The Evil Within, on the hardest difficulty it will take every ounce of sanity out of you. It will require you to focus all of your energy into the moment, it has breathtaking visuals, a lovecraftian feel to it, and requires a massive amount of problem solving skills to progress without death, The storyline also has you in deep thought of what is happening.

@dylandr: I'm actually a big moba fan already, I have about 4k games of League, 1k games of dota, and about 400 on smite. I'm looking for something like co-op Skyrim, or even a good strategy game with lots of different units/civilizations. I already have all of the Civilization series and rise of nations/rise of legends.

@Radnen: Don't even get me started on Microsoft games...

The Age of Empires series were legendary, I owned all 3. I adored Age of Empires 1 and 2, and Age of Empires 3 had the best online play, and gorgeous graphics. I enjoyed myself every day, playing and playing and playing... And then Microsoft went and ripped my heart out, they made Age of Empires online. It was a traumatic experience, and I will never forget the horror of playing it for the first time... And now... We have Age of Empires castle siege... I dry heave every time I think about it, I mean this is truly the most morbid, sadistic, and inhumane thing a development crew has ever done. They made a mockery of the Age of Empires series, and destroyed its phenomenal reputation.

It truly feels like Disney has been in charge of their games for the last 4 years.

The only game that I've seen somewhat similar to your preferences is called "Life is Feudal" . The game looks amazing from the trailer, and they did an excellent job advertising it, and YES it does meet the criteria for that sort of game, BUT. I will warn you, the game has not progressed at all since it was released as an early access game on steam somewhere in 2014. I would not be so quick to go out and buy it, in the condition the game is in right now, it just isn't worth it.

There was also an old browser based game called Lunar Wars that had a completely player driven economy. Not only did it have that, but the diplomacy in that game was brutal, the amount of manipulation, spies, and guilds that would drive larger clans up and down the ladder was tremendous. Lunar Wars closed because the player base died due to a nuclear war between the alliance "BIG", and the alliance "GOONS". Everyone was sent into economic depression for a month, and the rest of the players were forced into peace mode, neither of which were fun. Everyone stopped playing after that.

There is a suuuuuuuuuper old game out called Cyber Nations, its supposed to be just like Lunar Wars, but I haven't played it in almost 8 years.

Project Zomboid might fill your need for a non-questing free roam RPG game with a massive world to play with friends.

I know both of those games won't really fill your need for a "Starting from the ground up" sort of game, but there just aren't many games out there like that.

I think I'm a bit finicky when it comes to my games, for the entire year of 2014 up until now I have not enjoyed a single game that I've played, with the exception of South Park the stick of truth.

I like all categories of games, except for mmorpgs, I'm not a fan of killing something only to see it respawn 4 seconds later. I love games like Fallout New Vegas, which has a massive amount of options, upgrades, and skills to choose from. I absolutely love variety in video games, which is why I will even play games such as Combat Arms from time to time. I love games that have a "Lovecraftian" feel to them, such as the Amesia games, or the darkness within.

What I do not like are games that hold your hand like you're a baby (Like Age of Empires online). I also dread games that do not have variety, this is why I cannot play Starcraft 2. I REALLY tried to like Starcraft 2, but having only 3 factions, and only around 14 different units for each faction seemed like an insult to the strategy game genre. (I also don't like Blizzard's moba game Heroes of the Storm, it holds your hand AND has a minuscule amount of heroes to choose from).

Idk, I've just had some bad luck with the dozens of games I've bought this year, none of them seem to appeal to me. Maybe if someone could shed some light on a game with a lot of content, I might actually be able to enjoy the little time I have to relax.