The first ROA game is just giving me a hard time. I understand it's Hardcore and that's what I was looking for when I bought it, but what's bugging me most....

Is the large, nondescript towns. I get lost in towns for hours on end trying to find things. Should I skip the first one and move on to the second, or just get used to this?

What you can do is refer to the Cluebook and take look at the map for each town. It lists the locations of inns, temples, vendors and other services, including special persons of interest. Those persons are likely to have a map piece or at least point you in the right direction. Just be warned: save before talking to any of them, as I encountered one situation early in the game where a map piece was forever lost to me because I chose a wrong option in the dialogue, and I didn't even know the person had a map piece to begin with.

The game became much more fun for me once I started using the Cluebook. Strangely enough, although NPCs often point you to correct towns in which persons with the map pieces live, innkeepers have never heard of those people, even though you can ask them.

If you want to play without taking a look into a walkthrough every now and then, I think the second part will be a lot more frustrating to you than the first one. After all you almost always know where to go because every person gives you a few names. You just have to write them down and visit the towns they live in. Okay... You will often have to knock a lot of doors to find them, but most towns are not that large. And often you can get a hint in taverns or even meet the people themselves there. This way you will travel around a lot and subsequently stumble upon most interesting places. Sure... You will miss a dungeon or two. But you can play the game more than once.
In RoA2 on the other hand you will only know that there is this thing somewhere in the south. (Since you begin at the northern edge of the map that could be almost everywhere...) You have to find it and bring it to someone. But you don't know where that someone is. You have a huge map of wilderness which is mostly empty. And you get sick a lot more often than in the first game. And the diseases will be nasty. I do not think it is more friendly for the player...

The only reason to maybe skip the first game is its technical limitations. Tile based movement, missing inventory slots, fewer spells that actually work, having to select the same jobs at camp every single time...
Those bugged me, when I startet playing RoA1, because I started with the second game. Actually it was my first PC game ever... Damn... I am so old...

Thanks for the info, I'll stick with the first one.

I found the second game much more frustrating mainly as I seemed to die of disease every time I moved. All three games are horribly dated in terms of user interface so I don't think you gain much by skipping the first one and it is more fun than the second for gameplay.

just make sure you're equipped sufficiently, e.g. coats, sleeping bags, spare shoes, etc.

I can see how looking at maps would make these games much less tedious. I can remember spending hours happily mapping games like this in the 1980s, but honestly, I'm too old and busy to do that anymore.

Don't sweat skipping it. Even Guido Henkel was taken aback by how clunky and unwieldy this game was when he re-played it recently.

citation: Matt Chat interview.