Bullfrog in its golden years was a paragon of innovation, with titles such as Populous, Syndicate, and Theme Park all providing incredibly unique gameplay that was surprisingly indepth and competent for their ambitions.
Dungeon Keeper however, will always be their sublime masterpiece.
You can almost write an unending list trying to say what DK does right, the sound design is unparalleled, the atmospheric phenomenal, the voice acting and creature design dripping with love and mischievousness, the mechanics are incredibly fine tuned and everything just works and makes sense, the interface is absolutely marvelous for the time, the spells are varied and there's just a limitless amount of little touches, like the varying first person perspectives of various creatures (flies have several eyes, hellhounds see in desaturated color), the missions are difficult and have a variegated selection of goals and structure, the pathing for your creatures is good, and yadda yadda yadda.
I can just go on, there are some slight issues, of course, and most of those relate to some of the mission design (some missions are borderline impossible until you find the one particular strategy to slog through them), but even then, the game is just so wonderfully well made that it's difficult to not have fun even while you are getting utterly crushed.
The game provides a fairly decent amount of thought while playing as well, trap layout, dungeon layout, creature composition, deciding which creatures to train up for which situations, making sure your monsters aren't causing issues with each other, setting up guard rooms in order to give a decent response time and forewarning to dangerous situations.
You just almost always find yourself doing SOMETHING, and in a game where your units are mostly automated and do as they do, that's a simply stunning development.
With KeeperFX out, you can even play with updated resolution and bugfixes.
No reason not play this damn game right now, buy it, but it.
