Honestly, I feel like Dragon's Dogma has the most varied character creator I've ever seen. I like to make self-inserts when I play RPGs, and that game is the only one where I've been able to accurately recreate my front-heavy physique.

Seconding this. With RaceMenu installed you can even sculpt your character's face. And of course, there's no shortage of mods to improve on textures, hairstyles, armor, etc.

Granted, you'll find more realistic character creators in games like Cyberpunk 2077, and ones with more customization options in games like The Sims 4. But in my experience, modded Skyrim maintains the best balance between realism and customization.

Any mods that would allow you to also equip any set of gear in character creation and pose?

I basically want a character designer with a photo mode xD

The new one?

I loved SR2 customisation.

Nioh 2 has quite a wide variety of options to customise at character creation.

Cyberpunk 2077 has a good character creator, good fashion choices, and an excellent photo mode

The new Baldurs Gate will be what you're looking for. There will be lots of customization options and from the screenshots I've been seeing there'll be very well animated romance scenes. It'll come out this month.

It's not the best, but the one for BG3 looks amazing.

My favorite CC is for Lost Ark, but that is technically an MMO, even if you can play it as a singleplayer game.

Play Divinity Original Sin 2 while you wait for Baldurs gate 3.

Black Desert. My girlfriend constantly redownloads it, spends hours making characters, actually plays the game for like 10 minutes then logs off. She then proceeds to boot it up again months later to repeat the process lol

Dragon’s Dogma might be worth checking out. You even get to customize more than one character during the course of the game.

One of my favourites not yet mentioned is Divinity Original Sin 2. Characters are classless (there are starter classes but they work more as a starting kit), so development is incredibly flexible. You can have a party of generalists or hyper specific builds. And often the world is full enough of variables that any play style can find a route to success.

Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous has the biggest and most customizable character creation in modern gaming. The only thing that comes close is the really old-school RPG that had around 50 skills

Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous is on a different level as far as class and customization goes, especially considering the Mythic Paths

The later Wizardry games (6-8) had pretty good party and character customization. Lots of skills, classes, and an expansive magic system.

Given you liked Might and Magic VI, you might want to check those out.

In terms of "stat" customization: Pathfinder: Kingmaker and the sequel (aka even more options) Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous are probably the most detailed/complex games where it comes down to character creation/development in terms of skills, abilities, "class fantasy" and overall customization. >!Like you can be a gnome alchemist/cavalryman charging into the battle on the raptor, throwing molotovs at enemies!<

In terms of "story" customization: Dragon Age: Origins with it's origins prologues, multiple ways to solve each major quest line, how those quest lines could influence each other. Example: >!Like: You can pick if you want to move the demon to the wife of the baron (or whatever his title was) and kill her or just kill her possessed son; or if your previously solved mages questline and decided to not purge them, you can use mages to save both mother and son.!< And there are many quests that are intertwined in the non linerar way, so you can never get all the "secret" endings to all of them. Add to that that your companions can change their morality based on what they have experienced and how you talked to them. Example: >!Alistar, because of his idealism, will abandon you if you become "reaver" subclass. But if, you put him trough enough shit before, and each time afterwards you will tell him that world is shit and only the strongest will survive, he will become "harden", change his morality, his behavior and will accept even you becoming reaver.!<

Basically DA:O really feels like the ultimate "replayable" rpg, since there are so many origins/mainquestcomplitions/companionsrelations that each playthrough feels like you're reliving the same story with a completely new person who led to completely different outcome.

I enjoyed 8 a lot myself. Story might be bit bland overall, but the dialogue was still entertaining enough, and the combat was fantastic. One of my favorite dungeon crawlers. Definitely a labor of love from the developers and a suitable homage to the earlier era of complex turn-based RPGs during a time when everything seemed to be moving away from that (which has since had some resurgence).

If you do try it, I recommend using the wiz8fast mod at minimum though - enemy movement is too damn slow in the unmodded game.

There are also Mythic Paths which you can unlock as you play. You get to choose from multiple thematic abilites and eventually you lock yourself into a certain type of Mythic class. Or you can choose to just get another 20 regular class levels in a different class.

No, there are ability trees. Feats often unlock other feats which themselves unlock feats, etc. (EX: Power Attack unlocks Furious Focus which unlocks Dreadful Carnage) The Mythic system in PF:WotR also has requirements that unlock higher abilities. Some classes have optional class abilities that are unlocked by lower-level optional class abilities. (EX: To get the Nauseated Mercy for your Paladin, you have to have selected the Sickened Mercy at an earlier level).

I have Kingmaker on PS4. Seems a bit jank. Party members are manually controlled even though I set that shit to AI.

I played Star Wars The Old Republic for a few years and was loving the story and characters and several other things, but hated how mind-numbingly easy they made the main gameplay so quit.

That being said, it was the best damn character dressup game I've ever encountered. When they realized that outfits could sustain them when they went f2p, and wouldn't anger anybody, and that it's Star Wars with tons of options and decades of movies/comics/games/books/toys, they just went nuts.

Animal Crossing is basically the ultimate clothes collection game if you're into cartoony styles at all.

Since you like GTAV, you could check out other Rockstar games. Red Dead Redemption 2 has a lot of clothes you can acquire although it's not quite modern but at least it's not ancient armor.

XCOM2. You don't unlock anything, though, it's all available up front. Well, there's one cosmetic DLC purchase, but you can find crazy good sales for the works these days.

Is sunset overdrive actually any good?

Might pick it up if it has any depth.

Guild Wars 2

The character creation itself could be better, but the clothing and weapon customisation is amazing. Many call the game Fashion wars 2 for a reason. A huge selection of skins for every armor piece and hundreds of dyes makes it the perfect fashion sim. The end game is making good looking characters ^^

Dragon Quest 9.

divinity original sin 2

Wasteland 3

Battle Brothers

Recently started on Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous and the amount of class customization options is insane. Plenty of different equipment as well. It's a bit barebones in the looks department, though. It has a toggleable turn-based mode that seems to work pretty well.

Guild Wars 2 has a lot of visual options for your characters.

Baldur's Gate has some options (race, class, clothing color), for your main character.

Icewind Dale lets you make your entire party, customize them similar to how you can customize in Baldur's Gate.

Cladun has a lot of customization in that you can actually draw what your character looks like. Plus the classes and character progression are pretty custom.

Disgaea has extensive progression but not too much visual customization, but each class looks different which is cool.

Skyrim? It's nothing special but i think it perfectly fills the niche, especially due to being able to mod even more character customization.

Black Desert Online has the best character creation ever (it's not my opinion, it has been confirmed), but the game itself is a big grind and has a lot of RNG. It also has a good skill system and it's the MMO with the best combat system. P.S. The game has the worst story...

Try Neverwinter if you want medieval experience. It has a nice character creation, not really a big skill system, but it's still ok and a lot of progression. It's an MMO too.

MapleStory2. Although it's a new game I think it deserves a chance.

The Sims.

Divinity original sin 2

Monster Hunter on any platform, every hunter knows true endgame is fashion.

Every armor and weapon is transmog, plus all the unlockable outfits and stuff.

Dear friend, we are very much alike.

I see a lot of the games I was going to mention already listed, so I hope you don't mind if I provide a link to a long list of games that will hopefully aid your search.

Video Game Tropes: And Your Reward is Clothes

As someone always on the hunt for games like this, may I also suggest looking into PS2 and PSP emulators, as there are a LOT of games on those consoles that fit the bill, and many never got released anywhere else sadly. Some I will mention are Phantasy Star Portable 1 + 2 and Lord of Arcana (similar to Monster Hunter).

Honorable Mention: Way of the Samurai is an excellent series in my opinion, but I should mention they all begin with limited character customization and you unlock them all by progressing and replaying the games multiple times (they're all pretty brief playthroughs, and you're intended to repeat the story, choosing different paths each time).

Once you buy or unlock clothing/accessories/items in a session, you'll own them forever and you can start a brand new game with anything you've unlocked and paid for whenever you want.

Edit: to give a better idea of the scope of all the options available, here's a checklist of items needed in Way of the Samurai 4 to earn the "Fashionista" trophy: https://www.playstationtrophies.org/forum/topic/160157-fashionista-checklist-hairstyles-clothing-accessories/

The Sims 4 can't be beat in this regard... may not be the kind of gameplay you want though.

Really stick to the third. In my opinion 4th went past the line from fun to ridiculous. Not by much, but still prefer 3rd more.

Warframe

I'm happy either way. But if I can't customize the character I expect it's because the character already has a pre defined personality and backstory (think Witcher). So basically either customizable character or fully realized well written character. If the character is a blank slate to insert myself into... Add customization.

i would say it s depends on customization options. For me, it doesn't break the experience. On the contrary, it allows for deeper immersion and a closer connection to the character(For example, if you don’t like the default appearance.)
But if you for some reason … I don’t even know… can do overly caricatured characters or use items that don’t fit the era (like a ligthsaber n the Middle Ages), it would break the experience. Though, if it’s a single-player game, that would be on me.

Honestly the more games start adding individual freckle counts for butt cheeks the less I care about it. Give me 4-10 hair styles, 5 faces and let my goblin gamer brain play this first person RPG where my face will be covered by a full helm anyway.

It doesn't break the experience but changing some token things is required but not a selling point.

I think it's worth a lot to create a character that looks like yourself in RPG games.

I might be an outlier here based on the comments up to this point, but I actually care a great deal about character customization. Somebody mentioned how games like the Witcher are an exception, and I agree. But any RPG where my character is supposed to be MY character? I appreciate having a great deal of control over their appearance, backstory, personality, etc. I've spent hours in modded Skyrim or Cyberpunk customizing my character to my heart's content.

I definitely understand why plenty of people don't really care to that degree, and I can't fully explain WHY I do. It just makes my brain happy, and I genuinely find myself enjoying the rest of the game far more whenever I'm actually able to bring the vision of my character to life.

I'm gonna recommend Final Fantasy XII, specifically the zodiac version (i.e. the remaster) mostly because of your desire for a decently sized roster with good customisation.

It has a really good job system and a party of 6 which are basically fully customisable blank slates (aside from their base stats)

Also, free re-specs! So you can experiment heaps with your builds.

It's not the most loved FF, but it is my personal favourite and seems like one you'll enjoy from what you're saying.

Here are a few that might fit what you’re looking for:

• Ni No Kuni 2

• The Trails series (Trails in the Sky, Trails of Cold Steel, Trails though Daybreak, etc)

• Greedfall

• Lost Odyssey

In each of these party-based games, you have a variety of party members from which to choose, and you get to know each of them in depth. You know their strengths and weaknesses and what they bring to the party composition. More importantly (to me, at least) you get to know them personally. You learn their back-stories and whatnot. They are more than just a set of battle skills.

Good luck in your search!

Octopath 1 is also very good, Octopath 2 just really improves upon it. In case you wanted to try both games, play 1 first so it doesn't feel like a downgrade later.

Recent: Avowed is pretty neat. The cast is awesome.

Oldie: Shadow Hearts (ps2) has a very unique em setting and cast.

It's an anime jrpg. The tales series goes way back and is well established in the genre and they go all out in every title.

It has a large cast of interesting characters, strategic and flashy combat, itemization, a big world, a captivating story and amazing music.

For me it was one of those once-in-a-lifetime experiences, sometimes it actually felt like I was playing a show/movie. In a good way.

Define real. It has items with different stats, status effects, cosmetics, a ton of skills to unlock and a combo system where skills will affect eachother in chains, allowing for big finishes.

There is also your party set-up.

Tales of arise. What a journey..

If you like that, look into Romancing Saga series as well.

Have u play Octopath Traveler 2? There is 8 characters u can choose as main character, and then u can recruit the rest 7 character on your journey. Each character have their personal quest like Dragon Age, they also have party banter you can mix 2 class/job like Fell Seal, equip different passive skill aswell