Such a great show

Points 1 and 2 apply to most, if not all Diablo style ARPGs.

Point 3 - Diablo is not the only game in the genre that offers a fair balance between simplicity and complexity... i would even say there are better games when it comes to that particular aspect. For example - Torchlight II

Point 4 - Yes, the game has maybe the best grind in the genre, it's hard to argue here. However, others have come close to it... like Titan Quest and Grim Dawn, which offer a different type of grind, but just as addicting, if you understand what makes it special and different.

Point 5 - Simplicity has nothing to do with it - it's an easy to use, but also outdated system. Any generic skill hotbar, in combination with the mouse buttons as asigned skills > the Diablo 2's hotkey system.

Point 6 - I agree, except cooldowns can be a good thing when done right. What i hate is when every single skill in a game has to have an f'n cooldown... i like it best when it's a well done mixture of both - Torchlight series, Titan Quest, Grim Dawn and of course, Diablo 2.

7. Not something i would consider a valid point to determine the "best game ever" - for me, the best game ever must stand out as a single player game first... while the multiplayer should be irrelevant when comparing a game with multi, against single player only candidates for the title of "the best game ever"... because we are comparing Diablo 2 with other games outside of the Diablo style games bubble, right? More on that bellow...

Point 8? Where is it, you've missed it.

Point 9 - Yeah, the itemization is brilliant... well, not really... i'll explain what i mean. I love how you can make use of almost everything in the game and you have to open your eyes even for some withes in late game... not to mention how important grey items can be, right? No other game in the genre does itemization like Diablo 2... at least from the games i have played. Still... there's a lot to nitpick with Diablo 2's system... Like how there are some cool low level unique weapons, that you have to get incredibly lucky to find, because who's farming normal for uniques? So when you accidentally drop one of these "great" early game uniques in Act 1, is all great right? Well, no, because you can easily make some low level runewords that outclass them, making those uniques, and their rarity, pointless. How many uniques and sets are outclassed by low and mid level runewords in this game? There is no balance between the two and that's a deep flaw for me. Also, the incredible rarity of some uniques does not equal their usefulness, which is another flaw. So to summarize - the itemization is addicting, but is also all over the place, a near chaos <--- and please, don't tell me that this is what makes it great... because it's not, it's a flaw!

Point 10 - i don't see any advantage here. In every ARPG you can build fast clearing characters. And speaking of fast clearing characters and BALANCE... where in Diablo 2 is the balance between melee characters and some particular OP caster builds??? Sorry but what Diablo 2 does is not my idea of balance. There will be balance if all viable builds in the game can compete with each other in clear speed, but as we know, that's not the case here.


Diablo 2 is not perfect and never will be... but hey, it doesn't have to be perfect in order to be great. I'm surprised you didn't mention the game's atmosphere, setting, soundtrack and art direction in your list, as these are probably the strongest traits of D2. However the game lacks in the story department... yes, i know, a lot of people will jump to defend the story... but no, D2 hardly has the story and the characters to compete with some pure RPGs and even some action adventure games (Deckard Cain is not enough). Is it the greatest isometric ARPG out there? I would say, yes! But the greatest game ever? Far from it. It's all a matter of opinion, i know... that's why the two games that i consider to be the greatest ever, also have their flaws, but not big enough to change my mind about them - i'm talking about the first two games of the german RPG saga "Gothic". They have it all - the setting, the atmosphere, the characters, the story, incredible mood building soundtrack... all that in addition to a masterclass world building and true rpg elements, with one of the most satisfying character progressions in the genre. Sure, they have, at times, terrible voice acting, sort of an Average Joe main hero (that's for a reason by the way) and controls that are hard to get used to, but still, no other game can come close to the overall greatness of Gothic and Gothic 2 (with the Night of the Raven expansion).

There you go - my input.

This post was edited by KillingIsMyBusiness on Oct 17 2020 01:38am

Too bad the game is completely ruined now.

Point 8 is the most important reason of all!!!! - TBC


and yes i could have wrote a longer list and yes not everyone will agree to my points and i think you make some valid points

Very valid points. I’m pretty sure i agree with everything here. For pint 6, cool downs, are you referring to the cool downs such as meteor/frozen orb/nova. And OP started with talking about buffing, and my first thought about that is the BO/shout/frozen armor etc.

You mention torchlight and grim dawn a couple times with a few others. I’ve only played the trial version of torchlight a while ago and only looked at grim dawn via YouTube. I’m sure both of them have a similar feel to diablo through the whole game, but how are they, independently from diablo? Grim was a possible purchase but wasn’t sure.

Agreed, online play has been destroyed. All bots and wait times, I got a co-worker to start playing the game again but when he started talking about all the wait times I never started back online..

Need another ban wave of the bots like a couple years ago.. And learn to stick to random ban waves.

From words of the infamous TRUMP " Make DIABLO great again"

Thank you for taking the time to read, despite... well... you know... me being an asshole an saying some stupid shit awhile back.

Yes, i mostly refer to cooldowns like Meteor, Frozen Orb, Poison Nova and similar skills in other games... i'm not saying these skills are perfect they way they are right now, i just like the idea of a mixture of powerful cooldown skills with other powerful skills that you can just spam at the cost of faster mana drain. I don't like how the game deals with buff skills like Orders, Holly Shield, Shapeshifting and others. I think these skills should be semi-passive, by that i mean, once you activate them, they should stay active until you decide to deactivate them... because who wants to get debuffed in the middle of a fight, on hardcore, because he forgot to recast his buffs? I doubt there are people here who like the extra pressure of constantly thinking "hm, when was the last time i cast my BO, is it time to do it again?". My point is, once you're in the battlefield, you have no reason to not want these skills active, so why are they like that?


Torchlight 1 is a very casual game, i do mean very casual, almost to a negative point... yeah, even for my noob standards. Both TL 1 and TL 2 are like cartoonish versions of Diablo 1 and 2. The first one is simple, straightforward and takes you underground into a multi-layered dungeon, until you reach the Big Bad in hell (sort of). I've played it twice, on normal and it was a lot of fun, but i haven't touch it since, nor have i felt any desire to do so.

Torchlight 2 expands a lot on the first game, it's a real gem in my opinion. You have similar skill trees like in Diablo 2 - 10 skills per tree, with synergies between certain skills. It also has a skill tier system - every active skill (21 per character) upgrades to a new tier after you invest 5 skill points in it. Tier upgraded skills makes them more powerful or add additional abilities to them. What i probably love the most is how cleverly they made the attribute system - it's basically the same as D2's attributes at first look, but the way it works gives you more freedom to spread you attribute points. Strength gives not only physical damage, but also adds to critical damage. Dexterity determines your dodge chance and critical chance. Energy/Mana determines your mana pool, but also increases the chance to use both weapons simultaneously when dual wielding. Vitality adds to the armor rating and block chance. In other words, the way you spread you attr. points is determined by the type of character YOU want to build. I know you can do that in D2 too, but vitality being so important more or less, tells you not to give yourself so much freedom. In TL 2 you don't have to worry about not spending points in vitality, because vitality is not crucial at all when it comes to your life pool.
The game has a big emphasis on socketing, there are a ton of socketable items... a lot of useless ones that you can re-roll in the horadric cube version of the game and hope to get something useful, but also unique and legendary socketables in the form of skulls - these can be very valuable upgrades, but can only spawn from glowing chests, which makes farming them a pain.


Grim Dawn i haven't played much since the first expansion came out. The game is addicting, but i just love Titan Quest more, which is partially done by the same team of developers, back in 2006. The two games have similarities, but are also quite different.
Titan Quest is the game that i rank in close second place when it comes to this type of games. The main reason is the setting. Going through beautifully crafted epic ares in Anciant Grece, Egypt, Mesopotamia, the Orient, the Underworld and with new expansions - Northern Europe during the vikings' age and now also, Atlantis... it really is a great experience for me. If i have to summarize the whole game in one word, i would call it a JOURNEY! You never stop moving through new areas in TQ. In this game there's no "here's one hub area that you'll spend the entire act in", no. Instead you travel through ancient cities where you trade and take quests from, but you almost never have to look back. It's just such a nice change of pace, atmosphere and tone from Diablo 2... it's one of those game that is perfect to go back to when you're burnt out on D2.
I've mentioned Titan Quest's grind... For me what makes it great is all the things that makes it different from D2. Here you have 2 layers of unique items - Epics and Legendaries. The epic items can be found troughout all difficulties, but legendaries only drop in Epic and Legendary difficulty (the equivalent of nightmare and hell)... and you really have to get to legendary difficulty for the really good stuff. The game also have 3 tiers of rare items... there are your regular rares (equivalent of the yellow items in D2) that can be really good if you roll the right affixes, but what makes them even better is the option to socket them with relics and charms... something you can't do with epic and legendary items. The second tier of rares is the so called Monster Rares. These are rare items that can be dropped by specific groups of monster, and have one predetermined magical affix and you can roll up to 2 additional rare affixes on them. But the best rare items in the game are the "Monster Infrequents" - these types of rares have predetermined unique bonuses and on top of that you can get up to 2 additional affixes that can be taken from both, the rare and magic affix pools, which can result in a God tier item. It won't be an exaggeration if i say right now that the best weapons and armors in the game are well rolled MI's. And let's not forget that you can also socket MR and MI items with relics and charms, with additional completion bonuses to make them even better. Not to mention that MI's and MR's get more powerful versions on higher difficulties. Of course there's no way to know all this if not for the very useful item database you can find on the internet - it's a must have guide for every TQ farmer.
The relics and charms are TQ's version of the runes, but they work differently. Relics are act and difficulty specific (for the most part), meaning every act has a different pool of relics to drop, while every new difficulty offers a more powerful version of the same relics and charms. Charms are monster specific, meaning, you can farm a specific charm from a specific group of monsters. Want some boar hide? Go hunt some boars in acts 1 and 5. Want turtle shell, go to the swamps and lay the smackdown on the turtles there. Relics can drop from all monsters and bosses, but if you want act 1 relics, you better farm act 1... they can drop in act 2 as well, but at a very low rate. As i mention you can use the relics and charms to upgrade rare, magic and even common gear, but you can also use them to craft a powerful artifacts that serve as an additional item slot.. you need to find the crafting formula first, then go to the closest enchanter and follow the recipe.
In short, the itemization in TQ opens almost the entire game for the grind... depending on what you're looking for, you can find yourself grinding in all sorts of places, it's a very diverse grind, given the fact how huge the acts are and how much areas and bosses they have. In higher difficulties, you also get additional epic and legendary bosses that are nowhere to be seen in normal.

Grim Dawn is more or less the same in these aspects, but a bit more complex. Here you can add relics and charms to epic and legendary items as well... but that kind of ruins the greatness of the Monster Infrequent items in the game. You can also augment your items which is an additional layer of upgrades... it becomes too much for me... not to mention that there are much more item slots to fill. The game also has a devotion system on top of the skill tree... it's basically a second passive tree.
The game's setting is not as interesting, i don't what is it, but the Victorian setting is not as beautiful... the game is dark, but kind of boring looking to me... i don't know what it is, but the way Diablo 2 does the "dark setting" is unmatched by any other game. Grim Dawn does not impress me with its darkness and goryness. But don't take my word for it, because the game has a lot of fans and that must be for a reason, right?

Wow, my comment is too long to post? Damn! Ok, to be continued...

This post was edited by KillingIsMyBusiness on Oct 17 2020 09:48am

All that being said, i'm going to repeat myself by saying that i consider Diablo 2 to be superior to all the mention games here, because, guess what? They do have their own flaws:

Torchlight 2 has a terrible take on the difficulty system. You choose between 4 difficulties when making a character and you're stuck with it. When you beat the game you start a new game+ and the monsters are up to your level, but the game is still on the difficulty you chose at the start. Thankfully you can increase the difficulty in a LAN game, but once you switch again to single player, you're back on your starting difficulty. That's maybe my only complaint about the game, because other than wanting to see your character fully built at level 100, there's nothing else to keep you going past the first playthrough... Oh, did i mention that there's no benefit whatsoever in playing on higher difficulties? So if you want to grind items, just play on casual difficulty (which is bellow normal), because you're NOT getting higher drop chances on Normal, Veteran or Elite where there's a trade of in clear speed, so why would you waste your time there? That's a ruined potential at its finest! I'm not gonna complain about the cartoonish nature of the game, because for me, once again, it's a nice change of tone and pace... i don't like everything to look like Diablo 2, especially if i'm looking to take a break from D2. That's why i love the look of the game.

Titan Quest doesn't have randomly generated areas, but that's not the problem. The problem is that the monsters are also NOT randomly generated, which is a massive drop on replayability. You only get random miniboss spawns, but that's it. For that reason, i go back to TQ a lot less often than Diablo 2 where you can get all sorts of surprising encounters and battles with unique and champion packs with random abilities and auras.
Grim Dawn does the same thing as TQ, but at least there you have different enemy factions and when you reach maximum hostility level with a certain faction, they increase the spawns of its members and even send unique bosses to hunt you down... it's actually a pretty awesome concept. What i hate about Grim Dawn though, is the Arena! It's called The Crucible, which is a rip off of Darksiders 2's arena. What makes it bad, is that they made the Crucible the best place to find epic and legendary gear, which ruins the purpose to go out and farm the world for anything other than MI's, relics and charms - you have no idea how much i despise the Crucible concept. Why doing fun things and travel the world, when you can stay in one f'n arena for hours on end, to farm your best items? And you will eventually go there and do it, because you'll want to get the best gear, when you get frustrated with bad luck and rng. F the Crucible! So yeah, i know i mentioned Grim Dawns grind as a big positive in the previous post, but that's because i played the game mainly before the expansions and the addition of the Cricible.

It's also a big minus that all these games have useless common and magic items (the equivalent of the blue items in D2)... In the Titan Quest you can get some really good resistanse magical items, but for the most part, magical items become useless once you're passed acts 3 or 4 - it's all rares, epics and uniques after that. None of these games can figure out what to do with low tier items, unlike Diablo 2 where you can find yourself looking out for specific white and grey items on Hell difficulty, not only because of runeword bases, but also because some of them sell at a maximum price. Non of this is in TQ, GD, or TL - thank god, at least they have built in item filters...

Well, i think that sums up my 2 cents on these games... at least that's the things i can think of right now, because i'm in a long break from all Diablo 2 clones.

This post was edited by KillingIsMyBusiness on Oct 17 2020 10:12am

If grim dawn is too complex Imagine Kimbo playing dark souls lmao