The following games were picked because I had quite high expectations for them, but they failed to reach them and were rather meh.
tinyE: Time for me to get taken out and beaten senseless:
SYSTEM SHOCK 2
Odd, I was about to list it as one entry as well.
System Shock 2: - The gameplay wasn't much fun, many of the enemy types were simply annoying.
- I recall being annoyed by the "levelling-up system" as well, but I don't quite recall anymore how. I think it was something about the points or currency with which you improved your skills or something being quite rare. Deus Ex had a better balance there.
Thief Gold: - Very poor level design at times. Many of the levels didn't just make much sense, how the corridors went and this and that. Thief 2 was much better in that respect, the levels felt like real houses or real places.
- As in System Shock 2, some of the enemies were annoying as hell, the ones that you couldn't really avoid by sneaking or club from behind, and needed some rare object to get rid of them. This included zombies and some of the undead knights or sorcerers or such: most suggested using water arrows dipped into holy water or flash bombs against them, or sometimes other explosives, but all those were pretty rare and/or cost quite a lot if you tried to buy them between levels.
The Elder Scrolls: Daggerfall: What I usually like the most in old-skool RPGs are the statistics, levelling up etc., so I was expecting Daggerfall will be perfect CRPG for me. Ha, far from it.
- There were just too many different skills, like what is the purpose of swimming and diving being two different skills that you can practice?
- Levelling up and advancing your skills was somehow... oddly complicated. I think many of the skills were practiced by overdoing them (like you should run and jump all the time wherever you go, just so that you keep practicing your jumping and running skills all the time), but then you also had to complete guild subquests in order to... something, I don't even recall anymore. Maybe I just lost interest trying to understand it.
- Most of the subquests meant you need to find or kill someone in a random dungeon, but the dungeons are very hard to navigate and the automap system is completely useless. In my last DF save, I am supposed to find some person in one dungeon, but I have wandered around in the dungeon for many many hours in real time, not finding him anywhere. That's where I stopped playing the game.
- Far too many bugs even with the latest fan-made patches, you falling through stairs in dungeons etc.
- The gameplay, combat etc. is very bad. The way you swing your weapon... aargh. I recall people have complained about Gothic controls, but at least Gothic was playable and its combat was semi-interesting, with timing, combos and shit. Daggerfall's combat is... I don't even know what it is. Shit probably.
I liked even the archaic TES: Arena more because at least it was easier to comprehend, including levelling up, navigating in dungeons etc.