For regular activities, a regular browser without VPN is fine
For piracy, VPN is strongly advised (unless you live in Russia and some other jurisdictions where nobody cares)
For cosplaying cool hackers, go with Tor and onion sites (otherwise it's most likely an overkill). Also, DO NOT download large files over Tor if you don't have to. It's slow, it loads the network with already limited bandwidth, and it can drop suddenly.