MicShazam

I really like team based dungeon crawlers as well. Kind of became a rarity with time.

Dungeon Master II has an interesting way of doing it too: The first character, a warrior, is mandatory. Then you go around a dark cave with cryo-sleeping heroes and wake up the 3 pre-made characters you want to help you out on your quest. So you don't get to make your team entirely yourself, but there's something about this approach that still makes me wish more games did something similar. There's a feeling of personality to each character, with their unique stats, portraits and loadouts - even though they never speak.

The Batlord

1st person dungeon crawlers look cool as **** but FPS's clearly infected all of gaming with that ****.

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MicShazam

All of those old school first person rpg's play in a kinda clunky manner, but I'm very tolerant of that sort of thing. Those old RPG's with 2d artwork presented to look 3d definitely sacrificed a bit of playability inn order to look fancy.

Shadows Over Riva - which I didn't mention because it's not really a typical dungeon crawler, but a lot more story based, ditches the first person perspective when combat happens and loads an isometric perspective game board with turn based tactical combat. One of my favorite RPGs, but has a learning curve that probably kill most people's desire to play it. 90's PC RPGs didn't give a **** about user friendliness

The Batlord

I don't mind clunky mechanics. I've got Skyrim if I wanna feel like a real-time G, I just want that dungeon crawler atmosphere and pure RPG feel.

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MicShazam

All the games I mentioned have some really good RPG atmosphere going for sure. But let me know what you think if you end up trying your hand at any of them.

I played a bit of Ultima Underworld just now. Gotta get used to that interface and save often, I can see that much! Also gonna have to check if there's not supposed to be more sound effects. Seems very quiet, aside from the music. But it's got a real sense of mystery right off the bat. I'm gonna play some more of it for sure.

The Batlord

It'll probably be a couple months or so until I have a computer I can actually use .exe's with. Chromebooks can't. But that **** is definitely top of the list.

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MicShazam

Just played Jagged Alliance Deadly Games for the first time in 15 years or something. I used to love this game to death. How the hell did I forget how awesome it is? I used to make my own single player campaigns with the scenario/campaign editors and I also played the "generated campaign" mode a lot. Don't know how many in here knows this game, but it's really interesting. It's a top-down strategy game about mercenaries. The huge roster of hireable mercs with their own distinct personalities makes the game quite unique. And I mean unique. They even have phobias and axes to grind with each other. One merc might threaten to leave if you don't give him a raise, another if you don't fire that other dude he really hates.

Has a nice, mellow soundtrack that really sets a quietly tense, thoughtful atmosphere. The tune that plays in the map editor is my jam.

The Batlord

So OG Darkest Dungeon. Sounds awesome.

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MicShazam

It is pretty awesome. One of the best PC games of the 90's in my humble opinion.

There's also some character behaviors that are too funny to spoil. And while the controls take a little while to get used to, the gameplay system really is pretty clever despite the mid-90's clunkiness.

The Batlord

Clunky controls can be endearing cause you can see what they were going for and and appreciate the intent and attempt at innovation as opposed to a lot of modern games with polished mechanics that are often cobbled together from a bunch of different games to appeal to fans of ten different games.

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