i think the collecting and managing stuff is whats 'gamey', its the skinner box collectathon design impulse. something like sekiro is less 'gamey' to me because it does away with some of that to focus on immersion in the world and moment to moment interaction with the environment or enemies. no mini map in sekiro, no radar, no world map covered in icons to delete, no high score board other than external speedruns, no levitating objects laid out in convenient lines to collect by running through, no damage numbers coming off of enemies. take out the HUD and items and its almost a fantasy ninja sim. i actually like the open world stuff though, sometimes i don't want to focus very hard on a specific goal in a game, sometimes i just want to wander around a cool world and vibe. i like tsushima more than sekiro, but thats in spite of the world map shit not because of it, i like wandering around through the pretty grass more than dying to the exact same boss in the second level 100 times in a row before giving up, replaying from the beginning after a while because its been so long, and repeating. i unironically hate the combat of souls games, i hate the wooden canned combat animations and invulnerability frame dodge rolls. it doesn't help that i'm the kind of dweeb who looks up historical swordfighting manuals.