This is classic ignorant take of the average user that don't know how corporate gaming industry works.
The "developers", the actual engineers, don't decide shit, some manager that only care for what the higher ups are telling them. And what the higher ups are telling is the same in all corporates: Increase the cash flow.
Unless it uses a whole different engine or game mechanics (visual, controls, etc) I don't understand why not make it a DLC.
Titanfall 2 has a great gameplay and surprisingly good story with the added bonus to not try to lock you in for 300 hours for no reason with stupid boring side quest or "activities".
I would start with that.
The thing is, even Indies can look and feel like AAA games (well, the good ones) with something unreal engine for example.
I'm not a fan of Epic by any means but all I'm saying is that they asinine aren't in the same league while with Unity they could at least be close.
Unity have done a real shitty moves but all this "We'll do even better without it" attitude that I'm seeing around is either coming from people that just think "shitty move" or really really really naive developers.
Godot is an open source game engine that is incredibly trending among the "hipster" developers community and fanatics of FOSS.
It's absolutely not even close to the features offered by Unreal Engine or Unity but people that are barely informed are all excited because now an open source project with some serious bugs and limitations "will show them".
Unless there is a serious rewrite, Godot will never be a valid alternative to the two main commercial engines. And with the fact that it had been recently heavily rewritten to be updated to v4, it is really improbable that it will happen soon.
Is there a known historical reason for using lead or should I just prepare the holy symbols and shotguns?
This revisionism is quite tiring but I guess that the development companies are counting on it.
The problem with Cyberpunk was not "just bugs" but a 40 minutes video that tells lots of lies and was clearly stated as "fake" to drive up the hype for it.
What you see today was shown as if "ready" 4 years ago. And today we still can't see the hacking as shown in that video.
On top of that there are all the design decision that are simply terrible but no amount of patches will fix, like the looter shooter approach to loot, levels on enemies, etc etc.
Overall, it's not a matter of "realistic expectations". We were lied to and that's just it.
Followed by the inevitable thought: "well, I've got some terrible disease now" no matter that it's your own WC and hopefully your keep it clean.
Final Fantasy seems the one for you to be honest.
The player base is quite chill and overall enjoy playing casually, doing RP, decorating the house, etc. Crafting is actually interesting instead of just seeing a bar fill up!
I would not recommend ESO as it's very very very choke full of microtransactions and you actually will have a bad experience playing without ESO Plus (restricted space in bags, most content locked).
The same can be said for GW2 really and on top of that, it's way less polished than FF.
Just try FF, I couldn't stomach the classic oriental style cinematic and the quests until lvl 60 can get really frustrating (fetch quests) but overall it has the better potential considering your taste IMHO.
The fact that Russia and China are still even considered "Communist" is just happening for the US propaganda really.
They are regime that are moved only by greed.
This is a game for which the developers said "you have to cheese it, we made it that way intentionally".
You have to do fights trying to cheese it as much as possible, guess the correct order based on your level as well and often end up in situations that are impossible to resolve unless you do something that doesn't make sense.
And let's not forget the "kill everything that moves to get the most xp possible" because that's the way it's intended to be played.
If it was just a straight up "combat - cutscene - combat" I would agree with the "great game" opinion because the game only shines for the combat system.
Everything else is below average when not straight out broken.
plot twist, Putin have suffered from dyslexia all his life and made "some" questionable decisions in good faith.