Ultima Underworld I and II are great, but please just try to get the hang of the control scheme before you dismiss it for that. They hadn't figured out that WASD + Mouse is the best first-person control scheme. You might be able to find a patch that allows it. They're entirely underground dungeon crawls with free movement rather than block-step movement. It has an early effective lighting system and elevation changes. Elder Scrolls I: Arena is a similar control scheme and graphical style, and includes some incredible things that were removed by necessity from later Elder Scrolls games (such as random procedural dungeons which were last seen in TES 2: Daggerfall and creation / destruction of walls and floors and such). You get just one character. Spellcasting is very interesting and there are some fun item interactions (using a torch on an ear of corn makes popcorn!). There are a lot of fun little mini-games throughout (not like a Tetris puzzle or connect-the-pipes, more like environmental and social puzzles). Monsters don't respawn AFAIR.
System Shock 1 and 2 are also awesome, but they're scifi survival horror theme with a complex inventory / skill / cybernetics system like Deus Ex (RPG-like). SS1 looks and controls like UU1 and UU2, but SS2 has a WASD control scheme and is very much updated. Like UU above, environmental interaction is a huge deal. Monsters respawn.
Eye of the Beholder (SNES or PC, not the mobile version) is good, a dungeon crawl into the Undermountain dungeon below Waterdeep City. It's exactly like what you posted in the OP. EoB II and EoB III are not as good, bordering on lame. Dungeon Hack is a procedural game using the same engine. It's good but because it's procedural it becomes monotonous. It has a fairly decent level limit, which you shouldn't reach in normal play. You can transfer characters from one to the next, except Dungeon Hack which is its own weird thing and you get only one character at a time in it also. These games adhere to 1st or 2nd edition AD&D rules. You get a party of four PCs plus up to two NPCs. Monsters don't respawn except in certain places AFAIR.
The old Gold Box games were NOT all Dragonlance. That was just one series using the engine. There was also the first set in Forgotten Realms (Pool of Radiance / Curse of the Azure Bonds / Secret of the Silver Blades / Pools of Darkness) and a Dark Sun series which I never played. They're first-person like your OP until combat, which is a top-down grid with turn-based mechanics. It's actually a rather closer representation of tabletop D&D than later efforts like Neverwinter Nights or Diablo because realtime combat makes tactics difficult. They share similarities in rule sets such as Friendly Fire (your Fireballs WILL destroy your friends if you get too close) and adherance to 1st or 2nd edition AD&D rules like racial class restrictions and level limits. Each game also has some level limit which you might easily reach during normal play, but you can transfer a party of characters from Game 1 to Game 2 in a set and so forth to the end. You get a party of 6 PCs and up to 2 NPCs. Monsters are random or placed encounters. Placed encounters generally don't respawn, but random encounters generally keep happening forever.
Author
Topic: What's the best first person dungeon crawl? (Read 18312 times)