If you liked Skyrim, check out Enderal - it's a total conversion mod, but in Steam as it's own game. It's much more linear than Skyrim - the world still feels open, but it's much more dense, and it's scaled more like a traditional RPG, so if you wander off the intended path too far, you'll get your ass beat by mobs that are much higher level than you.

Side quests are meh, with a notable exception of the Rhalata line, which is kind of like a combo of thieves guild and dark brotherhood. Main quest line is fucking wild.

If you skip the vast majority of side quests, you might have an issue with scaling, since you'll be missing out on all that xp. If you run into that and don't want to do the quests, just use the command console to cheat some in.

FF16 is not an incredible game. But it sure is easy to button mash your way to a win, especially considering how good some of the trinkets are (acquired at start of the game). The music is solid, the writing is interesting enough, and the visuals are great, provided you can run it well.

Hearts

Dredge is a pretty unique one that I had a lot of fun with. Firewatch is good but short

I really like the Ys games, and I think Y's Origin meets those requirements. The boss fights are difficult, but no crazy difficulty spikes, provided you've been killing things properly along the way. I only had to grind for a few min for one boss, and that's back because I actively avoided the mobs and ended up underleveled.

Zelda games tend to also be really well designed, pretty much any will do.

Shattered Pixel Dungeon on fdroidorr Linux or Windows

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.

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.

OUTER WILDS!

• zero fluff. every piece of text and every setpiece is in service to the main story.
• no gating. you can go everywhere from moment one.
• no grinding. no combat at all, in fact.
• no time pressure. it may seem like it, but don't worry.
• the big mystery requires understanding the world and the story, rather than fighting a difficult battle
• it will make you cry

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.

If you liked Life is Strange, I strongly recommend Lost Records: Bloom & Rage. Made by the same team.

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.

Live for the adventure, not the grind:

Journey (if you play one game on this list it should be this one)

Far: Lone Sails and the sequel Changing Tides

Jazzpunk

Master Reboot

Manifold Garden

Sable

Fract OSC

Chants of Sennar

The Red Strings Club

The Stanley Parable

Rime

Superliminal

Naissancee

Soul Axiom

Contrast

Citizen Sleeper

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.

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.

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.

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.

Bugsnax. Substantially better game than I anticipated.

I enjoyed the Star Wars Jedi games.

The Stanley Parable and The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe. I'm getting the no play for 5 and 10 years achievements with no cheating.

Recently, I've been playing a lot of Brotato. However, there is no story.