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look back to some of the games for the 8 and 16-bit consoles. They tended to be about fun rather than shock factors. So check out the larger games for the megadrive for example.
Also, I kinda thought borderlands was good in that it adapted to how you prefer to play and the difficulty seemed consistent.
Dark Souls (any) and Bloodborne.
The others don't pass muster because they do have some insane difficulty spikes. These don't, really. Smough & Ornstein is really the only spike I can think of in the entire DS series and BB actually felt pretty even through the whole game.
Grinding isn't necessary and there is essentially zero fluff in all of them, tho.
Portal I and II.
Psychonauts I and II, with the caveat that there used to be a HUGE skill spike in the penultimate chapter of #1. I gather they've softened it, but don't know how much.
Portal I
Still suffering from the trauma of there being no cake
If you liked Life is Strange, I strongly recommend Lost Records: Bloom & Rage. Made by the same team.
Subnautica comes to mind. It's a survival game with a heavy focus on exploring and a very structured story. Fluff text and the obligatory random documents and audio logs are mostly optional, though the game does have a mystery to solve so some of those you want to pay attention to. No real spikes in difficulty, it's honestly an easy game.
Visual novels fit this rather closely. They're a mixture of book and game, so any fluff you encounter tends to be skippable.
Other than that, I propose The Pegasus Expedition. I found it to be fairly fast-paced.
You don't have many opportunities to grind in Reverse Collapse. The game is hard, though it mainly depends on your ability to strategize than raw numbers. For example, there's one boss early on who's completely unbeatable unless you can exploit her AI into running on some plants.
I got pretty far with this one and really enjoyed it, and then I spent days trying to get past those goddamn anglerfish and failing over and over again, so I just gave up at that point.
I couldn't bring myself to finishing it because "the timer" stressed me so much :( I loved everything else about it so much.
understandable, it took me a few times for it to click. i have the same problem with games that count days; i can't get myself to finish disco elysium or blue prince because the counter going up makes me think i will run out of time, even though you never do.
Its so interesting how different people perceive these things. Disco Elysium was so stress free for me, I didn't really think the day counter did anything. With Outer Wilds I think its really the anticipation of what I know is inevitable to come. And then I nervously wait for all those cues that tell me how much time has passed already... And yeah, very stressy for me, haha. Still, I should really push myself to finish it sometime because I'm really curious how it all ties up.
maybe it's reflective of the personality of the player. i can never get to bed at a reasonable hour and i've heard a theory that some people have that problem because the mind thinks that the sooner the next day begins the less time they have to themselves.
Just reading this somehow gave me goosebumps and made me tear up. Such an incredible and unique game.
Citizen Sleeper
What a soundtrack!
Recently, I've been playing a lot of Brotato. However, there is no story.
- Some Pokemon ROM hacks where the difficulty spikes were not too harsh
There are definitely some good pokemon fangames on PC that aren't super difficult from what I remember.
Most other fan games I could think of are either too long, have a good amount of difficulty, or have some sort of QOL thing preventing me from recommending it.
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.
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.
Planescape Torment.
Definitely. Thought I put it there, but guess not.
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.
Yeah, that's fair, had forgotten about that. Then again, that's one of the games where cheats can make it playable.
+1 for Enderal
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.
A neat feature in the new Death Stranding game is a "Pretend I Won" button on the death screen for bosses. It's nice when games recognize that skill checks can be a problem, and what makes some games fun for some users isn't being challenged.
It does, however, have a ton of fluff and filler.
I'm trying to work through Death Stranding right now. I've started it 3 or 4 times but I've gotten farther this time than any of the past attempts. I'm definitely playing care-bear(no aggro, mostly) but the world is very interesting.
Jazzpunk is not a game I've heard of in a long time, great silly surrealism
Manifold garden is great too
Sable is on a giveaway this week by Epic Games. Use the free-&-open-source Heroic Games Launcher to play it without having to download their platform.
I got bored by FAR's puzzles and didn't finish it but I guess I should persist, huh?
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.
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.
For an RPG, try Kingdoms of Amalur Re-reckoning.
Bugsnax. Substantially better game than I anticipated.
The Stanley Parable and The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe. I'm getting the no play for 5 and 10 years achievements with no cheating.
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.
I enjoyed the Star Wars Jedi games.