lotrsam0711

All the Infinity Engine games are worth playing. Suggested playorder: Balder's Gate, Balder's Gate II, Planescape: Torment. If you still want more after that, play Icewind Dale and Icewind Dale II, but neither are essential to play.

Fallout 1 & 2 are both great and worth your time. Also somewhat similar in spirit to those games is Arcanum. It's very rough around the edges, but those who love it, adore it.

Gothic 1 & Gothic 2 are worth playing. I'd liken them to the souls games to a certain extent, open world with a very tough sense of progression. Combat is quite wonky, though.

I'd also recommend Darklands. It's not as popular or well-known, but it's a great, mostly open-ended RPG experience that comes the closes to playing a tabletop RPG, IMHO.

Monaco should work, but you will need multiple controllers you can plug into your PC. If your friends have some wired controllers they could bring, you could try it.

Rebuild is the one I've sunk the most hours into. It's a base management zombie survival game. I know, I know, another zombie game! But it's one of the best in recent years and a great one of those "just one more turn" games.