vasta_narada

Bayek's a great character, I thought, and the final few scenes regarding the formation of the brotherhood and Bayek/Aya reaffirming their resolve were fine-to-good. The actual ending of the overall plot was disjointed as all hell; people complain about how FFXV suffers from the same problem, but I didn't mind it there and it was incredibly jarring for me in this game. I didn't much care for the side quests in Origins, so can't speak to the sub-narratives.

I thought that part made sense. The entire game, Bayek wants to avenge his son because he's trying to put his soul to rest before being able to move on with Aya. Aya, meanwhile, has already buried her past outside of wanting to put her son's soul to rest as well. She realizes that this quest has put her and Bayek on different paths and that somewhere along the way. potentially because they've been apart for so long, they've just drifted from each other.

The only thing that bothers me about the visuals is how incredibly slow Megaman's run cycle is. The guy runs like he's going at sloth speed!

As a game, I think Automata kinda sucks. The combat's a mashy slog, the same areas are used ad nauseum, and there's not a lot to see in the first place. The reason why I still like Automata is because I think the story's pretty neat and goes to interesting places. The theme of what constitutes humanity and life, among others, is a particularly resonant one for me. Then there's just a smattering of great moments all throughout: "This cannot continue", "You want to **** her", deciding what to do with Pascal and the consequences of that, 9S' slow descent into madness, and so on.

The Witness, Fez, Final Fantasy IX, Pyre, and Stardew Valley are all games I've seen non-gamers get pretty into. Hope that helps.

Easily this track from Mana Khemia (and a bonus second track):

And this one from Final Fantasy XV, just because of how it continues the trend in the game of incorporating the main themes into a bunch of songs and it's really good:

For me at least, the innovation in BotW comes from the way it was crafted and what's allowed there. Hyrules was crafted so that everywhere you went you could see somewhere else that looked like it had something of value; sometimes those somethings of value are just vistas or korok seeds, sometimes it's a shrine, sometimes it's a town. On top of that, there was the challenging of expectations and the sense of discovery that came with it: was the world truly open? Open enough to literally walk to the final boss and kill it from almost minute one. Could I use this tree cutting mechanic to get a log on a hill, push it down into an enemy camp, mowing bokoblins down? Hell yeah, and you can set the log on fire too. Surely having a torch out doesn't affect the temperature gauge--oh wait, it totally does. And, you know, they tripled down on "see that? You can go there."

BotW basically just said "Here's this big world that we crafted so that it's hopefully cool, and we made a bunch of systems that interact in weird-yet-intuitive ways, go have fun. Do what you want." For me, as someone who likes to explore in games for the sake of exploring, that was cat nip. The innovation there was, counter-intuitively I guess, not putting shit to do in every place in the game. Some places were just there to exist (and have a korok seed) and be part of this world they want you to believe in. To use another game I like for this as an example, Final Fantasy XV, a big (legitimate) criticism is that the world is big and designed pretty well, but doesn't have a lot of stuff to do in it. There's this gigantic lake area with swamp-like shores, a big plains area around it and a basin. They never use the lake for anything except a hidden fishing spot. In another sprawling field, there's a deprecated tank rusting away in a corner of the map. If I'm not mistaken, it's the only one of its kind, or very close. There's no quest involved, I don't think the party even really has anything to say about it, it's just there to be a relic of a war in the world's past. For me, it's things like these that I really appreciate in game worlds; I'm honestly pretty tired of the fact that any time I see a unique thing/location in a game I can shrug and think "Guess I'll do something here later." It just feels so contrived to not let a world be.

I've always been a fan of JRPGs, but I was finding that I was burning out on the genre in general until Final Fantasy XV came out last year and made me realize how much I love just hanging out with cool characters and checking out an interesting world. It made me go back and really dig deep into Xenoblade Chronicles X, Final Fantasy XII, and others. Splatoon rekindled my love of competitive multiplayer after basically completely falling off after moving on from Halo 3/Reach's multiplayer. It also made me realize that I actually don't like Overwatch that much somehow.

@boonsong: Gurren Lagann is absolutely insane, but it's also just a story about becoming a man. It's emotional when it needs to be (occasionally) and also absurd when it needs to be (most of the time). The gags drop off after a short while, because the story starts gearing up.

I played on PC so I can't answer that part, but no, they never explain it in canon. Don't recall if they ever subvert it either, but probably not if I can't remember. It's not really a Japanese design trend thing so much as Yoko Taro and one of the artists being unabashed perverts.

GU is pretty standalone (not counting Roots which is an interstitial piece that GU leans on but doesn't require), but you'll miss some things that are put in place for people who played IMOQ. For example, the main antagonist of GU Vol. 1 looks like the main character from IMOQ, which means nothing to people who haven't played those games but throws people who have for a loop. Then there are some characters who were characters in IMOQ (but this also doesn't matter, it's for nerd appreciation).
The IMOQ games are pretty pricey nowadays due to their rarity; I got lucky and got all four used in a lot auction on eBay for $150 USD many years back, but Quarantine by itself will probably run you $120 or so. My recommendation is to watch a Let's Play on Youtube; it's cheaper and those games play like trash. NakaTeleeli did a great job with IMOQ in my opinion.