Years ago, in my youth, I played this game through to completion on my Commodore 64 (second disc-game I owned for the c64, after Pools of Radiance). It was one of the first RPGs I'd played.

Now, with a couple of decades of RPG experience under my belt, I came back to the game for a little nostalgia and maybe a wry chuckle at what I used to find challenging....

.... stupid dog kicked my ass.

Then i spelunked one of my characters to death.

Either I've gotten soft, or RPGs in general have.... most likely both!

It's both, with more streamlined modern titles featuring more hand holding and lighter difficulty will eventually get you to not be able to handle the more difficult nature of older games since you will come to expect to have a easier time and more clear directions. I had similar issues when getting back into Might and Magic, Ultima(not so much from actual difficulty but rather needing to figure out where I need to go and what to do on my own) and Wizardry 6-8.

Same for me, but the explanation is simple, when I was young I had only 1 or 2 games to play at a time, so the dedication was massive... I had a LOT of time, and games were the only thing that was saving me from all the others boring things (like school books for example :P )

And every game that was coming out was something almost completely new and catching... but after years of "experience" in gaming, now I just buy a new game and it's always something that feels already played... so the boringness can hit me, leaving me without the necessary will to finish it... and when a game is also difficult I just can't have the time to play it seriously, because at every difficult step I surpass I have to stop playing, so I don't have anymore the rewarding feeling I had in my youth, when I had play sessions of 5 hours a day, and I was following the flow of the story in real time...
Now I play like 2 hours a week... and when I continue I can't remember where I was and what I was doing...

So, I think that in the "working" world, casual gaming (with hints and easyness) is like the natural choice...

I just leave long/difficult games for times when I have some free consequential days... and this happens like 1/2 times a year...

It probably didn't help that one of my first thoughts upon leaving the Ranger Center was "Right, where can I grind a few levels?"..... I'm not sure exactly where to start laying the blame for that kind of thought pattern, but I'd guess it'd start (for me at least) around Final Fantasy VII.....

I want to keep plugging away at it, though! Even though it'll probably mean making ANOTHER Ranger team and starting over for the fifth time since I downloaded this from GOG. That bug where the interface hangs is pretty darned annoying (especially during character creation!!!!).