Baldur's Gate

Baldur's Gate is the Dungeons & Dragons-style role-playing game people reach for when they want party management, tactical combat and a world built for talking as much as fighting. By our assessment, its real strength is how much of that tabletop structure it turns into computer play: careful positioning, spells, companions and long stretches of decision-making. The downside is plain too, because it asks for time, reading and tolerance for older computer-RPG pacing. In practice it feels like moving a small adventuring company through danger one choice at a time. It sits near the centre of western computer role-playing history rather than at the edge, and later party-based RPGs still live in its shadow. That reputation rests on systems, not spectacle, and the title still matters because so many games copied its way of doing things.