I'm more than positive that a thread of this nature already exists, but I simply can't find it, so here I dive headfirst into my rambling nostalgic nonsense:
I'm trying to recall a game I played a long time ago. I only remember the gameplay and the game world loosely, but this is what it was like.
The game started off with you in a cottage or a village. The surface world is very scarce for features, but you're encouraged to go spelunking in a dungeon that looks more like a hole in the ground than a bonified dungeon. This one dungeon comprises the entire game, and as you find out, it's much, MUCH deeper than you can possibly give it credit for. It just keeps going down and down, further and further, necessitating that you sometimes trek back up for supplies and healing, but eventually you get so far down that the trek back up takes too long, and so you just keep going down and down, using the supplies you find to sustain yourself. As you go down, the architecture of the dungeon changes, where at first it's a dark, dank, standard cliche dungeon affair, it slowly changes, becoming more menacing, then surreal, and eventually it's like you stumble into the land before time. It's no longer like a dungeon, but a whole different world hidden deep within the Earth's crust.
Gameplay is straight up turn based strategy roleplaying. You have characters, and you face monsters randomly, but you face off on a map where each character's positioning is taken into account when determining the area of effect of their attacks. I remember that one of my favorite combos was to use a gravity move to pull all the enemies into one tight group, and then use a circular area of effect attack to damage them all simultaneously.
Also, it would seem you weren't alone in that dungeon, because as you progressed down and discovered more of it's secrets, you ran into other adventurers that were either antagonistic, and you fought them, or were friendly, and would join your party. There might have been a cat girl, or atleast a normal girl that's just feral in disposition, I can't remember exactly.
Does this ring any bells for anyone? Because I'm completely dumbfounded, and it's been bothering me for a long time since I'm interested in indulging in my nostalgic gaming past, now that I have the money to do so.