That sounds like a great title for a new thread on the forums... hehe:

The "Why it no here GOG???" thread.

:o)

Let me bump the thread so we can read other's opinion about these games .

Here is my review for The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing: Final Cut . I'm a bit surprised that it was so badly received by others. Sure, it's flawed here and there but it was one of the best h&s experiences I have ever had. Highly recommended

If you want a very long but constantly evolving game Titans Quest: AE (i own 4 different copies i love it that much)
If you just want length and story without gear to worry about Dungeon Siege 2 with expansion (only play with expansion) is more then worth the time and effort to play... but i still recommend Titans Quest: AE more.

edit: Grim Dawn is the sister game to Ttians Quest as its the same developers... its a boatload more fun (at the expense of polish as compared to TQ:AE) but a lil'shorter then TQ:AE same quality of game different setting and highly recommend it, they are going to continually improve it over time and i hear more content is on the way!

If you dont mind graphics being dull but love atmosphere, story and music Diablo 2
If Diablo 2 looks to bad and need more graphical WOW its Torchlight 2 all the way!

Victor Vran is more fun then i thought it would be, feels very much like Diablo 3 and in that vein its akin to Path of Exile but... PoE is the most complex skill system i have ever seen in any game EVER.

As for Van Helsing, i just got the FC and playing though it, i rather enjoy the 2 character system, brings me back to Beyond Divinity... VH:FC is my current vice at the moment for ARPG's

You did miss a critical game here... Divinity Original Sin: Enhanced... its beautiful but Original Sin is not a straight forward single hero slaughter-fest so your mileage may vary.

I would also suggest looking into Sacred 2, its a mindless diablo clone with a decent enough story but the static world detracts from the overall game... while very fun the draw to keep playing was missing for me when i tried, only got 10 hours out of it.

TL;DR Titans Quest: Anniversary Edition... I will recommend above all else :)

Of the ones I've tried, I like Titan Quest for it's atmosphere of classic mythology and the colourful depiction of monsters and landscape, though I tired of the game by the time I finished the main game as the critters went up in scale and dying was just as easy from an ordinary crab as it was in the first game, making me feel not very heroic, after just having battled the big boss of the base game I would have liked a kind of superhero feel.

I like Van Helsing for it's gothic atmosphere and it's very well done voice acting of the two main characters, especially the slightly sardonic humour of your ghost companion Katherina.

The iconic Diablo 2 I played a long time ago but I tired of it when failing a boss battle, you had to fight your way back across a large landscape full of minor monsters each time you failed the boss battle. It made me lose lots of sleep, all that backtracking to the boss battle after a defeat, until I tired of the game both metaphorically and physically.

Torchilight and Victor Vran are still on my backlog, I don't intend to buy Grim Dawn until both my backlog and it's price have lessened. No use paying some 15 euro for a game I'll never get round to play. I only take that risk if the game costs me 5-ish euro.

*edit: I forgot Path of Exile (because it wasn't mentioned in the titles, but it's mentions in posts in this topic is well justified). A very high quality experience for a game that needn't cost you 'a dime' (or to say it in Dutch 'geen cent'). I play it for free, I play it as a single-player experience, ignoring the other players hanging around in the townbase and even though the game can be played for free, the artwork of the surroundings, especially indoor surroundings like the Library that I forgot the name of, are really beautiful and breathtaking with lavish detail.

Torchlight has an ending of sorts but then you unlock the "infinite" level dungeon.... its a dangerous delve!

Victor Vran is styled like an MMO with hubs and centralized quest locations with mini challenges... if you ever played Hellgate: London its designed like that which is a damn good thing and makes you want to play forever!

I haven’t played most of the newer games, including Torchlight 2. For me, the biggest appeal of these games would be the action in gameplay and the loot.

Diablo II with the Lord of Destruction expansion is my favorite. It has the best loot in any game I’ve played (in all the other genres). The variable damage, combination of things that enhances them, special items and sets, there was always something new to find that was useful and caused me to have to decide what to keep.

Weapons and armor degrade so you have to keep your gear repaired, and should keep a second set of weapons and armor in storage in case you die to fight your way back to your corpse, gather your things and lost experience/gold. Otherwise, you could always exit the game and when you return your body is near to base camp (though you’ll lose a little experience and gold).

The storyline is classic and rewarding to get each piece of the puzzle as you play through the acts. The atmosphere visually and the action is still good to this day. If areas are too tough, you can always hire mercenaries as companions, and give them armor and weapons. The expansion gives you more storage, which makes a huge difference and improvement in itself, plus adds more gameplay. Also, the maps are redrawn with every new gameplay, though the places you visit and bosses are still the same.

Titan Quest is great if you like the theme of traveling through locations in the Ancient World. Starting in Greece, through Egypt and Asia, the loot is good, but the best things rarely drop, so it is good to scan the merchants for random enhanced things, weapons, armor, rings and amulets. The action in this game is very good, switching from melee to ranged weapons, and drawing a few of the enemy to fight at a time instead of being swarmed by a horde.

You can create Male and Female heroes, and name them. The classes are varied having ability to merge two classes (out of the 8 or 9), and has pet companions to watch your back in a few of the classes. Also, you can share items between separate characters with the transfer storage area, not have to be in MP to trade with others. This invites you to play two or three characters at a time, at least. :)

The maps are fixed, and though they are relatively small, there are a lot of them strung together to journey through, with lots of little places, caves and tombs to make them worth exploring. Visually, the game looks great even to today’s standards of graphics.

The Immortal Throne expansion adds more gameplay but I never got through it because of a difficulty spike during the third act. Lost interest when I kept dying at one point. Hoping they addressed that issue in the Anniversary edition. To be fair, it could have been a flaw in my character build, and my choices to distribute points leveling up.

Another game to look at is Sacred Gold. I’ve only done a test run through it, but the loot looked really great. I remember finding great weapons an armor right away, and the items you use to enhance them get better as you go level up and explore the world. It seemed that if you liked some weapons and armor, you could keep them, and just upgrade the enhancements.

I also remember there was some kind of bug if you found certain items and used them before completing a quest, or did one quest before completing that quest, so that is something to read up on to avoid if you decide to get the game.

Another thing that stands out about Sacred Gold is that the enemy was always on the move in packs around the map. You could clear out an area and more enemy would wander through. Seemed like you would never run out of enemies to grind for experience. The game is visually dated, but the action was good. It’s on my backlog to play through one day. Sacred 2 looked good, but didn’t keep me as engaged as the first game when I tested it. but that too is another game to consider.

Divine Divinity only looks like a hack n slash clone of Diablo1/2. it is a huge world rpg that has similar combat action but the classes are all open to be customized. It has an odd sense of humor too, and is a game to consider playing, just not as a hack and slash like the rest of the games discussed in this thread.

I have yet to find any game that has better loot than Diablo II, so if that is part of the appeal of these games for you, it is one you should definitely plan to get and play. If anyone knows of other games that have as good a loot system as Diablo II, let me (all of us) know. heh...

In short:

- loved Van Helsing games and recommend them most definitely. Interesting, humorous, base expansion through all three games
- Grim Dawn is dark in it's mood. But a good game overall, playing it now and enjoying, recommend.

While I think all games mentioned are worth playing, I haven't played Diablo myself and those two above were (are) really fantastic.

Lots of good game mentioned , i have played most of them here are my recommendations.

Diablo 1,2,3 great hack/slash rpgs near perfect game mechanics this is the rpg series to play if you want a awesome story and progressive gameplay , honestly this is the series that you can actually complete fully without getting bored.

Torchlight 1-2 same diablo type game from the people who made diablo series although the gameplay is more refined and loot focused the story is barebones , its not something that you remember, just mention any character from diablo and people will remember but torchlight not much....average story.

Van Helsing : Had to quit out after a while , it might have been fixed now but had a lot of bugs and crashes then and the gameplay is complex and hard.

Titan Quest AE : Huge rpg , still playing this one so far its good wish the pathing was better .

Neverwinter nights 1 & 2 and the scared series are worth a look at along with risen 1 , two worlds series.

I played Sacred 1 forever ago and don't really remember it. Sacred 2 I agree is just...missing something in terms of a hook to just keep you playing a little longer...

It looks very shiny, though, and environments are well done, and the builds are fun to play with. I was stoked when I bought it, and leveled several characters to 15-20 and then just kinda lost interest.

Mounts were a nice feature [edit - though maybe more in theory than in practice. Mine kept dying].

Sacred 1 felt like never ending spawning enemies and a big world to me.

Sacred 2 felt like... a single player MMO, and looked like it too.

There is so much in both games to just keep you occupied with quests and things to do that you'll never run out of stuff to do. And if you do, you could do a new run and not remember most of it.

Lol - yeah, I think that's a pretty good description.

Soooo many quests! You'll out-level a sizable chunk of your quests before finishing them all, and you'll end up wandering to a new quest node while still having a bunch from the last.

On the one hand, it's nice since you can level alts through different quest lines and not just the same ones over and over like in a more linear ARPG/MMO, but it would help if the quest log were a bit more manageable. Didn't find a way to delete quests, for example so I had to keep looking at markers for quests I didn't want to be doing every time I opened the game or maneuvering around the map.

I do actually remember bits of certain towns and quests, but not a lot. It's a world that wants to feel immersive, but I just didn't feel any emotional connection to anything in it. Again, it's pretty though.

I think this is per character, since if you start a new class or the like, the quests are blank, but if you restart and resume from say bronze/Silver to gold difficulty then the quests are marked as appropriate. I recall playing in Silver, and then upgrading it later when I got sufficient level and I figured it wasn't hard enough.

But this was years and years ago... I want to say 2010.

There's probably a save editor somewhere to help with this. If not there should be.

No single town can really be a center hub or home. You do 6-8 quests and move on. There's just enough to keep you looking around and busy, but not enough to be invested. Having somewhere you can go and get invested in sounds more promising. Probably why in Diablo/Diablo2 and others have towns that you would probably be in for several hours going back and forth before progressing to something a little different.