The best party-based games

Dark Designs 2: Closing the Gate picks up right where the first game left off, with your party stumbling into yet another world-threatening mess. The stakes are higher, the enemies...

Dark Sun 2: Wake of the Ravager takes the harsh desert world of Athas and turns up the intensity. Building on its predecessor, it offers deeper role-playing, improved combat, and a...

By 1994, RPG fans were spoiled with titles like Might and Magic and Ultima. Then along came Disciples of Steel, a brutally complex, turn-based fantasy epic for DOS. It drops you in...

Back in 1990, Legend of Faerghail was what you played if you wanted a role-playing experience both grand and slightly unforgiving. A German-developed RPG, it combined dungeon crawl...

Shadows Over Riva caps the trilogy with a confident stride. The graphics receive a welcome upgrade, the atmosphere takes a darker turn, and the narrative leans heavily into detecti...

Might and Magic Book One: The Secret of the Inner Sanctum is a classic first-person role-playing video game (RPG) released in 1986 for DOS and other platforms. It was developed and...

This sequel takes the same D&D-in-space formula and tries to go bigger, bolder, and... okay, maybe just more complicated. Buck Rogers: Matrix Cubed continues the galactic strug...

Darklands is what happens when medieval Europe gets even darker than it already was. This 1992 RPG drops you into the Holy Roman Empire, but don’t expect knights in shining a...

Keys to Maramon is a role-playing game developed by Mindcraft Software and released in 1990 for the Amiga, MS-DOS, and Commodore 64 platforms. The game is set in the same universe ...

Whale's Voyage is an abandoned science fiction first-person view party-based RPG, developed by neo Software Produktions and released by Pro One Software in 1993. Whale's Voyage is ...

Released in 1989 for DOS, The Magic Candle is a classic RPG with more depth than a wizard’s library. You must keep a sacred candle burning to prevent evil from escaping &mdas...

Might and Magic II: Gates to Another World is a classic role-playing video game developed and published by New World Computing. It was originally released in 1988 for various home ...

Might and Magic V: Darkside of Xeen is a role-playing video game developed by New World Computing and released in 1993. It is the fifth installment in the Might and Magic series an...

Imagine being the captain of a space freighter crewed entirely by neurotic aliens, each with a personality straight out of a sitcom. That’s Psi 5 Trading Company in a nutshel...

Knights of Legend is a tactical role-playing game (RPG) released by Origin Systems in 1989 for MS-DOS, the Apple II, and the Commodore 64. Known for its complex gameplay and strate...

Amberstar is a fantasy old school RPG very similar to Ultima 6 that uses a top-down view for interiors and small locations and a first person pseudo 3D view for everything else. Un...

The Bard's Tale: Tales of the Unknown was developed by Interplay Productions and published by Electronic Arts for DOS and other systems. The game takes place in the fictional ...

Don't Go Alone is the kind of title that doesn’t need a warning label—it’s the warning label. This horror-themed dungeon crawler from 1989 drops you into a world ...

Think Dungeon Master, but in space, and your party is made of four remote-controlled robot prisoners. Welcome to Captive, where the only thing more confusing than the plot is the m...

If you’ve ever dreamed of being a grumpy bearded guy swinging an axe and saving the world before second breakfast, Bloodstone: an Epic Dwarven Tale is your jam. Released in 1...

Then there’s Martian Dreams, the Ultima game where you travel to Mars in the 19th century with none other than Sigmund Freud and Nikola Tesla. Yes, it’s as delightfully...

By 1992, The Magic Candle 3 refined everything the series had built — a deep fantasy world, intricate character management, and enough side quests to last you until retiremen...

Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord is a role-playing video game that was first released in 1981. It's one of the pioneering titles in the dungeon-crawling genre and one ...

Ultima 2 asks the pressing question: what if you mixed time travel with fantasy and a truly mean sorceress named Minax? The answer is chaos. You’ll bounce between eras—...

HeroQuest is a classic video game adaptation of the popular board game HeroQuest, released in 1991 by Gremlin Interactive. HeroQuest faithfully recreates the turn-based, ...