Yeah!

But they are NOT a Diablo clone! They came out before it, and are better in every way.

If he's seriously considering NetHack or ADOM, I agree they are worth playing, I played them when I had no internet and poor as hell for 2 years. But there's some that are a little easier on the eyes now. I'd recommend ToME at te4.org, if only because you don't have to do excessive food micro-management.

Naturally the game is here if you wanted to expand with the <span class="bold">DLC</span>. Addons are okay but mostly mods to make the interface easier, or add new classes/races (some rather unbalanced)

There's a cyberpunk diablo-like called Restricted Area - I think GamersGate has it. Now, it needs to be said that this is not a very polished game. It is buggy and suffers from a serious lack of variety in levels. But, as long as you set your expectations appropriately, I found to be a decent way of scratching the Diablo itch with a sci-fi twist.

Other games that aren't quite diablo-likes but that might appeal to you anyway include the aforementioned Divine Divinity, and the oddball action-RPG Entomorph (which has almost no loot or character-building, but you do get to turn into a mantis and punch giant ants to death.)

Yeah, Path of Exile is the most Diablo-ish aRPG I have ever played that's not Diablo.

But does Diablo 2 still holds the candle as the perfect PC Isometric, Loot-a-thon, button mashing Action RPG? There is a reason people refers to "Diablo Clones" as Diablo Clones

I actually like food and survival mechanics in rpgs.

I s'pose, but I love the charm of these old games. Heck, it's not as 'bad' as in Ultima 1, he eats food like a demon. I say 'bad' because it's still a great game. Haha, I really gush too much.

Yeah, you can also carry thousands of food. The whole game was highly unbalanced, which perhaps is part of it's charm. In ADOM it's calculated into your weight/carrying, and that makes a huge difference in how it plays.

They really should have called it "You Won't Believe It's Not Diablo!" then.
Blizzard-fanboyism? Seriously, if Dune 2 had been developed by a company not as famous as Westwood people would be referring to all RTS games probably as "Warcraft clones" to this day. :P

(edit: cleaned up a bit, added some games to the list)

Thanks to everyone for all the responses. It comes out to quite a list! I liked hearing about the rogue-likes. I haven't played any of those for a long time. Used play Nethack on a server a long time ago. Was really fun, but dying was just so dreadfully painful. You *could* backup your character files, but that kinda ruined the experience.

Can't believe there's no definitively better game! Those Blizzard guys really nailed it, in IMHO anyway. Then kinda fell apart with the Flagship Studios / Hellgate London project.

So how the heck am I supposed to pick a solution to this?? I thought I'd be clever and post that summary and mark it as the solution, but it doesn't look like I can do that.

I guess I'm going to give the solution to rtcvb32 for the suggestion of mods since that's what I'll be trying first.

This is my best attempt at summarizing the posts so far. I had all the URLs that people posted in here, but I'm not allowed to post URLs yet. Guess the account's too new. I tried to note the one's that are on GoG when it was mentioned, but I didn't go looking for each of them.


Diablo mods!
Zy-El
Median XL
Ancients The Fury Within

Full Games:
Titan Quest
TQ mods:
"Diablo 2 Immortal - Enhanced Edition"
"Diablo 2 Lilith"
Torchlight 1 & 2 (2's better)
Nox [on GoG]
Grim Dawn (coming soon)
Divine Divinity [on GoG]
Sacred 1 & 2 [on GoG]
Dungeon Siege
Van Helsing games
Sanity: Aitken's Artifact
Din's Curse [on GoG]
Silver - looks like Final Fantasy
DarkStone [on GoG]
Fate
Throne of Darkness
Harbinger
Ecstatica 1 & 2
Progress Quest
Restricted Area - cyber punk, buggy
Heretic Kingdoms series
Loki
Silverfall series


Rogue-likes:
ADOM
Tales of Majeyal [on GoG]
DiabloRL - free - ASCII!

Online:
Path of Exile * need to stay connected to internet to play it
Diablo 3

Hi, huge Diablo fan!
In my quest for other great hack 'n slashes, I've found Path of Exile to be very good. Yes, it's online, but you don't have to play with people if you don't want to. You roam the land alone unless you join with people or have them join you through a co-op board in towns. PoE it is a true free to play; the only things you can buy are cosmetics. There are your typical character classes to play, but due to the huge, non-restrictive character building tree, you are able to customize your character however you wish. There is no gold system in PoE, rather you trade items with vendors for scrolls. At first I didn't like it, but once you get used to it, it's not so bad.

One of my favorite things about PoE is the Races they have. At the PoE website there is a calendar with scheduled races. They range from "who can get the farthest in x time" to "try to get as far as you can w/o dying in this custom made dungeon". Sometimes there are weird rules added like, you can only use melee or all enemies are immune to magic. To run these races you have to use a brand new character, so everyone starts at the same advantage. By completing so much in a race you get points that go towards special, very unique loot.

WooHoo!

But seriously, Zy-El for someone who hasn't played it before is very hard. Kato (the Mod creator) stated in the manual he wanted you to feel like you were weak at level 1; And he succeeded. I think it took me a solid week to get to 30th level, then once i got 1-2 posters the game became considerably less monotonous. I almost quit playing before i got my poster, glad i didn't :P If you get stressed after a few days, do co-op and get a little help from Multiplayer... Or cheat. Someone's given a tutorial on how they ended up with elite equipment and tons of stuff, without ever leaving the camp just by making use of the new character and the various stashes from PlugY.



As a side note, use the players multiplier, but use it sparingly until you're decently strong. Using it after clearing an area and then opening the chests will give you a lot more booty for your buck, but remember the traps are multiplied too so it might instantly kill you with a dart trap!

There's a lot more help in the Zy-El specific forums, so i'd probably go there if you need help/have questions. I occasionally check up on it, but it's been a while. don't expect updates to Zy-El, as the limitations of the Horodric cube (something like 300 million combinations) were pretty much full.

Yeah, maybe should have mentioned that it's not currently available for download from any on-line stores, it was developed by Monolith and published by Fox/Vivendi which sounds disturbingly like it's publishing rights would have fallen down the back of the same filing cabinet as No One Lives Forever
http://www.pcgamer.com/no-one-lives-forever-lives-in-licensing-limbo/
When Vivendi bought Activision (or whatever happened there)

It's not a serious contender for the crown of 'best game like Diablo that isn't Diablo 2' though, but as a change of setting, worth a look as a curiosity, I liked it enough to finish it anyway (this may have just meant it was short though - can't remember now)

Features the voice of Ice-T too, Ice-T fans!

*fnord*

Sorry I just still like Diablo 1 alot despite its flaws.