Asklemmy

I do get those, but not that I think they're good. You have to understand the design philosophy is not to make a good game. It's to make a game that's addicting and wallet draining.

The timer does two things. It makes you plan your time around it, always coming back as timers end (often with notifications when they finish). It also creates an obstacle they can sell you the solution to. Its pretty antithetical to good game design, but it's profitable game design.

I get super bored after a few hours

You would've beaten another game in that period of time.

I can't speak for the other games, but as a former player, FIFA did change a lot each year, usually its changes to physics, game speed, skill moves, mini games, and ofc graphics. Not $60 worth of game changes, but I'd argue it's similar with things like call of duty. Best value was always to skip every other year.

Also gambling. Doesn't get talked about enough but FIFA YouTubers are more or less payed by EA to shill packs and get people (usually teens) addicted to opening them. I probably bought $200 a year on packs from 2016-2020, usually money I didnt have too. Mostly why I stopped buying the games. (Stopped playing CounterStrike for the same reason)

These days, I just casually play mods of older games and get football manager every other game.

Edgy was the style at the time. That might be a case of needing to adjust expectations to the time it was created in.

Final fantasy 7 came out 2 years before the matrix movie for example. Edgy was huge.

Final fantasy 8 starts out similarly, but turns into a much better romance story with all the same zaniness.

Final fantasy 9 is a more classical fantasy from that era. After final fantasy 9 it gets more modern, but that one at least loses the edge that you didn't like in seven.

I will say Witcher 3 kind of forced AA/AAA games to up the quality of their writing. It still stands up as some of the best writing in games, but maybe a little less obviously so after a decade of other competent game stories.

What's really exceptional is how pretty much every sidequest is also very well written, with believable characters and compelling situations. Many games, again especially before W3, might have pretty good main plots, but the sidequests would just be endless dross with maybe one or two standouts.

As for performance, you probably enabled some silly options. Both Witcher 2 and 3 pushed the envelope in crazy ways for PC graphics; there's an ultra setting on W2 that was still bringing GPUs to their knees a decade later as well. The game still looks great if you turn it down a little.