For ARPGs if you feel burnt by Diablo IV, I can recommend Path of Exile. Arguably the king of the genre today.

Others mentioned Grim Dawn, which has a bit slower gameplay, but a good choice nonetheless.

If you’re looking for indie ARPG, then there’s Chronicon. Nice little game that I really want to go back to again.

Exactly true with it not being a primary hobby for most people who game.

When I was a kid gaming wasn’t as widely considered as an acceptable hobby in general, but as a kid you just didn’t care what grown ups thought (games make people violent anybody?). By the time I hit university, people got shamed for it by non-gamer peers and I did a computer science degree too so it wasn’t a group of non-tech people who did the shaming either. By my early twenties I learned not to talk about it and just mention gaming as a hobby if asked and never elaborate further…

Good for you if that’s your experience, but I cannot say the same. The difference I found is with the way those people ignore arguments and insult you.

I can talk to a person from a technical field and come out of that conversation feeling like shit because I was called all kinds of stupid indirectly.

I guess I should mention 4 more. Most of these are playable in some form or other too, but still.

• Dune II - I didn’t understand any English when I was playing this as a kid, but had lots of fun with it either way. Open source remake (needs original data files): https://dunelegacy.sourceforge.net/website/index.html
• Golden Axe - This one was somehow memorable to me out of all the cheesy beat 'em ups. https://store.steampowered.com/app/34276/Golden_Axe/
• Stunts - The first racing game I played. Very nice map editor too. I even remember the bug where if you hit a peak between two ramp edges you’d fly straight up towards the sky! A brief search didn’t give me any faithful offline remakes, but here’s the wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stunts_(video_game)
• Secret Agent - I’m fairly sure this or Dune II was the first graphical game I ever played on PC. https://store.steampowered.com/app/358350/Secret_Agent/

I second XCOM, if we are talking about the original two, Enemy Unknown/UFO Defense and Terror from the Deep. I heard good things about the more recent ones, but I never played those.

Might I recommend the timeless classic Heroes of Might and Magic III? Most of the campaigns are not too difficult after you get the hang of things, if I remember correctly. And you can get a hundred hours out of it even if you only play the official campaigns.

Quake III Arena. It came out in the 20th century, which sounds crazy to me. It was about 10 years ago I last played it or its remakes.

I got into Q3 a few years late, but there was still a fairly healthy local community for it back then. Quake 4 came out and then Quake Live, which I played for a while, but the local community was missing by then.

Sure I could still play it, but I’m guessing there aren’t even enough people to fill a 5v5 capture the flag match anymore, Q3 or QL… a shame. But at least I have good memories of it.

I’ve been slowly playing through Vampire Survivors again with each hero only using their starting weapon. I did the lightning ring dude on the first map the last time. Only barely made it to 30 minutes with that one.

Battle for Wesnoth is a nice and polished turn based strategy game. You need to get used to the sometimes annoying rng hit system, but it can get addicting trying to protect a favourite unit, give them the last hits so they can level up and then faceroll the map.

I don’t care much as long as level scaling is gone. It’s lazy and it signals that the world is built for and around you instead of you just being a part of that world.

When I’m walking around some well travelled road between cities I don’t want to meet wolves first and then some damage sponge minotaur lord slaughtering every guard patrol coming through two weeks later, just because I levelled up a couple of times in between.

Most classic RPGs have lots of combat. What I don’t see mentioned here so far is Neverwinter Nights. Especially the first expansion of the second game. Mask of the Betrayer. Lots of combat of course, but a story that your behaviour has an impact on. Search for a cookie cutter build, lower the difficulty. You can skip through the combat parts quickly that way, if you don’t like them.

Also mentioning Planescape Torment again because it’s weird and not so combat focused.

In the last few years I started actively trying to stop myself from thinking about company code (and other work stuff too) when I’m not at work. You know, work life balance and all that. Did wonders to my mental health.

I recommend a simple little game called Rush. I don’t even know what motivated me to get it some time ago, but I had fun with it even though I wouldn’t say I usually like puzzle games. It’s all of 0.22€ on sale where I’m sitting, might be worth trying.

I used to enjoy arena shooters waaay back in the day when Quake III Arena and later Quake Live had a still somewhat active playerbase so I could just randomly find games. No multiplayer games caught me since then.

Nowadays it’s ARPGs (mostly Path of Exile), but I enjoyed Vampire Survivors too so I might go for that genre again.

Also I randomly get cravings for playing Elder Scrolls games. I just started my Nth Oblivion playthrough and I did it with Morrowind last year. It will be Skyrim again next year I suppose…

Oh and I have a few hundred hours in Dwarf Fortress too. And of course I played it the way it was meant to be played. With ASCII graphics!