This is a followup to @SorosFootSoldier@hexbear.net 's recent thread for completeness' sake.
I'll state an old classic that is seen as a genre defining game because it is: Myst. Yes, it redefined the genre... in ways I fucking hated and that the adventure game genre took decades to fully recover from. It was a pompous mess in its presentation and was the worst kind of "doing action does vague thing or nothing at all, where is your hint book" puzzle gameplay wrapped in graphical hype which ages pretty poorly as far as appeal qualities go.
So many adventure games tried to be Myst afterward that the sheer budgetary costs and redundancy of the also-rans crashed the adventure game genre for years.
Yeah I tried Elden Ring for a good 20 hours, but I see absolutely no reason for the mechanic of having to go back to your body to get the XP, and if you die along the way it's all gone. What gameplay purpose does that serve?
If you’re actually curious: the purpose it serves is to instill a weight in and fear of death for the player. The goal is to make you more tense when pushing farther from your last checkpoint.
That’s the idea, at least.