True. The entire world levels with you - what a stupid idea. That made Oblivion very boring and unbelievable. But I saw it as graphics engine anyhow. Boring game, but a very good basis for good mods and total conversions. Just like Dungeon Siege 1.

Another thing I realized sours a game's experience for me is when a game has permanently missable content that was never mentioned as such. Yes I'm talking about you, Valdis Story. The game's combat is probably the best I've faced in the last 5 years — I love how they make it useful to parry attacks or dash past an enemy to hit it from the backside. But now that I am about to tackle the main boss I checked online whether this game has a New Game+ mode and it does. But I discovered that you can obtain a different weapon in NG+ if you follow a "secret" list of steps like completing certain areas in a specific order before killing some optional boss... That left me with a bad taste in my mouth.

Back on Inventory Management I just remembered how asinine it was made in Mass Effect 1. Oh how I loved selling three hundred weapons, armors and weapon enhancers one by one in completely unorganized lists, two clicks to get rid of each piece. Not! Seriously Bioware? Not one of your testers caught how annoying that was?

At least with Stonekeep Interplay had the excuse of messing up during the nineties. Bioware had more than ten years to catch up. They should have learned by then.

I wholeheartedly agree with this part of your post. I'd probably agree with the latter too if I had played those Castlevanias.

Burnout series from Paradise onward and any racing game that doesn't let you change the control setup. I absolutely hate and can't/won't play any racing game that requires using the triggers L2/R2 for the gas pedal and brakes. Face buttons all the way.

*chuckle* Sitting here in their support chat. They rebooted someone else's server without issue. When I mentioned mine was still needing to be looked at, all of the employees disappeared.

If I wasn't playing Dragon Quest I at such a casual pace, I'd have two large beefs with it.

• As far as I can tell, there's only one place in the entire game where the game can be saved.

• A lot of the progression hinges on having magic keys. This would be fine if every town sold them, but as far as I've progressed, there's only two vendors and both are incredibly remote, logistically speaking, with one actually requiring a magic key to find in the first place.

• With how rarely I return to the lands of this game, it would help to have a log to help keep me on track, as now I've forgotten where the best (sold) armor is and don't feel like trekking across the lands to check.

This is a stretch (because, once again, I didn't love the game), but Fincon's Angel Stone could've been an awesome hack 'n slash game if it wasn't ruined by multiple glaring issues. If I had to pinpoint the biggest reason for my quitting the game two years ago, it was because of the absurdly expensive and tedious item/spell upgrade system. It would've taken an unrealistic amount of gold, grinding, and time to upgrade your equipment to a decent level, and you're only allowed to raid a dungeon five times during a 24-hour period. Plus, the randomized loot mechanic meant that you weren't guaranteed to receive your desired loot during those five raids. It was very common for me to only receive 0-2 of my needed component across my five daily raids. I thoroughly enjoyed the game's combat system, but given the overly cumbersome upgrade requirements, that virtually guaranteed that I'd never reach my full potential in the brutal higher dungeons or PvP areas. It doesn't help that Angel Stone was primarily a freemium title aimed at Chinese gamers. In the right hands, the game could've been golden.

Jagged Alliance 2's early game can be extremely frustrating during long range combat (which is most of the combat) until you get better weapons.

You can only save in one place, but the game world isn't big enough for that to be much of a problem. Also, in the GBC version, there is a quit save feature that allows you to suspend your game anyway (though I don't remember if you can use this after killing the final boss). Also, you can return there just by throwing some wings, or by casting the Return spell. Eventually, you get a spell that prevents weak overworld encounters from occurring.

If you already have a magic key, you can buy more in the starting castle if you don't feel like travelling to a remote area.

The best buyable armors are, of course, in the two most remote towns.

Oh, I just remembered another thing.

Retro City Rampage

It's a great game right up until it stops being the game it was actually designed to be.

Protip: If you're going to make a sudden sweeping genre shift, maybe give the player a chance to practice before it actually counts.

Also, the VHS Death Reel mission suuuuuuuuucked.