I was (and still am) a huge fan of the original Diablo, the game from which the Torchlight series can draw a direct line of descent. I played the hell out of Diablo II, but felt it was missing some of the pacing and dread that existed in D1. The Torchlight series unfortunately (for me) continues that trend. Dungeons are more of battlefields to mow down masses of enemies, and treasure drops so frequently that it become more of a burden than an excitement. Character progression and itemization are still done excellently, but I'm just wistful for the slower more measured pace the genre began with. TLDR; if you loved Diablo 2, you'll love this. If you loved Diablo 1, you'll probably like and maybe love this.
Akalabeth is a massively important game in the history of CRPGs, being the game that made Ultima I possible. That said, it doesn't hold up well at all, which can't really be held against a game that was inventing the genre as it went along. If you insist on playing one of the earliest RPGs, give this one a short bit of your time (it's free after all) then jump into Ultima I which is a better realizing of what Lord British was trying to do with Akalabeth (Ultima I doesn't exactly hold today either, but it's still much more playable than Akalabeth.)
The most amazing thing about Ultima VII isn't the open-world gameplay. It's the fact that despite combat being a complete mess, inventory management a nightmare, and spell-casting being opaque and cumbersome, the sheer level of immersion and quality of the world makes this a viable contender for greatest CRPG of all time.
Ultima and Wizardry are held up as the grandfathers of computer RPGs, and for good reason, but even those games owe their existence to Dungeons & Dragons, and Pool of Radiance is a shockingly good adaptation of D&D as it was played at the time. Modern players will find the graphics and interface to be clunky (at beast) and the D&D ruleset can often be unforgiving, but the level of tactical challenge and feeling of progression as you find more and better treasure while slowly leveling up your characters still works well with modern sensibilities. Word of advice - if you buy into this series with the expectation of carrying the same party throughout all the games (a very cool feature) it's not really worth it. The Gold Box games saw a lot of improvements and expansion, and characters built in Pool of Radiance lack access to options that characters created in later games would have - plus the games usually reset your party to naked & unequipped at the start, so there's not much to carry over.
If you played Blood when it originally came out, that's what you're getting here. The engine has been updated to run great on modern machines, controls feel tight and modern, and the difficulty is still brutal.
