About 4 years ago, I was really into Mount & Blade: Warband (or, rather, a mod of it, I think Perisno).

I really enjoyed the start-up, but I was horrible at the combat system as I'm not that inclined to live-action combat. But I enjoyed doing quests, gathering rapport with the nobles, and building an army. After a bit, I learned of the cheat codes (not Cheat Mode where you can just make folk like you, but the key combinations to do stuff like give yourself extra gold or KO all foes on the map.)

This quickly led to me finishing combat via cheats, teleporting around the map to do goals, and enjoying the game as a politics game. By the end, I think it started getting glitches since I had so many generals working for me. (One guy showed up at my court, I delayed letting him join or not, and he wound up leaving and not showing up on my roster, but I think still acting like my ally. I had a duplicate of my character show up as an enemy general; oddly, I could decide to defect and join him, but that super-glitched things up.)

One thing with the Perisno mod I particularly liked was that I managed to recruit a special character from each faction. For example, the elf and dragon-riding nations had a princess, and she defected to my side from each one. I lament I didn't manage to recruit any of the invading Not-Japanese generals, though.

Anyone else want to share odd memories of playing the game or unintended play styles?

Ooh... a look at the Perisno wiki makes it look like an update came with several new factions. Maybe I'll re-download that mod and try it again