Who would've thought that making your product more readily available would increase sales? That's so much more counterintuitive than "double down on NFTs and release schedules that require knowledge of calculus to figure out."
If you want to bypass grinding entirely then you'd need something like that, but it might trivialize certain parts of the game. Won't trivialize all of it though since several of the key fights rely on strategy.
That was someone's insane interpretation of the ending of the first Mother game (a.k.a. Earthbound Beginnings). It's not as out there as the guy who filled the Silent Hill wiki with claims that it was all symbolism for circumcision trauma (yes, really), but it's still kinda nutters.
Yeah, you do have to grind a bit. Nowhere near as much as some games (looking at you, basically every Final Fantasy game) but the leveling is designed around you doing some extra fights for XP. Every new area generally has a "grind spot" that is moderately to incredibly obvious, typically some grouping of enemies that are enough to fight but not enough to overwhelm you, placed within reasonable walking distance of a bed, hotel, or other way to refill your HP/MP for cheap/free.
For the first town, before you take on the punks roaming the streets you should get some levels fighting crows, dogs, and snakes up near your house. Once you can kill them in two turns or less head into town and try taking on a single punk. If you survive that fight without being nearly dead, keep fighting punks. If you almost die, go heal up and farm a little more. And if you DO die... well you only lose half the money you have on you, so as long as you keep most of it in the ATM you haven't lost much of anything.
EarthBound was the first JRPG I ever completed and the first JRPG I ever enjoyed. Before it I'd never been able to get into JRPGs: there was just too much complexity while also having too little going on. Wandering an overworld only to be randomly pulled out of it for no apparent reason was maddening. As a kid, trying to piece together the backstory of some undefined thoroughly detailed fantasy world while also taking in the emerging plot in the opening sequence wasn't anywhere near as appealing as firing up Mario or Mega Man and getting straight to the action.
EarthBound neatly sidestepped all of the things that had stopped me from liking JRPGs. The equipment system was simple without being braindead. The setting was a pastiche of suburban life that I could easily understand. The stakes were high but the tone was still whimsical and amusing. And above all I knew why I was suddenly getting dragged into battle with a snake or a crow or a dog instead of just being clotheslined by combat.
EarthBound still is my go-to recommendation in the (increasingly unlikely) event that someone says "I've always wanted to get into JRPGs, what should I start with?" It is the perfect "intro to JRPG" game without feeling trivial or like it cannot stand on its own. It singlehandedly made me love the JRPG genre, and I probably would not have played literally every other JRPG I've ever played if it wasn't for EarthBound.
While 177 countries sounds like a lot, it's not where the majority of players are. PSN operates in the top 15 countries by GDP and the top 4 by population.
Of course there's still the question of why they work in so few countries when literally none of their competitors (that I know of) have those limitations.
I said this elsewhere, but without knowing what specific integrated graphics card you're using (e.g. Intel HD 4000 series) it's hard to give specific recommendations. Generally though there's a range of things that will work:
Any game released 7+-ish years before the laptop was manufactured.
Most 2D games released 4+-ish years before the laptop was manufactured.
Anything that has an Android/iOS version.
Emulated games for anything from 2 console generations ago or more (e.g. OG Xbox, Playstation 2). Also the PC releases of those games (e.g. Knights of the Old Republic)
I had a similar "it's great I don't get what people are talking about" experience, only I was running it on lesser hardware than yours: 4GB GTX 970, 12-core i7-5820k, 32GB ram. I ran into a handful of bugs that were funny but not really disruptive (e.g. some dude's corpse floating behind a car as I was on the highway) and otherwise had a blast.
Nonetheless, it didn't really feel finished, y'know? That part wore on me, and I think is what undermined my enjoyment the most. It really was released too early.
99% of it was them trying to make the new fee structure retroactively apply to already-released products, and the damage there has already been done. The fact that they think they can change the negotiated fee structure after the fact makes Unity a huge liability to use now. No one can ever be sure they won't suddenly pull a "give us more money or stop selling your game" move sometime down the line.
Not always true; some games work really well on handheld/portable devices and the Switch is really good for that. The Binding of Isaac springs to mind.
Any of the Sierra "X Quest" games. Space Quest, Police Quest... so many soft locks. I remember Police Quest had a soft lock that would trigger on the first day but wouldn't become apparent until day 3 or 4.