Battle Brothers

This is a rough recommendation because what makes this game great also makes it a terrible choice for many gamers.
The fact is, this game hates you. Much like Kenshi, Quasimorph and many other games. This game is brutal. That's not the same as being hard. Technically the fail condition of losing all your brothers is a pretty high threshold. But this game makes you feel like you aren't making any progress oftentimes even when you are making a little bit. Doing a contract where you lose 3 brothers all at once for a reward that doesn't feel anywhere near worth it isn't exactly uncommon. The economy is also fairly tight. You can get ahead of it if you know what you are doing, but between low contract pay, mercenary upkeep, equipment repairs, buying overpriced gear, replacing consumable items, replacing dead mercenaries, and settlements giving you terrible prices on your sold equipment, it can feel like you aren't making progress even if you play fairly well.
To top it off, the non-human enemies can actually be frightening to fight even with the art-style divorcing you from the action. Being used to fighting bandits or barbarians, only to switch to an enemy like Unholds (giants) who will literally toss your brothers around like ragdolls and recover health each turn, or lindwurms (poison dragons basically) who will burn your brothers with acid every time you damage them. Even zombies (called wiedergangers here) can be a legitimately difficult fight, with them popping up with around double the enemy numbers, having no fatigue or morale mechanics, and occasionally getting back up again once killed.
That said, the brutal nature of the game can make mastering it feel amazing. You'll laugh your butt off when you are killing gangs of 3 unholds by trapping them in nets and poking them with spears, knowing full well how terrifying they were when you first fought them. Once you start taking on the secret bosses or more dangerous monsters, or even better when you resolve an endgame crisis, you'll think back to how hard everything used to be and realize how much progress you made.
Also the setting is fairly interesting. I hope they return to it someday with a future game. There's actually a tie-in comic you can read on steam.
If you like tactical turn based simulated games and you want them to hurt you until you love it, this is a game for you. Otherwise this is a hard game to recommend.
I also recommend picking up the beasts and warriors of the north DLCs. They add some interesting encounters, different mercenary company types, and actual incentives to fight beasts who otherwise are a fairly low reward enemy type. The Blazing Desert DLC is expensive, and while it adds a lot to the map with many new contracts and enemy types, it's also a region you might very well completely ignore in the average playthrough unless the holy war endgame crisis kicks off or you pick an ambition that rewards you for traveling south.

Hubert The Stallion uses Slash and misses Brigand Thug (Chance: 95; Rolled: 97)
Hubert The Stallion uses Slash and misses Brigand Thug (Chance: 95; Rolled: 100)
Brigand Thug uses Stab and hits Hubert The Stallion (Chance: 27; Rolled: 1)
Brigand Thug uses Stab and hits Hubert The Stallion (Chance: 27; Rolled: 7)
Brigand Thug has killed Hubert The Stallion
Brigand Thug is confident

If you are interested in this game at all, then read through this review as I go into quite a bit of detail about what you're getting into and why I enjoy this game. But be warned, it is extremely addicting. also disclaimer I play this game with Ironman mode turned on, If you're new you can leave this off so that you can manually save to prevent your company from being gone forever.
When I first bought this game in 2020 I was like "okay this looks like it could be fun" and decided to give it a try. 4 years later I have over 500 hours on Steam, 1000 hours on Playstation and about 1200 hours on my Switch. What this game lacks in visuals it makes up for in mechanics, storytelling, random events, character backgrounds, one of the best soundtracks for any game ever and near infinite replayability.
This game has quickly become my favorite game of all time for many reasons, ill list some here:
-A dynamic world that is going to change and evolve no matter what you do because you are merely one mercenary company, but you can also change this world by actively participating and helping to take castles for noble houses for example.
-A combat system that feels like a living chess game where your decisions have real and sometimes catastrophic consequences for your company.
-A soundtrack that immerses you on a deep level and that changes and matches whatever situation you're in or whatever enemy you're fighting.
-A recruitment system that has you walk into villages, towns, or castles and grab beggars and cripples off the street and throw them into the most nightmarish situations imaginable with a pokie stick and a wooden shield, or hardened fighters which have a combat background and come with their own gear.
-Random events while on the roads, in the wilderness or near cities that make the game feel even more alive and can reward you or hurt you based on your decisions
-A plethora of varied enemy types all over the map for you to discover and fight for famed items and boatloads of money, each enemy requiring different tactics to fight and sometimes different gear, meaning good preparation before a battle becomes a huge advantage for you and your men.
-Character backgrounds for every single man in your company, including what occupation they had before they joined, a small paragraph of backstory, and sometimes a title that goes along with their name that reflects their past, you can use these backgrounds to role-play in fun ways and you really do get quite attached to these characters as they go through hell with you in all of these battles.
-Character and company death: This game is not friendly to you. Its a hostile world where this game takes place, and there are a plethora of things that can and will kill you. That being said, once one of your beloved company members die, that's it. there's something gut-wrenching about spending 100 days in game with a guy that you grow quite fond of, and then watching an Orc lop his head off of his shoulders with a cleaver. Death is permanent, and if your company gets wiped in a bad battle its gone forever too.
-The weapons and armor in this game all have uses and work well in certain situations. sometimes it feels like a rock, paper, scissors type deal in a battle based on some of the gear you have. Swords have good damage against un-armored targets but suffer against armor, Spears are great at holding enemies back at a distance and are easy to use so you get extra chance to hit, but they don't do a lot of damage and are horrible against armor. Axes can split shields and do extra damage on a hit to the head, Maces stun enemies and ignore a decent amount of armor, and Hammers can smash armor completely and break bones. There are two handed varients of all of those and there's a lot more detail but this is already long enough.
-Finally, the writing for this game. Whoever wrote the event and quest text for this game definitely outdid themselves. Everything in game has text attached to it, some explains items, their uses and what they do, some explains what happens on the road, but most comes from quests. It explains where you are, who you talk to, it describes very well the personalities and ambitions of the people you interact with and the situations you find yourselves in, to the point where you're gonna be reading everything just so you don't miss out on little bits of lore. You will laugh, have your jaw drop, panic, feel fear and feel sadness all just from reading what your characters are currently up to or in the middle of.
In conclusion I would recommend this game to any strategy game lover or medieval/fantasy lover. It has a bit of a learning curve and definitely does not hold your hand or try to keep you alive, you have to rely on yourself for that. But this game has such amazing charm and I can honestly say I've never seen another game come close to doing what this game does.
If this sounds interesting to you at all BUY THIS GAME. You wont regret it.

Played nothing else for years! 5500+ hours in and still hooked. I wish for more DLC:s and official content other than mods. re-playability is great!

Really fun game, but...
The only problem is there are so many anti-tactical things that stop you from being able to plan. "If bad luck makes your plan fail it wasn't a good plan" How am I meant to make a plan when I have no idea on the terrain, very limited troop placement, inconsistent enemies and task difficulties and vague mechanics. It's a shame because it's a really fun game and I would recommend it but the steep learning curve also comes with a frustrating realisation that the game is more shallow that you think it will be.

Although this is a positive review, I feel that anyone considering buying the game should at least read a few of the negative reviews that have over 100 hours playtime
You need to have your eyes open to how this game will play before you buy it or you may regret it.
Do it, read those negative reviews, as well as the positive, they probably accurately reflect the experience.
The time I most enjoy this game is when I want to play a band of deserters in a brutal world where I will eventually get run down and killed and there is nothing I can do about it.
I recommend playing Iron-man mode because a casual attitude will result in a party-wipe followed by either a savescum or a restart with a better attitude.
I prefer the latter because without sorting out that casual attitude a depressing savescum loop is inevitable, and the carefully nurtured immersion and connection with a well managed party turns into just banging your head against RNG, repeatedly, until by chance you live, which is not fun.
I have played numbers-based war-games since the 1970's, I have played so many tactical and strategy games, I love poker, I get statistics. I love rogue-likes and prefer playing perma-death games because I like challenge and risk. I like learning how to win when a game is stupidly hard. I like learning how I lost.
I have deeply learned the mechanics of this game and, really really, it is impossible to prepare, plan loadouts, evolve a team over time and manage skills in a way that will guarantee preventing your team getting totally wiped.
Although,,, and this is the kicker - it SEEMS as if the game wants you to learn, think, consider , generally skill your way to an invincible party, the actual gameplay and the mechanics mean that this effort will mainly result in you having a team that maybe survives a bit longer, that you are heavily invested in so you can feel that pain when they all get killed in ways you could not have prepared for.
Having said this, when through a combination of good preparedness, and understanding the mechanics and really considering every decision, your gang survives for a a while longer, and you KNOW they could have died to RNG or a bad choice so many times, you do feel like, wow, these guys are really lucky to be alive! And it feels good.
That feeling won't last long, they will die. Maybe you made a mistake, maybe not, but really, It was only a matter of time. These guys live by the sword.
If you get to the endgame. Well done! you were very good at the game, and you were really really lucky.
It is a brutal world and it is brutally fair.
I have discovered that this is a unique experience that I only get from Battle Brothers.

I Honestly Can’t decide if I like this game or not. If I had to summarize my thoughts on how others might enjoy it i'd say it’s a game that a small number of people will love it and the vast majority will hate it.
The short version of the gameplay loop is that you build a company of mercenaries and either take contracts or explore the world and look for ruins. Both usually lead to combat and you use the resources you gain to improve your company of mercs. This is a solid gameplay loop and the options for customization are great. The game is rarely generous with resources and so what you chose to do with them is never trivial and I have never felt like I had more of anything than I knew what to do with. A bad financial decision can ruin you just as easily as a bad decision in battle.
The game explains very little and expects you to learn as you go, it is also VERY difficult, it will even be difficult for genre veterans. If you are reading this and considering this as your first step into turn based strategy run away this is not the game for you. But even if you are someone who has conquered many strategy games and are actively seeking difficulty this is still probably not the game for you. The problem is the way the game achieves this level of difficulty will be deeply frustrating for most people.
If you go into this game blind many of the more complex fights will feel completely impossible, because they basically are the first time though.The game claims that every enemy can be beaten with the right strategy but that is only half true. The whole truth is that every enemy can be beaten with the right strategy and the right preparations. Realistically you need to start preparing for certain types of enemies long before you ever learn how their mechanics work, often many hours before you even see them for the first time. Even resorting to save scumming (no judgment intended) will rarely save you if you did not bring the right tools to the fight.
Because of all the above your actual progression though this game will be one of constant losses, full wipes,or death spirals. Many of which will be because of things you could not have possibly known about unless you looked it up in an online guide or died to it previously. You will then decide whether your current company is salvageable, to attempt to save scum, or if you are starting from scratch often a dozen plus hours in.
If you ask me whether I would recommend this game to someone the answer would be no the vast majority of the time, But if nothing I have said above scares you and you truly think “dying is fun” then I absolutely would.