Meh, I wonder how much of it is rose colored glasses. There is one KQ (forgot which one) where you have to walk through a bunch of thorny bushes to get to a castle. Any touching of the plants = instant death. This was essentially an exercise in 'take a few steps, save game, repeat'. Where was the fun in that? There were many things like that, although I forgot most of them of course. Many of the mechanics just felt like 'hard for hard sakes', not 'hard for fun sakes' - of course with the idea that harder is more fun, but still.