I don’t see it here so I’ll mention Ty the Tasmanian Tiger! Really fun collectathon platformer. Played through the more recent remaster on PC and realized it’s very easy, but I spent a huge amount of time as a kid just running around the maps and hub area.
Nioh. It might not be what you’re looking for since it’s fantasy but it does mix in some real elements from that period and even has some historical characters. It’s a pretty good game.
Also in the same genre and also fantasy/samurai themed, Sekiro. Not sure about historical accuracy, but you will enjoy the gameplay or die trying. Or both, those aren’t mutually exclusive
Nioh can be best described as “dark souls gameplay with Borderlands itemization” which I personally love. It’s not for everyone. But the folks it is for will love it. You know who you are.
Escape Academy? It’s a great escape room game (even better in co-op) but it’s more engaging than Escape Simulator since there’s a story pulling everything together. The story’s ridiculous but honestly the context adds entertainment value, regardless of how absurd it is.
SuperBrothers: Sword and Sworcery probably fits this bill. It’s an odd game, but I love the shit out of every minute of it. I have 3 hours in that game. I haven’t touched it since 2013, but I still remember just how ethereal and soothing it was while still being an exciting adventure game. One of the odder things about it is how it instructs you when and for how long to play it. For example, it tells you to stop playing it for a few weeks so the moon’s phase can change. Not that that’s a bad thing, but
They don’t exactly fit with your theme of short mystery and puzzle games, but based on your initial question most JRPGs and most story-focused games came to mind. Let’s go over a few of them I’d recommend to everyone interested in those games:
Persona 5 Royal: It’s about a 100h and very story-heavy. There are some twists and turns which keep you engaged and you build relationships with a wide cast of characters. Besides the story and actual combat, there’s a ton of side activities, all of which you only do a few times. It’s probably my favorite game I’ll never replay, because all these things are an absolute slog to play again. The same goes for Persona 4 and maybe 3, haven’t played that one.
every Etrian Odyssey: They are old-school dungeon crawlers originally released on the 3/DS and got remakes on steam and the Switch. You draw your own maps of every layer the dungeon has, which is a large puzzle in itself. However, once you know the dungeon, there is literally no point in exploring it again. You know every trap, every worthwhile detour and of course the path to take.
Like a dragon 7/8: They combine an open world with lots of mini-games, funny and/or touching side stories and an epic overarching main story to follow. There are tons of interactions with your companions, all of them interesting. It’s just, similarly to Persona 5, all these mini-games and interactions only carry themselves for the short burst you get them in and while they are fresh. Replaying them? It’s an absolute slog. You know every punchline, you have optimized most mini-games and probably remember most of the great backstories each character has - you’d be skipping most of the content and the non-optional combat system isn’t fun enough to carry itself on its own.
Can’t you have fun in dungeon crawlers by trying other party compositions? Or is EO badly balanced where you can only succeed with an specific composition?
You absolutely can! There are classes, subclasses and equipable skills depending on the game. All with different builds. You can win with all of them and swapping around can be fun. However, you can also do this within a single playthrough. At least in my opinion, the dungeon is the main draw here - but of course, as with all games here, there are certainly people who like to replay them.
There is a game from the MS-DOS age of 1996 called Realms of the Haunting where you traverse large open areas for hours searching for items and interactables needed to progress.
You might clear it a second time just to make the experience seem like a linear cohesive string of events but I can’t imagine you would want to clear it any more than that.
90s style adventure games like Sam and Max hit the road, day of the tentacle, monkey Island, Indiana Jones, etc. Lots of comedy you can’t hear again for the first time, and puzzles that can be memorable.
scummVM can be used to run those games and runs on basically everything, phones, tablets, desktop.
Dredge comes to mind. It’s a nice game and all, but outside of the two endings (which are basically a choose left or right situation) you see pretty much everything there’s to see in a single playthrough.
"One Shot", it has a few achievements that might require going back to try to complete.
It is puzzle top down story adventure game( it does the whole look into your actual files for solutions thing), once I finished the main story I felt satisified. It allows for playing after the ending but doing so feels hollow and unsatisifying which is the point. It asks the question of why do you still want to play, but oh well I will allow it and makes it possible.
While I’m not sure the “walking sim” games are what you’re looking for, I’d add Lifeless Planet and maybe Dear Esther. Once you know what’s going on/what happened, there’s not much point in replaying.
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