Exploring some of the main quest dungeons in this game honestly doesn't feel that bad in itself, I can appreciate the creativity in the layout of some of them. However the janky combat and various bugs do not really make this game worth visiting, though.
The combat really starts to fall apart like a third or halfway through the game, as enemies start melting your health much faster, especially the magic enemies that will constantly shoot high damaging spells at you, potentially killing you in 2-3 seconds. At this point you will be spending a lot of time pressing U, constantly activating effects to reflect/resist/absorb spells to negate magic enemies from a distance, and chugging Heal True potions when fighting in melee range (basic healing potions are a useless waste of money). Also enemies that paralyze you are bullshit too (spiders do it very frequently since the start of the game), so you always need some Free action potions on hand. But if it happens to you while you're swimming, it's instant death lol.
This game is weirdly focused on potentially exploring the hundreds of equipment shops across all of the towns in the world to buy upgrades, instead of actually finding them as loot. Aside from passive & active magic items like belts & bracelets, the only equipment that can roll as enchanted when you find them as loot from enemies or loot piles are daggers longswords and platehelms. And even then, they are always going to be the basic quality instead of higher tiers such as elven/ebony/etc. So if you get 2 or 3 staff pieces, instead of trying to explore all of the shops yourself, you should honestly just look at the UESP wiki for whatever items you would want to buy, because the shop stocks are static.
As far as some other tips for slogging through this game:
Press F4 to save a lot of time with all of the menuing/talking in this game.
If playing on DOSBox, the game will run slower if you drag the 'Detail' slider to the right... so just drag it all the way to the left lmao.
Cure/resist poison is literally useless until the very last dungeon of the game, don't bother keeping it in your inventory.
Leaving a daedric artifact-related dungeon and then coming back to it can apparently despawn the chest that contains the map/artifact, potentially softlocking you out of getting any artifacts in that playthrough if you do not have a backup save before you entered the dungeon. (You cannot get a quest for more daedric artifacts if you have one in your inventory, or the quest for it in your log.)
There's also various other bugs with NPC dialogue sending you to the wrong locations, or orange text on the screen being garbled, for me at least this was always fixed by exiting and reloading the game, though I don't know if this always works.
Passwall is a busted ass ability that can be a necessity if you can't picklock high level locks. Also if you ever have to swim to get into a room, you can often be bodyblocked from entering it if there are flying enemies in there. They will fly above you and prevent you from climbing up, so you either have to reposition them and use invisibility to try again, or use passwall to get inside if the enemy is a ghost that can see invisibility.
Also man Keys are way too small, if they're not on a platform or have no message indicating their existence in the room, they are incredibly easy to miss. There was also one absolute bullshit riddle in The Halls of Colossus, and overall the riddles weren't that good tbh.
The combat really starts to fall apart like a third or halfway through the game, as enemies start melting your health much faster, especially the magic enemies that will constantly shoot high damaging spells at you, potentially killing you in 2-3 seconds. At this point you will be spending a lot of time pressing U, constantly activating effects to reflect/resist/absorb spells to negate magic enemies from a distance, and chugging Heal True potions when fighting in melee range (basic healing potions are a useless waste of money). Also enemies that paralyze you are bullshit too (spiders do it very frequently since the start of the game), so you always need some Free action potions on hand. But if it happens to you while you're swimming, it's instant death lol.
This game is weirdly focused on potentially exploring the hundreds of equipment shops across all of the towns in the world to buy upgrades, instead of actually finding them as loot. Aside from passive & active magic items like belts & bracelets, the only equipment that can roll as enchanted when you find them as loot from enemies or loot piles are daggers longswords and platehelms. And even then, they are always going to be the basic quality instead of higher tiers such as elven/ebony/etc. So if you get 2 or 3 staff pieces, instead of trying to explore all of the shops yourself, you should honestly just look at the UESP wiki for whatever items you would want to buy, because the shop stocks are static.
As far as some other tips for slogging through this game:
Press F4 to save a lot of time with all of the menuing/talking in this game.
If playing on DOSBox, the game will run slower if you drag the 'Detail' slider to the right... so just drag it all the way to the left lmao.
Cure/resist poison is literally useless until the very last dungeon of the game, don't bother keeping it in your inventory.
Leaving a daedric artifact-related dungeon and then coming back to it can apparently despawn the chest that contains the map/artifact, potentially softlocking you out of getting any artifacts in that playthrough if you do not have a backup save before you entered the dungeon. (You cannot get a quest for more daedric artifacts if you have one in your inventory, or the quest for it in your log.)
There's also various other bugs with NPC dialogue sending you to the wrong locations, or orange text on the screen being garbled, for me at least this was always fixed by exiting and reloading the game, though I don't know if this always works.
Passwall is a busted ass ability that can be a necessity if you can't picklock high level locks. Also if you ever have to swim to get into a room, you can often be bodyblocked from entering it if there are flying enemies in there. They will fly above you and prevent you from climbing up, so you either have to reposition them and use invisibility to try again, or use passwall to get inside if the enemy is a ghost that can see invisibility.
Also man Keys are way too small, if they're not on a platform or have no message indicating their existence in the room, they are incredibly easy to miss. There was also one absolute bullshit riddle in The Halls of Colossus, and overall the riddles weren't that good tbh.