TL was terribly tedious before too long, but TL2 is more or less what Diablo 3 should have been. Runic employs developers that used to work at Blizzard and the composer also worked on the soundtrack for Diablo.

Overall it feels very much like a continuation of the Diablo series, just in a different place with different lore. Have you played Diablo recently? None of the games in the series are particularly memorable. They were insanely fun to play, but they were rather cartoonish and forgettable.

I loved Diablo and Diablo 2, but I wouldn't consider them to be much more than rogue-lites.

I wouldn't agree with at all. Diablo 2 was some of the most memorable, atmospheric stuff in my opinion. I'm actually indifferent to the loot. It's why I hate the MF. I dislike the difficulty of finding loot in games Diablo I would liken it to gambling. I merely tolerate that aspect to enjoy what I like in the game which is the amazing world they've created, the music, the atmosphere, the gameplay, and the progression of your character. All of those things were there for me in Diablo 2. I think it's a disservice to the game to call them cartoonish and forgettable.

Honestly instead of TL or D3 I would get Grim Dawn. It's by the same devs that developed Titan Quest, and it's coming out of pre release next month. It IS a steam game, afaik, but if you buy it now you get it at a discount, and they've spent the past several months polishing the hell out of it.

I played it a little bit about 6 months ago when I first pre purchased it, and I cannot wait for it to hard launch. It's a beautiful game on many levels, and the devs are deserving of your support more than Blizzard, at least.

They basically lost their first company because pirates pirated the hell out of Titan Quest and spread rumors that the game had a critical bug where it would crash every 10 minutes. This was a design decision to counter piracy which bit the devs in the ass. Yep, you read that correctly. Pirated versions of TQ would crash every 10 minutes on purpose. Of course, since then, Steam has taken over a large segment of the online community, so the need to cause the game to crash is no longer there as it is a steamworks title, again afaik.

I just started it myself. Not too bad so far.

It's not a matter of whether or not it is dated (so is Diablo 2 compared to even Torchlight 1). It's just that Diablo 1 had some severe balancing problems that kept me from ever getting into it properly, although I've tried many times.

Neither, Torchlight is extremely uninspired and boring. The soundtrack is the only good thing about it - made by the guy who made the soundtrack for Diablo 1 by the way.
Diablo III is always online DRMed crap and even inferior to the free-to-play alternative Path of Exile.

Go for Diablo 1 (HD) - Belzebub instead
or Diablo 2 - LoD with HD mod
or Titan Quest - Gold.

Personally, I'd go for Nox.

Path of Exile is better than Torchlight and Diableo series, it is the current king in this genre.
Good luck!

Belzebub is fully playable, at least in singleplayer - I played through the game early last year.
I don't think it works with Hellfire (although it might include certain features from / inspired by it).

D2MultiRes requires an older version of Diablo 2 (1.12 I think) - it might work with mods as long as they worked with that version of the game.

If you buy the game through the Grim Dawn website (or backed the game on Kickstarter) you can get a DRM-free copy at / after release. Think it's redeemed through the Humble Store.

In which way? Neither T1 nor T2 make use of any Steamworks components, T1 is sold Drm free here, and a non-steam version of T2 can be bought directly from Runics website -http://store.runicgames.com/products/torchlight-ii.

Well Runic did say in their forums that they will try to get a drm-free version of Torchlight 2 out in to market in 2016 but its questionable if they will do a gog release.

As a fan of ARPGs, in my opinion, the genre it's kinda lacking. Now, i'm more focused on modern ARPGs, as i think the general gameplay it's much more improved than the previous ones.

Diablo 1 - It was ok back in the days, but it's hard to compare it with modern ones now. Especially regarding character movement, pathfinding, things are much more smoother on modern ARPGs.
Diablo 2 - Better than Diablo 1, still playable this days, but same as Diablo 1. Compared with modern ARPGs, the movement and pathfinding are inferior.
Diablo 3 - Things went crazy with this one. The direction of where first Diablos were going was shifted. Great, smooth game, but does not offer too much depth. It's a dumbed-down RPG, and i'm not saying it as a negative thing. Somethimes you want a mindless game that would just keep you busy.

Torchlight 1 - I never liked this one. I always felt that it's lacking personality, even if devs did whatever they could to make the game unique, especially on aesthetics.
Torchlight 2 - This is the game that really shines in my eyes. Much better than Torchlight 1, and pretty similar to Diablo 3. But some odd design choices makes me pick Diablo 3 over this one. The way that the zone resets work, the single-player campaign being kinda poorly tailored, as you feel the need to go back grinding some XP from time to time.

Path of Exile - in a league of it's own. It's not so accessible as others are though. I have few hundreds hours in that game, as i played a lot about a year ago. But when i tried to get into the game again recently, i pretty much had to start over and re-learn the game, as it was pretty changed. I respect GGG for their involvement in this game and for their true F2P model, but, in this kind of game, a lot of adjustments of the content, in relatively short time, mess things up for some people. It's the kind of game that you would like to get into if you already have a bunch of friends that are already playing it, so they can help you out. The character development it's very hard, with the crazy skill tree. You can basically mess up your character to a state that you can't progress into the game anymore, so you need to start it all over, but you can also find a fun build that you just love it, just to become nerfed and useless in next patch. A balance between complexity and consistency it's not reached. At least not yet.
Also, the always-online policy, while it's very understandable, it's not polished enough. De-sync problems are still present.

Grim Dawn - Have mixed feelings about this one. I don't have too much time into it, about 20 hours, but, i don't know, while the game it's great as an ARPG, it seems to lack an certain personality. Darker than Diablo and even Path of Exile, but lacks something. I prefer Titan Quest due to this fact, but i'll keep playing Grim Dawn, mostly out of curiosity. As simple and straight forward it seems, it's a game with a lot of content. The company seems pretty involved into it. Even if it's in Early Access, the game runs good, it does not feel like an beta and it's often patched.

Deathspank - This one it's not too often mentioned, but i find it great. If you ask me, Deathspank is what Torchlight 1 aimed to be. It's fun, it's easy to get into, but it's also not tailored around grinding idea. Great ARPG if you want something that won't eat you hundreds of hours in order to feel like you are really playing the game. I must say that the second part, Thongs of Virtue, it's not so great once you played the first one. It pretty much does the same thing as the first part, and it can get boring pretty fast.

The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing - Ok, and that's all. Does not shine, does not fail, it's just there. Except few line changes between the characters, that can get pretty funny, as well as other modern ARPGs, it does not have personality. It's basically Torchlight 2 with another characters. It managed to expose it's story better than other games, but ARPGs are not about the story too much.

Long story short, i have to say that my favorite stays Diablo III for now. Even if i don't play it anymore, it's the one that kept me hooked longest. It's easier, even in end-game, there are smaller chances of getting your character killed if you are playing hardcore due to technical problems. That's my biggest problem with Path of Exile. Most of the times, my characters died due to server/de-sync problems. And it's not a nice feeling, losing your character due to an de-sync. This never happened with Diablo 3, even if the servers had some problems.

And let's get something out of the way. Dumbed down does not mean worse regarding these games. There are people (me included) that simply love playing these kind of games where you do the same thing over and over again. These days i had a lot to work and i simply needed something to relax me after the work. A game like Grim Dawn did the job just well. I basically need an activity that do not require a lot of concentration, but that i find relaxing in the same time, ARPGs do just that for me. That's where Path of Exile failed if you ask me. It feels like an in-depth, frustrating RPG with action elements, it does not embrace the simplicity of a game like Diablo III. It almost feels like an roguelike, as you need to mess up in order to learn more about the game. Only that you are not messing up after an hour of gameplay, and you can do it after hundreds of hours.

Deathspank is an interesting one, but its steam only as far as I am aware. Would be nice to get that one here. Same with Grim Dawn.

Van Helsing, I would have mentioned this one, however the debacle that the developers have done, both by ruining the third part, and failing to provide those of us on GOG the final cut edition has really turned me off that product/developer, so currently I would NOT recommend that at all.

No love for Sacred?!:)

I have to say, the way you describe Path of Exile it's like you played some completely different game then I did. I found it rather easy to get into, the skill tree gives plenty of options, yes, but is really not nearly as complex and hard to use well as it might look, and I had no technical difficulties like you describe. And describing PoE as anything like an "in-depth RPG" is just laughable. Just because it's not Diablo III "my pet amoeba learned to play it without breaking a sweat" shallow does not make it an in-depth RPG.