Just wondering what your favorite features of early WRPGs are.

Requirements are:
* Game must be recognizably a WRPG, or at least close to being a WRPG (as opposed to a JRPG).
* Game must pre-date Baldur's Gate. I'm looking for interesting features that *early* games had, not semi-modern ones.

So, what are your favorite features (or other aspects) of early WRPGs?

That’s a tough one: I got interested into RPG starting with Baldur’s Gate, and can’t really get into older ones…
Unless you include Hack’n Slash into RPG, as I had a lot of fun on the original Diablo. But I would not call such games RPG, and I doubt you would either.

But I am going to follow this thread, as I am curious to know what people like in those older games.

The variety of settings. A lot WRPGs were always DnD clones or otherwise something vaguely European-ish medieval fantasy. These days, a lot are simply Fallout clones. That's not to say there aren't a lot of games with different settings otherwise these days, but they aren't really high profile enough to have caught my attention.

Wizardry, Ultima, and Might & Magic used to be this weird mishmash science fantasy, where there's sword and shields alongside spaceships and ray guns.

I haven't booted it up yet, but I found the concept of Bloodnet appealing. "Look, a vampire RPG set in a cyberpunk dystopia!" long before Vampire: The Masquerade made its digital debut. Reviews don't make it out to be very good, though.

Darklands is fantasy Europe, but it's very low magic and more connected to Catholic mythology and alchemy than casting lightning bolt, and you fight demons and witches.

Jagged Alliance, arguably an RPG series, is set in modern days where mercenaries are contracted to deal with conflicts in developing countries.

Honestly, I can't think of one that I tried that I enjoyed even slightly. They were all on about food management, hard difficulty, "drop you in and figure it out", and, worse, the dreaded gridmap 1st person dungeons.

I guess the one I almost came to liking was Bard's Tale Construction Set, but that's because of tinkering. Not because of the game itself.

I guess...
The only one I ever "finished" was Drakkhen. (As in, I was at the ending and didn't know it because the game was terrible about telling you things and then I loaded my save 10 years later and used a guide to do the one thing to trigger the ending that was completely undiscoverable through play.) What I liked about Drakken was its hybrid "point and click adventure" + "WRPG". I also liked that drinking a potion left you with an empty vial, that you could then refill from a few of the potion fountains through the world. And it came with an actual novella to introduce the story (expected to read before playing). It felt barren and empty (and was -- technical limitations of most games of the time!) But where as most other games you eventually run into "oh, there are all these other high-level people I need to defeat, why weren't they doing anything to save the world?", this game thrusts you into the politics between dragons... and there is basically no one but the dragons and their minions here.

But it still did all the other crap: random deaths, unpredictable difficulty, "look up on the reference card to decipher these glyphs to the spell name", fixed, limited, inventory shop, PhD in puzzleology to figure out the vaguely vaguest hints for things...

EDIT1:
I guess I also did play through Lands of Lore sufficiently. It was late enough that the 1st person gridmap was less terrible (though still was annoying) and implemented some "point and click adventure" stuff inside it. But I never completed it because late dungeons were basically impossible, especially if you missed any certain things earlier and had no clue about it. But again it was for the lore/story that I played... I had to leave piles of loot scattered around the world and go between them now and again because of extremely limited inventory, but you couldn't eve toss anything because you would need it.

Betrayal at Krondor: Train through use. Books can be used repeatedly for continued, albeit diminishing, gains. The mental link allowing mages to learn spells. Stats are reduced according to current HP. Chest riddles. "Dead" characters get back up after combat and shuffle along if at least one's left alive (actually with a description of the others helping them up and pushing them to keep going). [And probably still forgot some...]

Castle of the Winds: The bulk concept instead of inventory grid, and containers with either fixed or variable bulk.

Quest for Glory: Train through use, including of attributes. Being able to have fully maxed character (if you start with thief).

Not counting M&M6 since that's also a '98 game, like BG.

It's "Tale", not "Tail".

I remember that game having a spell editor, except that it was too limited, and couldn't even replicate spells that were simply combinations of two other spells. You couldn't replicate Flesh Restore IIRC.

Forgotten Realms Unlimited Adventures was another game that would allow such tinkering, as was Blades of Exile (though I'm not sure about the release date of that shareware game). I remember Dungeon Master doing this, except that refilling the flask (or simple filling it in the first place) simply required casting a spell. The game did not have any healing spells, but it did have a spell that would convert an empty flask into a healing potion that you could then drink.

(The game also gave you the option of filling the flask with water at a water fountain, in case the waterskins you find weren't enough.) Didn't realize that game came out so late.

Some other features I personally like:
* Being able to recharge items with a spell (Might and Magic series, Wizarrdy 7, Dragon Wars)
* Being able to enchant items (Might and Magic series has the beginnings of it, but it's in games like Demon's Winter and Daggerfall where this mechanic is developed further).
* Custom spells, like in TES: Arena. (If that counts as an RPG; it's certainly more RPG-ish than Oblivion.)
* Dungeon Master's magic system, where if you know the runes for a spell, you can try to cast it. (The JRPG Rudra no Hihou ends up having a similar feel; if you know the name of a spell, you can cast it, MP permitting.)
* Bard's Tale's persistent summons. Summons aren't just for a battle or a limited time.
* Centauri Alliance's transformation spells. You can transform into a goblin or dragon, and it persists until dispelled or LIFE (HP equivalent) reaches 0, though being transformed prevents you from leveling up (but not from earning XP).

"Phantasie" series (1985 - 1987).
Features I like(d):
- Top down view
- Battle View (party at the bottom of screen, enemies at the top)
- Turnbased
- Dungeons in the style of "Temple of Apshai" (another great game)
- Target zones (body parts (legs, arms, torso, head) could be attacked specifically)

Wizards and Warriors. Post Baldur's Gate but extremelly classic in spirit and gameplay. Pretty Hardcoreness, Difficult Puzzles. Wizardry Dungeonering.

Realms of Arkania Saga. Extreme Hardcore, Classic dungeonering, party micromanagement galore, rich character creation, survivalism. Very pen and paper RPG

Wizard's Crown. Pure vintage. Extreme and detailed tactical combat and character creation, nearly a wargame into a deep CRPG in features, not specially in story.

Those have some of m favourite features n a CRPG

Eye of the Beholder. Because it's the first CRPG I played on my rusty 286 a long, long time ago...

Before 1998? Swish.
That's easy.

Exile II: The Crystal Souls

Vast expansive world with little in the way of corralling you down the critical path. If you want, you can explore a lot of the world before even formally starting the plot.

Might and Magic 2: Gates to Another World has a large open world that really is open. If you can manage to find your way to the Plane of Fire with low level characters, there isn't going to be any friendly NPCs or signs warning you to turn back.

Quest for Glory is a game where it's really hard to make a character that you cannot finish the game with. There's so many opportunities to train up skills and improve your character's attributes that even if you do something that makes it harder for your character to progress further in the game with his current stats, you're going to be able to fix it.

Those freeform inventories you find in Ultima VII and Anvil of Dawn. Not on a grid, not in a list. Only problem is managing where to put all your crap, but that seems like a fitting and realistic challenge of self-discipline in inventory management.

I liked Four Crystals of Trazere aka Legend's resurrection system where you can resurrect for free, but you had bad luck unless you donated to the church. Has that cost analysis of making sure your party is alive, but has enough leeway that it's beneficial to pay out but not super necessary. At least, from what little I played of it. I also liked its isometric room approach to its layout.

Fallout. That's pre-Baldur's Gate. Take that OP. /jk

Actually, it's nothing new, but Dark Sun, Jagged Alliance, and Fallout, and I'm sure tons others, used a TB system where you fought on the same map you traversed and it switched between that and real-time traversal, but WRPGs, for whatever insane reason, gained this reputation for having real-time combat systems "as opposed to their JRPG counterparts" that I keep reading when J v W stuff comes up. Some reasons I can chalk this up to are: a. The most popular WRPGs were real-time games that console gamers can get attached to, hence why Skyrim, Mass Effect, and nu-Fallout get brought up, but not any of the PC focused ones, such as Temple of Elemental Evil and Wasteland 2, and b. WRPGs use a wide variety of systems and themes and can look and play completely different from one another, and even JRPGs get caught in this superficialization of being "little anime dudes that switch to a battle dimension and wait their turn to do fancy moves". Anyone else want to clear things up on this or otherwise comment?

EDIT: Let me clarify with the above tangent that I know that games like Diablo, Baldur's Gate, and Morrowind were all breakout hits that probably cemented WRPG = real-time combat, but the further actionization of AAA games are what newer audiences are going to attach to.

Champions of Kyrnn- my first crpg. You could make your own party, customize each character's looks. It had tactical battle system where party positioning is important.
To add to Castle of the Winds- I liked the variety of stores you could browse in Part 2. Previous poster mentioned the bulk concept.
To add to Dark Sun- I don't know if it's the first one to use spell targeting system to accurately target enemies or party members. Before this you had trial and error for targeting fireball.

* The "Create Your Own Adventure" feature of Forgotten Realms Unlimited Adventures, which predates part of the concept of the later Neverwinter Nights
* the option or requirement to create a full party at start
* AD&D - no matter how flawed, I feel at home with it
* text or simple graphics that stir the imagination

(I still prefer those that already offer mouse and VGA support though)