Realms of Arkania 3

Star Trail was a masterpiece. Shadows over Riva is still a good game, but feels rushed, and because most of the gameplay is in a city and the game is too short, you don't put to use good use hunting, camping, exploring, life in the wilderness, what I enjoyed the most in Star Trail. But the game is much easier, also because of this, and I can imagine it's more appealing to non-hardcore RPGers.

It helps to be more than passingly acquainted with the Dark Eye tabletop RPG mechanics, as this game does not hold your hand in the least, but it's a very solid old-school RPG experience, with turn-based combat, realistic gameplay features, serviceable graphics, and a couple of catchy tunes (which quickly become irritatingly repetitive, unfortunately). There's no main character, so all your party members will largely react and make decisions on their own, which is interesting and different, if a bit antithetical to the "rp" in RPG. A word of caution: Make sure you have a majority of magic users in your party before the end, and make sure to keep one save before delving into the final "level", as there's a cruel, game-stopping bug in the second-to-last fight that will keep you from finishing the game. Consider yourself warned.

Based on a pen and paper system similar to the D&D games of the era but has way more depth and character development. The amount of detail they have put into such an old game from its cool sounding MIDI files and turn based tactical combat its gaming that you just dont get these days.. Character creation is so indepth it takes hours to assemble the party you want.. Random rolling stats for classes like demonologist, pyromancers, wizards rangers to Jesters, the game has such an array of classes. I would advise theving in this game as its so profitable:) just make sure you save before you pickpocket merchants or they wont deal with you again if you are caught stealing. The detail lies in the finer points of the game where you need the right equipment to climb a mountian or traverse a swamp or you may fall ill to one of the many dangrous diease's like Numb Skull the game punishes you with. Its a hard game but very rewarding once you get stuck in.

Played this in the 90s, didn't recognize the title at first, because the original title in German is Das Schwarze Auge - Schatten über Riva. Great RPG. Although the 3D world is completely lifeless I really had fun exploring it, and getting familiar with the town more and more. It plays in Riva and some space around the town, so the world isn't as big as in the other Realms of Arkania titles. I guess if you know some background of the RPG it's based on (I read some of the novels, don't know if they're available in English or other languages) it's even better.