I remember loving Ultima 4 - Quest of the Avatar. Chrono Trigger was also awesome, but I believe that was just for the SNES, and not computer (although you can find it via emulators out there).
Those were the last two RPGs I really remember getting into. But, yeah, Ultima 4 rocks my world.
Wow, like a primitive, games-only Java!
No, it’s available for Playstation as well.
It’s part of a two disk set called Final Fantasy Chronicles. The set includes FFIV (FF2 in the US) and Crono Trigger, which has several new animated scenes. CT is truly an RPG in that the decisions you make in the game will affect the outcome. This set is playable on a PSX or PS2. Get it. Play it. Love it. It’s onlly about $15 at Amazon, and that’s for BOTH games, which are BOTH regarded as being great.
Baldur’s Gate was the classic for me.
I just ordered the Icewind Dale set (1 game + 2 expansions) for 30 bucks from Amazon. I enjoyed Baldur’s Gate and Throne of Bhaal, so it should be decent, especially because you get higher levels in IWD.
Arcanum wasn’t that great - the plot was sketchy, much of the story line was “wander through here until you trigger an event which pushes the story forward with no control”, and the combat system was completely broken - when the selling point of your game is “dwarves with guns!”, it’s a bad idea to have guns be completely inferior to melee weapons in all possible ways. I played a dwarf with a gun, and combat was a constantly iffy system that took fifteen minutes to barely squeak out a win. I played a half-ogre with a sword and in two minutes all bleedy things fall down.
How about “Neverwinter Nights”? Not to mention that the sequel just came out a few days ago, the original is a great bit of hack n’ slash goodness that is actually faithfull to the D&D engine. Add in two expansion packs and loads of on-line content… lots o’ stuff there.
If you’re doing the Ultima series, don’t forget the two weird ‘epsiode’ games for Ultima VI. The first was a Victorian pulp that sent you (and Nikolai Tesla, and Teddy Roosevelt, and Vladimir Lenin, and Sigmund Freud, and many others) off to Mars to deal with the aliens there. The second was a Tarzan-type jungle adventure. Both were self-contained and hella fun.
neverwinter nights was good. The sequel is due out day after tomorrow (I have mine on pre-order at play.com)
I’ll have to third Darklands. One of the most in-depth rpgs I’ve ever played, and a fantastic primer on medieval Germany. Still have it, and still play it. Great endgame with a solid setup. Perfect if you’re not looking for something too fantasy-based - aside from the folklore/biblical elements, it’s very much set in the real world.
Also, character creation is a blast, though the game allows you to quickstart with a party of fairly well balanced characters.
Would love to see this redone on a modern gaming system.
Darkstone was a nice little filler game that came out about two months before Diablo II, after which time it faded into oblivion. Did you try Temple of Elemental of Evil or Ruins (knights?) of Myth Drannor? Then there’s Diablo II…
set my mind at ease by saying you’ve played Planescape: Torment and Baldur’s Gate. those along with the Fallouts were the highlight of (graphical) CRPGing.
I’m replaying Arcanum right now, and I have to say that for the most part, John Corrado’s right… the story’s not very compelling, and it really does start to just feel like a string of quests. the main reason I’m playing is to explore the tech aspect of it, see if I can build up a badass character without magic (or magic items) for once. so far I’m seeing that it’s much more difficult and not nearly as rewarding. however, I do like the Fallout-style turn-based combat. I like that much better than hack-n-slash.
I will definitely second the recommendation for NWN. extremely engrossing.
if you’re interested in something that’s not quite RPG but has enough of the elements to be enjoyable, you might try the Quest for Glory series. I don’t know how well any of the ones before V will run on a Windows machine, but if nothing else, play the third and fifth ones. they might be considered adventure games, but dammit, they’re classics.
Agreed about Arcanum–the game just felt unfinished, as if the dev team just ran out of time and had to ship with what they had. It’s still worth playing, but it’s nowhere as good as their previous releases. And the guns were lame, but the technological melee weapons were great. Though I found I still needed to keep one or two magic swords in inventory to deal with some of the monsters that were magic enough to shrug off the tech weapons.
Another possibility is Divine Divinity; it’s sort of midway between an RPG and an action-RPG.
Geez.
Psychonauts. GameSpy: Psychonauts - Page 1
From the guy who gave us Grim Fandango and Full Throttle.
Sam & Max Episode One. http://media.pc.gamespy.com/media/771/771965/vids_1.html
From, well… the Lucasarts Sam and Max team, what got fired.
There’s more, but that’s some goodness there.
Note, yes, they’re adventure games, not RPGs, but from other people discussing ADVENT, I figure they’re worth mentioning.
For modern RPGs? Consider a MMO?
The first two Broken Sword games can be picked up for a song now - they’re about 10 years old, classic puzzle-solving RPG’s, and an absolute hoot: excellent scripting and voice work, beautiful 2D graphics, and great music - it’s like playing your own off-the-wall cartoon for about 60 hours. Best of all, they have a brilliantly grown-up sense of humour: most of the fun lies in the character interactions with a huge cast of eccentric NPC’s, and the hero’s deadpan voiceovers and asides: “I picked up the reflector. It was bright and shiny and…I like bright shiny things.” The format was rejigged into 3D for the latest instalment a couple of years back: fun, but the originals are still gaming classics - and almost unknown, alas.
See if you can find Dungeon Hack. It’s sort of an AD&D version of the original Bard’s Tale but with a huge random number generator–billions of different combinations–for the dungeon.
Dungeon Hack is actually a random Eye of the Beholder dungeon generator. I’m not fond of the D&D games other than the gold box series and Planescape (though some of the user created content for Bioware’s Neverwinter Nights isn’t bad), but if you’re looking for a hack and slash dungeon you can do worse than the EoB series.
Never played EotB so I went with what I knew. 
There is a Bard’s Tale feel to wandering around those dungeons.
Clearly my memory of Arcanum is better than the actuality. It happens that way a lot. I am pretty sure I would not be able to put up with a lot of the crap I used to play “back in the day”.
Another game I thought of, one that almost certainly suffers the same fate, is Lands of Lore. I never completed it, but what I played before I accidentally trashed the disks was fun.
There’s also Betrayal at Krondor, which is now available for free download (http://www.alt-tab.net/games/betrayal-at-krondor/download/ is the first site I found offering it). I remember my friend pressured me into getting this on diskette, because he did not have a CD-ROM drive at the time (go single speed cd readers!). Big mistake there, pal, as I missed out on the full speech. It helps, but is not a requirement, to have read Feist’s Riftwar books. It’s set in the same world, but most of the characters are not present (until he released Krondor: the Betrayal several years later, anyway).
Another vote for Might & Magic VI. The character classes and development were better in VII but the story wasn’t as good and there was rather less to do, although I always thought Light Elementals looked pretty in big dark caves. And while IX had possibly an even better character development system, the game itself sucked Donkey Kong (as it were). But if I costed out MMVI in how much per hour it’s cost me (playing time versus purchase price), I think I’m into single-figure pence.