Probably a bit of a mess but here are some of my thoughts on the topic :
I don't like when RPGs do simulation the immersive sim way, with everything realistic, real-time and seamless, everything about physics engine, your mouse controls your hand, if your only character is slow then the game must be played slow, etc ...
Don't get me wrong, looking for secrets in a seamless environment can be fun and so can be bruteforcing through the engine physics. Watching how heavy is your character walking is funny. Therefore I understand the first sticking point there, looking for the hidden door in the only uncovered part of your 20x20 map is essentially not as fun. But it's a very narrow view, there are plenty of other things and it does not follow CRPG philosophy the way I want it to be.
Which leads to the second sticking point, which is that you probably think like most people that's exactly what RPGs try to be, simply the most realistic games focusing on character scale (not grand strategy) which is absolutely not what I think, I think cRPGs, unlike other genres of video games, are the games which try to replicate the RPGs you were playing on your table, which if unlike other genre is the relevant part is then actually an opposite philosophy. In many ways the limitations you would get on your table are the core thing which should distinguish the games from other kinds of video games. I prefer when I feel like a GM is organising things. I like navigating on a grid, I like fighting on a grid. I like navigating going just as fast as I click, I like combat going as fast as I click. It's not only much cheaper to implement but I like entering a room and being taught of what's there the way a GM will do, with visual hints, rather than everything being simply put into context and all the narrative is emergent, it depends on the context but the former can often be more immersive. I don't need everything to be materialized and especially not with actual simulated physics, Wasteland 1 did interaction with a world in a way that clearly no game with physics did to me. Elemental or material properties, fire propagating, wood catching fire taking a number of in-game turns and electricity propagating through wet materials are fun, but I don't need any actual simulated real-time physics involved, they certainly won't make encounters better to me.
I enjoy introduced encounters which then kind of take place in a vaccum instead of monsters roamming seamless inside the dungeon (kind of because there might be a cool in-between where the enemies from the adjacent room might join the fight if you take too much in-game time, for example), it's fine that passing a skill check trivialises a part once in a while, when you had to actively choose to use a skill or item but also when you did not even had to and it was simply an automatic skill check you critically succeeded at. If your party is slow then the in-game time should simply increase faster. Maybe the party chooses to do a long thing, and the game determines if it's so long it get ambushed or not. The robustness of a wall determines what type of material hurts it and how much your weapon gets damaged, not what type of material hurts it and what in-game time you need to break it.
One more thing regarding combat, so far I don't think any turn-based game I've played went too far into simulating so many things that it becomes boring but being able to apprehend a grid, a discrete world, some numbers is fun. Precise floors and each elevation gap gives you a one point bonus over the guy below is cool, a thing can be wet or not wet, and enemy is charmed or not charmed, I don't need one million percentage half-bonus, I get a bonus or not, I get a penalty or not, it's fine that the computer deals with systems, computations and encounter scales we would not realistically try to deal with with my groups on a table (even simple things, initiative system >>> I Go You Go on a computer, the latter I hate when it's done on a computer, on a table it saves so much time when there are a lot of enemies though) but at some point I want to feel like I'm dialoguing with the game the same way I'm dialoguing with a GM, whether it's abstracted or on a tactical map in which case I want to feel the hex & counters, not that it feels like playing Starcraft.
Finally for a similarity I like everything being made for the player to deal with, and although not as much as in your average traditional cRPG such as Might and Magic, it is ironically given the philosophy still something that is generally more present in Immersive Sims than in other first person single character 3D RPGs. My problem with a game such as Morrowind is the problems you have deal with, not the tools, which are fine, while when I think of the good problems I always think of the same ones like getting the ring from the fighter guild in the town where you're looking for Caius Cossades. It might be a scale thing, immersive sims give you this little one part of the world which is going to be fun to explore for the kind of characters you might play and then create this very precise part in a kind of realistic way trying to put everything together within a good context, while the other ones would present you a massive world which then in a large scale is made realistic enough, getting a view of the entire world is the point and what's there is realistic enough, but then these very precise things about hidden passages and traps you can make use to deal with monsters which are the parts which are going to be the most fun to deal with are sparse and then there'll be plenty of parts which are not interesting to deal with for the player. Encounters are done an in-between way and like already mentioned I prefer the way traditional cRPGs do them.
