Your Top 25 1990s PC Games

I think Icewind Dale is not a good game. The plot quickly became bland and if you didn't select the right character classes then you would either have to level up or cheat the system somehow. I see what they were trying to do with the create your own fully custom party, but that feature detached your characters from the story. BG, on the other hand, the characters would have their own interactions with the events unfolding (as well as inter character events.) That and I think the story was just better. If you do get a lot of time on your hands, BG II is really good as well (but do beat the first one first of course.) Unfortunately, you are probably looking at close to 100 hours for BG I + BG II, especially if you get the expansions, and the BGII expansion is really good.

I fully understand not finishing BG. The game is way too long and the city part isn't as interesting as romping through the Sword Coast.

Planescape Torment is definitely a unique game in how you build your character. I wish they made another.


KQ5 is a close second, but KG6 had better puns. ; )


Multiple times and at varying difficulties. If you are having issues with the final battle, either save the Genie or abuse Mass Dominate (which requires a Psionicist in your party.)

It is hard for me to rank the Dark Sun (DS) games. I greatly prefer the battle system over BG's, because it is turn-based tactical RPG. On the other hand, BG's engine definitely outclasses DS by a lot. Now, DS' length is better (ie: shorter but still fulfilling), but you need to appreciate the post-apocalyptic gladiator escapes to save the world plot (which has become a little cliche today.)

The series does have an interesting history as Dark Sun Online: Crimson Sands (DSO) was one of the first MMORPGs. You can read the post-mortem.

DS is the reason for my recent lapse in gaming. I've be off and on with reverse engineering the DS1 (Shattered Lands) game engine. All of a sudden I got through and have all the media (graphics, music, audio), map data, monster data, and I was able to reverse engineer most of the GPL (their scripting language) to Lua. The point of the work is that it is both fun and to resurrect the DSO server which appears appears to be lost (since it was part of TEN.NET). In case it isn't obvious, this takes way too much time.

Heroes of Might & Magic is another series that looks interesting from a glance. Think I got a few of them in some GOG bundle once...

Has anyone messed with the newer Starcraft remaster? I'm probably more interested in that than I would be the upcoming Diablo 2 remaster.

Xeogred Heroes of Might & Magic can be incredibly addicting. It has got a lot of the appeal of RTSes (very distinctive factions, lots of unit types with their own statistics and special traits, conquering a map and amassing all the resources) as well as RPGs (leveling up your heroes, learning magic and advancing a skill tree). Pretty good Strategy/Tactics game as well, actually.