@Yoga, I guessed dungeon maps may be your problem too. I have a bro tip for you:
Recall. This is a spell that teleports you to a location previously set by you, for example the entrance of a dungeon. As you said the toughest part is finding the exit back, because the whole dungeon is drawn on the map; at the start it's easier to see where the map has unexplored ends (although it should be marked more clearly). So you cast recall at the entrance of the dungeon, then explore it, and when you're done with your objective and want to exit, no more bashing your head against the keyboard, just cast recall again and you're out!
This should return the joy to dungeon crawling in Daggerfall. It's absolutely indispensable. Sadly I suffered a lot too, because I usually don't like magic in RPGs, and in Arena and Daggerfall I find it too powerful, so I made a
special character (both
immune to magic and unable to cast), but he couldn't use recall because it never comes on enchanted items.
Hm I think I'll also give Daggerfall another go, it's been very long. And I'll be sure to have at least this spell.
Not counting the graphics, I think I'd say Daggerfall is my favorite, because it was the first RPG that was a real sandbox. Arena in comparison is too monotone and repetitive. Daggerfall also created the
history and the world of the Elder Scrolls, which is the best in video game series. In my opinion Morrowind dropped the ball a little in the sandbox department, because of what I said earlier. But if you care about graphics even a little, Morrowind wins of course. And if you're not too obsessed about graphics, they're good enough even for today, and they run on any computer.
@BranjoHello, not sure about NPCs' souls in Morrowind. Even though nothing of them is generated randomly, 99% of their conversation is shared. And once a NPC fulfills his purpose his conversation becomes out of date: for example the priest who introduced me to the Archcannon keeps asking me about it, even after I met fucking Vivec; hello, news? But I like the hypertext format, compared to Arena and Daggerfall.
The difficulty slider in Morrowind is in the options, I also missed its existence during most of the time I played the game.
@Jironobou, thanks for the mod suggestion. Keep them coming. It's great that these games can be modded to address their weak spots. It's something I have to look into.
Right now I'm playing Arena. I don't like that combat is ridiculously fast, you don't have time to take a look at your enemy, or cast magic for that matter. It could be because of DOSBox or modern computers but I don't think so; if I decrease the cycles the whole game starts being choppy. I quested for the Oghma Infinitum lots of times to max my character out, then I quested for Ariel's Bow, and then I cheated to be able to quest for three more artifacts: the Necromancer's Amulet, the Ring of Phynaster, and the Ring of the Khajiit. Right now I'm in the Labyrynthion. Arena is very hard.
After Arena and maybe Daggerfall I'll look for good mods for Morrowind (more NPCs, much more money for merchants, and I'll take a look around) and play it some more. It does have a lot of replay value. After that I'll finally think about playing Oblivion. All this could take years, mind you.