There used to be a time that I played games almost exclusively with cheats. That was during the PS1 and PS2 era. After 360 and onward, my mentality switched to achievement hunting and completionist playthroughs. Not only did most games disable any and all cheating to begin with, but some allowed it with disabled achievements instead. Great middle ground if you ask me.

That being said, even if there were no worries about either of the above criteria, I'd still avoid using cheats today. The last time I did wasn't fun at all. It was boring. Not sure how old me could stomach playing games with cheats on, but things change. Story modes were added to most games which make cheating almost impractical since there is usually barely any challenge. Why bother? Play story mode if you want to experience the story without much challenge.

I get that some cheats enable fun experiences like big head modes and other goofy things, but I don't really classify them as cheats. They are more like features or alternative modes. Many games include them as unlockables these days... or in the worst cases as paid microtransactions. Either way, I think they left the real of being purely in the realm of cheating to unlock.

Personally, I believe that cheating is from a bygone era of games when developers added stupid things as challenges, like clunky controls. Games used to be ruthless for no particular reason other than to buff their playtime due to restarting over and over. Games were made for the challenge first and foremost; fun had to be derived later (if ever) from that experience. Games weren't accessible (or nearly as). Cheating was a direct result to address some or all of these issues. Nothing wrong with it, just no longer necessary in today's gaming landscape.

Combination of cheating and restrictions can be fun sometimes.

In some games, I may cheat to get items/abilities that either aren't available at all or are not readily available. Like, for example, in SaGa 1 giving a human that 3 heads (or is it 3 horns?) attack that's normally seen on monsters.

Just a couple of days ago I cheated in Daggerfall Unity!

Somehow I had apparently committed a crime or something because in every town of the whole of Sentinel area, I was harassed by guards and got to prison. Even if I served my time in jail, I would be arrested again and again and again, making the area of Sentinel pretty much inaccessible to me. Maybe I was banished from there for an eternity, I don't know.

Since I didn't even know what I had allegedly done, and some googling suggested that might actually be a bug and not how the game was intended to work, I was ready to give up on the game, once again.

In some such discussion about this problem someone mentioned Daggerfall Unity cheat commands you can give in the game console, which will clear any banished status and criminal records, and you are free to continue.

No, I didn't feel bad at all using those cheats so that I could continue with the game. I was acting evil in the game or anything, and to me the game behaved illogically and erratically, especially since it didn't clearly tell me what I had done wrong.

The discussions about this problem seemed to be related usually to that same Sentinel area, I don't know what the issue there is.

I just finished a game of MoO 1 and rolled a horrible starting position so gave myself BC 100 (resource points and money in one) and decided to try like that and did manage to win though it did still take quite long. If I cheat, I only cheat in the beginning like that and as little as I think might be enough which usually is just adding BC 100 or 200 or saving on turn 1 and scout out a few planets and then restart or restart if a certain robot eats my starting colony ship.

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When are walk-throughs cheating? Everyone needs to draw the line themselves.

Yes. But only after finishing the game legitimately.

An exception would be when a game is broken in such a way that it cannot be finished otherwise.

Usually, no. I only use cheats if they add something fun to the game.

I'm considering allowing for some very limited cheating when playing the SaGa 2 remake. Basically, I would allow editing of stats with some significant restrictions:
* Only Human and Esper stats may be modified.
* Stats may only be lowered, not increased.
* A stat may not be lowered below the point where, without equipment, it would be 0.

This is most significant for HP. In order to reach the max of 1038 HP, you need your hit points to land on exactly 998, no higher, and then you can use the item that gives 40 HP.

I might also consider cheating some of the rarest items, then selling them to the pawnbroker to use on New Game +.

(For the original version, I'm more likely to cheat. Having more than 1023 HP is bad, and I'm likely to be using major glitches anyway.)