I want it all. Good graphics, good audio design, good music, good story, good gameplay. There aren’t many games that do everything right, but as a dude in his 40’s I don’t have that much time to play games either. There are enough games that tick all boxes to fill the limited time I do have.

I'd like to add that game graphics are not as important as file size.

Games that are 100+gb file size are just on my shit list, I don't care how good they are.

I've honestly reached a point where I would gladly take PS2 graphics over the terrible performance and constant stuttering of most modern games.

new video games have slowly become an interest that i can just flat out not afford anymore

back in the day you could play a good chunk of stuff with the kind of shoddy office pc anyone had in the home, but its gotten to the point where there is an entry fee of nearly if not over a fucking grand to actually play the latest pc games, with the required upgrades to stay up to date not exactly being cheap either

i dont think im all that far from the average pc gamer, and triple A titles effectively are not made for me anymore

I'm going to be put on a cross but I disagree. Its a balancing scale, one shouldn't ignore all other aspects because they favor one, its fine to prioritize one over the others but there shouldn't be a huge gap between them especially in the AAA field. Dwarf Fortress is a perfect example. It is one of the most mechanically deep games around and I think its wonderful at what it does but it is almost unplayable for most people until fairly recently because most people don't like Ascii. Hell even something like Aurora 4x is very mechanically deep but looks like a glorified spreadsheet, everyone has their breaking point and unfortunately for me Ascii is that out. I think many people throw away graphics since the AAA likes to glorify it too much but I think for a soulslike game, graphics need to be the 2nd most focused aspect because I consider animation quality a big part of graphic budget and I'm sorry a soulslike where there aren't good animations is a very bad soulslike. Predictability and reaction are a huge part of that subgenre.

Edit: Everyone has their own values on what they are looking for in a game and its specific subgenre, the recent debates about Cities skyline 2 shows this where people are some reason fine with a game like that being targeted for 30 fps. While sure its playable, I think we are in a modern era of gaming and 60 feels it should be the standard everyone shoots for.