Phantasie

The Good
Phantasie was the original Game Without End. With a party of custom adventurers, you roamed the land solving puzzles and fighting monsters (including the deadly BANTAR!). After level 100, though, the game just...stopped registering advancement, but you could continue on. For fun, I defeated the almighty Zeus over and over again. Thankfully, I've inherited a C64 and a trunkload of software, including Phantasie, so I can pick it up all over again!

The Bad
Nothing really bothered me about the game (back when it was state-of-the-art). The gameplay was solid, the graphics were on par with the games of the day, and it was a great overall experience.

The Bottom Line
Phantasie is one of the all time unsung gems of the CRPG world. Combining puzzle solving, turn-based combat and a legion of options, Phantasie is well worth the time spent, even today.

The Good
I guess I should write a review since the screenshots from my game are showing though it was back at level 1. No clue how they got here.

The great thing about this game is the diversity of character races, classes and abilities you can have. As an avid roleplayer from tabletop to World of Warcraft, one thing that is a sure success is a well balanced system with many kinds of factors in a fight. It's pretty flexible on where you can go, what you can do, and you can save your explored part of dungeon maps. Bottom line for me is, it's fun.

The Bad
It has a bug where when you hold west, your party will move east now and then. Learning curve is steep without a manual. Need to get spell list online.

The Bottom Line
For Commodore 64, I'll give this one "best in class" of roleplaying games I've played so far.

The Good
classes, "land explorarion" (view new land as you explore), battle animation, you name it! I spent months (years!) looking for anything about this game, and just finding brings back such great memories. (Ironically, one of my favorite series would turn out to be Final Fantasy! Even Phatasie's cover reminds me of it slightly). I never got too far into the game (I was only 10 at the time, and it was my first RPG).... but, so many of its' features are now seen in modern RPGs, and this was one of the best, origanal "CRPG". I can't play it anymore though, since the disk went bad, but I just can't stop saying how great this game was. It's right up there with the great NES RPGs of it's time. (and that's 1987 BTW, when CRPGs was a new and emerging genre).

The Bad
Well, nothing really. It was the first of it's kind.

The Bottom Line
The name could decieve you into thinking it's like Final Fantasy (tm) (c) :), especially the name (even I have to remind myself that it's a different artwork on the cover!). But, if you want to see a classic, and one of the first of it's kind, it's a game to get (if it's still around).

Remix anyone? :-)