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Torchlight 1 and 2 (diablo 1 and 2 but better)
Path of Exile (diablo the MMO)
Titanquest (my personal favorite non-diablo diablo game)
The Ascent (diablo with guns!)
Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance (D&D diablo on consoles)
Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel (Fallout Diablo on consoles)
And so many more… There was a time in the 90’s after the success of Diablo 1 where everyone and their mother was making clones of Diablo.
Path of Exile, Titan Quest, Grim Dawn, Torchlight 2
this is the definitive list.
path of exile is most popular but has optional mtx(?)
titan quest and Torchlight are on multiple consoles. titan quest has a sequel in production
grim dawn is by the titan quest team, has a small file size, and runs well on older pcs.
Does Last Epoch belong on this list too?
I’ve only heard good things but haven’t tried it yet, probably does belong!
Ive had a ton of fun playing it!
Grim Dawn is goated. Not a big ARPG fan but this one just hits different for me. Simple enough for anyone to get into but can get complex enough that min-max theory crafters will have a blast messing with the games systems.
For me it was a very short experience, but it’s got online coop.
Work all the dlc? I’ve played though a couple of times and it’s always like 30-40 hours
The base game can be done in like 5-8 hours on a leisurely pace, the current speedrun WR is 57minutes but there are only 6 runners who’ve submitted to it so feasibly you could get a lot better times than that.
I’ve actually got a video on YT where I perform the “I Was Not Expecting You, Human” achievement to Slay Warden Krieg, who is the game’s midboss, in Veteran Mode with a character under level 11, and it was an hour and thirteen minutes from character creation to finish. The last 10 minutes are just the Krieg fight itself. This could be done much faster without the level requirement, though, because you could get more damage and better items.
The major problem with it is the enemy scaling. Every area has a minimum level and a maximum level, and as the character levels up so do the enemies. That means if you keep leveling in an area until you dwarf the enemies, it just keeps making it harder in the next area, so you’re incentivized to stay at the minimum level for that area and ignore the vast majority of enemies. Even farming for good loot comes at the added cost of making the mobs harder. I used to use a site that shows the level range for areas but I can’t find it anymore, sadly.
There’s a game on game pass that I recently saw called Ghost Lore that I think claims it’s inspired by Diablo? Might be worth checking out
Not mentioned yet: Chronicon. A small indie game that doesn’t take itself very seriously. It has much less build variety than something like Grim Dawn (obviously) but it’s got some, and it’s aiming to be a much more streamlined/casual experience. Won’t demand as much of your time and attention, will deliver hugely satisfying colorful explosions across the screen. When I’m in the mood for an ARPG it’s a toss up whether I’ll install this or Grim Dawn.
Path of exile Last epoch Grim dawn Slormancer (a bit different) Torchlight infinite(have not tried)
Last Epoch scratches that itch real good for me and it’s hitting release in a few days.
Definitely I would check out Grim Dawn and Last Epoch.
Grim Dawn is an insanely sprawling game with tons of class combinations and builds, made by the people who made titan quest. The graphics are dated as hell but it never stopped me from loving it. I also find the lore very fun.
Then there is Last Epoch, which is coming out on the 21st. I’ve been playing it for 3 years, even done some testing for them. Personally some of the more casual friendly things that you can’t find (like the crafting actually being amazing, seasons giving content to non-season characters, etc) just are unmatched and give the game a very good flow. It will be out in 1.0 in ~ a week and I definitely think it’s worth a glance because I find it is a great middle ground between diablo’s dumbed-downness and Path of Exile’s sweatiness.
Here’s a few:
- Grim Dawn
- Titan Quest
- Sacred Series
- The incredible adventures of Van Helsing
- Warhammer 40k: Inquisitor - martyr
- Divine Divinity
- Torchlight series
Then there’s Last Epoch and Path of Exile
Grim Dawn is probably your best match. PoE is also online only so screw em.
Spent a good chunk of my childhood playing Sacred 1. It’s aged very poorly, and I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone nowadays, but I still think that the world design and environmental storytelling were some of the best I’ve found in a videogame.
For example, at the beginning of the game, orcs are migrating from the desert and attacking human settlements. When you progress, you discover that they aren’t doing it because they want to, but because the undead army is forcing them out of their land. And when you progress in the northern part of the world, there’s a completely optional region inside the forest, where you can find a few hastily made orcish settlements - but you only find women and shamans, because the men are fighting at the front. There are no dialogues, quests, books or anything telling you that, it’s just something that you infer from the environment.
It made exploring the world and finding its secrets fun, even if there wasn’t always a reward.
(There were also a metric ton of easter eggs, from tombstones mentioning LotR characters to receiving sunglasses as a reward for chasing rude orc visitors from a tourist island… it was a wild game)
Yeah both Sacred games have their fair share of jank on you’ll need to apply community patches and possibly mods to even make them work on todays systems. However what they do not lack is soul as both games are clearly made with love and feel very unique compared to many modern games.
If you can forgive the jank and don’t mind to play older games with somewhat dated graphics I feel these games can still provide a lot of enjoyment. Would love to see remasters for these games or eveb a spiritual sequel.
Currently playing Sacred 2 with community patch, enchanted edition mod , more enemies mod and music mod and having a blast. The EE is tough as nails though and I am frequently getting my ass handed to my by elite enemies and bosses even on silver difficulty.
Grim Dawn
Grim dawn looks cool aesthetically and I’m liking the UI and how big the skill tree looks. Are any of the expansions any good?
All of them, honestly.
The Crucible is the weakest - it’s just an arena mode, but it’s got a lot of utility for speed leveling new characters + some QoL for existing ones.
Ashes of Malmouth is the direct continuation of the base game’s story, adds Necromancer and Inquisitor which are both very well-loved masteries, and you need it for Forgotten Gods anyway. The zones are a bit meh - great overall mood but you spend a lot of time in cramped corridors.
Forgotten Gods adds Oathkeeper (very fun) and tons of huge new zones with a refreshingly different vibe to the rest of the game. And you can go to this expansion’s zones from the start! (Except that you probably shouldn’t on your first playthrough, you’d get destroyed and you probably want to focus on the main story anyway.)
I’d wait for a sale and get them all if you like this genre, or just base game + AoM if you just want to give it a shot (and technically you could hold off on AoM until you’re close to the end of the campaign).
Yes.
Path of Exile.
PoE 2 announced a couple years ago and should be launching soon, pretty much the same stuff on a new engine.
It’s actually an upgraded version of the same engine, and Path of Exile 1 is getting a lot of the new tech backported.
It was originally supposed to replace Path of Exile 1, but now they are going to exist together.
2 will be more refined and slower, with a brand new story and 6 new acts. Should be a fun time.
Slower? I tried to speedrun PoE once and because of a build mistake in Chapter 2 Act 3 it took me 14 hours to beat the base game before maps. Terrible time, but still.
I believe the acts themselves will be longer and more fleshed out but there’s less of them.
6 acts in Path of Exile 2 instead of the 10 acts that PoE1 has.
That might be nice, it would be cool to have coherent independent stories instead of: “There is literally only one path and this random person who means nothing to you or your mission personally is in your way, kill them! (reading their pocket journal is optional)”
I do feel like the second chapter was better than the first in that regard, though.
Minecraft Dungeons
yeah, i’ll see myself out
Nah I agree. Minecraft Dungeons has a really approchable aesthetic that hits different. It’s an easier sell to my partner. Its cute, and the build complexity and variaty is surprisingly good. Don’t sleep on Minecraft Dungeons y’all!
It’s ok but many of levels later in the game (especially dlc levels) are just way way way too long. People keep replaying the Soggy Cave and few other levels just because they’re short.
I do like however the variety the game has with weapons, items and skills.
Torchlight 2 spoiled me for basically the whole genre. It is a classic
RoguelikeARPG dungeon crawler but has so many thoughtful player centric quality of life features. Inventory is full but don’t want to stop kicking butt? You have a pet that can run back to town for you, sell your stuff, and even buy a “shopping list” of potions and scrolls for you. It’ll even run and pick up loot for you. I have trouble playing other games in the genre because I keep running into problems Torchlight 2 solved that I didn’t even think about. It also has mods available to add even more or keep things fresh. It’s getting old but because of that you can run it on anything. It’s a damn good game.Edit: seems I didn’t know what a roguelike was
Torchlight 1-2 are decent fun for normal playthrough but plagued by bad design decisions and downright silly difficulty spikes on harder difficulties. Mods probably fix many of these issues but in vanilla the build diversity on harder difficulties is quite bad with only handful of viable builds with skill trees full of “trap skills”.
I might have lucked into some cheesey builds, I only maxed one character and have a few at 60. One mod I did get was a full respec mod, but the default reset of the last 3 levels was at least good enough for me to see if a skill was working for me or not. I agree that there seem to be too many “dud” skills, especially on embermage and engineer. My lvl 100 character I did without mods and I kind of liked how punishing it was. I get that that’s a preference though.
Prismatic bolt embermage is really strong in vanilla and cannon engineer is probably easiest class to play in the whole game. Melee engineer and many other embermage builds can be quite tough and the game has plenty of weird difficulty spikes and enemies with “shotgun” skills that can melt through player health in an instant.
In Torchlight 2 you can reset the world and grind for levels and gear but that can feel like a chore.
Lol yep prismatic bolt embermage is the character I got to max. I realized super early how great that skill was and fully invested in it. I also played sword and board engie and dual pistol Outlander. So maybe if I had invested more in other skills or wanted different builds for my embermage I’d have a more lukewarm view of the game. I had a lot of fun with the builds I did try though.
I never had to go grind for gear, I usually had enough gold to gamble and transmute a decent equipment set together for each character. I did grind for levels in the extra map zones though after finishing the New Game+.
It is a classic Roguelike
I get that Roguelike is basically a vaguely defined genre now, and though Torchlight 2 in a great game it’s definitely not a “classic Roguelike”.
Ok, is a Diablo-like a thing I can call it then? It’s just such a specific type of game, the isometric top down view RPG with classes, customizable character leveling, randomly generated levels with area themes, randomized loot, a town hub and inventory etc. I’ve always heard those games called Rogue-likes but I never played Rogue.
It’s an ARPG. Rogue-like has permadeath with random levels. Rogue-lite has permadeath with random levels but persistent unlocks and upgrades.
Also a roguelike is usually top down/isometric and tile based. Really not a ton of roguelikes these days, which is good as far as I’m concerned because roguelites are better.
Shattered Pixel Dungeon notwithstanding, of course.
Last Epoch. It has the best crafting and best skill system of any ARPG IMO.
Absolutely this, the crafting system is a great balance of getting what you want but also giving you something to try again and again for.
Basically that and the talent trees inside skills sold me on this game.
And it has an actual endgame, leaderboards, and it’s half the price of Diablo 4. It’s a no-brainer IMO.
