It's not nearly as stat and rules heavy as a game like BG, with character development being much more in line with typical ARPGs (perhaps even a bit simpler, although not by much). It doesn't do the hack-and-slash gameplay quite as well as more pure ARPGs (Diablo, Torchlight, Titan Quest), but if you're looking for a combination of ARPG gameplay with a good story and characters and an open world to explore then Divine Divinity is an excellent choice.

Isn't there a Doom 3 mod that sorta mimics the original Diablo's "One hundred floors, straight down, with a teleporter to town every ten" dungeon delving gameplay? I can't remember the name of it, but it was a lot of fun.

I think that demo fails to have a lot of the patching that went into the full game, i.e. it's not a good predictor. Check forums and see if people have trouble running it on setups such as yours.

Never played Diablo, so I can't answer the OP question, but I can tell you that Torchlight is nicer than the original Fate trilogy. But yeah, wait for several months and we'll (hopefully) get Torchlight 2, so if you can wait just wait.

Gameplay mechanics-wise, Divine Divinity is not very complex at all. (In fact I'd say it's a little bit too simple for my tastes.) Still, it's action-RPG combined with an open world done right. The locations are interesting, the quests and characters numerous, and the story is a lot deeper than what you might have gotten used to from playing other games in the genre. Overall I'd say it's a great entry point into A-RPGs.

Not at all complex. Like I said, DD is definitely worth sinking your teeth into. There was a large demo as well which you can try. However it only shows the beginning town and dungeon, which although a lot of fun, don't really show how awesome the game is.

So does that mean I get credited with answering your question? :)

The link is http://onlyagame.typepad.com/only_a_game/2005/09/post_mortem_gho.html

I think I'm definitely getting DD eventually, but what does that link have to do with anything?

That's hilarious. I was looking up a link in a ghost master review and still had it in my clipboard. Decided to buy it while on sale

The real link was supposed to be to the DD demo

http://www.fileplanet.com/87654/80000/fileinfo/Divine-Divinity-Demo

Titan Quest can be a fun game of balancing a spreadsheet in ancient rome.

Yes it has a lot of classes, but a lot of them share skills with oh so slight variation and an unfortunately large number of them boil down to 'a colour halo unique to your class appears at your feet or on your weapon and you do more damage per swing', perhaps for a brief time your default attack animation plays faster.

Too many of the skills have you just upgrading the math behind the scenes. You're encouraged to pick two classes that synergise for big math damage. Visually... there's little to no upgrade path for far too many of the classes.

The world pace is already quite slow, spending hours to improve your character for a small boost to the behind the scenes math gets a bit tedious. It really needed to spice up skill visual effects and long game variety.

Not to nitpick or anything, but I think it's set in Ancient Greece. Granted, I've only played it for a couple of hours and that was years ago, so I might be wrong.

Diablo II all the way. You can play this game for years if you like genre. And believe me no game could even come closer to it. Atmosphere is unique and the game is like an addiction.

Greece, Egypt, Babylon, China, and Hades. Rome is the only main ancient empire that the game _doesn't_ touch. I'd also debate the "spreadsheet" part. I work with spreadsheets. I've played Titan Quest for a while. I don't see any similarities between the two. Every decent strategy game has more similarities to a spreadsheet than Titan Quest. Actually, I'd also debate the whole rest of the post, since only one or two skills per class do the thing that (according to the post) "a large number of them" do, but hey, everyone's entitled to his opinion. :)

Actually, I think, this thread has done a pretty good job in explaining the differences between the main games in the genre. While we certainly won't come to a consensus, I think this thread is pretty informative for those who consider buying one.

I'd pick Torchlight. I'd pick Torchlight because when it comes right down to it I simply found it more fun. It entertained me more.

My mum would probably disagree with me. She loved Diablo, then loved Diablo II, then loved Sacred and is still on sacred. She has played both Fate (with all the exps) and Torchlight. Sunk easily over a hundred hours into both of those. She still prefers Sacred. She talks about her Zombie horse all the time.

I liked sacred too, but I played it once all the way through in co-op with her and I'd had enough. Because Fate and Torchlight are not really set up quite the same way they are much more inviting to play for a few hours FOREVER between other games.

I doubt I'd ever play any of the other games again, but Fate (and/or torchlight) will most likely be mandatory installs on my machine, just like firefox. A computer would just feel lacking with out one of them on there.

I would really go for Diablo 2. It's my main game at the moment (playing it on nightmare now, lvl 52 Hammerdin) and loving every moment of it. The atmosphere is unique, looting is addicting and leveling my character is the most fun I had in a long time.

Also this game works perfectly on my HP DM1 Netbook