This is why I sometimes enjoy Ubisoft trash. Especially Ghost Recon Wildlands and Breakpoint. Just the same old shit on a massive map, an okay story, fun gameplay. Easy. Simple. Nice for mindless bullshit.
Let me offer a spin on this: the point-&-click adventure Technobabylon, which is more a staggeringly creative and massive series of escape rooms, and not that much of an open world to explore and revisit.
Perceptibly, it has zero grinding and is to the point with what you’ve gotta do. It is one of the only point-&-click adventure games that I’ve beaten; I normally dislike the genre, which speaks volumes to how incredible it is.
Gonna be honest and say that Barony is so damn hard that I use some of the “easy” modifiers (keep loot on death being primary), and we still get our asses absolutely destroyed.
It has taught me to loosen up about dying in roguelites, though.
I mean, if you’ve enjoyed Skyrim, honestly you can just google “best RPGs of all time” and play any that will show up. I’m gonna go against the grain here and say that Skyrim’s world is beautiful and the combat is cool but there’s nothing special about the story or the quests. Try enderall, fallout London, gothic 1+2 + archolos, mass effect 1-3, disco Elysium, Witcher 1-3, Baldur’s Gate 1-3, Neverwinter nights 1+2, dragon age origins, fallout new Vegas, pillars of eternity1+2, Kotor 1+2, south park stick of truth + fractured butthole, cyberpunk, fable the lost chapters, divinity original sin 1+2, dark messiah of might and magic(fun and underrated, imo), etc.
If at any point you feel like the combat is too hard or whatever you can use cheats and just enjoy the story. All of these have pretty good ones. At least all of these have less grinding and better story than Pokemon games, in my experience.
Beyond that, just go for popular, widely acclaimed games such as rdr2, bioshock, whichever doom you want, portal 1+2, etc.
Definitely don’t recommend Enderal. OP mentioned they didn’t want a game with difficulty spikes, and Enderal is pretty notorious for difficulty spiking. Playing Enderal on Normal difficulty is like playing Skyrim on Hard.
It might be okay on its own, but it’s not what OP is looking for.
A “best RPGs of all time” list will inevitably include Baldur’s Gate 2, and likely other Infinity Engine games, most of which are definitely not games without difficulty spikes or required side content.
oh also, a less popular one: Wandersong! non-violent adventure platformer about a bard who wants to make the world a better place. a beautiful, mostly linear story in a colorful world. very easy to get sucked into.
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