Preferably in the high fantasy or sci fi genre.
I enjoy playing games like Chronotrigger, Tales of Symphonia, Witcher 3 (easiest difficulty), Mass Effect (in Story mode), Outer Worlds (in Story mode), etc.
Basically, story first, mechanics second. What’s your fav?
Disco Elysium
As people already said, Disco Elysium for sure.
Baldur’s Gate 3 on the lowest/story difficulty.
The old RPG Arcanum. Great steampunk fantasy setting and story. If you play a persuasive character you can avoid combat and skip entire dungeons. The game has some balance issues (magic tree is fine, but the tech tree is underpowered, and early combat encounters are horrible to dela with). Various fan patches and mods are available, including a balance mod, a bugfix patch, and an HD patch. Since it’s an old game I recommend getting it from gog.com, since sometimes they fix up older games a bit to run properly on new systems.
Dragon Age, since you liked Mass Effect. Though, I personally found the combat more annoying in Dragon Age than Mass Effect. Mileage may vary.
The Outer Wilds (different game than Outer Worlds). It’s a sort of an archeology/space adventure game. It’s not strictly speaking an RPG, but if you want a story game it’s top tier. Please do not look anything up about the game and go in as blind as possible, as the feeling of discovery and exploration are the main draw of the game and once you have something spoiled you can’t un-know it. Also, I recommend getting the dlc immediately with the main game, as it’s a huge expansion that fits into the main story perfectly and affects the ending of the main game.
Not scifi or fantasy, but have you heard of Pentiment? It’s by Josh Sawyer, lead designer of New Vegas. You’re an artist in 1518 Bavaria completing your masterpiece at a monastery, when someone gets killed and you must collect evidence. There’s much more to it than that, of which I can’t speak without giving anything away. However, I can tell you that the game has no combat, it’s just exploration and dialogue. The whole game looks like an illuminated manuscript, and you walk around engaging in some of the most captivating conversations ever to be in a video game. The character creation is extremely unique; in the beginning, you pick where you spent your year abroad, what you do in your free time, what you got your Master’s degree in, and what your favorite subject was at university. All of these determine your attitude on and knowledge of pretty much every subject in the game. It has one of the most unique speech check systems in any RPG, with entire conversations counting toward convincing someone, showing you what you said right and wrong at the very end. Masterpiece.
Never heard of it, but it sounds like a well crafted non-combat game. Niiiice :)
You sound a lot like me, and probably get annoyed with a lot of grindy mechanics. Especially when you have limited time to play games.
Sea of Stars and Chained Echoes will really scratch that Chronotrigger itch.
Outer Wilds is also incredible (don’t read spoilers, just go in blind). It’s mini space exploration with cartoon-arcadey newtonian physics.
Sword & Sworcery is also great, and a good point-and-click adventure with an amazing soundtrack. I’d almost argue it’s better on a tablet or largeish phone through. It’s very touch input focused, which is OK with a mouse, but I think is better with a finger (as intended)
Others I enjoy :
- Kentucky Route Zero (point and click with a wild vibe)
- Firewatch (walking Sim with pretty low poly art)
- Dishonored 1 & 2 (gritty fps with stealth and magic)
- Inside (short puzzle platformer)
- Abzu (undersea exploration, relatively chill, but I never completed it)
- The Invincible (more recent than the rest, a very pretty walking sim in a retro-future sci-fi setting (Stanislaw Lem) that kept me pretty engrossed and occasionally worried)
- Horizon: Zero Dawn. (Absolutely adored this world and story. Story mode combat was good, but I just used cheats for a lot of the basic pickup/crafting stuff. Yes, I can take 30 minutes to run around and gather basic materials, but I don’t have that kind of time irl.)
Sword & Sworcery! Yes! A true diamond in the rough.
For real. Its high time I replay it, too. Been long enough that I just remember general themes.
It has gotten an update recently, to improve compatibility with modern systems: Patch Notes
Thanks for the recs! Already played Chained Echoes and quite liked it. Wish it was longer haha. Seen Sea of Stars reviews saying weak on story and dialogue and such, so I backburnered it, but maybe it’s worth it for the exploration elements alone?
Never played Outer Wilds. But seen it recommended before and it’s on my radar. Should it be played on console, do you think? Or is the steam version fine.
I’ll look into the rest when I have time. I appreciate all the details :)
Re: Outer Wilds, either console or Steam is fine but I would recommend a controller in either case. The flight mechanics can be a little tricky with a keyboard and mouse, but I had no issues getting it with a controller.
Abzu (undersea exploration, relatively chill, but I never completed it)
@troyunrau@lemmy.ca Abzu isn’t an RPG, but I’d still second this recommendation, as it’s very chill to play, has zero combat, and has a lovely story to it. Would also recommend Spirit of the North for the same reason. No dialogue in either, though - the story is very much in the visuals, music, and atmosphere rather than words.
Fair. I did stray from the “rpg” theme on… Most of my responses.
Will look up Spirit of the North though! It sounds right up my alley
Oh yes, if you liked Abzu, you’ll very likely like Spirit of the North too. :)
visual novels: Digimon survive, Danganronpa
Steins;Gate is one of my favourites here. And Sam and Max. :)
On the topic of Visual Novels: I’d like to recommend basically everything from Winter Wolves Games that is tagged as RPG. The classic is of course Loren the Amazon Princess, but, to be honest, their writing has improved since then, so you might want to check out their newer Tales of Aravorn games, like Seasons of the Wolf. Also, Loren is really long, so if you don’t have a ton of time, the newer, shorter games might be a better choice.
A word of warning though, by Winter Wolves themselves: https://mastodon.social/@winterwolves/111588943770965424
Cloudpunk is nice, although it’s more of a “walking simulator” than a fully-fledged RPG. It’s a cyberpunk-ish indie game in which you’re a delivery driver, although with a flying car and a sentient dog.
Moonring has been really fun, and it’s free! Not F2P, just free. The developer made it as a passion project, and it’s easily worth $10, imo. Lots of reading.
It’s akin to an old NES or early 90s PC game with the polish and applied game theory of modern times.
Moonring is made by a dev of Fable right?
Yep, one of the co-creators. Has a website that he hasn’t updated in a year or two that’s geared towards teaching people programming, so seems like a pretty cool guy!
Yeah he’s a good one. Left the studio over his convictions, can’t get much better than that.
Except of course when you follow up with what you mentioned - didn’t know that part. Even more awesome than I thought!
Saible. I just recently played through it. No combat whatsoever. It’s mostly about exploring the desert on your hover-bike. I’ve heard comparisons to Gension Impact, but I haven’t played that one, so I can’t say for sure.
Vastly different from Genshin Impact. Sable is closer to a modern 3D Zelda game than Genshin, especially with its puzzle platforming sections.
I’ve only played the first three you mentioned, but I would say they’re all far from minimal focus on combat…
Void Terrarium is quite cute, I don’t know how combat heavy it gets later in the game though.
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Utawarerumono series. Visual novels with pretty straight forward srpg combat.
