Some people love combat, crafting, collecting or any of the numerous other elements of games. What are your favorite elements of games?

A subtle whiff of irreverence that makes one smile and nod, without being the unstoppable ringing of gongs that Borderlands is.

I don't really play games, I just spend my time on character creation screens:D Jokes aside, one of my favorite aspect is tactical combat either real time with pause or turn based. Building decks is very fun too. Solving puzzles and doing detective work is another great element of a game. My no1 is of course amassing healing potions without ever using one of them.

Melodies. Call me curmudgeonly, but I have difficulty enjoying a game if the music lacks personality. I listened to the full Medical Deck track for the System Shock remake, and it was...sterile.

Unlimited save slots and manual saving.

Single-slot autosave should not be a thing.

After thinking on this a bit, my favorite elements (across genres) are:

1. semi-autonomous AI companions (ie Dragon's Dogma or Brothers in Arms). I love readying a team and taking them into battle. This is probably a reason I'm attracted to auto-battlers / auto-chess.

2. Contrary to many, I like voiced team chatter and color dialogue -- where characters comment on locations, backstory, etc. It can almost fool my mind into believing this isn't a mechanical exercise.

3. Measured and careful combat. I'm pretty decent in the thinkin' department, but these old eyes and reflexes move like molasses in January, so I tend to like games where combat is measured (ie Dark Souls) or turn-based. Yes, I do play some games with fast-paced combat (ie Ninja Gaiden), but I tend not to enjoy mashing buttons / keys as much... and neither do my keyboards and controllers.

4. I enjoy watching AI spontaneously interact with other AI (ie Skyrim giants fighting with other creatures) or intentionally interact (ie Shadow of Mordor Orcs fighting rival Orcs). It makes the worlds feel alive. I especially enjoy games where this interaction can be used by the player strategically.

5. The world responding to your actions (ie The Saboteur where the world turns to color from black-and-white as you fight -- and win -- against the National Socialists).

6. Base building. I'm a sucker for building home bases or fortifying keeps... with one of my favorites being the least consequential in-game: Kenway's home base in Black Flag.

7. Exploration. I prefer a majority rural setting for exploration (ie Gothic), but I'll take urban as well... if the story is compelling (ie LA Noire).

8. Setting. I tend toward historical games... or fantasy games. While I will play games set in modern day -- or even the future -- I don't gravitate toward them (ie I've never finished a Deus Ex game). Games that run contrary to this are those that I think are exceptionally well-told (ie Max Payne 3).

9. Atmosphere. I like strong atmosphere in a game, but I stop short of horror; I find enough horrific in life that I don't want to scare myself witless in my free time! ;)

10. Stealth. I love games with stealth systems (ie Sniper Elite series, Sniper Ghost Warrior series, etc) and because I tend to enter combat carefully, I like to use stealth to first recon the opposition.

That's more than I expected to list, but... yes, most of the elements I find in the games I most enjoy.

Exact moment save-files are to die for. One Sunday morning, I was rushing to the nearest save station in Metroid Prime 2 when the church bus rolled up and I assured my mom, still 2 rooms away and hopping on giant mushrooms, that I'm about to turn off the game. I made it before they gave up on me and had to explain myself, but you know what would be great? If I could just save my progress wherever I stand; it's the only save system better than frequent auto-saves because there's still an aspect of player agency.

Is "fun" an element? Not sure there's a line of code where "fun" is inserted...? But I may be wrong. I'm with you there!

I genuinely enjoy a bit of inventory management

Some things I tend to enjoy:

* I like games with some sort of mechanical "crunch", so to speak. For example, this involves things like having to work out character builds/setups that lead to fun and useful builds. Some of this can be found in incremental games (what's the best way to get the number to go up faster?), and I've even encountered some of this in the game Baba Is You (even without numbers, the mechanics can be quite complex to the point of being Turing complete).

* I like seeing characters grow, from a gameplay perspective, throughout the game, graduaooy getting more powerful when the game goes on. It's also interesting when the play style can change as characters grow and learn new game-changing abilities. Note that I tend to prefer the growth to be gradual rather than in bursts. (For example, if a game has XP based levels as the sole means of character growth, which is quite common, I prefer a higher level cap with more frequent leveling as opposed to a low level cap where one level makes a big difference.)

* I also like a game that can challenge my built-up characters, but isn't frustratingly difficult while they're still in early development.

* I like the rhythm of turn-based combat, as well as the time such combat gives the player to think.

* I also like it when the game provides the means to recover from a critical situation. In a typical RPG, this means being able to use healing magic to turn around what would otherwise have been a likely party wipe; such situations provide a lot of tension and then relief. In a game like Tetris, recoveries are my favorite thing to watch.

you can very definitly remove fun

Like in Dragon Warrior 4?

(If you're playing a remake version of the game and want it to feel more authentic, I would suggest avoiding the Follow Orders tactic in Chapter 5.)

I could also recommend Wizardry 4, provided you don't mind the hard adventure game element and that sometimes bad RNG will force you to reload.

Edit: By the way, looking at some of your other points, I could recommend Wizardry 8 (which, unlike the other two games I mentioned, *is* on GOG). It has some of 2, 3, 4, 7, and even a bit of 10 for you.

Well, there *are* games that are not designed to be fun. Desert Bus is a famous example of this; the game is incredibly boring, and that's on purpose.

and you know what - Desert Bus is not fun... and it is not one of my favorite games. makint a bad game on purpose just makes it a bad game

I could compare games like Desert Bus to, say, the musical works of John Cage. Seriously, they're not really meant to be entertaining to listen to in the usual sense, but rather are the sort of work that strains the definition of "music", much like how one could question Desert Bus's game-ness. (Although, Desert Bus does have well-defined victory and defeat conditions, and does have something that can be called "gameplay".)