Kenshi

I enslaved the dictator of a nation hell bent on the destruction of all robots. Once enslaved, I systematically removed his limbs and replaced them with robot limbs, essentially making him a living embarrassment to his entire nation.
My plan backfired: his hatred fueled him and when he escaped he beat the shit out of my villagers with his hardened steel hands and feet.
11/10 possibly the best rpg i've ever played.

I decided to start out as a one-armed naked man in the middle of a desert. Found the nearest town, tried stealing some clothes. Got tossed in prison, tried stealing clothes again. Got tossed in prison again, was sold into slavery. Forced to work in rock mine.
After waiting for my injuries from the various beatings I had taken at this point to heal, I, using the high lock-picking skill I had acquired from being in cages for days, proceeded to free 10 other slaves from their shackles and attempt an escape. In other words, I used the 10 other slaves as a distraction for the guards while I ran for my life. Once the guards had stopped chasing me, I started heading towards another town. Managed to find some clothes on a dead body outside the town to hide my slave-like appearance. Began putting my mining skills to use gathering copper outside of the town. Began building my funds while waiting for my slavehood status to be forgotten.
Eventually, I stumbled into someone whose wife had been taken by the same slavers who had captured me. He decided to join me so we can eventually wipe out the slaver scum. My slave status expires. I realize that I have a decently large bounty on my head, and have my newfound companion turn me into the authorities for the bounty. I then break out of prison and hide away in a small shack I had purchased within the town.
Preparations to leave the town begin, and I acquire a dog and a weird llama-like creature for carrying cargo. Once I finish packing supplies to make a trek across the wilderness, I have my companion carry me out of the city so the guards don't notice me. We then make our way across the vast desert, narrowly escaping death by weird bug-like creatures and capture by slavers, and build a shack in a decent location to start our own "town" of sorts.
A few days later, the tax men show up looking for money. I spent all my money on my escape. They say I have 3 days to pay, or there will be trouble. I am now panic mining copper with my buddy while me, him, our dog, and our llama starve to death. Need to make a trek to the closest town to sell the copper before the tax men come for me. Please send help.

The best game I have ever played. No other games in this genre are even close to pulling off what Kenshi is capable of. Actually, Kenshi should have a genre of it's own and kick start games that will be called "Kenshi-like" or "Kenshi-lite" or "Amazing."
Now, I am a big fan of The Elder Scrolls series, The Witcher, Read Dead Redemption and other famous open world games. I'm also a fan of games that are considered to be quite similar to Kenshi in their Sandboxy mechanics like Rimworld or Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead. Kenshi is somewhere in-between those games. In some aspects it's quite similar to Mount and Blade. Or The Sims if it had combat and slavery and was set in a Post-Apocalyptic Japanese-themed world and was actually fun.
But the thing that makes Kenshi so great is not the scarcity of boring side-quests that poison every other open world game. It's not the lack of cutscenes that makes playing modern games more like watching a movie with your hands on a keyboard. It's not even the fact that it's the only game where your choices actually matter and doesn't just lead to a different dialogue sequence. The thing that makes Kenshi so great is it's usage of the "Emergent gameplay." Wiki describes "Emergant gameplay" as "complex situations in video games, board games, or table top role-playing games that emerge from the interaction of relatively simple game mechanics."That is exactly what makes Kenshi my all time favourite game. Let me explain.
Let's say you're playing Kenshi and you're travelling from one city to another. In any other open world game you will run into some enemies, you'll either fight them or run away from them and there is that. In Kenshi tho, you might get attacked by enemies that are not only stronger, but faster than you. They will outrun you and cut off your leg. As you're lying there surrounded by enemies, unable to run due to a lost limb, on the verge of death and close to a game restart, another group of enemies MIGHT appear and defend you from your initial attackers. Only they turn out to be slave-traders and they're not here to save you. They're here to enslave you. You're taken to a slave camp with no means of escape, because well, you're missing a leg, which makes it pretty hard to run. You're crawling around the slave camp and slowly starving to death, when you approach and befriend another slave, who is eager to escape and suggests teaming-up. He joins your squad. There's two of you now. You wait for the Sun to go down, you lock pick your shackles, you ask your new friend to carry you and make a run for it. You might succeed or you might get caught and beaten to death. If you do succeed, your new worry is getting a robotic leg, which costs more money than you have, because you don't have any money and that's less than most of the amounts. Now imagine all of the above, but instead of losing your leg in the first fight, you lose your arm. The slavers come in to attack your initial attackers and you use the commotion to make a run for it generating a completely different turn of events. A simple mechanic of losing a different limb creates complex situations that are unique to your play-through alone. That is the depth of "Emergant gameplay" Kenshi manages to pull off. And I'm only scratching the surface here. That's why it is highly advised to play Kenshi without the so called "savescuming," don't just save and load, unless your character dies. Let the events unfold until the last moment, Kenshi is about the journey, not the destination. If you wanted to travel to a city mentioned above and you were attacked and instead of going with the flow, you decided to load and choose another path to avoid the enemies, you would have missed out on a struggle and the story that would emerge if you just let things happen. As Gandhi once said: "This is how memories are made... By going with the flow. Especially in the game called Kenshi. It's really a great game." What a wise man.
Another aspect that makes Kenshi amazing, is the possibility to role-play. Actually, role-playing is the only way to play the game since Kenshi has no quests, no narrative, no-one tells you what to do or where to travel, you are the creator of your own story and to make it fun, you need creativity. Once you get familiar with the game, the best way to enjoy it is to set your end goal, because the game itself has no end, it's you who decides that it's over. And your goal can be anything from Slave Liberator to Religious Tyrant, to a simple farmer or a travelling merchant that sells hats. And that's all possible because the world of Kenshi is huge! I have more than 200 hours in it and I still haven't explored everything. The world is not only huge, but also rich and has an incredibly deep lore, which is somehow told in fewer words than your girlfriend's grocery shopping story. The classes you can play as or encounter are not your regular Elves or Dwarfs, or Orcs or any other overused Tolkien creatures. They are all unique to the world of Kenshi and have their own backstories and attributes.
But Kenshi, as everything, does have its flaws. It is full of bugs and crashes. Your characters get stuck in walls and the path-finding at points is infuriating. If you're a min-max player and wanna be as strong as possible, prepare for a grind. If you let it, Kenshi can become Grindshi, do you get it? Cuz it's a "grind"? Anyway, to avoid that you can either level-up your stats slower, but naturally, or download a specific mod from the workshop that makes it a bit more fun. Oh yeah, this game has a huge modding community with such wholesome mods as the "limb/skin peeler machine," "Crucifixion" or "All-in-one Murder + Cannibalism." Truly, a mod for every taste.
To sum it all up, this game is shit, not worth the full price. JK. If you read till here and you think that Kenshi is something that you might enjoy, please just give it a go. If you don't like it, that's fine, but if you do like it, it has a chance to become one of the best games you've ever played. Peace out!

This game is pretty friggin epic. To anybody thinking of playing this game I urge you not to savescum (reloading when things go south) because one of my best adventures started with my squad of five being enslaved. Soon all but one were killed. He sought revenge on his enemies when he escaped but he was but a lowly craftsman... This man went on to become a legendary smith who created a sword that befell an empire. Literally he made a sword that i then gave to a warrior i trained for days so he could murder the holy flame. hell yeah man.

-Started as a lone nobody outside the Hub.
-Wandered around for weeks, gaining companions
-Started an ore mining company in Squin and Stack
-Built up my wealth
-Built a small City in Borderzone
-Sent out explorers to hunt for technolgy
-Fended off Raiders and Bandits, growing my population
...
-And then we ran into the Holy Nation. They did not like our robotic limbs...
>Kicked off a war that has lasted for over 300 Days, countless lives lost, entire cities sacked, entire Warbands captured and taken as Slaves to the rebirth Slave Camps and servents throughtout the Holy Nation.
>Some of my captured men who where enslaved got taken North to be used as war slaves against the United Cities and then captured again by cannibals...
-My Lone wanderer is now the Emperor of Crimson Peak, leading his people against the Holy Lord Phoniex and preparing to lay siege to Blister Hill.
10/10 Game, with mods there is infinite possible scenarios and Outcomes.

Started off as a starving man with one arm.
Ate a dog.
Was kidnapped in front of city guards.
Sold into slavery.
Lost my other arm.
Escaped.
Hired someone to feed, fight, and take care of me.
He stole two robot arms for me.
Fell in love and build a home.
Hard times and had to sell our food for tax payments.
Raided by slavers.
Killed my man.
Went into drug business.
Got rich.
Became libertarian.
Tax evasion.
Hired an army to fight of the government.
We won.
Empire nobles were fed to my legion of crabs.
Perfect game, high recommendation

This game is best described as an hidden gem.
Like me, most players that play this game, did not want to play it at first. They saw the graphics and thought they were crap. That's ok... So did i!
BUT after.... *cough* Jacksparrowing it *cough* in order to try it first I fell in love with the game in the first hour, so i bought the game instantly.
This game give you a unprecedented amount of freedom.
You hear this from games all the time, where they say: You can be a trader, you can be a warrior, a king, a builder, etc etc etc. and in most cases... it's not true at all. BUT !! in the case of kenshi, you really can be almost everything you want. You want to be a baker ? WELL YOU CAN! research baking and shop counter, buy a little place for yourself build an oven and start cooking. Buy or plant your own crops in order to cook. You want to be a trader? buy here sell there for more... it WORKS ! you want to be a drug dealer ? Well... without spoiling much.. Go to the swamps or build your own hemp crops.
Look i could go all day. The point is.. what you can be in this game is limitless. Specially with mods, there are tones of great mods!
Gameplay/Mechanics 10/10
Graphics 5/10
Replay value 11/10 (yes 11)
Updates/patches 10/10 (devs patch the game frequently)
MODS: 11/10 (More mods than you can think of)
Hope this helps.
Please try this game, don't think its bad because of how it looks. ( and youtube videos don't make it justice. Trust me)