We. The Revolution.

Historical kinda-strategic game about crooked, drunken Paris judge trying to survive, and maybe save own soul in fictionalised version of French Revolution

Solasta is an indie RPG based on the 5e ruleset (but using different sub-classes, due to not being licensed).  No wokeness.  Entertaining.
Markomojo.com

You mentioned you don't play visual novels (don't really blame you there) but I'd recommend the older Persona series. Persona 4 Golden is fantastic, and the Persona 2 duology are great if you don't mind emulating it. Another one is Shin Megami Tensei, which the Persona games are based off of. I know the third game is available on steam (SMT3: Nocturne) and it's a really good dungeon crawler as well.

Japanese games aside, I'd suggest Pillars of Eternity, BattleTech, and Civilization 5 if you haven't played it. All really good tbh.

Quote from: dronycroin on January 23, 2024, 11:40:16 AM
Solasta is an indie RPG based on the 5e ruleset (but using different sub-classes, due to not being licensed).  No wokeness.  Entertaining.
Markomojo.com

The best translation of D&D 5e ruleset in videogame form. If it only had the budget for the presentation it would be amazing.

But, it has enough heart to warrant the purchase and play time. The combat is really solid on this one.

Now that it's both official again and their most recent update with improvements to make it easier for new players to get into it, I'll throw my recommendation out for City of Heroes: Homecoming.

Absolutely free (funded by free will donations) and hundred of hours of content; if you've got an itch to be a hero, villain or something in between* I highly recommend it. Hell, I recommend it for the character creator alone.

It's an older game, but it holds up well for being released in 2004 and it's first run ending in 2012. The team behind its rebirth did an update to a 64-bit client which lets it run above its old top settings even on older machines (the old 32-bit client held back the graphics levels even on top end machines).

* for a more shades of grey/moral choices experience give Praetorian Earth a spin, the content is more difficult, but it's some of the best 1-20 content in the game IMHO... running the tutorial is recommended for Praetoria even if you're already familiar with the mechanics as it lays down a lot of world building for the alternate dimension's timeline and includes your starting moral choice for which faction to support that determines which secret missions can become available while doing cross-faction missions undercover.

I will also recommend Homecoming. I'm of the opinion CoH/V is the best MMO ever created.

Oh, and when I talked about the 64-bit client, I meant literally. I still had the desktop PC I had run CoH on when it was live when I heard about it's return. It played just as I had remembered it at 32-bit (same graphics settings). When they put out the 64-bit client though I was able to crank all the graphic settings up to beyond what even live had allowed on the exact same machine.

Honestly, it was the Homecoming team's insistence on doing the far less glamorous, but desperately needed, client update BEFORE throwing a bunch of snazzy powers and outfits that many of the other rogue servers were doing (particularly given that Apple had just announced it was dropping 32-bit client support entirely with its next OS release... which meant Wondows wouldn't be too far behind) was what told me early on that they'd be the team to actually follow for the long haul.

They were the substance (future-proofing the system) over style (over the top powers and dumping developer-locked assets onto the character builder without consideration for how they might interact or overload the 32-bit graphics engine) team.

And it's definitely paid off for them. They're no longer a rogue server.

Lately I have been playing the Book of Travels. It´s an isometric RPG MMO, sort of. Difficult to describe, it is different.
It´s available on Steam and is currently in Early Access though it is basically a full game already with very few bugs (my experience)