Not one bit. On the other hand, I never gamed in that era, so what do I know.
I still like to challenge myself, by playing through a game again on a higher difficulty or try to get a trophy for example, but it usually helps when you can see a reward in the end (I wouldn't have played Uncharted as much as I have, if it wasn't for their reward system and the addition of trophies)

I don't know if it is just me, but did anyone else like when games had really tedious stuff like in Vagrant Story where you needed to have under 150HP in a specific room to make a specific enemy appear to have a 2.5% chance to get a specific item?

I loved that. It felt so great what I got the HolyWin Rood Blade.

Even after training there, I died during Ultimecia's final form! I tried the boss fight like 3 times before, and I decided that I would never complete the game from that day on. It's pretty sad if you ask me! I have to admit, I missed a few GFs... Oh well! :(

Well I dont play RPGs much so I wouldnt really know. But Id choose the BOLD. I cant enjoy a game that "rapes me"
In the end Id rather play a "FUN" game.
And you were playing FF when you experienced this unbalance. What did you expect?

Meh, I guess I'm more like a ''Marcus Fenix with BIG guns and BIG muscles'' type of player: shoot and destroy everything in your path, no matter how many continues you gotta use! xD

I literally kicked the snot out of that game. After beating FFVII for probably the 3rd or 4th time I decided to spend a good 10+ hours at the start of the game playing cards, changing them into items, killing the T-Rex, getting the card, changing into item, rinse and repeat and had Lionheart at the start of the game. After that I would breeze right through it. Even made short work of Omega.

lol, I also tried that super-powered magic drawing trick with Seifer at the beginning of the game, but it was worthless because I stopped playing a week after doing that. That Triple Triad game ruined my save file (lost Ifrit and a few rare cards, and I saved over the file damnit)! I felt ashamed. ;_;

^ Now I want to play FFVIII again. I loved Triple Triad.

PS1 RPG's were the best.

In terms of difficulty though, NES kicked my ass.

I would prefer them a bit harder, but not near as impossible as they used to be. High difficulty settings help quite a bit.

I enjoy challenge, but there is a limit to that. I don't mind doing something over that i don't know how to do, cause as long as I practice, i'll eventually get better and over come that, hence I can do it, hence I've improved.
But when the game requires me to redo 90% of the game that I already know how to do in order to get 3 attempts to make or break that last 10%, it just gets so the costs to gains ratio doesn't balance out.

I'm all for challenge, but save points are necessary.