Yeah, the western RPG genre had become these "inventory management" or "taking notes" games. They made up for the lack of enhancing and balancing combat and developing AI with these gimmicks. Ultima series is one of the worst: you have to manage food, light sources, runes, mantras, finding spells, spell ingredients, spellcasting, moonstones, moongates, gems, two extra alphabets, mapping yourself, and so on and so on. When you start to think about it, it's like having a second job just to kill the bad guys.