Sivion by Mothingos (1995)

Sivion presents itself with a solid setting: the town of bespin, which is exactly how a zzt city should be. Instead of having many inaccessible buildings blocking the way (like for example in ned the knight) you can enter each one and additionaly follow several routes out of the city, so in total you have 9 different paths to choose from at the very start. Because long-distance movement in zzt is quite a chore, this high density of locations works very well.
Later Sivion fucks it up a bit by locking certain paths at the beginning and opening them up later a bit unpredictably, which is not bad per se but the game really should've been more clear about the whole thing.

When first diving in sivion I was very curious due to the high praise by Dr Dos of the characters, but honestly I don't think that's entirely fair. You still get the "get lost" types in the bar, and the writing is pretty basic in general. However, compared to other games the story feels more real inside the game (except for the useless introduction), rather than just unimportant exposition. The best example of course is the shop. The story itself, being just another boring (and badly executed) iteration of the "evil geany" story isn't good. However, the setting and events that follow the story make it matter. I suppose this is how a decent rpg is.

A detail many people complained about which is mildly annoying is the mazes. They are pointless and annoying.

Verdict: recommended, but quit after you finish the first part of the game

The second part is a bit messy and buggy and generally considered not as good.