I think these games also have that beautiful atmospheric environmental storytelling going on. Monomyth is where my hopes lie, and it looks great so far. Really sad that there will likely not be any Legend of Grimrock 3. It really nailed the atmosphere of being dropped in a mythic world. I really loved Legend of Grimrock 1 & 2 in particular in terms of more recent games. Etrian Odyssey 4: Legend of the Giant God Etrian Odyssey 1: Labyrinth of Yggdrasill Forgotton Realms: Eye of the Beholder 3 Forgotton Realms: Eye of the Beholder 2 Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner - Soul Hackers Dungeon Master II: The Legend of Skullkeep I dislike horror for it's own sake though I want my protagonist to be pro-active, so don't go for things that are purely intended to gross you out. I play all types of RPGs, but I find blobbers too, are sometimes far more immersive than isometric RPGs, though again, not always, depending on the developer's mastery of their material. Dropped into a Dark Fantasy world, you likely would be in a fight for survival, with only the environment telling you things. Perhaps Dark Fantasy being a sub-genre of horror, is more attuned to the psychological themes of being inside an alien world, yet contains some of the concern for logical intelligibility that fantasy does. Perhaps it is the lack of narrative, which make many of the early boomer shooters similar to Dark Souls in terms of telling their story environmentally.

Perhaps it is the immediacy of the perspective, that enhances the feeling of isolation and loneliness.

I also feel that the horror genre sometimes has better fantasy world-building than actual genre fantasy, in that something like 'Hell' intruding on reality (as in Hellraiser, Event Horizon, or Doom), is a ready-made complex metaphysical idea, that you can run with. That might be part of the reason horror is sometimes better at enemues, because being verbose is useless if your world's psychology and metaphysics are boring and trite. Other than Tolkien, very few people get 'long-forgotten darkness' right, which is a timeless concept embedded deep in psychology. I feel many of them captured the feeling of being isolated inside a fantasy world better than many explicitly fantasy games.

Who else feels that certain FPS games captured the atmosphere of being isolated, inside a lonely mythic world better than many RPGs do? I think there is something really compelling about the environmental storytelling and minimalist world-building of several boomer shooters, although it perhaps goes largely unnoticed while you play.

Ravenloft morrowind