Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I mentioned this in another thread, but I finally have a gaming PC. I am far behind on gaming. The newest console I have is from 2012. I never had a gaming PC. I am open to any games of any genre from the last 30 years. I love RPGs, but open to anything. Bonus if it’s cheap.
I accidentally posted in another thread and found this in an old tab, so sorry for the delay!
Guild Wars (the first game, not the MMO) got an update recently. It’s cheap, it’s a couple hundred hours for all three campaigns, and the gameplay is decent for its time if you don’t mind it feeling clunky by today’s standards. Real time, but more tactical than action. Skill system inspired by deck building games (eg you have a ton of available skills but can only carry 8 at one time). Stories are functional.
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My favorite RPG in a long time is Kingdom Come Deliverance 2. I've just started my second playthrough (hardcore mode this time), and it's the single most immersive game I've ever played. Historical authenticity is the core design principle baked into literally every aspect of the game, from world design to dialogue to the combat mechanics. The world is an absolutely beautiful, painstaking recreation of early 15th century Bohemia that you can get lost in for hours exploring, hunting, gathering herbs to make potions. The combat is intuitive but difficult to master. The side quests are well written and feel organically integrated into the world in a way I've rarely seen in RPGs. Lots of different ways to tackle problems. Mostly refuses to inject modern cultural norms where they don't belong (one obnoxious essential NPC aside), to the point where it's one of the only pieces of contemporary media set in the pre-modern era i can think of that actually takes the religious convictions its characters should have seriously.
I made so many damn potions. I got all the feats for potionmaking and made a ton of groschen selling them.
It felt fun to "stay up all night" ingame, working for my economic enrichment.
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I am now vaguely hoping you're unemployed for a whole year. Can't imagine getting to experience so many of these the first time.
You've seen many amazing recs, some I think are overrated.
I'll just drop The Homeworld Remastered Collection which is on sale for $3.49. The collection has essentially 4 games (HW1 and HW2, then the remastered versions of each).
The single player experience is really what you're looking for. While the remastered version has some mechanical issues, it does have some major QoL upgrades and is gorgeous. There's nothing else like it as far as I'm concerned. Enjoy!
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There are a lot of games I could recommend, but seeing as how I have 3000 hours in Factorio I have to go with that one. It doesn't click for everyone, but when it clicks it clicks.
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Man, you are in for a great time.
The two PC game digital storefronts worth using are GOG and Steam. GOG began its life selling classic games without DRM (Good Old Games), so it is very relevant to your interests. Steam can’t make the no-DRM claim, but it’s shown a level of ethical consistency uncommon in its space and its collection is enormous. I buy from GOG where I can and from Steam the rest of the time. The Steam sale (now copied by GOG) is a plague on the hobby; some vintage games will have appropriately discounted baseline prices, but many games will be left at their original retail prices so that the sales look more impressive and trigger more fear of missing out. Caveat emptor.
For older games – anything before the mid-aughts, say – I strongly recommend skimming the manual; it’s usually available with the game as a PDF. I have have had friends bounce off some truly excellent games because they couldn’t figure out one or two U.I. elements that were clearly explained in the manual. If that feels like an imposition in 2026, remember that it usually spares you from the tedious tutorials modern games use for the same reason.
Some of these you may have played on console, but I will recommend them anyway.
Role-playing Games
Diablo 1 [1997] (GOG)
Diablo is a real-time dungeoncrawler based heavily on the turn-based roguelikes that came before it. It’s a blast of a game and a polished jewel of a design. GOG sells it together with its third-party DLC Hellfire, which is fun but not as polished. I recommend going without the DLC for your first playthrough.
I haven’t included Diablo II on this list because I feel it hasn’t aged as well, but it is also a great game. I haven’t played the later sequels that are online-only.
Fallout 1 [1997] (GOG, Steam)
Fallout 2 [1998] (GOG, Steam)
Fallout is a top-down RPG in the classic style, set in a retro-future post-apocalyptic wasteland. The worldbuilding is great, the atmosphere is great, the whimsy is on point, and the mechanics are solid. Read the manual for this one. Fallout 2 is also very solid, but I feel like it’s stretching the limits of the design, particularly in the endgame; if you enjoy the first, it’s absolutely worth playing.
Neverwinter Nights 1 [2002] (GOG, Steam)
The AD&D computer games of the late 1990s have an excellent reputation, but I have not played them. This game was my first in that subgenre, and it’s based on 3rd edition D&D. It has its share of worn and cheesy tropes, but that’s why you play this kind of game, and it has enough new storytelling to keep things interesting. But NWN is very grindy by modern standards, and that holds it back in our era. It’s a charming classic, but some will bounce off.
Knights of the Old Republic 1 [2003] (GOG, Steam)
KOTOR is a Star Wars RPG that uses an adapted version of the D&D 3e rules that dominated the tabletop RPG market at the time. It’s not the ideal ruleset for Star Wars but it’s serviceable, and the characters and the writing make the game fantastic. It’s also pretty grindy; play it anyway.
Knights of the Old Republic 2 [2004] (GOG, Steam)
A more reflective, and perhaps jaded, game than KOTOR, KOTOR II makes a good sequel. It was also rushed out the door, and it shows; play it with the restored content mod (TSLRCM).
Neverwinter Nights 2 [2006] (GOG)
Another classic fantasy RPG, NWN2 benefitted from a newer engine than the original. In addition to the usual RPG wanderings, you find yourself in charge of a keep, preparing it for the climactic battle, which roots you more deeply in the setting.
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion [2006] (GOG original, Steam remaster)
The Elder Scrolls series is legendary for a reason. This game’s predecessor, Morrowind is a great game that oozes character; and as someone playing years later you don’t have to suffer through the half-hourly crashes to desktop that plagued it at release. But, as immersive as we found it at the time, Morrowind has gotten rougher with age.
Oblivion filed off most of Morrowind’s rough edges, but it introduced one new one: level scaling. The level scaling in Oblivion is bonkers. The remaster updates player character leveling mechanics but not level scaling. But PCs get mods! If you like this style of open world, exploratory, first-person RPG, I very much recommend playing the remaster with a series of mods by PushTheWinButton: Ascension Remastered, Balanced NPC Level Cap - Remastered, Simple Creature Level Cap, and Balanced Unleveled Rewards - Remastered.
Mass Effect 1–3 [2007–2012]
Mass Effect is a stellar series of shooter-RPGs. You may have played them on console. The first game has more classic RPG mechanics, while the second and third favor more shootery mechanics. While the series is excellent overall, its ending is controversial and, in my humble opinion, somewhat disappointing. It’s still absolutely worth playing.
I don’t give store links here because, while you can buy the game on Steam, you have to install and play it through EA’s storefront. EA is as slimy as Valve is ethical. I still have memories of playing ME3 and being regularly kicked out of the game without a save because my Internet connection flaked out. I would dearly love to play the series’ remaster, but I won’t buy it at this point unless I can get a DRM-free version – mighty unlikely.
Fallout 3 [2008] (GOG with DLC, Steam w/o DLC, Steam with DLC)
Fallout 3 proved that it is possible to make a first-person game built on the Oblivion engine feel like Fallout. This is actually a pretty big coup, and it’s a solid game. It feels like a soft remake of the original in some ways. It also fixes Oblivion’s level scaling issue. While it’s not as good as Fallout or Oblivion, I recommend it.
Fallout: New Vegas and Fallout 4 came out as sequels to this one. FNV is a beloved fan favorite, but – heresy! – I don’t enjoy it as much. Fallout 4 suffered from being tied into its new base building subsystem, much as Oblivion suffered from level scaling.
Dragon Age: Origins [2009] (GOG)
This is one of the all-time great CRPGs, and if you haven’t played it yet, you absolutely have to. Mandatory. Buy it now.
At release the greatness of the game was compromised by EA’s sliminess. It was packaged with a voucher for a day-one DLC that could only be redeemed once, requiring online activation of your game – using the disc as proof of purchase was still standard then – and bringing down the value of resold copies. You would also encounter a questgiver at your camp, and when you tried to accept his quest he would upsell you on another day-one DLC. The GOG version has all of the DLC and none of the DRM. I heartily recommend it.
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim [2011] (GOG, Steam)
If you are an RPG fan, you doubtless know what Skyrim is and have probably played it. It further streamlines and consolifies the game design, so it feels weaker in some respects than Oblivion, but it’s still a very solid game.
Deus Ex: Human Revolution [2011] (GOG, Steam)
The original Deus Ex was groundbreaking, but time hasn’t been kind to it. This action RPG prequel is a lot of fun and supports different playstyles. If you enjoy it, its sequel Deus Ex: Mankind Divided is worth looking into; it’s a little weaker but still a quality game.
Pillars of Eternity 1 [2015] (GOG, Steam)
This may be the best CRPG ever made. It more or less resurrected top-down RPGs as a genre. Its worldbuilding is excellent (not perfect but excellent), and its mechanics build on the old D&D CRPGs. It manages to feel classic and fresh at the same time. Timeless.
The expanion takes place mid-way through the main plot, which causes some awkwardness with level progression. But the expansion’s also excellent, so I recommend playing it at the appropriate point in the story.
Do not skip this one.
Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire [2018] (GOG, Steam)
Deadfire is a sequel worthy of the original. It wasn’t the commercial success its predecessor was, partly because the publisher insisted on voicing all the dialogue this time, which adds greatly to the atmosphere but cost an enormous sum. It’s a fantastic game, and IMHO all the DLC are worth it.
Because Deadfire didn’t make bank, and because the studio is now owned by Microsoft, we may never see a Pillars 3. They did make a first-person action game called Awakened. It’s okay, but the marketing led people to expect Skyrim, and it wasn’t anything like Skyrim, so it flopped. MS recently canceled Awakened 2 in favor of putting the studio on another Fallout game. Meh.
Cyberpunk 2077 [2020] (GOG, Steam)
Think 1980s-retro-future Skyrim. It’s based on the Cyberpunk 2020 tabletop RPG of the 1980s, with its timeline pushed forward to 2077 and partly (but not fully) retconned to better agree with subsequent real history.
The suits pushed this game out before it was ready, but the studio has put in the work to overhaul it multiple times since release. (Alas, one of the overhauls introduced a version of level scaling I don’t care for; you can’t have everything.) It’s great now. The expansion is also solid; its starting quest has some QuickTime-event-style sequences I find annoying, but once you get through that the expansion opens up like the base game.
Baldur’s Gate 3 [2023] (GOG, Steam)
BG3 is a very solid, well thought out CRPG in the classic style – very well made and worth your time. Some people treat it as the seminal RPG of our era, and I wouldn’t go that far, but I sure wouldn’t skip it. Remember the jump ability or you will miss parts of the map.
Adventure Games
Quest for Glory I–V [1989–1998] (GOG, Steam)
This is a series of adventure games with RPG elements. Each one is set in a different place based on a different culture, but the protagonist is carried through the whole series. I heartily recommend them.
The first two games are a hybrid of text adventure game with graphical adventure game, using a text parser to accept commands and showing the results on screen; but the series also includes a first-party remake of the first game with the 2D point-and-click engine. The third and fourth games are point-and-click adventure games in the classic style, and the fifth is 3D-rendered.
I think Quest for Glory is criminally underrated, and I encourage everyone who likes adventure games or RPGs to pick it up. If you are put off by the need to use a text parser and EGA graphics for the second game, there is a fan remake in the style of the later games available on the Internet.
The Secret of Monkey Island [1990] (GOG, Steam)
Monkey Island 1 is a masterpiece of an adventure game. It’s the funny and adventurous story of Guybrush Threepwood, who wants to become a mighty pirate and ends up discovering the secret of Monkey Island to vanquish the ghost pirate LeCheck.
I haven’t played the remake, but if I did I would opt for the classic VGA graphics.
Monkey Island 2 and 3 are fun, but they don’t rise to the level of the original. I didn’t care for the fourth one, and I haven’t played any of the others.
Star Trek: 25th Anniversary [1992] (GOG, Steam)
Star Trek: Judgment Rites [1993] (GOG, Steam)
These point-and-click adventures deliver on the promise of feeling like an episode of Star Trek: The Original Series. They are a bit more challenging by my lights than Monkey Island or Full Throttle, and they don’t reach the same height as classics. But they are a lot of fun.
Full Throttle [1995] (GOG, Steam)
Another masterpiece of the classic adventure-game era, Full Throttle is the story of Ben, a biker who has to solve a murder and prevent the last motorcycle manufacturer from switching to minivans. As with Monkey Island I haven’t played the remake, but I would play it with the classic graphics.
Grim Fandango [1998] (GOG, Steam)
Grim Fandango is the noir adventure of Manny Calavera, who is trying to work off his sins in the afterlife as a grim reaper and travel agent. Working against a rigged system, he ends up unintentionally perpetrating an injustice himself against one of his clients, and he pursues her across the afterlife in four acts trying to set things right.
The original game had awful controls. I am told the remake’s controls are better.
Esoteric Ebb [2026] (Steam)
This is billed as an RPG, but I consider it an adventure game with RPG elements, like Quest for Glory. Its mechanics are loosely based on D&D 5e. Each of your attributes has its own personality, and the ones you are strongest in will give the most input in your internal dialogues, which can be hilarious. It has good worldbuilding and good writing; surprisingly for a modern game featuring politics, I can only sort of guess at the maker’s own views.
Strategy Games
Master of Orion 2 [1996] (GOG, Steam)
MOO2 is a sci-fi 4X game that was made at the right point in history to have a good balance of simplicity and complexity. It does suffer a bit in the late game, as micromanaging your planets gets tedious (but essential).
Heroes of Might and Magic 2 [1996] (GOG)
HoMM II is a fantasy turn-based strategy game with armies led by heroes who have some RPG mechanical elements. HoMM III is also excellent.
Civilization 3 [2001] (GOG, Steam)
The first three Civ games share the same, increasingly refined, design. This is the apex of that original design, the spiritual granddaddy of 4X games, including those that preceded its third incarnation.
Civilization 4 [2005] (GOG with DLC, Steam w/o DLC)
With Civ 4, the series started overhauling the original design and adding depth and complexity. The gap between Civ 3 and Civ 4 is much larger than the gap between 2 and 3.
Personally I bounced off Civ 5, and I haven’t played the later games.
Stellaris [2016] (GOG, Steam)
Stellaris is in some respects the great, great grandchild of MOO2. I skip over Galactic Civilizations 2 because, while that game was great, I think Stellaris does most of what it does better.
This is a space 4X game where different species can have very different playstyles. The core design has been radically revised several times through updates, for good and for ill. The DLC on this one are pretty hit-and-miss; I would read reviews before choosing which to buy.
Crusader Kings 3 [2020] (Steam)
A grand strategy game with RPG elements, CK3 is far more accessible than CK2 was. You don’t play a nation or a single immortal ruler; you play a dynasty. Interpersonal diplomacy is important, strategic marriages are important, and of course warfare is important.
Your ruler’s personality isn’t just a source of bonuses and penalties, or even just a source of events. Decisions that are out of line with your ruler’s personality cause stress, among other things, so you have to choose between the decisions that best suit your realm and those that best suit you personally. Raising your children (and your vassals’ children!) correctly will pay dividends.
The DLC on this one are pretty consistently excellent. I know I like the game, so I just buy the season passes; but, as with Stellaris, there are a lot of DLC.
Miscellaneous
Lemmings [1991] (Internet Archive)
Lemmings is a classic puzzle game. Lemmings will walk out of one door, blindly walking forward on the side-view map, and it’s your job to get them into another door. To do this, each level gives you a certain number of particular commands you can give individual lemmings, like “dig,” “block,” or “explode.” It’s a true classic.
You can download it for free from the Internet Archive, but as it’s a DOS game you will need to use DOSBox to play it on a modern PC. You can play in your browser too, but I would download it.
SimCity 2000 [1993] (GOG)
SimCity is the classic series of city builder games. SimCity 2000 added flexibility and depth to the classic game. I haven’t played 3000, so I can’t comment on it. The most recent games all went online-only.
SimCity Classic is available on the Internet Archive, and it’s a charming game in its own right; I don’t know whether it’s a legal copy or not, but I can’t find it on GOG or Steam.
Tropico [2001] (GOG, Steam)
This sim game makes you the corrupt dictator of an island banana republic. You can play individual missions with particular goals, or you can play random maps. You build up your economy and your people’s quality of life, play the Russians and the Americans against each other, thwart coups and insurrections, and try to squirrel as much cash as possible away in your Swiss bank account before the clock runs out.
I would say that Paradox gaming (Stellaris and CK3 from your list) is a different hobby to the rest of PC gaming. I love it, but I don't have time for it.
Paradox write giant sandboxes trying to capture as much as possible of the feel of a particular strategic era. (Medieval dynastic politics for the Crusader Kings series, early modern politics dominated by incipient Westphalian states for the Europa Universalis series, the horror of industrial-age warfare in the Vicky series, the truly global scale of WW2 in the Hearts of Iron series.) The playtimes start from 30 hours and can go beyond 100 if you play a large empire from the earliest start date to the final end date.
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https://youtube.com/@Warlockracy
This guy does medium to long reviews (30 minutes to 2.5 hours) of most popular RPGs that have been released in the last 20 years, and many that you will never have heard of unless you grew up in the USSR or former republic thereof, or you somehow learned Russian to get into their indy dev scene. Most of the titles mentioned here he's reviewed.
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Welcome to the glorious PC master race. Protip: Steam is the best way to buy and play PC games. Always wait for a sale; never buy games at full price.
My recommendations:
If you're open to using Steam, I strongly suggest checking out Humble Bundle on a regular basis. They offer pay-what-you-want game bundles with higher donations unlocking higher tier bundles. Thanks to them, I have almost as many games as books.
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Very strong agree with the top pick. Civ IV and SMAC are the best games in the Civ franchise, and Civ IV is a lot more accessible to new players. I am happy to defend this position if anyone wants to argue it.
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Worth noting that it's a remake/rebalance for a flash game, and you can get those for free https://flashpointarchive.org/
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Coming out strong with Civ4 at the top.
Finishing weak with MtG Arena. (Free) you say, but I object.
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You forgot GOG.
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Going to list my favourite lesser-knowns, all puzzle games;
Blue Prince, Chants of Senaar, Case/Rise of the Golden Idol, Strange Horiculture/Antiquities, Seance at Blake Manor, Return of the Obra Dinn.
Since nobody seemed to mention it yet, I'll toss in GTAV. It's still technically impressive, good-looking, funny, and welcoming to just screwing around with the world. Lowbrow, perhaps, but it was not the incredible long-lived success it has been for no reason.
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I heartily recommend all of these! Although I think you meant Case/Rise of the Golden Idol (even if curse always feels appropriate).
I'd also add my favorite game, Outer Wilds, as well as The Witness.
D'oh. I was away from my PC while typing so I was going off memory. Thanks!
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A bunch of RPGs from various subgenres that I have enjoyed playing:
Puzzle games:
Misc:
You've compiled a top-notch list in general, which makes the omission of (Telltale's) The Walking Dead here especially odd.
Don't like zombie games.
Fair enough. IMHO this one is worth making an exception for, but I don't really have a good way to convince you of that. In hindsight it's insane that Telltale never just turned Episode 1 of the first season into a free demo.
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I give my highest recommendation to Valheim. It’s hitting 1.0 in a couple months, but do not miss this. I was in a very similar position as you a few years ago. New gaming pc after not gaming at all for 10 years.
If you’ve followed gaming trends at all you’ll have seen the whole survival sandbox genre explode in popularity. Valheim was one of the catalysts for that. It’s by far my favorite in the genre because it’s carefully designed. Boy just a bunch of shit thrown at the wall or giving players exactly what they say they want. I think the design of that game is a good example of “video games as art”. Certainly more so than the typical narrative I’ve slop that gets bandied about with that term.
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WhiningCoil mentioned lots of good ones.
I would add Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic (2003). If you've managed to avoid the spoilers all this time, you're in for a huge treat.
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Hollow Knight is absolutely must play, though potentially you already have it on your console. It is every bit the equal of Super Metroid. Its sequel, Silksong, is better but also not as perfect.
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Buddy, you are in for such a treat. If you are serious about anything from the last 30 years, you are in for a firehose of fun you can scarcely imagine.
But first, install Linux Mint, or CachyOS, or whatever your preferred form of Linux is. Microsoft Windows is over, and your computing experience will be much more pleasant (not to mention faster and more responsive) with any of the popular Linux distros. They all run windows games virtually out of the box these days.
Since everyone else is focusing on new trash from the last 10 years, let me offer a broader prespective.
That's probably enough for now. Have fun.
Still my favorite train game by far (unless we're counting Factorio). Hard to get it to work now though.
Railroads! is fast-paced, fairly intuitive, plenty of variability, and a full game doesn't take too long. It's just fun in a way that I mostly don't find other train games to be. I think because it's optimizing for gameplay instead of trying to be a realistic simulation.
Also, and this is big, industries actually set up near their input resources! One of the things that drives me crazy about, for example, Transport Fever 2 is that there'll be one brick factory and one source of stone and they'll be on opposite sides of the map and it can take literally years to get a shipment over. Oh, and then there's no market for the finished good anywhere nearby even once they're made. The placement just makes no sense. TF2 gets around this by making every shipment worthwhile to deliver, more or less, which isn't how things work!
Railroads! instead encourages the player to prioritize the placement of high-value lines to make money quickly, and then invest that surplus in developing more complicated supply chains and industries. While also managing stock price and heading off opponents, of course.
Finally, there's just enough maintenance/upgrade pressure to scratch my itch, without it becoming a sprawling nightmare to manage like TF2.
The only real complaint I have about Railroads! is that the train table mode has no option for restricting town growth, so instead of setting up a picturesque little train table it always ends up as sprawling cities.
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Morrowind has some level scaling. It is just handled so well you'd never notice. More likely to spawn tougher monsters and more likely to spawn better random loot based on character level. But also lots of fixed items and all named npcs are fixed.
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Great list. Surprised not to see Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri (1999) on the list, given that you've listed a lot of strategy and some other Sid Meier.
If @samesies wants to catch up on recent gaming history, it's probably worth playing a couple of "modern military shooters" to get a sense of what Doom 2016 was a reaction against and return to. Maybe add a modern boomer shooter too.
There's also a bunch of good remakes out these days, which might be a good way to pick up games you missed that might not run as easily. Many of LucasArts' classic adventure games now have remastered editions that run on modern machines. I'd recommend Day of the Tentacle, Secret of Monkey Island 1 and 2, and Full Throttle from that set. I think System Shock 1 and 2 got decent remakes if you want to play through some pretty influential first-person horror.
Speculative not-necessarily-recommendations: Brutal Legend, Oni, maybe one of the Hitman games?
How well does Tron 2.0 run these days? I never could get my pirate version to launch on my machine when I was a broke student.
SMAC is a funny game to me. Very much a direct sequel to Civilization II specifically. So much so that, IMHO, you almost need to have played Civilization II first to have gotten you feet wet with the mechanics, before SMAC turns them up to 11. It's also from that era where you really probably should read the manual. Preferably all 200 pages of it. You could probably get by with wiki articles or modern strategy guides, or even watching youtubers tell you how to play. But that just all feels suboptimal to me.
I also haven't played it in forever, so it's just not really top of mind for me.
All true. I think I just have a soft spot for the worldbuilding and the faction leaders, and how much depth there is in there if you want to chase up all the references.
Alpha Centauri's writing is fucking incredible, but the gameplay is sadly outdated, with a lot of annoying micromanagement (units are supported by their home bases rather than by the faction as a whole, air units must return to a base every other turn or crash, etc.).
I don't mind the micro, but there are a bunch of balance issues which really detract from the depth, even without the expansion.
(Standard terraforming is supposed to be stronger but more time-consuming - and polluting - than forests, but forests are too strong for this to work. Condensors' bonus to their own square is too strong, so nobody ever uses their interesting rain effect in favour of simply spamming condensors everywhere. Air power is kinda OP. And there's an ICS problem later in the game because of the Hab Dome limit and then the one-unit-per-turn limit binding excessively-hard.)
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I'll add a few split up by (non-traditional) genre:
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I'm going to immediately suggest a few "gold standard" games, since you missed them the first time around. They're all older, but either have staying power or inform a lot of newer games.
You missed Dark Souls!
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It's such a wide universe that it's hard to really just dump a suggestion without any feelers for what you'd be interested in. Going off of RPGs and with a fairly wide variety
Path of exile(1 or 2): Diablo style top down click to move loot game with near infinite complexity and a deep market economy. Both games are popular and continue to have near quarterly large patches. It's an overwhelming amount of complexity that people either love or hate. poe 1 is free and poe2 has a $30 buy in until the end of the year when it goes out of early access. The buy in gets you store credit which you could use to buy stash tabs(good or organizing your loot) that apply to both games.
Baulder's gate 3: basically dungeons in dragons as a single player adventure, extremely well received. If you're at all interested in the dungeons and dragons experience this is worth a pick up.
Hades 1 and 2: this is a rogue lite(a genre where you start essentially new games repeatedly with random powerups to try and beat the story, lite means there are inter-run power ups and like means no inter-run powerups essentially) with good RPG themes, great if you like a quick self contained run game that leaves you wanting to play just one more.
slay the spire 1 and 2: sts1 kicked off a whole genre of turn based rogue likes. It's a card game in the rogue lite style.
Blue prince: Another rogue lite at a slower pace where you explore rooms and try to get deeper into an ever changing house as you piece together a neat story.
Clair Obscur: expedition 33: A French JRPG with great atmosphere, not really my type of game but really well received.
Doom: It's doom!
Factorio: Ok, not much of a role play game but you're on the motte, you'd probably like factorio. Build a factory to turn stuff into stuff you need to build a bigger factory.
Hogwarts Legacy: If you like harry potter then it's a very competently made RPG in that game. The game play isn't anything to write home about but it's an RPG set in hogwarts, what more do you want?
Binding of Isaac: Perhaps the GOAT of Rogue likes, old but holds up.
That's what I find scrolling through the last couple years of my steam library. I'm sure I've missed some. If you have any games you've particularly liked in the past or mechanics you're interested in I might be able to refine the search a bit.
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Emulators
Nioh 1 (faster-paced action RPG)
Dark Souls 2 (slower-paced action RPG)
Darkest Dungeon 1 (slow-paced dungeon crawler; kind of dumb, but a reasonably fun time-waster)
Nuclear Throne and Enter the Gungeon (move with keyboard and shoot with mouse)
Death Stranding 1 (transport cargo across landscapes)
Fallout: New Vegas and Fallout 3 with Tale of Two Wastelands bugfixes
Kerbal Space Program 1 (plan space missions)
Cities: Skylines 2 (build cities)
Mini Motorways (draw road networks)
Freeways (draw highway interchanges)
Gundam Breaker 4 (the closest thing to Dynasty Warriors Gundam that's playable on PC)
House of Dead Ninjas and Super House of Dead Ninjas (simple action)
Solitairica (solitaire roguelite)
Slipways original and fancy (draw trade routes to develop planets)
Bridge Constructor
It's been a long time since I've emulated anything. Hell, I don't even think I have a torrent client installed on any of my machines these days. How, ah, concerned should one be about malware and such when it comes to ROMs these days?
I am extremely far from an expert on the topic, but I believe that many emulators automatically verify the ROM's checksum against trusted checksum databases like No-Intro, and will warn you if no match is detected.
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Suggesting Dark Souls 2 over DS1, DS3, Bloodborne, or Elden Ring is so crazy and conspicuous that it might be bait. Explain yourself.
Dark Souls 2 is the only game in the "Soulsborne" ""series"" that I've actually played. I have significant nostalgia for it (without DLCs) on the PlayStation 3 a decade ago, and years afterward I accumulated 300 hours of playtime on PC.
I've never felt much need to try Dark Souls 1 or Demon's Souls when Dark Souls 2 is so awesome already. (I think my brother and I did also have those two games on PS3. I don't remember why I didn't play them at that time. Maybe I preferred to spend all my time on Dynasty Warriors Gundam 1, 2, and 3.)
It is my impression that Dark Souls 3 and Elden Ring are "rollslop" in comparison to the more methodical gameplay of their predecessors.
As for Bloodborne and Sekiro, I prefer rolling to parrying.
You're in a rare window to have only played DS2, and I guess you're in the small but lively camp of DS2 defenders, while most consider it the black sheep of the series (though it does have its virtues and great points). For what it's worth, Elden Ring's big combat innovation was to get past to rollslop so that rolling is more strategic and timing based rather than spammy like in DS3 and Bloodborne. I highly recommend all the games, but you might like Elden Ring the best.
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I'm surprised you play other genres.
Don't forget that Bridge Constructor technically is in the same genre. Civil engineering is an extremely broad category.
Relevant incomplete webpages that I made years ago: 1 2
I noticed that error, and also expected that you'd be here to correct me before I could get to amending it. In return, I can recommend Dyson Sphere Program as something that might be to your taste. You might even learn to build that Space Elevator that's your true calling. To code.
I remain in hopium-huffing mode, not game-playing mode.
(I will take this opportunity to note that Dyson Sphere Program, Factorio, Captain of Industry, etc. are industrial engineering, not civil engineering. But I am interested in them.)
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