PositivelyCynical

I'm very late into act 3 and she has completely stopped talking and is stuck with one dialog response if you manually speak to her (cannot even remove from my party) since coming in to act 3, so I would believe the note from the other poster that it is a bug. She hasn't had nearly as much content as any of the other companions by a long shot.

It's more an issue of if there is a risk of litigation, or potential avenues of it. Having less things potentially be targets helps differentiate a products identity more and have less 'weight' if it is used in court as evidence thereof.

Another benefit is this allows them to deviate from past/common tropes that people would expect from a "Shaitan" or any other renamed creatures based on knowledge from other systems or analogous creatures of myth in future writing - even if they still borrow from the latter in most creatures cases.

Success, Failure or Critical Failure those conditions from Befuddle last until the start of your turn, not the enemies turn.

So with befuddle, because the spell itself notes a duration (this being one round) the spell only lasts until the start of your next turn.

I like painful vibrations as an example, because its a "damage spell" without being a basic save, although it functions very similarly to one.

You'll note that different from Befuddle's spell entry, Painful Vibrations has no noted duration, because it is instantaneous. Your conditions that could be applied based on their save results have a specific duration in this case however, because they are separate from the damage done by the spell (which happens and ends during the spell cast). So in the case of painful vibrations, you cast it and they critically fail, you roll your damage, they become sickened 2 until they spend an action to retch (or some other mechanic to rid themselves of a point or two of sickened) and are deafened for 1 minute.

Where the same cast of befuddle still, no matter how badly they flub the save is still a 1 round duration no matter what. That said, despite it's short duration, it is extremely potent as a spell. Especially for it's cost when put on a staff. You, in that round, can capitalize on it much less than your allies can offensively, but it is also a great defense against a caster - though they typically have better will saves. Even if they get a success they are casting at a lower DC, lower spell attack and have a chance to just completely waste the spell they were casting.

EDIT: For an example of a longer-lasting Befuddle-like spell, look at Touch of Idiocy.

Befuddle has a Duration listed on the spell of 1 round! So next turn, when your turn starts, it would go away.

If a spell’s duration is given in rounds, the number of rounds remaining decreases by 1 at the start of each of the spellcaster’s turns, ending when the duration reaches 0.

For the question about cantrips, nope! The extra cantrip is yours to cast freely, with or without charges remaining on the staff.

For the note on changing spells I don't think you can normally through the feature itself, though you could retrain into the same feature with different selections down the line if needed.

For your last point, since you can technically retrain by taking some of your downtime to basically roleplay as tweaking/re-carving runes on your staff, I don't know if this is as much a worry for you. You can get good mileage out of things like magic missile as a fallback damage spell, true strike is a also great for trading higher level spell slots that you may not have as much use for at the time for getting your hits to land if you pick up any attack roll spells.

For level 1 spells on the staff that aren't True Strike/Magic Missile, I've always liked: Befuddle, Gust of Wind, Grease, Shockwave, Command, Mud Pit as these mostly stay useful with using those level 1 spell slots and extra charges you can get. Mostly depends on what flavor you're going for and potentially what staff you want to craft, or are able to get to upgrade your makeshift staff into.

Red lights don't allow you to see as well in dark/poor visibility conditions that are needed for driving. You're moving 30 to 60 mph likely on the road vs walking speed while hiking and that reaction time visibility is much more important. The intensity of red light that would be needed would make the benefit non-existent (as they'd be just as obnoxiously eye-destroying as the super brights and blue lights).

Some states in the US allow "amber" colored lights for headlights/brights though, and I think they're way less obnoxious and still allow for high levels of visibility.

I thought ER was on par with or easier than other souls games solo, I actually had a harder time playing in co-op than solo. It's quite fun and has a ton of replayability on PC with the modding community. I'm in the same vein with the spooky games being a no-go, so I have nothing to offer on RE2 vs ER.

I've had decent experience in actual play with summons in exploration more than in combat, as you noted with the crawling hand as an example, but also with ferrying party members around or general roleplay opportunities to help with getting/gathering information once you can summon more talkative creatures.

In combat I'd have to echo the soaking hits being their primary use. Something makes it through the front line, I have small or narrow passageway or anything similar and no wall spells prepared or available I'd fall back on the creature to substitute.

I definitely agree that they're not powerful by any means, but I don't think they're without uses, especially with spells on their level for the diverse utility they can provide both in and out of combat. In combat I liked the whiptail centipede just for the reach, space it took up despite being able to squeeze well and poison being a nice deterrent if things got to close to my squishy self, but I think a number of other spells could have worked just as well or better.