I can do it easily: the most idiotic upkeep system which only affects the gold you are currently mining. Makes no sense whatsoever and is plain ridiculous. There, you have it now :)

Xen wasn't all bad I suppose. I did enjoy parts of it. Its mostly that lengthy factory/cloning facility level that I despise.

I'm nuts about the large levels in Commandos 2 on the other hand and I love to explore every little corner :) What useless skills are you referring to though?
Lol, that never really bothered me :)
Oh yes granted. It's not much of an adventure game as far as adventure games mechanics go. It's much more of an interactive movie like you said. And I love it for it :) Though not that keeps me from getting stuck sometimes :\

Bah, easy: the last mission is just stupid, the enemy is clearly cheating. It is a very frustrating and off-putting mission, at least in the hardest difficulty.

Also, I dislike the "Upkeep" thingie, meaning that if I raise a big army, digging gold becomes wasteful or something like that, ie. I get less gold IIRC. I hate that feature. I am unsure what is the point of it, I presume it is trying to keep you from winning by numbers (a bigger army) and instead try to cope with a smaller army.

Sorry, let me decide how to play the game and don't put artificial impediments there. If I want to e.g. build a turtle defense => build a big army => go on conquest, then let me and don't try to force some other strategy to me.

Third thing, I always felt the levels felt oddly cramped, something to do how big the characters were compared to the scenery. It was also often quite hard to tell whether certain part of the scenery should be reachable to your units, or not.


My examples, hmmm...

Serious Sam: you can kill even the biggest and meaniest enemies by hiding around the corner and shooting repeatedly with a handgun to their elbow or toe, until they go down. It feels kinda silly, I admit.

Starcraft: the user-inferface is pretty dated, the resolution is low and the timed missions where you have only a certain number of units in use are frustrating (missing the deadline only by a few seconds => sorry, replay the whole mission all the way from the start and try to be quicker about it this time).

Far Cry 2:
- Some of the diamonds are hidden in frustrating places, like you are supposed to find some hang-glider far away from the diamond and glide with it on the top of the hill where the diamond briefcase is. Sorry, just not worth it to try to figure them out (then again it was even harder to find many of the packages etc. in e.g. GTA 3 or GTA: San Andreas...).

- The respawning of enemies could have been handled in a better way. Now it is implemented in a quick & dirty way where exiting (and re-visiting) a map area resets everything in it, including enemies you have already killed, any health packs and ammo there is etc. I felt it was otherwise an ok respawning system, but it was problematic if there was a major fight near the border of the map and you happenened to go across the map border.

Then again the good news was indeed that also all the health packs and ammo would respawn as well, so it wasn't really that bad in the end, just not very realistic, breaking the immersion here and there.

(Yes I know many people totally hated Far Cry 2 due to that respawn thingie, but I felt many people misunderstood how it worked (like the claims that it was common for the same enemies you just killed respawn 10 meters from you; no it wasn't, that would only happen if the fight happened to take place very near to a map border), plus many of the same people don't seem to mind respawning police force or gangs in GTA games for some reason...)

Ah, I knew I wasn't the only one bothered by it! Thank you!

The only thing that I can find to criticize in the otherwise perfect Ultima 7 is the inventory. Yes, it is kind of realistic that you have to search through your backpack and that it helps to have separate bags for separate things. But the way everything gets jumbled as soon as you close the backpack was really annoying. Especially searching for the right key for a door or chest could take long. Luckily that was fixed by Exult by adding the 'k' and 'f' hotkeys (from Serpent Isle) for keys and food. Speaking of Serpent Isle - that's close to perfect too, if it weren't for all those bugs. You really notice that between Black Gate and Serpent Isle EA took over and exerted pressure to release an unfinished product.

XD seems like the upkeep thingy is very unpopular. That final level on hard is pretty insane, but I like it. I've managed to beat it easily on normal, but on hard it's another ballgame. Something like 4 years ago I finally managed to beat it by mostly relying on the standard night elf archer. It's not my least favorite level though. The worst level is that horn of cenarius one where you have a limited amount of time before the undead reach malfurion's cottage thing.

Actually I liked that. It made me feel like I was really playing a Bruce Willis character. (In German the hero is voiced by the dubbing actor of Bruce Willis) I.e. a special forces hero that goes through the mooks by the dozen. And the main charm of the game came from the exploration anyhow. So for me it was just a big adventure and didn't need challenging combat.

Secret of Mana is seriously one of my childhood games, and hoo, is it busted.

Pretty early on in the game, you get access to spells. This is the point where the game is broken in half.

You get two spellcasters, a healer/buffer and a black mage type. And two of the first spells you get are cure and heal. Also, healing spells and buffs come with invincibility frames, leaving multiple ways to abuse this casting system. What's better is that spells can stack and be multitarget. Only for 999 damage at a time, but if you're hitting that number, most things are already a cloud of red mist.

Oh, and also there's a spell that makes you temporarily immune to physical, and a late game spell that bounces spells cast at you back.

Ah, and the midgame spell that lets the mage restore MP for practically free.

Also spells only require a target to be vaguely onscreen, so worrying about wandering into melee range isn't really a thing.

Age of Wonders

- Diplomacy is not really good. In many Keepers missions you have to destroy every opponent (including neutrals) because it's almost impossible to ally with them on higher difficulty. And you were supposed to be a good guy...

- Spells are not well balanced. For example chain lighting (first level spell!!!) is extremely powerful because it can stun multiple enemies.

- You can't play as Frostlings in the campaign mode. Dire penguins are awesome!

Don't forget that you have to pause the game in order to cast spells; in multiplayer it can be really annoying.

When I was younger, I played through the game with a friend; he played the sprite, while I played the girl. (Neither of us wanted to play as the boy.) As a result, whenever one of us decided to cast a spell, that player would have to pause the game, which could quickly get annoying for the other player. (By the way, it is worth noting that, while you have paused the game, you can't order other player controlled characters to cast spells, though you can order AI controlled characters to do so.)

How about the messy and uncontrolled combat system? Give a party member a fireballl staff, and pick pieces of yourself from the ground as he/she keeps hitting your back with it.

Of the RPGs I've played (and liked), it has probably the worst combat system. I guess I mainly coped with it by not giving my party memebers any powerful ranged weapons, at least one's with area damage.

Sure, Baldur's Gate etc. could have somewhat similar problems, BUT at least Baldur's Gate gave you the option to turn off combat AI, so you would control each and every party member yourself.

Resident Evil 2, even on highest difficulty there's still way too much ammo and herbs

Psychonauts: There's the Meat Circus - and that one time limited test in the beginning that I totally sucked at and spent ages on trying to surpass while my friends didn't have any problems with it, which naturally made me resent it even more ... ;)

Planescape Torment: Combat is boring, mostly, and there are a few unnecessary fetch quests in the Sigil part. Plus, from today's standpoint at least, I hate the severely limited inventory space, especially considering all the junk you can pick up without really knowing whether it might be something of value after all.

Neverwinter Nights: It's awesome as a DIY-RPG-kit for creative modders, but the official campaign is a waste of time.

Forgotten Realms Unlimited Adventures: Text and event limits in dungeons. And the official demo campaign, Heirs to Skull Crag, is a waste of time as well.

Mafia: I know I've beaten it a dozen times and always enjoyed the story, but I absolutely hate a couple of the key scenes - especially since I know what they lead to.

Path of Exile: I don't hate grinding, but DAMN.

STAR WARS: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords: Awesome game, awesome story, but damn those long halls of countless enemies and clicking master flurry for thousands of times.

STAR WARS: Rebellion: SO. MUCH. CLICKING.

World of Tanks: The M18 Hellcat and T-50 are now ruined and I'm not good enough to carry my team.

Well, in U7 you could at least put them on 'Defend' or 'Flee' if they got in the way. But I agree, area effect weapons were a no-go for companions. (and the triple crossbow for Iolo - ouch!) But magic thrown weapons like the juggernaut hammer or the magic boomerang worked fine without endangering the avatar.