Better yet is if the game offers a mode with 0 human players and a spectator mode, so you can watch the AI play against itself.

** (On book vs videogame.)
It might be fun, but it's pretty limited when it comes to learning or building up a proficient vocabulary. While a child (or an adult for that matter) might be getting faster and better at some things (mentally and physically) , their vocabulary usually gets worse. At least those who only play and "never" opens up a book or read more in-depth articles. Just look at the vocabulary that most kids these days on the internet due to lack of parents or a proper school system to teach and guide them.

The English language is now, not only being butchered, but also simplified and regressed (see the movie Idiocracy (2006)). Writing "U" instead of "you", and "your" when they actually meant "you are / you're". And then we have the most atrociously retarded word "bae".

That and you actually needed to work and understand to get a computer to function. In the 80's/90's you actually needed to read and experiment a lot. Installing and setting up DOS and games f.ex. was (and still is) in my mind an achievement in itself. Being limited to run everything from a floppy because you didn't have anything else. Consoles makes things easier, but it also makes it worse. Reading today has not the same place in our society as it used to.

** The more a developer focus on graphics the worse the core game is. Games have become a lot more about eye-candy than substance/content. Just look how watered the CRPG genre and the real meaning of RPG have become.
A roleplaying game used to be about changing the narrative/story and the outcome as you play (from board-games). Now everything is "RPG" or "RPG-like" without even properly implement the core mechanics of it, the branching story. Much like rouge-like and this fetish for procedurallly generated content for lazy developers have become - stagnant.

Look at games like CP2077 and The Outer Worlds... are people talking much about them these today. No, they pretty much died off after 1-4 weeks. How about Deus Ex and F:NV (or even early Fallout/NWN) f.ex.? Or Wizardry and early D&D games?

Deep engaging story, that's what people will/does remember and will reflect over, long after it was released. Just look at early games and see how much they achieved by inspiring the gamer to use their own imagination to fill in between the lines of deadly text and simple, breathtaking characters (just like when you read a book).

(Also, we didn't have internet and phones to distract us from actually immerse us into the game world.)

** More game developers have become less (self-)aware about the real value of something. It's like seeing housewifes trying to value a (technical) thing before selling it off to ebay. In short, they overestimate what it should cost relatively to it's content, popularity, quality, and age (among others). Here on GOG we have plenty of old games (and new) f.ex. that is valued way too high based on these criterias. I've said it before, these text-based games should be in an open museum, free for all to be viewed and played for it's historical value, like an old book.

** With all that, ironically, I do see that my preferences have been changed of late more to RPG. I started out with games like Asteroid, Frogger, Alley the cat, Prince of Arabia, SQ, Mario and such before going over to more action like Doom, Jazz Jackrabbit, NFS, Dune 2 and C&C. Now I'm more of a RPG and PnP gamer with side-leaning towards the horror theme (though, my special need for speed still is there... like Ballistics and Wipeout).

I didn't have much patience for RPGs before, so I kind of missed the early (golden?) times... which is kind of sad when thinking of how simplified games have become today. Today we can't even make a mistake figure things out on your own, or explore on your own without being told "that's not how you do it", constantly told how or even being able to skip a tutorial because the developers think you're an idiot.

You'd think developers know that more people today have access to a computer and generally know how to play a game, but apparently no... pointing and clicking a button on a mouse soon needs a Bachelor's degree, in modules. "Warning, lots of text incoming". "Warning: contains themes that are for adults, make sure you're over 45 to play this".

Yes, it was so much better in the early days where you didn't have a nanny hanging over you. Seems like software developers today as a whole overcompensate for the fact that some might have trouble finding things out on their own or worse, don't know how to ask on the internet.

Reading and finding things out on your own is something that I think are the cornerstones in games (depends on the type of game of course).

** I agree, variety is the spice our life needs. The massive marked of games today makes it sometimes fun to discovers new game I didn't hear about before that moment. Personally I'm actually more open today to different genres of games and sees several indie games today that I'm adding to my list.

The downside is "what the heck am I going to choose to play now?" :D

Once again, story is not a core mechanic of a CRPG; that mechanic is really best associated with adventure games and visual novels.

To me, the core mechanic of a CRPG is that the player does not directly control their character. Rather, the player tells the character what to do, and the character then executes it, with the success of said action being determined by the character's abilities, not the player's.

(Things get trickier with table top RPGs, but the core mechanic I mention above still applies; if it didn't apply, then why bother with a rulebook in the first place?)

Also worth noting that procedural generation has been an element of some RPGs since the early ones; Rogue, Akalabeth, and Ultima 1 all are at least partially procedurally generated (though Ultima 1 limits it to just the dungeons). Also, I have seen Rogue classified as a rogue-like, which can be justified that there's no game more like the original Rogue than Rogue itself.

Those two statements are contradictory. Deep stories and games where the player uses their own imagination are complete opposites.

When I think of a game with a deep story, I start to think of games like Final Fantasy 4, which is when the FF series started to focus more heavily on story. In this game, there's less room for imagination than in, say, the original Final Fantasy.

Fortunately, that has been done for some games.
https://www.amc.com/shows/halt-and-catch-fire/exclusives/colossal-cave-adventure
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/1g84m0sXpnNCv84GpN2PLZG/the-game-30th-anniversary-edition

Also, it should be "its", not "it's", in that context. ("it's" = "it is"; its not a possessive like "its" is.)

Such warnings can be worthwhile to some people, while others can choose to ignore them.

For example, if one is looking to buy a game for a young child, the fact that the game is text heavy might be relevant. If the child hasn't learned to read, they might not be able to enjoy the game. On the other hand, for a child learning to read, a good text heavy game (especially if it's marketed at children, like Pokemon) may give them a fun way to practice their reading, and hence get better at it.

Warnings can be good for other reasons as well, like if the game has intense flashing lights that could cause seizures in a minority of people (those affected can heed the warning or decide that it's worth the risk), or if a game might legitimately trigger someone's PTSD (such triggers are worse when they occur by surprise; seeing the warning, even if the person decides to play the game anyway, will reduce the harm done by the game, especially since the player might be more able to deal with their triggers at some times than other times).

The Magic of Scheherezade is a really good game (especially for its time), but it unfortunately needs a seizure warning. Similarly, Wonder Boy 3: The Dragon's Trap has the screen flash red when you damage a boss, which can cause seizures or discomfort in some (if playing the 2017 remake, you can avoid this by switching to modern graphics for boss fights).