I built a $3,000 performance desktop a few years back, and the main games games I ended up playing on it were things like FTL, Shovel Knight, SNES emulators, and other games that could be run on an overclock ham sandwich.

CDDA: it's basically an immersive sim with zombies and mutants in an ascii new england. Sprites optional;

Stardew valley: haha ancient fruit wine go brrr;

Morrowind: whiff. whiff. cliff racer screech. the sounds of a wood elf screaming from the heavens and splattering on the pavement;

An SNES emulator: there's like an entire library to play here;

I just stumbled upon something called "Doki Doki Literature Club".
Yes or No?

My laptop is WAY WORSE than yours and I could play Fallout: New Vegas with ease.

Edit: I didn't read the RPG part 😅

Shattered Pixel Dungeon - https://shatteredpixel.com/shatteredpd/

It's free and open source.

cracktorio

Almost everything I play is just 2D indie games, practically any 2D game should run just fine on that.

There are so many great 2D games I could rattle off that I almost don't know where to start. But since you mentioned RPGs, I am legally obligated to shill CrossCode at any opportunity.

Stardew valley :)

I wish there were a site I could report my specs to and get a list of playable games.

I have an 8th gen Intel i7, 32 gigs of memory and beyond SNES style games I have no idea what options there are for me

Should have a good time with hollow Knight

https://www.gog.com/en/game/might_and_magic_6_limited_edition

Skullgirls is the best game you can play on any machine, and it will run on that laptop. But if you're mostly interested in RPGs, check out the Pillars of Eternity games, especially the second one. Wasteland 2 will likely run on that thing just fine.

5 years is a reasonable age but you'll need to post your full specs.

Inscription! FTL faster than light! Dicey dungeons!

Mine is not dissimilar and it runs BG3 on low settings.

Goat Simulator (the OG one)?

It has a DLC that parodies RPGs

Tf2

Not an RPG but is open world: Hyper Light Drifter

I've run it on a potato laptop before, so it should run fine.

wouldn't it be ddr4? I think since 6th Gen Intel.

Not really an RPG, more of a action adventure, but Far Cry 3 will probably run well enough. I played it on a much worse laptop when I was in highschool.

I bet you could get BG3 running on it at low-mid settings.

Also the Witcher series should work fine.

adom ( ͡~ ͜ʖ ͡°)

Plainscape torment. Thanks me later.

Hades

Hades 2

I would recommend DosBox paired with Catacomb Abyss

Well, play Skyrim then!

It's not an RPG, but I always recommend PowerWash Simulator. It's one of those games where you don't have to pay too much attention to the game and can watch stuff on your phone.

Aside from that, maybe World of Warcraft private server like ChromieCraft.

There's also Starbound, Terraria, Fallout 3 & New Vegas, the Portal and Borderlands games, Half-Life 2 just received an update.

Tunic

Sea of Stars

You can get a lot of games running well for that. Almost every 2D game will run great, and a bunch of 3D titles too.

I picked up Parking Garage Rally Circuit in the sales yesterday because I've followed the dev on tiktok and it's quite fun. A dreamcast-style time trial game!

Such laptops are at the low end. But, if you have a really good Internet connection, you could expand your options a lot with GeForce Now. Basically a paid service to use cloud servers to render your game; surrendering an often-unnoticeable delay in response time. They have a free tier worth trying.