It could just be wishful thinking on my part, but I'd like to think that if Diablo was released as per its initial pitch of turn-based roguelike instead of realtime roguelite, it would have been untouchably great. Also, for those wise old owls that know about copper and hardware scrolling, it is obvious that this game would have looked even better on the Amiga.
Fallout's influence has also been incalculable; for example, there would be no Arcanum, no Planescape: Torment, no Mask of the Betrayer, and no New Vegas or Alpha Protocol without it.
Deus Ex is an almost perfect game; it's why Y|yukichigai referred to his Shifter mod as 'removing what little of the "suck" there is in Deus Ex'. So yeah, when you have a hardcore modder trawl through a game's code and find almost nothing wrong with it, that right there is proof.
Tarant has its own subway system, diplomatic negotiations, gang warfare, orc uprising, thieves' underground, telegraph office, university court, shipyards and sprawling sewer system. It hosts 60 addresses, 15 sidequests, multiple pathways for exploration and quests (dependent on character build), loads of quality stat-based dialogue, and its own newspaper that publishes headlines based on how the player solved quests.
ToEE is also one of the most beautiful isometric RPGs. Take Hommlet for example: streams are animated to give the impression they're gently flowing, trees wave in the wind and leaves fall from them, chimneys plume smoke, the waterwheel rotates gently at the mill, the blacksmith strikes hammer to anvil, and lanterns flicker by night.
Not just famous for its reactivity and peerless dialogue, Bloodlines is also infamous for its bugs and annoying graphical glitches. There are two options available to the player that address such complaints and both of them demand equal footing: the Unofficial Patch by Wesp5 and the True Patch Gold Edition by Tessera. The former is controversial among purists in that its Basic patch goes beyond bug fixing and into the realm of "unnecessary changes". Thus, they favor the latter. Unfortunately, UP has been officially bundled with the GoG version and thus will need to be uninstalled before applying TPGE.
To the disgust of all, Oblivion introduces extreme level scaling, leveled loot and a UI gimped for console controllers. It even manages to disappoint Elder Scrolls fans, who aren't hard to please. But the aggressive marketing campaign conducted by Bethesda leading up to Oblivion's release drowns out criticism and ensures its financial and critical success.
Oblivion With Guns - the most pernicious RPG in history along with Oblivion - is released. Pure poison to the genre, it drives veteran Fallout fans into unbridled buttmadness. It wasn't enough for Bethesda to shit on their own franchise, you see: for chump change, they had to acquire the Fallout franchise from a bankrupt Interplay and soil that, too.
