Metalingus by Alter Bridge, gotta get me in a fighting mood.

Same game and roughly same amount of time. Just started the main quest in Novigrad.

Got both DLCs for like 3 bucks, which was nice.

Everything from 3 times a day to once every 3 days is normal. It depends on how much you eat, how much of it your body can absorb, your fiber intake and some genetic variance too.

Your intestines aren’t a conveyor belt, things don’t constantly move. There are multiple muscles acting as a valve between different sections. Based on the factors above your body decides when to push stuff to the next section including the exit.

Not entirely, however, I feel as though proper resource management got less common over time. While the ideas are still present in modern games, they tend to be easy enough that most resources can just be horded. Most people don’t even use consumables nowadays. Games are seemingly balanced around ignoring entire systems.

From my point of view, you’ve got it wrong, but so do many developers. A good JRPG is all about resource management. Your HP, MP, items, money and the balance between these and your EXP and equipment. Combat is simply a drain on your resources up until the final boss, which should require more strategy. This needs something akin to a dungeon without constant healing and money being a thight resource. Once you’re in a dungeon, you should either be prepped or doomed.

You mostly see this done in dungeon crawlers, think any Etrian Odyssey game for example. Persona 5 goes for the same thing, as do most Shin Megami Tensei games.

Most modern games, however, are overly lenient with either money or healing. Often times, combat is easy enough to not even drain your resources. That’s when endless grinding becomes an option. Once you’ve destroyed this balance, you need something else to keep attention and that’s where I think your observation comes in.