Larian Studios Forums General Chat RPG Chat Need a new game...

I liked Titan Quest, but I didn't love it. Only ever completed it once. It's definitely an ARPG and if you aren't into that type of pure combat game, it won't be for you.

Never even got Sacred 2 because of the abusive DRM, but Sacred 1 was solid enough, if you like ARPGs.

Neither is a match for Diablo 2, mind.

I began Drakensang 2 for the third time now. I LOVE this game ! !!!

What exactly is Diablo? I love RTS/RPG games but if it is just a game about hell and the devil, I think I will pass.

Diablo is pretty much the original action RPG, with randomly a generated dungeon, hunt and fetch quests, random loot drops, class based skill trees and equipment sets, etc. The original and Diablo 2 (with its expansion) have sold a million billion copies, and since their release a decade ago or more ago have been in the top 10 monthly sales charts for PC games.

Diablo is kind of like Aleroth in Divine Divinity (town and dungeon), if you take away most of the humour, dialog and quests, world interaction, make the catacombs 15 or whatever levels deep and randomly generated, and get limited inventory slots and scrolls of town portals rather than teleporter stones, and throw in respawning opponents. Diablo 2 added more classes, etc, and much more area above ground (different locations), still with various randomly generated dungeons.

There is a mod for Never Winter Nights re-creating the original Diablo.

What is it about? is it just a game about hell and the devil like the name implies?

Diablo 2 is probably the best ARPG ever made. It's about your character setting out to kill Diablo (Who is either a demon or a devil, I'm not sure which). You get to kill his brothers, too. It involves fighting, fighting and even more fighting, basically. But it's the gameplay that makes it awesome.

If the idea of massacring hordes of demons & undead doesn't appeal, then you won't like Diablo 2.

The plot is just a pretense to justify going out and killing things, so you can get better equipment, so you can kill stronger opponents, so you can get better equipment, etc. Pretty much any evil characters (aliens, robots, etc) could be swapped in without a huge impact on the game, other than atmosphere / style (though I got bored with both games and didn't finish either).
Most of the actual story was told in cutscenes, which were quite well done.

Yes, it's about hell and demons. Diablo looks like a super version of the stereotypical Satan. In both games you eventually descend to hell, and there's a lot of (somewhat altered) heaven vs. hell mythology.

ehhh...not my thing then.

I am fine with games that mix demons, undead, and mythological creatures (i.e. Divinity and Dragon Age)

Not sure I would enjoy a game that is all about them.

Guess I am narrow minded

This game is basically an action-remake of either Nethack or Eye Of The Beholder or both.

You ascend ino a crypt, battle devilish evil, and the game is over when you've come to the deepest level and finished the monster that lurks there.

Like in Nethack.

Only that in Nethack you are sent down to retrieve an amulet.

More on Nethack here : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NetHack

Note : What Nethack lacks of graphical reperesentation it has gained in terms of ideas.

That really depends on what you call an ARPG.

The English Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_role-playing_game#Point_and_click) says "Some of the aforementioned diablo clones are: The Sacred series, Divine divinity, Beyond divinity, Titan Quest, Dungeon Siege series, Loki: Heroes of Mythology, Legend: Hand of God, Fate, Torchlight, Path of Exile."

Of these, in my eyes at least Sacred 2, Divine Divinity and Dungeon Siege 2 were better games than Diablo 2. Some aspects of Diablo 2 were admittedly very well done, but it was terribly lacking in others. I wouldn't even call Diablo 2 an action role-playing game (ARPG), it was a pure character-advancing game (CAG) or maybe a stat-improving game (SIG), without any role-playing.

ARPGs are incredibly popular, but that doesn't mean they'll suit everyone. If you're looking for something where there's any kind of variation in the gameplay, they're not really for you. As Raze said, the entire point of them is to kill stuff so you gain power & equipment to go out and kill more stuff.

I've played enough of them myself to know that I like them when I'm in the mood, but they'll never be my favourite type of game.

The popularity of ARPGs did lead to a massive decline in games companies making true RPGs - not least, I suspect, because ARPGs need a LOT less work by game developers and will make them at least as much money.

It's only when The Witcher and Dragon Age came along that the true RPG is starting to re-emerge. A trend I very much hope will continue

I have to admit, I think 'RPG' is the most abused term in computer gaming. So many games companies don't understand that term, so they wrongly label their games as RPGs because they think anything where you level a character up or equip them is an RPG. Which it's not, of course, but unfortunately the players of RPGs never bothered to protest when the problem started (And yes, I'm as culpable as any other RPG player for this) and now we're stuck with a definition that could be applied to almost any game you care to name. It's an utterly ridiculous situation.

True RPGs are determined by one thing and one thing alone: characterisation. Role playing is freeform acting; it is assuming a role. As such, the player must be able to affect the personality and characterisation of the character they play.

Even with set characters (As in The Witcher) there can be a huge amount of personality variance if the game is done right, because of the choices you make as the character. In a true RPG.

So yes, you are right. Diablo 2 is no kind of RPG at all. Most of the games on that list aren't (And I'm only saying 'most' because I haven't played some of them so can't be sure). But, unfortunately, far too many people think they are for that battle to ever be won.

As for which of those games is the best, well, that's always gonna be a matter of opinion

I suppose I tend to think the same way about the term "Action RPG": apart from being a rather murky area where there's no clear delineation, I find that most RPGs could be described as ARPGs since they tend to involve more action than I'd prefer: almost all seem to have an unnecessarily frequent schedule of violence and aggravation when I'd rather be exploring and chatting to people. But maybe that's just me.

Not as bad as the term "shooter with RPG elements" though, which seems to describe much the same thing but in more obtuse terms.

The way it normally gets defined, a lot of RTS games could be described as ARPGs, Vometia.

Look at the Total War games. Your generals level up, they gain abilities according to what you get them to do, and boy do they ever do a lot of fighting! You can even get them better equipment and followers.

And then there's the Dawn Of War games, where your main character levels up, earns new abilities, and pretty much serves as your in-game avatar.

By a lot of definitions being used in the computer industry, they'd qualify as RPGs, which is just crazy!

And yeah... 'RPG elements'... Even worse. Is there any game, anywhere that could NOT be described as having 'RPG elements'?

Even with something like Space Invaders or Pacman you're still 'taking on a role'.

I think you are getting just a bit technical there

Nah, just pointing up how completely meaningless 'RPG elements' is as a description 'Gator

Look at it this way: if something says FPS or RTS or Adventure Game on the box, you know what to expect, right? But if something says RPG, would that carry the same clarity?

LOL. not really.

I never really looked to see what kind of game I was buying, lots of times I would just look at the cover and read the back description, in fact, it was the back of the Draconis package that made me buy it. The Dragon mechanic is what interested me, and while some here don't like it, I thought that was the best part of the game and wish there were more of it.

Diablo II was my first real PC game love affair, so for a long time, I just bought games based on "does this look like Diablo II?" I didn't care about labels and genre-splitting. That's how Divinity and Arcanum and all the Black Isle games fell into my lap - they just happened to also have 2d isometric camera with mouse controlled characters.

By the way, each of my characters in Diablo II had a name and full fleshed out backstory that was constantly expanding in my head as I played it. I felt very much like I was playing a role and developing a character. I even wrote some fan fiction about them. So there.

Damn, I was biding my time until I threw Pacman in here as an example of just how broad the definition of RPG was, but I was beaten to it.

Maybe it's convenient for me that my definition of RPG tends to be similarly broad to that of the games studios... though I must admit that whilst being able to pilot one's character around is nice, I'd like the character development to be more than what's going on in my imagination and for choices and consequences to be more apparent than "decide to do this quest... or not" at best.

This has given me some food for thought. The various "xRPG" terms often make me bristle somewhat as they're frequently used inappropriately to malign some game that the user of said terminology has a personal gripe about, but actually thinking of the likes of the aforementioned Sacred 2 as well as Stalker and a bunch of other stuff, could they really be described as anything other than "Action RPG"? They're much too complex compared to the average shooter (I'm thinking Doom as representative of the genre, to be clear) but aren't quite "there" (at least per prefab character in the case of Sacred 2, though you at least get half a dozen choices... and most do actually have a "dark path" and "light path" now that I think about it) in terms of RPGs. So perhaps, but I still feel a resistance to introducing additional genres into the nice, straightforward categorisation of RPG, shooter, strategy or adventure, even if not everything I'm likely to play fits neatly into that simple division.

Sigh, I dunno. I'm now just rambling, really.