I’m lucky to have “inherited” my parents’ doctor. She is extremely compassionate and gets deeply involved in you and your concerns on every visit. So much so that she is infamous for being behind schedule, to the point where we fully expect to wait for an hour to see her after the scheduled appointment time. She makes up for it by talking with you for as long as you want.

She also hasn’t accepted new patients for like 4 years… so yeah, I guess all the good ones are taken.

As a One Piece fan I think I have to treat this comment as a personal attack

I’ve been playing the Elden Ring DLC, in these clouds all I see are fingers, so many fingers…

I understand the sentiment and I generally agree with you but I think I can make a case for Hades as an exception.

I picked up the first one in ea because I was thirsty for a new roguelike and some friends raved about it enough to me, and it was already a great game. The changes that came over the period I played were additive in the sense that they just opened more options in a game that already felt complete to me (mostly anyways, but more on that in a sec). But to defend it I can’t just say “oh well it felt like a finished game” there also needs to be a tangible benefit to playing it in early access. And there was! The early access versions of the game included meta banter between the narrator and Zagreus, little jokes about new things appearing or things that should be there but aren’t, references to the fact that pieces of the story’s scaffold were still being set up. It sounds small but it was just more of the wonderful character charm that oozes from every corner of that game and I actually kind of missed it a little bit once the full release came. Anyways I haven’t picked up Hades 2 yet (been making more of an effort to clear my backlog lately), but I’m thinking about it. And as far as the ostensible “point” of early access—community feedback and income to support development—Supergiant has given me ample reason to trust that they’ll make it worth it for me as a player if I don’t want to wait for the polished final product.

Hollow Knight and Darkest Dungeon both fit this for me. When I initially played them there would be some pain point where I got frustrated with some wall in the exploration or a tough setback (like some classic darkest dungeon bullshit like 3 spiders getting critical hits in a row killing a hero at full health). But the atmosphere of both games kept pulling me back again and again, and each time I’d get a little bit further.

Now I can say I’ve beaten Darkest Dungeon probably a half dozen times, nearly 100% Darkest Dungeon 2, and beaten every pantheon in Hollow Knight (with bindings on all but P5).

Not sure if my obvious masochism was the biggest factor in these games pulling through for me, but I can still say they are fantastic experiences for anyone willing to dig in and face the challenges they have to offer.