You might want to give the La-Mulana games a shot. While it does have "Go to five spots and..." activities, the challenge the game presents is figuring out the where and what. Kinda like oldschool King's Quest plus Zelda, but as a metroidvania.

Certainly not when they try to make them all "badass" and Rambo-like or when they're in leadership positions acting all tough and cold and shit, bossing around people cause they can. Female leaders wouldn't act that way. Women have their own qualities which are often on the caring and empathetic side, I have rarely seen that in a video game. Putting them into typical testosterone-driven male roles is just silly in my opinion and not fair also because as I said women have their own qualities. If you want to see a strong female character that acts believably, watch the Alien movies.

There are of course, exceptions ... plenty of them, if only a small minority.
And of course, it is exceptions that generally appeal in many cases ... fantasy character ideals after all.
And no doubt they drive sales.

Lara Croft is one such.

There are many kickass women out there in real life. Many sports attest to that.
And while they may be more in touch with their feminine side than most males, there would be many males who are more in touch ... once again a minority.

Nature and nurture play a big part.

Honestly, that just as clichéd as the male Rambo mentality. Men aren't all cold warriors and women aren't all kind-hearted samaritans. Have you actually worked with female leaders? Of course they can be just as bossy as male ones. But the more important thing here is that the role these characters play in videogames are not man and woman but action heroes. The reason why the Lara Croft in Tomb Raider 2013 was not a very believable character, for example, was not because she is a woman, but because they tried to show her caring and empathethic when the game called for something else.

So you're saying Riplay is not a "badass"? ;P

I think women in games used to be a man's idea of a cool woman, but that has been changing lately. That's one reason you see constant complaints about it, people miss that old style that was tailored to them. I'd probably more want a balance, nothing wrong with some fantasy wish fulfillment (on both sides) as long as it doesn't go way overboard like a metal thong for armor.

There's a general "men are boorish idiots and women are smart and witty" trend in media in general nowadays though, which I find kind of nauseating. That's much more annoying to me than any kind of more honest representation.

Easy way to avoid such questions...just don't feature any women at all.
This was one of the reasons I enjoyed the S.T.A.L.K.E.R games tbh, it was a nice fantasy of all around male camaraderie, without any female distraction. The first Gothic was like that as well (though there were some women in the old camp, as sort of sex slaves for the ore baron iirc...pretty offensive if you think about it).

No, she was definitely badass! That's my point she wasn't just a woman who tried to act like a tough guy dude.
I should have worded it differently, women can definitely be "badass" in a unique womanly way.