Thanks for the share and write up! I’ll have to check it out. I’ve played and beat all the main souls games and am always looking for good reasons to try new soulslikes.
The original Demons souls was what got me back into gaming back on the PS3 in college. I haven’t revisited yet as a dad now with 2 young kids but can say that Elden ring took me an entire year to beat as my main single player game - with a total playtime of somewhere around 140 hours.
Recently I’ve actually really been loving the streamlined play and linear areas of FFXVI - Taking on a hunt or some small quests with plenty of options to do smaller quests has helped me feel more “progress” despite only playing in short bursts. I know open world is the rage but with small kids that linear gameplay has been so refreshing.
Just wanting to echo the suggestion for linking the kindle to the library. It took a while but basically I just did a massive number of books I was partially interested in (>25) and got on the waitlist. If you then don’t have time you can always defer and set the number of days to defer by (e.g. just a couple) but after only a month or so of reading new books I’ve had constant opportunities to read big name books over the year. There is also sometimes a special “skip the line” copy which can give you a bonus week reading early!