Disco Elysium itself suffers from those problems. Spoilers ahead:
From the very first couple hours in the game you know the most important thing you should do is visit that 'island' - but the game does not give you any option to do so. You have to go through a very tedious grind to unlock the option, even though there is no real reason you shouldn't be able to. The game just doesn't allow you to do so.
Personally, after I managed to get there, I realised the rest of the game was pointless.
I disagree. The plot thread you speak of isn't immediately apparent -- it takes hours to surface, and the likelihood of the island being the correct place to investigate is considered by Visual Calculus to be very low. We who have beaten it can opine about the ultimate conclusion being forgone, but the equally-important non-investigative plot threads took, at least in my case, enough time that I didn't really "notice" the ludic preventative of denying you a boat until endgame.
!!! SPOLIERS END !!!
>Personally, after I managed to get there, I realised the rest of the game was pointless
I find this personally astounding. By contrast, I found the non-investigative plot threads, few of which have any real measureable outcome on the game's conclusion, to be the real stars of the show. When you watch police procedurals, do you just fast forward to the last ten minutes? Isn't the statefulness of the investigating characters interesting?
You just made me realize it’s an adventure game. It’s also an RPG and choose-your-adventure game and so much else, that I filed it as »Disco Elysium« without ever thinking about genres.
The game is branded as RPG and there are a few "meta" dialogues where it's explicitly declared that you're playing an RPG, but I found that a bit strange. It always felt like a point-and-click adventure to me. But don't get me wrong, the RPG elements are excellent and it's one of the most innovative games ever.
It's kinda amazing how many wishes from the original post it covers isn't it?
I really love the modern evolution of the genre - we have old style point-and-click games, new style Telltale games, experiments like Disco and Detroit: Become Human. The genre has expanded a lot.
