Ultima 7 / The Black Gate:

my first CRPG and first real computer game, and a complete winner. If you weren't exposed to the Ultima world before, this one just hit you (thinking it was the early nineties). I still replay it now and then for nostalgia's sake

Eye of the Beholder 1:

another one that, for its time, was fantastic. Addicting point-and-click fun that was still more atmospheric than some of today's 'twitch' action RPGs

Baldur's Gate 2:

another winner. I wasn't impressed by Baldur's Gate 1, maybe because I had played a lot of RPGs up to that point and it didn't offer much innovation (considering that party member interaction was flat out BROKEN in the German version). But #2 did it all right, and offers some crazy action with all those high level abilities + spells, plus it's designed very well. And it does not take away anything if you haven't finished BG before (I hadn't gotten very far in BG before because it got boring quickly)

Might and Magic 7:

easily the pinnacle of the MM series. It has all that's to love about the series, is very polished (with all patches) and has some fun innovations like the built-in card game. It may be a tie between this and MM2, just for the uber cheesiness and gigantic battles of the latter (I don't think any other MM game had as many enemies as MM2? I might be wrong because I've only played MM3-9 myself)


My favorite RPG world is probably that of Dark Sun, and I hugely enjoyed these two games just for the setting.
Also, there are so many great RPGs, a lot of them from the Dos era... the Realms of Arkania games, the Magic Candle games (including Bloodstone), the Megatraveller games, GoldBox etc. or newer ones like the Fallouts, Icewind Dales, DivDiv... there are lots of 'good' RPGs but it's very rare in this genre that games are absolutely outstanding. Of course, over the last few (8?) years the MMORPG craze has taken time and resources away from the development of single player RPGs, which is a shame because MMOs don't even come near in terms of depth and gameplay. But I do hope that this market will soon be saturated enough that developers will turn toward the single player market again