I just tried out this game called mount and blade,
http://www.taleworlds.com/index.html
You can download the trial version for free, the trial version alone gave me about 12 hours of play. I went and got myself a key since I loved it so much. I have no clue when this game came out, but im running it pretty decently on this old rig that can half assly run wow the burning crusade but cannot run wotl wow.
I think this game rocks, you manually block\dodge all incoming damage, you manually swing 4 different directions to try and chop down your enemies. Its not some run of the mill wow type game, its very realistic, not cartoony in the least, it actually takes skill swinging blocking and dodging. You get to level up as well get better items, sell slaves if you want, raid villages, defend a maidens honor or do nothing, its all up to you, there is no goal.
Your basically thrown into the middle ages in the time of nights and mounted archers, it has a fallout sense of do whatever the hell you want. Its only 800 mb or so, im very impressed by the graphics from how small it is and how well it does on this low end this rig, I cant wait to play it on my bros high end rig when we get it fixed so I can play it on max settings. I currently have it on 1280x800 res and the settings are set half way, it even has a thing in graphics that tells you your performance % with the way you have the settings, I keep mine at 100%.