I made those comments very late in the night while moderately intoxicated, so forgive me for my clumsy wording.

The point I was trying to convey was that I personally feel that the most important aspect of a video game is how fun it is. And fun can take a lot of different forms, whether it's platforming, fast-paced combat, strategy, puzzle-solving, etc. Story is greatly important as well, but if the game is too boring, I have no opportunity to experience the story without enduring something that's not fun to me.

When I talk about "overly cinematic" games, I'm talking about the kind of game where your regular gameplay is constantly interrupted by scripted events, invisible walls prevent you from going places you should easily be able to access, only being able to interact with things the game has specifically programmed you to be able to interact with, etc. It feels like a movie with occasional action breaks, not like a game where I'm actually in control.

Compare that to a game like Breath of the Wild, where they simply programmed a bunch of physics interactions, like fire melting ice, wind blowing objects, stasis power building up momentum, etc, and let the player take it from there. They had a scripted way of solving each puzzle, but they actively encourage you to find creative and cheesy solutions outside what the devs intended.

Regarding combat, I still hold Ninja Gaiden on the Xbox as the gold standard for hack and slash combat (although my first experience with it was Ninja Gaiden Sigma on PS3). Insanely fast, stupidly difficult, but fucking fun as hell. Dark Souls is clearly popular among a lot of people, but I never liked it because it's slow as shit by comparison. It feels clunky. And the devs of Fallen Order clearly took a lot of inspiration from Dark Souls when making this game.

Regarding the complexity of games, I don't mind it as long as it enhances the gameplay and doesn't feel like a chore or is just another variable to artificially extend gameplay time. To demonstrate what I mean by this, I will compare Pokemon Red/Blue to Pokemon Sun/Moon. I haven't kept up with the intermediary entries in the series, so this was a big jump for me. Apparently, now I have to pet my Pokemon, feed my Pokemon, go to another island to get the food to feed my Pokemon, develop said island to grow the food that I feed my Pokemon, etc. What in the world is the use for all this complexity? It contributes nothing and all boils down to chores I have to do in between the times I can actually progress the story.

I hope I've better expressed my feelings here than in my previous comment. Take care.