PC game cases from 90s were amazing. I wish console games would do something cool like that. They were made of cardboard, typically had boxart with a bunch of high quality engraving, had manuals inside. They felt like collectibles and you didn’t have to pay extra for any of it. It was just part of the base game price.
Diablo 4. Honestly not bad, I kind of get some of the hate, but it’s super early days and as long Blizzard doesn’t turn it into mtx hell, it could go the Eternal Collection route in a few years.
Nearly all action games have some amount of RPG elements built into them these days. A few titles come to mind:
Horizon Zero Dawn and then Forbidden West.
God of War and then Ragnarok.
Spider-man, Miles Morales and upcoming Spider-man 2.
Read Dead Redemption, Read Dead Redemption 2.
Jedi Fallen Order, Jedi Survivor.
Guardians of the Galaxy
Resident Evil 2 Remake, 3 remake and 4 Remake.
Ghost of Tsushima.
Plenty more but that should keep you busy. All of these have character progression, leveling up, getting better gear to varying degrees combined with forgiving dificulty (which you can tweak).