DRAWBACK MECHANICS IN SINGLE PLAYER GAMES

If we are to talk about some truly classic games, then Nethack might just be a defining example of drawbacks in its design. As you play, you'll find a lot of items (potions, amulets, rings, spellbooks etc.) that are all unidentified, and will stay unidentified unless you come across identify spell somehow. (Well, Wizard/Witch might start with one, but I haven't tried playing as them yet.)

That just creates a lot of tension, because first, any item you get might be blessed (good) or cursed (welds to your body and cannot be taken off unless you get some holy water or unicorn horn, I think). That is obviously punishing even if the item is otherwise innocuous: a crappy dagger welding itself to your hand just stops you from using better weapons; Hermes forbid you get a cursed two-hander like a partisan or a mattock, basically stopping you from doing most things. Armour is even more interesting, regardless of whether or not it's cursed. The most powerful armours are obviously metal ones, and they give a lot of protection, but also force the spellcasting chance way down, making the usage of even healing spells nearly impossible. Thus, the question of whether it's worth taking the better protection of elven/dwarven armour over good spellcasting of leather ones, or whether you should always wait for said elven/dwarven armours or settle for plate if it turns up earlier (which actually has slightly better protection, but has insane weight.)

And while with body armour you can at least trust it to just do its job, gloves, boots, and helmets can all have magical varieties. Even if you consult the wiki regularly, it'll only tell you which ones are regular varieties. The rest is randomised, and can be mildly crappy (gloves of fumbling), mildly useful (visored helmet protects against the extremely rare blinding attacks), game-changing (autocursing Helm of Opposite Alignment), occasionally awesome (Kicking Boots), pretty great (gloves of might, etc.) or hilariously game-ending: my most memorable run in my 3 months of playing was an early one where I bought boots for 6 gold at the shop and thought they would do nothing. Then, my gnome archeologist lady put them on and they were levitating boots! Awesome!, I thought... until it turned out they made bending down to pick up stuff, or even to go down to the next level, completely impossible, and couldn't be taken off, because curse.

The always-magical item categories have even more * fun * associated with them. Amulets are quite simple, as there are only like 8 varieties of them, and they include really cool ones like magic reflection, or life saving (basically an OneUp! that breaks when you should've been killed). Still don't forget to test them for curses first, or you'll get Amulet of Strangulation - guaranteed insta-kill in six turns, unless you are lucky and your god isn't angry with you. (Prayer mechanics are probably another example of a drawback in their own right.) Wands are also nice, as long as you look up on the wiki figure out the way to instantly identify them through engraving with them (works on like 25/30 of them.) The wand of lightning is a good example of a drawback all on its own: it's really powerful, but the flash will blind you for quite a while afterwards. You can also try breaking any wand when you feel it's about to run out of charges: the explosion might be a lot more useful to you, assuming it doesn't kill you.

You have spellbooks, which might give you a new spell (which you might not be able to use regardless), or might screw you up badly, and which you'll eventually forget unless you reread it. You have potions, ranging from booze and apple juice, through (surprisingly useful) water and all the way to healing/gain level one hand, and acid or polymorph on another. When you normally have no idea what it does, you can still try to drink it, to dip your weapons (or practically anything else) into them, or to throw them at the enemy and see what happens. You can also just carry them around and not bother to do much - until you come across flame/frost breathing enemy whose breath just blows them all up and likely kills you. And you also have rings, which are so random that identifying one through throwing it down the sink, to be lost forever, might actually be worth it at times.

So, yeah, NetHack practically lives and dies by drawbacks and risk/reward management. Download it for free on your phones to check it out, assuming you haven't played it already! It's a pity you soon get so much potentially useful/potentially game-ending stuff no character can lug it all without being reduced to a crawling, easily slayable wreck, and so you get a whole song and dance about creating safe stashes, etc., at which point I kinda lose interest and stop.