Why not give it a try and see for yourself? When I did it, I got surprised by how the sluggish pc I had became much more performant. I had a few issues here and there, with the transition, but with time, I started getting much fewer issues and stress than with windows

As for pirated games, most will run fine with wine. You can use plain wine, bottles or lutris to run them. If you look for it, you will also find some good source of pirated games for linux ;)