Hi there,

I finished this series several time and I am looking for CRPG/dungeon with similar atmosphere. I have tried Baldur's Gate, Morrowind, Legend of Grimrock, Drakensang, but no one was close to feeling I have when playing Shadows over Riva/Star Trail (I personally prefer Shadows over Riva for the story, or maybe because it was the first game of series I played). I know, there are several old great games, but to be honest, it is very hard to start playing like 30 years old game you did not know before (the difference is if you know the game from your childhood or so).

My personal preferences are (sorted):
- first-person view for exploring mode: I hate the 3rd person camera from BG or Drakensang - it never pulled me into game. I felt like I am not part of the game, when I just click on the map and then watch the characters go there themself... I prefer do the moves by myself and see the world through the eyes of the character, it has so much better feeling
- deep story: Riva was about the story. There were so many details in the game, so even after the years I play it again, I find small piece for the story I missed before. You do not need these things for finishing the game, but when you find small detail explaining what happened before, how or what, is awesome.
- party-based: I simply prefer party-based RPG (unlike Morrowind etc), do not ask me why. Better to start with the party from the beginning and keep it to the end of the game (and the best of all: import it from previous games!).
- long gameplay: Some games ends before I can take on the role in the world/party. Arkania is a trilogy, so it very very long tale.
- hard-core character statistics: Diseases, injuries, potions. The countless number of hours generating each characters, writing statistic to LibreOffice Base and then doing this every level-up was...kind of cool :). Maybe this statistics could be done automatically, but the game should have it, even if just hidden on the backgroud.
- tactical combat
- need for eat/drink
- not so old?: as I said, I dont think I could not take on the 25 years old game these days...

I am thinking about Pillars of Eternity, but it looks quite similar to BaldursGate to me...

Thanks for any tip!

I would say Darklands, but its doesnt have a deep story, just a deep world. Its also really old.

Try Wizardry 8, its a contemporary of Morrowind but party based. Its modern enough to not be a chore to get into and I think checks all your boxes.

Unfortunately, outside Japan, first person- party based RPG's have gone the way of the Dodo.

Thanks @SirHandsome, Wizardry 8 really looks promising, will check it.

That's deliberate - it's almost the same in all aspects, which I consider to be wonderful but might be unfortunate for you if you never really could get into BG or BG2 (by far the superior of the two, by the way) - so I suppose you better avoid it.

And like SirHandsome wrote, you're not likely to find anything contemporary that remotely resembles Riva.
If you've not just enjoyed the storytelling but also the world then I'd love to recommend the Dark Eye novels, but I'm not sure any of them have been translated from German, so that's a bust too :(