Sometimes, a good game releases at the wrong time, and ends up getting overshadowed by other big releases or by some other major change or event that steals their thunder.

What are your top games that ended up being overshadowed, what stole their attention away, and why do you think they deserved better?

Advanced V.G. 2 has the best single player mode in a fighting game on PS1, and still, almost no one outside of Japan talks about it.

I'm not sure it was over shadowed but it certainly lived in the Shadow of GTA 3. The Getaway, great game people mistook for a GTA clone, it wasn't that at all just a really good third person shooter with a gritty story. Once you realise the open world is just a back drop and you can heal by leaning against a wall, the game becomes gold.

Shadow Hearts
(No pun intendfed)

It released just a few days appart from Final Fantasy X in both Japan and America.
That has to be one of the all-time worst timings to release a Jrpg.

As a result, many (me included) never even heard of it until years later.
This series has a special place in my heart. One of them is in my Top 5, and the other in my Top 15.

SoulCalibur VI. It is commercially successful and acclaimed but it launched in October 2018 where it was sandwiched between Spider-Man (PS4) in September, Red Dead Redemption 2 a week later in October, and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate in December. Who was talking about SoulCalibur in the last 3-4 months of 2018 when those three huge games launched? SC VI just feels right to me as a game. It's my favorite SC game and one of my favorite games period. It saved the IP from a looming death, or so it seems. There's still no confirmation VII is happening. VI took about 4 years to make. Assuming VII takes 4 years as well, it would've had to start development back in 2021 to release in 2025. And I am very skeptical of that.

Pokémon Black 2/White 2 and sometimes Super Mario Galaxy 2. That's because they are sequels with similar gameplay and aesthetics of their previous installment, so in gaming discussion, people sometimes disconsider them and talk only about Pokémon Black/White and Super Mario Galaxy. Super Mario 3D Land is also highly overshadowed by Super Mario 3D World as it has a similar gameplay and aesthetics of its home console brother

I have a big soft spot for the original Killzone on PS2. It was understandably overshadowed by Halo 2, which launched one week later. But over the years it’s also been overshadowed by its home console sequels, which I consider inferior. I think a lot of what made the original so special was actually lost on PS3/PS4, particularly in terms of the single-player campaign. I actually prefer the PSP/Vita sequels in that regard.

Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy died under the shadow of the crappy Avengers game and never fully managed to escape it. Even with it winning awards and stuff, people to this day judge it because of that. Its sales were heavily affected because of that, and that means it'll never get the sequel it deserves.

Oh well.

Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines!

Not the best idea to release the same day as Half-Life 2 as well as within the same month as World of Warcraft, Halo 2, Jak 3, Killzone, and Metal Gear Solid 3.

Shame too. Troika were goated RPG developers and the franchise is finally getting a proper sequel, but talk about a perfect storm of bad timing that ended in the studio getting shutdown. 

Oh this! I mistook the games for the same entity, I can only imagine that was widespread.