Kingdom Come: Deliverance II

You simply won't find a truer "zero to hero" experience than this game. After a decent intro section that concisely lays out the story so far from the first game, you end up in rags, nothing to your name, with a traumatic head injury and an impudent little ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of a lord who flocks off to who-knows-where and you have to track down as his squire. Along the way, you'll encounter quests and people that consistently take some of the most mundane aspects of medieval life and spin them into interesting narratives with their own twists and turns, with some having multiple parts that unfold as the story progresses. One quest has you tracking down a serial killer across the city and countryside, another has you helping a bathhouse owner sabotage her smug competitor, and yet another has you joining a thieves' guild to become a bit of a Bohemian robin hood. They all have excellent writing and voice acting that help to back up the stakes and stories that they establish. The combat feels like garbage in the beginning, because, well, you start out as a garbage fighter, but feels satisfying to slowly, gradually, but surely master. Stick with it; it will click as you keep playing. And you can and should always run away from fights you aren't prepared for! The best part about this game is that literally *everything* you do will level up your skills. Walking, talking, brewing potions, carrying heavy things, playing dice with strangers - all of it will get you stronger and savvier, and by the end you'll find yourself cutting through half a dozen heavily armored soldiers without breaking a sweat. There is also a hefty dose of immersive sim to the RPG aspect of this game, allowing you to improvise and get creative in how you approach its many, many quests. If you're having a tough time taking on a group of bandits, for example, you can brew up a dollmaker poison, which saps the strength of whoever ingests it so they can only limp along toward you, then pour it into the stew at their camp while they aren't looking, and come back later that evening to slaughter them with a crossbow as they attempt in vain to chase you down. The approach to crime is also one of the best in any game I've come across. Guards are not psychic, they will not know what you've stolen or where you've crept around, but if they notice you casing someone's house and the residents there tell them their stuff has been stolen, they're smart enough to put two and two together. You can get away with stealing almost anything if you're clever enough and don't get caught. What really makes this game stand out is the flexibility it offers in how you approach it. I'd call it more of an immersive sim than an RPG, even, when it comes to gameplay, closer to something like Skyrim than The Witcher 3 in how you tackle the world. It presents brutal and unfair circumstances to you and challenges you to survive and even thrive in it through your own creativity and persistence.