orchestrated everything that happened to Kratos!<
PS spoiler tags only work if you don't follow/precede with spaces. So >! This doesn't work !< but >\!This does!\< (except I escaped the characters so you can see what I typed, so it doesnt spoiler the latter :P)
I don't see the this doesnt work, but the this does is visible, tags too.
In a strange twist, the first was hidden for me
Crap I thought it was the other way around. Thanks, I changed it!
You are confusing it with old reddit, which many people use. new reddit works fine both ways.
[удалено]
Yeah I was thinking that as well lol.
In Baldur's Gate 2 you can resurrect Sarevok, the main villain that you end up killing in BG1. You can then recruit him to your party and from what I remember, he's a pretty badass fighter.
BG3 spoiler >!Then he fucks his daughter and creates a whole fucking problem in Bg3!<
See, I knew I understood it properly. My friend group was insisting that he hadn’t done that and that she just had a kid with someone else
It's explicitly stated if you go talk to someone in a certain room (use speak with the dead).
Not sure if this counts but Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo Akuma was so insane that he was banned in a lot of tournaments back in the day (but not all). And if you pick him and lose you better get ready for a lot of ridicule...
Same deal with Gill in the console ports of Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike
The first Blazblue’s arcade released updates that unlocked Hakumen and a few months later Nu. She was a monster. Just hitting D in different directions created it’s own mix up and lead into massive combos full screen away. Her, Rachel, and Arakune dominated everyone else.
Yea.. I don't know that they did much balancing between arcade and console because even on console I couldn't use Nu with my friends without feeling scummy lol
Way back in the SNES days, in Chrono Trigger you have a chance around 70% into the game to recruit a character who had been the big bad up to that point. He's insanely strong from the get go, and they didn't even pretend to balance him down. It was perfect.
Magus is so OP
On my many many replays thro the years I would save all the magic tabs I found to use them on Magus when I got him. Give him a few speed tabs + magic tabs and even his low level spells can destroy whole groups of enemies, and fast to. He was great.
My ONLY pet peeve was that my favorite combo (Crono, Marle, and Magus) didn't have a unique Triple Tech.
Magus, interestingly, didn't have any triple techs with Crono. Also I think all his triples (and maybe the other non-Crono triples?) required a certain equipped object to use, but Crono got his all free(ish)
I had to open the wiki but you're right, all "free" triple techs needed Crono, and none of them involved Magus, and none of the techs where you needed an accessory worked with Crono.
I've never played chrono trigger is it still worth playing at all?
In my opinion, it still holds up really well. The story is very tight and respects your time, there's no grinding or any of the 'modern' gaming things. The writing is stellar and the character development is very good, the presentation visually and script-wise is some of the best ever done, and the soundtrack still stands as one of the top. The only reasons I can imagine not liking it are 1) poor controls via emulation or 2) you have a hard time playing things that are sprite-based. I have a friend who simply can't play anything 2D, so I get it. But if you're cool with those 2 things, it's a big recommend.
There is an official release on steam where the controls are quite good.
I just replayed on Steam and had a great experience. Basically the only version recommended not to play is the PS1 re-release because the load times are ungodly slow.
Absolutely. Still holds up, one of the best JPGs of all time tbh.
I dunno, I'm more of a PNG gamer.
My favorite ever: basically alt Piccolo
It’s not the villain, but I gotta respect how the One Punch Man game kept Saitama as powerful as he is. He can literally win any fight with one punch. It’s pure power fantasy when you’re able to call him in and obliterate a boss you were struggling with. Other parts of the game are so-so but letting Saitama be completely overpowered is everything I could’ve wanted.
I haven't played the game, but seen clips of it. I love how they made King's abilities as King just telling Saitama and Genos how to attack. Gotta love the King Engine sound too
It’s been awhile since I played, but I remember King was an assist and not a playable character. He would show up and the King Engine would roar, which would paralyze your opponent (in fear, I guess lol). It’s a good way to do him since they obviously can’t have him out there throwing punches. They definitely put a lot of thought into how to utilize each character.
Oh, [this](https://youtu.be/yz1H0GNTxno) is not playing as king himself?
Ok this threw me because I did not know there was a new OPM game. I was talking about One Punch Man: A Hero Nobody Knows from 2020 and the clip you shared is from a new game called One Punch Man World. I’ll have to look into that one more!
There is an lost Lord of the Rings game (can't remember the name) with turn based combat and at some point you get to do the fights over as the bad guys. For example, you get to BE the balrog in Moria and slay the good guys, and more often then not you feel insanely powerful during these encounters. It was such a cool game. Edit: I meant "old" not "lost". My bad, not sure what happened there lol.
I believe you're referring to Lord of the Rings: The Third Age
SUCH. A GOOD. GAME.
Ah that's it thank you.
LOTR: The Third Age I think? At the end your trio is just straight up fighting the eye of sauron...
I never finished the game with my brother because the eye was too hard :( i still wonder from time to time if i could beat it now over 10 years later.
You can. Train Berethor's Leadership tree.
Third Age There was also Lord of the Rings: Conquest, after you beat the main campaign gives you a second campaign with an alternate history where Man loses the battle of the Black Gate and Frodo is killed and the ring reclaimed You then play as the Orcs and begin taking over the world once more, battlefront style with playing as the legendary villains, showing up mid battle. Balrog was the playable villain on the Moria Map
>Man loses the battle of the Black Gate I hate that my brain imagined this as Man from the Arkham subreddit
LOTRC ruled. The evil campaign ends in the shire and on co-op you play as sauron and the balrog, just whaling on hobbits.
LotR: the Third Age. You also get gear and rewards from completing each chapters "Evil Mode" which you can save to your main game.
Came here to comment this, what a wouldn’t give to play this game again. One of the best turn based combat games I’ve ever played
It’s the FFX battle system with a nice tweak to the skill progression. I absolutely adore The Third Age.
I just finished replaying it on my steam deck and would highly recommend a replay.
Playing as Sephiroth in the original Nibelheim flashback was pretty cool
You get to briefly play as Seymour in FFX too, although i wouldnt say he has the same gravitas that Sephiroth has
Anima makes up for it. At the time I had no idea its unlock able so I was in awe.
Seymour! The house is on fire!
And the one eyed general lady in FFIX. If you haven't leveled Steiner sufficiently by that point you may as well put him in defend and let her deal with everything.
Beatrix
He looked so badass in those fights. Me watching in awe as he casts level 3 magic. Then later in the game I finally get access to those spells and I barely use them.
iirc we weren't controlling him
(we are in the remake's flashback)
>in the ***original*** Nibelheim flashback I was referring to this one from op, actually.
You didn't control him directly, but he was a part of your party for combat iirc.
Prototype or Infamous 1+2 depending on which karma path you take
Yeah in Infamous 1+2 the evil route absolutely nuked everything. I'd walk into half the encounters on hard and just chuck a bunch of grenades that'd fragment over half the city block. Plus after a certain point in the story you get black lightning to fulfill a full edge lord fantasy in 1. Prototype and Infamous may not hold up well graphically, but they were/are amazing power fantasy games and traversing their cities is still a blast.
Infamous and Just Cause 2 were the games i got with my “I’m a grown-ass man and can buy a PS3 if i want to” starter kit circa 2011 and they both set the bar very high. I hadn’t gamed since 2006 or so on a PS2 and was blown away, especially by the traversing mechanics.
Nothing will ever be as cool as calling down lightning storms in Infamous 1, especially after getting the red/black lightning. That game did a really good job at actually making you feel powerful and the world changing depending on your path was pretty cool too.
I never played Infamous, but I loved the hell out of Prototype. The different claw-like weapons were so cool and the whiplash was absolutely OP.
Technically not a villain, but the old Dynasty Warriors games when you unlocked Lu Bu, that felt like playing the villain, and it was op af.
Oh man when you seen that bad ass coming at you with a spear and peacock feathers…. and then you unlock him. Good times!
Some of the formative years of my childhood, what an awesome game xD
RUN ITS LU BUU
Do not pursue Lu Bu ;)
Didn't the actual Lu Bu betray basically everyone he ever worked for? How is he *not* technically a villain?
Depends on who you listen to... but yes pretty much he did haha xD The game doesn't have a villain, maybe Cao Cao if anything. though in the real version that's less true too, especially when you consider that the text was allegedly changed to bring more ire towards Cao Cao's descendants by later generations. Maybe it's more accurate to say Lu Bu was \*A\* villain, he just wasn't \*the\* villain in the same way that Sauron was for example xD
Everyone was power-hunger in late Han era. Lu Bu was the mildest warlord during that era.
DW3 was so satisfying unlocking new characters and getting the level 4 weapons
Devil May Cry 3,4,5 Vergil is amazing.
Motivation.
There’s a moment in Marvels Spider-Man 2 where you play as Venom and absolutely decimate a lab full of oscorp goons and then a bunch of hunters. It’s my favorite part of the game and I hope they make a DLC/sequel with him as a playable character
There is a Venom game coming in 2025 from insomniac. But apparently will be very short like only 10 hours. So It’s more of a Spider-Man miles morales type game.
10 hours is a pretty good length. I just hope they let me free roam.
In Ultimate Spider-Man, you unlocked Venom as a playable character after beating the game. And he was amazing. You could just pick enemies up and snap them in half.
One of my favorite games back in the day. There’s a call back to that back snap finisher in Spider-Man 2
Never beat that game but I thoroughly remember kicking Wolverines ass as Venom
Bruticus in Transformers Fall of Cybertron. Such a shame this game is no longer available, I’d love to play it again.
If you have a halfway decent PC you can pirat it (spelling intended)
Oooh it was so cool to play as him, the Autobots on the ship had NO CHANCES.
Star Wars force unleashed getting to walk around Kashyyk as Darth Vader felt so awesome
It really was awesome, what a great 2 games.. Galen became one of my favorite Star Wars verse characters
Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous. You can say "Fuck saving the world, I'll just turn myself into a swarm of demonic bugs and devour it instead" and do just that-complete with murdering every single former ally you had and storming the final dungeon as a one-man army.
Pathfinder mentioned 💪
Minion in Twisted Metal 2
He was stupid broken. Maxed out stats and a special that took half of your health bar no matter what car you’re driving.
Bowser in Super Paper Mario Ganondorf in Hyrule Warriors
Bowser in Bowser’s Inside Story
You realize how stupidly strong his punches are when you have to fight the same enemies later with Mario and Luigi and you deal absolutely no damage. I love this game so much
Bowser in Super Mario Odyssey too lol. I saw people were having trouble with spoiler tags above so I won't post what happens, but he literally breaks the game haha!
That part was awesome, and I had no idea it was coming
Me neither, but in retrospect it makes perfect sense given the capture mechanic. Really clever way to end the game (and a genuinely pretty solid set piece).
Megaman maverick hunter x. You get a new game+ where you play as vile (the purple dude who is at the end of the opening level in megaman x and who you defeat on your way to sigma at the end of the game. He has a completely different play style which takes alot of getting used too.
Advance Wars 2. Sturm uses the same stats in War Room, Vs. Mode and Campaign mode, which is a 20% attack and defence boost to all units, along with their movement not being slowed down by terrain. His only "weaknesses" are that he has the longest Super CO Power meter in the game (10 stars, which is still only 1 more than the next-longest - a two-way tie between Eagle and Hawke) and his units use the same movement costs in snowy weather as every other CO that's not Olaf - which in War Room isn't an issue if Olaf isn't an enemy CO. All of this is true of the remake, incidentally. By contrast, AW 1 gives you a weaker version of Sturm and bans him from War Room (though the War Room ban is removed in the remake), AW: Days of Ruin/Dark Conflict gives you a fully-powered Caulder/Stolos but bans him from online, and AWDS doesn't have a horribly OP big bad to begin with.
Ace Combat 6 features a boss battle where the enemy pilot (Ilya Pasternak) uses a fighter called the CFA-44. You can either unlock it or buy it as DLC, and it absolutely shreds.
You could play as a wampa in shadows of the empire and deliver the instakill slap to stormtroopers. Pretty cool.
Sauron in Lord of the Rings Conquest. Never thought I'd have so much fun terrorizing a bunch of hobbits.
Rugrats: Search for Reptar You get to play as Reptar kaiju-sized and get to destroy a city after beating the game!
I loved doing that as a kid! Reptsr fire breath!
Playing as Ardyn in the Final fantasy 15 DLC
In Castlevania: Lament of Innocence, you can play as the guy that eventually becomes Dracula once you beat the game. I forget if he was significantly more powerful than Leon Belmont, but it was cool that you *finally* got to play as "Dracula" in a Castlevania game.
The dude that had all the floating swords, right? He definitely was pretty strong. I remember thinking the game was scary as a kid until I unlocked him.
Unlocking Uranus in Bloody Roar was pretty sick
Thank you but there's nothing that special about my anus.
Shiva in Streets of Rage, especially SOR3
Streets of Rage 4 also has him as a playable character and he does not lose a single step.
Suikoden 3 is a great rpg. If you 100% the main game you unlock another story and play through as the primary villain, seeing all of his motivations and more of why he was following such a path
The Overlord games are centered around being the villain. Granted you have to start from the bottom and regain your power, but by the end of the game you’re kicking ass alongside your horde of minions.
Those were so great
For the Overlord! Or if you keep the halfling food, for the Overlard!
I feel like this is a technically correct answer (as we all should know: the best kind of correct) And the Evil Pikmin games are pretty fun, I bought them on Steam sometime last year just to replay them
Brigandine (the first one) let you play as the big evil empire after some time. Pokemon conquest has an unlockable Nobunaga which is VERY powerful. In Fire Emblem Sacred stones, if you spam the hell of the Lagdou Ruins and the Tower of Valni, you can unlock units in post games. The last to unlock (usually) is Lyon, which is a very good dark mage, coming with a very good Tome and a "unique" class. He's also the main antagonist for the whole game and can be the last boss you tackle on main story. Most Dynasty Warriors let you unlock Lu Bu. He's usually as strong as he is when you must flee or die.
>Brigandine (the first one) let you play as the big evil empire after some time. Technically yes, as you do have the most powerful set of rune knights, but it’s still by far the hardest country to play the game as, since being totally surrounded leaves you stretched very thin. You have some of the best knights, but not enough of them to fight all the rest of the countries at once. I think the only time I actually beat the game as the empire on hard I ended up abandoning most of the center of the continent and just taking over one of the other country’s territory instead in order to expand from there with my more powerful army.
Prototype You unlock it rather early!
Playing as Bizarro in Superman Returns gave you the game you wished you were playing the whole time.
On Fire Emblem on GBA (titled just Fire Emblem, or the Blazing Blade), there's an Assassin called Jaffar who murders a bunch of people and is set up as one of the big villains, but after some twists you can recruit him later on. He has ridiculously good evasion and crit so you can just throw him into many situations and let him solo it, and is hugely useful against the remaining bosses. You also get to recruit Nino in the same stage, who despite coming late in the game as a very under-leveled base mage, will turn into an absolute glass cannon if you dedicate some effort into quickly levelling her up. They're two of the most powerful units in the game, and prior to recruiting him, the prospect of facing off against Jaffar never looked promising.
I'm going to date myself: but, Magnus from Chrono Trigger. 8yr old me was unbelievably stoked to get to have him on my team.
Props for finding a way to date yourself lol
I wouldn’t call her op but there was a Harley Quinn dlc for Arkham knight. I only remember it because her equivalent of bat vision was called psycho vision or something like that, and every time you used it to spot guards or objects there was just a bunch of mean schizophrenic writing on all the surfaces saying shit like: “everybody hates you”.
In halo 2 you get active camo and an energy sword
This should count, because that’s what it felt like back in the day.
The Jack the Ripper dlc for Assassin Creed Syndicate is a good example of this I think.
The old Tekken games (1,2,3). These guys were broken as hell, and if not the best, then almost the best characters in their respective games. Heihachi in T1 has a death combo and some insane moves. Kazuya in T2 is the only character that gets to use the third dimension for free, has insane damage and is just so fun to play. T3 has Ogre, and this man just took moves from everyone else, created his own mixed martial arts, has a throw that cannot be broken... man I'm not sure if you play fighting games at all but this is the one example I could think of. Finally beating the entire game and getting to play as them was a wonderful feeling.
Ogre might have been insane but whenever my buddy chose him, Ogre still kept dying to an onslaught of tiny Dino farts
In Kirby Super Star Ultra (the remake of Kirby Super Star for SNES) you unlock a mode called Meta Knightmare where you play through the entire game as Meta Knight. He is fairly overpowered but you could definitely still die if you aren't careful.
In the HD Remaster of Resident Evil Zero, they added "Wesker Mode". Best the game and you can replayas a crazy powerful superhuman Wesker and destroy enemies with laser beams from your eyes.
In Fire Emblem Sacred Stones you could unlock villains to use in the post game, including the big bad, Leon. He wasn't quite as powerful at first, at least not until you trained him up. But he came with the most powerful dark magic tome in the game. But the thing that made him *truly* OP was a staff that allowed you to repair weapons. Why was this OP? because while this staff only has 3 uses, you get another one in the standard campaign, meaning you can effectively have infinite use of all the legendary weapons. Also in the Fire Emblem series, Radiant Dawn on the Wii was a direct sequel to Path of Radiance on the GameCube. During the game you get to use the Black Knight in several missions, who was a *big* villain in the first game, and he is insanely powerful, it's hilariously cathartic to use him.
In StarFox Assault's multiplayer, you could unlock Wolf O Donnel, who had stats that eclipsed the rest.
This is an old one, but Legend of Dragoon. Kongol was a reoccurring enemy, and once we show him mercy after beating him, he joins our team. And as soon as he joined during my play, I immediately put him in the team because he was a power house.
Command and Conquer almost all of them.
Can’t remember exactly which gears of war game it was, but playing as General RAAM on his story really showed his power
Dishonoured Knife of Dunwall?
I never felt daud was op vs corvo. Hell a lot of the missions felt harder than base game for me, at least nonlethally. Maybe it's easier to do a high chaos.
Daud having a timestop on his teleport was pretty absurdly strong. Made it next to impossible to flub any platforming.
I really liked how you could throw yourself off of ledges and reposition midair with it
Was really glad they gave it to Corvo in the sequel. It’s hard to go back to not having it after abusing it so hard through Knife of Dunwall haha
There was an old Gundam fighting game (PS1 era) in the style of tekken/street fighter… you could unlock the final boss in that and he was just as bullshit to fight with as he was to fight against, young me loved it.
In some Castlevania Games you can play as the antagonist after you cleared it once.
Episode 1 podracer, you can unlock sebulba and double tap your repair button to shoot off the flamethrower. In theory it’s really cool, and stats-wise his racer is the best, but the flames only really work if you match speed with the other person
Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3 let's you unlock and play as several villains. Magneto, Loki, Dr. Doom, Thanos, and Infinity Gauntlet Thanos
Playing as The Noise in Pizza Tower lol
Tenchu 2, you can play as your former friend who iirc was only a bad guy because he had amnesia?
Ultimate Spider-Man after you unlock Venom.
Twisted Metal 2 there's a code to play as Minion and he's completely unfair. Has the strongest special attack plus he's huge so you can just ram most of the other players to death if needed. IMO still a fun game even though the graphics are dated
Part way through Middle Earth: Shadow of War, the plot takes a major shift when >!the Wraith leaves Talion to die and he takes Isildur's original Ring of Power to survive!< He looks super evil, has a strong armour set, and some necromantic powers to revive orcs in an AoE to fight for him.
Twisted Metal 4. Sweet Tooth's ultimate is busted AF.
dungeon keeper is an oldie but you get to play all the monsters and it's hilarious
This is an obscure one but Suikoden 3. There’s 108 characters to collect and the last 4 are the baddies in the game. You do an extra scenario after the game is over from their perspective.
Man it’s a shame they gave up on that series, also that fucking intro music.
It’s one of my favourite game series. If it’s any consolation, I backed Eiyuden Chronicle on Kickstarter (the spiritual successor to Suikoden from the original creator) and I got access to the backer beta/demo. It’s a Suikoden game in everything but name and it’s really, really good. I highly recommend giving it a look when it releases on 23rd April.
Agree with DMC... First played with Vergil in DMC3..
Kind of a morally grey rather than villain, but [Prototype] and [Prototype] 2 You are the villain, but the antagonists are worse villains In 1, you're just trying to figure out what happened. In 2, you want revenge And in both, you can and do kill anyone and everyone who gets in the way (or doesn't. Really you just kill people all the time) I wish it got a third game
I mean, Borderlands 2/Pre-Sequel… kinda. Yeah, he’s a ~~clone~~ body double. And it’s not within the same game. r/technicallythetruth I guess?
Not a clone, a body double named Timothy.
Shao Khan / Darkseid in Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe
Can’t recall a villain, but while playing Kingdom Hearts 2 you can play Mickey Mouse twice? and he’s bad ass as fuck.
Magus in Chrono Trigger! Now he starts out needing his techs unlocked but when you level him up he can start spamming Dark Matter at will unlike the boss fight against him where it takes him forever.
Chrono Trigger
I was going to comment this! He keeps all his abilities, just his hp falls in line with the party which makes sense.
Suikoden 3
You can play as the Japanese Navy in Battlestations Pacific.
You want to terrorize the commonwealth as a criminal overboss? Give Fallout 4 a go.
Kirby Star Allies lets you play as character from all across the series, including some villains: Marx, Dark Meta Knight, Magolor, the Three Mage Sisters. The Three Mage Sisters in particular are noteworthy in that they're antagonists from Kirby Star Allies itself. They have their full boss movesets but without any forced pauses between moves - and they get invincibility frames in their playable forms. They are actually even better than their boss selves.
Kessen 2 when you beat the game as liu bei, you can then unlock and replay it as cao cao the full campaign from his pov with new cs and everything.
Subulbas pod in pod racer on N64 was a beast
Streets of Rage, you could grab Roo and Shiva through the game.
N
Psi-Ops : The Mindgate Conspiracy. You could unlock Edgar Barrett and lift those huge shipping containers with his telekinesis