Ultima Underworld
It came out before Doom, had full isometric 3D environments including looking up and down, and contained immersive sim and RPG elements. All the ingredients of a modern first person action RPG... in 1992.
cyd
joined 1 year ago
Maybe he wanted to build Deepsea Challenger II, III, and IV simultaneously, and it took longer than expected.
Chrono Trigger. It's basically the evolutionary peak of the NES-era console RPG. Every aspect, including the story, art, game mechanics, and music, are best-in-class, with no obvious room for improvement given the technical constraints of the time.