Nox and Giants: Citizen Kabuto. Maybe Darksiders series.

If you are into pirate games, then Sea Dogs series. I've played only Sea Dogs: Caribbean Tales and in that one you can play as a female. I don't know about the other two, but apparently Sea Dogs: City of Abandoned Ships is the best of them. And there's a fourth one, Sea Dogs: To Each His Own, which is not on GOG yet.

Dex

How important are female leads compared to the other criteria? Syberia and The Longest Journey series could be options.

How about the Trine series?

^ this, is an excellent game.

Jade Empire

If creating your own character is enough, I would recommend Neverwinter Nights 2, but that game does assume that you're at least somewhat familiar with D&D lore (and preferably the rules too). It was my introduction to the Forgotten Realms and I understood nothing of it at first; playing other D&D games (namely Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale and Planescape: Torment) got me into the right mindset so I had a much nicer and more coherent experience overall the second time around.

The NWN2 main story is solid if hardly revolutionary, but it leads directly into Mask of the Betrayer which is one of my favourite games. The party members are a much more integral part of the story too.

I decided to buy Hob. /thread closed.

I'm having a real hard time navigating this game... I love the setting, but somehow I have trouble getting into the game.

What specifically? Looking back on my comments about the game I said:

I was surprised how good this was. I enjoyed the story and the voice acting and writing were quite good. The combat was a low point. It started off great in the early game with melee, was quite difficult when using guns because of the minimal damage, difficulty aiming, slow reloads, and general lack of ammo, and then became trivially easy once you got a certain regen upgrade. This upgrade kinda broke the game as it made all other skill and aug upgrades when leveling pretty much meaningless.

The game reminded me a lot of a JRPG where the developers have a story they want to tell and you're along for the ride with minimal impact to what happens. That may sould bad but sometimes you just want to hear the story. The side quests were generally interesting diversions and background for the story. The plot itself had some cliches and foreshadowed the big reveal a lot (at least I thought) and all of the endings felt like a letdown. Still I thought it was quite good and if the combat and leveling were a little better I think it could have been an alltime favorite.

I loved the cyberpunk themes, protagonist/s and milieux* but there were too many hurdles to play it. :(

Personally, my poor laptop can't hack the game at anything above 640×480, which is unfortunately not sufficient to read the menu without headache-inducing eyestrain on a 40-inch monitor at 7 feet. As for gameplay, I really wanted to like it, but it also has ridiculous real-time matrix combat that is a little beyond my configuration. (It's not easy playing games supine, with the keyboard and mouse strewn across and beside. :) It would be nice if there were some kind of "story mode" option, as for the titles from Wizards of the Coast, for those less capable (or dedicated) gamers.

Otherwise, I might be tempted to play further than I have into the game, despite the author's obvious (but minor) mistakes, like an NPC who needs a spleen (my spouse hasn't had one of those for over a decade, it's not like a kidney or a liver, it stores old blood/plasma for hypovolemic shock or recurring infection). Not game-stopping on its own, but it does tend to jolt one out of the suspension of disbelief necessary to be immersed in a virtual world.**
But it's not that everyone has antiquated equipment like me, or — it seems — rudimentary anatomical knowledge, so mileage will definitely differ!

edit: Gog forum does not like hyperlinks that contain parentheses in the anchor. Or multiple links in one paragraph. >_<
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*Yes, les beaux voyous pun intended :) see:
https: / / en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milieu_(organized_crime_in_France)
**After all, how long does it take to look-up "spleen" in Wikipedia? The author/s presumably wanted something that sounded cool and different — without regard to its actual use in the body.
Perhaps (in this future) the spleen has been genetically updated with the post-pubertal thymus as a kind of super-charger for the immune system, against a future in which infectious and contagious diseases have become more virulent and debilitating; but, if that were the explanation, it would have been cooler to include it in the NPC's story.

First post updated.