Diablo clones that don't suxxorz

[Snufkin]

Diablo 2 MedianXL.

 

[Damned Registrations]

I want to like Grim Dawn. But I've got two hangups with it. The first is that it's ugly. Not a fan of the art direction (it's like two artists, one obssessed with neon and the other obssessed with brown grit were assigned to make something together and couldn't agree, ever) and on a technical level it looks much worse than Diablo 2 did.

The secon hangup is that the character classes are AWFUL. The whole constellation thing is cool once you figure out all the shit it lets you do (I didn't initially think it'd let your minions proc on hit effects, for example) but the base class abilities are so, so fucking bad. Like half of them are just 'toggle this on and you do extra damage.' Each class has like 4 active abilities, and even those tend to be super barebones shit like 'throw a bomb' or 'fire a beam.' You'd never find something as creative as all the cool shit in PoE where you like, send a clone forward and create a series of AoE damage feels along it's path and then teleport to it when you stop channeling. PoE has dozens of skills that do weird creative shit like that. Even diablo 2 had a hanfdul, and so does Last Epoch. Grim Dawn has none, as far as I recall, so all you can really do is slap various effects on hit onto your normal attacs. Really cool effects on hit, granted, but still.

 

[Eisen]

Each class has like 4 active abilities, and even those tend to be super barebones shit like 'throw a bomb' or 'fire a beam.'

Yeah, that's exactly why i've dropped Grim Dawn

 

[Beans00]

Off the top of my head in no particular order

Nox is the best but it's not really a 'clone', more westwood take on the ARPG
Darkstone is cool(diablo with 2 characters)
titan quest
torchlight 1, 2 is ok too but I prefered 1
dungeon siege if you want a full party but the game is kind of boring, great soundtrack though
sacred/sacred 2 are ok, 1 is better

 

[ferratilis]

I want to like Grim Dawn. But I've got two hangups with it. The first is that it's ugly. Not a fan of the art direction (it's like two artists, one obssessed with neon and the other obssessed with brown grit were assigned to make something together and couldn't agree, ever) and on a technical level it looks much worse than Diablo 2 did.

The secon hangup is that the character classes are AWFUL. The whole constellation thing is cool once you figure out all the shit it lets you do (I didn't initially think it'd let your minions proc on hit effects, for example) but the base class abilities are so, so fucking bad. Like half of them are just 'toggle this on and you do extra damage.' Each class has like 4 active abilities, and even those tend to be super barebones shit like 'throw a bomb' or 'fire a beam.' You'd never find something as creative as all the cool shit in PoE where you like, send a clone forward and create a series of AoE damage feels along it's path and then teleport to it when you stop channeling. PoE has dozens of skills that do weird creative shit like that. Even diablo 2 had a hanfdul, and so does Last Epoch. Grim Dawn has none, as far as I recall, so all you can really do is slap various effects on hit onto your normal attacs. Really cool effects on hit, granted, but still.

I'm sure you haven't played in a long time. The point about art style is personal preference, but when it comes to other things, they have changed a lot since release. On the technical side: 64-bit, deferred rendering, better anti-aliasing, better performance, more stable. On the gameplay side: every class now has a movement skill, many skills have been buffed to make builds viable, endgame has been improved, more constellations with interesting abilities, new masteries, there's a bunch of other tweaks to make the game more enjoyable.

What I don't like about PoE is the mechanics bloat over the years, focus on trading, and the fact that endgame looks like a zoom fest. Grim Dawn is slower, but has more enjoyable gameplay imo. And the feeling of hitting enemies is more satisfying in GD. My biggest gripe with GD was endgame, but they've improved it a lot over the years, with Shattered Ralm and Celestial bosses. I recommend giving it another try.

 

[luj1]

Nox

Revenant

Harbinger

Prince of Qin

Throne of Darkness

 

[Baron Tahn]

The other thing that sucks about Grim Dawn is its try hard, super camp 'dark' writing style. It's consistent enough at least but it comes across like a cheap brand knockoff of 'Grim'. Like all the place names look like they want to wear $2 plastic vampire fangs and a zany vampire cape and run around going 'bleh, be carevul not to wissit the Steeeeps ov Torment, or the extra scawy Blood Grove, ooOOooh, it's haaaaunted'.

 

[luj1]

Both Grim Dawn and Path of Exile are ugly and lack style.

 

[NwNgger]

Sacred would be my pick. It combined Diablo style gameplay with an Elder Scrolls like open world and it's very detailed with lots of interesting quests. All the characters you can pick to play have interesting and unique mechanics that make multiple playthroughs very viable. It's also completely offline. So you can play it without having to worry about some Globohomo authorization server.

 

[Vlajdermen]

The other thing that sucks about Grim Dawn is its try hard, super camp 'dark' writing style. It's consistent enough at least but it comes across like a cheap brand knockoff of 'Grim'. Like all the place names look like they want to wear $2 plastic vampire fangs and a zany vampire cape and run around going 'bleh, be carevul not to wissit the Steeeeps ov Torment, or the extra scawy Blood Grove, ooOOooh, it's haaaaunted'.

True, but it's so standard in video games that it's hard to be bothered by it.

 

[Vlajdermen]

Sacred would be my pick. It combined Diablo style gameplay with an Elder Scrolls like open world and it's very detailed with lots of interesting quests.

Oy vey, that doesn't sound good. The next time someone tried combining Diablo with The Elder Scrolls was Kingdoms of Amalur, and it ended up in a frustratingly flat game with mechanics that could've made it great if they weren't half-assed.

 

[NwNgger]

Sacred would be my pick. It combined Diablo style gameplay with an Elder Scrolls like open world and it's very detailed with lots of interesting quests.

Oy vey, that doesn't sound good. The next time someone tried combining Diablo with The Elder Scrolls was Kingdoms of Amalur, and it ended up in a frustratingly flat game with mechanics that could've made it great if they weren't half-assed.

Try it. It's way better than that piece of shit Kingdoms of Amalur. Sacred has a huge amount of rich mechanics to sink your teeth into. It isn't a casual game at all. It's a top down isometric Diablo clone that plays like Diablo mixed with Elder Scrolls. It's fun.

 

[Vlajdermen]

Sacred would be my pick. It combined Diablo style gameplay with an Elder Scrolls like open world and it's very detailed with lots of interesting quests.

Oy vey, that doesn't sound good. The next time someone tried combining Diablo with The Elder Scrolls was Kingdoms of Amalur, and it ended up in a frustratingly flat game with mechanics that could've made it great if they weren't half-assed.

Try it. It's way better than that piece of shit Kingdoms of Amalur. Sacred has a huge amount of rich mechanics to sink your teeth into. It isn't a casual game at all. It's a top down isometric Diablo clone that plays like Diablo mixed with Elder Scrolls. It's fun.

where do the elder scrolls elements come into play if it's isometric?

 

[NwNgger]

Sacred would be my pick. It combined Diablo style gameplay with an Elder Scrolls like open world and it's very detailed with lots of interesting quests.

Oy vey, that doesn't sound good. The next time someone tried combining Diablo with The Elder Scrolls was Kingdoms of Amalur, and it ended up in a frustratingly flat game with mechanics that could've made it great if they weren't half-assed.

Try it. It's way better than that piece of shit Kingdoms of Amalur. Sacred has a huge amount of rich mechanics to sink your teeth into. It isn't a casual game at all. It's a top down isometric Diablo clone that plays like Diablo mixed with Elder Scrolls. It's fun.

where do the elder scrolls elements come into play if it's isometric?

It's an Open World in the same way as an Elder Scrolls game or an MMORPG is an Open World game. Which I already said. It's an isometric game that plays like Diablo 2. But in an open world where you're free to do as you please. I realise you're ESL but I'm getting tired of repeating myself.

 

[Kruyurk]

I'll recommend Inquisitor though it wasn't bad, Is apparently going offline/got an off-line patch and recently got a new class I think.

I understand that you are referring to W40k Inquisitor: Martyr, not the older Inquisitor isometric RPG? Just pointing out the possible confusion.

 

[Vlajdermen]

Sacred would be my pick. It combined Diablo style gameplay with an Elder Scrolls like open world and it's very detailed with lots of interesting quests.

Oy vey, that doesn't sound good. The next time someone tried combining Diablo with The Elder Scrolls was Kingdoms of Amalur, and it ended up in a frustratingly flat game with mechanics that could've made it great if they weren't half-assed.

Try it. It's way better than that piece of shit Kingdoms of Amalur. Sacred has a huge amount of rich mechanics to sink your teeth into. It isn't a casual game at all. It's a top down isometric Diablo clone that plays like Diablo mixed with Elder Scrolls. It's fun.

where do the elder scrolls elements come into play if it's isometric?

It's an Open World in the same way as an Elder Scrolls game or an MMORPG is an Open World game. Which I already said. It's an isometric game that plays like Diablo 2. But in an open world where you're free to do as you please. I realise you're ESL but I'm getting tired of repeating myself.

Oh... I'm so tired... It's okay, maybe he's just ESL... Oh my Lord, it ain't pretty being me...

 

[deama]

Not sure how much you wanna stretch your definition, but what about Evil Islands? It's sort of like a diablo + jagged alliance.
Has a custom spell making system, and allows you to add in spell effects to armour as well, and other features blended in from jagged alliance type of games.

Divine Divinity? I quite liked the atmosphere of it, and graphics have aged very, very well. Nice music too. It's like an open world diablo, more similar to sacred in that regard.

 

[Zarniwoop]

Sacred

 

[Grampy_Bone]

Here you go, Silverfall for a dollar.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4420/Silverfall/

 

[JarlFrank]

Honestly, I played so many C-tier Diablo clones in the 00s that I wore myself out on the genre. Diablo was my first RPG, and Diablo 2 my second, so I was fond of it in my early teens. Both Diablo games also had gorgeous 2D art so progressing through the areas felt rewarding just for seeing all the cool environments.

But the genre itself is just incredibly shallow and repetitive by nature. Click on mobs until you level up, repeat. Most mobs aren't much of a danger to you. Only bosses offer a challenge. Most of it is just mindless clicking and farming random item drops. Gets boring very, very quickly. Usually the structure is pretty linear, too, and level design is randomized and random level layouts are always repetitive and boring.

Titan Quest and Grim Dawn at least have decent character building and hand-made worlds, but the structure is still linear as fuck and all you do is click on mobs until you level up. Not much to it.

Sacred is my favorite Diablo clone because it offers you an open world to explore, rather than just sending you along a linear path. At some points in the game you can explore openly, and there are some optional side areas too. That's pretty unique for a Diablo clone, and makes exploration much more interesting.

I don't consider games like Divine Divinity or Lionheart to be straight Diablo clones because they also have towns and dialog trees and quests that aren't just about clicking on mobs. They use Diablo-style combat, but there's so much else going on that it would be unfair to call them Diablo clones (although both games do devolve into mob clicking in the later levels).

 

[JarlFrank]

It's not that common that the first game in a genre also happens to be the greatest. D1 and Super Metroid come to mind.

Super Metroid isn't the first game in its series

EDIT: ok you said genre, but arguably the original Metroid qualifies too

 

[Cryomancer]

Sacred 1, Titan Quest and Grim Dawn are imo the best ones.

But you can also check Diablo 1 mods. I would recommend Belzebub.

 

[Spike]

Median Ultimative mod for Diablo 2 (makes it an entirely different game)
ReModded for Diablo 2 Resurrected, completely revamps skills and adds 2 post-game dungeons each with 100 levels

 

[Baron Tahn]

Wot u said

I've been back and replayed Diablo a number of times. Diablo 1 that is, I never clicked with 2.

While it may be by its nature a repetitive clicker, something about the whole package of 1 just nails it. Golden era blizzard, OG battle.net, the atmosphere, the sound design, the v/o, the proc gen...nothing ever recaptured it.

The music of Tristram followed up by that descent into the dungeon with the echoey, dark music, the skeletons getting trashed with a sound like dusty bones and the zombies with their dull moans and sounds like torn rotten meat...All the way through a fairly standard cellar style dungeon up to The Butcher and his room full of gore that set the tone for the further descent to hell. Just great stuff.

 

[asper]

Nox is a very good game, very smooth in the playstyle. No clicking, but holding buttons, and quite some innovations (line of sight with opening closing doors, etc) Very much an underappreciated gem, worth checking out