2 picks for me: Stardew Valley, most boring shit ever, I don’t see the appeal, seriously how the hell did that thing sold 20 million copies?
And Witcher 3, I own that game since 2019 and I regret buying it, funny thing is that I’ve finished Dragon Age 1 and 2, which are kinda same genre but I actually enjoyed those games. I guess the old BioWare sauce carried those games unlike Witcher where there’s nothing to enjoy in its massive pointless world.
I just do not like Fallout 3 and 4. I played the hell out of 1 and 2 back in the day, but Bethesda really changed things up. The writing in particular suffered.
Try New Vegas baby
Right there with ya. Oh, I tried so hard. Walking and junk collection simulators in a depressing, ugly setting. The humorous bits are way too infrequent to make up for the litany of misery.
Wasteland 2 and 3 will activate the same brain ridges as the original Fallouts. I actually would recommend starting with 3 if you don’t think you can commit to playing both games, as it has the most polished presentation, and you get all the relevant backstory quickly enough not to need to play the other games. WL3’s structure is all about supporting different, mutually incompatible factions, which can feel like Fallout New Vegas.
I’m currently playing Colony Ship, which is an independent game that makes no secret of being inspired by Fallout. It is very mechanically dense. Clearly it is intended to be played by a variety of character builds. I haven’t finished it, but it seems promising so far.
Underrail is another game that takes a lot of inspiration from the old Fallout titles, with a lot of social stratification and mystery about the world in the game and mechanically a lot of different build types.