Ya gotta admit, there comes a point where the party breathes fire, and everything falls over dead. Everything.
I have always thought that was one of the weaknesses to the games. They're great up until then, but then the last section of the game is just going through the motions - no real challenge left except finishing. I'll take you back a ways.
The absolute start of CRPGs, a game called "Rogue", which was an old Unix game. Zero graphics, zero story (beyond get in, get the ring, get out alive), but bloody addictive.
You knew you were going to die going in, but the hook was that it was actually possible to win - just bloody impossible in practice. So everyone was working for the high score, praying that one day they'd be the one who finally win. (If I had a dime for every hour that game was played in the CS lab, I'd be richer than all my MM parties combined!)
It just got harder and harder. You always had to have some escape planned in case you got trapped, confused, blinded, etc. You couldn't just walk in, pound everyone, and get out. Heck, once you did get the ring and start back out, you still had 26 levels to get through, and most of them were still quite deadly.
It was the challenge, start to finish, that made that one work. The fact that you could be powerful enough to get down to level 26, or to kill a dragon with 4 or 5 blows, but one wrong move and you were toast. That you ALWAYS had to keep your eye out for an escape.
That's what I miss in the MM games at times. Even the gods can't scratch you. I just think that there always needs to be a challenge, else it starts to be a bit too boring.
