What's a game that would have been a 9/10+ if it wasn't ruined by monetization
... or QoL that was intentionally worsened to promote sales (e.g., purchasable inventory slots).
What comes to my mind is e.g., *Lost Ark* where players were actually forced to buy freaking *HEALING POTIONS* with real world cash or be very restricted in how many they can gain each day (in a game based around high difficulty raids). It had some other flaws that were highly monetization based, but from the class design it's easily amongst my favorite games of the last decade. #games source