I'm looking for immersive RPGs with "
dungeon synth" type of music and athmosphere. Any platform will do but since I'm looking for that certain "early 90s dungeon RPG" vibe, SNES and Amiga (+PC-Engine CD and Atari ST?) games are the most likely candidates. I dont have anything against more modern games, but the chances are that they look and sound too polished. It's important that the music has that amateurish 1990s black metal synthesizer sound to it. I think the SNES can put out some great music in this style, like
Castlevania IV: Waterfall and
Donkey Kong Country 2 castle theme. In other words the music is "creepy", but not really due to the limitations of the hardware. Maybe "organic" and "melancholic" are better terms for describing this type of (video game) music. That's what the game should feel like: engrossing, athmospheric. Things like story and character development don't really matter, it's all about the mood.
Another really important aspect is the graphics, they shouldn't look too polished. I really like the hand drawn, comic book style of graphics many early 1990s Amiga and PC games use.
I also really like the look that games like Shadow of the Beast, Agony and Kolibri have (a lot of parallax scrolling?)
I find it appealing that many early 1990s RPGs used very bright colors while they simultaneously had a dark tone, so they looked kind of cartoonish. But "anime-ish" character sprites are sort of a turn off in this case though.
The game doesn't have to be a dungeon crawler. I'd prefer to have a turn based combat system (so that I can eat while playing
), but I don't mind real time combat if the game is otherwise excellent.
Games I've already played: Ultima Underworld, ADD: Eye of the Beholder&Slayer
Lands of Lore: The Throne of Chaos looks promising but I haven't had the chance to try it out yet.
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