missingno

Do you have any actual evidence, or are you just pointing fingers?

StS1 had unlockable beta art after completing the True Ending. I guarantee this will be back, once True Ending is a thing.

I hope you're right.

Doormaker is the best thing that happened to Act 3. Right now Act 3 suffers from being too much of a victory lap, there's not much you have to do to prepare for the other bosses. The most fun runs I've had were when I had to scramble through the Act looking for solutions to get ready for Doormaker, picking cards and Ancient boons I rarely took before.

Unfortunately, we can't have nice things because too many players want a power fantasy rather than a difficult strategy game. I've even heard people whine that A10 is too hard, not that the game as a whole is too hard, but that hard mode specifically is too hard and it would hurt their ego to just play a difficulty they're more comfortable with.

Then it sounds like the real issue here isn't that the narrative-driven games you talk about in the OP don't exist at all, but that these games just aren't being laser-targeted at whatever specific and narrow set of tastes you have.

And honestly, to an extent I do get where this kind of frustration comes from. I've felt like my tastes have narrowed with age too, and I have a bit of a chip on my shoulder about certain genres that have completely faded from relevance. But I've had to come to terms with the fact that this isn't an industry problem, it's a me problem. Just because my kind of specific niche favorites don't get catered to doesn't mean that good games don't exist at all.

My argument is there are fewer and fewer year in and year out.

When there are far more games being made in the first place, good and bad, I do not think you are correct at all. There are still tons of great games coming out, but you don't seem to want to look for them as you've already shot down previous comments bringing up critically acclaimed modern hits.

I think nostalgia has you remembering the best games of the past, forgetting about all the slop that used to come out back then too, and losing perspective of the actual time scale in between those hits. If you compare the very best games from a full decade to just the average game that came out last year, that comparison will be very misleading.

If that's enough of a narrative for you, most of the games you're complaining about also have narratives with at least that much depth to them.

How do you feel about the narrative and worldbuilding in Space Invaders, Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, etc?

What a weird thing to be mad about.

Yup, and I'd even say that the best FF is the one that SE was too afraid to put the FF name on. I just wish it wasn't relegated to being a lower budget B-list project, imagine if SE put the same kinds of full AAA resources behind this that they put on the FF7 'remake'.

Does wishing that Final Fantasy would return to its roots and be a turn-based JRPG again count?

StS1 let you unlock all the beta art as a toggle after finishing the True Ending. I guarantee you this will be back once StS2 gets its True Ending.