Other good AD&D CRPGs?

No other 2nd edition IE games exist. As for the 3rd or 3.5 editions, Troika’s Temple of Elemental Evil (ToEE) was really good, especially with the Temple+ Mod.

Good non-IE 2nd edition games are the old SSI Goldbox games. I would highly recommend Darksun Shattered Lands and the Krynn trilogy. If you like blobbers, go with the Eye of the Beholder trilogy.

For non-D&D, take a look at Knights of the Chalice 2 and if you love BG, try The Black Geyser Couriers of Darkness. The dev obviously LOVED BG. Also Lords of Xulima. All quality games.

 

How did I EVER forget PT? I feel like I blasphemed….

 

What's so off-putting that makes people quit before getting out of the Mortuary? That's like quitting Baldur's Gate before getting out of Candlekeep, or BG2 before escaping Irenicus' intro dungeon. Although it is a bit longer than either of those, it's more like PoR's Stillwater section or NWN's "Attack on the Training Academy" prologue.
Admittedly you're stuck as a fighter until well after you get out and it took me forever to track down the trainers to switch classes since I usually like to try to play a game without guides the first time.
In fact, I didn't even realize that I could switch classes at first, I thought the description of other classes was for NPCs that join you.

Back on topic, as for other 2E games, I can't really think of any for the computer. There is "Ravenloft" and "Menzoberrizan", but those are quite different. I didn't really enjoy them like I did the more turn based games, although I did enjoy Eye of the Beholder due to it being obviously based on "Dungeon Master". Ravenloft and Menzoberrizan are sort of a cross with the gameplay of Eye of the Beholder come to think of it.

There are a few games that feel like BG, but are not Dungeons and Dragons. "Konung" and "Divine Divinity" are some older titles, as well as to a lessor extent "Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura". Be warned that with Arcanum some people have trouble with getting it to work. I myself couldn't get it to work in XP despite finding patches, and can only play it under Windows 98SE on a now ancient computer, although come to think of it I never tried with my Windows 10 computer, giving up with a Vista/7 dual-boot computer before Windows 8 was around. It also has a few bugs and I strongly recommend you get some fan-made fixpacks, just like the G3 fixpack (successor to Baldurdash) is recommended here for the Baldur's Gate games.
More modern there is "Pillars of Eternity" and "Tyranny", although I have only tried them out as I just got a new monitor that seems to scale better than my old one and I can actually play them now without eye strain despite having them since Epic gave them away during the COVID crisis. I'm currently playing something else and am going to play those next, although I did play a couple hours of each to try them out and got hooked, which is a good sign.

Dragon Age:Origins was also made by Bioware and has a feel similar to Baldur's Gate, but is a brand new setting and system inspired by RPGs and CRPGs, but something new. I haven't gotten around to getting DA2 or Inquisition yet.

Fallout and Diablo have some superficial similarities, but Fallout has more in common with Jagged Alliance, while Diablo is a clickfest of hack and slash and more like Rogue with graphics. I'm not saying they are bad games at all, just different.
Honestly, I'm having a hard time coming up with something similar to the way the IE games play besides Konung, Divine Divinity, and to a lessor extent Arcanum. I know I'm forgetting something obvious.

The NWN games have a different feel, and there aren't too many like those either, Knights of the Old Republic is one of the few to come to mind.

 

If you liked Dungeon Master (also a remake for free on Steam, but it's not quite the same) or Legend of Grimrock you'll like Eye of the Beholder.
Menzoberranzan and Ravenloft have some superficial similarities, but are a bit different.

P.S. does anybody have a .CONF file to get Menzoberranzan to work with DOSBox? I understand GoG is selling it now and they usually use DOSBox. However, I don't have that version. I have the Forgotten Realms Silver Edition on CD-ROM.
It always seems to go slow and unresponsive in DOSBox even on my most modern computer.

P.P.S. I wouldn't mind hearing about other BG-style RPGs I might have missed myself.

 

Did you try to change the video backends in the configuration's screen? Maybe that helps.

 

@gibberishh , I don't think I have it installed anymore. I can't find it on my 98SE/XP computer or my Vista/7 computer. I don't recall ever trying it on my Windows 10 computer. I could reinstall it tomorrow, I just need to dig out the CD-ROM.
@Felipe I am pretty sure I played around with some of the video settings, but it's been around 8-10 years since I last messed with it.

 

Indeed, you can maximize everything and your stats maximized or not depend of the class you choose.

 

I see, i suggest you try some forks of dosbox out there that are updated more often than the main program.

Edit - i wish there was a way to delete posts, i want to edit this msg in the post above. :/

 

Well, the game is from 1994 i believe, not much in the way of the bug fixing patches if i'm not mistaken, max stats is (almost surely) a bug.

 

This site has it, and a ton of other manuals. It's been a great resource for games I pick up at the library "book sales" for the last 20 years:
http://www.replacementdocs.com

This was normal when SSI had the license for making AD&D games. Gold Box Games, Eye of the Beholder trilogy as well as Menzoberrizan allowed for this. I think Ravenloft did too.
Most versions of the Gold Box games however would penalize your for doing so, by increasing the number of enemies you faced the better your stats.
I don't know if any of the others did this.

As for max stats, it was allowed in Dark Sun, to the limits on the race and class. Try maxing the half-giant's mental stats to see what I mean. Dark Sun was odd compared to previous A&DD games in that some stats could go up to 20. I don't know it that was reflecting in the source material as my group concentrated on the Forgotten Realms and never purchased any Dark Sun books. Although we did get a couple of Greyhawk modules early on without realizing it until afterwards. They could be useful for generic adventures however.

 

I don't recall any telepathy actually working automatically. Everything had to be manually triggered. However, I haven't played in years, not since before I got my Win10 computer in 2018.
I do recall that the non-psionicist characters didn't use their abilities much except for the mind blank and the psychometabolism's healing ability. At least not after escaping the slave pits of the Arena. Early on they are all useful.
That said, if you are new to the game, I'd strongly recommend having one of each of the disciplines and one multi-classed psionicist with all three. The latter is not optimal, but you don't get a feel for what you want on your first play through and it allows you to experiment.

I'd also recommend taking as many classes as possible with mutliclassing for your first play through. You get enough XP that it only hurts you in the beginning if you try to farm the arena for gold (one of the only places where you can do this and it pays off to do so as you tend to be rather starved for money if you don't build up a small fortune at the beginning. Also the game will be hard if you had enough triple-classed characters and did not level up at least one level, preferably two at the Arena, but you don't need to increase more than two levels for your triple class characters. That being each class increased by two). Even then it's not as serious an issue since you can usually stop and rest (occasionally the Announcer says "That was too easy" and releases stronger monsters).

P.S. Could somebody remind me of what advantages Gladiators have over fighters or the disadvantage of Rangers over fighters? It sounds like with Gladiators you get a -1 to AC at 5th level at the expense of being restricted to a single class, but otherwise are identical to fighters.
Rangers get all kinds of advantages if they refrain from heavy armor such as two-weapon fighting and spell casting, but I don't recall any down sides.