Oh, I'm quite aware that it's playable as a single-player game, even when playing on closed b.net. Back in the 1.09 days I played mostly as you described, and had multiple lvl 99 characters with top-level gear, all self-found. However, that was also when I was still in college, had a ton of free time, and spent way more time grinding than could be called healthy by any stretch of the imagination. My point was that if someone is looking for more of a pick-up-and-play single-player experience then TQ would probably provide a more enjoyable experience than D2.

Hey whatever floats your boat. In Diablo II it's the mechanics that keep me playing. In fact, as soon as I hand in my assignment Monday morning I decided I will make another character. The game's formula is limited in scope, but immense in depth.

I don't agree with what you say about Blizzard, but then again we've had this discussion before. I don't think that you're using the term 'milking' correctly here. Blizzard has created three immensely successful franchises from which every single game has been an absolute landmark in gaming. That's not 'milking a franchise'. Milking is what EA does with their FIFA 199x-20xx, though I have also heard that some of their later instalments have had major overhauls.

Just checking - did you play SC2?

You can get TL for much less than 15 bucks. It's fine, the interesting gameplay will likely drop off after the main storyline (maybe a little longer on Live, if you want your achievement for maxing Fame). Honestly, one of the best ARPGs around is still Titan Quest, people knew I was gonna say it, but it doesn't make it less true. I'd suggest picking up the Titan Quest Gold pack somewhere (the expac was also really, really good, and you get that in Gold, just play the expac, includes the original game).
2006-ish.

BTW just tried the Titan Quest demo myself on my W7x64 laptop, and it got that Failed to initialize Graphics Engine error...

Indeed, DD is also a very good game. First take Diablo 1-esque gameplay and mechanics, put them in a big open world, and spice it up with a ton of quests, some of which are very different from the norm in the genre - you can't really go wrong there. As far as I remember from one playthrough, the plot was pretty unconventional as well.

Yep, Divine Divinity is a good game. It's well worth the $6 that GOG sells it for.

Pretty much this. In fact, I have successfully ignored all Diablo 2's sorry excuse of a story in favor of hacking and slashing my way to the....moment when I got bored from the repetitive gameplay.

Regarding some of the comments about Titan Quest:

- I don't think that the skills are somehow less interesting than the ones in Diablo, imho both games built their skill trees around the same mechanics. You do get bigger variety with Titan Quest since it has 9 base classes, of which you choose two for your character, which means that there are 36 class combinations you can play. And if you get bored of Titan Quest's skills, you can install one of the mods that totally change the skill system, there are about 5 of them last time I checked.

- If a boss battle is really too difficult for you due to the you have skilled your character (as alluded to in a previous post), then you can use of the Mystic NPCs to reskill your character. Costs a bit of gold and can't change character classes, but it's no problem to (for example) switch a Conqueror (Warfare/Defense skill trees) from a defensive shield-basher to a dual-wielding damage dealer, or to switch a Necromancer from a life drainer to a shooter or to a pet-based build. If getting the gold for the reskill sounds like too much grinding, then you can also do it in TQ Defiler, a fan-made editor. But I think that it's actually pretty difficult to skill a TQ character badly, as the game is pretty easy (mods that increase the difficulty are also very popular).

- Titan Quest does run on Windows 7 and on laptops, but it does require decent graphics chip, which older laptops might not have. An nVidia Ion chip should be sufficient, older Intel graphics might be problematic though due to the lack of shader support. There's a 3rd party program (called "3d Analyzer") that emulates shader support for machines that don't have it, and that might allow running TQ on laptops with weaker graphics chips, but it'll probably run too slow then - though it might be worth a try.

May I add my a-rpg black horse? Din's Curse is an indie a-rpg, with dynamic world. Monsters fight between themselfs - undead vs others -, bosses send assassins in town, they build "doomsday devices"/evil altars, npc can betray town, also they can gamble all of their money and you can help them, or they starve to death or risk doing some quest themselves, or just stole something from merchants.

And it has demo!

Din's curse is great, I second it for whatever the main topic is about.

I like both games. Hack and slash done right.

Torchlight has some awesome mods available. I'm planning on skipping Diablo 3 in favor of T2 due to price, time constraints (biggest influence) and price. I'm sure both games will be worthwhile.

I thought Titan Quest (yes even with the expansion) sucked. Couldn't play for more than five hours. 'Soulless' is how I would best describe it. Very intricate and well designed character/talent system but the actual game itself was dull, bland, boring, big open fields of enemies. Not engaging in the slightest.

Out of the pure roguelike mainstream H&S Diablo 1 is the one I'd go for - for single player (and I have no interest at all in multiplayer). Torchlight's too generic and unfocused, Diablo 2 marred by being a Multi-player game first (and supposedly a lot more fun when played online).

Diablo, for me, got it right. It's simplistic in some of it's features, but they are so much better balanced together (and that includes music, atmosphere and the process ever downward). Most other clones (including Diablo 2) just went for more, bigger, more sophisticated - but the H&S gameplay just doesn't really, imo, lend itself for "complex" and "sprawling". It gets too repetitive. Small levels, focused gameplay works so much better.

Other than that - the games that don't try to be "Diablo but bigger" are indeed the more interesting alternatives. Divine Divinty that was mentioned, with more focus on story and better quests; or Soldak Entertainment Depth of Peril and Din's Curse that do so much more with the base formula.

Well said.

People recommending Diablo 1 are a little crazy or haven't played it in ages. It's only interesting these days to play as a sorceror maybe. The actual branching out the genre did to make non-magic types remotely varied and fun was desperately needed, clone or not.

I still find D2 playable, as well as many of the entries in the genre released around that time, but D1 has not aged well at all.