Torchlight 2 spoiled me for basically the whole genre. It is a classic Roguelike ARPG 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.
I haven’t played it. My impression is that it was trying very hard to cater to the mobile market. I heard it suffered from a lot of design changes and ended up being sold and then patched up and released by a new team to cut their losses. Meanwhile, Torchlight 2 may be older but it was made with love and care and a strong vision. It’s dirt cheap now too so it’s not hard to get your money’s worth out of it.
Have played a few hours of infinite and there’s fun to be had with the different characters, but every character being (different build and skills) locked behind another paywall, it’s a tough sell… (And as far as I remember the publisher was Korean from the start)
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.
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.
Funnily enough, Diablo was originally a rogue-ish game inspired by the likes of NetHack. The engine was even (technically) turn based - there’s a pretty cool anecdotes about how they made it real time over the course of a single weekend with some clever hacks.
I don’t know if it was ever supposed to have permadeath outside of the hardcore difficulty setting though.
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.
A game nobody has mentioned yet would be Undecember. Instant dont play if Korean MMO, f2p or an in-game shop scare you away. Behind all that is a pretty good arpg with unique skill combination mechanics that are a joy to experiment with. Beware though that if you want to get really far, the grind won’t stop. (Progress can be bought, generally it’s just not worth it though, only p2 play hurdle is inventory space and that’s a one time payment of 20-40€ depending on you) I`d recommend checking out a guide or two concerning runes before jumping into the campaign as it can be a bit challenging in the early levels, especially if one doesn’t use all the skills available.
Path of Exile is like Diablo for adults. It’s much more dark and intense in my opinion. It’s worth checking out because the New Zealanders who make it are genuinely good guys.
The second one will be free as well, it isn’t even in beta yet. All micro transactions (I’m sure all the visual ones, not sure about stash tabs but I think they would be as well) will be usable in both games as long as you’re using the same account.
Path of exile is a wonderful experience, I’d suggest watching nyxvellum on YouTube, he started playing path of exile as a Diablo 3/4 player, and has good takes both on starting blindly and using a build guide.
Don’t be intimidated, don’t listen to the trolls and detectors, you can play the entirety of the campaign without 2 clues to the game mechanics. End game you might find more difficult, but by then you’ve experienced a bit of everything and might be interested in pursuing something different from when you started playing.
If you’re going to start path of exile I’ll give you 2 tips, 1) get a generic basic super open loot filter (use one from the path of exile website and it’ll tie to your account and be updated automatically), 2) elemental resistances (to their cap) and HP are the most important stats, chaos resistance and damage being second most important.
It’s a wonderful game with a very active community and development studio.
Haha, yeah, free. I totally haven’t spent hundreds of dollars on the game. It’s over a decade with thousands of hours though. I haven’t really played the last couple years though, but that’s mostly because I have small children and a career
The original NES version of Legend of Zelda! I want to (slowly) work through the whole Zelda chronology, barring like, the CDi ones. I’ve had the NES Zelda games on my 3DS for ages but I always found them difficult to play and pretty bad at telegraphing where I was actually supposed to go.
This time around, I just bit the bullet and used a walkthrough, and collected a whole bunch of power-ups before the first dungeon. And now a couple dungeons in, I’m actually having a lot of fun with it! I even kind of like how completely open it is. I stumbled across the eighth dungeon, took one look at the four-headed bullet-spitting plant thing, and turned right around. But it’s cool that I can go there pretty much from the start!
I also played the original Zelda via emulation, but the physical game came with a map that makes the game much more feasible to get through on your own. Once I had that, I was golden.
Yup. I think this is it, but you might find better scans elsewhere. It doesn't tell you everything, but it shows you most of the map and labels the first handful of dungeons. Even knowing where the first dungeon is is such a huge help, because then you get a new checkpoint when you die, and once you beat the dungeon, you get an extra heart container.
This is really fascinating, I think it contextualises so much of how the game was meant to be played. (I’m being lazy and using the Zelda Dungeon walkthrough). It’s so interesting to me when these early games kind of offload crucial information into the manual - like with some of those items, you might never know they even exist in the game without it!
I got into it back when SC-II was the only game in the arcade I could beat on a single quarter.
I have played every game in the series - even the awful ones.
I love the stupid, overwrought storyline.
I love the wild assortment of weapons the characters bring to bear.
Though… I’d be okay if Ivy calmed her tits. Just a bit. Lady is one good sneeze away from a traction bed.
I’m hoping Bamco makes enough $$$ from Tekken to throw a few dollars to their other fighting game franchise… but I kinda doubt it.
Its 100% free, so you can play it like a demo until you are either fully in or bored.
It gets a season refresh every 3ish months with an entirely new mechanic, so most experienced players restart it 4 times a year, play a new build, and then stop playing when bored and return at the new season so its always got reasons to peek back in and see if you want to rejoin.
The leveling system is a little daunting at first, but the base game is completely playable newbie blind even if you pick “suboptimally” from the skill tree. If youre too worried about FoMo, there are tons of guides online for builds, both top level and newbie friendly.
The attack/skill system is very interesting and completely moddable, tons of replayablility.
I’m not sure if you are looking for anything on a specific system/console but I have a few suggestions. The first one being Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance and it’s sequel. Eternium also looks pretty good, especially for a game that was originally exclusive to mobile. I unfortunately can’t say much about these games because I have yet to play them for an extended period of time but I have played them enough to know that they are at least similar to the Diablo games.
I am also aware of some other games that might be worth checking out but I’m not sure how close to the Diablo games you are looking for and they are quite different from the Diablo games.
Last Epoch and Grim Dawn are probably most in line with Diablo, I think.
People have mentioned Path Of Exile, and I've played a lot of it, but I don't think it feels particularly like Diablo any more, even though it started out that way. It's quite unforgiving, and even a lot of experienced players feel like they need to follow build guides rather than work things out for themselves. Its learning curve is hundreds or thousands of hours long. Of course, the reason for that is that it has incredible depth, variety and complexity, which may be a selling point or a deterrent depending on what you like! I definitely like the complexity of it myself, but it's very overwhelming when you're new. The reason I don't think it's all that in line with Diablo these days, though, is simply the pacing of the gameplay. You blow up screens of enemies at a time, and your deaths are often so fast that you're not really sure what killed you.
Path Of Exile also heavily revolves around its trading economy. Item drop rates are balanced around players being able to trade for them, which makes trading somewhat mandatory (unless you're a bit of a masochist). The economy is fairly complex, with there being a lot of different currencies, and quite a lot of factors that can affect the value of an item. I'll let you decide whether you find this appealing or not - some people do, some people don't! I do think it causes some issues with the balance and progression of the game, but it's interesting to say the least, even if you wish you didn't have to engage with it.
Grim Dawn feels a little mechanically dated at this point but it's still solid. It's got some good builds, the dual-class system and constellations system make for some interesting variety. It's got an offline mode, as well as online co-op play. Its real selling point, though, at least for me, is it's absolutely soaked with atmosphere. It's very, well, grim, but the world is really immersive and it has a great setting in general with a solid story and some great lore. It also has quite a lot of mods available (including the Reign Of Terror mod I mentioned in another comment in the thread that adds the entire Diablo 2 campaign and all its classes to Grim Dawn).
Last Epoch is more mechanically interesting than Grim Dawn, I think, but it's lacking in the story and world-building. It's still in early access, although its full release is next week. It has quite a lot of depth and complexity, but it's all done in an intuitive way that means you can jump into the game blindly and work things out for yourself fairly easily. It has a good variety of skills, and the fact that each skill has its own fairly comprehensive skill tree means you can play the same skills in very different ways. It has a wonderful itemisation system that does a great job of making you actually engage with the loot you find on the floor (which is an issue in other loot games), and some of the best crafting I've ever seen in a game. The dev team also manages to come up with some really creative and somewhat intuitive solutions to things they perceive as issues in other ARPGs.
Last Epoch's biggest drawback is that its endgame is currently a little lacking in comparison to POE (which has a very rich and deep endgame, but is also a ten-year-old game that's been updated constantly). It's still far, far better than Diablo 4's, though, and will obviously only improve as more is added. Last Epoch has some truly brilliant systems in place for the devs to build off - and frankly, I still think it's great now - but it'll only get better as more content gets added over time.
I love all three games I've talked about for different reasons, and honestly, they're all well worth playing!
The reason I don't think it's all that in line with Diablo these days, though, is simply the pacing of the gameplay. You blow up screens of enemies at a time, and your deaths are often so fast that you're not really sure what killed you.
Yeah, that's why I don't care for POE anymore these days.
I'll add Chronicon to the list! Its approach to endgame is quite similar to D3, but more entertaining imo. It was also made by a solo dev, which is very impressive.
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Aktywne