Games

I am gonna give a recommendation out of left field a bit, and answer The Last Federation a game from the developers of Tidalis, oh and AI War.

https://arcengames.com/the-last-federation/

https://store.steampowered.com/app/273070/The_Last_Federation/?curator_clanid=32938991

You play the last surviving member of a species that used to rule the galaxy with terrifying advanced technology and weapons. Eventually your species fell and became wiped out by the other species that were being subjugated. Now there is a power vacuum and these other minor powers are battling to becoming the new empire. Your job as a lone alien with an extremely powerful ship (in a small battle, not powerful against an entire civilization of warships) is to try to balance the scales in an evolving conflict between political/military actors and create a peace that learns from the foolishness of your species ultimate mistake.

Very interesting way to make a 2d tactical space combat game and I love how your job isn't to conquer the universe like Stellaris, your job is to push and nudge in just the right places to stop full on a galactic war.

You say visual novel, I say "slay the princess". It is real good.

Ultrakill is avery different game but it is not a rpg snd the lore gets real biblicsl later on

The world of Northern Journey looks really rich to me, it is bot a rpg. The only caveat is that it şs a gsme that I am planning to play not one that I hsve played so can't comment on how good it is

I know it technically claims to be an RPG, but Disco Elysium plays more like a visual novel really. It has none of the grindy, stat-heavy progression that seems to turn you off of traditional RPGs.

It uses the interactivity of the video game medium as an important part of its storytelling and presentation, however, and has an incredibly deep lore and very interesting world building.

You might like Shadows of Doubt. It's a procedural generated detective game where you have to solve murders. The entire city is generated, every npc has their own routine and you can pretty much go anywhere. There's sneaking, hacking, talking, etc.

It's still in early access, but it's already a lot of fun.

Arkane's immersive sims are fantastic. Dishonored 1 and 2 and Prey (2017). Brilliant worldbuilding and interesting stories that you can interact with. I don't think either is particularly stat heavy or grindy, but I have an extremely high tolerance for that sort of thing so maybe my perspective is skewed.

Dwarf fortress.

Have you explored text adventures / interactive fiction? They're even more niche than VNs but there's some good ones out there. I remember liking Worlds Apart back when I played it. (15+ years ago... o___o)

One of these days I should go dig back into them again.

Have you played Ixion?

It’s a space-city builder that is story rich and your choices affect the gameplay and story. I normally don’t like city builders, but Ixion drew me in to the point I called off work one day to finish it.

It’s not stat heavy, it’s a one and done type of game. I really liked it.

Hypnospace Outlaw kind of seems like exactly what you're looking for to me.

I love that game so much.

Hmm let's see. So the Subnautica games are survival games with a lot of exploring, uncovering mysteries, finding logs, figuring out what happened to you, the alien civilization, the ecosystem, etc.

If you like Obra Dinn, recommended elsewhere in this thread, The Case of the Golden Idol has some similar energy of looking at scenes and solving who's who and what's what and how this person died.

Chants of Sennaar is a game where you decipher fantasy languages and learn about the peoples that speak them while progressing up a tower and solving puzzles.

Viewfinder is a surreal-perspective puzzler with lots of narration and backstory from the characters

Sable is an exploration game with puzzles to solve, in a fancifuil sci-fi desert world with towns and NPCs and crashed spaceships to explore

The old Escape Velocity trilogy (though nowadays you'll need a classic Mac emulator to play them) are top-down ship captain games where you fly your ship around, trade, fight, do missions, usually have multiple storylines going on at once, lots of planets, ships, stations, factions, etc. The modern game Endless Sky is explicitly molded on the EV series.

Sunless Seas and its sequel Sunless Skies have some similarity to EV mechanically, but with a lovecraftian, steampunk aesthetic to the world, and lots of world-building.

Beyond Good and Evil is a third-person action game that has good plot, characters, and worldbuilding, and there are updated versions available that run on modern hardware.

Bastion is an isometric action game a little like Diablo in the combat mechanics but with no numbers for you to worry about. Explore the aftermath of a most peculiar apocalypse and discover the world that was and the peoples who lived there. Good characters and worldbuilding.

What about Skyrim? There are limited stats and a giant world to explore that you can approach from any number of ways, stats may go up but you aren't asked to allocate any of them (except the skill tree)

What do you qualify as an RPG?

I would assume you mean something like Ultima or Wizardry? How about Yakuza or Shenmue? Legend of Zelda Fire Emblem?

For VNs I would recommend YUNO (not the Switch remake, that one butchers the original art style) if it wasn't for it being an eroge from 1996, which contains sexual content I personally don't find particularly appealing. Its a phenomenal story without that stuff but IMO its so jarring that it can take you out of enjoying the story if you can't look beyond the culture shock of it. Maybe if you know Japanese the SEGA Saturn port would be better, since it removed some of the sexual content AFAIK.

NieR is quite good, though it has RPG elements. Personally I liked Gestalt better, the father-daughter story was more compelling to me. Not that Replicant is bad, I just liked the father protagonist more. Automata is also quite good.

I liked Power Dolls, but you have to know Japanese to understand any of the games beyond the original. Its a strategy game like Advance Wars or Fire Emblem about mecha. Tuned Hearts also.

You may enjoy Control, I personally couldn't get past the rather uninteresting gameplay and mechanics, but the lore and snippets of story you find scattered around are something else

The Myst series has some pretty deep world building, especially in the later games.

The STALKER series.

That's all I can think of off the top of my head. You're severely limiting yourself if RPGs are a no-go for you.

danganronpa has a side plot that unravels over 3 games plus the spinoffs & anime

You've basically just described any of the Telltale games.

Visual novels with action usually limited to QTEs.

Unfortunately company is no more, so what they have out is all there is.

Subnautica has a pretty interesting world to explore. If you don't like the survival elements, you can can turn them down or off.

Hardship space breaker had a somewhat interesting story. Not deep world building and definitely more focused on the game play, but still pretty good lore.

Another vote for the outer wilds. That's really the best game in this area.

Some of the classic RTS games perhaps, like C&C or Starcraft? They tend to be story driven and the most stats you tend to care about are "do I have enough resources" and "do I have enough units?"

The Outer Wilds might be the kind of games you're looking for.

And if you are open to a more linear structure there is FPS like bioshock which have amazing world building and have very light RPG elements.

There is also the "walking simulator" genre, with games like firewatch, gone home or SOMA. But it's also quite linear.

For world building I would totally suggest Foundation. Also medieval dynasty comes to my mind.

Do you have any preferred games or examples to be more specific?

Huh?

What about playing a "stat heavy" game on a "story mode"difficulty? There are tons of games these days that'll turn everything down to easily managed levels so you can explore the story without the grind.

Maybe a deep puzzle game, like Syberia?

Return of the obra dinn?

Phoenix wright attorney games...

If you're okay with scary/lovecraftian horror amnesia the dark descent has great lore.

I think there are many options for games without stats that have good stories, but the gameplay Element needs to come from somewhere, otherwise it's just a visual novel (which there are also tons of good ones) (kill the prices is a good one I've heard)

And if you're looking for a very good middle point, check out disco Elysium, it has stats, but you can neglect them to you're egos content.