Damit did I succeed to kill this thread? That's quite unfair, it's not the first hot exchange in this thread, it doesn't worth this death.
Well I'll throw my new current top ten:
- Gothic 2 + NOTR - Story density, nice world living, player choices, very good exploration, amazing sword fighting with a lot of depth.
- Fallout 1 - Adult story telling, depth, plenty interesting choices, nice turn based fight system, magically appealing since the first seconds of play.
- Ultima Underworld - Best merge of story, dialogs, exploration, puzzling and fights. Not the best story line but very good dialogs, they mix very well hints, general information, NPC relationship. Excellent puzzling design you don't see anymore in modern CRPG. Real 3D design of the area, no modern CRPG has yet done as well, only the recent Drakensang is going close. Nice original controls but for fights, fights still with a nice depth once you get more used to their weird and approximative controls.
- The Witcher - Best story writing, original management of player choices with real consequence in long term, best world living with Gothic 2 NOTR and Ultima 7, an adult story telling full of nice or weird humor, miraculously uncensored content like funny male chauvinist quotes, non serious teenish erotic content and even some weird funny pedophile stupid smiles. Quite fun action fighting if you don't stick to the more basic approach and try diversify your fighting by mixing swording with movements and magic runes.
- King's Bounty: The Legend - A tactical RPG and that's the tactical elements that are the core of an amazing gameplay with a lot of depth. A fresh non realistic approach from the scale to very cute graphics. The RPG elements just setup a nice and very pleasant mood. But objectively they are a bit too much symbolic, too generic, with too many humor referencing modern context.
... Myst, Pathway into Darkness, Civilization 1 for Mac, Doom and now King's Bounty The Legend. All those has been more than games, they fascinated me. King's Bounty The Legend isn't top 1 in this list because the RPG elements even if they setup a nice mood, they lack a bit of depth and I need more time to put it that high in my list.
- Mystery Dungeon: Shiren the Wanderer - Build on the rude base of roguelike games but with many very original design counterbalancing the lack of save backup. Deep gameplay but much more user friendly than in the genre tradition. Add to that cute graphics, funny characters and much more story stuff and you get a very original roguelike, rude but very fun gameplay.
- Dungeon Master 1 - I played it not so far ago and get amazed by the gameplay quality. An amazing example are the fights, no realism but extreme concentration on gameplay design, this result in a very fun fight action with a lot of depth. Add to that a nice mood, very good exploration and an amazing puzzling quality very diversified and very well merged to the exploration, and you get an amazing game like you don't see much more in more moderns CRPG.
- NWN2 Mask of the Betrayer - Epic game, better puzzling than most modern RPG but far to match older games like Dungeon Master. It has deep party NPC and even if they aren't the more attaching companions they are interesting anyway, a great story with a strong epic feeling, and it is much more subtle on the moral point of view than are usually most CRPG.
- Badur's Gate 1 - I replayed it recently and get amazed to have forgot how fun it was except an ugly final. For sure BG2 go further and overall BG1 is only solid contents lacking of deep originality but with very few weakness, everything has a solid quality, from fights to main story and NPC companions. But in comparison with BG2, BG1 achieved more freedom, much more attaching companions, better Fantasy mood, better main story and the last but not the least, no weird boring romance to manage.
- Citadel: Adventure of the Crystal Keep - I replayed it recently and it's been a chock to realize it was even better than what I allowed me think of a totally unknown game. It's just a little dungeon game but it has an unmatched mystery mood, plenty original and deep puzzling even if few are probably too dfficult. It's also impressive how many modern features this 1989 game had, from deep mouse interface design to personalized graphics. Few big flaws in the gameplay design, deliberate or not, but don't exploit them and you get a rude but great dungeon RPG with an excellent mystery mood.
I won't add the long list of possibly great CRPG I haven't yet try or that I played too few to get a good idea of their fun. But I'll add a short list for honorific mentions:
* Drakensang - Not the perfect CRPG design but plenty quality including an excellent companions design, most often a very good fighting, a very interesting class system. In my heart it clearly worth to be in my top ten, but too many obvious weakness and not so clear yet why I enjoyed it so much, too fresh play, need more time.
* Divine Divinity - If I keep only the core of this game, ie a large part after the beginning and before the last third of the game, this game would be probably in my top 5.
* Realmz: Sword Lands Trilogy - In fact a scenario trilogy for the now free game Realmz (but its scenario aren't yet free even if the price is now very low). I haven't played yet the full trilogy because when I played it the third wasn't released. I remember a lot of good stuff of this play, very good for the first scenario of the trilogy, amazing for the second. Among qualities I remember, a very good writing, nice puzzling and tactical fights design, extreme attention to details, incredible depth and alternatives particularely for such game close to sandbox but with strong story. Alas for such an unknown game and almost a user made addon (but not freeware), I need a more fresh replay to be more sure that my remembering isn't too wrong.
* NWN1: Dreamcatcher Series - The rembering I have of it is a bit old and it's not clear if a part of this remembering wasn't also coming from the amazement of this coming from almost a single guy.
* BG2 SoA and ToB - It's weird how I get a very good but not fully positive remembering about SoA and much better about ToB just because of fights design, unballanced in SoA and quite better tuned and designed in ToB. But I don't know anymore how much I like any of them and need replay them.
* NWN2 OC - My feeling was very very positive about this game when I played it and still is but not enough now because details about it strangely vanished quite a lot and I get a mixed feeling from having read too many negative comments about it.