oh man those gorgeous maps and manuals I think I am going to cry. Sometimes I would take them to the school to read and daydream about the game.

well when you meet her in person, you can tell her that

It is, the respawn rates are insane by modern standards. 0/10 would not recommend, stick to the movies instead.

I meant games that had tutorial videos built into them. Stuff like Syphon Filter; a rushed, poorly voiced video that lists your controls and tosses you into the mission. The player is told what does what and isn't given a chance to learn how to interact with the world.

Soul Reaver 1's first 20 minutes is what every game should be aiming for. You learn how to navigate the world, how health and the spectral/material realms work, how to solve the combat puzzles, and more importantly, how those systems interact; then you're on your own. If a game needs the help of extrenal resources to convey such basic information, it's a failure of game design. Not necessarily out of incompetence but because game design principles hadn't evolved to that point.

I'm not against external (including physical) resources, iff they're used in a clever way. Shenzhen IO has a thirty-page manual themed as actual technical documentation about the electronics used in the game. Through this, the manual becomes part of the game. Same for Keep talking and nobody explodes. Volo's Guide to Baldur's Gate is a fantastic example of presenting supplemental information that is good to know but isn't a roadblock in its absence. If a manual improves the game experience, it's good material. If it's necessary to make a game playable, it's bad design.