Dungeon Master clones - the best or the memorable

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I had far more trouble with the ogre in Black Crypt than the ones in LoG. IIRC, you had to explore several parts of his lair before you were able to kill him. It was tense as fuck.

Captive was also pretty hard after you'd cleared three or four bases. However, there were some fun weapons and gadgets in the game — e.g. anti-gravity boots that enabled you to walk on ceilings.

I'd add the Ravenloft games to the list of recommendation (although they're arguably not top tier). Dungeon Master 2 was a really nice game (if rather short and simple) with interesting new mechanics, that is often overlooked. Chaos Strikes Back > all, and unless you're really into Eye of the Beholder, you can safely skip the first and (especially) the third game.

Edit: On second thought, I have to agree with Sceptic on the first EoB.

I was going to brofist your post, but then you did suggest that I should be shot, so I won't. Especially since you rip into Anvil of Dawn for basically having challenging puzzles. Why is that a bad thing again? not to mention they're not THAT challenging... I breezed through the game quite easily, and I'm no crawler expert (and never played CSB). Encumbrance was never a problem, and if you're actually standing there waiting to regen mana/health you're doing something wrong; I finished the game with TONS of restoratives in inventory without ever just standing there. As for the endgame, there's tons of hints on the best ending throughout the game, and the game allows a LOT of backtracking if you miss stuff, so if you end up at the very end and somehow overlooked that you've missed something, well, your fault entirely. Not to mention I do like the not-optimal ending - very fitting. Also, the little chat you have with the big bad at the end is just great.

As for Stonekeep, replayed it last year and it's not as horrible as I remembered it, but it's nowhere near as good as AOD and it has the single worst interface ever, BY DESIGN. WTF were they thinking. Also, the reason many of us hate on it is because it's the triumph of flash over substance; lots of FMV, the horrible inventory, no control over NPCs coming and going, actually no control over them at all... though I'll give it to the game, the soundtrack is very very awesome.

The EOBs are not bad, and I'd argue the first is in many ways the best. EOB2 may be longer and more challenging but EOB1's dungeon design was MUCH more interesting, with several ways to go down, and a very nice non-combat alternative at the end if you were smart enough to figure out all the clues earlier.

I feel compelled to mentioned Dungeon Hack. It's not exactly the same, since you only have one character, but it contains all the essential elements of the genre. Quite a nice implementation of D&D 2E rules as well. I had a lot of fun with that game.

I'll give Oubliette yet another shout out:
Oubliette is actually a classic game from the 70s, that was remade in 1983, and has now remade again for iPhone/Android – it predates the Wizardry Series by several years - Which is just one reason that the range of classes (10) and races (8). Roll up to 10 PCs per party. One nice thing about Ouellette is the big rogue-like influence, which means getting party wiped is both expected and inevitable – but not a hassle, since rolling a new party is quick and easy.

Get the 1983 DOS remake here:
http://www.zimlab.com/oubliette/

Get the Android version here:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.gabysoft.oubliette&hl=en

Get the iTunes version here:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/oubliette/id376637764?mt=8

Dungeon Hack is odd. It's a weird roguelike/crawler hybrid. I like it, and played through it a few times, but the randomization makes it less interesting and less fun to go through than a typical crawler (and the "puzzles" are... well, not that good), and at the same time I don't think most roguelike fans will enjoy the crawler interface and 2E trappings. It also runs on the EOB3 engine, and that wasn't a terribly optimized engine for this kind of game.

Ok, I've played pretty much everything suggested in this thread ages ago and want to pick one of them back up. Call me a lazy fag but do ANY of them have an automap? Worst case, I guess I can run them in a window and use a dungeon mapper program but I'd really rather have an automap. As I recall, didn't Wiz 7 have a map skill and as you got better, you got more info on the map, like doors, etc... I'd love to play something with a system like that again.

Black Crypt has automap.
As for Chaos Strikes Back, part of the challenge is making a map, and an automap would have cheapened the game IMO.

I'll check out Black Crpyt again, and I do agree with you on mapping it yourself. I spent many hours with graph paper and pencil but I'm just too lazy to do that nowadays.

The Ishar series had pretty good graphics. That's about all I can say in its favor though.

Looks like you got most of them. I'm a big Lands of Lore II fan, so grab that as well. I wish there were more of these god-forsaken games... I love a good dungeon crawl, me!

If you like Blobbers, Dark Spire for DS should be up your alley, also!

Alrighty, any games of the dungeon crawler variety, blobber, DM clone, single player (Ultima Underworld-ish), or otherwise available on GoG?

I am against work. And therefore against tweaking games to make them work on my older Netbook.

However, I've never played the earlier M&M or Wizardry games, so which ones should I start with, or is there some other type of game I should invest in on GoG if I want an overview of the genre(s)?

From a quick look, there's Arx Fatalis: http://www.gog.com/gamecard/arx_fatalis

It's basically an Ultima Underworld 3, and I believe it even started out development as such.

There's also the Might & Magic 6-pack, which is the first 6 MM games: http://www.gog.com/gamecard/might_and_magic_6_limited_edition

I personally have not played MM1-2, but MM3 is excellent and MM4+5 combine into one single game, which is one of my favorite turn-based blobbers of all time. I would start with 3, but you can try 1 and 2 to see if you can stomach them. I couldn't.

A lot of people recommend the Realms of Arkania series, which I've never gotten around to trying: http://www.gog.com/gamecard/realms_of_arkania_1_2

I believe the combat in RoK is not blobber combat, though.

My favourite game out there.

Also keep in mind it was delevoped in earlier times when RPGs were not designed for retards, so while it gave you plenty of healing/mana items AND feature regeneration (which depends on stats, mana regen was fast for mage and mana means healing) - you still had to fight minimising damage taken/resources spent. Like, i say, in Wizardry games etc. where each fight wasnt challenging, it was challenging to conserve resources for several subsequent fights.

If you want to compare about endings, there are plenty of games where to get better ending, you have to do much more than actualy being careful to listen what NPCs tell you and use logic.