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Enderal for a whole new world in the Skyrim engine. New map, new creatures, new spells, new items, pretty much nothing is unchanged and it's really well done.
Kingdom Come Deliverance for a more hardcore and true-life fantasy RPG
Oblivion if you haven't played it, just needs a texture mod for the most part.
Dragon's Dogma Dark Arisen
Witcher 3
Cyberpunk 2077 if you don't mind non-fantasy.
I can't believe I've never heard of Endral. This is so exciting.
Be prepared. I love Enderal but it is unforgiving. Not to say it's bad, but it's following a different design ethos than Bethesda's Elder Scrolls.
Also prepare for an emotional roller coaster
Kingdom Come Deliverance is probably the best RPG I've played.
Yeah, it's proper good.
Ultima VII - with the FOSS Exult engine, it's old but has AI schedules, and stuff that really reminded me of TES.
Baldur's Gate 1 - it's quite old and much more linear in many ways than TES, but the semi-open world was still great. The Pathfinder games are also quite similar for a modern alternative. Avernum is also a little bit similar for the open world aspect.
Thief 1 + 2 - first-person stealth games, this directly influenced Oblivion. The Dark Mod also has some good newer maps.
Deus Ex (especially the original 2) - first person immersive sims.
Kingdom Come Deliverance - the closest to TES overall.
Daggerfall (Daggerfall Unity), Morrowind (OpenMW), Oblivion - if you haven't played them already.
Arx Fatalis (Arx Libertatis) and Ultima Underworld - share some aspects with TES although are much more dungeon crawlers.
The Legend Of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom - quite different but the large open world and focus on exploration is amazing.
Seconding Morrowind with OpenMW. It does an amazing job updating everything for modern computers.
Play skyrim with the ordinator mod, it's basically a different game with huge talent trees and vastly more options for how to play.
I've used it. it's not that different.
It's basically better talent trees, not all that different.
For an actual different experience you need mods like Apocalypse (155 new spells) and most importantly the mod that instakills you if try to play a stealth archer.
Nah man, if you want a truly different experience, try out a heavily modded modpack on Wabbajack.
There's one I really enjoyed called Librum for the mage playthrough. Didn't even have any mana to start with and spent like a full playthrough just to get my first spell. Lived in inns for a while a spending day after day to study, doing odd jobs for money. Couldn't even get into the college at first because I didn't know magic.
I heavily dislike modpacks because they never explain what they actually do.
Then find better modpacks that do explain. Like the pack I mentioned above, Librum, it does have what is basically a manual describing what it does and what it wants to do and how it differs from the the vanilla game.
Granted, very few modpacks actually explain to that extent, but I mean, most packs from my experience actually do briefly explain what it does. At least in my experience. Not totally sure what else you're looking for.
No need, I'm perfectly capable of modding it myself. Frankly, that's half the fun.
So am I, but let's not pretend it doesn't take forever and I'd like to play the game at some point and not just play the game in "debug" mode.
Doesn't take all that long once you figure out less is more. You don't need 16 times the detail in grass textures, just add a few big gameplay changing mods and get going.
Witcher 3
Morrowind is most obvious choice.
However if you want something new, eurojank games tend to scratch same itch to me if you can tolerate unpolished game mechanics until you get used to it. Two Worlds 2 and Elex 1 is great games to start with.
I really enjoyed Tyranny, not exactly scrolls-like but the story felt ES like.
Skyrim lol
Skyrim lol
Skyrim lol