Welcome to the board mortification!!!!!!
Excellent post! Lots of great comments/observations about the game!
I personally gave up on the bows during my first playthrough. I always had my magic users set for range spells so I had something good to toss off right away.
We've had a couple of threads recently in which we've gotten into the problems of developing the Rogue characters. Compared to the rest they really get a slow start in this game. My own opinion is that it wasn't planned that way but ended up that way when the project was rushed to market.
You can't save in the towns. I always made a habit of saving just before I entered and if I was happy with what I had done inside the gates, when I came back out.
Not the best automap. I really disliked that you could never really fill it in completely and in places like the stout mines with overlapping tunnels it was next to useless. My maps ended up with a lot of flags on them with notes like: continue north to next east passage and follow to etc. A pain! That could have been greatly improved!
Agree on all your other points too and still it was a FUN game!! That's rather amazing in a way!
Wyv