I was looking at hack and slach action RPGs, and I was wondering what everyone's preferences were. I know Diablo and Diablo 2 are legendary, but I've heard that they didn't really age well. Then there's torchlight, which has a much less bloody and dark art style, but very similar gameplay. Which one should I get? Blizzard's website has Diablo 1 and 2 for $10 each, or I could get Torchlight on XBLA for $15.

Diablo 2 isn't bad, but honestly I'd probably save the money and wait for Torchlight 2 to come out. A lot of the folks working on it were working on Diablo and Diablo 2.

That being said, Diablo 2 and Torchlight are both quite fun. The main issue with both of them is limited replay value and the tendency to get kind of dull as things go. I never finished either one because I got to the point most of the way through where it just got too repetitive.

Hm......Tough choice. Diablo II has more characters and I think the skill trees are bigger and more interesting, but Torchlight has more other elements like pets, fishing, etc, etc........
After all they feel quite similar.......I think if you want to play Diablo II, you would also want to get the LoD expansion, of in total Diablo II might actually be a more expansive choice.

I'll give a kinda out of the box recommandation--Sacred Gold. It's on sale here and GetGames, and it is one of the better not-so-diablo-ish diablo clones......
The Diablo clones I think worth playing are Torchlight, Titan's Quest (more diablo-ish), Divine Divinity and Sacred Gold (not so diablo-ish)...... (Heard about Dungeon Siege, but have never played it, and they are still quite expansive after these years......)

Btw, Blizzard is still selling Diablo I?

If you really don't care, take Sacred Gold (for 4.99 USD in the current GOG sale). There are a few bugs left in it (broken event triggers if doing one specific sidequest before another), but other than that it is a very decent hack and slash.

Diablo 2 is better if you get the addon included, it adds two new classes and some nice gameplay additions. If the items are not sale specific, you can play demos first to determine if you rather want Diablo or Torchlight.

If you decide for Torchlight and can wait a few more weeks/months, get Sacred Gold or Diablo 2 with addon now and spend 20 dollars on Torchlight 2 instead later.

Both Diabo 2 and Torchlight are fun games. Torchlight has somewhat less content IIRC, but is still quite enjoyable. The main difference is, as you already mentioned, the art style and the general atmosphere. Torchlight feels more light-hearted and has comic-book style graphics, whereas Diablo can be rather dark.

Personally, I'd recommend Titan Quest though. The Gold edition is 10 € at Gamersgate (I suppose it's 10 $ for non-Europeans), and the game plays pretty much like Diablo II, is huge, has 9 character classes (as opposed to Torchlight's 3), and has (imho) way better graphics than both. It's main weakness are the non-random maps and the difficulty (it's mostly very easy), but the former isn't that much of a problem due to the size of the game, and the latter can be fixed with mods.

Really? I only check Blizzard's website and they say each is 9.99.....If they are 9.99 combined, I will consider grab one......

It's not. I had to enter both codes in order to receive both D2 and LoD. Unless you're thinking of the Diablo 2 warchest.

Don't take my word for it though. If their site says they're separate, they most likely are.

I know registering my retail Diablo2 key (old format though) gave me the expansion as well in the same package, the same was not true of Warcraft 3, its expansion is instead a separate download.

That's probably a bug as I know I didn't get it without having to register a LoD key. And that was only last year that I did that.

Ah, my key's in the old format, so that may be why.

Neither. Wait a couple of months and get Torchlight 2 for $20ish.

So was mine. I registered it because one of my discs went missing.
That was my thought earlier. But it is a bit hard to push for a game that hasn't yet been released.

True enough. Although I can't justify paying $15 for Torchlight 1 to anyone when it's been on sale a bajillion times for $5 or less and Torchlight 2 pretty much replaces it entirely. It isn't as if there is much of a story to Torchlight so not like the differences between D1 and D2.

I also think it's absurd Blizzard continues to charge $20 for the D2 package. If anything it should be like $5 to get more people interested in D3.

Torchlight is basically a remake of Diablo 1, and I like both of them far better than Diablo 2.

Diablo 2's outdoor environments are nice at first, but then it becomes a lot of running back and forth and back and forth and it's really annoying. The single dungeon design of Torchlight/Diablo 1 makes your goal far more clear with minimal backtracking.

But yeah, all three games are designed by the same general team as I recall.