The shortbow you can buy from the Undead Merchant in the upper Berg. I'm too much of a completionist. So much so that I imagine that you somehow gain knowledge of the drop table after an item is dropped a la Castlevania.
Also the monotony and comfiness made a several hour grind plausible.
Come to think of it, getting older I'm starting to prioritize atmosphere over complexity.
In the original Pokemon Gold, I evolved my Totodile into a Croconaw before the very first rival battle. On my first playthrough.
Is that even possible? You can only get so far before you need to have 2 people to continue.
It times out after long enough.
Are you really? The arcade version of Gradius III has an assload of slowdown too; the slowdown is just of a slightly different nature than the SNES version. In some ways it's more frustrating because it's so easy to accidentally fly into a wall when the slowdown dissipates for a moment.
Why would you even bother? It's not even an interesting game.
...
Maybe it's the ps2 version
The PS2 version has an option to play without the arcade slowdown but the game isn't really designed around it. A number of bosses outright rely on slowdown in order to be manageable.
I have 5 play-throughs of Dragon Age 2 and have romanced every companion. Even the gay one's.