As somebody who enjoys all 3 games immensely, you don’t strictly have to play Miles Morales. You’ll be missing some of his character growth that continues throughout 2, but a lot of the broad strokes you can pick up from context.
That said, I highly recommend playing Miles Morales.
They just released content for Neon Genesis Evangelion this year, they released several movies for it between 2009 and 2021, and the original series released in 1995, so I’d say it matches long running and still active.
Not sure about Hollow Knight, though. The first game released in 2017, they released additional content for it over a few years, and then the new game released last year. I don’t think I’d count that as long running, personally, but you made the thread.
I meant to say Z-A. My bad. Arceus didn’t really hold my attention, likely for the reason you mention.
It definitely depends on how much they incorporate improvements from Legends: Arceus Z-A (one of the side games). Gens 6 - 8 were all so easy that a popular way to play each of those is with a difficulty mod, if you are able.
Gen 9 tried to mix it up a bit, but as another user mentioned the performance on the Switch was so poor that it was hard to enjoy.
Legends: Arceus Z-A has introduced several quality of life features that could be game changing if they make it into Winds & Waves, but we shall see. This could be the most fun mainline gen, if they do it right, or they could fumble it again.
Edit: Looking back, both times I meant to say Z-A I said Arceus. Whoops.
Could be an abbreviation for “constable”?