I don't blame you for not understanding my quoted "disappointment". I chalk it up to you forgetting to boot up your central nervous system. Because if you had actually spared even a minimum of mental effort, you would have to see immediately where is the problem. The game starts with character generation, you have to pick races, classes and roll stats, without the game providing any information about them whatsoever. So player is left to blindly stumble around, which is not very enjoyable.

And that information actually WAS in the original manual, along with exhaustive description of the ingame magic system, individual spells, etc. Pretty much everything was explained in meticulous detail, unlike in this joke of a "remaster".

Back in the 90s, every game came with a detailed manual, it was a standard back that, because every piece of software was released properly documented. That said, gaming back then was not entertainment for the masses - games were played by people who actually read those manuals, because they wanted to understand the game mechanics as best as possible to enjoy them. You did not have to explain anyone why games need to be released with documentation - everyone understood that point.

Sadly, those times sre long gone.

The Grey Crypt is something of a special case. It prevented many spells that worked in antimagic zones in some ports.

Yeah, I think in DOS/Amiga they coded ranged attacks for enemies as spell-like effects.
Then again I think there are some spells the enemy is coded to use that never work in those versions.

The mechanics aside, the manual did a great job setting the setting the of the game. I do like the hints you can find in houses though. I wouldn't consider that a replacement for a manual per se. A pdf or an in-game text file would be nice.