Diablo IV, for me. I love the Diablo series and just a bit ago, I sank 2 hours down to get my necromancer character up and set in Diablo II Resurrection. I have Diablo III and its expansion too, but they’re online only and I almost can’t be bothered to go through that. I’ve beaten it a long time ago.
And I really do want to get Diablo IV, but they’ve made that online-only as well. Like, I know I’m always online and everything but I do like to have that fallback where if I am without internet or I can’t afford internet for a time, I can play or watch things to bide the time over. I can’t do that with online-only games because it’s like being gated away from something you bought.
So everytime I look at Diablo IV, I just get a little depressed at times. Blizzard should do what D2R did, have an online character and have an offline character.
Diablo III and IV don’t have a monopoly on the genre. There’s Titan Quest, Grim Dawn, and the Borderlands games, all playable offline, even in multiplayer. They’re not exactly Diablo, but you’ll hardly get closer than Grim Dawn, and there’s no reason you need to be married to the Diablo IP anyway. That kind of brand stickiness is how you get taken advantage of.
Personally, when something like that doesn’t respect my values, I’m not even finding myself tempted by them these days. Oh, it’s always online? It’s dead to me. There’s a deluge of other stuff to play, including games that are similar but respect my values.
What did you think of Torchlight? I’m a bit surprised it didn’t make your list.
…well, then again, I haven’t played anything you listed, so I can’t compare.
I’m a very recent fan of loot games, and I only briefly tried Torchlight 1 as more of an academic exercise to see how the genre evolved over time. There was some special sauce that I observed starting around Borderlands 3 or Pre-Sequel (that I suspect originated in Diablo 3) around class design that was still absent from Torchlight. Other than that, I didn’t form much of an opinion on it.
I’ve played a lot of ARPGs and every one of them has their different flavors. But, I’m a type that wants a specific flavor and trying other flavors just makes me feel like it’s not good enough. It’s kind of like it’s a discount version of that flavor I like. I’m playing a game that’s inspired by the game that defined the genre. Just to expand a little, I am not trying to say that the games mentioned are terrible. I’ve touched upon Grim Dawn and Titan a few times.
But a lot of the time, my mood and feeling always darts for Diablo.
I’m a big fan of Last Epoch for ARPGs
I feel that, Im a huge diablo fan but 4 was incredibly disappointing. FWIW i think path of exile gets the closest to the formula, I’ve also had a lot of fun with early access in poe2
I’m in a similar boat. I don’t know if you’ve heard the news, but it looks like some of the old D2 devs are now working on Darkhaven. It’s not out yet, but there’s hope!