It was my first cRPG. Tweenish me did manage to puzzle it together enough to get it all done EXCEPT beat it. Then a decade and a half later, after the Internet, I looked up the ending. (The whole "throw everything away and..." part.) I was right at the end except that. I'd even had all the hints to it, they just made no sense. I also had the EGA version (packed in the VGA version box), so it wasn't as pretty as I originally had wanted it to be. But I still enjoyed it as I did EVERYTHING at the time, since games were scarce.

The potions and magic systems being "look up in the book" and "some things don't have any reference" were definitely irritating too. You got to recognize some eventually. Once my warrior got that "DragS +2", though...

Wow, you were so close to beat the game! I couldn't even get inside the ice and the desert zone castles without the Internet's help, haha. That part removing the inventory items at the end was so random. Well, I don't know if the hints are there somewhere in the gasme or the manual, since I completed it with a guide and it would say what to do but never explained why.

It must have been quite dissappointing getting the EGA version on the VGA version box. The game was stll enjoyable and didn't look that bad in EGA, though. :)

My version had both EGA and VGA, but my monitor at the time was EGA, so I played it at first in that mode. When we got our first VGA monitor, Drakkhen was the first game I played, and I remember being in awe at the sky gradients in VGA, lol.

Also, I played it at first with PC speaker sound, and after we got our Soundblaster card the music tracks (or at least some tracks) were different compositions, and I remember missing one that I liked, I think it was the character creation music.

My Infinity Engine experience is currently limited to BG1, BG2, and Planescape: Torment. So far, I like Planescape: Torment the most, but it has more do with the setting/story rather than the game mechanics.

Adventures, Secret, and Trials are great. After that, it's up to taste. I'm not going to deny that Legend of Mana was a beautiful game, but to peruse it fully is very disrespectful of time.

Block'Hood, I was waiting for the dev to pop up two years after the fact and drop a mega update. You know, actually make the game work, or admit it was from a different time and quietly withdraw it from sale. (Like Windforge.)

It doesn't help that the overworld while technically impressive for the time, had that issue most games of that overworld type had (take Eternam, for example) in which trying to make sense of flat basic colors against no navigational aids does not make a good overworld experience.

"Seek the third tower past the village of Koras" doesn't help when you don't know where the first two towers are, nor is Koras even labeled on the map.

MMM love MULE. The NES version is ugly, but meh.

I never had a manual either, but other than being a 'test' colony (6 months) or full year colony (1 year).

The hardest part i had when first playing was figuring out how to attach the mule. Once i got that understood i played just fine, and found my own techniques for playing and usually winning every time.

Wasteland is a game I still do not fully understand. I've beaten the game, and it helps that there's some exploitable balance holes, but I still don't really understand what stats do and how to optimize characters. (I even did some tests to try and figure things out, which helped, but didn't fully solve the issue. It looks like lucky characters going full auto with assault rifles might be able to do some serious damage.)

One would think the SaGa games would qualify here, but I actually understand the ones I've played pretty well. In fact, I could probably write a mechanics guide for the original SaGa 2, and most of the details still apply to the remake.

(Still haven't played Unlimited SaGa.)

Shadowfire is another one. Somehow I managed to find out how to assemble the squad and launch the mission, but after that, I had no idea where to go, what to do, and how combat worked. The game was totally icon-driven, after all, so without a guide, tough luck. I still loaded it from time to time, though, maybe in the hope of "getting it" eventually - but also for the great graphics (we're talking 1985, guys) and the rousing soundtrack by Fred Gray.

Vangers. At least back when it came out. All that lore to puzzle out, and I mostly cared about arcade truck battles.

Knew I forgot about something:

- Nethack

Perhaps one day I'll gather the courage to try again. I don't think I came close to understanding the multitude of dangers present in those depths.

No, that's a game that simply makes no sense, storywise. Even in the mother tongue of Russian, it's a fairly abstract game. Given it starts out with humanity ending a war by merging with bug people...and only gets weirder from there.

Now, some of the mechanics are lost in translation such as basic progression, but it basically boils down to a series of weird rituals. (Read: Get thing from A, and deliver and/or race to B.)