i would say that for me some of the best games on gOg are:

Psychonauts
Opus Magnum
Hotline Miami
Settlers II: 10th Anniversary edition
Defenders Quest
DOOM II
Painkiller: Black edition
Giants: Citizen Kabuto
Nox
Project Eden
Tower of Guns
TRI: Of Friendship and Madness

Baldur's Gate (or any RPG actually) - being a huge Mage/Wizard fan, the AD&D rules for limited spells was tough idea to wrap my head around at low levels. But it was one of those things you got used to, knowing in the long run you'd end up being one of the most powerful classes. BG2 was a bit better since you started higher (I don't recall if I imported my char from BG1).

BG1 & BG2 would have been nice if they had a turn-based option. (Given how much I enjoyed Fallout 1 & 2)

As to isometric and click to move rather than say moving with the WASD keys (or controllers), I'd say that's a matter of preference (or maybe perspective as well) as to how enjoyable the game was. (Again, Fallout 1 & 2 come to mind)

Let's face it, if people could enjoy text based games back in the 80's and games like Pool of Radiance series (Curse of Azure Bonds was my favorite; huge fan of the whole Forgotten Realms book series), then it's not too much of a stretch to find that they enjoyed isometric games. We didn't have a wide variety of PC games as we do now, so a hunger for any new CRPGs was a huge thing for me.

Granted I enjoy games like Dragon's Dogma DA, Dragon Age 2, Mass Effect, etc. a lot more these days. I agree that being able to control your character directly is tremendous fun lol.

Ultima 7 is a game I'm kind of hoping that someone out there will make a remake (or remaster) with more modern features and fix all the combat issues. It truly was a world filled with rich and interesting lore and characters. Though I always found Lord British's char rather odd now that I think about it.
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Ultima 7 would probably be better if it used something like Ultima 6's engine, with turn based combat and direct control over your party, while still having a continuous world. While we're at it, handle food like Ultima 6, where it's only needed to rest, and where it gets removed from your inventory automatically, much like reagents are when you cast spells.

(Then again, I think I like the overworld/town/battle separation that Ultima 3-5 had.)


Speaking of reagents, I actually think the series would have been better if it didn't have reagents, or if only powerful spells required them. Needing reagents to cast spells like Open and Missile (in Ultima 4) has the effect of making those spells basically useless.

That's actually not the main issue I had with BG1. Rather, my issue is how HP and accuracy are so low that a typical battle will likely be a series of misses until someone gets a lucky hit, which could very well be a hit that kills the main character. That sort of gameplay I do not find fun. (Meanwhile, at high levels, like in Throne of Bhaal, the THAC0/AC system breaks down, resulting in there no longer being a point to AC, which is what armor provides. If armor instead provided damage reduction, this wouldn't be as bad of an issue.)

There are games I've played where magic does not feel limited, like much of the SaGa series. Or even Quest 64, for instance.

Games that work ?... ;)

I haven't played the earlier Ultima games prior to U7, though I didn't know U6 was a turn-based game. Any game that allows automatic consumption of food and ingredients is certainly a plus from my perspective. There's a lot to be said for convenience when it comes to mundane chores. Combat is where the manual focus should always be (at least for turn-based), except maybe reactive skills (or passive skills) such as counter attack or parry.

Reagents, to be or not to be lol. I much prefer a simple system myself, with just a consumption of mana (or something equivalent) rather than limiting a spellcaster to a resource that may be limited or has to be constantly harvested just to be an effective party member. I shudder to think what this would mean if it was a solo type game. Mages / Wizards should be fun to play, not tedious. So, I guess in short, I agree that these games didn't really need reagents or at least not the way it was implemented.

Magic should never be limited except by internal resources rather than external. External resources are meant for learning new magics, upgrading existing magics or things of such nature. At least that's what I believe.

BG series - THACO and AC system has its pros and cons to be sure. On the one hand, it was simple. On the other hand, it can be boring and limiting at some point. But these games were released at a time when it made sense and there weren't a lot to compare it to. Now we do. :)

Forgot to add. I too didn't like the fact HP was so low at the lower levels. I mean a bad roll and a mage could end up with 2-3 HP (depending on CON) at level 1! There should have been a base starting HP for all classes, maybe based on their race and background (maybe they grew up on protein shakes!). I think there should always be a base increase each level, then a bonus based on attribute gain, such as adding a point to CON. Which brings another point of limits on attributes lol, but that's the system they chose, one based on a tabletop ruleset.

As for Accuracy hmm. I always thought of low level as unskilled and needed combat experience to raise those skills, hence level ups. This is excluding non-combat related skills ofc, which shouldn't affect Accuracy, unless you count some type of passive synergy.
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With the appearence of Prince of Qin from Object Software i hope we soon get more titles that are classics for many, like Three Kingdoms Fate of the Dragon and Seal of Evil.

You should play the earlier games, particularly 4-6 (though I sometimes enjoy 3, which was before reagents were added into the series).

Food consumption isn't as tedious in the earlier games as it is in 7. In summary:
* Ultima 1-2: Food is rapidly consumed automatically as you walk around. Reaching 0 food is an immediate game over. (Game over is particularly bad in Ultima 2, as IIRC you can't reload, and you can't easily start over either.)
* Ultima 3: Each character has a separate food supply, which decreases automatically. A character with 0 food will gradually lose HP. The loss of HP is slow enough that healing spells can keep up with it. Note that buying food and distributing it between your party members can be annoying here.
* Ultima 4: Food is shared between the party, and isn't too much of a concern here. Food consumption increases the more living party members you have.
* Ultima 5: I believe this is similar to 4, except with smaller numbers.
* Ultima 6: Food is automatically consumed when you rest. If you never rest, you do not have to worry about food.

Another note: In Ultima 5, your MP only recovers when you rest; this is not true of any other game in the series, where it regenerates automatically (except possibly 8 or 9, as I haven't played those).

An intermediate system could be implemented. Eliminate all reagents except for mandrake root, and any spells that don't require mandrake root no longer require any reagents. This is similar to how the Might & Magic series does things; spells require MP and sometimes gems.

Maybe it's OK to have spells like Tremor (Ultima 4 version), Resurrect, and Enchant require reagents while not requiring them for more basic spells.


Actually, there's a lot of games that were released before BG1 to comapre this to.

A couple examples (both JRPGs):
* Dragon Quest 1. The player's hit chance depends on the enemy being attacked (and ranges from 75% to 63/64 (or 100% for the final boss as a special case), while enemy attacks never miss (but can't critical). Damage is ATK / 2 - DEF / 4 with some random variance. Both ATK and DEF increase as the game progresses.
* FInal Fantasy 5: When attacking, the attacker rolls to hit, the chance only determined by the weapon or skill used. Then, the target rolls to evade. Note that some weapon types have 100% accuracy, and some targets have no evasion; in particular, party members can't evade without a shield or an ability/item that has evasion as a special property. Damage is attack - defense, but then multiplied by a number based on the attacker's level and strength.

There's also WRPGs where armor mitigates damage rather than boosting evasion, including Wasteland, Dragon Wars, and Demon's Winter.

lol now that would be a funny thread (with massive dislikes).

The problem is that the d20 system's accuracy mechanic (which AD&D THAC0 is isomorphic to) does not scale to higher levels.

My favorite example: Around level 4,000, a 1% difference in level can mean the difference between needing a natural 20 and always hitting except on a natural 1; this is without even accounting for all the other bonuses that tend to get bigger as you reach higher levels.

Disgaea, on the other hand, does not break down this badly. Balance still breaks down to some degree, but not nearly as badly as the d20 system's balance does.

Also, a low level character shouldn't have much difficulty hitting a low level enemy, or low level combat becomes frustrating and not fun.

In 3e, you get max HP at 1st level.

In 4e, I think you might get HP equal to CON, or something along those lines, at 1st level.

Also, many RPGs, including most JRPGs, give you enough HP to survive a few hits at lower levels.

Its subjective which are the must have games but i meant which games are very recommandable or lets say you would personally recommend to others or your best friend etc. Great games are listed so far

Oops, sorry for the late reply.

I don't know about the level 4,000 thing since I never got that high in any games lol. But I agree that AD&D rules for THAC0 never really scaled and at extremely high levels even -10 AC didn't make much difference to fighter type classes and its variants. It worked for the games for what they intended, just not as appealing in games now, for me at least.

I also feel the D20 system had a lot of limits, at least for pc versions. It probably worked just fine for table-top gaming, though I do recall a steak of bad rolls by a certain DM lol. (damn that DM!) My starting characters almost always sucked since I usually got bad rolls and that continued to combat and save rolls. =P

Never played Disgaea, so it's hard for me to understand any references to that game, but I get the general idea.

I don't recall the differences between 3e and 4e since I never paid much attention. But as far as I remember, HP dice rolls were pretty standard for all the known classes, though I think Ranger at one point changed from 2d8 to 1d10 for the first level maybe, not 100% sure. And only fighter types got any real benefits to bonus HP past CON 16. Though I think Neverwinter nights allowed all classes to benefit from higher CON. (I could be wrong on this last part, it might have been another game)

I don't know what they intended with the AD&D rulesets, but perhaps WotC was trying to find a balance between casual and hardcore, who knows. Most of the games were overall fun, but yeah, low levels can be a struggle. Most decent games were. It was the HP decision that was probably harder for new players than for most veterans of RPGs.
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WotC didn't acquire TSR, the former owner of the D&D system, until late in the 2e cycle. When 3e was released, they dropped the term "Advanced" from the title. Hence, it's really TSR, not WotC, who designed the game in the first place, and the design was, I believe, more geared toward hard-core players.

There's also some rather lousy mechanics that were present in earlier editions, but were (fortunately) dropped in later editions. The worst were:
* In 1e, character stats were capped based on race and sex. Female characters had lower strength caps than male characters, and female characters didn't get anything to compensate for this. I consider this to be an extremely sexist rule, and will refuse to play with any DM who enforces it (if it's a CRPG, I'll hex edit my save file to get around this issue). Fortunately, this rule isn't present in 2e.
* In 1e and 2e, there were racial level caps. A character who isn't human and isn't a thief had a hard cap on what level they could reach. This did not affect low level campaigns at all (except for a few 1e limits being really low, like half-elf clerics being limited to level 5), but essentially made non-human characters non-viable at higher levels. Even worse, the table of level caps was in the Dungeon Master's Guide, which players were not supposed to read, so not only was there this terrible mechanic that made some choices become non-viable (and unfun, since you stop gaining levels), but players were not told about those limits in advance. Fortunately, 2e relaxed those limits, and 3e got rid of them entirely. (One common justification was that th4se limits were to counter-balance the advantages non-humans got at low levels, but the problem is that this does not actually affect low level play; in 3e, humans got a bonus feat and an extra skill point per level to balance them against the advantages non-humans get.)

(As an aside, I don't like random HP rolls, either. On the other hand, if Constitution does somehow increase, at least the rules make the effects on HP retroactive, so it doesn't, in the long term, matter when you get the bonus; many CRPGs and CRPG-adjacent games (including games a late as TES: Oblivion) get this wrong.)