Avalon Code
The world is going to end, and someone needs to record its contents to prepare for its remaking. You do this with the titular Avalon Code, a book which you'll use to collect information on everything, everywhere -- and which you can also use to modify everything, by replacing key elements: for instance, turning a Stone Ogre into a Sickly Ogre, or a Copper Sword into a Fire Sword. These stupid-cool powers are integral to your quest to, uh... invading army, magic... things... well, they're integral to your quest.
Avalon Code has a really neat premise, and is astonishingly complex: not only can you level-up and effectively craft items with your magic book, but the book can also level-up, based on how much information you stuff into it. Whack a monster or an NPC with the book, it gets an entry. Inspect random pieces of minutiae in the area around you, it enhances the area's entry. Explore the landscape to find key elements, use element swapping to fix some NPC's problems, enhance the NPC's entry. Plus there's a whole combat system where you can beat shit up.
Unfortunately - especially given the intricacy of its game world - Avalon Code fails to adequately polish its selling points. Element swapping is crippled by a small swap space, so you'll have to store most elements within the pages for monsters, NPCs, and items; and then you'll have to flip through those pages to find them again later. Most of the pieces of hidden information in an area have no visual cues, ranking the fun-factor of this mechanic slightly below pixel hunting. The combat system in general is weak and uninteresting, with infinitely-respawning enemies and a very low HP count for your player character. The game too-frequently puts you in a "dungeon" that's just a corridor of sequential rooms with monsters and switches. And, bafflingly, although the game has built-in tutorial tips, many crucial controls simply aren't mentioned (although you can look them up in the magic book's Help section).
Having only put a couple of hours into this, it's already clear that Avalon Code isn't living up to its lofty ambitions. Although I really like many of its ideas, I dread the thought of slogging through hours of inconvenience to get close to them.
Progress: Gave Up -- Got thrown in prison