5: A popular series/game you just can’t get into no matter how much you try?
i'm just like @catiuapavel re: pokemon. i played it a bunch as a kid, but these days none of the games can hold my interest, i find the premise extremely boring. battling and catching cute animals just doesn't keep my attention for the sheer length of those games. it's also the kind of thing i wish i was into, because It's Huge, but i also don't feel like i'm missing out because i've got other things i can be into. i felt some FOMO when pokemon go was a huge thing, but that's mostly because i didn't even have a smart phone then, so i couldn't have played even if i wanted to (which i did, just so i could play with friends)
6: A game that’s changed you the most?
this is a tough question. i'm nixing any games from my childhood because i don't feel like they "changed" me as much as they established my interests/character. (who was i when i was five years old? a five-year-old.) so final fantasy tactics is out, because that one is more amy-defining than it is amy-changing (though i feel like i've grown into it and continue to find things to love about it, twenty fucking years later). i'm actually gonna answer this question in phases.
high school: final fantasy ix. i like ffvii better, but that's mostly nostalgia; like other people who have mentioned this already, ffix's narrative has an extraordinarily unique relationship with death that completely changed how i feel about it as a person, and what it means to face it. it gave me like a baby existential crisis, but a good one.
university: i technically played assassin's creed games first, but i feel like getting into skyrim was the number one game-changer for me (lol). an entire world of video games that weren't just linear, tightly controlled rpgs or relaxing & simple adventure-platformers opened up to me after i mastered skyrim. skyrim was the game that got me from "gamer who only plays one specific genre" to "gamer who is willing to experiment and play with all kinds of different genres." the open world and real-time combat was so huge and terrifying to me when i first played it, but because skyrim is easy (relatively speaking, like it's easy for its genre) i was able to get over some fears and learn some new video game skills that have stayed with me since.
post-university: good lord but dragon age. it was the gay romances that drew me in and kept me there, i'd never experienced anything like it before in video games. i loved the date mechanics of ffvii, but dating aeris as cloud was different than dating aeris as me / as a woman, and dragon age like... as sad as it sounds, it offered the chance to play as a lesbian, which was really exhilarating the first go-round. it's still mind-boggling to me that people play it and do like... all the straight person romances. why???
recently: i'm still stewing over it but i think outer wilds is really one of the best games ever made and, like ffix, also has an extremely unique, refreshing, and also kind of terrifying approach to life & death, and i'm obsessed with it. i'll be chewing on this game for a long, long time, it's without peer tbh.
secondarily tales of the abyss has now surpassed a vast majority of jrpg titles i hold dear to my heart, like i'm talking most of the final fantasies, so that was fun to play. ALSO has a very good relationship with existence & with death, though imo it's more depressing than ffix (but like, worthwhile depressing)
sorry about the length of this question lol. it's hard to answer. i'm sure i will find another game somewhere down the line that will change me again, too.
9: A game you turn your volume off every time you play it?
i hate turning off the volume on video games!! the audio experience is CRUCIAL to my experience of playing a game. like i'm obsessed with footsteps sounds, for instance, those tiny audio details can drastically alter a game for me. i don't like to listen to or do anything else while playing games, i like to be focused in on what i'm doing. the only exceptions to this are if i'm doing something extraordinarily repetitive, like level grinding, and i'm getting tired of the battle music, so i'll put on a podcast or listen to music or something. but in general i prefer to be deeply engaged in the audio experience of playing a game
