I've been reading through some of the posts, and decided to comment on some of the things I've seen people mention.
"Fireball is useless" - It is absolutely NOT! It's one of my favorite spells. Especially later on once you get a collection of priest gems and rings to heal your devistated parties. Why do I like it so much? It makes short work of creatures that can turn your players to stone or cause level drain. And because your characters have a chance of leveling up when your lvl18 mage blasts them. Remember, party members have a chance to lvl up when they take damage.
Someone commented that Rangers were useless because humans age too quickly. My favorite class. I have seven of them in my party. Not the best fighter, but good enough. Much better than Sages. Can actually go toe to toe with harder monsters and not die. Plus, their hit points go up at a fairly high rate, like other fighters. As to the aging, only take them to the inn once they've gotten two pluses. And don't be cheap. Pay the 250g so you can level them in one (occasionally two) tries. If you have a ranger that is 20yrs old, even if you leveled him once you got one plus, you can get a level 120 ranger before he reaches 30. Wait for two pluses, you could double that. I can't imagine ever getting a character to that point. So, nothing wrong with a human Ranger
Peasants are useles - mmm, their uses may be limited, but as some have pointed out, they help you get that class that you were maybe one or two stat points away from getting. In fact, three of my rangers originally started off as peasants.
Of course, I've read the complaints about having to use temperal crystals for saving. I remember a game I played ages ago called Wizardry. Absolutely no saving in that game. A character died? It was dead. I loved that game. I actually feared for my characters, and was devistated when one died. But I still loved the game.
I love the complaints about the lack of a compass or indicator on the map of party position (of course there is a spell that gives you those things, but you have to use precious spell points for it). We have gotten very spoiled in this day and age. Another of my favorite games was Might and Magic I: Inner Sanctum. That game had NO automapping system. you had to get out the grid paper, and hand make your own, or just commit the areas to memory. And there were tons of areas to explore. Not 10 levels.
I love this game, with all it's personality traits (whether I find them usefull or not). Could things be improved? sure. But I would be sad to see any of the things listed above changed.
The only thing I would like to see changed, is the ability to choose the gender of my characters, and not make that a random component of character creation. I don't mind having to roll and roll and roll to get the class I like. It has it's not exactly fun, but I do admit I get excited that I finally get the class I tried so hard to roll. Gives me a sense of satisfaction. But I like to pattern my characters after characters I've played in other games. Making gender random is frustrating to that end. I ended up naming my males with female names. You may notice some of them in the Hall of Fame =)