coop stardew is Fantastic, because in addition to the help having someone else around inherently does, it allows so many oppertunities for hilarity as you can prank your friends by doing stuff like running around in circles in their cutscenes.
Old school Final Fantasy games are classic. Turn based, very easy on agility requirements, can be quite strategic, huge variety of settings depending on which game, and as they are some-bits or ps1 era they are decent on old pcs. You can find 7, 8 and 9 on Steam, and I think there are remakes of 4 and 6 for portable. My absolute recs would be nine, six, and four, but everyone loves seven and would give their firstborn for a remake.
Stardew and Undertale are def what I would recommend to try first. I was p much you ~5 years ago. Pokemon had been my Special Interest since I was a wee smeet, so I mostly played nintendo games. My first exposure to more Gamer Games (tm) was Dragon Age Origins, which is was a good transition as it's combat is very slow, and while it can be hard at first, it got me completely hooked on big RPGs. The game came out in like 08 or something, so your PC may be able to handle it (my 2011 macbook could play both DAO and DA2.) I know I saw Elder Scrolls suggested, but I honestly find DA much better for roleplaying and interesting characters. I was terrible at shooters for a long time, and still sort of am, but the learning curve is worth it imo (easy mode is your friend). There are just so many fucking amazing games that are shooters. Fallout is a good gateway to shooters cause it has this auto targeting system that either pauses or slows down time, and that universe is so kooky and weird and wonderful. You can get Fallout 4 for ps4, or Fallout New Vegas for your pc (Came out in '10, so older systems might be able to handle it okay.)
I would warn that the Steam version of 6 is a port of the mobile version, for some ungodly reason. They completely replaced the graphics in a very cutesy style for reasons that elude me; besides the tonal mismatch, a lot of the backgrounds have wonky tiling. Spoiler: Annoying commentary on a screenshot from the Steam store You have to play either the SNES or GBA versions for the original graphics, which nowadays probably means emulator + piracy. (If you do go looking for a ROM that fell off the back of the truck, the English SNES release was as "Final Fantasy III.")
For turnbased rpgs Dragon Quest IX might be a good bet? It's on the 3DS, lets you swap around classes after a point, isn't that hard for newcomers but lets you break the game in half as you get better at it, lets you make your own little team of dudes that you can customize the appearances and names of to a degree and so on. It's also a cute game and a funny one. Dragon Quests in general would be my suggestions for turned based RPGs. A good bulk of the series is available for 3DS too. The most recent, XI, is available on PS4. Sadly the 3DS version is not seeing a release outside of Japan to my knowledge.
A few people recommended Ori, and I just want to add that personally I think playing Ori without a controller is a bit of a futile effort (if you do decide to pursue it). So assuming it does work with your PC, yeah, controller. Undertale is a kind of funny example. It's a great game, but also a lot of the story elements are subversions of usual RPGs. Honestly fun with a good story no matter when you play it, but might be even funner on a replay after becoming more familiarized with RPG tropes. Any FF game works too, though I personally rec IV (4) and IX (9). Odin Sphere's a fun game with an unusual storytelling style where you learn a story from multiple different perspectives that makes the timeline eventually fall into place that got a remake for PS4, though it has pretty timeless graphics. Also.... Mother 2 + Mother 3... cuz so many games are inspired by Mother 2 including Undertale! It's a very classic but good game. Quirky emotional RPGs with kids saving the world. Neglected a little but it's a great game! Personally I know I tried to buy it on my DS, but they only let you buy it if you have a newer XL DS. So. I'd just emulate it, depending on what you have if you play it. People have different emulators they use, but I'll offer advice if needed. Also, if you like Pokemon, you can also give Yokai Watch a chance. It's similar in that it involves monsters you can catch, befriend, name and then use on a team, but different enough to be really entertaining.
Meanwhile I like keyboard+mouse Ori, especially after rebinding Dash from its annoying default bind. Then again I now almost exclusively play randomized Ori, which often involves use of grenade/light burst. Controller grenade is so astoundingly awful that one of the changes the 3.0 randomizer makes is to completely rehaul it! (Incidentally the speedrunning community considers kbm better for Ori in general, with, iirc, a ~20 second timesave just by using kbm over controller? and that's with wall charge jumps and swimming both being a bit better on controller.)
I almost added most of the FFs Witchknights mentioned to my big long rec post, so I might as well talk about my opinions on the various ones- Spoiler: rambling about Final Fantasies because I love the sound of my own voice 4 was basically one of the first mainstream console games where people went, "Hang on, what if we actually tried to tell, like, a story? With, like, characters, who have personalities?" As such, the story may come across kind of awkward, cheesy, and disjointed, but it's still got a charm to it. The DS and Steam versions replace the original sprites with 3D graphics, and while I have some major beefs with a lot of the decisions they made, I'd say it's still probably the better option for a beginner because the balance has been changed a lot so it involves way less fighting-the-same-boring-monsters-every-three-steps than the SNES and GBA versions. It also allows a lot more character customization than the original game, which barely had any. 6 is a personal favorite of mine. Like a lot of JRPGs, it's the story of a ragtag bunch of misfits fighting an evil empire, and it's the first FF game to really lean into the fusion of magic and technology that would turn into a series hallmark. One of the interesting things about it is that the entire second half of the game is open-world: after a certain point, the plot rails disappear, and you're free to wander around the entire map, doing things in whatever order you feel like. It has a huge cast of playable characters who drop in and out of your team because of the plot for the first half of the game, then you re-recruit in the second. They've all got their own gimmicks, but any party is viable, so you have a lot of leeway to mess around and try things out. There are a number of ways to break the game wide open hilariously if you look hard enough, but you can just muddle through and generally do fine (though you might want to grab a guide to figure out which of Gau's Rages are actually worth using). Unfortunately, there's also the availability issue I whined about. 7 is one of the most famous games ever made. It's about a ragtag bunch of misfits fighting an evil corporation, and it's the first time they tried to go all deep and mess with the player's head. There's a twist halfway through that almost everyone gets spoiled on, but which is way more effective (by which I mean heartrending) if you somehow manage to dodge the spoiler. Gameplay-wise, this one is really, really, extra easy to break wide open if you're trying; as with 6, any party is viable, so you can again pick your favorites. It's massively overhyped and has a million spinoffs, but I was surprised how much I enjoyed it anyway. (Fandom osmosis inexplicably left out all the hilarious bullshit like "dog trying to pretend to be a human by dressing up in a sailor uniform and teetering precariously on his hind legs with his tail sticking out" and "sneak into an Evil Corporation facility by being launched up onto it by a convenient friendly dolphin.") It does, however, suffer from badly-aged 3D models and a lousy translation. 9 is about a ragtag bunch of misfits... well, trying to fight a lot of things, with varying levels of success. The big strengths of this one, to me, are how fun and quirky most of the cast are and how oddball and vibrant the world and setting is. Half the NPCs in any given town are anthropomorphic animal-people, the main character is a thief with a monkey tail who's part of a theater troupe, and the player characters include a princess who kidnapped herself because she was bored, a rat-woman knight searching for her lost love, a genderless monster chef who got kicked out of their house and sent to travel the world to eat new things, and an uptight guard captain with a love of stinky pickles. It's also got a ton of stuff to do that's not part of the plot and often doesn't reward you with anything but bragging rights, so if you enjoy being able to just wander off and do some oddball minigame, this is an especially good one. And I'm going to add: 10 has a lot of fans, but also some pretty nasty detractors. I personally have some huge problems with aspects of the writing and storytelling, but find the gameplay enjoyable and the world gorgeous (other than most of the clothes, seriously, what are all of you wearing). It follows a sportsball player who wakes up on another world after an attack by a giant monster called Sin, and ends up accompanying a summoner on her pilgrimage across the world to defeat Sin. I find the gameplay much quicker and more streamlined than a lot of the older-school ones, and while it has some stuff that requires a ludicrous amount of time and energy investment and/or a detailed guide, it's all completely optional, and mostly only available at the very end of the game. It was originally on PS2, but there's a remastered version for PS4 and it's on Steam. There's also a sequel, which I haven't played.
X-2 lets you play dressup with your girlfriends and go on a pop idol quest of whatever the fuck the plot of X-2 was I forget But you get to be a sexy pop idol with guns and two friends and you get to play dressup and that's fucking rad as shit.
...I can't believe I forgot to mention that in FF6 you can suplex a train. Which is clearly an argument in its favor.
I am seconding the recommendation and reasoning on Dragon Age Origins. Of the 3 that are out, it's the oldest and the best character experience. It's also a bit like Pokemon in its "talk to everyone" style. And just for a 3rd take on Ori. I have no access to a controller, and prefer playing with only the keyboard as I do not have a physical mouse, only a touchpad. I think touchpad and keyboard is probably the WORST way to play Ori. That said solely keyboard feels pretty good, I have to date, not yet gone "oh god there's so much going on my fingers can't do all of that at once" and honestly if you do find yourself struggling with certain abilities, changing the keybindings is REALLY easy, took me less than a minute.
I also really rec Dragon Age Origins. It's not my favorite game because FF9 exists, but it's a close second and I'm absolutely obsessed with the series.
I also recommend getting Dragon Age: Origins! If you get it on steam you can get the bundle with all of the downloadable content for a good price, especially if you wait for it to be on sale! (Although if you’re not able to get all of the DLCs I recommend you at least get Awakening. While it’s absolutley not necessary it adds a lot at the end of the game that I really loved, and is especially good to have played if you go on to play Dragon Age 2.)
Seconded on Awakening DLC. It's a mixture of an epilogue to Origins and an origin story (I swear that was not an intended pun but I love it so I'm keeping it) to Dragon Age 2. The other DLCs are...less than the most interesting. They're nice little additions but all in all not worth all that much.
A friend of mine was deeply personally hurt by the fact that the Steam version removed "This guy are sick." :::PPP
I'm going to caution that Dragon Age: Origins has extremely opaque systems and clunky menus. It was a challenge for me as a relatively experienced gamer to get it to do what I wanted it to do; it might be extremely frustrating for a newer gamer, especially one without experience in the kind of antiquated semi-turn-based strategic combat system it uses. It also suffers pretty badly from the late aughts "everything fantasy must be in sepia, dirty, and every man looks middle aged, even the 18 year old boys" aesthetic, so brace yourself. (If you're willing to dabble in mods, however, they can make the game a much smoother and more pleasant experience all around.)
