A short Hike: It's a pretty short relaxing game. Low stake, no stress.
Chained Echoes: I don't know how long Octopath 2 is, I only finished the first game, but since you mentioned it you may like this one. It's a turn based rpg, but there is basically no grind. Your party is fully heal between each fights. It's quite respectful of a player's time in that way.
I've been using Pocket Casts on Android and it works well. I think that I started using it 2 years ago and I haven't encountered any issues. I use the free version and it hasn't asked me to pay and hasn't shown me ads. I'm a light user when it comes to podcasts though.
They have a web player for PC, but I haven't tried it.
I gave Sea of Stars a try. It's from the developers of The Messenger. I'm really liking what I played so far. After Chained Echoes, I think this will be my next big hit for retro jrpg. The pixel art is gorgeous and the music is really good so far. I'm not big on timed attack in turn-based game, but I suspect that I'll get over that quickly.
That's good to know. I'm having fun playing a magical archer at the moment.
I played the Final Fantasy 16 demo. I'm not sold on it, but I tend to favour older games with turn based combat. Still, I did mostly enjoy the gameplay, it seems like it could be a fun game.
I gave Dragon's Dogma another try, and I'm 20+ hours in now. I never made it this far. It's a pretty fun game, though I'm having difficulty figuring out some quests without resorting to searching wikis. My current quest, I need to find a gargoyle, kill it and get back something from it, but it didn't drop anything. I'm wondering if it glitched.
For relaxing, I'm playing Etrian Odyssey 3.
I liked Hearts Beat Loud. Here are some recommendation that I think fits in the genre:
It has been a while since I saw 20th Century Women, but it was recommended in a list of slice of life movie. Our Little Sister is in Japanese. There is something heartwarming about the story and the everyday life of the characters. Only Yesterday is an animated movie by Studio Ghibli.
I feel the same way. The demo was great and I can't wait to play the full game.