Glad this thread made the move over. I've been really enjoying the podcast for a while so I hadn't been posting. The Immersive Sim focused one was great, and the interview/discussion with Manveer was awesome. I love getting some insight to the trickier goings on at a game dev.
As one take away to the immersive sim talk, I think I figured out that for me the stuff that's important in an immersive sim is also what I like about a "metroidvania." That sense of exploration, gaining new abilities that let you navigate the space, combat you can deal with in a multitude of ways (including avoidance) and a world you become increasingly familiar with as you go on. Hollow Knight and Prey both hit a lot of those similar points for me despite being very different styles of games with (I'm assuming) very different budgets. I totally get that it doesn't really immerse you the way a first person game with lots of minutiae does, but in terms of general qualities the game gives off, those were my takeaways.