There are very few games with a skill system I like more than Gothic.
Elder Scrolls, now those are games with awful skill systems. I still remember equipping heavy armor and buying a lot of healing potions, then standing still with three mudcrabs pounding on me for an hour or two so I could level my heavy armor to max. Jumping continually to level acrobatics, sneaking around the island to level sneak skill, etc. Absolutely horrible, even though Morrowind was definitely not a bad game. People nag about grinding in MMO's, but they forget that a lot of single player games they idolize necessitate it, as well. I can't believe they didn't radically change that for Oblivion. Tsk, tsk.
Last year I played a fighter class in oblivion with no mods (i know, i know, i'm crazy!), with heavy armor, etc,etc and i didnt do that grinding at all. I still ended the game and had fun. Those grindy processes to go around the leveling system (like your examples) is what made your experience bad, not the system in itself (imho), If you leveled normaly by killing mobs, etc and not worry too much about that, you would have a much better time.
Of course now i am re-playing oblivion with over 30 mods instaled (leveling addons aswell) and the experience is much much much better, but i still think the oblivion leveling system was not as bad as ppl say.
ABout the worst RPG i ever played i think it was Lands of Lore 2 and 3, but most people wont recall that game.
