As a D&D grognard since 1980 I'm baffled by why people think they have to keep upgrading to the newest version of everything, complaining about what's wrong with it, and depending on a company to fix it. There are other ways to make choices in life besides clicking on menu options.

Back when I could only afford a game every once in a while oldschool rpgs were great. They took forever and some had decent replayability (like pokemon or classes in FF). Nowadays they just feel like a slog.

cough ORAS extremely grindy, i played pre-2007 and post 2007 and getting certain stuff was insane, im guessing thats why rs3 came out to mitigate that but pissy-gatekeeping fans wanted the old game back. and they never stopped complaining either, especially towards the rs3, especially what happened to rs3 recently. i play RA2, used to RA3, and generals, and tiberium but i lost access to those games, apparently they were all pretty much based of ra2 units.

I love old RPGs but they're too grindy for me now or something.

Like I bought the Final Fantasy Tactics remake. Original is easily my favorite game of all time. And a HUGE Quality of Life improvement the remake added was the ability to fast forward the gameplay and the cutscenes (IYKYK).

Every time I try to pick up my 2nd all time favorite FF6(Snes) I find myself losing interest after my 10th random encounter. I like the story, the characters, the music(!), the puzzles/exploration. Defs not bored of the game, haven't beaten it (again) for like 15 years now.

But the gameplay itself, sadly, just doesn't do it for me anymore. Like I burned many hours on my gameboy colour playing Dragon Warrior. Can still hear the music for Secret of Mana and Chrono Trigger in my head. So it's not like I never liked the genre.