Fe

I loved that game so much. Haven’t had quite an experience like it since

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.

Baldur’s gate 3 would be my suggestion. It has difficulty settings from easy to insane. No quick time events. And the whole world was designed with care.

The combat system is very deep since it is based on DnD.

You can ignore side quests and still see the whole main game but even after 1500 hours in the game i was still finding new questlines and hidden caves to explore.

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.

Half life 2?

Metro 2033?

New doom games

Witcher 3 if you stick to the main quest line only

I know exactly what you're talking about with the burnout and decision anxiety for new games that take hours to complete a tutorial or have paragraphs of menu text. It's not exactly the open world you're talking about, but I found Hard Space Ship Breaker to be a great alternative to that. It's got excellent lore and storytelling while still being a very simple game. Think power wash simulator, but breaking apart spaceships in a space trucker stop. It's simple, and each "day" is a hard 15 minutes, so you'll always have a stopping point in a reasonable time.

I feel exactly the same as you. I have ADHD so fluff is painful and pointless grind is just depressing. I thought the most obvious way to recommend my favourites would be to go by hours played, so here's my top four:

My Time At Portia - 594hrs Hardspace Shipbreaker - 498hrs Kingdom Come Deliverance - 370hrs Just Cause 3 - 255hrs

Special mention too for Assassin's Creed Odyssey (164hrs) because that is one well made game in almost every respect. Very little fluff, grind and you're always in control of how big a challenge you feel like facing. To my mind it makes all the other AC games look clunky and drab.

Also I hate difficulty spikes so much that whenever they happen and just seem to be there so the devs can grind a few more hours of playtime out of you for their analytics, I just reach for WeMod. Big shout out to WeMod in fact :) It's made so many games I'd abandoned fun again.

If you want more Skyrim, Starfield will give you lots of that. I know people give it a hard time, but it really is just more Skyrim in space.

What are some ROM hacks you can recommend?

There is Mass Effect on the Game Pass.