u/Dub_Coast

Often overlooked in favor of it's sequel, Lords of the Realm 1 is one of the most chill strategy games I've ever played and features beautiful pixel art that I personally think has aged better than the sequel's mid-'90's 3D graphics have (don't get me wrong, I love LotR2 as well). But just look at this art! Who else has played this hella chill game?

I have D2R on Xbox and Project Diablo 2, but playing 1.14d with PlugY and the widescreen graphics fixes is just an amazingly nostalgic way to enjoy D2. It's how I remember the game being and how I remember it looking. I wish Blizzard would throw us a bone with official widescreen/stash fixes for legacy 1.14d, but alas I doubt it'll ever happen. My laptop is unfortunately not strong enough for D2R, and PD2 is amazing but feels definitely not vanilla. Anybody else still playing legacy with PlugY?

Messerschmidt's Reaver isn't the best weapon but it's still my favorite unique in the Diablo series. Screenshot is taken playing Diablo via DevilutionX.

Game pictured is "Curse of Aros"

Eternal Lands released in 2003 and is an indie MMORPG that has been up and running for 23 years now. The client is open-source and it's easy to install on multiple platforms. The game is F2P with optional MTX available on the website via PayPal (yes, it's old and indie). I'm actually recommending this as a newer player. I originally tried EL a couple years ago and bounced off of it, but I've been diving deeper into it lately and have found it to be an excellent game, and it's convenient that I can play on both my old thinkpad running Linux as well as my older mid-range Android phone. If you haven't tried it before I definitely recommend trying it out, especially if you are a fan of RuneScape or just enjoy older MMORPGs in general. It's a smaller community, from my understanding the peak player count was just shy of 1,000 online back in 2008. So there you go, there's an obscure mmorpg for you to check out.

Believe it or not there are still those of us playing the original Diablo, and not just a "one and done" to experience it, but actively grinding hundreds to thousands of hours for high level characters, item hunting, and self imposed rules such as Ironman, hardcore, Hunter vs rabbits, live off the land, and more.

If you're still curious about joining one of the original Diablo communities that is still active then I recommend the following communities:

DevilutionX

The Horadrim

WUQH

It also features big fixes, zero tier multiplayer (Android/PC cross play), touch controls, controller support, 120+ FPS, stash support, alt-item highlight, PvP arenas, and more. It does require your diabdat.mpq file to play.

Warfare 1917 & Warfare 1944 were originally flash games played via browser back in the day. Nowadays they've both been remastered and bundled in Unity with new content, available on both Steam and mobile stores. They're side scrolling RTS games that are simple yet addicting AF and I lost a lot of hours on these back in the day. They did an amazing job with the Battle of the Bulge campaign and I hella recommend you give these a play through, especially if you're like me and have nostalgia for them.

I wish they didn't shut the servers down, or at least had ported it to PC so that we could use alternative servers like with BF1942. It was the perfect classic Battlefield experience distilled into an amazing time.

Please don't be angry grandpa

One of my absolute favorite rpgs of all time, Darklands was made in 1992 and was way ahead of it's time. It's a historical role playing game that takes place in 15th-century medieval Germany (The Holy Roman Empire), where you'll be fighting bandits, robber knights (raubritters), taxed by bishops, but not just that, the mythologies and beliefs and superstitions of that time period are all here too. So you have witches, demons, schrats, dwarves, werewolves, dragons, and all other sorts of evils that people believed in or feared at that time period in history. Magic is replaced with alchemy and religion, where you can create powerful potions or invoke the help of the Saints to assist you. The combat is real-time with pause (in fact, it may be the first crpg to use that system) similar to BG1+2/KotoR/IWD/etc, but much of the game is a "choose your path" text adventure, but traveling on the overworld is an isometric overview map. The character creation system is also one of my favorites, and I highly highly highly suggest reading the manual. The game is on GOG/Steam and I recommend using a DosBox emulator that can use CRT filters to play. There are also image files I recommend getting (for the in-game copyright protection) so you don't get booted. This game is old school and is really one of a kind. I can't recommend it enough.

Celtic Tales: Balor of the Evil Eye is an old school strategy/RPG that takes place in a mythical version of ancient Ireland. It's essentially what if Ireland existed and all of the Celtic mythology was real. This game is considered abandonware now, as the only way I've seen to obtain a copy is buying secondhand. It's an interesting game that I discovered by chance when looking up abandoned/obscure DOS games. Funny how the older I get and the more advanced tech gets, the more I look towards older games for genuine experiences.

Have any of you ever played this game or even heard of it?

Lords of the Realm II (1996) is a hybrid turn-based/real-time strategy game (similar to Total War before Total War was a thing) released on DOS and Windows. It's an incredible game involving resource and population management, diplomacy, castle sieges, land grabs, expansion, trade, mercenaries, and more. It's available on Steam and GOG and I highly recommend you find a way to use a CRT filter while playing. This game is an oldie but a goodie, I highly recommend it.