Unbound Saga

I like how this game takes what Comix Zone put down and tries to grow it in ways that make sense for the era of gaming it came out in while making it more mechanically approachable, but at the same time, it feels like a showcase of many of the things wrong with that particular point in the medium's relative infancy. Unbound Saga feels like it so badly wanted to be "hip" and "cool" by seeming aloof and contradictory about its themes, but I think it would have been better served by just being sincere with its players and having faith in what it started as.

Gate of Doom

I know I’m playing armchair game designer here, but I really feel like Gate of Doom would become something great with just a handful of changes. Increase the default movement speed, rebalance some enemy damage output (or just give players full health when respawning), make magic usable in boss fights, and make the power-up items permanent and you’d have a much more reasonable game that actually feels like a proper blend of action and RPG elements. As it is now, Gate of Doom wears the skin of a D&D campaign and does so very well, but when you actually get your hands on it, it just feels like a less polished and poorly balanced take on contemporaries like Gauntlet, Cadash, and The King of Dragons that were all doing the same thing more effectively, to say nothing of the excellence that the Capcom D&D games would achieve just a few years later.