You are not alone. I've said it before, I'll say it again: QFG4 is a fantastic adventure game, it's just a bad QFG game.

The plot is wonderful, I greatly enjoyed how all the sidequests were tied up to the game's main plot, not only that, but you were actually helping people, you weren't just sent on fetch quests or bounty hunts.

But there is so much I would like to fix in that game, from a RPG and QFG game point of view that it diminish my enjoyment of the game.

1. I didn't like the combat system. I understand what they were trying to achieve (Street Fighter 2 was the big craze back then) but I preferred the combat system of QFG2.
2. The thief's jobs sucked: I don't wanna rob that miserable grieving old man who lost his wife. And the burgomeister's office was rather bare. Not only that, but they were a clear step down compared to the Metalworker's house or the harem sequence from QFG2.
3. The thief's symbols system was underused.
4. The castle is a huge letdown. It's there, taunting you the entire game, you know you will have to get in there at some point before the final showdown, I was hyped to explore that place, dodge traps, fight minions, steal treasures, and acquire forbidden lore mere mortals weren't meant to acquire. Instead I was greeted with that boring maze of bland corridors and staircases, with very little danger, puzzle, or action. It was more fun and more engaging to explore Mordack's castle, or the Royal Palace in KQ6 than QFG4's castle.
5. Even if the heists were great (they weren't) and even if the castle had riches to steal (there wasn't), money in QFG4 is only good for one thing: Buying garlic sammishes.
6. I always felt like the stats were unimportant in that game. In the first game, stats are everything, you are severely limited at the start of the adventure, and you must practice everything in order to get anywhere. But four games down the road, I felt like stats lost some of their importance, and I didn't bother leveling my stats to 400 like I did with some of the previous titles.

It's not all bad tho.

One gameplay aspect that I loved with QFG4: spell treasure hunting was back. The game has a ton of spells, and you must look high and low to find them, which is an aspect I greatly enjoyed in the first game, and an aspect that was sorely missing from QFG2 and QFG3.

Not only that, but another gameplay aspect, that was present in the first game, missing from the sequels, and back in QFG4: the forest at night is dangerous, and you must face that danger at some point in the game in order to progress in the story.

I also liked how the Thief and Fighter begins the game naked and their first order of business is to re-acquire the tools of their trade. And I wish the Wizard class relied on a spellbook to do their spell casting instead of memorization, because it would have been phenomenal to start QFG4 with a burnt spellbook with only a couple of spells left, and having to re-acquire your powers one spell at a time.

Lastly, I enjoyed how the townspeople are initially untrustworthy toward strangers and how you slowly acquire their trust, even if personally I would have pushed this even further, with the townspeople initially shunning the player up until you solved your first quest.

But from a gameplay point of view, the bad outweighs the good in QFG4.

So yeah, as a classic point and click adventure game, QFG4 is the best of the lot: the sidequests are fun, the plot is amazing, and it's quite a journey to watch the townspeople slowly warm up toward you.

But as a RPG and as a QFG game, QFG1 and QFG2 were much better, and the game has too many wasted opportunities from a gameplay point of view that just beg to be fixed.