Best ARPG of all time

horrorshow

Lakewood Original
Joined
Dec 14, 2007
Messages
9,420
Discuss.

Diablo 2, Diablo 3, Torchlight 1/2, Titan Quest:IT, Sacred 1/2, Path of Exile or other?
 
I can't say a favorite. I love D2 as its a classic. I also think sacred one is a classic and traveling deep under caves to fight dragons with friends was great fun. Sacred 2 was also good fun and never did explore the whole map. I also liked Titan Quest, it was very good I just wish it had more randomization to the levels. Torchlight 2 is good but I think I like all the games I listed so far more.
 
Best of all time is Diablo II.

One of my favorites nobody ever mentions and is kind obscure is a game called Revenant. I love that game.
 
I have a love/hate relationship with Diablo2 and it's kind. It's crack. There is always another carrot dangling in front of your face that you have to grind for. Diablo 2's single player quest was a lot of fun the first time through... then online it was all about skipping the useless quests and grinding the right areas over and over again. I lost so much sleep.
 
I think that D2 was the most balanced and they did set the benchmark (every ARPG that came after them was measured against them) ... I would put TQ as a close second though ... they had the Diablo formula down pretty well (lots of monsters to slay, tons and tons of stuff to collect, and complex and meaningful character development trees :)
 
Of the ones you listed; titan quest; but there are others not listed that were quite fun.
 
Will Divinity Original Sin fall into ARPG category? If yes then this is my pick. Before that Divine Divinity.
 
Van Helsing is pretty damn fun. Good combat, loot, story, and geaphics; however I think D3 has them all beat right now.
 
D2. Still to many memories to say anything different. POE is second bc of all the build diversity.

People may want to look into van helsing as well. Really good and the complete edition is currently part of the humble bundle on the lowest tier.
 
I think D2 LOD was something truly special.
I enjoyed TItan Quest and Sacred 2 a lot also.
POE is also something special, although it didn't hold my interest for very very long.
I thought Van Helsing was meh.
Diablo 3 is only ok.
 
Will Divinity Original Sin fall into ARPG category? If yes then this is my pick. Before that Divine Divinity.

Original Sin? No, because of it's turn-based combat.

The original Divine Divinity.... What a great game.
 
Of the ones you listed; titan quest; but there are others not listed that were quite fun.

Feel free to name whatever, it's not a vote :)

I wanna buy Grim Dawn for example but $25 for a half finished game seems kinda ridiculous.... (Plus, I've been burned by pre-releases before.. *cough* Castle Story *cough*)
 
I think that D2 was the most balanced and they did set the benchmark (every ARPG that came after them was measured against them) ... I would put TQ as a close second though ... they had the Diablo formula down pretty well (lots of monsters to slay, tons and tons of stuff to collect, and complex and meaningful character development trees :)

Sacred 2 was a beast.

Pity we didn't get the expansion state-side etc....
 
If I had to go by the total number of hours I dumped into the game before tiring of it and moving on... The ONLY answer can be D2 + expansions. Followed by the original Diablo, then Titan's Quest, which is so freaking long I NEVER finished it...

D3 didn't hold my attention for very long once I made it through the game a couple times. I'm not the type that gets into farming for pieces for hours to hopefully get a piece that might help me survive the insane difficulties...

worm
 
Diablo 2, pre 1.10 where they ruined gear diversity. Absolutely no contest. If they'd destroyed all the hexes/ith/hacked items in 1.09, that would have been a perfect patch for a perfect game.
 
Titan Quest: Immortal Throne

Loved the environmental settings. It had diverse and interesting enemies. The graphics still look great by today's standards. Sparse but interesting story. Great class leveling system that allowed plenty of viable builds, with the kind of theory crafting you see today with PoE (but on a smaller scale). The kinds of gear that you feel the NEED to collect every piece of it. Plenty of mod and community support to this day.

And something that I feel is lost in most of today's ARPGs except PoE: gameplay progression that makes complete sense.

I can't wait for the final release of Grim Dawn :D.

Van Helsing is pretty damned good, too, I just haven't put nearly as many hours into it as TQ. I also hope to play through the Divinity series some day...
 
Diablo 2 is of course the grand daddy of the genre.

Lately I gave the Path of Exile a try, and it felt like a pretty solid game with lots of options for tweaking your character. Not bad for a completely free game with a fair F2P system (cosmetic and few convenience items only). Apparently the game is also tuned to have decent team experience with support skill available.

One word of caution though, I really suggest installing the game to SSD drive. It does a lot of pre-load caching, which can lead to a very long initial loading times when using a HDD.
 
D2 LOD no doubt is the best still. Add Nox somewhere to that list.

If you consider ARPGs from other perspectives then I'd say Dark Souls was more fun experience than D2.
 
Am I missing something or are we only talking about "overhead loot collecting" games? ARPG just means action, doesn't it?
I immediately thought of the Witcher, Mass Effect, Dark Souls, and the various Elder Scrolls and Fallout games.
 
Am I missing something or are we only talking about "overhead loot collecting" games? ARPG just means action, doesn't it?
I immediately thought of the Witcher, Mass Effect, Dark Souls, and the various Elder Scrolls and Fallout games.
The only one from that list I would consider an ARPG is Dark Souls. The others are western RPGs. I really think the more appropriate term for what we're talking about here is cRPG, but ARPG has become the commonly accepted term for Diablo-type games.
 
Seems like an odd term to apply to a small genre of games. I don't really think you're "role playing" in Diablo (any of them) any more than you're role playing in Metroid or Castlevania.
I interpret action RPG to be anything that isn't turn based or pausable like the Baldur's Gate and Dragon Age type games. Something that takes a little finesse to go with strategy.
 
Seems like an odd term to apply to a small genre of games. I don't really think you're "role playing" in Diablo (any of them) any more than you're role playing in Metroid or Castlevania.
I interpret action RPG to be anything that isn't turn based or pausable like the Baldur's Gate and Dragon Age type games. Something that takes a little finesse to go with strategy.

It is just gamer nuance ... the rogue like games (Diablo, D2, Torchlight, Titan's Quest, etc) are considered RPGs because of the character development trees; the action prefix is related to the real time nature of the games and the constant quest of loot and monsters ... many other subclasses exist typically: JRPG (your Japan style games like Final Fantasy), TBRPG (Turn Based RPGs like Baldur's Gate, Might and Magic, etc), FPRPG (your first person games like Fallout 3, Skyrim, Oblivion, Witcher) ... the same thing gets applied to most gaming genres so the niche players can more easily identify the games in the niche they prefer
 
What is the distinction between Action RPGs and Adventure RPGs? Is there another name?
 
I'll never understand why D2 gets rated higher than the original diablo.

I guess its scale for most people ... the first Diablo was Rogue with fancy graphics ... it was an extended dungeon crawl with three different classes ... Diablo 2 took it to the next level ... outdoor environments made a bigger game, more classes, and lots more treasure and treasure options (like Runes) ... and D2 had better graphics than its predecessor ... all things that tend to put it over the original (and that doesn't even include the MP crowd who had a better experience with D2 than Diablo)
 
Back
Top