Favorite old school RPG's

[andyroosta]

In some sort of order


Dungeon Master (best puzzles)
Chaos Strikes Back (same)
Legend Of Grimrock
Lands Of Lore
Arx Fatalis
Knightmare
Eye Of The Beholder Series
Black Crypt
Wizards And Warriors
Neverwinter Nights

amonst many others.

[b8w2N7r6Wz0q5e]

Dungeon Master - not my favorite game but a nice one. I rented this a few times and always got stuck at the "fireball door" if you know what I mean. Probably a simple puzzle, but when the cart had to be returned in 3 days this stuff was annoying.

Skullkeep - Multi-level machine being periodically dismantled by respawning, door-opening, flying eyeballs. Lightning bolts that 1-hit kill the party randomly (or unlucky enemies). A respawning thief enemy that steals items out of your inventory and runs away, but drops a gold coin. Respawning wolves in a maze of pits. Horse merchants and spinning tables. Indoor/outdoor areas. Also long load times and frequent game freezes (on my ailing Sega CD system).

Might and Magic - played most of them especially 3-8. They're all more or less the same, this is back when game developers knew how to make sequels that didn't piss off the fanatically loyal fanbase they'd accidentally conjured. Get items, sneak into areas you're not supposed to be yet, get killed a lot, and take tons of notes on everything you find.

Wizardry 6 - a game so annoying that I resolved myself to beat it and finally did years later. Many things were stored permanently as they happened, for example NPC hostility, and there was no "new game" function to erase the memory. I think I managed to annoy the Lord of Hearts so much the main quest became impossible on the cartridge (without physically dismantling it and wiping the SRAM), and had to finish the game in an emulator. Returning to town (even from areas in levels 1-2) became cause for minor celebration. But you could create new characters at any time (in town) and mix them into your existing party or just start fresh with some of the puzzles completed.

DnD Warriors under the Eternal Sun (or something like that) - A town full of lunatics, random character stats, a trapped temple, enemies that knocked your characters back a few levels, dragons that could rip the party to shreds in a few turns, and characters that just couldn't seem to hit anything that wasn't Entangled. Good luck getting back to town from some places without hand-writing notes and maps. etc.

[Ixnatifual]

1. Ultima VII (both parts - amazing detail and "living" worlds, with excellent story-telling to boot)
2. The Dark Queen of Krynn (my first venture into the Gold Box series. Played it through many times until even my multiclass characters were level 40!)
3. Ragnarok/Valhalla (incredible roguelike game with simple graphics and interface usable with mouse)
4. Betrayal at Krondor (just epic!)

I never actually tried Eye of the Beholder, but I did play many similar games. Crystals of Arborea, Ishar (beautiful visuals), Ancients: Deathwatch and Lands of Lore: The Throne of Chaos (awesome!). Also Dungeon Hack but never really got hooked on it.

The first RPG I ever got was this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Faery_Tale_Adventure
Had a really cool open world, though nothing nearly as advanced as the Ultimas. I wonder if anybody here played it?

[Trolkien]

Pool of Radiance
Curse of the Azure Bonds
Phantasie I-III
Questron II
Legend of Fairgheal
Dungeon Master (of course)

[Andyd77]

I know this thread is a bit outdated but here are my two cents

My favorite RPGs are mainly played back in the days on my AMIGA 500 (1 MB Ram, 2nd Floppy):

1. Dungeon Master 1 (and after that "Chaos strikes back" expansion disk)
2. Xenomorph (Awesome Sci-Fi dungeon crawler game a la Dungeon Master !)
3. Eye of the Beholder 1+2
4. Black Crypt (never played to the end - sorry)
5. Amberstar, Ambermoon (never played to the end - sorry)

Later on the PC
Wizardy 7, Eye of the Beholder 3, Lands of Lore 1&2, Titan Quest

Playstation 2
Baldurs Gate 1&2

Sorry but the Diablo Stuff is not the way I like RPGs to be played (only my point of view)!

My favorites are definitly the "Dungeon Crawlers" with grid based movement, solving a lot of puzzles and a very unbeatable atmospehre. Dungeon Master and especially Xenomorph are my all time favorites

[alaska]

I had a powerful urge to add to this list, regardless of its age.

Lunar: The Silver Star - Probley the first I ever played as a child, the music, the characters, and the story are never to be forgotten... Cant belive no one mentioned this game.

Phantasy Star IV - Next in line...same sort of thing, early memory's as a child. The story, sexy android chicks, space travel, robotic music...it is so unforgettable also. (Thank you enumulators!)

Kings Field II-III (or I and II, depends if you count sword of moonlight )

Castlevania SOTN-. Seriously? No other mentioning of this? Its still a RPG of the sort. Again the music, the scenery, the feel of this game makes it a favorite of mine. A hidden castle...

The fear of death, slow pace, mazes, traps, and basic scenery made this game a favorite of mine forever. (Ancient City was cool too!)


Fallout 1 and 2 - No need to explain, we know why this makes the list.
Fallout 3 was good for the fact it filled a void, and was chaotic enough.
But it lacked the dark humor that the original executed so well.

Final Fantasy 7 and 8 -never finished 7, finished 8 just to beat my sisters progression.

Morrowind - So many possibilities, was a favorite from its release date.
Too bad alot of games these days (points to Oblivion and Skyrim) are dumbed down for the crowd of people who cant handle character development, combat stratagy, and finding solutions without a big sign saying "look here" "go here"


Well, never played many of the games mentioned in this thread, and i know my list consists of console games with minimal character development, I think they deserve mentioning.

[Komag]

Those are definitely some great games, mostly RPGs, but most are not "old school RPGs" according to what we're talking about

[retrobits]

My fav of all time is Dungeon Master, followed by the EOB series.

These days I have trouble playing crawlers without an automap. I know this changes the gameplay, but for some reason its hard for my older self to enjoy the mapping by hand as much as I did when I was younger. If you feel the same way, you might want to look into the following versions of the games.

If you want to play Dungeon Master these days, a great version to try is Meynaf's Amiga mod dmcsb here: http://eab.abime.net/showpost.php?p=943 ... tcount=380
It has an automap feature as well as support for custom dungeons. Its an Amiga program, so you'll probably want to run it with WinUAE.
(setup tutorial: http://www.lemonamiga.com/help/tutorial_1/1.php. Once you've installed Amiga Workbench and can boot, just mount the lzx archive as a hard disk. Then boot to the Workbench and copy the files over to your main hard disk. Remember when using Workbench to copy files you need to right click the mouse and make sure the menu item "Window->Show->All Files" is checked).

For EOB 1 & 2, I would recommend the "All Seeing Eye" (http://personal.inet.fi/koti/jhirvonen/ase/) add-on for running the game in DOSBOX. This adds an outstanding automap to EOB 1 & 2. If you have 2 monitors, you can play EOB full screen in one and have the automap displaying on the other monitor.

[Komag]

Wow, thanks for this! I might give EOB another shot with automap, as I'm one of those grown-ups with very limited time.

[DeDy]

1. Dungeon Master, Chaos Strike Back, Hired Guns, Legend of Grimrock (sorted by date)
Definitely the best puzzles

2. Dungeon Master II, Ishar 1+2, Baldurs Gate, Icewind Dale 1+2

3. Arx Fatalis, Fallout 1+2.

I played well EoB, Black Crypt, and many others, but none had such an amazing puzzles as DM, that I did not finish. When I was able to take LoG. It surprises me how few people know the Hired Guns. Personally, I think Grimrock surpassed DM. However, so far no game did not exceed orgasm while playing Hired Guns (4 player co-op).