I feel exactly the same as you. I have ADHD so fluff is painful and pointless grind is just depressing. I thought the most obvious way to recommend my favourites would be to go by hours played, so here's my top four:
My Time At Portia - 594hrs
Hardspace Shipbreaker - 498hrs
Kingdom Come Deliverance - 370hrs
Just Cause 3 - 255hrs
Special mention too for Assassin's Creed Odyssey (164hrs) because that is one well made game in almost every respect. Very little fluff, grind and you're always in control of how big a challenge you feel like facing. To my mind it makes all the other AC games look clunky and drab.
Also I hate difficulty spikes so much that whenever they happen and just seem to be there so the devs can grind a few more hours of playtime out of you for their analytics, I just reach for WeMod. Big shout out to WeMod in fact :) It's made so many games I'd abandoned fun again.
I feel like ACO has a lot of fluff & repetitive gameplay but I played it for over 400 hours so I can say I enjoyed it 😬 it feels like going outside without having to
Slightly old by now, but Portal and Portal 2 remain two of the best games I’ve ever played. Gameplay is intuitive and linear, and doesn’t require grinding or building up resources. I thought the difficulty increased appropriately as well.
Fun fact: Portal was originally a university student project called Narbacular Drop that got hired by Steam. In a sense from its limited narration and story, it felt a bit more like a proof-of-concept than almost a full-fleshed game to me at times, which, for me, was hands-down Portal 2.
I usually have a good time with isometric fantasy rpgs in the vein of Baldur’s Gate. They don’t really have grind, the world is generally well-filled with a relatively dense story and interesting quests (denser than Skyrim at least), and if the game becomes too hard you can turn down the difficulty. Though you do need to actually be interested in the combat mechanics (which are much more complicated than e.g. in Elder Scrolls games) to really enjoy these games, IMO. One downside is that these types of games are usually really long; I’ve dropped a couple of them halfway because they overstayed their welcome.
Some examples:
Baldur’s Gate 3 (don’t really need to have played 1+2 to enjoy this one, though they’re still very good)
Divinity: Original Sin 1+2
Pillars of Eternity 1+2 (2 has much better combat, but the first one is pretty important to understand the world)
Tyranny (this is a relatively short one)
Pathfinder: Kingmaker 1+2
For more Skyrim-style games, I really enjoyed the Gothic series. I think their level of grind is about the same as Skyrim (probably a little less, but it’s been a while), and if you can get past the outdated graphics of the early titles they’re quite fun. Especially the dialogues, they aren’t as serious as Skyrim’s.
Oh, and I just remembered the old Thief games. They had pretty consistent difficulty. At least for the first two. I cannot remember if that was retained with the third because it was a little more open in terms of what you acquired in the hub world and took on missions. And we don’t talk about the fourth (which was a reboot nobody wanted, not even the dev team).
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 could be what you’re looking for. The main story areas are significantly easier than all the side content.
You’ll want to do the side quests because how can you not play that game with cool sunglasses and a baguette on your back?
But you can easily get through the game without doing any side quests. And if you are afraid of being overpowered when you do play the side stuff, they recently added some nice controls to bump up the difficulty.
I’ll be honest I was a bit hesitant because of the hype. F the hype this is amazing. Turn based but active with parry/dodge/crit. Story makes me want to cry.
mass effect, cyberpunk, clair obscur, baldur’s gate 3 all super fun and have difficulty options. Doom is pretty fun too. I’ve just been ripping through game pass single-player campaigns and RPGs.
Ya I’m a big single-player story-driven player. Other recommendations are red dead 2 (never played 1, I’d like to), lies of P, sekiro, elden ring, bloodborne, uncharted series, death stranding (I love this game but completely get why people bounce off it), alan wake 2 (also not for everyone), control, and I’ll always have a soft spot for halo 1-3+reach. Theres probably a bunch more i’m forgetting but I loved all of those games. I just love a really good story.
I would describe Red Dead Redemption II as having significant fluff, not just in how much time it wastes getting from A to B a lot of times but also in that whole island chapter, Act 4, I think.
Time spent riding during missions has never felt like fluff to me. As it’s usually filled up with dialogue and stuff. Plus the nature and views and stuff are relaxing.
For the in-between missions riding you can just get one of those cheat menu mods and use the teleport feature.
It’s the in between missions riding that I was referring to. The previous game was much more lenient about giving you opportunities to fast travel. Also, when I played the game, mods weren’t an option, and OP might be looking for Xbox games.
these are my favourite games, thats why I put them in the second comment I realize they’re a little on the more difficult side. My bad I didn’t clarify.
One thing i’ll say about sekiro is that it demands you learn “the dance”. You need to play the game on its terms and learn the rhythms, essentially you just need to “git gud” but it is absolutely worth it once it clicks. Its an incredible game once you finally get a feel for it.
It sounds like you’ve found some games you like but are turned off of by some difficulty bottlenecks. If that’s the case, considerWeMod. It’s a trainer for a ton of games that allow you to “cheat” in singleplayer games(god mode, speed hacks, etc.)
I still love playing games but as I get older, my tremors get worse, making it impossible for me to get through one on my own. WeMod allows me to explore all of the game world without being stopped by something as simple as clicking on something quickly.
Obviously I’m not OP, but I took them to mean content that might be considered superfluous or otherwise not as meaningful to the overarching narrative in and of itself
Spiritfarer is awesome and I also recommend it, but I think I would concede there’s some “grinding” aspects. You’re going to be going out of your way to collect certain things.
I know exactly what you’re talking about with the burnout and decision anxiety for new games that take hours to complete a tutorial or have paragraphs of menu text. It’s not exactly the open world you’re talking about, but I found Hard Space Ship Breaker to be a great alternative to that. It’s got excellent lore and storytelling while still being a very simple game. Think power wash simulator, but breaking apart spaceships in a space trucker stop. It’s simple, and each “day” is a hard 15 minutes, so you’ll always have a stopping point in a reasonable time.
If you haven’t already tried Oblivion Remastered, that’s a no brainier.
Avowed was pretty straight forward with a decent story. It’s more linear than Skyrim, and sometimes I had to reload a save because I walked into a situation I wasn’t ready for, but all in all, I made quick consistent progress.
I played both on Gamepass.
Also, there’s no shame in turning that difficulty bar down when it’s available. I’m in the same boat as you. I don’t want to master the game, I just want to enjoy it.
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