It's not quite the same thing, but every so often, I forget that although it has a significant online presence, Ace Attorney is a fairly niche series whose average release only pushes between 250k and 300k sales. And the entire Ace Attorney franchise combined has yet to sell even 9 million copies.
Then I go "Oh, that's because a series of mystery-themed visual novels often only released in Japan is never going to be THAT big a seller."
Then I remember that the JB Harold series sold 20 million copies by 2011, despite being "a series of mystery-themed visual novels ALMOST ALWAYS only released in Japan." And then I wonder what the hell is even going on anymore.
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Besides that, focusing on games with low sales as my main metric of determining what is "underrated?" The non-Persona Shin Megami Tensei games, Bayonetta, and strangely, the original Doom duology (surprisingly, VGChartz indicates that Doom and Doom II, two of the most important shooters ever released, sold a combined 3.5 million or so units thru 1999, about as much as the PS1 version of Rugrats in Paris).
Love and tolerate.
