>>11860548This
These games can take hours of fucking around trying to figure out what to do next. The fact that it's entirely possible to do something that blocks you from ever progressing at some future point and you having no idea this has become the case is inexcusable. The game will just seem like normal to the player, when them having no idea that they have somehow caused their save file to become softlocked hours ago, while they keep trying everything to try to figure out how to progress past a point they are no longer able to progress without even knowing it.
King's Quest 5 had a nasty one, if you simply enter a specific part of the town an event plays that looks just like anything else, a cat chasing a mouse. Congratulations! You have already soft locked, and you don't even know it! Before you ever walk into that specific section of the town you were supposed to know what you had to do something, had done the hours of questing beforehand to get the item to do it, and know that you had to use that specific item here. That mouse is supposed to save you IN THE FINAL AREA OF THE GAME! And not just in the final area, but in the jail of the final area that you end up in if you get caught by a patrolling monster. Naturally most players would assume you need to avoid said monster, problem is you need an item from that jail to beat the game. An item which makes zero sense to use (It's moldy cheese, which somehow recharges the used-up magic wand you have had since the start of the game, the in-game text even says that nothing seems to have happened when you use it. No, nothing in the game ever indicates that somehow moldy cheese will recharge your magic wand.)
That isn't even the only softlock scenario in the game where you can save and keep going either, there are several, it's just the most egregious example. That kind of shit is what put me off from Sierra's point-and-click games.