I’ve been getting really into Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines and Redemption, old school Runescape, Ragnarok Online, Arcanum, Diablo II, and others lately, and I’m looking for more 90s/early 00s PC games that will run on my new Thinkpad E15 G4 running Arch Linux.
Check out all the old “immersive sims” like Deus Ex, Arx Fatalis, System Shock 2, and Thief.
If you’re cool with emulators, PSX has a metric ton of JRPGs that will absolutely devour your life.
This isn’t really a good recommendation for OP, since it has fairly hefty modern graphics card requirements, but I’d like to give a shout out to the System Shock remake. It finally launched two weeks ago (I kickstarted way back in 2016 lol) and I’ve been enjoying it. It’s mostly a graphical and controls update that doesn’t otherwise stray far from the original game’s design. Largely the same maze-like space station layout, old-school tile-based inventory management, etc.
System Shock 2 is one of my all-time faves, and I’d love to see Night Dive give it the same treatment.
I highly recommend looking into Spiderweb Software games. They’ve been pumping out top down turn based tactics rpgs for years now. I am not sure of the viability on Linux, but I’m sure there is a workaround if anything.
The Avernum series in particular is great if you’re into detailed character building, exploring, and high difficulty optional quests/bosses!
If you haven’t played them the original Fallout 1 and 2 (the Fallout 2 Restoration Project is a big recommend) and Arcanum are classics as well.
I haven’t played any Fallouts except 76 for about 15 minutes cuz a friend wanted me to, I’ll give them a shot 👍
Caesar 3 is a fantastic city builder that will run on just about anything. https://store.steampowered.com/app/517790/Caesar_3/
Fallout 1 and 2, and Grim Dawn are all excellent choices, although Grim Dawn is newer.
I was a huge fan of Wizardy 8 when it released. Being able to type questions and responses to NPCs in a 3D RPG was mind blowing to teenage me. The older Elder Scrolls games like Daggerfall can be fun for a while as well.
The isometric games from Black Isle Studios were also top notch 90s/2000s RPGs. Baldur’s Gate (I & II), Icewind Dale, and Planescape: Torment are all fantastic. Planescape is less combat focused than the others.
You could look into Spiderweb Software games. It’s a veteran mom and pop indie studio from before indie studios were a thing. They’re still going strong in their retro RPG niche and I’m pretty sure their games run on a potato. Recently I’ve enjoyed Queen’s Wish 1 (2 is in my backlog). I have fond memories of the Avernum series as well.
Thanks for the tip!
Interestingly enough, I would say breath of the wild. I thought it was only okay. I didn’t love the powers, the world felt big but empty, idk just didn’t fully click with me.
I feel like totk has everything I was missing in botw. Could be because I didn’t really watch any promotional materials and had lower expectations, but totk blew me away.
Wonderful games, but I’ve already played BOTW into the ground and there’s zero chance Yuzu will run TOTK well on my GPU-less AMD 5625u machine (that being said, I am of course playing it obsessively on both the Switch and emulated on my tower PC w/much higher specs), …and of course neither of them are 90s/00s games… but thanks anyways ❤️
Hahaha that you for the nice reply but I totally responded to the wrong thread post, sorry still new to lemmy.
There’s a bug, it’s not just you
hahaha no problem. I had a feeling something like that was up, but the thing that made me really want to join was that the conversations I saw were people actually communicating and not being giant dickbags so I intend to keep that going 👍
