Battle Brothers

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!

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.

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.

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

It's... so good... SO, SO GOOD. You can really appreciate how well tought everything the more you play it. How you discover little strategies, and how to beat whatever random smuck wiped you out last run. Distinct enemies actually matter and play differently. Just in the same faction (Undead) you have. Skeletons, who always move last but won't tire out: They are all with shileds and will play the long game to eventually tire your brothers. Zombies: Easy to kill, but they are a lot, and I mean A LOT. They respawn if you don't decapitate them. Ghosts: Stand in the back and spam fear so your brothers flee. Without being able to control them, they're as good as dead. Die in one hit. The catch? You have to take the horde of zombies separating you WHILE they spam fear. Not only that, you have a fixed 5% chance to hit them with ranged, forcing you to go close.
You see them, you die slowly and horribly... and then you learn. Skellys have shields? No matter, axes break them and flails ignore their defense bonuses. Zombies respawn? Not if you use cleavers, that always decapitate enemies. The ghosts make you unable to control troops? Go from 2 sides, since their attack is a kind of cone that can't hit everything at once. Also use the skill RALLY to give morale to your fleeing brothers. THE WHOLE GAME IS LIKE THIS.
The bad: This game is NOT for everyone. Losing company after company hurts, specially when you started to like your bros. They can get permanent injuries, wich almost always means you have to dispose of them anyways. I wish we could treat them, even if costly. It's sad to have to push them away and you'll slowly de-humanize them, like disposable tools. I don't want to play like that man.
The other problem is skills. While Bros are clearly NOT made equal, everyone has access to the same skill tree. Sadly, some skills are REAL bad in comparison with others. Some examples are Brawny, that should really give you more that what it gives, and that the best skill that you could pair it with, the light armor expert one, specifically states that doesn't apply. I think buffing these "low tier skills" would do marvels for the build creativity.
The other is the weapon expert skills. You basically specialize your bro in one type specifically. The problem is that some weapons, like bows and crossbows, are usable in only certain scenarios (skellys are almost inmune to long range for example) and a lot of times it's best to just use the type of weapon the enemy is specifically weak to. This is kinda aliviated by the fact that you don't always know what's jumping at you in the middle of the forest at 3 am, but still.
So yeah, absolute marvel of a game, losing is fun, buff ranged and low tier skills please. Fuck you Hoggart.

This incredible game, despite playing for hours, the different events I encountered in every playthrough prove the level of replayability. The RPG elements are really high quality. In my last save, I saved my banner man from execution by the villagers, when I asked about his story, I learned that he was caught r*ping a watermelon. We fought side by side in countless battles in my band for months. We lost him in a brave battle against the Orcs. You are missed, Gero The Melon Mugger.

I keep uninstalling it and then reinstalling it. I hate this game so much that I love it, mainly due to the fact that I have to play ironman and can't accept losing a single soul.