First you choose a race and then a starting point in some kind of seedy citylike place, where your equipment is wholly insufficient... Combat at first attempt seems to unfold in a linear, predictable fashion, with frustratingly little wiggle room. You do a flat 7 damage, the enemy gets you back for their flat 5 damage. It seems inevitable and unavoidable but surely there is a trick to it? Otherwise the game is impossible.
I did not dream of a solution, but saw others' experiences as other races (something more mushroom-forest-spirit-like) as runaway adjective collecting things; they were glowing, small or giant, etc. They must have gotten further than I had, or perhaps that was just the starting complexity of their characters?
New connections:
the starkness of Cholo (1986/1987)
the linearly unfolding depth of Grim Fandango, Psychonauts, etc