Hahaha, thanks for the advice, but I don't think I'll ever return to Elminage. What really killed the game for me was the tooltips that are only displayed crawling along the bottom of the screen at a snail's pace: clearly an artifact of its origin as a PSP game.

It's usually not advertised (but rapidly discussed), but there are games that try to put forth a "real time" (e.g., Monster Hunter World) or "very challenging" (misc "soulslike" games) component to to their not pausing. "If you want a safe space, you'll need to find one, and hope a monster doesn't find you while you waste time away." kind of pitches that are totally unrespectful of the player. Which all of mine are about: they're all ways in which the game disrespects players.

And of course there are always the poisondrinkers who defend it, like when I asked about (I think it was Terraria?) and pausing and all the responses were hacks to get around the lack of a real pause.

I wouldn't necessarily say your first three are disrespectful of the player (resource collection, crafting, fishing), but I do agree that usually all those things are more tedious than fun. Resource collection in particular is actually a very critical component of a lot of great games, such as Age of Empires, Starcraft, or any RTS, really, but those games are never tagged or discussed as such, so that's a bit beside the point.

Glad we understand one another. I meant resource collection in the perspective of crafting (not as in RTS, or sim games, etc). I mean things like "wander the fields incessantly plucking flowers" or "find gold ore nodes to harvest and then wait for it to smelt" or the shitty cooking [and most everything else] in Zelda BotW.

I find the three disrespectful to players because they're added literally to pad content for no reason other than to make it take more time or checkbox extra features, without actually (EVER!) improving the game.

Found another one:

A focus on over the top visual effects* (wut? XD)

(* Those are actual buzzwords used for an upcoming game, same as High Quality 3D Retro Aesthetic, which apparently means you can nostalgically pretend to be gaming on your old 486 again, with all the blurry low res pixels, while making your brandnew hardware run hot as hell.)

Eh, plenty of things from my perspective, but I totally understand that for many people they're not important.

First of all, their hipocrisy about emulation (they've stated in official FAQ that "emulation is illegal" (sic!), but it doesn't stop them from selling emulated games on all their platforms.

Second thing - dog in the manger. Would it kill them to finally publish their ancient games from NES anywhere else but on their expensive, crippled platforms? I get it, exclusive games are necessary for consoles to sell them, but people are playing with roms from internet for ages, intelligent publisher/developer would try to make some cash by making those compilations or remasters on other platforms which are nowadays extremely popular. Seriously, it wouldn't kill them to publish games from "ancient" (looking from industry's perspective) age of NES and SNES - I can't imagine anybody (sane) who would resign from buying any new Nintendo's hardware because of it.

Third thing - their overrated games with Mario/Link/whatever - I'm sick of reading praises about stuff which I can find in plenty of indie games, but they're not praised because they're not published on "holy nintendo" consoles and/or don't have inside "holy Mario" or "holy Link" or "holy Pikachu". Not saying that those games are bad (although I have allergy on anything connected with Pokemons), but they doesn't deserve on reputation they have*. There is a lot of contribution by american youtubers, but I guess that plenty Americans have soft spot on Nintendo.

Which is totally fine, the most important things about games is to bring entertainment, but I'm not going anymore to pay anything for Nintendo's games, nor hardware. I've made it in the past, by buying DS and 3DS (and some games on it), but I'm not going to do it anymore.

*It also occurs in case of games made by third-party companies, but released exclusively (or mainly) on Nintendo's platforms. For example first Turok or Goldeneye.

Out of curiosity, have they stated this in general, or just in the context of games?

(Strictly speaking, emulation is legal if you aren't using software you don't have the rights to; One example of unquestionably legal emulation is Stephen Hawking's final voice system, which ran on a Raspberry Pi emulating the old one.)

It's about games, they're referring to it as "Nintendo Roms" and "Nintendo Emulators", but they're understanding under those terms all titles released on any of Nintendo's consoles, so not only produced by them, but also by third-party developers ("NIntendo Roms"), and by Nintendo Emulator - all emulators that are emulating any of Nintendo's systems.

https://www.nintendo.com/corp/legal.jsp#download_rom

Their "emulation is piracy" babbling is wrong at so many degrees, starting from the fact of usurping the right of defining what's legal and not in terms of emulation (those are defined by local laws in various countries), finishing on other aspects mentioned in linked FAQ. I don't think I've experienced more prepasterous FAQ/policy in case of any other company (so far).

Now the interesting question is, of course:
* Does it apply to titles not licensed by Nintendo (like many Tengen games, for example)?
* Does it apply to NES Homebrew?
* Does it apply to other uses of NES emulation, like emulating the sound chip, or software like Famitracker? (I note that Shovel Knight's music was composed in Famitracker, and I believe Cathedral's was as well.)

Fantasy: 95%+ of the time it's the same Tolkien-inspired tripe. I can at least respect games that draw influence from elsewhere, like Thea: The Awakening does (and the Quest for Glory games, which I love), but overall, I prefer a modern or futuristic setting.

Adventure: It used to be the case, decades ago, that you kind of had to choose between something arcadey or something that put much more attention into the presentation, atmosphere, story and characters. The difference between Doom and Monkey Island, with not much to bridge the gap. That's no longer the case, you can now have all that in a game that offers meaningful gameplay mechanics. Or, to put it another way, you can have a story-driven game where you're not putting together cat-hair mustaches. Of course, walking sims are even worse in my eyes.

Sums it up quite nicely

Since Game of Thrones, only 47,5% are LotR-inspired. Another 47,5% is GoT-inspired now.

Have you even read Tolkien? LOTR may have inspired high fantasy, but it's still very different from it. If LOTR was like your average western high fantasy, Gandalf would be throwing magic missiles at Orcs. Tolkien was all about poetic and historical type fantasy.

I didn't say LOTR was written like these new fantasy games, just that they draw elements from LOTR. The modern conception of elves, dwarves, orcs, etc. That all comes from Tolkien, and it's really tiresome seeing it done over and over again without a hint of originality. Elves *have* to be slender, artistic dandies with a love for nature, dwarves *have* to be ale-chugging miners with a Scottish accent. It got old decades ago, and then the industry kept doing it.