Combat in Age of decadence is great imo, I've never understood the complaints about "RNG-reliance", it's just not true in my experience (and I did multiple playthroughs for all backgrounds). You just have to accept that if you don't play a character dedicated to combat, there will be many fights which you simply can't win.
The game does have flaws, as even its creators acknowledge, and it can be frustrating (I even wrote a somewhat negative review for it here on GOG, wish I could correct that), because you can easily create a character that will get stuck, if you don't specialize. But it's still one of the best crpgs ever imo.

I'm genuinely glad I prefer playing over-the-shoulder TPS with a gamepad in this instance, the port was sloppily done and the mouse does feel flat out unplayable with the in-game V-Sync active. Luckily it seems to work just fine if you force adaptive/variable v-sync with the video driver or external override software.

And the game NEEDS v-sync, trying to play a game with this many rapidly flickering lights combined with screen tearing is just intolerable.

Wish I'd known to do that :P Still, I can't say I remember experiencing any noticeable screen tearing or any other unpleasant visual effects with v-sync turned off.

So many...
I remember my first game disappointment: WWF European Rampage. Me and my brothere were big wrestling fans back then, so we bought the game, ran home and about 45 minutes later sat there as the ending screen was shown. The game is crappy, has only one game mode and lasts not even an hour, ugh.

Black & White and basically every Peter Molyneux game. Massive hype, massive advermitsent, Molyneux announces and promises so much stuff, 90% of it turning out to be lies. Black & White wasn't even fun to play, it was just basically a half-assed god game with some Tamagotchi crap thrown in.
Same goes for Theme Park, The Movies, Fable...All his games are the same: After 2 hours you already saw everything you can do and then you start to notice the massive flaws and missing features that should be there.
Why people love his crap is beyond me.

Fallout 3 as mentioned. The warning signs were there as outside of Wayne Gretzky Hockey 2 and maybe the 2 good Terminator games (Skynet and Future Shock) Bethesda had a horrible track record full of shitty games full of bugs but what they did to the Fallout franchise (and they continue to rape it) is just tragic and sad.

Final fantasy 12 had one of the most boring stories I've ever had the misfortune of playing. Which is impressive, considering the backdrop is a big war, it's hard to make that boring. The characters are all dull, the voice acting makes everyone sound as bored as I was playing it. The character options were pointless because there was only ability that was powerful enough for you to take on the bounty monsters in each area, nothing else was worthwhile taking. It was the first time combat wasn't turn based. BUT as dull as it was, at least the story in 12 makes some sense, though I never did finish it. I played final fantasy 13 for about 25-30 hours before I gave up, and I still had no idea what was going on, what I was doing or why. I found out later that essential information was apparently hidden in codex entries, without reading those nothing at all is explained. It was so bad.

X-2 certainly wasn't a good game and its tone was way off, but there was one thing that stuck with me as memorable, there was one excellent cutscene where Yuna puts on a dress sphere that has her channel a singer/ tragedy from the past and the game does help explain some of the world's past from final fantasy x. If you're not going to play the game, you can search for x-2 yuna concert scene or '1000 words' in youtube to see it. The only reason the game was worth playing at all is because it's connected to the final fantasy X world.

Recents:

Fallen Enchantress - I was a day 1 GalCiv2 player, and followed Elemental development blog from the start. That game was a huge mess, but then FE is what came out of it, and it was just so bland, pretty broken, and took all the things that were different out of the Elemental formula. Last preorder ever.

Oblivion - it's a good game, but it was such an expectation reset from Morrowind, it took years for me to actually give it another chance.

Bastion - It was supposed to be so awesome, and instead it is like a phone aRPG with better art and writing. My most "this is it?" game in recent years.

No Man's Sky - everything has been said...

Totally agree. We're never going to live this game down are we? ;)

Armored Core 5.

The earlier titles were significant parts of my childhood & I still go back to them from time to time & binge them, start to finish.

I loved 2 - it was my first foray into the series. The concepts & ideas were completely new to me & really cemented the whole interest I had in freelancing, competition, & customization - I didn't have too many earlier games with these kinds of concepts.

3 expanded everything & made it better. What a thrill. It remains my favorite. It really let me delve into the things that I came to love about 2.

Last Raven was actually too difficult for me to really progress & explore, but the additional customization & the ideas of a branching story held my interest. Developing techniques to just barely survive also worked retroactively for 2 & 3.

4 was really different, but still really fun. I didn't understand the game that much, but I completed it & enjoyed whatever it was. I should play through it again.

5 looked amazing & I was so excited to finally get my hands on it - & what the heck? I didn't enjoy it at all. It looked absolutely gorgeous, but I tried so hard to enjoy it & it never clicked, so after one long strong attempt, followed by a couple weaker ones, I just quit & never returned.

Hope they release some kind of remaster or even ports soon, because my PS2 & Xbox 360 are on their last legs.

Really? I remember it being really bad. Enemies scaling with you was the worst. The main quest was bland and uninspiring. This was the first game I played of the series, so I went in unbiased but it was so dull that it became the first (and only?) AAA game that I never finished. I did the assassin guild stuff, looked a bit here and there and then tried out some mods and after that, I was done with the game.That's another game I'm glad I never paid money for.

Exactly my impression. The enemies scaling with the player is one of the stupidest ideas in CRPGs ever, since it removes all the advantages of character progression. To quote a movie: "This is a strange game. The only winning move is NOT to play!" The rest of the game was, as you say, bland and generic. All in all Oblivion was nothing more than a tech demo for me - and an awesome base for modding. It delivered the tools to create some really great total conversions. That alone was reason enough to buy it. (The same is valid for Dungeon Siege, which I also only bought to play Ultima 5 - Lazarus)

As others said, if the problem was due to lag, turning off V-Sync is the way to go. Another big problem for me was the non-mappable movement controls; as a left-handed user i need the arrow keys for movement rather than the awkward WASD; problem solved with a hex editor as per pcgamingwiki.com's instructions. My biggest pet peeve with Dead Space though, was the totally ridiculous FOV, obviously reminiscent of the console version. For that i used an external program and set the FOV to 100 degrees which provided a much better experience and, as a side-effect, it made the graphics crisper. Technical problems aside, DS is an enjoyable game with some nice but not really scary atmosphere.

I suppose not :)

I'm going to say Fallout 3. It was one of my first PS3-generation games and I was initially blown away by it, but the PS3 version a technical mess and would crash frequently and have frame rate drops <20, even worse once the save file got too big. Ruined an otherwise great game.

I totally agree about Bastion. This game was very disappointing for me. Also no Man's Sky.