I'm in a mood for a Diablo-clone / favorite Diablo-clones

[Ninjerk]

Throne of Darkness

Came to post this 'un.

 

[Morality Games]

Seconding Nox.

 

[pippin]

Nox, Torchlight and Divine Divinity are my favorite Diablo clones, although I consider Divinity to be its own thing rather than just a clone.
I still have to try Path of Exile. Didn't wanted to play it to see if it ended as a pay2win "experience", but since this hasn't happened yet, I think I might, even if that means to submit to the RNG.

 

[Doctor Sbaitso]

Look into Darkstone. It's a great Diablo clone with deeper mechanics and really good co-op if you are into that. Can be had on Gog for 6 bux.

http://af.gog.com/game/darkstone?as=1649904300

 

[Ninjerk]

Look into Darkstone. It's a great Diablo clone with deeper mechanics and really good co-op if you are into that. Can be had on Gog for 6 bux.

http://af.gog.com/game/darkstone?as=1649904300

And you don't even bother to tell him the Darkstone Shines?

 

[Abu Antar]

Buy Baldur's Gate: Dark Allaince II and emulate it on your PC.

 

[Abu Antar]

Buy Baldur's Gate: Dark Allaince II and emulate it on your PC.

Or, or, you could just download it like a sensible person.

That too, I suppose. That's just not how I roll.

It's not like any dev would see that money now.

OT: What's so good about Dark Alliance II? It always looked pretty bland and soulless to me.

I like to play it in co-op on the hardest difficulty. Obviously, it pisses on any BG lore. I just like the classes and the boss fights. Loot was fun to gather and you can enchant it and stuff like that. I haven't played the game in over 9 years, so who knows what I would think about it now. I do remember playing as the Barbarian and Monk. You can also unlock Drizzt and Artemis, but they are so overpowered, it isn't even fun using them. I remember when me and my brother reached the last boss on the hardest difficulty. At 90% of the bosses health gone, I was running around with my monk and using ranged attacks to beat him. We probably played the game 4 or 5 times.

Theres also the Norrath games. Fun to play if you like to play with others. The games were unblanaced and hard, but not always in the right way. Playing with 3 other players was fun, though.

 

[Aothan]

Online only? Do I have to interact with anyone, ever? I don't like online interactions in games.

online only but without any need to directly interact with others, though you will see players in the town encampments but not in any 'pve' areas. You can also remove global chat, as I did come the end of the beta phase (or just before).

but on the other hand it is a game that offers a lot through trading with others, to those ends you might want to use secondary programs to search for items and listed prices and trade every so often.

all the other game suggestions seem fair to me as well


edit: I feel as though Din's Curse could have elevated the genre as a whole, even if only some of its innovations were partially integrated, which seem very straightforward, however that was not to be so.

 

[Naraya]

Divine Divinity is cool. Open world Ultima VII-lite with ARPG gameplay.

Also the game gets piss easy after you hit level 15 or so.

This, thanks for reminding me of this game! I have reinstalled it just now and I'm amazed of how gracefully it aged. Works out of the box in 1080p, graphics are crisp and clear and it really IS an underrated gem IMO.
I have to finish it finally... Last time I remember (3 years ago) I got stuck somewhere around the orc camp - felt very underpowered and died too fast for the game to be fun. Maybe it was the skill build I went with (it's possible to hilariously exploit the game but I avoided any cheese)...

 

[Morkar Left]

Oh I remenber another one: Soulbringer. It's a full fledged rpg with realtime combat. The combat is more tactical with less enemies on the screen.

 

[grudgebringer]

No Torchlight?

Never tried it. I get the impression people aren't that into it and it's like old. I didn't mention it but I'm actually more curious if I missed something recent. But I'll try anything at least once. At least if it's single player.

It's single player only. If you liked D1 then first Torchlight is the one to go. It's very D1-like, not so much in terms of art-style/visuals, but in terms of gameflow. With floor by floor progression it resembles slow paced diablo style pretty good. In the meantime, does quite a few improvements on traditional formula.

Also, it has Matt Uelmen's soundtrack which deserves your attention on its own.

 

[naossano]

The Witcher 1 get often compared with Diablo, but IMO, the only common point is that you use your mouse left button quite a lot.

Otherwise, most Diablo clone i know about are mentioned here. (including the lame borderlands)
I hope to try out Grim Dawn as soon as possible.

 

[Black]

I liked Din's Curse a lot. Wish the developer would update it somehow, the dynamic quests can really make a hack 'n slash interesting.

 

[nomask7]

Here are the games recommended so far that were mentioned by title (I'm also leaving out the ones I mentioned in the op):

Grim Dawn (early access 2013)
The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing (2013)
Path of Exile (2013)
Torchlight 2 (2012)
Torchlight (2009)
Divinity 2 (2009)
Titan Quest with Immortal Throne (2006)
Kult: Heretic Kingdoms (2005)
Restricted Area (2005)
Shadowflare (2002)
Prince of Qin (2002)
Throne of Darkness (2001)
Nox (2000)
Soulbringer (2000)
Revenant (1999)
Silver (1999)
Darkstone: Evil Reigns (1999)
Cybermercs (1999)

PS2:
Dark Alliance II
Norrath games

Damn, this thread has been more interesting than I anticipated. And the Torchlight games are a lot newer than I thought.

I want to play Path of Exile now that I still can (I'm assuming that as an online-only game it will become unplayable at some point).

Thanks for the interesting and thorough recommendations.

 

[Decado]

Restricted Area is pure dog shit...

Holy fuck I remember Restricted Area. What an awful piece of shit game. I have the box here somewhere.

ETA: Also, there is no reason to not play Torchlight 2. In a lot of ways it was the game that D3 should have been, though Blizzard has done a good job of bringing the latter back up to speed.

 

[Rahdulan]

No Torchlight?

Never tried it. I get the impression people aren't that into it and it's like old. I didn't mention it but I'm actually more curious if I missed something recent. But I'll try anything at least once. At least if it's single player.

It's single player only. If you liked D1 then first Torchlight is the one to go. It's very D1-like, not so much in terms of art-style/visuals, but in terms of gameflow. With floor by floor progression it resembles slow paced diablo style pretty good. In the meantime, does quite a few improvements on traditional formula.

Also, it has Matt Uelmen's soundtrack which deserves your attention on its own.

It should be noted that first Torchlight has quite piss poor sub-par itemization which is kinda one of the crucial parts with these types of games.

 

[Snorkack]

Path of Exile? Give it a try, it's free!

Online only? Do I have to interact with anyone, ever? I don't like online interactions in games.

You don't. The issue is the real bad netcode, unless they fixed it. If you don't manage to keep a ping <30ms, prepare for the worst controls ever.

Also give Torchlight a try. 1 and 2 are pretty faithful clones of Diablo 1 and 2 respectively. Only the brilliant setting was abandoned for comic and silly humor.


But to be honest my favorite Diablo clone of all time is Diablo 1 with the Beelzebub HD mod.

 

[DraQ]

The Witcher 1 get often compared with Diablo

<
Wat.

Spoiler

I cannot plumb the depths for sheer enigma!

 

[Black_Willow]

Try Sacred 1. It has a fuckhueg open world, some fun game systems and classes and you can go around riding a horse and killing stuff.
Also, I second Nox, Revenant and Path of Exile.

 

[Old Hans]

torchlight 1 is really fun.

 

[Watser]

Fine, I'm finally convinced. Buying Nox

 

[nomask7]

I've now played Path of Exile all the way to the second act. The second act seems to have a little more freedom than the first. The problem with the first act at least was that there wasn't much in terms of opportunities for trying your hand at higher level areas, i.e. no opportunities at all other than by skipping areas. Unfortunately skipping areas would be rather effortful due to exits being difficult to find.

Without skipping content, there was zero challenge of any sort until the Act One boss - and even beating that didn't take me more than redoing the last couple of areas until I was lvl 17 and could wear better armor. I dislike equipment level restrictions btw. These games don't need balance as much as they need opportunity for trying higher level areas and skipping content easily, and cool stuff like finding an awesome armor at low level and being able to use it.

Game looks awesome. It also reminds me of Diablo specifically in some ways, like gratuitous tomes that reveal lore via voice acted monologue, similar equipment modifier system, procedurally generated loot and monsters and levels. Even beating monsters has a similar satisfying feel to it, although I wish that slashing-weapons sounded different than smashing with a hammer.

It seems to me the loot system could be better. First of all, there's too much loot - every monster type drops random loot regularly (compare with Dark Souls or Two Worlds, where you're motivated to kill for xp but not loot most of the time, and certain monsters drop certain kinds of loot). The 'money' of the realm here is mainly scrolls of wisdom. Those scrolls are used to identify items, and I'm running out of them. You can bring back solid, good loot and get one scroll in return or something while having had to identify multiple items. It actually doesn't matter much how good your loot is. It's weird. I think the game expects me to drag back to town and sell everything I find. Fortunately you find those scrolls on occasion, but not nearly like gold in Diablo. It's possible to progress without constant travel back to town because the game is so easy, but the whole thing seems a little off. The loot system does require a complete overhaul imo.

I alluded to it - monsters are nothing but trash mobs so far if you don't skip content, so even the ones that aren't just annoying slime balls kind of lose their coolness when you can just mow them down without breaking a sweat.

I need to start skipping content - maybe the game will become more interesting to play.

 

[pippin]

It should be noted that Torchlight 2 incorporates multiplayer, which requires a Runic account (from their website).
It also has better mod support. IIRC, the multiplayer mod for 1 was broken by a patch.
It's still quite good, with bigger and more open worlds, like in Diablo 2.

 

[JasonNH]

GRIM DAWN

http://store.steampowered.com/app/219990/

Yeah Id also recommend this....awesome game already

Same here. The multiplayer works very well too.

 

[JarlFrank]

Restricted Area is pure dog shit...

Holy fuck I remember Restricted Area. What an awful piece of shit game. I have the box here somewhere.

Yeah, I played a lot of shitty Diablo clones in my time, and this is by far the most bland, boring and soulless one I ever touched.