So, The Bard’s Tale—this NES classic drops you into Skara Brae, a city frozen solid by some wizard named Mangar. Streets are crawling with monsters, and honestly, you don’t wanna be outside after dark unless you’ve got a decent party backing you up. You start by rolling up a crew of adventurers—fighters, mages, rogues, the usual—and then it’s straight into the grimy sewers and creepy towers to figure out how to break Mangar’s curse.

It’s got that old-school Wizardry vibe with the first-person dungeon crawling, but with way more color and some neat tweaks. Like, you can actually step outside between dungeons (which feels weirdly freeing after hours of corridors), and there’s a ton of classes to mix and match. Just don’t expect hand-holding—half the fun is scribbling down maps and praying your mage remembers the right spell when a pack of werewolves shows up.

Honestly, it’s brutal but weirdly satisfying when you finally crack a dungeon’s secrets. The music’s also way catchier than it has any right to be.