Proto-Baldur's Gate?
I remember before it was released, seeing the first print ads for BG back in the day and thinking, "Wow, this looks like C5." And indeed, a PC with a fully customizable portrait, recruiting NPCs to his party along the way, who maybe chime with their own thoughts during dialogue sequences. And your party will get HUGE by the end of the game.
It's not one of those super old-school dungeon crawling type of RPGs that requires super patience and dedication. I mean, I was 9 years old at the time, and I was still able to get into it and get to the end. It's more about story and dialogue rather than min-maxing. Unfortunately, that emphasis on story also includes a certain plot device that will make certain locations inaccessible and thus prevent you from finishing the game if you tarry too long. If you are not 9 years old, and you look carefully at the map, maybe this will not as big a problem for you as it was for me back then. But regardless it does significantly limit the exploration of the open world. A sense of urgency is of course not necessarily a bad thing, but even a small chance of a long and non-Roguelike RPG being impossible to complete and forcing the player to start all over from scratch is not good game design, IMO, so it should be noted. Perhaps this is one aspect that can be described as too "old-school".
A disclaimer, because reviews here are too often clouded by nostalgia and you are probably as sick of them as I am, that this was my first CRPG, probably still got the box and manual and floppy disks somewhere. I also haven't played it since the 90s, so I can't speak to technical issues (if any) of the GOG version. But I felt the need to say something because there is so little info about this game on the internet. If you are fan of 90s CRPGs, I consider it to be a safe buy. Not a must-buy, but I don't think C5 deserved to be ignored as it was back then and continues to be today.
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