Dungeon Keeper 2

Dungeon Keeper 2 perfected the idea the first game introduced: you play the villain, build an underground dungeon, and defend it against annoying heroes who crawl into your basement to steal treasure. Bullfrog moved the whole game into full 3D, which wasn't a given at the time, and above all this enabled the thing people remember it for to this day—at any time you can possess your own minion and walk through the dungeon through its eyes, in first person, with all that damp darkness and the echo of footsteps.

The management side is still the core of the game. You dig tunnels, wall off rooms, lure monsters in with food and gold, make sure the imps don't quarrel with the dark elves, and when someone slacks off, you smack them with your giant hand. Each room type attracts different tenants, and a poorly laid-out dungeon falls apart from within before the first knight even arrives. Alongside this runs a proper war: you're up against either heroes from the surface or another dungeon keeper, and the fighting is over territory that first has to be dug out.

What set the game apart from other strategy titles, though, is its tone. The narrator comments on your actions with such lazy sarcasm that it's worth losing just for the lines, and the whole game pokes fun at fantasy clichés without ever ceasing to function as a strategy game. Bullfrog released it just a year before EA dissolved the studio, making it one of the last things this studio managed to finish.

Why play it: An underground builder strategy game that nobody has properly repeated—and possessing your own monster makes it an experience few games from 1999 can match.