Wizardry 8

This is the only game I play as it allows you to challenge yourself in many ways.

This one was on my top 10 list for years. No, it doesn't fully stand up to all of the modern titles, but it has some things that modern games don't. For example, the way the experience is split between your characters is great. This means if you fill every slot, everyone will level a lot slower. On the other extreme, if you solo, you rapidly level. The upshot is that the game is very different depending on not only what class combinations you go with, but also how many characters you go with. The world is vast, the challenge is great, and there is a ton to do and explore. I'd turn based and I personally like the way that your entire party is in the first-person perspective, so that it's as if you are in the party and can see the various spells, ranged attacks and melee attacks of your team from first person perspective. 5 stars at the time, I give it 4 stars with the aged graphics and insanely long playtime (therefore requiring grinding like most big games back then).

Wizardry 8 is a wonderful cRPG for me. It has turn-based fights with randomly re-spawning monsters. Every play-through is a little different. And the many races and professions allow a lot of min-maxing for more fun at the next play-through. As an old school cRPG it gives no hints in-game about character creation, level-up or fight choreography. The explanation of the game mechanics in the manual is vague and incomplete. But - surprise, surprise - here is finally the simple game mechanics guide. I present a beginners party and all the spells and knowledge that you need to make it to Arnika without grinding on difficulty level Normal. See in GOG forum Wizardry series, Wizardry Game Mechanics (Spoiler) entry. Why only 4 points? The graphics could be better. See Outcast from 1999 and Longest Journey from 2000 for better graphics. And specially Vampire Bloodlines: The Masquarade. But this a a year 2004 game.

Too much work for me to get up and running. My out of game experience included a lot of delving into the forums of Steam and GOG. Once I achieved the Wizardry of getting the game running, I was met with a lot of black screens and noises where in-game movies were supposed to be playing. TLDR, lemme know when it works out of the box.

It never happened to me, although I tried. I spend a lot of time trying to love this game back when it was released. 1/10 of it was RP, 9/10 of it was tedious grinding. For me it feels like a poor clone of M&M overal... However good the story and the world are supposed (sik!) to be, I couldn't realy get to them. It is very unfriendly game, hard to engage with. I guess it might be what they call old-schoolhardcore RP and it might be fine EXCEPT the sheer amount of filler. You can't go anywhere without fighting hordes and hordes of monsters, and even if the party is strong enough to finish it quickly (which is rare) it still wears on a player. The game may appeal to W long-standing fans from back then, newer players should beware. This game requires A LOT of time and gives very few rewards for it. Most adventures ARE better RP experience than this: character here are few and far between, you can take up to two of them with you, and don't expect much party banter or vibrant NPC or interesting quests. However, if RP for you is buildiing an ideal team and taking on hordes of enemies while you slowly advance (you can't ever "clear" areas and respawn is heavy) and you have a lot of time to burn - this might be the thing for you. Classes are interesting and there are many tricks for PCs to learn and improve, battles often call for tactical decisions. The maps are moderately interesting to explore.