Gameplay really is about how much agency you have. Visual Novels are usually not games, as plenty of them have zero user agency. You’re just reading a comic book at that point, not playing a game.
I’ve been reading a ton of these things the last few weeks. I can’t bring myself to say “I’m playing these games” over “I’m reading these novels.” Because most of them have had literally no choices to make, or the choices you make have zero effect on anything and are just there as a joke.
Dragon’s Dogma is pretty good at making you both the center of the world and being surrounded by people that want you to succeed with how the pawns constantly talk, and even out in the middle of nowhere, you’ll run into people just walking around between settlements so the world never feels empty, even in places it maybe should.
Echo
Have you tried Adastra? That story can make you feel pretty good… Until it ends…
It had a way of packing a game into a CD/DVD when it launched. I used it all of two times. It was slow as fuck. If it still has it, as another commenter suggests, I don’t know how to access it.
I remember before the first Fable came out, in an interview or preview of the game in one of the magazines I subscribed to mentioned that you would be able to carve your name into a tree and then see it scar the tree as it aged over time, and even then as a teenager, I was like “bull fucking shit.”
They didn’t even have that as, like, a cutscene. Let alone a mechanic.
If you wish to keep your sanity through the entire game, I suggest only doing the really big side quests and ignoring the majority of the others. The game is fucking huge, and it can easily become repetitive doing everything.
With the prices of PC parts these days, you’re not wrong. However, my nearly decade old machine that was only around $600 to build at the time is still working strong with modern games. I just don’t have RTX or DLSS because my GPU was made before those existed; and I don’t even use them on my PS5 because I prefer 60+ FPS to graphical fidelity I can’t even see the difference in.
It’s only bad when the game isn’t a stealth game and also has shittastic stealth mechanics.
It’s worse when it’s the opposite, like Deus Ex: Human Revolution where the game is meant to be played in stealth, but then the boss battles are straight up FPS style shootouts when most players probably didn’t put points into combat skills or armor because they’re supposed to be a sneaky spy.
I honestly think the most egregious bullshit that has to do with stealth is Elden Ring and Sekiro. They have decent enough stealth mechanics, but they also have enemies that straight up don’t give a fuck that you’re in stealth so you’re never actually able to sneak around the entire time. It’s not that upsetting in ER, given it’s not the intended method of play, but in Sekiro you’re a literal god damn ninja who relies on being unseen. And iirc, Fromsoft also made Tenchu; one of the best stealth games of all time.