Silverhand

The Mario & Luigi games are similarly approachable and good RPGs, Superstar Saga (the first one) especially. They are handheld games so maybe a bit more difficult to play together with someone, though you could emulate them very easily to play on a more suitable device.

Sea of Stars also might be worth a try. Takes a lot of inspiration from Paper Mario.

Good fucking riddance. I hate these things, people leave them just lying across the sidewalk all the time.

It sometimes was but there were good alternatives for that. The much bigger problem imo was the lack of a dpad, using the trackpad for that was abysmal.

I have a Chromecast (/Google TV, their branding is a mess) and Apple TV, and have used Rokus family members have. In my experience chromecast has the best app selection, it’s just running a modified version of android. It does require specific tv versions of apps, but the standards are as low as the rest of the google play store for better and worse, so anything you can get on an android phone that you’d want on a tv is probably on there. It also (with a bit of trouble) allows sideloading, and I’ve put some github projects on there like SmartTubeNext (ad-free youtube with a better UI).

This number is basically useless except for headlines like this. Actually using my steam deck I don’t care at all about the verification status. There’s plenty of unsupported and unknown stuff that works well, and there’s verified games I’ve run into issues with. Playable is also a particularly bad category because it’s weirdly picky about certain things but not others, and it seems to be rarely updated when games get patches, so stuff can get better or worse than it’s labeled. I just check ProtonDB or look up youtube videos of someone playing a game on deck if I want to check something.

Seconded, one of my favorite podcasts.

Might be outside of what you’re looking for, but have you considered online chess? It’s fun to learn, doesn’t need quick reflexes, and the playerbase is never going to die.