Wait... a picky gamer. On GOG!? ABSURD.

Hard to believe, huh? Especially with that one thread on here where everyone was posting pics of their GOG collection, showing off dozens of games PER PERSON. ;-)

But of the ones mentioned here, I think my best bet would be ToEE. King's Bounty is another one that looks like a possible match. Avernum looks like it might suit my taste, too.

I remember years ago starting up Planescape, but feeling like it had too much story (I remember reading a ton of dialogue)...but admittedly, I didn't get very far in the game, so maybe just the beginning is so dialogue-heavy?

No. Planescape Torment is all about the Dialog. Baldur's Gate strikes a nice balance between Dungeon crawling and Dialog, and Icewind Dale is the more combat oriented one.

If you like good combat based dungeon crawls, I would suggest the Icewind Dale games. They give you a nice little plot to follow, but they really come down to cutting down every enemy who stands in your way, with a some exploration on the side. Think of them as combat oriented Baldur's Gate.

You mentioned that you didn't care for HOMM earlier. King's Bounty is pretty much the same thing. An excellent game if you like HOMM though.

And it might fry your video card :)

But seriously though, King's Bounty is basically HOMM, so if you don't like that, you propably won't like King's Bounty either.

Has anyone suggested that Jagged Alliance "clone", Hired Guns? Or silent storm (can't be sure about the name on this one...)

Picky like a chicken, i pick everything :).

I don't agree that King's Bounty is essentially the same as HoMM. Despite some surface similarities, the two are entirely different experiences. HoMM is a light mission-based 4X game, whereas King's Bounty is fundamentally a hack-and-slasher. KB is not a bad fit for the "RPG-Lite" category in which Chauncey placed World of Xeen, but it's definitely not a strategy game.

I love King's Bounty, but I don't like Heroes of Might & Magic a bit.

Don't get Hired Guns:Jagged Edge. It's sort of like Fallout 3 compared to Fallout 1...

Speaking to the OP, Jagged Alliance 2 Gold with the v 1.13 patch is the perfect tactical RPG.

Protip: If you don't want to hire and pay mercenaries, v 1.13 allows you to make a party of IMP mercs that require no upkeep costs...so you can sort of create your own JA2 Gold party :D.

A bold statement, seeing as I've read so many people saying KB is a HoMM clone. I'm gonna look up some KB videos on YouTube to try and get an idea of how the combat is run to see if I like it.

I have to give my obligatory recommendation for Anachronox. Combat is turn-based, but admittedly there isn't a lot of it. Also, there's no excuse for not at least having tried out the Baldur's Gate games. They're turn-based at heart and can be paused at any time and you're going to fight a lot.

In particular, you said that you didn't like the town management and strategic layer of HoMM. There is none of that in King's Bounty. The entire game focuses around your single hero, his skills, stats and equipment, and his personal accompaniment of soldiers (up to five unique units, which can increase in size as you level up). It's a raw monster bash. You'll never need to concern yourself with upgrading castles or stationing garrisons to hold choke points.

There is some resource management in the sense that you have a finite amount of gold and available troops, so you need to be aware of your limits and keep casualties to a minimum, but in practice that's not much different than the management of healing potions and resurrection scrolls and such that you'd have in more conventional RPGs. It's just a different coat of paint.

I will say that KB is a love-it-or-hate-it game that requires forgiveness for some of its flaws, so it's impossible for me to recommend it without reservation. If you consider yourself picky, you'll likely either find it to be exactly what you wished HoMM was, or find it to be shallow and a bit of a chore.

Be advised as well that if you're in the mood for a strong story, KB isn't the way to go. Like I said, this is a raw monster bash, and a somewhat silly one, at that.