LogFAQs > #955619374

Kenshi? It's more of an RTS/open ended RPG though. If you can get into it, you'll probably love it, but it's one of those kind of brutal sorts of games (but it has a very variable difficulty slider and a lot of different starts, especially with mods. some modded starts are basically a shortcut to the city building part). you'll have to mod in some aspects like visitors purchasing things or just ambient villagers, but, well, it's super moddable. This is probably the closest to what you want if you want actual freedom, but there's not really a main plot

Dark Cloud's kinda old and I don't like the actual combat but the city building aspect is a huge part of it

The Suikoden games can feel this way because you have 100~ people to recruit each game and they often brings upgrades to your main base, so it feels like progress is constantly happening as you do sidequests to bring people to your side. 2's the one everyone loves and I think I remember enjoying it the most too

Mount and Blade is kind of similar but you don't design the layout of cities, it's more about kingdom management (once you eventually reach that level, which may take a very long time)

tldr: kenshi

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raytan and Kana are on opposite ends of the Awesome Spectrum.