Victoria 3, still the undisputed king of world economic simulation. I had a blast with Vic 2, but I just can't bring myself to support Paradox Interactive in their current form with ridiculous monetisation of DLC...

Daggerfall.
It has the most elaborate character creation and most freedom of choice of all the Elder Scrolls games.
You can walk, ride or fly through an open world that's as large as Great Britain, with thousands of realistically modelled towns and cities, and enter any house in them. You can turn into a vampire, werewolf or were-boar, buy a ship, make deals with the gods, invent your own spells, and commit bank fraud.
First time I played it, it took all night to download the 140MB installer from Kazaa.
But actually playing it now, after so much development in game mechanics has happened, is a chore.
When doing quests, you just go through the same loop of "talk to person, clear an absurdly huge dungeon, kill dozens of enemies that aren't scaled to your level, die a couple dozen times unless you cheesed the game to become invincible, solve a text riddle, find the McGuffin, return, repeat" over and over again.

Silksong. My muscle disease has progressed too much to physically play it. That really stings because Hollow Knight was one of my favorite games ever.

World of Warcraft. I'm honestly at my happiest when all I have to worry about are dailies and raids. Unfortunately, that's not compatible with family life, my work, etc etc.

The Dark Souls series takes place in a fascinating universe and I'm sure the lore is enthralling… I just refuse to play games that are made artificially hard for the sake of it. If it's single-player, the devs shouldn't have an opinion on how much time each player is comfortable wasting on it. Give me "story" difficulty, cheats, etc., and let me decide what to do with them. All you're hurting are your own sales.

Even if you don't mind the online only part, ignore this abomination. They botched the D4 campaign. It's too easy and almost impossible to die during the regular campaign. It takes roughly two minutes to beat a world boss on the first play through.

The Talos Principle 2. The micro stuttering makes it unplayable for me, and it will never get fixed.

rust,

1. i'm on linux
2. its rust

Factorio, I might legitimately starve to death.

Cyberpunk 2077 - it still doesn't go on steep enough sales to justify buying when I have hundreds of unplayed games on Steam. But I'm keeping an eye on its downward progress. Maybe when it reaches £10-13...

Rdr2. I'm not making a damn account just to play the game offline.

Most anything PvP.

I just can't do anything with games that don't allow me to pause (or go idle) as I just have constant interruptions.

It doesn't help that many PvP games also have sweaty tryhard metas that put you on a different level if you're not reading up on forums or discussions.

Clair obscur.

It looks so good, and the music is great, and story is apparently fantastic, but I just can not get the hang of the counter/block mechanic in combats, and without it the battles are pretty much impossible.

I love the story of Final Fantasy XIV, but it can easily categorize as "One of the most expensive singleplayer games of all time". On top of buying the expansions, you'll need to pay for each month you play; and unless someone's really speedrunning, that will start to add up. Worse, for a first timer setting up their account, their website and payment system is really stuck in 1998, making giving them money an obtuse task. And, while the story has its great moments and excellent side content, a depressing amount of it is extensive polite dialog with just simple quests where you move to a location and right-click on someone. I've finished Dawntrail, and am glad I experienced it, but I can't blame anyone who sees it all as beyond them.

Bloodborne

The last console I owned was a PS3, and I don't plan on ever having another. Sony thankfully mostly got with the program and released a bunch of their stuff on PC, but Bloodborne remains a standout.

Alan Wake 2, I loved the 1st but I'm not using Epic's shitty store. Especially with Epic's general anti-linux stance.

I'd love to play Baldur's Gate 3 with a diverse group of real people and share an adventure together, but have no friends who enjoy games that aren't mindless slop.

Same with other slow-burn games like Project Zomboid and other survival/crafting games.

I learned to do slop to hang out with others, I even got good at slop like Rivals just to keep social contact alive. But I can't drag anyone into a game that doesn't have 2-minute matches filled with flashing lights and colors and gambling mini-games.

Elite Dangerous. Extremely beautiful, especially impressive in VR - but way too time-consuming for me.

There's like a boatload of really classic Xbox 360/One era games that I'd love to play on PC.

Problem is they were made by Ubisoft or EA. Repurchasing them is already dubious from the get-go, but chances are the versions in Steam, if they're still there at all, are old neglected buggy builds. And things are not much rosier on the Uplay or Origin! They may have gotten a patch or two, but old shit's janky. These need the GOG treatment.

I did get the Mass Effect trilogy rerelease for a pittance. Also found out I somehow had Dragon Age Origins already. These should keep me occupied for a while, as (to paraphrase a certain video game villain) at this very moment, EA burns.