*Really* Classic Games

[Aenor]

This:

http://www.gog.com/game/darklands

One of the greatest games ever made before Everquest. I still think the combat system in this game is revolutionary. You control four characters and you hit space to pause, give those characters orders (i.e. click on a place for them to move to or an enemy to attack), then unpause and the combat happened in real time.

I'm not sure if this was the first game that moved from stupid turn-based combat like Pool of Radiance (you move your character across the screen while everybody else is frozen in time, then once your turn is done, you sit there motionless while each NPC moves one at a time) to real time/simultaneous. But it's the game I remember it for. So it incorporated real strategy because if your wizard was about to get attacked by some plate-clad enemies, you needed to move him back and get your mele character in the way.

It's not open world ... you move about cities through dialog screens and only go into the 2D isometric view during combat. This was a DOS game. Old school. Yes, I'm old. Fuck you. I had a Commodore 64.

According to the description on GOG:

One of “The Greatest Games Of All Time” according to Gamespot®.

Yes, easily.

After Darklands, the next major game for me was Myth II: Soulblighter. This game took the concept of real time action and giving orders to your troops and expanded it to a small army. The game's realistic physics combined with one of the best game soundtracks ever plus voice acting to make it extremely immersive. If you put your archers on top of a hill to fire down on your enemies, their range is greatly expanded. When the enemies close, your have your archers run like hell and move up the ground troops. Fucking phenomenal game lovingly updated and preserved here:

http://projectmagma.net/what/

I'm going through GOG looking for a game to buy, something I missed (which isn't hard because I never bought a lot of games, just found a few that I liked and played the shit out of them). Torchlight looks pretty cool as does Gothic. Mount and Blade looks fun but it has so few votes. Recommendations?